pairing. bucky barnes x fem!reader.
mcu timeline. tfatws.
synopsis. you and bucky are friends... or, at least you were 2 months ago, before he cut all contact. if you had known an injury and a hostage situation was all you needed to finally get some answers out of the stubborn soldier, you would have handed yourself over to karli morgenthau months ago. requested through dm by @theslayerofthevampires
warnings. smut ( unprotected piv, shower sex, silly/sappy sex, doggy style, clit play, switch!bucky with mentions/callbacks to sub!bucky, electricity kink? bestie idk but bucky's gone and got himself his own personal shock collar aka you, implied choking kink - m receiving ) , no use of y/n, reader+bucky's pov, ex-friends to lovers, mutant!reader, ex-avenger!reader, nurse!reader, slow burn, mutual pining/yearning, protectiveness, arguments, does this count as hurt/comfort? idk, implied anxiety+panic attacks, trauma, hostage situations, vomit, canon violence, fire, injuries, blood, mentions of death, angst, fluff, one (1) joke about electro-shock therapy & one (1) use of the word cripple, lord(e) free me from the hell of writing action scenes 😩. this fic ghosts over many of the events in tfatws, please keep this in mind while reading as it could effect it’s readability/the flow of the plot if you are unfamiliar with the events of the show!
reader inclusivity. the reader in this fic is implied to have been part of the same program as wanda and pietro, i'm not the best at describing superpowers but, basically, she can manipulate and conjure energy/electricity through her hands. the request did not make it clear if smut was wanted, so i included it at the end of the fic so anyone who doesn't want to read it can skip it <3
wordcount. 11.7k
hyde's input. diva down, y'all, send help (it's been a sad week so i decided to haunt y'all with my presence)
fic playlist,, for anyone who cares 👉🏻👈🏻
besties aka taglist. @yes-ilovetowrite @strawberryforks
The last time you saw Bucky Barnes, he broke your heart.
Factually, this statement is inaccurate. You could not actually see him when he did it. Yawns have lasted longer than the phone-call, an abysmal fourteen seconds of cold, scripted, rehearsed words fed into your ear through a scratched speaker. Then the line went dead and all that remained was the static sound of silence.
“I am no longer the Winter Soldier. I am James ‘Bucky’ Barnes. Befriending you was part of my efforts to make amends. I’m sorry.”
He wasted no time in blocking your number.
Life takes no prisoners, rolling on and demanding you move forward, trudge through the quicksand of confusion before it swallows you whole and condemns you to a lifetime of wondering why.
Why he walked out your life. Why he chose that day to do so. Why he apologised.
The mind can be a wicked thing in times of distress. In the wake of Bucky’s departure, the rose-tinted frame of friendship cracks, allowing all your memories together to spill over the floor. Picking them up and wiping off the dust, you find yourself staring at captured interactions in a new light, different shades of words and shadows over gestures than you originally remember being there.
Had you hurt him, had you been the one to open the exit door, had you done something wrong that night — even now, you are none-the-wiser to what led him to sever ties.
You’ve always hated police stations.
There’s something sinister about them. A stain on the world, too much grey, and white, and blue lit beneath a sterile light. Metal always seems to clang, all voices fight to yell louder than the rest, and there’s a pervasive stench of bleach — like the building is one big, dirty secret the world is trying to wipe its fingerprints from.
Lump in your throat, you stomach your discomfort for the sake of the soldier. As easy as it was for him to block your number, he forgot to scrub you off his legal records. An emergency contact, a trusted confidant the courts had required him to provide as part of the pardoning agreements — a fail-safe, that’s what you are, someone to call up and pin the blame on should the Winter Soldier ever dare come out to play again.
When the call came in, a tempting siren to rip you from the boat of sleep, a sickness flushed over you, mind racing and heart bracing to hear those awful words. Mr Barnes has fallen off the grid. Reflecting on it now, trapped inside a claustrophobic interrogation room, you’re unsure if fiction would have been worse than the reality of the situation.
Mr Barnes has been arrested. As his registered contact, we cannot release him from custody without your signature. Please make yourself available at the earliest convenience and-
“This only works if you’re all willing to be honest,” declares the woman sitting across from you.
With the little facts you learnt about Dr Raynor, you never pictured her to look so… homely. The blouse almost fools you into thinking this isn’t the sharp-tongue, sharper-minded woman the soldier complained so much about.
“Okay, I’ll go first,” you surprise even yourself. The men sitting at each side of you just about snap their necks as they turn your way. “I honestly do not know why I’m here.”
The soldier was never one for grand displays of affections. Nor minute displays, either. His friendship was not one felt through hugs nor pats on the back, but seen in reassuring glances and the kind of smiles that told you he was still relearning how to form the shape with his lips
Knowing all of this, some foolish part of you had still hoped he would have missed you enough these past few months to lose a little of his composure the moment you walked through the station doors. You’ve flown across state lines just to sign him out of jail, for heaven’s sake!
The least he could do is pretend to still care about you.
“Genius here still has you listed as his handler,” Sam mutters. At least he had been happy to see you, throwing an arm over your shoulder and pulling you in for a side-hug, an silent apology in his eyes.
“No,” you adjust yourself atop the uncomfortable chair. It creaks, far too loudly for a room thick with this much silence. “Why I’m here. In this room. Part of this… weird couples therapy session.”
“Because if James has truly been freed from me by dime-store Captain America, he needs to tie up some loose threads before I let him leave,” the man in question can’t, or won’t, even meet your eyes, stare glued to a corner of the room.
Still, you can feel how you’re infecting his peripheral, can see the way his eyes almost drift towards you, like you’re a magnet drawing them in.
“Oh, trust me, I’m no loose thread. James,” his name is a hiss from your tongue, burning with a foreign flavour. He’s always been Bucky to you — he always was Bucky to you. “Cut me off long ago.”
“I know. That’s exactly why you’re here.”
The guerilla therapy session unfolds about as well as one would expect: in a hypnotic disaster, like a car-wreck you can’t quite tear your eyes away from. Dr Raynor adopts methods used on couples, introducing a seemingly simple prompt: “Suppose that while you’re sleeping, a miracle occurs. When you wake up, what is something you would like to see that would make your life better?”
While the two men busy themselves with snark, you bite back your answer. I’d like to go back in time, to two months ago.
Then a soul gazing exercise comes up, and you’re quick to scoot your chair backwards, out of the soldier’s line of sight, a freshly sharpened knife that promises to pierce the plastic wrap around your heart. But distance can’t save you from the crack in his voice.
“And if he was wrong about you then he was wrong about me!” It would have been less painful to have him dig into your chest and rip your heart clean out from it’s cage.
Hand gripping at the chair beneath you, your fingers jump, a silent plea for your composure to dissipate and allow them to lay themselves atop his shoulder, his brutal aversion to comfort be damned.
You reinforce your hold on the chair, instead, and face Sam, who is halfway through a speech in defence of his decisions. With the blink of an eye, he rises to a stand, smacks a hand atop Bucky’s arm, and turns his sights on you.
“You still a human light-bulb?” The teasing nickname awakens an ache in your soul — Tony used to call you that in the early days of the compound, free for the first time in years and still learning to control your powers. Warmth sizzles through your veins as a crackling light-source ripples from your hands, burning tendrils of electricity warping and dancing between fingertips. “Good, cause I got a favour to ask.”
With that, Sam leaves and lets the door slams on his way out. You’re a moment away from following after him, curiosity itching at your skin that you know he’ll satisfy — unlike the soldier, Sam actually answers when asked a question.
Dr Raynor is quick to intercept, “Ah, no. You sit back down and face James.”
Body barely lifted from the seat, the drop back down still manages to knock the wind out of your lungs. There’s a chance Bucky is to blame for that, a heavyweight gaze that’s pinned itself somewhere past your shoulder, melting you into a blurry stain within his line of sight — not fully in focus, a nuisance in the way of the wall he seems so interested in.
He blinks. Slowly, carefully, an intentional pause taken as he fills his lungs with a stabilising breath. When eyelids reopen, Bucky is finally looking at you.
Blue eyes that do their best to lack any hint of a soul, frozen and robotic in their stare. Humanity, unbeknownst to the soldier, bleeds out of him. It’s in the tightening of his jaw. It’s in the stiffening of his shoulders. It’s in the widening of his pupils.
You itch to ask him how he’s been.
“Now, James, time for a little honesty. And, do me a favour, would you? Really try. You need this more than you think.” The therapist is a horrible reminder of where you are, why you’re here. Bucky doesn’t even flinch at her voice, long ago conditioned to accept being spoken at instead of spoken to. “You crossed her name off your booklet. Why?”
The golden question.
Three simple letters that have shaped your past, present, and future days since the line dropped and Bucky’s number stopped being the one you could dial at any time of the day. Habits die harder than most would think; you sometimes type out the digits, just to tease yourself with the thought of pressing ‘call’ and actually having it go through.
“I completed the assignment you gave me, doc,” Bucky’s response is directed towards Dr Raynor, yet he remains fixated on you, watching you like a predator stalks its prey — too afraid to turn his back, lest you run back off to the burrows with the rest of the cottontails and strays.
“What I told you to do was make amends,” Dr Raynor crosses her arms over her chest, the image of a mother scolding her rebellious teenage son. Any minute now, you expect she’ll drop the classic ‘not mad, just disappointed’ line. “What you did was make a mess. At least tell me you told her the reason.”
Shame overcomes him, casting his stare down to where gloved hands sit fiddling in his lap.
You breath, and it’s like a building has been dropped on your chest. Skipping breakfast is starting to feel more and more like a strategic decision instead of one made on impulse; the cloud of nausea floating around your oesophagus is but an empty threat, no contents in your stomach for it to projectile rain over Bucky’s scuffed boots.
The soldier won’t answer, so you do it for him, “He didn’t.”
“Really, James? I mean, what have you been taking from our sessions? We both agreed her forgiveness would be monumental in your path to reconciliation-”
“I forgive him,” you interrupt, partially because you can’t stand how the pinch between his eyebrows deepens the more she chastises him, and because, as desperate as you are to understand what dictates Bucky’s decisions, you want to hear it from his own mouth, not from the stranger that’s been assigned to analyse his mind. “If that’s all he needed me for, then he’s got my forgiveness.”
The tips of his brows are just about kissing one another.
The soldier lifts his gaze once more, colliding with the intensity of your studying eyes. Red rims the borders of his, spider-webbed and bloodshot with lack of sleep. Who does he call now, when the nightmares leave him stranded and in need of a human life-jacket?
Selfish as you can be, you hope he at least is calling someone.
His lips part slowly. Cracked and bit ridden, a lack of life stains his mouth. He seems none-the-wiser to the state of it, living like there’s still a muzzle covering that half of his face and shielding his voice from the world.
“I don’t need to know why you’re sorry,” you interrupt him before he can possibly begin. It’s a lie you tell both yourself and him, but if you say it with enough conviction, perhaps you’ll start to believe it. “If you don’t want me in your life, I’m not going to force myself into it.”
The chair screams as your stand from it. His head follows your ascent, bending backwards to maintain eye-contact.
This would be easier were he not so naturally attentive. A weapon built to observe, and watch, and study the movement of others as an act of survival.
Is he trying to survive you?
Or, are you another target he needs to exterminate?
The light flickers overhead, product of your own discomforting thoughts as you let them delve into memories best kept concealed in an airtight safe, where all the bad of your past is free to slaughter one another to death. At the first spark of electricity between fingertips, you clench your first shut.
“I’m not like them, James. And neither are you.”
When the door closes behind you, the interrogation room’s light goes back to a cold white, the colour of one’s breath in the chill of winter. The breath Bucky pulls in is ice, a cool burn down into a hollow chest.
“Sorry doc,” his lips pull tight with dishonesty, pain at the edges of his mouth as he forces them to stretch wider. “I broke rule two.”
If anyone was going to drag you back into the fight, of course it would be Sam Wilson.
You had sworn to never step foot back onto the battlefield after the events with Thanos, the war to end all wars. While victory had been secured and families were reunited, too many faces you’d come to admire and adore had perished. Not into particles of dust, but as lifeless bodies strewn across a muddied field. Casualties that no number of glowing stones and no perfected time travelling device could ever bring back.
Cowardly as it may be, you hung up the mantle of hero. Secured an apartment in New York, enrolled as a nurse, and carved out a life of normalcy. Warmth still flowed through your veins, a daily itch that begged to be unleashed, but you learnt to mute it. Dull it. Serrate the weapon implanted into your DNA.
Befriending the soldier had helped take your mind off of it, gave you both common ground to tip-toe over like a mine-field, an unaddressed understanding between two tortured souls. Then he up and left you to fend for yourself.
You could not return the favour when Sam presented you with his plea, fervour behind each word he described the situation at hand with.
A group of mercenaries turned revolutionaries. Gunning for a good cause, yet turning violent. Altering their bodies with a serum, tearing the fabrics of their being apart and stitching it back together with a strength that did not belong to them. The Flag-Smashers are a force to be reckoned with.
Who better to reckon with them than an escaped super-soldier hating convict, the bionic super-soldier, a retired avenger, and the man who passed on the role of Captain America? From Earth’s mightiest to Earth’s most-unlikely, what a fall from grace your career as a hero has taken.
Let the record show, to whom ever it may so concern, that you were staunchly against the liberation of Zemo.
Voicing this was futile, of course, when the man himself was already stepping into the limited light of the warehouse and shooting all three of you an easy smile, like he had not just changed out of an orange jumpsuit.
Through high and low, in a plane bound towards Madripoor and on the ground running from bounty-hunters convinced you had a hand in killing Selby, Bucky has not spoken to you once. You’ve heard his voice, through one-word answers to a cautious Sam and in threats aimed at Zemo, but not once has it been directed to you.
Nor have his eyes, until now.
Neon strobes flash all around you, a dizzying sight that has you craving a drink and the permission to capture the light source and watch it implode on itself. Sharon’s instructions had been to blend in, unfortunately, so you weave through bodies and ignore the pain blooming from your temples.
You feel Bucky’s attention before you spot him. It hovers over you like a force-field, a protective bubble that seems to push the surrounding crowd one step back, heads turning to glance over their shoulders at the man, the myth, the nightmare. The Winter Solider, back pressed to a wall and arms crossed over his chest.
Someone did not get the memo on blending in.
A hand brushes against you. First a whisper of a touch, the kind that makes you doubt you’ve even felt it. And then it’s as loud as a scream, a faceless limb curling over the curve of your waist and entrapping you back against the stiff outline of a stranger. Possessive, yet inviting, coaxing you to sway in a rhythmless pattern to the music blaring throughout the room.
One look across at where he stands is all it takes for Bucky to move. On the prowl, he drifts through the crowd, finding pockets of space to slip past strangers. It triggers a reaction in you, one that yearns to prove you don’t need his help.
Super-powers on lock-down, you lay your own hand atop the stranger’s, who entangles their fingers into the fabric of your clothing and presses themselves closer to you, like they’ve spotted the green-light they were looking for to smother themselves against you. One steadying breath and a quiet mantra on repeat in your mind — disarm, disengage, disappear — you launch your attack.
Taking a deathly grip, you feel as the stranger’s hands mould beneath it. There’s an uncomfortable grunt at your back, one that deepens as you twist a wrist and pair it with a stomp of your foot atop their own. Free from any unwanted touch, you dash out into the crowd, leaving a slew of foreign curses and an aching hand behind.
You steal a look over your shoulder, confirm no one is following you, and run head first into someone else.
The chill of vibranium kisses one elbow, while the heat of flesh burns the other. When your eyes meet, the soldier appears more rattled than you. The red flush in his eyes has grown darker since the police station, the dusting of facial hair now a shadow of brown over his face.
It takes you a moment to register the shake in his hand.
Nearly unnoticeable, Bucky fails to ground himself in your skin. There’s no method behind his breathing, no in and out, no dance of the rise and fall of a chest. Instead, his breathing is scrambled all over the place; inhaling on what should be an exhale, and holding far longer than ordinary lungs would deem survivable.
You’re not sure he’ll hear you over the music. You’re not sure you want him to.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine,” the first thing he’s said to you in months and it’s a lie.
You don’t call him out on it.
You don’t let him rest thinking you believe it, either.
You do press a hand to his heart.
It races beneath cotton, beneath his suit jacket. A marathon of chaos thrumming throughout his arteries, spreading something dangerous to every cell that encompasses him.
And now he’s watching you, pinning you with a look so disturbed and vulnerable that you ache to flea. From him, with him. A game of tug-of-war between your desires and rationale.
Swallowing down a mouthful of your own nerves, you match the panic in his eyes with a softening of your own. Pressure against his chest, your free hand guides his to lay flat against your sternum.
And then you inhale, slowly, let him feel the rush of air expanding your lungs beneath his fingerprints. He tries, and fails, to do the same.
Holding your breath, you mouth a slow count of seven, making sure he reads over the words you don’t quite speak, and then you exhale. Slower than he does, chest deflating beneath his hand.
Where failure occurs, dust yourself off and try again. That’s exactly what you do with him, beginning a second inhale and forcing him to feel it once more.
Three, four, five breaths are pulled and pushed out both your lungs, slow motions amongst a crowd of pounding hearts. The soldier falls in line, synching himself to the timing of your rise and fall. Upon inhales, the distance between you both diminishes, bodies lingering closer for a counted pause in time, until you exhale and the space returns.
Your hand loosens atop his own upon the sixth breath. Bucky holds it still against your chest, not even a twitch of a finger. Your eyes widen, brows jumping with the proposal of an unspoken question, a nonverbal check-in. He nods, affirmative and slow, confirming the calming of his restless soul.
As you itch to step back, his metal hand clasps over the one atop his chest. You yield to his grasp, let him drag it north to where metal dangles from a chain. The soldier encases both of you around the dog-tags, a tight squeeze that brings no physical harm yet terrorises you with the branding of his name into your skin.
Your breathing is now the one out of line, falling behind in the steady pace you set.
The shape of your name forms over his lips. Before he can speak it, Sam beats him to it, emerging from the left with Zemo hot on his trails and the claim that Sharon has found the intel you were all hoping for.
Hours later, dodging bullets and taking cover amongst shipping containers, it remains stained over your palm.
James Buchanan Barnes.
Chaos does as chaos does best: it spreads.
You chase after it alongside the three men, trailing from one end of the Earth to another. Exhaustion stitches itself into your features, becomes a prominent descriptor for your face. And the silence between you and Bucky persists.
The avoidance is purposeful now, on both each other’s part. An agreement to keep out the other’s way. Yet presence is not something either of you can suppress.
When lights flicker on through every room he enters, Bucky says nothing.
And, when you wake up each morning to find an extra blanket shielding you from the cold, you say nothing.
Somewhere in Europe, an early morning, all hell breaks loose. Minutes from talking down the leader of the Flag-Smashers, Sam has the rug pulled out from beneath his feet by a self-entitled John Walker, storming on the scene with a barrel pointed at the girl’s head and a demand to surrender.
The ensuing events are a blur. An unchoreographed chase-down. Each pounding of your feet to the ground, the electricity pleading to be set free grew louder, warmer, a constant buzz frying your brain with the need for release. Another defeat notched onto all your belts, your meagre team of four dragged itself back to the Baron’s home.
Another fight awaited you there.
The Dora Milaje had their sights set on Zemo, yet they wound up wrestling against Walker and his sidekick. Despite your intentions to remain out of the fight, Sam and Bucky’s interference landed you a bruised cheek and your hands pinned behind your back.
You let the warrior fool herself into believing she immobilised your powers when, in truth, you never intended on using them.
Walker’s bruised ego and Zemo’s fleeing later, the silence between you and the soldier shatters.
“You’re bleeding,” of course you’re the one who has to swing the verbal axe.
Unaware of his injury, Bucky begins to inspect himself. He spots it in the mirror: a gash down his right shoulder blade.
“It’s a flesh wound,” and he’s an idiot, with skin torn open and spilling a river of red into the black cotton of his shirt.
“It would be embarrassing for a super-soldier and war veteran to die from tetanus,” so, maybe you’re being a slight hypochondriac. Working the wards does that to a person, steals any room for doubt when it comes to health and safety. “Don’t be so bull-headed, come here.”
Sam long gone in search of a calming breath and the will to not implode with anger, only you two fill the space of Zemo’s hideout. No other eyes are there to witness nor question as the soldier sits quietly in a bar stool, shirt off and back facing you.
A bowl of cold water and a damp rag, you swipe over drying blood and watch it revive itself, pink rivulets rolling down the stretch of his skin. You catch them before they can reach the waistband of his jeans, and accidentally brush a finger over the silvery mark of a scar long healed yet the pain it brings remains fresh.
You almost apologise.
Bucky almost says it’s okay, your hands could never hurt him.
Instead, you return focus to his open wound and he clamps his teeth down on his tongue.
The mending process is impromptu, the ultimate display of working with what you have. Or, rather, what you find. A half-drunken bottle of vodka to cleanse the wound, a sewing kit to stitch the flesh back together, a bandage to dress it.
The soldier struggles to dress, incapable of angling his arm correctly and pulling the fabric of a fresh shirt over his skin. Against your better judgement, you step in and help, looping over his head and feeding his arm through the sleeve.
“Thanks,” his smile is sheepish, false. A placeholder for whatever he’s really feeling. It sparks something in your heart. Something ugly, and dangerous, looming over all four chambers of the delicate organ, and feeding itself into your bloodstream. “I forget how hard the Dora Milaje hit-”
“Don’t talk to me like we’re friends,” it snaps out of you, cruel and aiming right for the soldier with intentions of killing the smile on his face. It doesn’t even waver but his eyes do, sinking to the floor like a kicked puppy. You feel sick with pity, yet ripe with anger. “Not after putting so much effort into proving we’re not.”
“You’re right,” why doesn’t it fill you with victory to hear him say it? “I’m sorry.”
“Stop!” You get him to flinch, but at what cost? It only deepens the nausea in your soul. Still, you press on with irate words. “I’m sick of hearing you apologise. When have I ever asked you to be sorry?”
“It’s not something you ask,” he bites the inside of his cheek. “It’s something you’re owed.”
“You know what? Yes, I am owed an apology!” The pacing begins before you truly realise, boots scuffing over carpet and kicking up a storm in their wake. “Two months, Bucky! I haven’t heard from you in two months! And then I come here, I go out of my way to give up the peace I’ve worked so hard to bring into my life, and you won’t even look me in the eye!”
Tears sting, blurring your vision yet you won’t let the dam break, won’t let him see you so emotional when he’s the poster boy for stoicism. Fog in your eyes, you fail to notice the way his are suddenly pinned to you, following the back and forth pattern your steps engrave into the floor.
“I mean, who does that?” The words are practically ripped from you, painful as you bring them into fruition. Heaviness clogs your throat with a sob, another degree of distraught you have to fight to contain, reducing your voice to a whisper. “I thought we were friends.”
You’re not exactly sure what reaction you were hoping for.
A yelp of pain? A howl of anger? A whimper of sadness? Backed into a corner and speared by you words, the soldier gives you no such thing. He just stares.
Wide-eyed, unblinking, slow-breathing.
“If I deserve an apology, you deserve a ‘thank you’.” The laughter that tears through your chest possess not a trickle of humour. Instead there’s only grief, mourning for the friendship he left to rot. Dead and unburied, you’ve wandered the last few months desiccating through the streets of the city. Now, you reach for the knife he placed in your back and turn it on him instead. “Thank you for reminding me I can sleep through the night, if you’re not there to tear me away from it. Thank you for showing me I’m capable of doing this all on my own. Thank you for liberating me from… this. Us.”
As high as you get off of cruelty, the comedown is a complete crash of your system. Shoulders that deflate, hands that squeeze shut, and lights that flicker like an electrical storm. When one of the light-bulbs shatters under the heat of your ire, your eyes flinch shut and the barrier of tears snaps at last.
The first to roll is the warmest, lulling you in with the promise of oxytocin.
Bucky inches closer and, on reflex, you flinch back. Images flash quicker than all the surrounding lights, memories of the early days. Confinement, experiments, men in lab-coats.
You never forget the first life you take. In your case, you knew nothing about him. Not his name, not his age, not his favourite colour nor his dearest relative. All you have to remember him by is the smell of his body, blood spilling through every orifice and the stench of electricity convulsing his limp body.
Before the guilt could fully creep in, one of the lab-coats clapped and set off a chain reaction, overcome with a joy that did not match the territory of having just watched their colleague unexpectedly die at the hands of a child.
Of course, you were no longer a child to them, but a weapon.
“There’s something wrong with me,” Bucky starts, and pauses instantly to pull himself together, armour almost cracking under the pressure to reach out and wipe the next tear away before it can trail down your face. “Something in me, it… It hungers. I can’t watch it devour you.”
You hiccup over a sob, the gentle tone of his voice a blanket over the chaos of another light smashing. The soldier does not even react, he just keeps looking at you.
“What does that even mean?”
“It means that everyone I’ve ever cared about has either died,” the first thorn in his field of roses appears, a twinge of distress staining the calm of his voice. Not fear of your powers, but a plea to be understood. “Or I’ve made them hate me through hurting them. I can’t watch that happen to you.”
“Don’t worry,” you wipe at your cheek with the back of your hand, a futile attempt to dry tears that only spread further over your skin. “You hurt me by making me hate you.”
The events in which your life falls apart are quite simple.
First, there’s a threat posed against Sam’s sister. Second, an agreement to meet with Karli Morgenthau — she demands an audience of one, Sam brings her three: Bucky, him, and you. Third, Cadet America and Battlestar Galactica — or whatever John Walker and Lemar Hoskins are running around calling themselves… The point is, they show up uninvited and wreak havoc. Fourth, a fight ensues.
Despite the work put into suppressing that tingle in your bones, it feels good to finally let it loose.
No fear of frying someone into cardiac arrest, the strength that courses through the Flag-Smashers acts as a padding to your touch. For every punch thrown your way, you block it with an electrifying grip, hand closing over fists and watching as faces flush with fear while you zap a bolt of light through them.
A fist flies at you from the right, crashing against your cheek with a crunch that has your jaw aching and open, a thrum of pain echoing up the side of your face. Before you can unload the ball of electricity conjured in your hand, a Vibranium one interferes, grabbing your attacker by the scuff of their neck and knocking them unconscious.
“You’re okay,” the words carry relief, but it’s unclear who they’re aimed at: you or him. Barely two days have passed since you confronted him, yet Bucky stands before you now, right hand inspecting your jaw, like nothing between you has changed. Like these last few months have been nothing but a bad dream that he’s finally called and pulled you out of. “‘S not broken, just gonna bruise.”
If you have the will to answer, you’re not given the chance.
The fight around you both continues, three fighters caging you against one another. Back to back, you fight your way through them. Bucky is all brawl, fists thrown with his entire weight behind them and slamming into the Flag-Smashers with the intention to deescalate, not kill. You, on the other hand, continue the approach of defence, waiting for them to attack first before you unleash shock-waves over their system.
The fighting comes to stand-still at the first casualty. Lamar lays slumped over, a fountain of blood pouring from his mouth as he stares onward, void of life.
“Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey... c’mon... Lemar, Lemar, Lemar, Lemar, Lemar...” Walker’s voice fills the hall, frantic with denial as he checks over his fallen friend.
At Karli’s command, Lemar’s killer flees the scene. Walker is hot on his trail, tightening his grip on the shield of America as devastation and heartbreak settles over him in a blinding cloud. Bucky moves without much thought, dashing to follow the fight and capturing the attention of a handful of Flag-Smashers.
Too many for the soldier to take on his own, instinct comes over you as you raise both hands, eyes squeezing shut in an attempt to channel the power from every flickering light, every outsource of electricity scattered throughout the dilapidated building.
Pain. It infects you like a poison, like nothing you’ve ever felt before. Your eyes fly open with a cry, and find Karli’s hands crushing one of yours in both their grasp, bones snapping like twigs under her strength. The amber tendrils flicker in your other hand, unruly and unwilling to bend to the demand of shocking her, as the super soldier continues to hold you within her deadly grip.
“I’m sorry,” the girl is so soft spoken, you want to believe her. “But I can’t let you get in my way.”
The stitching of your shirt’s neckline snaps beneath Karli’s grip. You barely have time to spew any version of Bucky’s name before she slams her forehead into yours.
The light in your palm burns out and the world goes dark.
There’s this street in Brooklyn.
The floor is cobblestone and uneven, a hazard to cross when rain runs a river over it. Trash compacts and lives deep within the crevices that divide road and sidewalk. Business ends before twenty-two hundred hours, a paradox living within the city that never sleeps. No light guides the way — burnt out decades ago, the streetlamps sit as a landmark of time and not as a beacon of safety.
“You know,” you muse, the midnight breeze brushing over your skin in a sweet caress. “You don’t have to walk me home every time we go out.”
“This street is darker than my past. It’s the least I can do.”
“You don’t have to worry about my safety,” even so, the thought heats up your cheeks. “I’m a walking taser, remember?”
“How could I forget?” Not even you can help but laugh, reminiscing your first encounter. Amidst the chaos of the Sokovia accords, his feet escaped confinement and your hands wrapped around his throat in a mock shock-collar. “It’s not your safety I worry about. Someone’s got to be there to call an ambulance when you electrocute a poor unsuspecting criminal.”
Despite the strength that separates him from the confines of normalcy, Bucky gives in to the shove you give his shoulder, drifting several steps out into the empty road only to be sucked back into your orbit, an arm hooking over your shoulders and offering an apologetic pat.
Both your strides grow shorter as your building comes closer. If you hadn’t already taken two unnecessary laps in the search of more time, you’d ask for another walk around the block. But it’s late, way past any reasonable hour, and he has therapy in the morning. You can’t take more from him.
“I want to,” the soldier confesses, gentle tongue and smiling mouth forming the words. “That’s why I walk you home. Know you don’t need me to, but I think I need it.”
A comforting quiet carries you both the rest of the way, delicate thuds echoing as you travel up the steps to your building’s doorway. A moment of panic passes over you as you struggle to find your keys, hand rustling through your purse in search of the precious metal, only for something to jingle in Bucky’s grasp.
“Lookin’ for these?” He drops them into your open palm, a vibranium key-chain glinting beneath the moonlight — a souvenir from his recent visit to Wakanda, Shuri made sure to send you a scathing text detailing how the soldier blackmailed her into making it. “You left them on the bar. Wanna tell me again how you don’t need me?”
“Technically, I never said that,” while you verbally push at his buttons, your pointer finger pushes on his chest. Solid and warm, you’re overcome with a foreign urge. “But, oh thank you, my knight in vibranium armour!”
Standing one-step higher than Bucky, you meet no difficulty in throwing your arms around his neck and pulling him in for a hug. He, on the other hand, goes stiff as a board, smile melting into a thin line as the rest of him freezes. You double down in light of his non-reciprocation, squeezing your arms a little tighter behind his neck and leaning further over the ledge of the step — nothing but trust for the soldier as you unload the responsibility of bearing your body onto him.
Slowly, the arms glued to his side loosen. Rise over your mid-back. Take their own hold around you. His movements are awkward and full of insecurity — when was the last time he was hugged?
You let him decide when enough is enough, unfurl your arms when his slip from your waist. As you shuffle back over the step, however, the moonlight catches over something else.
“Oh, I forgot,” he’s receptive to your voice, patient as he waits for you to continue. “The book I’m reading, it’s set during a fictional war and, well… I’m sorry if this is a bit silly but, do soldiers really gift their dog-tags to people?”
There’s every chance the question catches him more off-guard than the hug you just imposed on him, for it takes a few second for him to answer.
“Sometimes, yeah,” he nods to his own words, flesh hand rubbing at the back of his neck. “To family, friends… Loved-ones. The tags, they have our names, our whole identity engraved on a metal plate. I guess that’s why they usually go the person you’d want to be remembered by the most.”
The beauty in your friendship has always been the lack of curiosity. A safe haven from each other’s histories; neither of you ask things the other would not want to remember.
And so, you swear you do not mean to pry.
“Do you have anyone like that?”
Instead of a name, the soldier gives you a look.
A single trail of his gaze down your face, something unspoken etched into the way his forehead wrinkles with a frown and his throat swallows.
“It’s late,” the distance between you both remains the same, yet his voice sounds miles away. Gone. Removed. Detached. “You should go up. I’ll call you in the morning.”
And then you never see him again…
You wake with an itch in your palm. World still shutout behind the darkness of eyelids, a pained groan coughs out of you when you try and close your fist. Fingers, swollen and bruised, brush against one another in a failing attempt to curl inwards.
“I’m tryin’ to help,” a voice calls out from the left. “Bit pointless if you keep movin’.”
Consciousness crashes down on you like a sledgehammer, reawakening your nerve endings to every ache and throb, ghosts from a fight long gone and passed.
You let the light seep back in, eyes peeling open to face the rays of warmth piercing through a shattered window. But your veins feel empty of it, hollow as you attempt to conjure that familiar lick of heat.
Karli Morgenthau sits at your bedside — a dirty mattress on the floor — gauze threaded through her fingers as she uses it to tighten a plank of wood to your crushed hand, broken bones screaming out in pain as she forces the fingers flat. A makeshift cast, the kind one would expect to be given while shackled in the hideout of an evil mastermind.
Except, no cuffs bite at your wrists and there’s no inch of her that appears evil. She’s just a girl, barely grown past a child, and the weight of the world has already engraved itself into her tired face.
“Where are we?” Your own voice rings in your head.
“The city you call home,” Morgenthau offers up freely, securing the bandage with a knot.
What she lacks in nursing skills, she makes up for with her bedside manners, unscrewing a bottle of water and holding it out for you. Rising slow, you take hold of the plastic and welcome the sweet relief of moisture to sandpapered lips.
Barely a sip slips down your throat before you gag, body rejecting it and spewing down your chin. The pounding in your head feels like it grows tenfold.
“How long was I asleep?”
“A day or so,” Karli surprises you, delivering soft pats against your back and aiding you in your throat’s need to relieve itself of the burning bile. “You’ve been slippin’ in and out, especially on the plane. D’you know you talk in your sleep?”
The dream replays in a montage, memories of Bucky and you on that dark street stabbing you in the gut with embarrassment. What nonsense had you said aloud?
“I think I’m concussed,” unbroken fingers push into your temple, massaging in a circular motion as you try to coax the agony out of your skull. “You need to get me to a hospital.”
“I can’t do that,” the girl’s demeanour shifts, the once soft stare of a child lost in a sea of madness now hardening with ice and sending a chill down your spine. “You’re my leverage, it’s the only way to keep your friends in line.”
“Karli,” as calm as you keep your voice, there’s panic coursing through your system. Your body won’t cooperate; you can’t summon a single wisp of electricity in your non-maimed hand. “This could kill me. And if I die, my blood is on your hands. Are you sure you can live with that?”
“We’re so close, don’t you get it?” Any sense housed within her has departed, leaving nothing but a crazed look upon her features. “The GRC are meeting tonight. We’re going to put an end to the Patch Act, and then we’ll set you free.”
Outside the window, New York is sunny. A blue sky with no clouds, birds fly through the air, and the Sun paints a golden hue over every inch of land it touches.
It wouldn’t be a bad day to die.
Bucky feels like he’s choking.
Perhaps his jacket is too tight, leather wrapped around him like a casket and confining him beneath the rigid material. Maybe adrenaline is stealing his breath, using it as fuel to propel him onwards through the GRC building, eyes scouring for anyone running around like a headless chicken to direct them towards safety. Or, possibly, his lungs can’t remember how to pull in air when you’re not around.
Days have blurred together. Nights have been restless. Helpless and hopeless, it’s taken everything to not turn towards a familiar comfort in your time of danger. A part of him longs for a time where those ten words still hovered over him like a threat, so he could command Sam to unleash the colder side of him and send him on one last mission.
The Soldier would have had you back by now.
Without him, Bucky is nothing but a man frozen in time. A veteran, a cripple, and a man who’s woken every day with torment in his chest.
Self-inflicted, the kind of pain one can only hope to heal with pressure and time.
There’s a call of the soldier’s name. A stranger wrapped in a pencil skirt and sporting a badge around her neck passes him a phone, declaring the call is for him. Before speaker even meets ear, Bucky knows who awaits him on the other end.
“Ain't you tired of fightin’ for the wrong side, Mr Barnes?”
“I've done this before, kid,” lights flash outside the windows, red and blue, and oh so reminiscent of that dance floor in Madripoor. For a moment, he feels you on his chest, like a phantom limb, lulling it to rise and fall with the rhythm of your own. “I know how it ends.”
“It doesn’t matter if I don’t survive this. I’m fightin’ for somethin’ bigger than myself.” Karli spits down the line as he trudges down a flight of stairs. “And with all the bodies you’ve collected, have you ever been able to say the same?”
That strikes a nerve.
Bucky resists the bait as well as he can, “You don’t think I ever fought for something bigger than myself? That’s all I ever try to do, and I failed twice.”
“Three times, if you think about it hard enough. Do you think she’d still be willing to die for you,” his muscles stiffen, every bone in his body locks, and his grip tightens on the phone. “If she knew what you did?”
“I don’t know what you’re-”
“Yes, you do. I’ll do you a favour and tell’er all about it, right before I kill her.”
“Touch a hair on her head and there won’t be anywhere far enough you can run that I won’t find you,” he can’t bring himself to say your name, a cocktail of fear and desperation. Karli can tell you his dirty secret. She can tell the whole world, for all he cares. What she can’t do, what he won’t survive her doing is taking you from this world. His world. “You don’t want to do this, Karli.”
“You’re right, I don’t.” Finally, a full breath of air. “Well, thank you. I'm glad you took my call. You've been a big help.”
The line drops and Bucky’s left with nothing but his own reflection, a face of agony in the window as he realises that, despite his efforts, he took the bait.
Hook, line, and sinker.
When you were a child, you loved the smell of gasoline.
Your father was a busy man. Time with him was rare, fleeting, something you had to fight to obtain. Being his daughter did not grant you premier access to him, you had to compete alongside all of his business associates; all those men in suits versus a little girl with skinned knees.
But road-trips, those were the only instance where he put down the pager and gave you all the love and attention any normal father would. Gas stations became a vision of home on the horizon, the promise of lukewarm meals, toilets that had never once been cleaned, and the sweet, sweet burn of petroleum deteriorating your brain cells.
The vehicle you sit in now is not manned by your father, yet it smells of gasoline.
Blindfolded and bound, your body sways blindly as tires screech over asphalt. Polyester slices at your neck, seatbelt fastened too tightly against your body. You know better than to complain.
It’s amazing how quickly old survival instincts return, slipping on like a cable-knit sweater you’d long kicked under the bed and forgotten about. You may not be in a literal cage anymore, dragged out for a routine poke and prod of chemicals and needles, but the process of being a hostage, all these years later, remains the same: sit still, be quiet, and do as you’re told.
What do you do, however, when your captor abandons you?
Bedlam overruns the scene. The vehicle comes to a halt, a door slams to your left, heat begins to pool over your skin. At first you tell yourself it’s nerves, a marker of the anxiety coursing in your veins. But it grows warmer, the air around you scolding to breathe and riddled with smoke.
There’s a ruckus of voices, all loud and none familiar, as several bangs ring out.
“Hold on!” A voice stands out amongst the noise.
Fists bang against metal and glass, pounding over and over, desperation thrown behind every punch. Hinges screech and snap as a door is pried open at the back of the vehicle, followed by the flee of feet over a metal body.
“Go, go,” the liberator of captives commands.
You test your own voice, a wail of distress that’s not loud enough, and your chances of being saved are halved.
Breathing grows weaker as the heat grows higher, a fire burning bright enough you see it in flashes behind the dark of your eye-covering.
“Thank you for saving us,” sleep calls to you through the rush of strangers, begging you to let yourself drift off back to that street in Brooklyn. “But there’s a girl! She’s trapped in the passenger seat!”
Eyelids reunite as your head lolls to the side, a ringing starting back up in your ears at the same time as the throb in your head. Your hand went numb hours ago, wrapped in gauze and tied tightly to your other. The voice of resilience inside your head, one that sounds alarmingly like a certain soldier, is screaming at you to fight.
To pry your lungs open with air. To tear your eyes open again. To let the buzz of electricity simmer from beneath your nail-beds, electrifying your touch enough to burn the bindings scratching at your wrists and to tear the blindfold from your face.
Your attempts leave you empty-handed, control lost from the moment Karli crushed one of your palms, abandoned in a time of need by your own powers.
All that pressure has put Bucky in a race against time.
Fire blazing on along the right side of the getaway car, smoke grows thicker as he rounds the driver’s side. Behind the window lays a cloud of grey, a storm that rolls in and obscures his view of the passenger seat. There’s a blurry shape, a figure slumped over.
The soldier’s fist slams through the glass.
And then he’s reaching inside, two hands grappling a hold of the passenger and hauling her over the van’s console. It’s messy, and graceless, and no doubt a bruising ordeal as he takes the weightless body in his embrace.
Brain switched off to outside stimulus, the only thought that passes through him is safety, get away from the ticking time bomb that is the burning van. Only then can he concern himself with trivial matters, like the state of the girl in his arms.
The girl who stirs, face turning into his chest as her ribs shake with the assault of a coughing fit. The girl whose blindfold slips down her nose and pools around her neck, a noose made of rags. The girl who’s capable of putting him into a state of cardiac arrest with one look alone, starlight sewn into the sparkle of her eyes.
“Took you long enough to rescue me,” you croak up at him between a cough. “Knight in vibranium armour.”
Bucky lowers your feet to the ground at your own unspoken request, squirming in his hold until the tips of your toes step over solid road and he’s loosening the bindings around your wrist.
If the world around you is at war, the soldier is dodging draft, too caught up in the battle of assessing what state you’re in. Wrinkled clothes, and dried blood, and the ash of a fire that’s still burning behind him. A grin creeps onto your face and sparks uproar in his chest.
An overjoyed imposter in a crowd of disaster, something in the stretch of your lips feels off; the corners do not quite reach your eyes. Exhausted and drained, pupils that stare past his own and plea for the gratification of sleep, the blessing of rest.
“Need you to follow my hand,” Bucky can’t help himself, palm cradling your face and a thumb soothing over the bags weighing heavy on your eyes. A cold sweat clings to your skin. “Think you can do that for me, darling?”
“Don’t call me that,” the words fizzle out into a giggle. With a slow wave of his metal hand, he watches as your stare stutters along in a failing attempt to catch up with his movements. “Makes my heart-”
You cut yourself off, body melting against his own.
Bucky won’t let himself make the same mistake, won’t have this moment be a repeat of that night in Brooklyn where his arms froze at his side instead of satisfying the craving he’d been feeling for months, scratching the itch to wrap you in his embrace.
The soldier’s arms slot around you with practised ease, like a lock sliding into place to conceal the greatest treasure. Touching you spreads warmth not only over his hands, but his soul, at long-last finding a breath of ease after months of drowning in himself. Slumping deeper into him, Bucky accepts you with every fibre of his being, heart lurching into his throat as he shuts out the chaos, for just a moment, and rests his head stop your own.
“Bucky.”
“Gimme a little longer,” his mumbles into your scalp, resisting the urge to tighten his biceps as the full weight of you presses into him. “Just wanna hold you, feel you’re okay.”
Karli and all the rest can wait.
If a fight is what they want, he’ll give them it. He’ll kick, and punch, and do all that he can to hold off until back-up arrives — Sam is somewhere out there, wings spread and a shield at his back. But not now.
Now, he’s going to memorise the song your heart sings, and anchor his worry in the wholeness of your existence, and sync his inhales to your exhales.
“Bucky, it hurts,” foolishly, he hums in response, not yet cognisant of what you said.
Until your breath trips over itself.
He lets the world back in too quickly, numbing his vision with flashing lights and a shadow cast from a Flag-Smasher standing ten paces behind you and sporting shock all over his demeanour. When you come into focus, he’s staring down at your back and bearing witness to the spreading of a disease, a dark mass spreading over grey cotton.
And his hands… They’re not just warm, but scolding. Contaminated with a peculiar wetness that’s viscous and sticky, slipping between the crevices of his fingers like a syrup, thick streams that drip from his skin and stain the road a darker shade of black.
Bucky catches you as your knees buckle, soaking hands submerging themselves back into a pond of blood. The logical part of his brain is failing him. Lower-rib, left side, rebar impaled through shirt and flesh. So much blood. Too much blood. It is your spleen? It has to be your spleen.
He’s back to drowning again.
“Hey, hey,” he whispers, forcing down the lump in his throat as he pulls back to find you calm, not a single ripple in your features while tears surface over his own. “Eyes on me, remember? Follow my hand.”
Metal plates scream into place as he raises the vibranium to the level of your face, repeating a waving motion. At your back, the stain of you on his flesh is a bloodbath, a sickening sight he knows better than to subject you to.
Bucky’s own private hell grows.
Distant yells move closer as he tunes back into the insanity swirling around you both. Flag-Smashers are fighting tooth and nail with John Walker, flames have completely engulfed the wreckage of the van he pulled you from, and, worst of all, the other vehicle of hostages dangles by a thread atop the shell of a building, bars of metal that are slowly bending beneath the weight of wheels.
“You have to go,” you speak calmly, like every second that passes isn’t making it harder to stand up straight.
“No.”
“You have to stop them-”
“No!” Bucky shakes his head, hoping to block out the screeching of metal and the slamming of fists against skin. He just wants to hear you. “I’m gonna get you somewhere safe, okay? Get you in an ambulance and to a hospital. And I know you hate being a patient but, you don’t gotta worry ‘cause I’ll be there to hold your hand and-”
“Bucky,” there you are again, pushing him away and forcing him to let the noise of everybody else’s terror in, like he too isn’t watching his fears come to life before him. “Those people need you, please.”
“But I need you.”
Unlatched from him at last, you drift a few steps back, head shaking when he tries to reach for you.
A handful of civilians, the very same faces Bucky rescued from that burning van, crowd around you, carefully slipping your arms over their shoulders and hauling your slumping figure up.
“I’m fine,” you choke over a sob, tears to match his own sliding down your cheeks. “Go.”
All Bucky has ever tried to do is the right thing. He chased down the hostages. He pulled them from the van, a man even thanked him for saving them. So, why does it feel like he’s failed once again?
The taste of stale breath.
The smell of peonies.
The sound of a clock.
The touch of a paper gown.
The sight of the soldier at your bedside, one arm folded over the bed and under his head, and the other outstretched, an inch or two of space living between where his fingers end and yours begin.
Bucky snores, a soft whistle floating out with each exhale, while a monitor turns the beat of your heart into a muted beep, a green line pinging across the screen. The muscles in your neck are stiff, protesting as you try to get a closer look at him, but the moon is out and no light is on; you’re left to admire the shadows cast over his skin and the slow ebb and flow of his breathing.
A hiss shoots to the back of your throat.
Blue eyes that open in an instant, from deep sleep to a state of alert in less than three seconds. The hand he lay resting closest to yours shoots for the call button, but you intercept before he can press it.
“Don’t,” even as you coax him back into his chair, there’s conflict in his stare, like any minute now he’ll call the nurses into your room and cause a big scene you don’t need. “I just sat up too fast. Help me?”
Bucky nods, thumbs hooking under your arms and slowly tugging you up the bed while you busy yourself pressing the incline button and delighting in the way the mattress rises.
“When did you wake up?”
“Barely a minute ago,” you finally manage to pull in a full breath of air, and that’s when you feel the scratch of gauze around your torso. “You never told me you snore.”
“You never asked,” the chair creaks beneath him as Bucky struggles to get comfortable, elbows resting over knees only for him to straighten his spine and grasp a hold of the arm-rests.
“That’s kind of a hard thing to do when my number’s blocked.”
It’s an evil thing yet possessing no real malice, said completely out of the desire to see him squirm under the microscope of your eyes.
“How, uh,” he leans forward instead, right arm on the bed, tongue darting out to wet his lower lip. “How d’you feel?”
“Like someone took the knife you stabbed in my back and decided to replace it with rebar instead,” this time, your words make him flinch. His fist clenches, retreating from the bed until you hook your good hand around the wrist and stop it in its tracks. “Bucky, I’m just messing with you. You saved my-”
“That night, outside your apartment, I realised something.”
The mask of composure he wears is starting to crack, the shine of something earnest and vulnerable slipping through and forcing you into silence.
“Your life-” Bucky pauses to correct what he’s saying. “I told myself that your life would be better off without me, but I was just being a coward instead of being honest with you,” he’s squirming, uncomfortable with the weight of the truth in his mouth, and it makes you feel sick with the need to comfort and cradle.
“You don’t have to tell me anything if-”
“I’m the reason you ended up as one of Hydra’s experiments,” he practically throws it out, like a grenade that’s one wrong word away from detonating and exploding in both of your faces. “Your dad, he was one of my handlers. I’d been out of the ice too long, I wasn’t taking orders properly, and I… I killed him.”
“I know.”
“They realised his death would leave you orphaned, and so they took you,” not even the dark engulfing the hospital room can hide the shine of wetness his gaze, an visible ache splotching over a palette of blue. “All that pain, all the torture they put you through-”
“I know.”
“It was because of me.”
“Bucky, I know,” your hand engulfs his own, fingers threading like knots you have no intention of letting him loosen. “Steve told me years ago, right before I agreed to fight against the rest of my friends for you.”
“I’m sor-”
“I told you I’m sick of hearing you say that,” you almost lay your other hand on his cheek, only to find a cast — a real one — obscuring it. You settle for tugging him closer with your good hand, until he’s all but hanging off the edge of his seat. “Hydra made a weapon out of both us, Buck. The pain, the torture, all the bad… That’s on them, okay? I would never blame you-”
Soft and sweet, his lips land on yours like a secret.
Not the sinful kind, the ones that tear families in two and bring all but ruin to those who dare keep them. But the giddy kind, the ones that fill people with childish glee and leave them biting at their lips in an effort to contain it, the fear of ruining the greatest surprise.
His kiss is a question, iterations of ‘can I?’, ‘should I?’, and ‘how could i not?’ speaking directly to your heart. If his mouth is wax, then yours must be the stamp, moulding his affections into shape and making something meaningful out of him.
You answer with zeal, covering his cheek in your fingerprints as you pull him in, pull him closer, pull him onto the bed. It creaks in protest as the soldier presses a knee into the mattress, back curving over your body and shielding you away from the rest of the room.
You’re giggling into Bucky’s mouth like a fool, so much so that you barely feel the jolt of your shoulders as he bumps against broken ribs. It’s subtle, yet the soldier notices all the same, mouth tearing away and head dipping to make sure your injuries haven’t mysteriously worsened under the weight of his touch.
“What was it you realised,” you pull his attention back to your face, where your eyes are waiting to trail over the kiss-bitten blush of his rose-bud lips. “Outside my apartment?”
You ask it with every intention of pulling him in for another kiss, so long as he answers.
“That you’re the person I want to be remembered by most.”
There’s an apartment in Brooklyn.
It lives on a street that’s never lit, where the world falls quiet come twenty-two hundred hours, and the neighbours are forever complaining about flickering light-and power-cuts.
It’s insides are full of clutter. Keys strewn across the dinner table, books stuffed unceremoniously in crevices where they’re bound to be forgotten, vibranium trinkets made through blackmail congregate as litter around the TV unit.
A junk-drawer full of movie tickets — dates that end with him monologuing about the death of cinema. A bowl overflowing with arcade stubs — he’s adamant it doesn’t matter that it would be cheaper to just buy the bear, he’s going to earn you it through blood, sweat, and many tears. A bedside table has gained another strip of photos for it’s growing collection — he’s a fiend for dragging you into photo-booths and kissing you until the flash of the camera is a distant memory.
“Stooop,” you’re whining pathetically for all the wrong reasons, slippery hands losing grip and sliding down a tiled wall while you’re bent at the waist and grinding your cunt back against his cock. “This is supposed to be sexy, not sappy.”
“I’m not being sappy,” not even Bucky believes himself, voice trailing off in a chuckle.
He’s cruel, the most evil man you’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, so of course he grips at your hips and forces them still. Like a punctuation mark ends a sentence, the tip of his dick is poking at that stop-talking-coherently spot inside your walls and threatening to make you gush more than the shower head spilling water over you both.
“Yes, you are,” you somehow find the will to form a sentence, only to gasp something akin to his name when cold vibranium presses into the arch of your spine.
“Maybe I am,” he finally admits, and if you weren’t halfway through a hail-Mary in an attempt to fight off an incoming orgasm that he’s definitely not earned the right to yet, you’d let out a cry of victory. “If admiring how resilient you are makes me sappy, then sure. Arrest me officer, I’m guilty, again.”
That ‘again’ prompts a kaleidoscope of events from Halloween night… Bucky, naked and shackled to the headboard, sporting literal tears in his eyes as he watches the buttons of your sleazy cop outfit strain while you make yourself cum for the third time without a lick of help from him. In your defence, the punishment was well earned — he’d been a little too proud of the number of eyes that had lingered over his gladiator costume.
You're back in the shower the moment fingers kiss over your scar, delicate promises sealed into the caress he brushes over the raised tissue.
It happens more often than not — you raise your arm to grab something out of a cupboard and suddenly Bucky is behind you and trailing over the mark; you wear a dress that cascades down your back and Bucky spends the whole evening brushing his thumb over the scar while holding conversations with friends across the table; you let him bend you over the nearest surface and expect him to have you seeing stars and, while stars are definitely seen, Bucky’s stare burns brighter along your left side. You’ve wondered if it’s a form of torture for the soldier, a bookmark on your skin for the night where your blood stained his hands.
That’s not how you remember the night — the pain, the bleeding, the rebar puncturing through bone and spleen. You remember the strength in his hands as they pulled you from the van, and the relief that fell over his face when you spoke, and the way he held you close while the rest of the world burned away in a cloud of chaos.
“I love you,” who chokes up with tears while standing eight inches deep and damn-near marking up a new blue-print for your organs to reorganise themselves to make more space for him? Bucky, that’s who, and you wouldn’t have him any other way. “So much.”
Okay, so maybe you would have him one other way.
The good man that he is, Bucky slips his cock out of you after a push back against his abdomen, already moulding his hands to the shape of your waist as you turn around to face him.
“That’s it, Barnes,” you try your best to sound authoritative. The shampoo burning at your eye makes it a little difficult, but you pull through and drag him into your hold, arms curling around his shoulders and a leg hooking itself over his hip. The tiles are cold, pressing into your back, a welcome contrast to the heat of Bucky. “I’m sick of you and your wimpy attitude. You’re banned from doggy style, standing or otherwise, until further notice.”
“Don’t be mean, darling,” he drags a thumb over your slit, kissing it against your clit with the practised ease of a man that’s spent the greater half of a year getting to know you inside and out, in every and any position. “Or I’ll cum. And I was really hoping to do that while I bury myself inside you.”
Left palm hovering over his sternum, a muted crackle of electricity burns into his skin, only to fade at your command, “Then I guess you better hurry up and give us what we both want.”
“Hmm, have I ever told you you’re my favourite electro-shock therapy?” He’s laughing at his own ridiculous joke, while gripping your wrist and guiding you up the path to his neck, locking your fingers around him like a collar he’s more than proud to wear. “Now, think you can spread your legs a little wider, baby? Wanna make you cum so hard you blow the building’s fuse.”
+ extra hyde.
· thank you @theslayerofthevampires for your patience and for trusting me to fulfil your fic idea! i hope the wait was at very least worth it <3 (the request prompt, for anyone interested: Well I was thinking that it could be where the reader goes with bucky and sam to after the flag smashers. Bucky is really into the reader but he's dealing with his inner demons that he doesn't let himself grt too close to her. Things change when karli and her followers take y/n hostage and that really pisses off bucky. Sam and bucky save y/n after that when y/n is thanking bucky for saving her bucky just grabs and kisses her which leads to bucky opening up to y/n about himself and he also confesses his feelings for her)
· one of my personal pet peeves when it comes to fics is when it simply reads as a copy and paste of the source material with the reader forced into the scenes, hence why i skimmed over the events of tfatws as much as possible. hopefully this was enjoyable and bucky and reader's relationship felt like a story separate from the show's plot <3
· slowly working my way through requests, please tell me you're all proud of me! ( i have so many left to get through )
oneshot: you send him one wet, towel-clad pic while he's away on a mission. next thing you know? you're waking up to his tongue in your pussy and his cock buried so deep you’ll be walking funny for days.
pairing: bucky barnes x reader
tags: (18+). 3.2k words. SMUT. feral yearning. phone sex. video call tease. sex on phone. creampie. post-mission bucky who books a damn flight just to ruin you. fingering. oral sex f!receiving (waking-up edition). overstimulation. raw dogstyle & missionary bc he needs it that deep. listening to earned it by the weeknd will be the cherry on top of this filth. minors dni.
You shouldn't send it.
Oh, darling, you really shouldn't. This is a reckless, deliciously terrible idea—teetering on the edge of moral ambiguity and an international scandal wrapped in a single, impulsive click.
And yet.
Here you are, standing before your mirror, a vision of damp locks and wet skin, the towel clinging to your curves like a lover's desperate grasp. Droplets of water trail down your neck, catching the light. There's something wild in your eyes, something about your heavy lids and parted lips, like you've unlocked a secret angle of yourself that only a front-facing camera could capture.
And you? You're going to send it.
Because Bucky Barnes—your Bucky, with his storm-blue eyes and that vibranium arm that hums with quiet power is a thousand miles away.
Prague, maybe. Serbia, possibly. He's on a mission, one of those shadowy, leather-gloved affairs that probably involves scaling rooftops or disarming a bomb with seconds to spare. You don't know the details. But the ache in your chest? That's all the intel you need.
Ten days.
Ten days since you've felt the heat of his body pressed against yours, since you've tasted the soft, devastating edge of his mouth. Ten days since you've run your fingers through his dark hair, felt the shudder in his breath when you tug just a little too hard. You're unraveling, fraying at the edges, a woman starved for the man who's both her anchor and her storm.
So, naturally, you do what any rational, touch-starved, love-drunk soul would do. You grab your phone. You swipe open the camera. And you pose.
It's not graceful. You're not some sultry vixen trained in the art of seduction. You're just you—heart pounding, towel slipping just enough to tease, hips tilted in a way that feels like a dare. You stare into the lens and think, What would make Bucky lose his mind?
The answer is this: you, glistening from the shower, skin dewy and warm, the towel barely holding on, one hip cocked, your lips parted in a look that's half-innocent, half-come get me. It's a snapshot of longing, of I miss you laced with I dare you.
You snap the photo. Your thumb hovers over the send button for a heartbeat—two, three. Then you press it.
The wait is electric.
Your phone buzzes, and your pulse spikes.
Bucky
Jesus, sweetheart.
Another buzz, and it's like his voice is in the room, low and rough, curling around you like smoke.
Bucky
What are you doing to me?
I'm in a goddamn surveillance van with two other agents and a shared screen. Had to throw a blanket over my lap like some kid who can't control himself.
You bite your lip, a slow, wicked smile spreading across your face. The towel feels heavier now, like it's conspiring with your racing heart. You type back, fingers trembling with mischief.
oops! just wanted to say hi... all clean and wet. is that a crime now?
Bucky
You're lucky I'm not there, doll. You wouldn't be standing.
Your breath catches, a soft laugh spilling from your lips. Heat pools low in your belly, and you can almost feel the ghost of his hands—calloused, warm, possessive and grazing your skin. You type again.
hmm, i'm all wet and lonely. you're out there being dangerous and armed... we're not playing fair, are we?
Bucky
Say that one more time, and I'm on the next flight home. Mission be damned.
You laugh again, loud and unguarded, because you know he means it. He'd burn the world down to get to you if you asked. And that's the sweetest, most dangerous part of all—this love that's so big, so consuming, it's hard to breathe without pulling him into your orbit.
You sink onto the edge of your bed, still clutching the phone, the towel slipping just a fraction lower. Your skin hums with the memory of him, and you wonder how long it'll be before he's back, before you can trade these teasing texts for the real thing—his hands, his mouth, his everything.
Until then, you'll just have to keep torturing him. One sultry selfie at a time.You spend the next three hours doing completely ordinary, non-sinister things like brushing your hair and moisturizing your soul. Also, watching Mamma Mia! for the hundredth time and pretending you don't keep glancing at your phone every seven minutes.
You do. You absolutely do. And yes, you are tracking Bucky's location like the clingy menace you are.
And it turns out he's checked into his hotel.
Which means—oh.
He's alone.
And probably grumpy.
Which means Bucky Barnes, Sergeant of Chaos, is probably somewhere in Europe brooding shirtless in soft lamplight. All sharp jawline and stormy eyes, still simmering from the situation you personally orchestrated.
Your body hums. Full-body anticipation. Wicked little pulses of mine mine mine under your skin. So naturally, you do what any well-adjusted, emotionally stable girlfriend would do.
You hit the video call button.
He answers on the first ring.
His face fills your screen—all chiseled bone structure and dark stubble and mussed hair like he's been running his hands through it since your last message. His voice is a low growl, sleep-rough and laced with something entirely more dangerous.
"Baby,"
You sprawl across your bed, the towel you're still wearing—barely—slipping dangerously low, exposing the curve of your thigh, the dip of your collarbone. You tilt your phone just right, letting him catch the glint of your damp skin in the soft light. "Hi, Sergeant," you purr, your voice a velvet blade, sharp and sweet.
He groans, head tipping back against the headboard, the sound vibrating through you like a physical touch. "Don't start with that Sergeant shit," he warns, but his eyes are already darkening, pupils blown wide as they rake over you. "I'm barely holding it together."
"Why?" You tilt your head, letting a damp curl fall across your shoulder, your lips curving into a smirk that's pure sin. "I'm just being respectful. Honoring your rank." You shift, the towel riding up just enough to make his jaw clench.
"Fuck," he mutters, the word a prayer and a curse. You hear the creak of his hotel bed, the rustle of sheets as he adjusts himself, and it's enough to make your thighs press together. "That picture you sent? I've been hard since. Had to lock myself in this room just to breathe."
You laugh, low and sultry, stretching out on your bed, letting the towel slip another inch, teasing the edge of decency. "Poor baby," you coo, your voice dripping with mock sympathy. "All worked up because of little ol' me?"
"You know exactly what you're doing," he growls, his eyes narrowing as he leans closer to the screen, like he could reach through it and grab you. "You're a fucking menace."
"I miss you," you whisper, and it's not just teasing now—it's raw, aching truth. Ten days without him, without his hands, his mouth, his weight pinning you down. It's too long. Too empty.
His expression softens, just for a second, before the hunger takes over again. "Miss you so damn much, sweetheart," he says, his voice thick, almost reverent. "It's killing me. Ten days, and I'm dreaming about you, waking up hard, thinking about your taste, your smell, the way you fucking move."
Your breath hitches, heat pooling low in your belly. "Then show me," you challenge, your voice a husky whisper. You prop your phone against a pillow, angling it so he can see every inch of you—towel barely clinging to your hips, your skin flushed and glistening. "Show me how much you miss me."
His eyes go molten, and he shifts, the camera catching the flex of his vibranium arm as he adjusts himself. "You want to play dirty?" he murmurs, his voice dropping to that dangerous, filthy register that makes your toes curl.
He shifts, grunts softly, and sets his phone down too—somewhere low, tilted up just enough to give you the full view. And oh. Oh, God.
He's shirtless. Hair a mess. His thighs spread wide and bare.
And his cock. Thick, flushed, already hard rests heavy against his stomach.
"Like that, baby?" he asks, a little breathless, a little too smug for someone stroking himself with a metal arm like he's trying to kill you with lust via satellite.
You whimper. That's it. That's your only response. A noise of full-body, feral yearning.
Because his vibranium fingers? Wrapped around the base of his cock like a fucking vice. The gold plating catches in the low light, gleaming wickedly as he strokes once—slow and deliberate, like he wants to ruin you before he even touches himself properly.
"I thought about you all day," he murmurs, lazy now, letting his thumb rub over the head, watching your mouth fall open. "Tried so fucking hard not to do this until I saw you. But then you called, lookin' like you wanted me to lose it... Take that towel off, baby. Let me see you."
You comply, agonizingly slow, peeling the fabric away until it pools beneath you, leaving you bare and breathless under his gaze. His groan is primal, a sound that vibrates through your core. "Fuck, look at you," he breathes, his hand disappearing below the frame, the motion unmistakable. "So fucking perfect. You know what I'd do if I was there? I'd bury my face between those thighs. Lick you so slow, so deep, you'd be begging me to let you come."
You whimper, your fingers trailing down your stomach, teasing yourself as his words burn through you. "Bucky," you gasp, your voice trembling with need. "Keep talking."
"Oh, I'm just getting started," he says, his voice a low, filthy promise. "I'd spread you open, taste every inch of that sweet pussy. Fuck, I can still taste you from last time, all wet and warm and mine. I'd suck that clit until you're screaming, until you're pulling my hair so hard it hurts. You'd be dripping for me, wouldn't you? Soaking the sheets, begging for my cock."
Your fingers move faster against your hot core, chasing the heat of his words, your hips bucking as you moan his name. "Yes," you pant, your body arching off the bed. "God, Bucky, I need you."
"You have no idea," he growls, his breath hitching as he matches your rhythm, his camera shaking slightly as he moves. "I'd fuck you so deep, baby. Pin you down, make you take every inch. You'd feel me for days. I'd fill you up, make you scream my name until your voice gives out."
"Fuck, Bucky—" Your hand trails down again, desperate, twitchy.
He smirks. "Go ahead. Touch yourself while you watch me." His jaw flexes, the vibranium grip stroking tighter. "Wanna see how wet you are for me."
And you do. With him watching. With him moaning. With the sound of slick metal pumping against his cock, slow and devastating.
"I'm gonna fuck you so deep when I get back," he growls, voice wrecked now, gaze locked on you like a threat. "You won't be able to walk straight, baby. Not after this. Not after seeing me fuck my fist thinking about that perfect pussy of yours."
You gasp, your rhythm matching his, your thighs trembling.
"I'm gonna come all over this hand," he grits out. "And the second I land, I'm putting my mouth where this hand's been. Gonna taste you, taste me on you. Make you take it."
The words push you over the edge, your body shuddering as you come, his name a broken cry on your lips. He's not far behind, his groans rough and ragged, the camera catching the tense line of his jaw, the way his eyes flutter shut as he chases his own release.
For a moment, there's just the sound of your heavy breathing, the shared silence of two people wrecked and sated. You're sweaty, flushed, your body still trembling, but you feel alive, tethered to him through the screen.
"Jesus Christ," he pants. "I'm booking the next fucking flight."
You collapse into sleep, hard and heavy, your body still humming from the filthy promises of Bucky's voice over the video call. The blankets cocoon you, your pulse a lazy flutter, your skin tingling with the ghost of his words. You're not even sure if you ended the call, too drunk on pleasure to care. One moment, you're sinking into the soft haze of afterglow. The next—
Oh. Fuck.
You wake to a sensation so sinful it rips you from sleep. A wet, searing heat between your thighs, deliberate and unrelenting. Your hips buck instinctively, a sharp, needy jolt as your eyes flutter open, vision blurry with confusion and want.
Another slow, possessive lick drags up your core, and your brain stutters, short-circuits, melts. Your breath catches, a broken gasp, as you blink down and see him—Bucky Barnes, all six-foot-something of him, nestled between your legs like he was made for it. His hair's a tousled mess, dark strands falling into his eyes, his beard scraping deliciously against your sensitive skin. Those broad shoulders, carved from years of violence and redemption, pin your thighs open against the sheets. And his tongue—fuck, his tongue—is inside you, lapping at you like you're the sweetest thing he's ever tasted.
"Bucky—what—?" Your voice cracks, half a moan, as you try to process the impossible. "How—?"
"Shh, pretty girl," he murmurs, his lips brushing your clit, the vibration of his voice sending a fresh wave of heat through you. "Heard you whimpering my name in your sleep. Fuck, you sounded so needy. Couldn't just lie there and listen."
"You're here?" you gasp, trying to sit up, but his vibranium arm curls over your hip, pinning you down with gentle, unyielding strength. "You—ohmygod—Bucky."
"Told you I'd be on the next flight," he growls, his voice rough with hunger, his eyes dark and feral as they meet yours. "Couldn't stay away. Not after that little show you put on." He dives back in, his tongue swirling deep, dragging a wrecked moan from your throat. "You taste better than I remember. So fucking sweet."
Your hands fist the sheets, your hips grinding up to meet his mouth as he devours you, slow and reverent, like he's worshiping every inch of you. His tongue flicks and curls, teasing your entrance before plunging inside, and you're already trembling, your body a live wire under his touch. "Bucky—please," you whimper, your thighs quaking as he hooks them over his shoulders, spreading you wider, claiming you completely.
"Love hearing you beg," he murmurs against your pussy, his beard scraping your inner thighs, the burn only amplifying the pleasure. "Missed this. Missed you. Been dreaming about this pretty cunt every fucking night." He sucks your clit hard, a deliberate pull that makes your vision blur, your body arching off the bed as you cry out. "Gonna make you come so hard you forget how to breathe."
You do. You come so fast, so violently, it's like a supernova bursting behind your eyes, your entire body seizing as you scream his name. He doesn't stop, lapping at you through the aftershocks, drawing out every shudder, every broken gasp, until you're a boneless mess beneath him.
But he's not done. Not even close.
Before you can catch your breath, he's up, his hands—flesh and metal—flipping you onto your stomach with effortless strength. "Ass up, sweetheart," he growls, his voice a dark, filthy promise that makes your core clench all over again. You scramble to obey, your knees sinking into the mattress, your back arching as you press your hips back toward him, desperate, aching, needy.
"Fuck, look at you," he groans, his hands gripping your hips, his thumbs spreading you open as he kneels behind you. "So wet for me. So fucking perfect." You hear the rustle of his clothes, the clink of his belt, and then he's there, the thick head of his cock nudging against your entrance.
Not yet.
Instead, he presses the hot, leaking head of his cock on your wet pussy and just… holds it there. Teasing. Taunting. Letting you feel the weight of him, the heat, the pressure, everything you want but not giving you an inch.
He grinds in slow, maddening circles, rubbing right where you're soaked and aching, coating his tip in your slick. The sensation is enough to make your knees shake.
You whimper. Push back against him. Beg with your body.
But he only chuckles, low and wrecked. "You want it that bad, sweetheart?" he rasps, dragging his tip up through your folds, nudging your clit before sliding back down and rubbing against your entrance again. "Fuck, look how wet you are for me. Just from my voice. Just from thinking about me."
You sob his name, fingers curling in the sheets, desperate for friction, for fullness, for him.
But Bucky stays exactly where he is. Letting the swollen tip of his cock press against your cunt without breaching it, just enough to make your whole body burn. Just enough to make you feel like you're going to snap.
He groans like he's punishing himself. Like this is torture for him, too. "Could slide in so easy," he murmurs, grinding slow and shallow against you, your slick coating both of you now. "You're begging for it, baby. This tight little cunt's fuckin' fluttering, pulling me in."
Your hips buck helplessly. "Bucky... please—"
"Please what?" he growls, jaw tight. "Please put it in? Please fuck you stupid? You want this cock, doll?"
"Yes—fuck—yes," you cry, nearly delirious. "Please, don't tease, just fuck me..."
"Oh, I'm gonna fuck you," he says, his tone dripping with dark, delicious intent. "Gonna fuck you so deep you'll feel me for days. Gonna ruin this pussy." He slides in slow, inch by agonizing inch, stretching you, filling you, until you're gasping, your hands clawing at the sheets.
"You're mine, baby. This tight little cunt? Mine."
He starts moving, hard and deliberate, each thrust driving you into the mattress, his hips snapping against yours with a filthy rhythm that makes you sob with pleasure. His vibranium hand grips your hip, cool and unyielding, while his flesh hand slides under you, finding your breasts, cupping them possessively. His fingers pinch your nipples, rolling them just hard enough to make you gasp, your body arching further into him as he groans against your skin. "These fucking tits," he growls, squeezing them from beneath, his touch rough and reverent. "Been dreaming about these, too. So soft, so perfect in my hands."
"Yes—yes," you moan, your body shaking as he pounds into you, each thrust hitting that perfect spot that makes you see stars. "Love it. Love you. Bucky, harder."
He growls, low and feral, and gives you exactly what you want, his pace turning brutal, his cock slamming into you so deep you feel it in your bones. "Fuck, I want to taste you again," he rasps, leaning over you, his chest pressed to your back, his lips grazing your ear.
It's too much. It's everything. Your body is a live wire, oversensitive and overstimulated, but you can't stop, can't pull away from the way he's claiming you, body and soul. His filthy promises, his bites, the way he fills yoU, it's all-consuming. Your orgasm crashes over you like a tidal wave, white-hot and blinding, your walls clenching so tight around him you feel him falter. You scream his name, a broken, desperate sound, your body shaking as you come so hard your vision goes dark, your pussy gripping him like it's trying to keep him forever.
"Fuck—fuck," he chokes out, his thrusts stuttering as he buries himself deep, his cock pulsing as he spills inside you, hot and thick, wave after wave filling you up. His forehead presses against your spine, his breath ragged, his hands trembling as they lock onto your hips, anchoring himself to you like you're his only tether to the world.
But he's not done. Oh, God, he's not done.
He pulls out just enough to catch his breath, his cock still slick and half-hard, and then he flips you over with a strength that steals the air from your lungs. You land on your back with a startled gasp, your legs trembling as he nudges them apart with his knee, his vibranium hand curling around the back of your neck, possessive and grounding. His dark, wild, starving eyes—lock onto yours as he lines himself up again, pushing back inside with a slow, deliberate thrust that makes you whimper.
"Need to see you," he murmurs, his voice low and wrecked, his lips brushing your temple as he rocks into you, deep and unhurried, like he's savoring every second. "Need to come inside you while I watch those pretty eyes fall apart." His flesh hand slides down to your thigh, hooking it over his waist, opening you up so he can fuck you deeper, his cock hitting places that make your breath hitch.
"Fuck, baby," he groans, his forehead pressed to yours, his hips rolling with a rhythm that's both tender and devastating. "Feel how full you are? That's all me. Gonna fuck you so deep you'll feel me for weeks. Wanna mark you inside and out, make sure you're dripping with me." His vibranium hand slides up to your breast, squeezing hard, his thumb brushing your nipple until you're gasping, your body clenching around him again.
He bites your shoulder again, harder this time, his teeth sinking in as he growls against your skin, the sharp sting blending with the pleasure of his cock filling you. "Love these fucking tits," he murmurs, his hand kneading your breast, his fingers pinching just enough to make you moan. "Love how you shake for me, how you take every inch like you're made for my cock."
You're a mess, slick with sweat, your body trembling as another orgasm builds, unstoppable and overwhelming. "Bucky," you gasp, your fingers digging into his shoulders, his back, anything to hold onto as he drives you higher. "I love you. I love you so fucking much."
That's what breaks him. A shattered groan of your name spilling from his lips as he comes again, his cock pulsing deep inside you, filling you until you're dripping, claimed in every way. His thrusts slow but don't stop, drawing out your pleasure until you're shaking, your own release crashing through you, your moans mingling with his as you cling to him, utterly ruined.
He collapses over you, chest heaving, his body a warm, heavy weight pinning you to the mattress. He doesn't pull out, just stays there, softening inside you, his lips brushing soft, reverent kisses over the bite marks on your shoulder, soothing the sting he left behind. "Missed you so fucking much," he whispers, his voice raw, trembling with something deeper than lust. "Couldn't stay away from you. Never can."
You hum, too fucked-out to speak, your arms wrapping around his back, holding him close as your body thrums with the afterglow, the marks on your shoulder a delicious reminder of his claim.
"You okay?" he murmurs after a moment, nudging your nose with his, his voice a mix of concern and that smug, bastardly charm.
You manage a breathless laugh, your head still spinning. "I think I died. Twice."
He grins. Smug bastard.
"Good."
You roll your eyes. "You and your fucking audacity," you mumble, barely coherent.
He chuckles, still inside you, still hardening slowly. Still not done.
"I am so in love with you," he murmurs, voice low and dangerous. "'And I'm not going anywhere."
summary | everything in westview is exactly as it should be—except for the moments when it isn’t, and bucky barnes seems to be the only one who notices.
tags | (18+) MDNI, Explicit Sexual Content, unprotected sex, p in v sex, fingering, oral sex (f!receiving), 1950s aesthetic, wandavision au, hex reality (wandavision), domestic fluff, subtle foreshadowing, light comedy, neighborly shenanigans, married couple dynamic (but it’s fake), brief language, mind manipulation, references to past trauma (winter soldier/hydra flashes)
a/n | yoh guys I just saw the time now. came home like 30 minutes ago, and then I was chatting to my mom. cause her and my stepdad went out on a date then brought me some steak home😛 so now i'm chowing lekker.
and I swear nothing will ever be as humbling as sprinting for the bus, sigh, just another reminder how unfit I am, though my body is tea, don't play.
taglist | if you wanna be added to my bucky barnes masterlist just add your username to my “Don't Wake Me” taglist
likes comments and reblogs are much appreciated ✨✨
ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ᴡᴀᴋᴇ ᴍᴇ ᴍᴀsᴛᴇʀʟɪsᴛ
next chapter
divider by @uzmacchiato
The morning light was too warm.
It poured in through the thin lace curtains like honey, casting soft shadows across the hardwood floor. For a moment, Bucky lay still beneath the sheets, eyes squinting against the glow, trying to convince his body it wasn’t still dreaming.
Something felt off—not wrong, exactly, just unfamiliar in the way a battlefield went silent before the first shot. His chest rose and fell with slow, steady breaths, but his muscles stayed tight beneath the surface. Sleep clung to him like fog.
His left hand shifted against the blankets. Bare skin. Smooth. His brow furrowed.
There was nothing wrong with his arm.
That thought came quick and sharp, like it had been waiting for him. Nothing wrong with it. But… shouldn’t there be?
Bucky lifted his hand into the light, turning it slightly, watching how the sun caught the gold ring wrapped around his finger. A simple band. No inscription. Just warm metal, glinting against his skin.
His throat tightened without reason. He stared at the ring for a long moment, his chest going tight, lungs slow to expand.
He didn’t remember putting it on.
And yet… it didn’t feel unfamiliar. That was the worst part. It felt like it belonged there—like it had always been there. Like whoever had slid it onto his finger had done so gently, looking at him with something soft in their eyes.
Bucky blinked and pushed the thought away, rubbed at his face, and sat up. The sheets rustled as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed, bare feet brushing against the cool floorboards.
Everything in the room looked like it had been plucked from a catalog—mid-century furniture, matching lamps, soft yellow wallpaper patterned with white roses. Neat. Peaceful.
Wrong, something in him whispered. But he ignored it.
The clock on the wall ticked too loudly. He glanced at it without really seeing the time, then stood and made his way toward the bathroom, sleep still tugging at his limbs.
The mirror greeted him with a face that felt too clean. Hair neatly trimmed, jaw freshly shaven. No bruises. No blood. No scars. His reflection stared back like it belonged in a postcard, not a war.
He peeled off the undershirt he’d slept in and stepped into the shower. Hot water ran down his back, steam curling around the tiles. He washed automatically, not thinking. Just moving. Like muscle memory. Like someone else’s routine.
And still, that ring stayed on his finger.
He dressed without thinking. Undershirt first, then the crisp button-down hanging neatly from the bedroom door. The fabric felt stiff and starched, the kind of thing he imagined he'd once complained about, but today he didn’t mind it.
His fingers fumbled slightly with the buttons, like he wasn’t quite used to the fine motor movements. The tie gave him more trouble—too loose at first, then too tight, the knot sitting slightly crooked at the collar. He stared at it for a second, debating whether to fix it, but decided against it. It didn’t seem to matter.
The house was quiet when he opened the bedroom door, the floor creaking softly beneath his feet as he moved down the hallway. He could hear a sound—faint at first, then clearer the closer he got.
Humming.
Light, tuneful. Unhurried. Like whoever it belonged to had been up for hours already, in no rush at all. It reached him just as the smell did—bacon, eggs, something warm and familiar. The scent hit him low in the chest, spreading like something he couldn’t name.
He didn’t think. He just followed it.
The closer he got to the kitchen, the heavier the feeling became—not dread, not exactly, but something like anticipation. Like he already knew what he was going to find but needed to see it anyway. The hallway opened into the kitchen slowly, and for a moment he stood just beyond the frame, quiet.
There you were.
Back turned to him, working at the stove in a soft house dress that caught the morning light like it had been made for it. Hair pinned loosely off your neck, one hand steadying a skillet, the other moving with ease.
There was a vase of fresh flowers, lilies maybe, on the table, petals too perfect to be real. A small green plant on the sill above the sink leaned slightly toward where you stood, as if reaching.
You turned at the sound of his step, a smile already in place—bright, familiar, like it belonged to someone he’d known forever.
“There you are,” you said softly, as if he was late for something, as if this was a morning like any other.
And Bucky, who still wasn’t sure where he was, or why the air tasted too sweet, or why everything felt a half-step off from real, could only manage one thing.
He smiled back.
You crossed the kitchen in soft steps, the hem of your dress swaying just above your knees, smile still warm as your hands found their place around his neck. Bucky didn't flinch, didn't question it. His arms slid around your waist like he'd done it a hundred times before.
You leaned in, brushing your lips over his in a slow, familiar kiss—the kind that didn’t need heat or urgency, just the comfort of knowing exactly where you belonged. He closed his eyes as your mouth lingered against his, letting the quiet press of it settle the last of his nerves.
“Morning,” you murmured against his lips, your voice still sleep-soft. “How’d you sleep?”
He took a breath before answering, your fingers gently combing through the hair at the nape of his neck.
“Good,” he said, the word catching slightly in his throat. “Just… woke up a little confused. You weren’t there.”
You pulled back just enough to look at him, one brow lifting in something like amusement, but not mocking. “I’ve been up a while,” you said, brushing a piece of hair away from his forehead. “Didn’t want to wake you. You looked peaceful.”
“Right,” he said, forcing a small laugh that felt too hollow for how calm the morning was. “Guess I just forgot.”
You didn’t ask what he meant. You didn’t need to. You kissed him again instead, slower this time, your lips moving with intention. And for a moment, Bucky let himself stop thinking. Let the warmth of your body, the smell of bacon and coffee, the hush of the house—all of it—pull him back into the dream.
You pulled back slowly, just far enough to look at him again, your hands still resting against the sides of his neck. One thumb brushed along his jaw, then higher—softly tracing the space between his brows where a faint furrow had settled.
“What’s that look for?” you asked, voice gentle. “You okay?”
Bucky hesitated. He didn’t really know how to answer that. The images from his dream—if that’s what it was—were already slipping through his fingers like water. Flashes of dust. The echo of metal hitting metal. Screams. Cold.
He cleared his throat, offered a small, awkward smile.
“I think I had a strange dream,” he said after a beat. “Something with aliens, I think.”
You tilted your head, amused, and gave him a light tap on the shoulder as you turned back to the stove.
“That’s what you get for watching those silly pictures with Sam and Steve,” you said, clicking your tongue. “I told you Invasion of the Body Snatchers would get into your head.”
Bucky smiled faintly, resting his hands on the back of one of the kitchen chairs.
“Yeah, well… how could I say no? Sam insisted.”
“I bet he did,” you said, glancing at him over your shoulder. “And Steve probably nodded along like he knew what it was about.”
He smiled, softer now, his fingers absently toying with the edge of his sleeve.
“Guess I should’ve listened to you.”
“You should always listen to me.”
There was no bite to the words—just warmth, easy and familiar. And with that, the last edge of the dream slipped a little further away.
He was just starting to settle in his chair when something else caught his attention—a new scent in the air, tucked just behind the bacon and coffee.
Sweet. Tart.
His gaze shifted instinctively toward the counter, and there it was—perched on a cooling rack like it belonged in a magazine ad: a freshly baked cherry pie, crust golden and flaky, the filling just beginning to bubble at the edges. He could smell the cinnamon mixed in. His mouth actually watered.
He stood up slowly, eyes narrowing like he was trying to scope out the best approach.
“When’d you have time to bake a cherry pie?” he asked, already drifting toward it.
You didn’t turn around, but he saw the way your shoulders moved—subtle, like you’d been waiting for him to notice it. Just as his hand reached out toward the pie, you cut in without missing a beat.
“Ah-ah. Don't you dare.”
He froze, caught mid-reach like a kid sneaking a cookie.
“That’s not for you,” you said, finally glancing back at him with a pointed look. “It’s for the new neighbors.”
Bucky blinked, confused. “What new neighbors?”
You gave a little huff, returning to the stove.
“I told you about them. Wanda and Vision? They just moved in across the street.”
He tilted his head, expression twisting. “What kind of name is Vision?”
You turned, spatula still in hand, and swatted him lightly on the shoulder with the back of it.
“Be nice.”
“I am bein’ nice,” he muttered, rubbing his arm. “Just sounds like a stage name or somethin’.”
You ignored that, moving to plate up the eggs and bacon like nothing happened, but Bucky wasn’t finished giving the pie a longing look. He slouched back into his chair, one arm resting across the back of it, watching you with half a grin.
“Just sayin’… you make a pie like that and give it to someone else, I might start takin’ it personal.”
You slid a plate in front of him with practiced ease—eggs, bacon, toast, all still steaming. He muttered a “thanks, doll,” before reaching for the fork, but you cut in before he could take a bite.
“Nat and I were thinking of dropping by later,” you said casually. “Be neighborly. Bring over the pie, introduce ourselves to Wanda.”
Bucky paused mid-bite, chewing slowly as he side-eyed you over the rim of his coffee cup.
“You and Nat,” he repeated. “Gonna go be nice to someone.”
You arched a brow. “Yeah. That a problem?”
He set his cup down, leaning back in his chair. “I just think the words Nat and nice don’t really belong in the same sentence is all.”
You narrowed your eyes at him, but it was half-hearted—more amused than annoyed.
“That’s my friend, James.”
He smirked. “Yeah, and unfortunately she’s married to my friend. So now I gotta deal with her twice as much.”
You gave a soft scoff, folding your arms loosely across your chest.
“She’s sweet when she wants to be.”
“She’s mean when she wants to be too,” Bucky shot back, grinning around another forkful of eggs.
You didn’t deny it, just shook your head and turned back toward the sink. Bucky watched you for a beat, the way your dress moved with each step, how the morning sun kept catching the little strands of hair that had slipped free from your pin.
Everything looked right. Felt right.
And yet, in the back of his mind, there was still that one nagging itch—like he’d forgotten something important, something big. But when you moved past him again and your hand brushed his shoulder, it faded.
He finished the last bite, leaned back in his chair with a sigh, and patted his stomach like a man who had no business going to work after a meal like that.
“Well,” he said, pushing his chair back with a soft scrape of wood against floorboards, “guess I oughta head to the office. Be back ‘round six.”
He stood, walking over to the door and reaching for his coat off the hook near the door, but before he could get too far, you stepped in front of him—hands already reaching for his collar. He stilled as you smoothed down the fabric, fingers adjusting his tie with practiced ease.
“Crooked again,” you murmured, brow furrowed in disapproval.
Bucky’s gaze didn’t move from your face. “You sure it ain’t just my neck’s crooked?”
You gave a soft laugh, brushing a bit of lint off his lapel. “No, handsome. I’d know.”
He watched you with quiet amusement, his voice dropping just a bit as he added, “You always fix me up before I leave?”
“Every morning,” you said, stepping back just slightly to admire your work. “And every morning, you leave it a mess by lunchtime.”
Bucky gave a lopsided grin. “What can I say? I fall apart without you.”
“Oh, is that right?”
“‘Course. You tie my tie, I eat real food, I remember where my damn shoes are. You’re basically holdin’ the whole operation together.”
You tilted your chin up, giving him a look that was half flirt, half challenge. “Well, it’s nice to know I’m appreciated.”
His grin widened.
“You’re more than appreciated, doll,” he said, leaning in and pressing a quick kiss to your lips.
But then another followed. And another—slow, drawn-out, his hand resting lightly on your waist as if he might just forget about the whole "going to work" part of the morning.
You huffed softly against his mouth, mumbling, “Bucky, you’re gonna be late.”
“Worth it.”
You laughed again, nudging him gently toward the door.
“Go on, before I keep you here for lunch, too.”
He raised a brow, clearly not opposed to that option. “That a threat or a promise?”
You pushed his chest with both hands, laughing. “Go.”
He kissed your cheek one last time before finally backing toward the door, still smiling. As he opened it, a rush of sunlight spilled inside—and for just a second, something about it made him pause.
But he didn’t linger. He just gave you one last wink over his shoulder.
“Six o’clock, doll.”
And then he was gone.
The screen door creaked softly as Bucky stepped out onto the porch, the morning sun already casting a golden hue across the street.
The air smelled like freshly cut grass and laundry hanging out to dry. He paused on the top step and took a slow breath, rolling his shoulders back as if he could stretch off whatever was still clinging to him from that weird dream.
Peaceful. Quiet. Too quiet, maybe.
He started down the walkway, adjusting the cuffs of his shirt as he glanced across the street. That’s when he saw her.
Mrs. Donnelly, the sweet old woman from two houses down—the one who always wore pearls and carried around those little hard candies that stuck together in her purse. She was in her front yard, as usual, tending to her rosebushes in a floral-print housecoat.
Only… she wasn’t moving.
Shears in hand, frozen mid-prune. One arm stretched toward a blossom, the other holding the stem in place. Her smile was wide, too wide, and didn’t flicker. Didn’t falter.
Bucky stopped at the edge of his walkway, eyes narrowing slightly.
“Morning, Mrs. Donnelly,” he called out.
Nothing.
His brows pinched. He cleared his throat, tried again, voice dipping with the smallest thread of hesitation. “Hey—Mrs. Donnelly, you all right over there?”
For a second, there was no response. No movement. No breeze. The street might as well have held its breath.
Then—she blinked. Shifted. Her shears snipped through the rose stem cleanly, and she turned with that same bright, polite smile she always had.
“Oh, good morning, dear!” she called, waving the clippers casually in her hand. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”
Bucky stared a moment longer, jaw working slightly.
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “Yeah, it is.”
He kept walking, shoes crunching lightly on the gravel as he made his way toward the sidewalk, not looking back. He didn’t want to think too hard about it.
Probably just his imagination. Maybe the heat. Or leftover nerves from that dream.
He kept telling himself that all the way down the driveway.
The door had only just clicked shut behind Bucky when you glanced at the clock on the wall and pressed your lips into a small, satisfied line.
8:57 a.m. Right on schedule.
You smoothed your dress, checked the pie on the counter for any signs of imperfections (none, of course), and laid a folded dish towel neatly over the top.
Ten minutes later, the knock came.
You opened the front door with one hand on your hip and a sweet—if mildly exasperated—smile already on your face.
“You’re late.”
Natasha Rogers stood on the step looking completely unfazed in a smart mint green blouse and matching pencil skirt. Her red hair was perfectly curled, sunglasses perched low on her nose like she hadn’t a care in the world.
She quirked one brow. “You’re just early. As always.”
You stepped aside to let her in, tsking softly as she breezed past. “Being punctual is a virtue, you know.”
“So is not baking for people you haven’t met yet,” she replied, peering toward the kitchen. “Did you really make a pie?”
You lifted the towel to show her.
“Cherry. It’s cheerful.”
“Of course it is.”
Nat leaned on the counter, arms crossed. “I still don’t get why you insist on being the neighborhood welcome committee.”
You tilted your head, giving her a patient smile as you carefully arranged the pie on a dish.
“Well, someone’s got to make a good first impression. And you and I could do with some more pleasant company. She’s our age, Nat. Married. Quiet.”
Nat tapped her nails against the counter, unimpressed. “Married doesn’t mean normal. Could be hiding a cult in her basement.”
You gave her a look over your shoulder. “Nat.”
She shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
You set the pie down with a bit more determination than usual.
“We’re being polite,” you said simply. “And besides, it wouldn’t hurt you to smile once in a while.”
“I am smiling,” she muttered, deadpan. “On the inside.”
You laughed, nudging her arm as you headed for the door.
“You keep showing up at my house. Deep down, you like this.”
“Deep down, I might need a hobby,” she replied, opening the door for you. “Let’s go deliver your pie before I say something truly neighborly.”
You stepped outside into the golden morning, sunshine warming your skin as the pie cradled gently in your hands.
“Just be nice,” you said lightly.
“No promises.”
You and Nat stepped up onto the tidy porch, your heels clicking against the painted boards. Everything about the house looked just right—flower boxes bursting with color, a freshly swept welcome mat, wind chimes tinkling softly in the breeze.
You adjusted the pie in your hands and gave Nat a pointed look.
She adjusted her sunglasses. “Still time to run.”
You ignored her, and knocked gently on the door.
It opened almost instantly.
Wanda stood there in a neatly pressed house dress, soft curls pinned back just so, and a smile so practiced it looked like it had been rehearsed in front of a mirror. Her lipstick was a perfect shade of cherry red, her apron spotless, and her eyes warm—but not quite relaxed.
“Hi!” you said brightly. “I’m your neighbor—just across the street. I thought I’d come by and say welcome.”
You held out the pie carefully, and Wanda’s face lit up like you’d handed her a trophy.
“Oh, how thoughtful! Cherry pie! Isn’t that just the most darling thing?” she said, taking the dish like it weighed nothing at all. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble at all,” you said, brushing a hand over your skirt. “I figured it’s always nice to meet a friendly face. And this is my friend—”
“Natasha,” Nat said, stepping forward just enough, offering a short smile. “I live around the corner. Sort of.”
Wanda beamed. “It’s so nice to meet both of you! I’ve been meaning to get out and say hello, but with all the unpacking and Vision starting at the office, things have been just a touch hectic.”
Her laugh was soft and musical, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
You smiled anyway, trying to set the tone. “We won’t keep you long—just wanted to say welcome and offer a slice of something sweet in case you haven’t had time to settle in yet.”
“Oh, you are just the sweetest thing,” Wanda said, clasping the pie to her chest for a moment. “I swear, people around here are just so charming. Isn’t that right?”
She glanced briefly past you, as if expecting someone else to be standing behind you. But there was no one there.
Nat shifted slightly beside you. You could feel her eyes on the back of your head.
“Well,” you said, recovering smoothly, “we’re glad you’re here. If you ever need anything at all—flour, sugar, a woman to vent to—you know where to find us.”
Wanda’s smile softened just a little.
“I’ll be sure to take you up on that. But, please, come in,” Wanda said, stepping back from the doorway with the pie still cradled in her arms. “It’s just me this morning—Vision’s at work, of course.”
“Of course,” you echoed with a pleasant smile as you stepped inside, Nat trailing just behind.
The interior of the house looked like something out of a catalog. Everything matched—pastel walls, matching floral curtains, a perfect set of porcelain figurines arranged above the fireplace. Even the couch cushions were fluffed just so. Not a speck of dust in sight.
You blinked.
“Wow. You’ve settled in so quickly,” you said, stepping further into the living room. “You two must be very efficient.”
Wanda let out a practiced little laugh. “Well, those boxes don’t move themselves,” she said with a wink.
Nat raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
Wanda gestured for you both to sit. “Can I offer you ladies anything? Coffee? Lemonade?”
“Oh no, we won’t stay long,” you said, sitting gracefully on the edge of the floral loveseat. “We just wanted to check in and make sure you were getting along all right.”
“So far, so good,” Wanda said, carefully setting the pie on a doily-covered sideboard. “It’s a lovely neighborhood. Very quiet. Peaceful.”
Nat dropped onto the armchair across from you, crossing one leg over the other. “Suspiciously peaceful, sometimes.”
You shot her a look.
Wanda just smiled, unbothered. “I do like the quiet. Vision and I came here for a fresh start.”
Nat glanced around the room. “Well, you definitely started fresh. This place looks like it’s been lived in for years.”
“Doesn’t it?” Wanda said, clasping her hands in front of her. “We wanted it to feel like home right away. I’ve always believed that if you want a perfect life, you have to make it for yourself.”
Something about the way she said it made your smile falter—just slightly.
Still, you nodded. “That’s a lovely way to put it.”
Wanda looked at you with something almost like recognition, her eyes narrowing just a little before smoothing back into a pleasant expression.
“And what about you two?” she asked. “Have you been in town long?”
Nat glanced at you, letting you take the lead.
“Oh, we've been here for what feels like forever,” you said. “Long enough to know everyone’s favorite pie flavor at least.”
Wanda laughed again. “Well, then I’d say I’m in excellent hands.”
“More or less,” Nat muttered.
You gave her a warning nudge with your elbow. Wanda just tilted her head and smiled wider.
“I’m so glad you stopped by,” she said. “It’s nice to feel… welcomed.”
You nodded. “It’s what neighbors do.”
And for a moment, everything was still—three women sitting in a perfect living room, the morning sun casting long golden lines across the rug. Too still.
Then Wanda clapped her hands gently.
“Well! I won’t keep you any longer. But next time, you’ll stay for coffee.”
You stood with a nod. “We’d like that.”
As you and Nat made your way toward the door, you turned back with an easy smile, pie dish now resting on Wanda’s immaculate sideboard.
“Oh, and by the way…”
Wanda tilted her head, still smiling—but her eyes sharpened just a little, as if bracing herself.
You leaned in conspiratorially, lowering your voice just enough to sound like you were about to spill a real secret.
“We know your secret.”
Wanda’s face didn’t move—but the shift in her posture was immediate. Her fingers stiffened slightly where they rested against the doorknob. The smile stayed in place, but something behind her eyes flickered—tight and uncertain.
Then you laughed.
“Oh—no, don’t worry,” you said quickly, waving a hand. “We’re not exactly All-American girls either.”
Wanda blinked, that practiced smile slowly returning.
“Nat’s a Soviet,” you said, tilting your head toward Nat. “But don't tell anyone.”
“Mmhm,” Nat added flatly. “Straight from the Motherland.”
Wanda blinked again—twice—but you were still smiling.
“And me? Well… I doubt you’ve even heard of where I’m from.” You let out a light laugh, brushing it off like it was nothing. “Half the time I can’t even find it on a map myself.”
There was a moment’s pause, and then Wanda’s laugh chimed in—high and cheerful, if a little delayed.
“Oh, well—how exotic!” she said, clasping her hands together like that made it all just darling. “Isn’t that fun? All these little surprises in one neighborhood!”
You nodded cheerfully. “That’s what makes life interesting.”
“Sure does,” Nat muttered under her breath as she stepped outside.
Wanda followed you both to the door, waving pleasantly as you walked down the path.
“Do stop by again,” she called. “Next time, I’ll have something sweet ready for you!”
You waved back over your shoulder. “Looking forward to it!”
And that was that. Just a pleasant neighborly visit on a beautiful summer morning.
Nothing strange at all.
The office buzzed with a comfortable hum—typewriters clicking, phones ringing somewhere down the hall, a faint scent of aftershave and fresh coffee lingering in the air.
Bucky sat at his desk, trying to make sense of the day’s paperwork. It looked simple enough—just columns of numbers and a lot of unnecessary carbon copies—but his mind kept drifting. Something about the room felt too polished, too bright. Every man wore a tie just slightly too tight, every laugh too well-timed.
Still, it was a job. He had a desk, a nameplate, and apparently a nine-to-five.
Across the room, Vision stood near the break table, a mug of coffee in hand and a furrow between his brows. His pressed shirt and tie were immaculate, not a wrinkle in sight, and yet he looked completely out of place. Like a man who’d read about offices in a manual and was now trying to act the part.
He turned to the trio of men beside him—Herb, Norm, and Phil—all gathered like clockwork for their morning chat.
Vision nodded subtly in Bucky’s direction. “Forgive me, but… who are they?”
Phil followed Vision’s gaze across the office and let out a low whistle.
“No way, Jose,” he said, nudging Norm with his elbow. “He’s askin’ about them?”
Herb leaned in, whispering like he was telling Vision a classified secret. “That’s Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, and Sam Wilson.”
“Big dogs,” Norm added. “Upper-deck guys. Sit at the front of the cafeteria, never wait in line at the vending machine. You get the idea.”
Vision blinked. “They’re… what, the popular ones?”
“‘Popular’ is putting it mildly,” Norm said, adjusting his tie. “They’re the cool guys. You don’t sit with them unless you’re invited. And if they do talk to you? Congratulations—you’ve made it.”
Herb nodded sagely. “You ever seen Wilson walk across the floor? Straight spine, jacket slung over his shoulder, not a care in the world.”
“Meanwhile, we’re over here filing memos about memo formatting,” Phil muttered.
Vision looked genuinely perplexed. “But we all work the same job… don’t we?”
“Sure,” Norm said with a shrug. “But there’s the job, and then there’s the ecosystem. You’ll learn.”
Across the room, Bucky looked up from his desk, feeling eyes on him. Vision froze mid-sip. Bucky gave a polite nod, faint smile in place, before turning back to his paperwork.
Herb elbowed Vision again. “You see that? He nodded. That’s like a handshake from the president, pal.”
Vision blinked. “I… see.”
Vision turned back toward Bucky’s desk with a look of mild determination, brushing a non-existent wrinkle from his sleeve.
“Well,” he said brightly, “I suppose I’ll go introduce myself.”
Phil choked on his coffee. “Now hold on, let’s not be hasty.”
Herb threw up his hands. “Whoa, whoa—maybe give it a year, Vision.”
Norm leaned in with urgency. “You can’t just walk up to them. That’s like trying to sit with the quarterback on the first day of school!”
But Vision was already walking.
Phil muttered, “Godspeed, brother.”
The three watched as Vision crossed the office floor—shoulders squared, tie still perfect, footsteps a little too deliberate—like someone playing the part of a “confident coworker” from a training video.
He stopped beside the trio of desks where Steve, Sam, and Bucky were reviewing a few blueprints.
“Hello, gentlemen!” Vision said, too loudly. “I thought I’d take the opportunity to introduce myself.”
Three heads turned. Steve smiled politely. Sam blinked. Bucky just tilted his head slightly.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Vision continued, extending a very stiff hand. “Vision. I’m new here. My wife and I just moved here to Westview.”
Bucky’s brow lifted. “Vision?”
“Yes.”
“You’re the new neighbors, then,” Bucky said, shaking his hand with a light grip.
Vision’s posture lifted a bit. “That’s me. Just moved in across the street. My wife, Wanda, and I—lovely place, very… structured. Very normal.”
“My wife baked your wife a cherry pie this morning,” Bucky said, smile pulling slightly at the corner of his mouth.
“Oh, that’s very kind of her!” Vision said with a bright smile.
“She’s always bakin’ something,” Sam added. “Pie, muffins… whatever that thing was with the—what’d she call it, Buck?”
“Peach crumble,” Bucky said. “She gets restless if the kitchen’s too clean.”
Vision chuckled. “Well, do let her know I love cherry pie. Though I've never actually eaten it before.”
There was a pause.
Then, almost too quickly, Vision added, “Medical thing. Digestion. Complicated.”
Sam squinted at him. “Wait… you love it, but you can’t eat it?”
“Yes,” Vision said, nodding far too fast. “It’s the idea of cherry pie that I find most… satisfying.”
Steve raised an eyebrow.
Vision cleared his throat—if only for effect. “So. I just wanted to say hello. Lovely to meet all of you. Very normal. Very human introduction.”
There was another pause.
Then Bucky, bless him, just offered a small nod. “Nice to meet you too.”
“Likewise,” Steve added smoothly, ever the diplomat.
Sam gave Vision a slow once-over, clearly amused. “You… you’re all right, man.”
Vision smiled too widely, gave a double thumbs-up, and backed away—literally walking backward toward the break room, trying not to trip over his own feet.
As he passed the break table, Herb whispered to Phil, “He didn’t make it.”
Phil sighed. “He crashed and burned.”
Norm shrugged. “Honestly? Could’ve gone worse.”
Bucky had just gone back to his desk, settling into the rhythm of the office again—pen in hand, reviewing another set of neatly typed memos—when the pen slipped from his fingers.
He reached down to grab it.
The moment his fingers brushed the floor—
Crack.
The overhead lights buzzed. No—not the office lights. Different. Sharper. Like a crackling voltage in his ears.
His vision blurred for half a second.
And then he was somewhere else.
Cold concrete. Harsh fluorescent light. Screams muffled behind thick glass. Metal pressed to his back, restraints tight around his wrists. Russian. He could hear it—“готов к миссии.” The sting of a needle in his neck. The echo of boots on steel.
Then—gone.
He blinked hard.
He was back at his desk. The floor was just… the floor. His pen rested beside his shoe. The office around him buzzed along like nothing had happened. Phones ringing. Someone laughing at the break table.
Bucky sat up slowly, heart pounding, his shirt clinging a little too close to his skin. He glanced around. No one had noticed.
He cleared his throat, forcing himself to breathe through his nose.
Just a weird moment. A lapse. Probably nothing. Maybe he’d skipped breakfast. Maybe it was the coffee.
Still…
As he adjusted his tie, his eyes drifted to the fluorescent lights above.
They buzzed softly. Steady. Innocent.
But for a split second, he could’ve sworn they sounded like electricity ripping through his skull.
The sun was setting by the time he walked up the steps of his front porch.
The street was quiet, porch lights flickering on one by one like stars—perfect, timed, like someone had painted them there. But the air still carried that weird static he couldn’t shake. A feeling behind his ribs. Not fear. Not quite. Just… off.
He loosened his tie with one hand as he stepped inside, trying to breathe it out.
Then he smelled dinner.
Savory, rich, something roasted—herbs and butter and garlic. The kind of smell that belonged to a place you called home.
He stepped into the kitchen and found you already plating the food, apron still tied at your waist, your hair pinned loosely, humming to yourself. The table was set—candles lit, soft music playing on the old radio tucked in the corner.
The moment you turned around and smiled at him, something in his chest gave way.
“Hey, sweetheart,” you said, your voice already warming the cold corners of his day. “Long day?”
He exhaled through a half-laugh. “You have no idea.”
You nodded toward the chair at the table. “Sit. Eat first, talk later.”
He didn’t argue. He couldn’t.
The food tasted as good as it smelled—roast chicken, buttery potatoes, green beans still crisp. The kind of dinner no one had made for him in years. Or maybe ever.
And the whole time, you just… existed beside him. Refilling his glass. Rubbing his shoulder for a second when you passed behind him. Asking about his day, but not pushing when he didn’t quite answer.
And it hit him all at once.
How much he wanted this. How much he needed it.
When the plates were cleared and you turned to rinse something at the sink, he didn’t even think. He stood and came up behind you, arms slipping around your waist as he pressed a kiss to the side of your neck.
You laughed softly. “Hey—dish duty is yours tomorrow.”
“Fine by me,” he murmured against your skin. “Long as this keeps happenin’.”
Another kiss. Then one just behind your ear. Then your jaw.
“Bucky—”
He turned you toward him, your hands still warm from the dishwater, and kissed you properly—slow, steady, like you were the only real thing he’d touched all day.
And maybe that was true.
He couldn’t remember half the details of work. Couldn’t explain the flicker of cold in the back of his mind or why the lights had made his head pound.
But this—your lips, your hands, your laugh against his mouth—this made sense.
This was the part he understood.
You were still smiling when you pulled back, cheeks flushed just a little, hands still resting lightly on his chest.
“Finish up the kitchen for me,” you said softly, your voice carrying that same gentle lilt it always did when you were up to something. “Then come to the bedroom in five minutes.”
Bucky raised a brow, hands sliding down your sides. “Oh yeah?”
You leaned up, pressing a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”
That got his full attention. His grip tightened ever so slightly, eyes flicking between yours.
“You can’t just say somethin’ like that and walk away, doll.”
You slipped out of his arms with a grin, already backing toward the hallway, your fingers undoing the apron at your waist as you went.
“Five minutes, Barnes,” you said over your shoulder. “And not a second sooner.”
He stood there a moment longer, hands on his hips, watching the way your silhouette disappeared into the bedroom.
“Clock’s already runnin’,” he muttered to himself, and turned toward the sink with a new sense of urgency.
And before he knew it, he was drying his hands on a dishtowel and checking the clock.
7:37 p.m.
He’d waited exactly five minutes.
He moved quietly up the stairs, loosening the top button of his shirt as he went, his footsteps slow and deliberate. The hallway was dim, but as he reached the bedroom door, he paused—brows pulling slightly at the sight of flickering light seeping beneath the frame.
He pushed the door open.
The room was bathed in candlelight. Dozens of tiny flames glowed from the dresser, the windowsill, the nightstand—casting golden light across the soft curve of your figure standing at the foot of the bed.
You turned toward him with a little smile and gave a gentle twirl, the hem of your new silk slip catching the air.
It was soft. Clinging. Just barely translucent in the low light, and absolutely not something meant to be worn for long.
“Do you like?” you asked, voice light, sweet, knowing exactly what you were doing.
He didn’t speak.
Didn’t have to.
His eyes swept over you slowly, like he was trying to memorize the way the light touched your skin. Then he nodded—slowly, dumbly—as his fingers found the second button of his shirt and slipped it loose.
Then another.
And another.
As he stepped closer, the candlelight caught the edge of his jaw, his voice low and just a little hoarse.
“You’re gonna kill me, sweetheart.”
“That’s the plan,” you murmured, voice low as your arms slid around his neck.
His shirt hung open now, barely clinging to his shoulders. Your body pressed flush to his chest, the silk of your slip catching against the heat of his skin. The thin fabric did little to separate you from him—your covered breasts rising against his sternum with every breath, soft and warm, sending a quiet jolt through him.
His hands found your waist, fingers splaying gently over your hips like he needed to remind himself you were really there.
For a moment, he just looked at you—eyes dark, full of something tender and dangerous all at once. Then his forehead dropped to yours.
“You drive me crazy, you know that?” he murmured.
You smiled, brushing your nose against his.
“I know.”
His hands slid slowly over your hips, then beneath the edge of the silk slip—fingers brushing over bare skin, warm and steady. He exhaled through his nose, and you felt it, soft against your cheek, just before his lips dipped to your neck.
The first kiss landed just below your ear, slow and deliberate.
Then another, lower.
Then another—open-mouthed and warm, his tongue barely tasting your skin.
You hummed, head tipping to the side, one hand curling tighter at the back of his neck.
“Bucky…” you breathed, voice barely more than a whisper.
He didn’t answer—just continued his slow trail downward, mouth grazing along the curve of your throat. His hands shifted higher beneath your slip, fingertips tracing the curve of your waist, thumbs stroking the soft flesh just beneath your ribs.
Bucky’s mouth found yours again—urgent this time, not rushed but certain, like he needed it. Like he couldn’t stand the space between you any longer.
He kissed you deeply, hungrily, swallowing every soft sound you made before it could leave your lips. One hand cradled the back of your head, the other still beneath your slip, fingers sliding lower, down the curve of your hips and over your thighs.
You barely registered the shift in his stance before he lifted you—effortless, like you weighed nothing in his arms.
But he didn’t stop kissing you.
Not for a second.
His mouth stayed on yours even as he adjusted his grip, one hand cupping the back of your thigh, the other pressed firm against your spine, holding you to him like he didn’t want to give you the chance to slip away.
Your legs wrapped around his waist without needing to be told.
And still, he kissed you.
Slow and deep, like he was trying to memorize the shape of your mouth, the taste of your breath, the way you trembled just slightly every time his tongue slid against yours.
Bucky's grip adjusted—secure, careful—his lips still moving against yours as he took a few slow steps toward the bed, each one deliberate, like he didn’t want to break the rhythm of the moment. His breath was warm and ragged against your mouth, and his hand splayed against your back, holding you close, like he couldn’t bear to have even an inch between you.
As his knees brushed the edge of the mattress, he slowed, finally breaking the kiss—but only just enough to breathe.
You were both breathing harshly in the hush of the candlelit room.
“Y’know…” he said, voice low and rough with that unmistakable Brooklyn drawl, “I ain’t ever seen somethin’ as unfair as you in this thing.”
His eyes dropped to the slip you wore—clinging now to your frame, a little wrinkled from his touch, slightly askew from the way you’d pressed together. His thumb brushed under the strap at your shoulder.
“You planned this whole night just to make me lose my mind, didn’t you?”
You smiled, still breathless. “And if I did?”
Bucky huffed out a soft laugh, resting his forehead against yours.
“Then it’s workin’, sweetheart.”
He kissed you again—slower this time. Deep, sure, with that quiet kind of desperation like he was trying to anchor himself. Like the day’s static still lingered behind his eyes and the only way to shut it out was you.
His hands slid beneath your thighs again, and he lowered you down gently, laying you back against the soft sheets like you were something fragile.
But he didn’t pull away.
Instead, he hovered above you—his mouth still close, his hand brushing your cheek, then drifting down your neck, his calloused fingertips dragging fire over your skin.
“Look at you,” he whispered, half to himself. “Dressed like a dream. Layin’ here like this… waitin’ for me.”
You reached up, curling your fingers into the open collar of his shirt.
“I’ll always be waiting for you,” you whispered.
He swallowed hard at that—jaw clenching slightly, like the words hit somewhere deep—and kissed you again, a low sound catching in his throat.
He then sat back on his heels for half a second, eyes raking over you like he’d just walked into the best damn surprise of his life.
Then he was stripping his shirt off in one smooth motion, tossing it somewhere he clearly didn’t care about.
“Been thinkin’ about this since you told me to wait downstairs,” he muttered, already working his belt open, the metal buckle clinking as it came loose.
You grinned, sitting up just a little. “Five whole minutes of suffering?”
“Longest five minutes of my life, doll.”
His slacks hit the floor, and he was on the bed a heartbeat later, knees sinking into the mattress as he grabbed you by the hips. “C’mere.”
You let him pull you toward him, his hands already sliding up your thighs, fingers curling into the hem of your slip.
“Gonna unwrap you,” he said, voice low but not shy about the grin tugging at his mouth. “Like the best damn present I ever got.”
Before you could tease him back, he was bunching the silk higher, skimming it over your hips, up your sides, the fabric catching here and there on his calloused hands. You lifted your arms without thinking, and he yanked it over your head in one quick move, tossing it aside without looking.
“God, look at you,” he said, leaning in to kiss you hard, already pushing you back onto the bed.
Bucky’s mouth stayed on yours, a little rough now, all teeth and heat, his hands already everywhere. One slid up your side, cupping your breast through your bra, thumb brushing over the fabric just to hear the sound you made. The other gripped your thigh, pulling it higher around his hip like he couldn’t get you close enough.
“Missed you today,” he muttered against your mouth, his accent thicker now that he was half out of breath. “Whole damn time at work, thinkin’ about this… about you wearin’ somethin’ like that under my nose.”
You grinned into the kiss. “And what would you have done if I’d shown up at your office like this?”
He groaned low in his throat, squeezing your thigh. “Doll, I’d have cleared the desk and gotten fired in five minutes.”
You laughed, but it broke into a gasp when he pulled your bra strap down with his teeth, letting it snap lightly against your skin before sliding the strap off your shoulder with his fingers.
“Bucky—”
“Yeah?” His hand trailed down your stomach, warm and firm, stopping just at the edge of your panties. “Somethin’ you wanna tell me, baby?”
You arched under him, trying to push into his touch. “Stop teasing.”
That cocky smirk flashed across his face. “I don't think so.”
His fingers slid past the thin fabric of your panties, finding you warm and already wet for him. He let out a low, satisfied hum, leaning down so his mouth brushed your ear.
“Jesus, doll… you’ve been thinkin’ about this all day, huh?” His voice was gravel now, deep and smug. “Feelin’ all worked up while I was stuck at that boring-ass office?”
You let out a shaky laugh, breath catching when his fingers started to move—firm, slow strokes that made your hips twitch against his hand. “Maybe I was.”
“Maybe?” He chuckled darkly, nipping your earlobe. “Sweetheart, you’re drippin’. That ain’t maybe.”
You bit back a moan, your nails digging lightly into his bare shoulders. “Could just be I’m not that picky.”
His laugh was a hot breath against your cheek. “Yeah? Liar. You’d never let anyone else touch you like this.” His fingers pressed harder, faster now, each curl of them hitting exactly where you needed it.
You gasped, eyes fluttering shut for a second. “Cocky much?”
“Damn right,” he said, kissing along your jaw while his hand worked between your thighs. “You tell me to stop and I will, but we both know you won’t.”
Your lips curved in a grin even as your breath stuttered. “Not a chance.”
“Atta girl.” His tone was pure praise, but his fingers stayed relentless, every slick slide making your legs tremble a little more around him. “Gonna make a mess for me, sweetheart?”
You arched into him, meeting his rhythm. “Only if you can keep up.”
“Oh, doll…” he murmured, curling his fingers just right, drawing a sharp moan from your throat. “That ain’t a problem.”
You felt it building — that sharp coil tightening low in your belly, every flick of his fingers pushing you closer. Your breath hitched, hips rocking into his touch, ready to tip over—
And then he pulled his hand away.
The loss made you whine, your hands grabbing at his shoulders. “James!”
He grinned, the kind of grin that made you want to slap him and kiss him at the same time. “Stop bein’ a brat.”
“I’m not—”
“Yeah, you are,” he cut in, his voice laced with amusement as he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of your panties. “But don’t worry, doll. I’ll still take care of you.”
Before you could throw another complaint at him, he tugged the thin fabric down your legs and tossed it somewhere behind him without looking.
Then he shifted lower, settling between your thighs, his hands pushing them open wider until you felt the cool air brush over your heated skin. He looked up at you from under his lashes, that smug glint still in his eyes.
“You’re already shakin’,” he murmured, leaning in just enough for his breath to ghost over you. “And I haven’t even touched you yet.”
Your pulse jumped, fingers curling in the sheets. “Then stop talking and—”
But your words broke off in a gasp as his mouth finally met you—hot, wet, and devastatingly slow at first, his tongue drawing long, deliberate strokes that made your toes curl.
Bucky groaned low against you, gripping your thighs to keep you spread for him. “God, you taste like you’ve been waitin’ for me all damn day.”
You laughed breathlessly, trying to bite it back. “Maybe I have.”
“Maybe,” he said against you, “isn’t good enough. I want you screamin’ my name before I’m done here.”
Bucky didn’t rush.
That was the worst part.
He licked you like he had all the time in the world, like he could spend the entire night between your legs and still not get bored. His tongue moved in slow, deliberate strokes, flattening against you before curling just right, catching that spot that made your back arch.
Your hand shot to his hair, fingers tangling in the strands as your other gripped the sheets. “Bucky—”
“Mhm?” he hummed against you, the vibration sending a shock straight through you. He didn’t lift his head. Just kept licking, steady and maddening, like he wanted to make you beg.
Your hips rolled against his mouth without thinking, chasing more friction, and his grip on your thighs tightened. “Easy, doll. I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
“Then go faster,” you gasped.
He pulled back just enough to look at you, his mouth already shiny with you, lips curved in a smirk. “Pushy tonight, huh?”
“Maybe I wouldn’t be if you’d—oh, James—” Your words cut off when he sucked your clit between his lips, tongue flicking over it in quick, relentless motions that made your vision spark.
“That’s it,” he murmured when he let go, his voice low and filthy. “Let me hear you.”
Your breath came in short bursts, your thighs trembling against his palms. He alternated between long, slow licks and sharp, precise ones, never staying in one rhythm long enough for you to brace yourself. Every time you thought you’d figured out his pace, he’d change it—keeping you right on the edge, drawing you higher without letting you fall.
“Bucky—please—” you managed, your voice breaking around the word.
“Please what?” he asked, deliberately slow, before dipping his tongue inside you, fucking you with it, his nose bumping your clit with every movement. The combination made you gasp, your hips jerking.
“Please don’t stop,” you breathed, your fingers tightening in his hair.
That made him groan, a deep, rough sound that vibrated through you. “That’s my girl,” he said against you, before sucking your clit again, harder this time. “Always so sweet for me.”
You felt it then—the coil tightening again, this time faster, sharper. You tried to warn him, but all that came out was a strangled moan.
“Yeah?” he asked, reading your body like a book. “You gonna come for me?”
You nodded frantically, words failing, your thighs closing around his head. He let them, one hand sliding up to press against your stomach while the other kept you open enough for his tongue to keep working you.
“Come on, pretty girl,” he murmured against you. “Mess up my face.”
The filthy encouragement shattered what little control you had left. Your back arched, your mouth falling open in a cry you couldn’t muffle, your entire body going tight before it shook apart.
Bucky didn’t stop—not right away. He kept licking you through it, softer now, drawing out every aftershock until you were twitching under him, breathless and spent.
Finally, he pulled back, kissing the inside of your thigh before looking up at you with that damn smirk. “Told you I’d take care of you.”
You swallowed, trying to catch your breath. “Yeah,” you said, your voice hoarse but teasing. “Guess you’re good for something after all.”
His grin widened, and he started crawling up your body. “Oh, sweetheart,” he said, bracing himself over you, “I’m just gettin’ started.”
Bucky stayed between your thighs, his hands braced on either side of your hips, eyes dragging over you like he was trying to memorize every inch. The candlelight caught the sharp cut of his jaw, the curve of his smirk.
“Are you ready for me, baby?”
You didn’t hesitate. “I’m always ready for you.”
He grinned, one hand wrapping around himself, giving a slow stroke as he positioned between your legs. He brushed the tip along your slick folds, just enough pressure to make your hips twitch.
The contact pulled an involuntary sound from your throat, a small, aching note of impatience. “James,” you said, his name leaving your lips like a warning and a plea all in one.
That made him laugh under his breath, leaning down to steal a quick kiss. “Easy, doll. I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
Bucky guided himself to your entrance, the head of his cock pressing just enough to part you, and his gaze flicked up to meet yours.
“Look at me,” he murmured.
And when you did, when your eyes locked with his, he pushed forward — slow at first, deliberate, like he wanted to feel every inch you.
The first stretch of him inside you stole your breath. Even with all your memories of a hundred times before, your body reacted like it was new. Muscles tightening around him, heat pulling him deeper, making his jaw clench.
“Jesus, doll…” Bucky’s voice was low, strained, like he was trying not to lose it already. He pushed in until his hips met yours, holding there for a beat, his forehead nearly touching yours.
You weren’t sure why it felt different tonight. You’d thought you’d had him before — countless times, slow mornings, quick nights after dinner parties — but this… this was sharper. More consuming.
Then he started to move.
The first pull back was slow, deliberate, and then he thrust forward again, harder this time. Your back arched, a moan catching in your throat. His hands gripped your hips, anchoring you as he set a rhythm — not rushed, but deep and purposeful, every thrust hitting that perfect spot.
The room was thick with heat — the soft flicker of candlelight, the creak of the mattress, your mixed breaths and muffled curses. Every time his hips met yours, that strange undercurrent rippled through you, a sensation that felt both brand new and achingly familiar.
Bucky felt it too — though he couldn’t name it. Something about the way your body gripped him, the way your eyes locked on his, made it feel like he was crossing a line he hadn’t before.
“God, you feel… different tonight,” he breathed, almost to himself, his pace faltering for half a second before he drove back into you, harder. “Better. So much better.”
You clung to him, legs tightening around his waist, pulling him in deeper. “Then don’t you dare stop.”
“Wasn’t plannin’ on it,” he said, voice rough, hips pounding into you now with a messy urgency that made the bedframe knock against the wall. “Not ‘til I’ve wrung every sound outta you.”
Bucky’s thrusts turned heavier, more insistent, his pace pushing the air from your lungs in small, sharp bursts. The candlelight caught on the sheen of sweat at his temple, his hair starting to fall loose against his forehead, his mouth open as he breathed through the effort of keeping himself together.
But there was no keeping it together — not with the way your body clung to him, every squeeze pulling a ragged groan from his chest.
“God, doll… you’re perfect,” he ground out, his voice low and rough. “Takin’ me so well… fuck.”
You tilted your head back, the sound of his praise shooting straight through you. “Feels—so good, Bucky—”
His hand slid up your side, cupping your breast, thumb brushing over your nipple until you gasped. Then his mouth was there instead, teeth grazing before his tongue soothed the sting, all while his hips kept driving into you.
It was overwhelming — his weight above you, his hands everywhere, the way he filled you completely with every thrust. The scent of him, the heat, the faint rasp of his voice in your ear when he pulled back just enough to murmur, “You’re squeezin’ me so tight, baby… you gonna come for me?”
You let out something between a laugh and a moan. “If you keep talking like that—”
“Oh, I’m not stoppin’,” he cut in, grinning against your neck before biting lightly. “Not until you fall apart around me.”
He adjusted his angle, and suddenly every deep drive of his hips was hitting that spot inside you that made your toes curl. Your legs tightened around him, anchoring him to you, pulling him deeper. The bed creaked under the steady rhythm, the headboard tapping against the wall in time with your gasps.
Bucky’s breath grew harsher, more ragged. “You feel that? That’s me—every inch of me—right where you need it.”
“God—yes—” you panted, nails scraping down his back hard enough to make him hiss.
“Just like that,” he growled, his pace quickening, losing some of the measured control as his own need took over. His forehead pressed to yours, sweat-slick skin against skin, his eyes locked on yours like he couldn’t look away.
That strange, unshakable intensity was back — the unspoken this is different humming beneath the heat, making every touch, every thrust feel sharper.
“Come with me,” he urged, voice almost breaking now. “C’mon, doll—let go. Wanna feel you—fuck—wanna feel you while I—”
The sound of him losing his words, the strain in his voice, pushed you over the edge. Your body went tight around him, the orgasm ripping through you so hard you cried out his name, clutching him like you might pull him under with you.
That was all it took.
Bucky groaned loud, hips slamming deep one final time as he spilled into you, his whole body shuddering with the release. He stayed there, buried in you, his face pressed into your neck, breath hot and uneven against your skin.
Neither of you moved for a long moment, just clinging, riding the aftershocks together.
When he finally pulled back to look at you, his lips curved into a slow, dazed smile. “Hell of a welcome home, sweetheart.”
You laughed softly, still catching your breath. “You earned it.”
And though neither of you realized it, that night had changed something — because it wasn’t just another time. It was the first.
Bucky flopped onto his back beside you with a heavy exhale, one arm automatically draping over his eyes. “If I knew that’s what was waitin’ for me after work, doll, I’d start leavin’’ early.”
You rolled onto your side, propping your head on your hand to look at him. “You start leaving early, and who’s gonna bring home the bacon?”
He peeked out from under his arm, smirking. “Pretty sure you just fed me all the bacon in the county.”
“That was your dinner. This was…” Your lips curved into a sly smile. “…dessert.”
Bucky laughed, low and warm, and reached over to pull you against him, tucking you into his side. “Best damn dessert I ever had.”
You rested your head on his chest, listening to the steady thump of his heart. He absently brushed his fingers up and down your arm, the post-coital haze wrapping around you both like a blanket.
“You know,” you murmured, “if I’d known that slip was gonna get that reaction, I’d have bought three.”
“Sweetheart, if you buy three, I’m never leavin’ this bedroom.”
You swatted his chest lightly, but you were laughing, and he caught your hand before you could pull it back, pressing a kiss to your knuckles. “Don’t tempt me, Mr. Barnes.”
He grinned. “Oh, I’m already tempted, Mrs. Barnes.”
Bucky shifted onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow so he could look at you. The candlelight softened his features, made his smirk look more like a smile — genuine, open in a way that was rare for him.
“You know somethin’, doll?”
You tilted your head. “What’s that?”
He brushed a thumb over your cheek, his touch slow, tender. “I love you.”
Your smile bloomed instantly, the kind that crinkled at the corners of your eyes. “I love you too, James.”
He leaned in and kissed you once — slow and sure — before pulling you in so your head rested under his chin, his arm secure around you like he could keep the whole world out just by holding on.
The two of you lay there in the candlelit room, the sounds of the neighborhood fading into the background — a car passing on the street, the hum of the old ceiling fan. Everything felt easy. Right. Like the world outside could wait until morning.
And in this perfect little bubble, neither of you had any reason to think otherwise.
a/n — I don't think people in the 50s had sex like this, and it's a shame for them. and yes, this was the first time these two were actually having sex, if some of you didn't catch that hint. anyway let's pray and manifest consistency, because y'all know my mind and focus wanders
summary: after two years of you talking into his ear, bucky meets the face behind the voice on the comms after a tricky mission.
pairing: tfatws!bucky barnes x fem!reader
insp by: an instagram reel from an art account that drew bucky on the phone with someone screaming at him…….. guys trust me my brain was thinking big things… also inspired by the goat penelope garcia!!!!!
word count: 10.1k… wowza… read at your own risk
content warnings: usual description of violence (blood and punching and stuff), being trapped under rubble, swearing, mentions of dying death and murder, very slightly suggestive content, explosions, guns and shooting
a/n: my first bucky fic!!!! for @opheliabbarnes since you got me hooked into bucky with all of your bucky propaganda and also becuade you cheated in my poll and used your bucky powers to make me write this. also guys for the sake of the book just imagine that bucky is working with sam and doesn’t divorce him
"comms are live. hello, can you hear me?"
a pause.
there's a static crackling that rings through your headset before bucky's voice comes in, low and gruff, "yeah, unfortunately."
"good morning to you too, barnes." you smirk as you lean back in your chair, the screens in front of you flickering to life one-by-one. "it's nice to hear that your sunshine and optimism lived to see another day."
"play nice, you two." sam warns, "we haven't even gotten inside."
"i am playing nice." you retort, "that was me being sweet."
"define sweet..." bucky grumbles. you're not sure whether he's forgotten you can hear everything he's saying or if he's doing it just to spite you— but you let it slide.
you glance over to a screen where you can see joaquin's boots— and only his boots— thanks to his poorly angled body cam. it's shaking like he's struggling with something.
"joaquin, you there? i think your mic's off."
"yeah, he's here. he just can't figure out his ear piece." sam sighs. you watch him step into joaquin's screen and grab something from his hands, "you just have to click the button, man. it's not that hard—"
there's an awful screeching noise that pulses through your headset. it sounds like someone had just murdered a sentient robot and then fed its screams through a megaphone.
you pull it off in a hurry, waiting until it goes silent, and then place it back onto your headset with a huff. "everybody just... stop touching things."
another screen immediately catches your eye. blotches of red and orange pop out amongst a deep blue background— heat signatures patrolling the perimeter of the building that sam, bucky, and joaquin are in. you watch as a handful of them enter the warehouse.
"we've got movement." you still up in your chair, zooming in as the thermal overlay focuses, "there's about four patrolling the west perimeter. there's five— no— seven of them have just entered through the east side of the first floor."
sam peaks around the corner, but he can't see much unless he wants to compromise their position. he pulls back, "super soldiers?"
"i can't tell. they move like it, but nothing’s confirmed." you narrow your eyes. your eyes flicker to a smaller screen and a controller that sits beside it, "i'm sending scout. incoming!"
from somewhere in the sky, a grey blur cuts across the roof of the warehouse. bucky rolls his eyes as he watches it zoom past.
on your screen, scout's POV snaps into focus— clear, high-res, infrared, and absolutely glorious. it’s practically your child. you guide the bot with a simple flick of your wrist.
a small drone no bigger than a tennis ball and stamped with a white 'S' on its side zips through the air like a wasp on a mission. it's virtually silent, zipping low as it peaks around the corner of the east wall.
"okay, they aren't armed, but—" you pause as you rotate scout, "wait, there's a truck pulling up on the east loading dock."
sam furrows his brows. they didn't plan for anything other than a simple surveillance and a couple catch and arrests. "can you see what's inside?"
you turn to another screen— a thermal drone that's zoomed into the truck. "one driver and one passenger. there's a few crates in the back, but i can't see what's in them. they must have some sort of cooling system because they're freezing."
joaquin glances between sam and bucky, "that has to be the serum, right?"
"this must be one of the meeting points for their buyers." sam says, "they're gonna be here any second."
"don't worry. i've got eyes on them." you cut in, fingers flicking across your keyboard as another feed pops up, "i'm guessing it's the four black range rovers approaching from the south along franklin street."
there's a pause, then bucky asks, "what's our game plan?"
he's not looking at sam or joaquin. he hasn't moved a muscle. his voice is low and steady, his eyes fixed straight ahead— like he's waiting for your voice to tell him what to do next.
and you don't hesitate.
"we need to seperate them from the buyers. if this is an exchange, they're going to have bodyguards. we can't have thirty armed criminals in one warehouse. can you handle that, torres?"
joaquin nods, "loud and clear."
without another word, he takes a running step off of the warehouse's broken wall. his wings snap out from his jet pack with a hiss, catching the wind as he flies south along franklin street. you watch his tracker blip across another screen, already zeroing in on the buyers.
"and you two have to take these guys out." you continue, focus turned on sam and bucky, "there's five on the perimeter, all armed. there's two that have just wandered off towards you guys. pick them off."
sam's voice crackles in, "i'll take the guys with the guns."
there's a pause—
"we can take the guys with the guns." he corrects himself a moment later— probably after a look from bucky.
"they're unloading the crates now. the truck is electric, so i think can stall it long enough for you guys to get close— maybe cut off their exit entirely. we still don't know if they're enhanced, so be careful and don't be stupid."
you watch sam's body cam as bucky turns to him, his voice flat through the comms, "yeah, sam."
sam scoffs and waved him off as he readjusts his shield, "i think she means you, man."
"i was just throwing it out there." you roll your eyes, fingers flying across your keyboard as you send joaquin backup, "torres has already contained the buyers, so you're up— go."
bucky's already moving before you can even finish your sentence, heavy boots almost silent against the concrete floor. sam vaults the barrier to his left, moving fast and low.
sam closes in. a pacing guard turns just a moment too late— sam drives his fist into the side of his face. he drives into another guard, sending him tumbling into a wall with a dull thud. another one spins around with a gasp. he fumbles for his weapon—
crack.
a metal fist drops him before he can even point it. bucky steps over the guy, barely slowing his pace or breaking a sweat. but then another guard rounds the corner— one who doesn't fumble with his gun— and shoots.
you look over to another screen. the thermal camera shows more figures closing in on sam and bucky, clearly on high alert. the tension in their movements show that they're panicked. the four crates that had been unloaded were now being covered back up.
"you've got six of them heading your way, and fast." you scramble. the truck's screen is visible on your screen, but your software is still trying to figure out the password, "they're unarmed, but be careful."
sam's wing fans out in a practiced motion and shields them both from the bullets. the shots ping right off of the reinforced metal. his wing retreats, and the guard looks terrified. he tries to reload the gun, but he's struggling.
sam's voice comes through, dry but amused, "i guess we're past the stealth phase."
"i didnt like that phase anyways." bucky grunts as he shoves the guard against a wall. he makes a point by grabbing his gun and snapping it in half like a twig, tossing it out reach. he knocks the guy out with one swift punch to the jaw.
they're doing good— clearing the path with ease and making sure to be vigilant— but then they walk into the main area of the warehouse. it's wide open and humming with the sound of the truck and trailers shoving the crates back into the back, and there's at least a handful of masked figures standing there.
the six figures you had seen nearing sam and bucky are already stepping into the light of the warehouses main floor— calm, coordinated, and slightly intimidating.
each one is broad-shouldered and looks battle-worn. their body temperatures come up significantly warmer than both sam and bucky's, and you can tell something is wrong.
"you think they've taken the serum?" bucky shifts his stance, fists already clenched.
you watch as one of the men lurches forwards— blindingly fast— and throws sam across the room, far too fast for sam to catch himself. he hits a pillar, sliding down it with a groan.
"shit." you inhale.
"i think so!" sam yells, voice strained.
the rest of them charge. bucky's the first to meet them head-on. he lands a solid punch to one of their jaws— and it should've dropped him— but the guy just snarls, barely flinching, and drives his knee into bucky's stomach.
sam's back up, his shield snapping into place just quick enough to block a hit. he's fighting hard and moving fast, wings flicking around for balance and defence, but for every hit he dodges, there's another one right after.
you're watching the fight from a drone overhead like a game you can't control. youre working on trying to stall the truck, but it's difficult when youre also watching your friends get their asses beat.
sam takes out one guy with a swing of his wing and a nasty uppercut, but two more corner him. bucky slams a guy through a metal beam— literally through it— but it only buys him a second before another super soldier grabs him by his jacket and tosses him across the room, back slamming into a shelving unit.
then— like a miracle— a screen on your right starts beeping. a red dot farts across the radar, closing in on the warehouse. you spin in your chair to check the corresponding feed just as a figure cuts through the sky.
you grin, "torres incoming!"
not even a second later, joaquin bursts through one of the warehouse windows, wings flaring wide. his visor glints as he absolutely bodies two super soldiers like bowling pins just as one of them winds up to hit bucky again.
he lands with a thud, wings retracting quickly as he jogs up to sam. bucky is close behind, but he's still fighting off two super soldiers.
"about damn time." sam huffs.
bucky wipes the blood leaking from his nose, taking a moment to catch his breath, "what the hell took you so long?"
"traffic." he grins and holds his hand out for sam, who's literally holding on by a thread, trying to prop himself up with his shield, "was getting your asses kicked a part of the plan?"
sam groans as joaquin pulls him up, "don't push it, joaquin."
you're still watching the fight through various monitors. the comms are full of grunts and sharp breathes, but now that joaquin's there, they're struggling a little less.
and then there's a beep— a small, sad beep— and a window that says 'OVERRIDE FAILED' in big red letters. you freeze.
"they've locked me out of the truck's system. they're overriding my remote access." you scramble to restart the process, but it doesn't let you.
you glance at another screen. the camera feed confirms your worst fear— they're escaping. one of the super soldiers is climbing into the driver's seat, the rear doors slamming shut as the engine hums to life.
"they're taking off—" you panic as you watch the truck pull out of the warehouse driveway, "shit, someone stop that truck!"
before anyone can respond, bucky takes off in a full sprint— no hesitation, no plan, and clearly no intention of letting that truck get away or waiting for anyone. his boots pound against the asphalt as he trails it.
"barnes—" you call through the comms, stressed out of your mind.
you hadn't expected him to chase after it. he was the only one without wings or a jet pack, yet you watched him run after that truck like he was chasing all he's ever wanted. the panic in your voice doesn't help. if anything, it only pushes bucky harder.
he barrels out onto the street, only a few metres from the truck. you send a drone up ahead, the camera feed glitching as it races to keep up. you're trying to calculate every route the truck could take to evade capture— until your eyes land on a large clearing.
there's a river glittering under the sun, splitting the city in half. a large drawbridge stretches over it, connecting the two sides of land. just next to it, there's an enormous cargo ship waiting to cross— and your heart stops when you notice the bridge is already at a 70 degree angle.
"they're gonna jump the bridge, barnes." you quickly warn, "if they make it across before the split—"
"they're gone." he finishes, breathless but ready. you can hear his sharp breathes through your headset, "i'm not letting it get away. 'gonna jump it."
"fall back, barnes, you're not going to make it." you bark through the comms, trying to keep your voice steady. you watch as he speeds up, running faster than you've ever seen him run.
"you better listen to the lady, bucky." sam adds, wings slicing through the air as he tries to catch up.
you watch as the truck barrels forwards, climbing up the incline of the rising drawbridge like it's easy work. bucky's close— too close to stop. he digs his feet into the ground harder as he launches himself up the incline.
you can see it all through a drone— the truck about to leap, bucky on its tail, the bridge yawning wide open underneath them, and the water far below shining like teeth. the cargo ship blares its horn as it draws closer to the bridge, wary of what's happening.
it happens too fast—
the truck leaps across the gap. its front wheels leave the ground for just a split second before the back wheels follow, and then its airborne. behind it, bucky jumps too.
you're on your feet now, eyes locked onto the drone feed. your hands are braced on either side of the desk and your knuckles have gone bone-white. you're not breathing or thinking. you're not even sure if your heart is beating.
for a moment, he's airborne. then just as quickly, he's falling straight through the gap and into open air. the wind catches in his jacket, gravity yanking him down towards the water and the cargo ship below.
just before he hits the ship deck, a blur of red, white, and blue zips past— sam.
his wings flare as he dives, hooking one arm around bucky with precision, the two of them twisting mid-air as the momentum nearly sends them spiralling. they hover under the bridge for a moment before sam takes off towards solid ground.
you collapse in your chair and yank the joystick for scout, who zooms towards bucky and sam. its camera focuses, cutting through the haze of the sun to check on them.
"jesus christ, buck, are you okay?" you panic into your mic, already trying to see if he needs medical attention.
"i've caught the princess, he's safe." sam replies, smug as ever.
you lean in closer to the screen as scout zips around him, "are you injured? you might need to take your vest off so i can assess it and let medical know."
"take me to dinner first." he doesn't look thrilled about the rescue. he brushes off his jacket with a clenched jaw, then narrows in on scout, who's circling him. he flings his hand at it like a fly, "and get that stupid drone out of my face. it's ugly."
"rude." you frown, "he just risked his tiny propellor life to check up on you."
"yeah?" bucky asks flatly.
you narrow your eyes, "yeah."
bucky gives scout a fake smile and says an insincere 'thanks buddy'. then— without hesitation— bucky grabs scout mid-hover. you barely have time to shout at him before he launches scout straight up into the sky, spinning wildly and almost vanishing.
the feed spins out of control as the stabilisers struggle to compensate with the speed it'd been hurled at.
sam clicks his tongue and shakes his head, "ooooh, she's gonna kill you."
bucky shrugs, utterly unfazed, but there's a shadow of a smile sitting on his lips, "i didn't like the way it was looking at me."
"you better pray he still works when you get back or else i'll murder you in your sleep." there's a lowness in your voice that should be intimidating, but bucky doesn't falter.
"i'd like to see you try." he retorts, his tone bordering amused.
"you've never seen me." you reply matter-of-factly, "you wouldn't even see me coming.”
"oh, trust me, the moment i hear nasally breathing, i'd know exactly who was about about to beat my ass."
"that sounded like a compliment, barnes." you roll your eyes, ignoring the insult and simply smirk, putting on your best mock-sultry tone, "are you complimenting me?"
"don't flatter yourself. i've just taken too many hits to the head."
he hears you scoff, and it makes his grin widen. he can almost imagine you in your little computer room at the base, sitting in front of your set-up with an unimpressed look on your face, or even pacing back and forth muttering about how annoying he is.
it's weird how he knows so much about you, but still can't really picture what you look like. he's tried, but it's mostly just a blur— almost like a familiar face from a dream.
sam stops walking and turns to bucky with his hands on his hands, "are you guys done flirting or do you want me to circle back in a couple of hours?"
"you should've just let him fall into the river, sam." you grumble through the comms.
"hey guys?" joaquin's voice comes in clear and troubled.
sam pauses, his eyebrow furrowing, "what's up, torres?"
"you might wanna come and check this out."
it's later in the day. the team had gathered back at the base to debrief, worn out and trying to gather themselves after the failed mission.
sam is slouched on a chair, eyeing the information on the screen to figure out what went wrong, bucky's leaning against the wall with a towel around his neck and a band-aid above his brow, and joaquin's icing his shoulder and holding up his phone, where your voice comes through the speaker.
"so youre telling me that they just abandoned two entire crates full of super soldier serum and then just dipped?" you spoke— sharp and unmistakably done with everything.
"uhhhhhhhh... yeah." joaquin blinks, then tilts his head in confusion, "i thought you were already caught up with this?"
"do i sound caught up, joaquin?" you roll your eyes and take a deep breath, "it just doesn't make any sense. they went through all that effort to keep up busy, only to leave the serum behind like its nothing?"
"you think it was a decoy?" joaquin asks.
"i don't know." you half-shrug, "they've barely touched it, and i just got a message that they want me to check it out before they log it and send it into evidence."
sam straightens in his chair, "you want backup?"
"it's sitting in the middle of an air-force base, sam. if someone pops out, they've got bigger things to worry about than me— like the twenty armed guards surrounding it or the drone that's been circling it for the past hour."
"you're actually leaving your cave?" bucky jokes.
"yeah, barnes, i am." you deadpan, hand already on your 'caves' door handle, "since you threw scout into orbit, i'll have to use my eyes like a normal person. he's fine, by the way. just a bit of whiplash."
sam huffs out a laugh, but his shoulders are still visibly tense, "hey, just be careful, okay?"
"always. i'll call back in ten." you say, more to yourself than anyone else, then hang up.
the room is silent for a few seconds. the low him from computer monitors fills the space, punctuated by the slow ticking of a clock nearby.
joaquin sighs, then mutters, "can't believe they left the crates behind." he shifts the ice pack on his shoulder, "feels... off."
sam leans back in his chair with a tired sigh, "if anyone's gonna spot something we missed, it's her."
then another moment of silence stretches through the team. outside the window, the airfield lights burn against the dusk. the base is usually quiet at this time of day.
bucky stares out of the window. then he asks, "is she always like that when she's out in the field?" he doesn't clarify what he means by that, but the others seem to understand what he means.
"what, annoyingly confident?" sam lets a small smile wander onto his face as he thinks about you, "she's about ten times worse when she's not behind those screens. but it's good. she doesn't miss much. and when she's got a gut feeling..."
sam doesn't finish his sentence. he doesn't need to.
"you should see her during intel briefings." joaquin adds with a goofy grin, "she'll shred a guy's whole thesis with like... three words. it's brutal."
"and that weird 'incoming' thing she does?" bucky frowns, like he's genuinely confused, "what is that?"
joaquin laughs under his breath, "she's been doing that since we were recruited. it's like... her thing."
bucky's quiet for a moment. his eyes glance at joaquin's phone where your voice had just crackled through not even a minute ago. it sat idly on the table. there's a weird feeling in his chest— almost embarrassment. he'd known you for two years and was only just now asking questions.
"is she tall?" bucky blurts out.
joaquin blinks, caught off guard, "what?"
there's another beat of silence. sam turns his head away slowly from the monitor, clearly unimpressed, and gestures vaguely to bucky. he deadpans, "he's never seen her."
"seriously?" joaquin raises his brows, "you've been working with her for two years, and you've never ever seen her face?"
bucky runs his tongue against the inside of his cheek. he wants to just get over the subject, but he's brought it onto himself. he shrugs like it's nothing as he pulls the towel from around his neck, but the pink tips of his ears say the opposite.
"she's always behind a screen or..." bucky runs his hand over his face, exhaling like he already regrets having this conversation, "or on encrypted phone calls, or in a control room in some random part of this place. she's not exactly the easiest person to bump into."
"you've never looked her up? never seen a photo?" joaquin still looks utterly amused, inching ever so slightly across the table, "you haven't even stalked her, just a little bit?"
bucky looks at him like he's spewed gibberish, "no."
"she was standing right next to you last week." joaquin exclaims incredulously, "at the debrief? she was standing next to you with her arms crossed? we could go check out to the crates right now. she'd be there."
bucky furrows his brows, completely silent.
sam leans back with a knowing smirk, "trust me, if he'd seen her, he'd remember her."
"what's that supposed to mean?" bucky frowns, unsure if he should be offended or if he actually has a point to make.
"it means she's memorable, man." sam says like it's the most obvious thing in the world, "voice like that? brain like that? you think the looks don't match? she’d have you thinking about her 24/7.”
joaquin raises his brows in agreement, "he's got a point."
bucky doesn't respond, and his silence says more than any smartass comeback ever could. he's just sitting there, absentmindedly playing with the towel in his hands and staring at nothing in particular, his gaze far off— maybe trying to picture you again. maybe trying to figure out if he should go out and see you— but it feels wrong.
sam watches him for barely a second and has already read him like a book. he rolls his eyes and leans forwards with intent, like he's seen this before. and he has. "don't go getting all obsessed, buck."
that snaps bucky out of his head. he scoffs, "i'm not—"
"she called you buck and you didn't say anything about it."
joaquin watches the exchange like its an intense tennis match.
"i've known you for, like... ten years. i called you buck last year and you didn't like it." sam points out, gesturing emphatically, "and you just asked if she was tall like you were filling out your dating profile preferences."
"it was a question." bucky defends.
"a weird question." sam retorts.
"oh, give me a break." bucky clenches his jaw, "you're telling me that if you there was a voice in your ear 24/7 for two years, you wouldn't be going insane?"
and he meant insane. you were everywhere. in his ear during missions, on his phone when you need to let him know important intel at ungodly hours, in briefing folders where half of the intel had come straight from you, and even in conversations he overhears whenever he walks through the base.
you— the genius air-force captain who works directly for the new captain america.
no one really knew how you ended up running tactical for sam, but no one had questioned it either. you were just good. scary good. the kind of smart that made people shut up and listen, and the kind of precise that made bucky trust your voice more than his own gut.
bucky had fought his entire life— in wars, for and against hydra, stared down gods and aliens and wizards— but somehow, it was you, the staticky voice in his ear, that kept him on edge.
how can someone be everywhere, but nowhere to be seen?
but then there's a loud bang— loud enough to jolt sam and joaquin out of their chairs. its sharp and feels wrong in their guts, the kind of sound that doesn't belong in a secure military base.
"what the hell was that?" sam shouts.
an alarm starts blaring in the main sector of the air base— where you are.
the three of them were already sprinting down the hallway before they had even registered that they'd moved. the smell of smoke hits their noses before they even make it out of the doors— acrid, bitter, and smelling off chemicals.
outside, the air is thick of it. it sticks low to the ground, a handful of military personnel already corralling debris and shouting orders at each other amongst the wreckage. something had definitely exploded.
"jesus—" sam mutters with his mouth shielding his face from the smoke, "isn't that where the crates were?"
bucky's jaw tightens. there's a crunch under his boot, and when he lifts it, a tiny vial with blue liquid stares back at him. his eyes sweep through the smoke, but he's not sure he could even recognise you. a figure in fatigues passes by and bucky's wastes no time in stomping towards them.
"hey—" he calls, voice rough with urgency. your name slips from his mouth, "was she here? was she hurt?"
the figure turns and points to the other side of the base, "they took her to medical." they quickly reply.
joaquin wastes no time and bolts in your direction, not bothering to ask any questions or where you are— he'd find you.
sam is already stepping over the debris to try to figure out what had happened. when they'd transported it back to the base, there had been no signs that anything was wrong. and now, after hours of silence, one had detonated after you had checked on it.
"she said she felt something was off." sam stiffens, "and she was right."
bucky rounds the edge of the blast zone, his eyes scanning the ground. bits of scorched wood and metal are strewn everywhere with dark smoke still curling upwards like it's taunting them. his boot kicks something small and metallic, half buried in the dust.
"sam." he calls, crouching down.
sam looks over. his eyes narrow as bucky reaches for a small warped disc. it's blackened, but not completely unrecognisable— a thin casing, circuit etching, and what looks like melted adhesive around the edges.
"they were never gonna come back for it." bucky turns over the deflated bomb, "wanted to cause serious damage to whoever took it."
"yeah, and it worked. they've put our man in the chair in hospital."
bucky rips off a flailing piece of plastic from the bomb. underneath, there's writing writing in minuscule block letters and unintelligible to him at first glance. its not english or in any language he recognises.
he squints, turning it slightly, "you seeing this?"
sam leans over and brushes soot off of the surface, "some kind of... manufacturing tag?"
"could be a location." bucky matters, pointing at a short line of text half-buried under the sticky residue, "this part here looks like latitude and longitude."
sam exchanges a stumped look with bucky, "so what, they booby-trap the crates, nearly kill our comms specialist, and then give us a return address?"
"looks like it."
they both fall silent. there's still a hum of chaos and confusion in the air with military personnel running back and forth to figure out what's happening, and joaquin's still in medical trying to find you. sam's jaw ticks.
"you thinking what i'm thinking?" he asks.
bucky nods once, "yeah. time to pay 'em a visit."
the moon hangs heavy over the towering complex. the building hangs on the edge of a tree line, swallowed by both nature and time. what used to be a lavish apartment complex in the 70s was now home to spiders, rats, and bird nests, the crumbling skeleton of concrete and steel forgotten, but not untouched.
joaquin frowns, craning his neck just to look up at the building, "you guys sure this is the place?"
before he can even finish his sentence, a slow gust of wind passes through. it whistles through the exposed windows and cracked walls, groaning like its alive. the metal structure groans under its own weight and it sways.
"that cannot be good." sam audibly winces.
they shake it off, moving without speaking. joaquin checks his wings and weapons, bucky is staring up at the windows like he's trying to see something through them, and sam is trying to get redwing to scout the area— a poor substitute for the tech they had gotten used to.
there's a silence surrounding them that crawls under their skin. no crackling in their ear pieces, no humming from drones zipping around in the air, and certainly no voice in their ears telling them what to do next. all that accompanies them is the sound of wind and the thud of concrete as chunks occasionally fall from the building.
then joaquin exhales through his nose and shifts uncomfortably like your lack of presence is physically effecting him, "yeah, this feels weird."
"right?" sam lets out a relieved laugh like he's been thinking the same exact thing, "it's almost too quiet. i dont know what to do with myself without someone yappin' in my ear."
he glances sideways at bucky, who looks like he's thinking the same, but is keeping his mouth shut about it. "you miss her too, don't you, buck?"
bucky pauses like he's about to say something witty that'll get sam off of his back, but he lets out a small breath in amusement and nods once instead, "yeah. i guess i got used to her bossing us around all day."
then, as if summoned by pure magic, there's a crackle that hits all three of their ear pieces.
"you guys can't get rid of me that easily." your voice slips in, smug and unhurried— like you'd been listening the whole time and were just waiting for the perfect moment to turn your mic on.
sam jumps so high that he nearly flies redwing straight into a power line, "jesus christ—"
bucky's head snaps straight up. his hand flies to his ear piece like he can't believe that your voice is actually there. "what the hell are you doing on comms?" he asks sharply, but he can't hide the hint of relief he feels.
"it's nice to hear you too, barnes." your roll your eyes, amused.
"they cleared her." joaquin laughs, answering the question before they could ask.
"yup." you nod and gesture to your face as if they can see you, "i'm a little burnt and they had to remove a piece of metal from my cheek, but other than that, i'm fit as a fiddle."
your monitor flickers to life. in one of them, you can see the tips of bucky's fingers pressing against the lens of the small camera he usually wears on missions.
"what are you doing, barnes?" you deadpan as you watch one of your screen flip back and forth.
"i'm trying to put—" bucky sighs as he tries to jam the camera into a small hole in his vest, but it twists and turns and wont stick. "this camera's broken."
"it isn't broken. you're just putting it in upside down."
"... didnt the nurse tell you to stop talking?" bucky grumbles as he messes with the small camera. he flips it around and scoffs when it sticks on with ease, "y'know, to preserve your vocal chords and prevent any more damage or whatever?"
"a bomb exploded in my face, barnes, not in my throat." you roll your eyes, "and look— it's in now. see what listening to me does?"
"i thought i was... zooming in."
joaquin snorts, "dude's out here trying to fight super soldiers with the tech literacy of a toaster."
"i've killed people with a toaster—"
"love the attitude today, guys. very inspiring." sam grumbles. redwing flies back into their radius and clicks back into sam's pack, "now that you're here, you mind checking out the perimeter?
"whatever. scout is in—"
"incoming." the three of them chime in unison, perfectly timed and perfectly familiar. there's a silence before you laugh.
"wow, you guys." you sigh with dramatic flair, a mix of both sarcasm and genuine amusement, "i've babied you guys for so long that you're finally taking after me. wanna call me mama next?"
you can hear joaquin snicker loud and clear through the mic, and you watch through sam's body cam as bucky scoffs, rolling his eyes like he's annoyed with your antics.
sam gives the camera a flat look, knowing that you were probably laughing at their faces, "this is what happens when they let her out of medical early."
scout zips into the scene, a quiet mechanical sound whirring past the team. it flies high up into the abandoned apartment complex, small enough to squeeze into the cracks of broken windows and rusted beams like a bird, scanning the surroundings and mapping them out on sam's tablet.
"scout's in." you announce, weaving scout through dusty cloth and abandoned furniture.
from outside, the guys glance up, watching as scout disappears for a moment before darting back inside.
"i'll never get used to how fast that thing moves." sam mutters as he watches scout zip through the top floor.
"he's faster than redwing." you simply reply, but sam doesn't miss the slight edge of challenge in your voice.
"excuse me?" he scoffs, glancing at bucky's body cam like it's you and you're actually there, "trust me— if your tiny little tennis ball goes down, you're gonna be begging to use redwing."
"i'm not touching your freaky little robot bird. i have standards."
"hey, i met your ex. don't you talk to me about standards—"
there's a sharp bark of laughter from joaquin, but bucky cuts in before you and sam's banter can escalate. "can we focus?"
you roll your eyes, but narrow in on scout's POV.
"something moved on the fifth floor. it could've been the wind and some tarps, but it could've also been— woah."
that gets their attention.
"what is it?" bucky asks, immediately alert.
you zoom in slowly. "there's... something big in here. looks like machinery— lots of it. the whole setup looks old, but it doesn't look abandoned."
"what kind of machinery?" sam asks.
"hang on." scout scoots a little closer, and your eyes widen. "it's a production lab— specialised injectors, gene sequencers, stabilisers— i think this is where they were were making the serum."
joaquin narrowed his eyes in confusion, "they used this place as a super soldier factory?"
you shook your head, "no, not anymore. looks like it's been stripped clean, but the setup's still here. they didn't even bother hiding what it was and just left it to... rot. scout's picking up residual heat signatures, so whoever was here cleared out recently— maybe a few hours ago, maybe less. it should be safe."
“should be." sam mutters under his breath, but he's already pulling his shield to his chest and heading towards the door, "never feels comforting when you say that."
the team fans out as they enter the apartment building— or what's left of it.
sam sticks to the lower floors, descending down stairs leading to a basement. the flashlight on his vest isn't bright enough to cut through the vastness of it.
bucky decides to check out the machinery to see if they left anything of importance behind. he mutters something about it smelling like a meth lab as he heads upstairs.
joaquin jets to the rooftop. he wants elevation, to see the layout of the place and the potential leads that could find the group behind this— but he also wants to avoid being on the ground floor if the building decides to give way.
"scout's overhead if you need backup. keep your comms clear and open. let me know if you find anything." you tell them before turning your microphone off.
"wouldn't dream of ignoring you." joaquin teases.
and then you're alone in the silence of your command room. you lean closer to your monitors, hands intertwined against your mouth as you watch your boys disappear one by one into the dingy bowels of the apartment complex.
it's dark, and even with scout's night vision, you can barely see ahead. the hallways look more like underground tunnels, and you can only imagine how cramped it must feel. the camera stutters with static as scout floats ahead, probably from the lack of service. you're almost afraid you might lose contact with them.
scout rounds a corner. you dont necessarily know where you've guided him— it's too dark to see— but you know you're somewhere down below. you're half-focused, watching bucky's body cam and keeping tabs on joaquin's feed— until something jolts scout off course.
the small drone clips the corner of a wall and bumps into sam's shoulder, startling him.
"what the hell?" he whips around, staring down at scout like he'd just punched sam in the face, "don't sneak up on me like that."
you click your mic on with an apologetic smile, "sorry. wasn't looking where i was going."
sam rolls his eyes and turns back to the basement. it's almost a labyrinth with how many empty boxes and crates are stuffed down there, and it smells of mold and rot. sam scans the room, and you do too. there's an old supply crate shoved into the corner of a hallway, covered by a measly and moth-eaten tarp.
"hang on..." sam mutters as he nears it.
"sam, wait, don't touch it—" you warn, but it's too late. sam nudges the tarp aside, and what's underneath sends your stomach plummeting.
"it's a bomb." you breathe, "get out, sam, now—"
"sh—"
the comms explode with static— not just sam's, but bucky's and joaquin's too. there's a high pitched ringing noise piercing through your headset and sam's screen goes white, then black.
your hands fly to your keyboard, pulling up scout's emergency override system. he's still functional— wobbly and a bit glitchy, but functional— and through his lens, you see smoke and chunks of plaster. there's a section of collapsed ceiling sitting beside scout's whirring body.
before the smoke even clears, another explosion rings out— louder and closer, and then there's another. for a split second, all you can see is light, your screens showering you in a horrible, horrible feeling of dread. for a second, you think you've lost all of them.
"sam!" you yell, "sam, can you hear me? sam?"
there's movement— and then there's a groan.
"still alive." he coughs through the dust, his voice strained, "think i caught the edge of it. damn shield saved me."
"okay. you're okay—" you let out a horribly shaky breath, "just... hold still. i still need to— joaquin? bucky? someone, come in."
there's nothing but static, and then one of your screens flashes back to life. it's joaquin's, who's outside and on flat ground.
"i'm fine— jesus, i barely made it out of there." joaquin pants, doubled-over with his hands on his knees, "the roof's collapsed. i managed to fly out just before it gave out."
you close your eyes for a split second, relief washing over you— but then it's gone just as fast as it came. you whip your head towards the last monitor, the screen still static and your heart clawing in your throat.
"what the hell happened?" sam grunts as he pushes a chunk of concrete off of his chest.
"i don't know, man." joaquin replies, still catching his breath, "i was heading down and there was a POP, and then the whole building blew up like a chain reaction."
"it was a chain reaction. they must've known we were coming." your voice is low, urgent, "one in the basement near sam, one on the roof, and—" you pause as you glance at bucky's feed, "one near the lab."
sam presses his hand to his ear, trying to filter out the crumbling concrete from the static in this ear piece, "bucky, do you copy?"
"barnes?" you call again, leaning over your console like it'll bring you any closer to him, "barnes, can you hear me?"
"come on, buck, say something." sam mutters, pacing through the wreckage, "try bouncing the signal again."
"i am." you snap, more out of fear than anger, "i've already rerouted twice. there's just— there's nothing." then, more quietly you add, "he was right by the lab. that blast radius—" you swallow hard.
"i'm going after him." sam says immediately, already pushing his way out of his entrapment.
"no— no, wait, sam. the buildings not stable. i have to run a structural integrity scan before you can move." you pause, frantically typing, "follow scout— he'll find a way out. i'll find barnes."
sam clenches his jaw, but he listens.
"i'm going to try switching stations. maybe in the explosion he accidentally hit a button. maybe he just lost signal— a tech issue, maybe. either way, i can fix it."
you try reasoning out loud— trying to stay calm— but you're not convincing anyone, least of all yourself.
from the middle floor, bucky lets out a wrangled sound— half-cough, half-groan.
he doesnt know where he is. everything's dark and dusty, choking him every time he takes a breath. his ears are ringing, and the ground is cold and damp beneath him, and it even takes him a moment to register that he’s on the ground.
and there's a throbbing pain in his leg— dull at first, but then sharp, like someone lit a fire in the muscle just below his knee. he tries to shift it, but the pressure doesn't give.
"shit.."
its hard to focus. he can't remember where he was or how he had gotten there. he blinks, once, then twice. it's silent, and he's alone. he can tell before the thought even forms, and a deep unsettling feeling forms in his stomach.
there's no chatter or humming of a drone. there's no voice telling him where to go or what to do— there's no you.
bucky clenches his jaw as he pulls himself up on one elbow. he grits his teeth as he shifts, enough to look down. there's a large metal beam pinning him down just across his shin. he exhales, trying not to move too much— trying not to panic.
he reaches up to his ear, pressing against it just to see if there was anything at all. his fingers press the buttons, trying to switch the dials— anything to get a hold of someone— but there's static.
"sam?” he rasps, "sam, come in.”
a shifting groan in the walls answers him.
"torres?" his voice cracks, "joaq— joaquin, come on. hey—"
the metal beam pinning him down just creaks under pressure.
panic starts to creep into his minds, replacing all logic. the pressure on his leg is sharp now, his side aches, and the silence is starting to weigh on him.
and then— barely a whisper— your name slips from his mouth. once, twice, and then once more, calling for you like you'd appear and rip the rubble from off of his body yourself.
"c'mon, talk to me." he pants, "tell me that i'm holding the camera upside down, or... or that scout's incoming. anything— just— say something."
he waits, and waits, and waits, but only static answers.
bucky doesn't know what to do. if he moves, he's afraid the rubble around him will crush him. if he doesn't, he'll never get out.
he squeezes his eyes shut, his forehead pressing against the dusty concrete as his breath stutters. his heart is pounding in his chest and he can hear it in his ears, unsure if it's from fear or the lack of oxygen.
he doesnt want to die. at least not like this. not alone.
a sharp, dry laugh escapes him— bitter and breathless.
"shouldve told you i missed your voice before i got crushed by a goddamn support beam." he mutters to no one, "that would've been smart."
his hand slips from his ear and falls to the floor. he's tired.
then—
"barnes? barnes?"
his earpiece glitches as he turns his head, looking around like the voice might be there. there's a sputter, and another glitch— but the voice in his ear is unmistakably you.
"bucky, can you hear me?"
your voice cuts through the static like a blade of light in the dark. youre clearer now, sharper— desperate.
and bucky laughs. its all he can do. a soft, disbelieving laugh into the stagnant air, his chest stuttering with pure, aching relief. its the sound of someone trying not to fall apart.
"you—" he coughs, dragging a shaky breath into his lungs, "you dont know how happy i am to hear your voice. where's sam and joaquin?"
he can hear a loud breathy laugh and then a thud, almost like you just collapsed at your desk from sheer joy, "they're fine. they're out. you just... you scared the hell out of me, barnes—"
"call me bucky’."
there's a silence on your end— like you're letting his words find their way into your brain. like maybe you needed to hear that.
then softer, you smile. "okay. bucky."
he closes his eyes again. he lets the sound of his name in your voice carry him through the weight pressing down on your leg.
"can you move? are you bleeding? are you—"
"i'm trapped." he cuts you off. he knows you're stressing yourself out far too much, "there's a support beam pinning my leg down, but otherwise, i think i'm fine. i can't get a hold of sam or joaquin, so... you're all i've got now."
"good. i've got you all to myself now." you try to joke— trying to keep bucky from panicking— but he can hear the quiver in your voice and the way your words wobble just enough to betray you.
"hey." he softens, "you don't need to worry. i'm okay. i'm alive."
"right. sorry, i'm just—" you swallow, eyes boring holes into bucky's monitor, "i was scared."
there's a silence, and for a moment, you're afraid bucky's been knocked out— but then he laughs. with his usual calm certainty you're so used to now—
"takes a little more than bombing a building to get rid of me."
you smile— watery and breathless— even if he can't see it. but he can hear you, and that helps with his pain. bucky huffs out a soft laugh, but it catches in his throat when the rubble around him shifts against his chest.
you catch the sound immediately. "what was that?"
"i'm under five hundred pounds of concrete and steel." bucky grunts under his breath, "i don't think it likes me moving."
"okay, okay. hold on. i'm pulling up scout's last scan of your level." you're already typing, eyes darting between monitors. "there's a structural weakness about two feet to your left. if you can push against it, i think i can guide you out."
"you think?" he mutters.
"barnes—"
"bucky."
you sigh, "i'm going to get you out, bucky. just.. trust me."
"i do." he says without hesitation.
you breathe in. "alright— now lean over and try to pull out your leg out from under that beam. it's cracked and scout thinks you can snap it. from there, you should be able to push some of the concrete away on your left and climb out."
"i'll try."
there's a deep rumbling sound coming from bucky's mic, and it was now more than ever that you wished his body cam had worked. there's a sharp grunt from bucky, and then—
there's a metallic groan, and then a cracking noise.
"bucky?"
"i'm out."
"jesus christ, bucky, don't ever do that again. i thought you broke your leg or something."
"you just told me to do it."
"that's not the point. i just—" you stop yourself and place a restless hand against your forehead like you can scrub the panic away, "i'm re-routing scout to find you. sam and joaquin are moving to help you from the outside.
there's a pause— just the low hum of your tech and the faint hiss of static in bucky's ear.
"you're doing great." bucky says gently as he pulls away a handful of debris, "seriously. you've got me halfway out already."
"halfway doesn't count." you mutter. youre focused on scout's monitor as it zooms up multiple levels towards bucky. you're barely blinking, and you're thumbnail is torn up from where you've been nervously chewing on it.
he smiles faintly— dusty, tired, but honest. "it counts to me."
scout clears the floors— each level scanned and discarded— and then, like a light in the dark, you can spot the unmistakable glimmer of bucky's vibranium arm under the rubble.
you switch back to sam and joaquin's channel, your voice breaking through the comms, "bucky's on the sixth level's east corridor. he's trapped, but he's okay."
"copy that!" joaquin responds instantly.
before long, bucky can hear two pairs of boots thudding against the ground. he blinks slowly as a flashlight burns into his face. he turns his head just enough to see them through the haze— sam on the left and joaquin on the right.
"took you long enough." bucky jokes as he shoves another piece of debris out of the way.
"oh, he's alive." joaquin exhales as he grabs at chunks of metals, "i thought we were gonna be digging out a corpse."
bucky rolls his eyes, holding out an arm, "love the optimism."
sam practically leaps forwards, crouching beside him, "you're a damn cockroach, you know that? an explosion, six floors of concrete, and you're still alive." he says, grabbing bucky's arm and slinging it over his shoulder, "can you walk?"
"i'll manage." bucky leans on sam and joaquin more than he wants, but at least he's upright.
as they make it out, scout trails behind them like a loyal shadow. your voice crackles through, but not in their ear pieces— through scout. "you've got a clear past east. the stairwell's stable, but don't waste time."
bucky glances up, and although he can't see you, there's a softness in his expression as he limps down the hallway, "still with me?"
you smile, "still with you."
joaquin glances awkwardly at sam, then rolls his eyes, "alright, you can flirt later. let's just get out of here."
the hangar is dim, lit only by overhead lights that flicker slightly and the occasional sensors that turn on when a janitor walks by. sam, bucky, and joaquin stand in a semi-circle staring down at atleast ten full crates of super soldier serum, the lids pried open and the vials staring— almost mockingly— back at them.
no one speaks for a while.
"so you're telling me..." sam pauses as he holds his hand to his mouth, trying to make sense of the unbelievable situation in front of him, "we almost died... and the serum was in john walker's hands?"
joaquin tilts his head, "hell of a sentence."
bucky leans over and plucks a vial from it's foam confine. it's heavier than he expected. he tilts the vial, watching the blue liquid slink to its side, an inkling of suspicion growing in his chest.
"who's to say this isn't a trap?" he places it back into the crate and crosses his arms against his chest, "walker drops off ten crates of serum and walks off, no questions asked? i mean... how'd he even manage to take these guys down? he doesn't have the shield or the government's support."
sam turns around and shakes his head, too stressed out of his mind to even think about it anymore, "i don't even wanna know, man."
behind them, a door opens with the familiar hiss of hydraulics. and then there's footsteps— soft, but certain.
"what are you guys looking at?"
bucky freezes.
it hits him like a punch in the chest— he knows that voice. he hears it in his sleep. in the quiet between missions. in the static of a dead ear piece. and now it’s just here— fast approaching.
it’s you. he knows it’s you.
he doesnt want to turn around— not yet— because turning around would make it real, and if it’s not— if its just his mind trying to comfort him with something familiar in a world that keeps pulling itself from under his feet— then he’s not sure he can handle it.
but then—
“why do you all look like someone died?”
and something breaks lose in him. bucky turns— he can’t stop himself— and there you are. you’re walking towards them, headset around your neck and your sleeves rolled up, clearly just finished with reports, debriefing and damage control. you look tired, but so alive that it almost knocks the air out of his lungs.
he doesnt know what he expected, but you look better than anything he could have possibly conjured up in his mind.
it’s instant, like something short circuits in him. you’re safe. you’re here. there’s no more static through a headset, no dust, and no explosions. you’re real and you’re standing ten feet away, completely unaware of the fact that he hasn’t stopped thinking about you since you said his name over comms.
you walk closer, hands on your hips as you peer into one of the crates. you speak, but bucky barely hears you over the roaring in his ears.
she’s fine. she’s fine. she’s fine.
he swallows hard. his metal hand twitches. you feel his stare before you see it. you glance over.
there's dust still smudged along the side of his jaw, and a faint scrape just above his eyebrow. but he's standing there and breathing, watching you like he can't believe you're real.
“hi, bucky.” the corner of your mouth twists up into a warm smile as you give him a proper once-over, “you look good.”
you say it like it’s the most normal thing in the world.
as you walk up to them, your shoulder brushes his for a fraction of a second. you just stand beside him like it's nothing— like this isn't some world-shattering event for bucky and that you weren’t a disembodied voice talking in his ear less than an hour ago.
even sam and joaquin are surprised, side-eyeing each other over the crates with identical expressions of is this really happening right now? and why is he just staring?
he's trying to play it cool, but he can't— he just can't keep his eyes off of you.
"holy shit, is that—" your jaw almost goes slack as you peer into the crates, eyes glazing over the glass vials in their foam casings, "where the hell did these come from?"
joaquin lets out an exasperated laugh, "you'll never guess."
you blink, "john walker?”
sam snorts, “okay, maybe you’ll guess.”
"i heard you say his name before i came in, i just didn’t think he was the one who dropped these off." you exclaim. you’re sort of impressed, "are you kidding me? how'd he even manage to get in here?”
your voice pitches with incredulity, the question half-rhetorical, half pure disbelief. you’re already running through possibilities in your head, and none of them are good.
you’re still peering into the crates, but bucky’s barely processed a single word since you walked in. his brain short circuits a little, and he speaks before he can stop himself.
“you’ve got… pen on your cheek.”
you blink, caught off guard, “what?”
bucky gestures vaguely to his own face, like his hand can explain for him, “right there. blue. it’s… smudged under your eye. must’ve been from the, uh… debrief reports or something.”
there’s a pause.
"seriously?” sam turns to face bucky’s, his brows raised so high that they’re practically part of his hairline, “you see the lady's face for the first time and that's what you say?
joaquin chokes on a laugh. you stare at bucky with an amused grin. he looks absolutely mortified.
“wh— it was distracting.” bucky waves sam off, trying to get him off of his back.
but you only laugh as you watch bucky scoff, "two years and you still don't know how to greet me. you could at least tell me i look good.”
he furrows his brows, caught somewhere between embarrassed and flustered “that’s a bit egotistical, don’t you think?”
you shrug, “oh, my bad. i forgot that you were the only one who’s allowed to be a little full of yourself around here.”
joaquin sucks in a breath through his teeth, “she’s got you there, man.”
bucky rolls his eyes and sighs. he opens his mouth, then closes it, and then he just shrugs, “you look good. really good.”
its awkward and a little stiff, but something about the way he says it makes it feel real— a little vulnerable— like he means it more than he knows how to physically express it.
you soften, just a little, “thanks, bucky.”
a short silence passes again, more comfortable now.
“okay, but seriously, what the hell are we gonna do with these?” you nod towards the crates, nudging one with the toe of your shoe.
sam blows out a breath, “i don’t know, but i do know one thing.”
you, bucky, and joaquin all look at him as he claps his hands together like he’s had a brilliant idea.
“i think we deserve a drink— y’know, to celebrate not dying.”
joaquin raises his hand, “i second that.”
“best idea you’ve had all day, sammy.” you grin, “i’ll go grab the good stuff.”
bucky watches as you turn and leave, something unreadable in his eyes. he stays frozen as he watches you disappear behind a door.
once you’re out of earshot, sam turns to bucky and pats him firmly on the shoulder—
“don’t worry.” he says with a knowing grin, “i’ll make sure you get another chance to say something better.”
bucky doesn’t reply, but the faintest smile pulls at the corner of his mouth.
summary. your bestfriend has a request. 9.3k words.
cw. smut obv! bucky's a virgin, reader is implied to be experienced. male!receiving & swallowing. fingering. titty sucking & nipple play. p in v. wrap it before you tap it! (i don't but do it anyway). buncha other things. minors dni!
a/n. my longest fic yet. went a lil overboard and might've strayed off a bit lols! this took me SO fucking long to write. i really wanted it to be good :( my back hurts SO BAD.
dt. @plumtartt for requesting this & being super patient with how long i took to write this. @54nboo for proofreading. @buckyspup for being super nice to me, love u twin!!
masterlist
you’re cramming for your chemistry midterm. you're hunched over your desk with your pink highlighter in hand, rereading words that are now dancing around and just won't seem to stick into your brain when when your dorm door slams open.
and there he is—james buchanan barnes with his stupid broad shoulders and stupid messy bed hair, looking like he just rolled out of some frat party with his varsity jacket and fuckboy smile that he wears like an armour. except he didn’t.
because bucky barnes is a fucking nerd.
“i need you to take my virginity,” he blurts, like he’s asking you to borrow a pencil.
you blink, genuinely surprised. “what.” your highlighter screeches against the page, nearly drawing random lines on the page as you turn to look at him, dumbfounded.
he flops onto your bed, and fuck, he smells good, like expensive cologne and the stupid locker room body wash that the school provides.
“i’m serious,” he says, propping his chin on his hand while he lays on his stomach, betraying the casual act. “i don’t wanna date anyone, but i also don’t wanna be bad at sex when it does happen. and you’re my best friend. so.”
you stare, the disbelief leaking out. “you’re a virgin?”
he scoffs, but his ears go pink as he toys with your pillow underneath him. “don’t sound so surprised.”
“bucky, you literally have fuckboy energy. no, i’m just...” you wave your hands, trying to process, your eyebrows furrowing in confusion. "you’re my bestfriend and i absolutely love you but you're also james barnes. you’ve had, like, half the campus throwing themselves at you since freshman year."
he rolls his eyes when you tease him, but there’s a flush creeping up his neck. he licks his lips, nearly hesitating but he says, "yeah, well. none of them were you."
the words hang in the air for a moment before you open your mouth, and fuck does your pulse kick upp. "that’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said."
“well. you know, sometimes energy is simply nothing but energy, and besides,” he shrugs like it's nothing yet you can tell he's nervous asking you this. “i’ve been busy. decathlon nationals. moot court prep. debate regionals. football. standards.”
you snort, going back to your school work. you think it's a joke because it's hard to take it seriously james buchanan barnes wants to just.. lose his virginity to you. “so you want me to… what? teach you?”
“yes!” his grin is mischievious, the familiar mask slipping back into its place, but his fingers tap nervously against your comforter. he moves closer towards you, poking your thigh with his finger, “c’mon, please, please, please. it’s me. you know i’ll be good at it.” eventually, he sits up on the edge of your bed.
“oh my god, bucky—” you furrow your eyebrows at him playfully, but he catches your wrist. and suddenly his voice drops to a more serious tone. “what, scared you’ll like it too much?”
your face burns, and you warn, “barnes.”
bucky leans in, close enough that you can count the faint lashes on his eyes, close enough that you can see the flecks of blue in his stupidly pretty fucking eyes. he's serious. he's actually fucking serious. the kind of seriousness that comes from rehearsing this moment in his head a hundred times and still feeling like he’s fucking it up. his confidence is so fake, but the way his pupils dilate when he's looking at you? real. definitely real.
you swallow. “you’re such an idiot, james.”
“yeah, well...” his smirk falters for half a second, but enough time to show you the slight of uncertainty under the bravado he's put on for you. he's ran out of words. that's a first. and he just sits there, waiting and exposed. “...so? what d’you say?”
you exhale sharply, leaning your elbow against the desk like you need the support. your hand drags down your face, fingertips pressing into your temples like you can physically push the absurdity of this situation out of your skull. “you’re really asking me this.”
“i really am.”
“and if i say no?”
he shrugs, but his jaw tightens out of embarrassment. “then i’ll go back to my room. shut the door. pretend this never happened. no weirdness. i promise.”
you study him—the way his fingers flex like he’s stopping himself from fidgeting, the way his throat bobs when you don’t answer right away. his fingers flex restlessly on his thigh, bouncing, like he's stopping himself from fidgeting further. and running.
“...you’re nervous,” you realize, the words slipping out before you can stop them.
“no,” he lies, too fast.
you raise an eyebrow at him.
he groans, caving as he flops back onto your pillows with enough force to send a few stray strands of hair fluttering across his forehead. “fine. yeah. a little. it’s weird, okay? i've never done this before. i've never, you know, walked into your room and just,” he looks up at you with those stupid puppy dog eyes, “asked you to take my virginity.”
“you’re bucky barnes, the golden boy.” you giggle, teasing more than anything. “captain of everything, future senator, literal embodiment of the american dream pamphlet. you’re not supposed to get nervous. you’re supposed to just… know things.”
“oh, hush it,” he grumbles, throwing an arm over his face. “just—laugh it off or whatever. i'm going. my dignity's in the negatives.” he starts to sit up, but you catch his sleeve. “i didn’t say no.”
his eyes snap to yours, wide and hopeful. “...so that’s a yes?”
“it’s a ‘you’re ridiculous and i can’t believe i’m even considering this insane, potentially friendship-ruining idea, but you’re my best friend and i love you.’”
his grin returns. that stupid, stupid, stupid smile. “so yes.”
“maybe.” in reality, you're really just trying to hold onto some semblance of control.
"maybe is good." he smiles, nodding—except you can see the way his fingers twitch like he’s fighting the urge to reach for you already. "i can work with maybe."
your stomach flips, warmth pooling low at the way he says it. "you’re crazy, you know that?" you huff.
"yet you’re still here," he points out, teasing.
"because i tolerate you," you mutter, rolling your eyes for effect, but the second the words leave your mouth, his hands are on you.
he moves fast. you barely have time to gasp before his fingers dig into your waist, pulling you forward.
until suddenly you’re straddling him, your knees bracketing his hips. your hands are on his shoulders for balance. your heart slamming against your ribs as his grip tightens, holding you right where he wants you.
bucky laughs, like he can’t believe you either—and then he’s leaning in, so close his breath fans hot over your lips. "...so?" his voice drops, sending a shiver down your spine. "how’s this gonna work?"
"god, you’re such an—"
he doesn’t let you finish. his mouth crashes into yours, swallowing the rest of your protest in a kiss that’s anything but patient. his lips are warm, and holy shit—he kisses like he’s been waiting forever, like he’s memorized exactly how to make you melt. one hand slides up your back, fingers tangling in your hair, tilting your head just so.
you whimper, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt, and he hums against your mouth.
yeah. he’s definitely gonna be good at this.
you’re perched on the edge of your bed in that stupid lingerie set he definitely didn’t buy for you, scrolling through your phone like this is just another study session. except your heart is pounding, and the lace is itchy, and then bathroom door creaks open.
bucky steps out, and—oh. oh no.
he’s prepared. like, extensively prepared. you can tell by the way his stubble is gone, his hair meticulously styled with enough gel to survive a hurricane, he shaved properly and well, his cologne is obviously freshly sprayed. he probably scrubbed behind his ears, flossed twice, hell, cleaned his belly button because—“what the fuck,” you say, staring at the notebook in his hands.
he flips a page, all serious, like he’s about to present his thesis with a slideshow, cue cards and everything. “okay, so i did some extensive research—”
“research.”
“—and i have a comprehensive game plan." he clears his throat, finger tracing a line on the notebook. "step one: dedicated foreplay, which i guess is what we're about to do right now but then the kissing, touching and all that stuff. minimum twenty minutes, focusing on—”
you snatch the notebook. his handwriting is neat, bullet-pointed, with little diagrams in the margins. “bucky. did you— did you cite sources?” you point to the bottom of the page. ‘kerner, j. (2018). the neuroscience of intimacy. new york: oxford press.’
his cheeks go pink. “i.... wanted to be thorough.” he mumbles, shifting his weight. "evidence-based practice, you know?"
you burst out laughing, clutching the notebook to your chest as you fall back onto the bed.
“hey!” he pouts with wounded pride, but his eyes keep darting to the way the lace cuts into your thighs. “i’m trying to be professional about this!”
“professional,” you deadpan, flipping through the pages. oh my god. is this— is this a timeline? with… color-coded phases?” you hold up a page showing a literal bar graph labelled ‘anticipated arousal progression’.
“it’s a structured approach!” he insists, reaching for the notebook. “it maximizes efficiency and mutual satisfaction!”
you hold it out of his reach, grinning. “structured. right. so what’s this note in the corner? ‘remember to breathe. don’t lock knees. check in verbally @ T-minus 5 mins’?”
his ears go red, and he's embarrassed, huffing and puffing as you laugh at him. you sit up, still laughing, and he huffs, tossing the notebook aside before suddenly crowding you back onto the mattress. his hands are warm, a little shaky, as they bracket your hips.
“you’re mean,” he murmurs, but he’s smiling. he dips his head, lips brushing a light kiss against the curve of your shoulder, right where the strap of the lingerie bites. the touch sends a jolt straight through you.
“you’re adorable,” you shoot back, your fingers find their way into his stupidly perfect, gel-stiffened, hair, ruffling it slightly.
“adorable?” he pulls back, mock-offended. “i was going for devastatingly seductive.”
“mhm. sure. mission accomplished, soldier.” you tug him closer. “how about you show me step one of that game plan instead of just reading it to me?”
his breath hitches when you arch under him, the heat of his body pressing you deeper into the mattress, the springs groaning softly. the air between you is thick, filled with the anticipation and bucky's nervousness with this whole thing.
"fine. forget the plan," he murmurs, his voice is low and almost a whisper, like he’s barely holding onto control. his hands hover over your hips, fingers twitching like he’s fighting the urge to grab. "just— tell me what you like."
you let out a nervous laugh, suddenly hyper-aware of every inch of your body—the delicate lace of your bra, the fabric of your panties clinging to you. his eyes flickers down to your chest. he’s trying (and failing) to be subtle.
"i don’t—i don’t even know where to start," you admit, voice smaller than you meant it to be. the tables have turned completely. now you’re the one drowning in nerves.
bucky’s smirk slides back into place, and he leans down until his lips nearly brushing your forehead, kissing it. your sweet, sweet bestfriend, bucky.
"lucky for you," he says, "i’m patient and great at improvising." his fingers trail up your side, testing, teasing, mapping every curve like he’s memorizing you. you shiver slightly, biting your lip. his touch feather-light, hesitant, unsure. like he’s memorizing sacred territory.
"you’re shaking, love," he says, with no teasing in it—just something warm, almost surprised, like he can’t believe he’s the one making you fall apart. love? the word hangs in the air, momentarily forgotten in the intensity.
"bucky.." you say under breath. his thumb swipes over the edge of your bra, soft skin dragging against the delicate lace.
"you’re cute when you’re flustered, you know that?" he grins, but his own nerves bleeding through the act. his eyes drop again, lingering on the swell of your tits, on the peaks of your nipples poking through the lace, the way your chest rises and falls with each unsteady breath as his fingers drag through your body. he looks back up to you, like he’s forcing himself to focus, with his fingers tight on your waist. "tell me if i do something wrong.. or if it feels good. anything. yeah?"
"you literally cited academic sources about neuroscience," you say breathily, a weak, pathetic attempt at levity, but then his mouth finds your neck, and—oh. fuck.
bucky's lips are hesitant at first, then another, tasting your skin, but he eases into it slowly, like he’s taking his sweet time tasting you, learning the landscape.
when you gasp, he groans in response, like he’s just discovered something that changed the course of his life. "fuck," he breathes against your skin, pulling you closer. "you— you sound so good like that. do it again."
you can feel him hard and heavy against your thigh, the heat of him searing even through the thin fabric of his boxers and your panties. the sheer size of him, the insistent pressure, is dizzying.
but bucky is in no rush, taking his time, mapping every reaction like it’s his new favourite subject. the fuckboy act is crumbling, replaced by something painfully earnest.
his mouth is hot as it trails lower, pressing open-mouth and wet kisses along the slope of your breast. then his tongue drags a teasing stripe between your tits, and you whimper, fingers twisting onto his hair. he chuckles against your skin—before his lips close over your nipple through the lace, sucking gently.
"so fuckin’ pretty," he pulls back slightly, murmuring, like he can’t help but tell you how pretty you are. "love how you taste even through this.. like fucking sugar."
the fabric is still a barrier between his mouth and your nipple. sucking with just enough to make you whine, but not enough to fully satisfy either of you. it’s exquisite torture.
all the while, his eyes stay glued on your face, watching every wave of pleasure that hits you, every micro-expression, like he can't believe he's the one making you feel this way.
"you like that, sweetheart?" he hums with his lips still pressed again you. his other hand finds your neglected breast, rolling it between his index and middle finger.
you squirm, hips lifting uselessly, but he doesn’t rush and he definitely doesn’t give you what you want. "you like that, sweetheart?" the question vibrating against the wet lace still covering you. "like me suckin’ on you? like me touchin’ you?" his thumb rubs firm circles over the hardened peak trapped beneath the fabric.
"bucky—please—" you whine again, and he groans in response,like the sound alone is enough to undo him.
"i got you, baby. just wanna take my time. wanna learn you." his eyes hold yours, almost pleading for understanding. "wanna make it good."
then, finally, his fingers hook under the edge of your bra, tugging it down with a painful slowness.
he freezes for a heartbeat. "fuck," he breathes, his eyes raking over your bare chest, drinking in the sight. his gaze is traces the curve of your breast. "so perfect. jesus christ..." he licks his lips, his own arousal a palpable force in the room. "even prettier without it." he doesn’t move for a long moment, just stares, committing the sight to memory.
then his mouth is on you. bucky's mouth sucks hard, and your back immediately arches off his bed. his free hand finds your other breast, kneading and massaging it softly. the sensation is overwhelming, and you squirm beneath him, torn between pressing into his touch and twisting away from the intensity.
"bucky—fuck—" you manage to choke out, and he hums against your skin. the vibration sends another jolt of pleasure straight to your core, you clamp your thighs together instinctively.
"that’s it," he pulls back just enough to speak. "i wanna hear you, sweetheart. i wanna know how good i’m making you feel." he doesn’t slow down, laving the tender spot he’d just sucked, like he’s determined to wring every possible sigh, every moan, every whimper from you before he even thinks about moving lower.
and god, you’re already so close to the edge, just from this—just from his mouth, his hands, the way he looks at you like you’re the only thing that matters in this room, you’re something sacred he’s finally allowed to worship.
bucky can see it. he sees exactly how close you are and stops abruptly, lifting his head. you gasp, a shocked sound because he's deeply offended you for denying you, but he ignores it, his movements surprisingly swift as he tugs the discarded bra back up.
but then his hand slides down your stomach, over the trembling plane of your abdomen, he finally—finally—slides it between your legs. his curious eyes lock onto yours, because he can’t believe he gets to touch you like this.
"this okay?" bucky asks hesitantly. his eyes are watching you as fingers tracing slow circles over the wet lace of your panties. "am i doing it right?"
you nod, biting your lip to stifle the needy whimper building in your chest, but he catches it. he sees the way you're holding back.
"good," he says, the word exhaled like relief. he leans in so close his nose brushes yours, you could feel his breath hitting your face. "'cause i really wanna hear you. need to. after all, this is my first time. gotta make it count."
his fingers press just a little harder, enough to make your back arch under his touch. "fuck," he says, seeing the way your body responds to him. he’s mesmerized. "you’re so— god, you’re so fucking pretty like this." his thumb drags along the edge of your panties, suddenly going all rough yet shy. "is this okay?"
you nod again, but he doesn’t let you off that easy. "say it," he murmurs against your lips, barely a kiss, just a touch of contact. "need to hear it, sweetheart."
"yes," you gasp, the word breaking, "yes, it’s—fuck, bucky—it’s perfect—"
he groans, low and sweet, his forehead dropping to yours. "you like that? d'you the way i touch you?" his fingers slightly press harder, still careful but enough to make you whine. "tell me, sweetheart."
"i— i like it," you whine as your body chases his touch, your hips moving in circles against his fingers. "so much, bucky."
his lips curl into this stupid, smug, utterly boyish smile, but his cheeks are still pink, his breathing still uneven and shallow as he studies your face. "good," he whispers, nuzzling against your jaw, leaving kisses all over your jaw. you tilt your head back, giving him more access to your neck, your fingers digging into the hard muscle of his waist.
"i love how you look in this." his free hand skims up your stomach, tracing the lace of the bra. "knew it’d be perfect on you. pictured it in my head, you know."
"so you've said." you chuckled, hands gripping his waist as he touches you. the way he looks at you,like you’re something precious, something his.. it makes your chest tighten, your heart pounding so loud you’re sure he can hear it.
"just sayin'," he replies, that hint of playful dorkiness surfacing. his fingers move again, sliding lower, beneath the lace barrier this time. he moves slowly, exploring your folds with a focused curiosity, drawing out every tiny gasp, every shudder, like he’s determined to map every sensitive spot, to memorize the exact way you fall apart for him.
you huff a laugh—weak, unsteady, and definitely trying not to show him his effect on you. but his touch does that to you, leaves you unraveled before he’s even really begun. “you’re such a dork, james,” you say under your breath, but he hears it anyway. because of course he does.
his lips brush the corner of your mouth, featherlight, and the most hesitant he's ever been. just the barest graze, because he’s nervous, and you can tell.
it’s stupid, really—he’s kissed you before, countless times, but this feels different. a lot heavier. filled with the weight of what's about to happen. his fingers slip further beneath the lace, still hesitant, and his voice is shaky when he speaks. “this okay?”
“yes—” you gasp, arching into his touch before you can stop yourself. "god, yes."
“this?” his fingers move, just so, a gentle pressure against a spot that makes stars explode behind your eyelids.
“bucky—” his name spills from your lips.
he laughs, breathless, almost giddy, and then his mouth crashes into yours, swallowing every broken sound you make. his kiss is hungry, desperate, but his touch stays careful, achingly tender, like he’s afraid you’ll break.
“jus' wanna make sure,” he murmurs between kisses, each word pressed into your lips like a secret. his fingers move with ease, coaxing you closer, until you’re trembling for an entirely different reason. “wanna do it right. for you.” his forehead rests against yours again, breathing you in. “always for you.”
and god, you hate how much it makes your chest ache—the way he touches you like you’re something precious, something to be cherished, not just taken. he’s memorizing every breath, every moan. like this moment is everything. this is your bestfriend. your bucky. for god's sake, pull it together.
then suddenly your hands press against his chest, flipping you both over and pushing him back gently. for a second, bucky looks up at you, "wha- did i do something wrong?" like he thinks you’re about to leave. his fingers twitch at his sides, curling like he wants to reach for you, to pull you back, but he stops himself, swallowing hard. the way his throat bobs is almost painful, like he’s holding back.
you don’t leave.
instead, you step back just far enough to flick off the light, plunging the room into soft moonlight that spills across the sheets, across his skin. "'s better this way, james. i promise."
his eyes follow you, wide and a little dazed, pupils blown so dark you can barely see the blue. his lips are parted, his chest rising and falling too fast, like he’s already struggling to keep it together.
“lay down,” you murmur, pushing his chest down even further. the command is soft and sweet. your palm presses him down gently but firmly against the solid plane of his chest, urging him deeper into the mattress.
he obeys without hesitation, like a soldier conditioned to follow orders scooting back until his legs dangle off the edge, his fingers digging into the bed like he’s afraid he’ll float away if he doesn’t hold on. like he’s terrified the intensity of the feeling might lift him right off the bed and into the void.
you sink down to your knees. your hands slide up the outside of his thighs, before gently urging them apart, opening him further—a little inhale that makes your stomach flip. the evidence of his arousal is impossible to miss now. you can already see him, how hard he is, how his cock strains against his boxers. he sits up on his elbows, watching you.
“you okay?” you ask. your hands rest warm and heavy on the tops of his thighs, thumbs brushing slow circles into the sensitive skin just above his knees.
he nods, but his voice comes out strangled and reveals more nervousness than he wanted to show. “yeah. just. uh.” he drags his flesh hand over his face, a gesture of flustered embarrassment, muffling his next words slightly. “never done this before.”
you pause. “...never?”
“never.” his cheeks are burning now, even in the dim light. he looks away for a second, focusing on the ceiling. “told you. virgin.”
a soft huff of air escapes you, more affectionate understanding. you bite back a smile, fingers hooking into the waistband of his boxers. “well,” you say as you tug the fabric down just enough, revealing the flushed head of his cock. “guess i’ll have to teach you that, too.”
his hips jerk when your fingers brush against him, already hard and leaking, the tip slick with precum. “fuck,” he chokes out, his hands fist in the sheets again, twisting the fabric into knots. “you— you don’t have to—” his words are weak and automatic, born of ingrained politeness or fear of expectation.
“i know,” you say, and then you lean in, pressing a kiss to the inside of his thigh. his whole body shudders, a full-body tremble that rolls through him like a wave. "i want to."
“oh my god,” he whimpers, head thuds back against the mattress.
you grin against his skin. nuzzling into the tender spot just above his knee. then, deliberately slowly, you drag your lips higher, tracing a path up the inner seam of his thigh, “you’re loud, james,"
when you finally wrap your fingers around him, he whispers incoherent words. his cock twitches violently in your hand, and you can’t resist spitting into your palm, watching the way his stomach tenses when you slick him up properly. your thumb swipes over the tip, smearing the pre-cum there, and he makes a noise—a very desperate moan.
“fuck,” bucky gasps, hips jerking up uncontrollably into the tight circle of your fist. “fuck, please—”
you hum, leaning in to press a kiss just below his navel, your fingers still working him with slow, lazy strokes, twisting slightly on the upstroke. “please what?” you ask, tilting your head up to watch his face.
he groans, his fingers twisting in the sheets. “don’t— don’t tease—” bucky begs, his voice breaking in desperation. the blue of his eyes is almost swallowed completely by black now, fixed on you.
“but you’re so fun to tease,” you whisper, and without warning, you lean down and lick a slow, deliberate stripe from the base of his cock all the way up to the flared head, the flat of your tongue dragging firmly against the straining vein underneath.
his hips jerk up his thighs tensing with pleasure under your hands. “oh my god,” he whines, his voice wrecked.
you grin, swirling your tongue lazily around the sensitive crown, tasting the salt and musk. then you suck lightly with just enough pressure to hollow your cheeks slightly, drawing a choked gasp and another desperate thrust of his hips. “you're so sensitive,” you say against him, your fingers kneading his balls, rolling them gently, and he lets out a strangled moan.
“gonna— fuck—” his voice cracks, his hands flying from the sheets to tangle frantically in your hair, fingers clenching and unclenching in the strands. tangling in the strands like he’s not sure whether to pull you closer or push you away. “gonna come if you keep— oh fuck—”
you pull off just enough to laugh, your lips still brushing against the tip. “that's what i'm trying to do.”
“shut up, shut up, shut up, oh my god,” he gasps, the words trembling out of him like they’ve been punched from his chest, but it dissolves into a ragged moan the second your tongue drags over him again. his hips twitch instinctively, chasing his pleasure.
“oh— oh fuck—if you keep doing that—” his voice cracks, fingers scrambling and eventually landing on your hair. “jesus, that’s—i can’t—”
you take him deeper, swallowing him down until the head bumps the back of your throat, and he chokes, his back arching off the bed. “please.”
it’s the first time you’ve ever heard him beg.
and god, you really like it.
you don’t give him a second to recover, surging back down, taking him deep again, your nose brushing the base. you can see the way his entire body shudders. his fingers twist in your hair, tugging helplessly, straining with the effort not to jerk his hips up and lose himself completely in the sensation. your nails dig into his thighs, holding him down as you work him over, his choked-out moans filling the quiet of the room. he's holding himself back from jerking up and fucking your face.
“you can move,” you say, pulling off just enough to speak. a string of saliva connecting you to his cock for a second before it breaks.
his breath hitches, his grip tightening in your hair. “i don’t— i don’t wanna choke you,” he gasps, like the mere thought is too much. he's filled with concern even amidst the overwhelming pleasure, like the idea horrifies him.
“you won’t.” you laugh, before sinking back down, taking him deeper this time, until his thighs shake under your hands,
his fingers tighten in your hair, hesitant for a fraction of a second. but when you hum deep in your throat, the vibration traveling straight through his cock, he breaks—his hips thrust forward with a broken cry, shallow, uncertain thrusts that quickly lose their rhythm.
you can tell he’s close, because his thrusts are getting weaker, he's louder. “i’m— fuck—i’m gonna—” he tries to warn you, but you don’t pull away. he warns you again but you keep working him until eventually, he cums with a loud moan, hot and thick down your throat. the taste is musky, salty, intense. you swallow it all, your fingers tightening on his thighs to keep him still as he convulses.
you don’t let up, not even then. you keep a gentle suction, your tongue lapping softly at his flesh, working him through the waves of his orgasm until he’s trembling, whimpering, his hands pushing weakly and uselessly at your shoulders.
“too much,” he whimpers, tears glistening at the corners of his tightly closed eyes, but his hips still twitch forward, chasing the feeling even as he tries to escape it.
you finally pull back, pressing a kiss to the inside of his thigh as he collapses, looking up at the ceiling. his fingers trail weakly through your hair, like he’s still not quite sure this is real, convinced this was a dream.
“you’re mean,” he mumbles, pouting— but it's pure awe at the sensations you've dragged from him.
you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand, smiling up at him. the taste of him lingers in your mouth and throat. “so. still think you need a game plan?”
he groans, dragging an arm over his flushed face. suddenly he's everywhere, flipping you over. his solid weight pins you to the mattress, as his hands slide into your hair again, cradling your head. moonlight spills over his face, catching the flutter of his lashes as he hesitates, just for a second.
“can i kiss you?” he whispers.
you nod, and his mouth meets yours—slow, so slow. it’s nothing like you expected, nothing like the rushed, sloppy kisses you’ve had before. it’s a revelation. nothing like the clumsy urgency you’ve known. this is deep water, pulling you under. reverent. his lips move with a sweetness
his tongue traces the seam of your lips, teasing, asking, and when you open for him, he groans deep in his chest. his fingers tighten in your hair, and the sound you make gets swallowed by his mouth.
he pulls back just enough to say, “you’re so fucking pretty,” against your lips before kissing you again, his hips rolling against yours. you can feel him, hard again already, and the realization makes you whimper.
his teeth graze your bottom lip, tugging gently, and when you gasp, he takes the opportunity to trail kisses down your jaw, your neck. “bucky,” you breathe, fingers scrambling at his shoulders.
“yeah, sweetheart?” he murmurs against your skin, lips brushing the lace of your bra.
“please.”
bucky chuckles, as he nips at the sensitive spot beneath your ear. “tell me what you want.”
you whine, hips lifting, but he stops you, his hand firm on your hip, and says. “use your words.”
“i want—” you could feel your cheeks turning red as you spoke. “i want you to touch me.” you swallow, forcing the words past the sudden shyness.
his eyes lock onto yours, as his fingers slip beneath the lace, skimming the swell of your breast. “like this?”
your answer is a moan, and he whispers, “good,” reverence lacing the word. “just like that. arch for me a bit more.” his praise is a physical touch, warming you from the inside.
his fingers tremble slightly as they unhook the straps of your bra, his eyes flicking up to yours, searching. "can i—?" he doesn't even finish the question before you're nodding, biting your lip as he peels the lace away, taking in a deep breath when your tits finally spill free.
"fuck," he says, staring like he's been handed something sacred. his thumbs brush over your nipples, then firmer when you arch into his touch. "can i—" he swallows hard, "—suck them again? please?"
you nod again, and he doesn't waste time, bending down to take one into his mouth with a groan. but he's too gentle, just soft lips and hesitant flicks of his tongue, like he's afraid of hurting you.
"harder," you gasp, tangling your fingers in his hair. "use your teeth a little—yes, like that."
he moans against you. he's unsure what to do so you take his free one, guiding it firmly to your other breast. he's squeezing your other breast as he obeys, sucking harder, swirling his tongue in the rhythm you showed him earlier, learning fast.
every few seconds, he pulls back to ask, "this okay?" or "you good?" tight with a fear of overstepping, of hurting you. he’s terrified of messing up.
"you're doing so good," you murmur, and the way his hips jerk against yours at the praise is to die for, almost violent in its need. his mouth moves to your other nipple, lapping at it eagerly, his fingers pinching and rolling the wet one he just left behind.
“tell me what else,” he rasps between desperate, open-mouthed kisses scattered across your chest. his eagerness is overwhelming, touching. he's so eager to learn you and what you like. “tell me what you like.”
your hand slides down his arm, guiding his hand lower, past the waistband of your panties. his eyes are on yours, wide and hesitant until his fingers brush the slick heat between your thighs. "fuck, fuck," he chokes out, his fingers are moving clumsily but with somuch enthusiasm. "like this? am i—am i doing it right?" he sounds so innocent, so unsure.
"little higher, buck." you instruct and he obliges. your hand goes to his wrist, helping him find the clit. his desperate, beautiful blue eyes remain locked on yours, watching your face intently, cataloging every flutter of your lashes, every catch in your breath as he begins to circle it.
"yes, oh—that's it—right there," you gasp, your hand still wrapped around his wrist. "just—faster—"
he watches your expression like it's the most fascinating thing he's ever seen, fingers are working you . "you're so fucking perfect," he whispers, like he can't help himself. "gonna make you feel so good, i swear—i'm gonna give you all i have."
his fingers move between your legs, touch growing more confident with every little gasp you let slip. his eyes are trained on your face like you’re sacred to him—his tongue, meanwhile, circles your other nipple lazily, possessively, as if he can’t bear to stop tasting you, claiming you.
“you’re so fucking pretty, sweetheart, so fucking pretty,” he murmurs. his thumb presses firm against your clit, just the way you showed him, and you whine, your hips lifting off the bed. “like this?” he asks, his other hand kneading your breast.
you nod, tugging his hair gently, and his mouth seals over your nipple again. his fingers slide lower, dipping into your heat, and his breath hitches. “fuck,” he whispers against your skin, “you’re so—god, you’re so wet.” the discovery seems to both thrill and overwhelm him.
he’s clumsy, but eager, his fingers curling inside you experimentally, his eyes locked on your face like he’s trying to commit every twitch of your brows, every bitten-off moan to memory. he needs the guidance, craves it. “tell me,” he rasps, “tell me what you want.” he needs the guidance, craves it.
you guide his wrist, showing him the rhythm, and he follows instantly, his forehead dropping to your collarbone as he fucks you with his fingers. “like that?” he asks, lips brushing your skin. "'s that okay?" the constant seeking of reassurance is endearing, grounding.
“yes,” you gasp, and he shudders, pressing closer, his breath hot against your throat, his movements gaining confidence, driven by your response.
“gonna make you come,” he promises, utterly wrecked. “wanna feel it—wanna hear you. please.” the plea is raw, vulnerable.
his fingers become relentless, finding a rhythm that hits that perfect spot inside you. his mouth trails wet and open-mouthed kisses up the column of your neck as he murmurs a stream of broken praise against your skin—so good for me, so perfect, fuck, you feel amazing.
when you finally tip over the edge, his eyes are still fixed on you, filled with open wonder and curiosity. his fingers slow but don’t stop, drawing out every pulsing wave, milking every last tremor from your body as you cry out his name, the sound echoing in the moonlit room.
“holy shit,” he breathes, his own hips rutting helplessly against the mattress. “that was—fuck.”
he collapses beside you, his chest heaving, his fingers still glistening with you. he stares at them for a second, before bringing them to his mouth and licking them clean with a groan.
you blink, momentarily stunned by the raw intimacy of the act. “bucky.”
he flushes, but his grin is shameless. “what? didn’t wanna waste it.” his gaze holds yours. the nervous virgin replaced, for this moment, by a man utterly captivated, utterly claimed. his hand finds yours, fingers intertwining, squeezing gently.
you laugh, pulling him in for a kiss, and he melts into it, his hands roaming your body like he still can’t believe he’s allowed to touch. “so,” he murmurs against your lips, “what’s next?”
you roll him onto his back, straddling his hips, and his breath catches, his hands flying to your waist. pupils blown so wide the blue is just a thin ring. you could feel bucky groan against your lips when you seat your pussy against his cock, fingers curl into his chest.
he can feel the heat of your cunt dragging over his cock, and bucky makes a broken, punched-out sound that makes your stomach flip. his hands clamp down on your hips like he’s trying to hold himself together, but his body betrays him, hips stuttering up in desperate thrusts.
“f-fuck,” he gasps, head falling back against the pillows, “fuck, you—you feel—”
you grind down harder, watching his face unravel—his lips parted, brows knitted, like he’s in pain. his cock twitches beneath you, already leaking, and you can’t help but tease.
“you’re loud,” you murmur, dragging your nails down the line his abs.
“oh god,” he groans, but it’s ruined by the way his hips thrust up when you lift up slightly, just enough to rub the head of his cock against your cunt. “oh my god—please—”
his hands dig into your thighs, forcing you back down. “please,” he chokes out, hips jerking up uselessly as you hover just out of reach. “c’mon, please—fuck, just—just ride me, i can’t—"
you chuckle, grinding down again, the friction making you both gasp. “can’t what, buck?” you tease, leaning closer, your hair falling like a curtain around his face.
he whines, fighting the urge to just flip you over and take what he wants. “you know,” he grits out, eyes wild, “fuckin’—teasing me when i’m—god, i’m dying here—” he arches beneath you, seeking more contact, his cock straining against you.
you lean down, lips brushing his ear. “beg for it.”
he shudders deeply and whimpers, but it’s weak, his hips stuttering up again. “please,” he gasps. “please, i need—need you to fuck me, please—” his voice breaks completely on the last word, raw and utterly exposed.
you sink down on him in one smooth motion, taking him deep, stretching to accommodate him, and the noise he makes is filthy, his back arching off the bed as his cock finally fills you. “fuck,” he sobs, fingers scrambling at your waist, “oh fuck, oh my god—”
you roll your hips slowly. his lips are parted in a silent scream. “that what you wanted?” you murmur, watching his face.
like, full-on, yelps, back arching off the bed as his hands fly to your waist, gripping tightly. “holy shit,” he gasps, eyes wild, “holy shit, you—you’re inside me—” his voice is thick with disbelief.
you freeze, your own breath catching. “...what?” confusion flickers through the haze of pleasure.
he blinks up at you, sweat beading on his forehead. “i mean—i’m inside you. obviously. fuck. words are hard.” a shaky, embarrassed laugh escapes him, colour deepening on his cheeks. “can’t… brain’s not… working…”
you burst out laughing, but it turns into a moan when he rolls his hips experimentally, his cock dragging against your walls, sparking pleasure deep inside. “oh—fuck—” the sensation steals your breath.
bucky just nods frantically, his eyes squeezed shut while he bites his lip, his cock throbbing inside you. “more,” he begs, voice breaking. “please, please—”
you sink down onto him, slow, very slowly, and his mouth falls open, and his eyes close, taking in the pleasure from feeling your cunt wrap around his cock. “oh my god,” he whimpers, his hips bucking up. “oh my fucking god—”
his hands tighten on your hips, pulling you down harder as he thrusts up, a clumsy, desperate rhythm beginning. “please… don’t stop… feels… feels too good… gonna…” his words dissolve into incoherent gasps and moans, his forehead pressing against yours.
his entire world has narrowed to the place where you are joined, to the heat and pressure, to the sound of your shared breathing, to the desperate, driving need for more.
then suddenly, his eyes are wide with panic and his hands fly to your waist, stopping you. “wait—fuck, wait,” he pants. “condom. we need—fuck, we need a condom.”
“shit,” you curse, scrambling off him so fast he hisses, a sharp intake of breath at the sudden loss of contact. you lunge for your bedside drawer, yanking it open with a clatter, fingers frantic, fishing past loose change and old receipts until you snag a familiar foil packet.
bucky’s eyebrows shoot up, lips parted. “you just… keep those around?” he watches your hands, the crinkle of the foil impossibly loud in the heavy air.
“they’re free at the clinic,” you say, ripping it open with your teeth. you fumble slightly, adrenaline making your fingers clumsy.“grabbed a handful. just in case.”
you roll it onto him. as you roll it onto him. he’s up on his elbows now, muscles in his arms taut, watching intently as your fingers brush his cock, smoothing the latex down his length, and he lets out a laugh. “just in case?” he echoes, a flicker of something vulnerable in his eyes – wonder, maybe, that you’d thought of this, thought of him in this way.
you raise an eyebrow like you're questioning his words but don't say anything. back to straddling his hips, you sink back down onto him with a slow roll of your hips. “seems like i was right, huh?”
he bites his bottom lip, whimpering, hands gripping your waist like he’s holding on for dear life. “shush, missy,” he breathes, “and move it, come on.”
you pause, letting him adjust, but he’s already shuddering, his cock twitching inside you. “you okay?” you ask, brushing his hair back from his forehead.
bucky nods frantically, his eyes squeezed shut for a second before flying open, dark and drowning. “so good,” he answers, nodding frantically again like he can’t stop. his hands slide up to cup your breasts, his thumbs finding your nipples and rubbing over them in clumsy circles. “you’re so—fuck, you’re so tight.”
his hips thrust up from beneath you, out of pure desperation, losing the rhythm already, just seeking more, deeper. his cock twitches deep inside as your fingers work frantic circles over your clit. "fuck—fuck—" bucky's voice is low and almost intelligible, but his eyes are locked on where your body takes him, where you’re joined. the sight seems to undo him further..
the condom stretches tight between you, a thin, hated barrier despite him already being buried deep, but the way his tip nudges your sweet spot with the roll of your hips has you gasping, arching, like you can't bear him ever leaving, barrier or not. the stretch, the friction, the sheer him of it is almost too much.
"wait," he blurts suddenly, his body tenses, his abs flexing beneath your palms. "wait, i—i'm not gonna last, i—"
his protest dies in a whine, his teeth sinking into his swollen bottom lip as his orgasm rips through him. you feel it—the way his cock jerks, the way his hips snap up one last time to bury himself to the hilt as he spills into the condom with a choked-off sob. his fingers dig into your skin hard enough to bruise, his thighs trembling beneath you, but you don't stop. you keep riding him, milking every last shudder, every helpless twitch from him as he whimpers your name like a prayer. his head thrashes side to side on the pillow, utterly lost.
"oh my god," he slurs, dazed, his head falling back against the pillows as his chest heaves. his skin glows with sweat, his hair sticking to his forehead, and he looks ruined—just the way you like him. "that was—fuck, i—"
you lean down to kiss him, swallowing his incoherent babbling, and he melts into it instantly, his hands sliding up your back to pull you closer. his lips are soft, pliant against yours, his breath still coming in shaky bursts. "so," you murmur against his mouth, grinning as you grind down just to hear him whine, "still think you needed a game plan?"
he groans, his fingers tightening in your hair as he flips you onto your back with surprising strength for someone who just came his brains out. "shut up," he grumbles, nipping at your jaw before his mouth finds your breast again, his tongue swirling around your nipple in a way that makes you arch off the bed. "i'm not done yet."
you laugh, but it quickly dissolves into a moan as his fingers slide between your legs, his touch already knowing exactly where to press. "bucky—"
"i told you," he murmurs against your skin, his voice dark with promise as his thumb circles your clit, his other hand guiding his cock back to your entrance. the condom's still on, still a nuisance, but the way he looks at you—like he wants to devour you whole—has you dripping all over again. "i'm a fast learner."
and when he pushes back inside, filling you inch by agonizing inch, his eyes never leaving yours, you realize—
summary | when newly-appointed congressman bucky barnes reluctantly hires the sweetest, most radiant assistant imaginable, he doubts your place in the cutthroat world of politics—until you prove you can run it and melt his guard all at once.
tags | slow burn, grumpy x sunshine, office romance, unspoken feelings, miscommunication, overhearing a conversation, mutual pining, angst with a happy ending, emotional hurt/comfort, bucky is bad at feelings but good at kissing, reader cries a lot, it’s fine, sensitive!reader
a/n | reader’s based on our amaya papayas personality, we love our sensitive gangsta. based on this request
taglist | if you wanna be added to my bucky barnes masterlist just add your username to my taglist
likes comments and reblogs are much appreciated ✨✨
ᴍᴀsᴛᴇʀʟɪsᴛ
divider by @cafekitsune
Bucky still couldn’t figure out how he ended up here.
Congress. Of all places. The marble halls, the high ceilings, the egos inflated enough to float over the Capitol dome. And then there was him—James Buchanan Barnes—who could barely make it through a two-minute speech without sounding like a half-defrosted android.
His suit itched. The tie choked. And don’t even get him started on the shoes.
He sat behind his too-polished desk in his too-expensive office, staring blankly at an inbox full of emails with subject lines that made his eyes twitch. Urgent: Appropriations Strategy. Reminder: Agriculture Committee Briefing. Lunch with Donor—Move to Friday?
Lunch with a donor. Christ.
He rubbed a hand over his face, resisting the urge to lay his forehead flat on the desk. This wasn't him. He was a soldier, not a politician. He gave speeches like he gave orders—short, dry, and with zero charisma.
Every time he opened his mouth in public, he could see reporters wince. His team had tried coaching him. “Smile more.” “Loosen up.” “Try not to look like you're about to gut someone with a bayonet.”
So far, the best he'd managed was a half-smirk that came off more like a nervous tick.
Bucky sighed. Deep, soul-weary sigh. He looked at the framed picture on the wall—him shaking hands with someone he was pretty sure hated him. That was politics, apparently. Pretending to enjoy small talk with people who could and would stab you in the back with a regulation-sized American flag pin.
His phone buzzed again.
Another email.
Subject: Staff Assistant Interviews – You Still Haven’t Picked Anyone
Bucky groaned. That damn assistant position. He’d pushed the interviews for three weeks now, mostly because he couldn’t think of anything worse than sitting through a dozen conversations with people who’d use phrases like “synergize the legislative workflow” without flinching.
He didn’t want someone who talked like a press release. He just wanted someone who would show up, get shit done, and not ask too many questions when he had to disappear for an afternoon to punch a wall in private.
But apparently, you couldn’t say that in a job posting.
He glanced at the stack of printed resumes on his desk. He’d skimmed a few. Too polished. Too eager. Too… not him. None of them had that quality he couldn’t quite define—something real. Something normal. Someone who wouldn’t blink if he came into the office looking like he’d fought a raccoon on the metro.
The door creaked open slightly. It was Sam. Again.
“Still haven’t picked anyone?” Sam leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed.
Bucky didn’t look up. “They all talk like LinkedIn threw up on a resume template.”
Sam chuckled. “Want me to just find you someone?”
“God, yes.”
And just like that, he handed off the decision. Delegated. Efficient. Which, ironically, made him feel even more like he didn’t belong here.
Bucky leaned back in his chair, exhaling like a man twice his age. He looked at the ceiling. It stared back.
Congress. Jesus.
────────────────────────
Some Days Later
Bucky didn’t look up when the door opened.
He figured it was Brenda. Maybe Sam again. Hopefully not another reporter asking for a quote he’d regret later. He was mid-email—something about committee assignments and a lunch reschedule—when he heard it.
“Hi! Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry I’m a tiny bit early—traffic was a dream, can you believe that?”
Not Brenda.
The voice was too bright, too chipper, and far too comfortable for someone stepping into a federal office for the first time.
Bucky looked up slowly, pen still in his hand, and there you were—framed in his doorway like a damn Hallmark commercial. Floral dress under a structured blazer, hair bouncing, smile like you’d just walked into brunch, not a congressional office. You carried a leather bag and a clipboard and somehow radiated the scent of confidence and cinnamon.
He blinked.
You didn’t flinch. Just walked right in like you’d been doing it your whole life.
“Congressman Barnes, right?” You extended your hand, polished nails and all. “I’m the assistant Sam recommended. So nice to meet you.”
He didn’t take your hand right away. He was still trying to process the human sunbeam in front of him. You looked like someone who hosted charity galas and had a Pinterest board for every holiday.
Eventually, he stood. Shook your hand. Warm grip. Firm. No hesitation.
“Right,” he said, voice low and flat. “Sam said you’d be coming by.”
You smiled even wider. “I brought a printed copy of my resume, just in case. I know Sam already sent it over, but you never know. Oh! And I made you a little overview—color-coded—of what your schedule might look like if we streamline some of the overlapping committee times. Brenda said Wednesdays are chaos.”
You placed the papers on his desk like you’d done this a hundred times.
Bucky glanced at the overview. It was in soft pastel shades, each block of time cleanly labeled, with footnotes. Actual footnotes.
He looked back up at you. Still smiling. Still sparkling, somehow.
“You always this organized?” he muttered.
Your laugh was soft but definite. “Only when I’m awake.”
Christ.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t really do… interviews.”
“Good,” you said, cheerful as hell. “I don’t really do bad interviews.”
He had no idea what to do with that.
“I work hard,” you went on, tone bright but grounded now. “I don’t miss deadlines. I know how to read people. I’ve handled CEOs, campaign donors, and one very angry florist. And I’m from New York, so I’m nice—but only as long as you need me to be.”
That part made him pause.
Your smile stayed sweet, but your eyes—sharp. That flicker of edge.
He exhaled. “You’re hired.”
────────────────────────
A Few Weeks Later
The thing was—Sam hadn’t exaggerated.
You were, somehow, even better than advertised.
You had shown up the next morning with a personalized planner, a labeled filing system, and two different cold brews—one for him, one “just in case he preferred oat milk.” Within three days, his inbox was tamed, his schedule was tight, and his meetings started and ended on time.
You smiled your way through logistical nightmares. You turned budget briefings into organized, annotated packets. You once managed to reschedule an entire committee meeting without pissing anyone off. That alone should’ve won you a medal.
And the worst part?
Everyone adored you.
Brenda now referred to you as her “angel girl.” The intern, Emily, had started mimicking your outfit choices. Even grumpy old Greg from Finance smiled when you passed him in the hall, and Bucky hadn’t seen Greg smile since the start of his term as Congressman.
Meanwhile, Bucky… didn’t know how to talk to you.
You were polite, always. Sweet. Occasionally too sweet—offering him snacks mid-meeting, asking if he needed a moment to breathe after intense calls. Once, you said “You’re doing amazing, by the way,” after a disastrous media interview.
He’d stared at you like you’d spoken another language.
He didn’t know what to do with that kind of warmth. He knew how to handle tension, confrontation, icy professionalism. He could navigate sharp words and sharp eyes. But compliments? Softness? Your sunny little “good morning!” every day before you sat down to absolutely decimate his workload?
It threw him off.
And you never tried to throw him off. That was what made it worse. You weren’t fake. You didn’t flirt or suck up. You were just… like this. Bouncy and competent. Bubblegum and brute force. Warmth wrapped in weaponized organization.
He wasn’t sure if it made him uncomfortable or impressed. Maybe both.
He heard you laugh in the hallway one afternoon. Loud. Joyful. Brenda was giggling too. Probably over that dumb plant someone brought in. You’d named it. Called it Marvin. Marvin the Money Tree. Bucky didn’t understand why that made everyone so happy.
He sipped his coffee. It was oat milk. He hadn’t asked for that.
You’d just noticed.
One month in, Bucky realized you might actually be magic.
You handled press requests like a PR veteran, fielded donors with the grace of a diplomat, and had somehow convinced the coffee cart guy downstairs to give the staff a “Capitol Crew” discount.
Bucky didn’t know how you did it—maybe you smiled at the guy too nicely, or maybe you just offered to reorganize his inventory out of the goodness of your glittery heart.
You never stopped smiling.
Even when the job sucked. Even when schedules collapsed, or the media spun things sideways, or the office printer jammed for the fourth time in a single day—you smiled. Not in a fake, corporate way. In a real way. Like the chaos never got to you.
It made him suspicious.
He watched you from behind his desk more often than he meant to. You always moved like you were dancing to some rhythm he couldn’t hear. Laughing with interns, giving Brenda a shoulder squeeze on a bad day, complimenting someone’s shoes before dropping a twenty-slide briefing deck into their inbox.
And every time you turned that blinding kindness on him, Bucky froze like you’d aimed a spotlight at a feral cat.
He didn’t know how to respond when you handed him color-coded notes for a hearing and said, “I highlighted your speaking points—if you want to wing it, I backed up the quotes with data so you sound casual but still super smart.”
Or when you brought him soup from that one hole-in-the-wall deli because he coughed once and you “just had a feeling.”
He grunted. He nodded. He said “Thanks,” but it always came out dry, stiff, like someone had to wring it out of him.
You didn’t seem to mind.
You never flinched. Never made it awkward. Just smiled and moved on to the next task like your kindness didn’t require a thank you. And that bugged him more than anything.
He was used to people playing politics—smiling with their teeth, angling for favor. But you? You brought him homemade banana bread on a Monday because “Mondays are brutal and I didn’t want you to suffer more than necessary.”
Who does that?
He watched you now, through the glass wall of his office. You were standing in the hallway, coaching the new comms kid on how to navigate a donor event, switching between “babe” and “sweetheart” like it was a dialect, your hands moving as fast as your mouth. You were wearing some lavender thing today. Smelled like citrus and resolve.
Bucky looked back at his laptop. He hadn’t typed in ten minutes.
He hated this.
Not you. Just this feeling.
────────────────────────
Three Months In
It started with a meeting.
A routine one—just a few junior reps and a legislative strategist who looked like he’d swallowed a thesaurus. You had prepped Bucky flawlessly. Briefing notes, talking points, key players—all in a soft yellow folder with a post-it that said, “You’ve got this :)”
He didn’t got this.
The strategist spent the whole meeting throwing jargon like darts. Bucky kept pace, mostly. You even leaned in halfway through to quietly remind him which bill number they were referencing. Still, when the room cleared, Bucky felt like he’d just walked out of a storm.
You stayed behind, re-organizing his desk without being asked. “You did really well,” you said softly. “I know this guy was wordy but you held your ground.”
Bucky nodded.
But something in his chest pulled tight.
You were too kind. Too gentle about it. It made him feel like a child being praised for tying his shoes.
He didn’t say anything then.
But it stuck.
You were good at your job—he knew that. But politics wasn’t just about competence. It was brutal. Ugly. People chewed you up and spat you out for smiling too much, for being too friendly, too soft. And you… you glowed like you didn’t know the world could be mean.
He couldn’t shake the worry. That someday soon, someone was going to say the wrong thing to you in the wrong room, and you’d come undone. Or worse—you wouldn’t. You’d just… leave. Quietly.
So a few days later, when Sam called, Bucky didn’t think twice before stepping into his office, closing the door, and letting the words out.
“She’s not cut out for this,” he said.
Right outside the door, you were balancing two coffees—his preferred dark roast and your own sugar-heavy concoction—and a muffin from the café down the street. You’d been about to knock.
You didn’t.
“She’s good at the job,” Bucky went on, his voice low but firm, “but I don’t know if this is the right setting for her. Politics isn’t about being nice, Sam. She’s too… bright. Too open. That’s not sustainable here.”
Your stomach dropped.
It was the way he said it. Like being who you were wasn’t just a mismatch—it was a liability.
Too bright. Too open. Too much.
You’d heard that before. Too sweet, too emotional, too loud, too bubbly, too soft. Always a smile, always a “thank you,” always a goddamn post-it note. And it was never enough. It never counted. People liked it until they didn’t.
You blinked hard, eyes burning suddenly. You hated how fast the tears welled—hated that he’d never even raised his voice, never said it cruelly. That somehow made it worse. He hadn’t meant to hurt you. He’d just meant it.
You stayed frozen, heart thudding.
Then Sam, through the phone, “You sure this is about her not fitting in… or you not knowing what to do with someone like her?”
You didn’t wait to hear the rest.
You set the coffee and muffin on the side table near his door, the yellow post-it stuck neatly to the lid. It said “You looked tired today. Hope this helps.”
But you didn’t knock.
And for the first time since you’d started, you walked away without smiling.
────────────────────────
It started subtly.
You didn’t stop smiling—but it didn’t reach your eyes anymore.
Bucky told himself he was imagining it at first. That maybe you were just tired, or busy, or maybe it was allergy season. But the longer he watched you—really watched you—the more certain he became that something had shifted.
You still did your job. That was never in question.
Emails answered. Calls returned. Schedules maintained like clockwork. You still handed him briefing packets with neat highlights, still walked him through the day’s chaos each morning.
But the post-its stopped.
No more “You’ve got this!” or “Don’t forget to drink water :)”
Your voice, once full of light and little jokes and endearing asides, had gone quieter. Measured. Professional. Nothing personal. You didn’t ask how his weekend was. Didn’t tease him for frowning at your color coding. You didn’t call him “bossman” anymore.
You just called him Congressman.
That one hit the hardest.
The rest of the office noticed too. Jimmy asked where your “sparkle” went. Brenda had quietly asked Bucky if you were okay. He’d just shrugged, said you were probably busy. But deep down, something pulled at him.
You hadn’t brought him coffee in nearly two weeks.
He hadn’t realized how much he noticed it until it was gone.
You still smiled at other people—still lit up when interns needed help, still made time to compliment someone’s new haircut. But with him, there was a wall now. Polite. Distant. Not cold, exactly. Just… not warm.
You didn’t linger. You didn’t laugh with him anymore. You didn’t look at him like you had before—like he was something worth rooting for.
And the worst part?
He didn’t know why.
He couldn’t remember doing anything—saying anything—that would’ve caused it. But then again, he hadn’t been paying enough attention, had he? You’d been right there, every damn day, and he’d barely looked up. Barely said more than necessary.
He didn’t realize he missed you until the version of you he knew was gone.
And now, sitting at his desk, watching you work across the office with that tight-lipped expression and that perfectly put-together posture, he felt something sharp twist in his chest.
He missed the sunshine.
And somehow, he was sure it was his fault.
────────────────────────
He should’ve canceled everything.
But he didn’t.
Bucky woke up feeling like he’d been run over by a truck, the kind that reversed and hit him twice. Fever high, head pounding, body aching like his joints had finally decided to unionize and strike.
But he had a subcommittee meeting at 10 a.m., and three calls with constituents scheduled after that, and some damn transportation proposal that needed his signature.
He could barely see straight.
He tried emailing Brenda, but it took him ten minutes to type two lines. Gave up. Called you instead.
You picked up on the second ring. “Good morning, Congressman—”
“Hey,” he rasped, voice wrecked. “I, uh… I need you to bring some files from the office. And… maybe a laptop. There’s stuff I gotta do.”
You paused. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t answer fast enough.
“Mr. Barnes?” This time your voice had real concern in it—soft but sharper, like it used to sound before he ruined everything.
“I’m fine,” he lied. “Just a cold. I just… I need the budget report and that meeting brief for the committee.”
There was a pause. Then, “Text me your address. I’m coming over.”
Before he could object, you hung up.
You showed up 40 minutes later.
He didn’t expect you to let yourself in, but you did, like you belonged there—like someone had to keep things running. You had the laptop, the folders, your phone already out and your expression focused.
You were still in your usual outfit—put-together and professional—but there was something else in your eyes when you saw him slumped on the couch, pale, sweaty, and looking every bit like a man who shouldn’t be left alone with political responsibility.
“Jesus, Mr. Barnes,” you said, setting everything down. “You look like death.”
“I told you, I’m—”
“You’re not fine,” you snapped, and for the first time in months, your voice had bite. “You’re burning up. Go. Bed. Now.”
He blinked. “You’re not my—”
“I said bed, Barnes. Don’t make me speak again.”
That shut him up.
You guided him to the bedroom with surprising gentleness, adjusted the blankets, took his temperature without flinching.
Muttered something about idiots and stubborn men as you set a glass of water on the nightstand. Then you left the door half open and walked straight into his living room like it was your war zone.
And then?
You took over.
Bucky stirred to the sound of your voice. It was steady. Calm. Businesslike. Something about the infrastructure bill and a scheduling conflict.
He blinked at the ceiling, groggy but conscious enough to realize the headache had dulled. The water glass on his nightstand was full again. The thermometer was gone. So were most of the folders.
But your voice remained.
“…no, we’re not pushing it another week. The Congressman already reviewed the amended language,” you said, sharp but not yet rude.
Bucky turned toward the open bedroom door. He could just barely see the edge of you standing in the living room, phone to your ear, one hand on your hip.
A pause.
And then—
“Okay, you know what? You don’t gotta raise your voice at me, sweetheart. That ain’t how this works.”
His eyebrows rose. That tone? That wasn’t the voice he’d grown used to over the last month.
Your next sentence came faster. Smoother. The vowels shortened. The sugar gone.
“You show up late, you miss deadlines, and now you got the audacity to talk down to me? Mm-mm. Uh-uh. Try again.”
The silence on the other end must’ve been long, because your voice dropped lower, firmer.
“You’re an extremely odd individual, and I do not wanna speak to you anymore. So here’s what you’re gonna do: fix your mistake, resubmit the form correctly, and stop wastin’ my damn time.”
There was a beat. Then you scoffed, low and dry. “Don’t get slick with me. I’m bein’ very polite right now.”
Another pause.
Then a final, clipped, “Goodbye.”
Click.
You exhaled hard. There was a rustle of papers. A muttered “weirdo” under your breath. And then the soft tap, tap, tap of you moving to the laptop again, your tone immediately shifting back into something more composed as you started your next call.
And yet, it wasn’t jarring. It was seamless. Natural. Like your sweetness wasn’t a mask, but a choice—one you could take off the second someone disrespected you.
And he’d never heard anything so impressive in his life.
You’d gone from high-level strategy to full-on verbal takedown in under five seconds and didn’t even flinch. Didn’t apologize. Didn’t soften it.
Bucky stared at the ceiling, half in awe, half in… something else he couldn’t quite name.
Maybe fever wasn’t the only reason his chest felt tight.
────────────────────────
By the time the sun had dipped low and the apartment took on that soft, golden hue, the chaos of the day had fully subsided.
You were back to yourself—at least, the version Bucky knew. Sweet. Bubbly. Moving around his apartment like it wasn’t the least bit strange that you’d just taken over a congressman’s workload in a knit cardigan and a cloud-patterned scrunchie.
He stood in the doorway now, blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a reluctant ghost, watching you tidy up the living room while humming under your breath.
You turned before he could say anything, your face lighting up like it always did when you saw him—even now, even after the day you’d had.
“Hey, sunshine,” you said softly, like he was the one who needed reassuring. “You should be in bed.”
“I’m fine,” he muttered, throat still raw.
You gave him a look that was very not convinced but didn’t press it. Instead, you stepped forward with a little tablet and a closed folder in hand.
“I wrapped everything up,” you said, tone gentle, like you didn’t want to overwhelm him. “Sorted the subcommittee notes, handled the calls, pushed your morning meetings. Everything’s in here, just in case.”
You held it out to him with both hands, like it was fragile.
“It should all run smooth when you’re back in the office,” you added. “No big hassle, I promise.”
He took it slowly, fingers brushing yours.
Then your eyes flicked toward the kitchen. “Oh! And I made soup.”
Bucky blinked. “Soup?”
You nodded, looking proud. “Chicken. With orzo. Little bit of lemon. It’s an old recipe from my ma. Helps with stomach stuff, and it’s good for fevers.”
You paused, like maybe you were worried you’d overstepped. Your hands twitched slightly in front of you.
“I mean—you don’t have to eat it now,” you said quickly, “but I left it in the fridge. Labeled it with a little sticky so you know which one it is. Not that there’s a lot of stuff in your fridge, I just… y’know. Thought it might help.”
Your voice trailed off, but your smile stayed.
Soft. Open. So completely you.
And all Bucky could do was stand there, wrapped in his stupid blanket, and wonder how the hell you’d spent the whole day being terrifyingly competent, and still ended it with soup and a nervous little glance like you weren’t sure if he’d like it.
You hesitated at the edge of the living room, hands fidgeting with something behind your back.
Bucky noticed the shift immediately.
The glow you’d carried all day—while juggling Congress from his couch and checking his temperature without breaking stride—had dimmed. Not gone. Just… pulled inward, like you were trying to protect something small and fragile inside yourself.
You stepped forward, arms unfolding to reveal a neatly sealed envelope.
Your smile this time was softer. Smaller. Like a flickering candle. “Before I forget,” you said lightly, “I meant to give this to you earlier.”
You held it out.
He didn’t take it at first. Just stared. “What is it?”
Your lashes fluttered. You tilted your head slightly, voice still calm—almost apologetic. “It’s just my formal letter of resignation. Two weeks’ notice.”
The room went still.
Like even the hum of his ancient fridge paused to register the words.
Bucky took the envelope slowly, like it might explode in his hands. His stomach dropped, even lower than it had that morning when he first woke up sweating through his sheets.
“You’re leaving,” he said, flatly, like maybe saying it again would change the shape of it in the air. “Why?”
You hesitated, and for a second, he thought you weren’t going to say anything at all.
But then your gaze lifted—slow, reluctant—and something behind your eyes dimmed. Not anger. Not even disappointment. Just a sadness so quiet it made his chest ache.
“I heard you,” you said, voice small but even. “That day on the phone. When you were talking to Sam.”
The words sank into him with slow, merciless weight.
Shit.
He opened his mouth, panic rising. “You weren’t supposed to—”
“I know,” you cut in gently, holding up a hand. “It’s alright.”
That made it worse.
You smiled, the kind of smile that tried so hard to be kind it hurt to look at. “It’s okay,” you repeated. “I get that a lot, honestly. People sayin' I’m too soft. Too nice. Too… whatever.”
He shook his head. “That’s not—”
“I know you didn’t mean it to be cruel.” Your voice was airy, almost thoughtful. “It didn’t even sound mean. You were just being honest. And you’re right, in a way. I am sweet. I care a lot. I get excited over little things. I bring baked goods to meetings and I probably hug too much and I call people sweetheart even when they’re mean to me.”
Bucky’s throat was dry. “I didn’t—”
“But I’m not naïve,” you said, and this time there was steel under the softness. Not sharp—but unbending. “I’m not stupid. I know how this world works. I just… don’t want to become like it.”
Your eyes met his fully then, warm and steady. “I like who I am. I don’t want to lose that just to survive a place that tells me kindness is a weakness.”
He opened his mouth again—anything, something—but you beat him to it, words tumbling now with gentle finality.
“I’m a big-hearted person, Mr. Barnes. I love hard. I care hard. I will go to war for the people I believe in, and I’ll still make them soup afterward. That’s who I am.”
You gave a small shrug, and your smile this time was a little sad, a little tired. “But I know not everyone wants that. Not everyone likes their coffee sweet.”
He looked at you, mouth parted, heart twisting tighter with every breath.
You tilted your head, a soft laugh escaping. “And that’s okay. Really. I don’t need everyone to like me. I just want to work somewhere I don’t feel like I have to apologize for existing.”
Bucky tried—he really tried—to find the words to take it back. To undo it. But they stuck in his throat like gravel.
All he managed was a strangled, “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”
You nodded gently, like you already knew that.
But the hurt was still there, just under the surface, quietly humming like a bruise.
────────────────────────
It’d been three days since you handed him that letter.
Three days since you smiled with that soft resignation and walked out of his apartment, leaving behind bowl of soup and a hollow ache in his chest.
And now you were in the office—laughing.
Bucky watched you through the slats of his office shutters like a goddamn surveillance drone. Brenda was telling some story that clearly wasn’t funny, but you were laughing like it was the best thing you’d heard all week. Head tilted back, hand on her shoulder, the kind of laugh that made the people around you lean in like flowers toward sunlight.
He hated how familiar that laugh felt now.
And how far away it sounded.
You’d gone back to being sweet, professional, helpful. You hadn’t missed a single beat in your work. But with him, you were still distant. Polite. You hadn’t brought him coffee. Hadn’t cracked a joke. Hadn’t touched his arm in passing the way you used to.
He was losing you.
And the worst part? It wasn’t dramatic. You weren’t bitter. You weren’t angry.
You were just… quietly leaving.
So now he sat at his desk, glaring at his screen, not reading a damn word. His mind was a storm of useless questions and even more useless ideas.
Could he offer a raise? A promotion? Make the job more creative? Incentivize something?
He rubbed his hand down his face. No, that sounded like bribery.
Maybe he could ask her to stay just until the end of the quarter. Emphasize her value. Play the logistics angle. Remind her how much smoother things have been with her here.
He leaned back in his chair. That sounded desperate.
What if—
‘Jesus,’ he thought. ‘This isn’t about keeping her.’
A beat.
Then he corrected himself instantly. ‘Keeping her as an assistant. I mean. Not— Not like—’
He groaned, scrubbing at his eyes like he could rub the feelings away.
She was just efficient. That’s all. Stable. Predictable in a way he relied on. She was good at her job and the office ran smoother with her in it and that’s why this mattered.
Not because she smelled like lemons and comfort. Not because she looked at everyone like they were worth loving. Not because he’d started measuring his mornings by whether she smiled at him.
No. No, no, no. Just work.
Strictly professional.
He glanced back out through the blinds.
You were organizing a folder stack with the intern, gently fixing the label tabs, still smiling.
Still leaving.
And Bucky felt like the office was already colder without you—even though you hadn’t gone yet.
────────────────────────
Bucky liked to think he was a decent boss.
Not fun, sure. Not particularly approachable. Maybe a little gruff. And socially awkward, definitely. But fair. Honest. He let people take their lunch breaks. He remembered birthdays when he could. He even once approved an impromptu office donut day.
So it surprised him—no, perturbed him—when he found out about your going away party… from Brenda.
Brenda, who was sixty-eight and had once said she considered EDM “an acronym for something immoral.” Brenda, who referred to clubbing as “light alcoholism with extra steps.” Brenda, who had received an invitation.
He had not.
He found out over coffee. His coffee. The one he’d fetched himself because you no longer brought it to him.
Brenda had mentioned it casually, in that unassuming way older women do when they know they’re about to light a match and walk away from a very dry haystack.
“They’re doing a little sendoff for her Friday night. At that club downtown—the neon one with the ridiculous name. Something with vowels missing.”
He’d blinked. “What sendoff?”
“The one for your assistant, dear.” Sip. “The one who’s leaving.”
The words sank in slowly. Your assistant. Leaving. Right. That was happening. Somehow he kept forgetting it was real. Or maybe refusing to process it.
Then came the kicker: “Jimmy’s organizing the whole thing. Should be fun.”
Bucky had stared. “Jimmy?”
Brenda nodded, as if it were perfectly normal that the chillest, most easygoing staffer in his entire office had turned into a party planner on your behalf. “He booked a VIP booth. Very thoughtful.”
VIP booth? Bucky didn’t even know Jimmy knew how to book things. The guy wore mismatched socks and said “vibe check” unironically.
“So… they didn’t think to tell me?”
Brenda hesitated, just for a second, which was all the answer Bucky needed.
Later, he cornered Jimmy in the hallway, trying to sound casual and not like a man deeply offended by club logistics.
Jimmy had shrugged, wide-eyed and harmless. “We just figured it wasn’t really your scene, you know?”
Bucky blinked. “It’s not Brenda’s scene either.”
Jimmy scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah, well, Brenda knows the DJ.”
Of course she did.
Bucky didn’t say anything else. Just walked back to his office, each step echoing a little louder in his chest than it should have.
They didn’t think he’d want to come. Or maybe they didn’t think he deserved to.
And maybe they were right. Maybe he wasn’t the kind of guy you threw parties for. Maybe people just did their jobs around him and left. No post-its. No coffee. No soup.
But still… the fact that you were going to be out on a dance floor, surrounded by people who adored you, celebrating your last day—without him—hit harder than it should’ve.
Because he’d hurt you. He knew that now. And they all knew it too.
And no one invited him to say goodbye.
────────────────────────
He wasn’t even supposed to be there.
He told himself that, at least, on the way over. This wasn’t some grand gesture. He wasn’t planning a speech, wasn’t going to make a scene. He’d accepted it—you were leaving. And maybe he didn’t deserve a chance to change that.
So he’d come to do the one thing he could do.
Say goodbye.
He clutched the small, carefully wrapped box in his jacket pocket, fingers curling around the corners. It wasn’t much. But it was personal. Thoughtful. Something that reminded him of you—sweet, strange, specific.
But he remembered.
The music hit him first. The bass vibrating through the walls as soon as he stepped into the club. It was too loud, too crowded, too young. Neon lights pulsed off the walls, everything warm and blurred. He stood near the entrance, eyes scanning—feeling wildly out of place in his plain clothes and clenched jaw—until he saw you.
And then his lungs just… stopped working.
There you were.
It took one second. One.
You were standing near the booth, laughing—God, always laughing—wearing a pale blue outfit that looked like moonlight wrapped in fabric. Halter top hugging your curves, skirt tied at your hip, legs long and bare under the shifting lights. Gold hoops in your ears, bangles on your wrist, that familiar dreamy look in your eyes as you leaned into Jimmy mid-laugh.
Bucky’s feet stopped moving.
You were stunning. Effortlessly so. But it wasn’t just that. It was the freedom—the way you stood like nothing in the world could touch you here. Like you weren’t his assistant or part of a machine or tethered to other people’s expectations. You were you—unfiltered, unbothered, alive.
And he’d never seen you like this before.
Not in your pastels and blazers. Not behind your desk with your clipboard and schedule.
This version of you—this—was what he was losing.
He swallowed hard.
She’s just your assistant, he told himself. Or had been. That’s all this was. You were good at your job. That’s all.
But even he didn’t believe it anymore.
You were mid-sip of your drink when you caught sight of him, standing near the edge of the club like he was trying to melt into the wall.
Your breath caught.
And then your whole face lit up like someone had flipped a switch inside you.
“Oh my gosh, you came!”
You pushed past two people without thinking, grinning, already reaching for his arm like you couldn’t help yourself. Your bangles clinked as you tugged him gently into the glow of the booth’s lights.
“I didn’t think you were coming,” you laughed, almost breathless. “You hate places like this.”
Bucky looked at you—really looked at you—and it took him a second too long to answer.
Your eyes were sparkling, cheeks flushed, hair tousled and falling perfectly over one shoulder. You looked like the kind of girl who had the whole room on a string and didn’t even realize she was holding it.
He murmured under his breath, just low enough that it got swallowed by the music, “Maybe ‘cause I wasn’t invited.”
You tilted your head. “What?”
“Nothing,” he said quickly, shaking it off with a stiff half-shrug. “Just thought I’d… say goodbye.”
Your expression softened. Just a bit.
“Oh,” you said, the word light and airy, but touched with something else. “That’s sweet.”
Bucky nodded once. Awkward. Hands shoved in his jacket pockets like he didn’t trust them to stay still.
He should’ve left it at that.
But instead, he held out the little box he’d been carrying all night—plain black wrapping, a thin ribbon tied unevenly, like he’d done it with too much concentration and not enough skill.
You blinked, surprised. “What’s this?”
“Just a gift,” he said, not meeting your eyes. “It’s stupid.”
You took it carefully, reverently, like it might break in your hands. “Oh, you shouldn't have…”
“It’s not a bribe,” he added quickly, before you could say anything more. “I know you’re leaving. I just… thought you should have something.”
You didn’t wait.
Right there in the middle of the club, music thumping, lights flashing, you carefully tugged the ribbon free and opened the box with that bright, childlike excitement you always had when someone gave you something—even if it was small. Even if it wasn’t wrapped perfectly.
And when you saw what was inside, your breath hitched.
A delicate gold necklace. Thin, simple chain. At the center, your birthstone—tiny, gleaming, perfectly cut. Nothing flashy. Nothing loud. Just right.
You stared down at it, brows pulling together, mouth parting slightly.
And then, to Bucky’s horror, your eyes started to well.
“Wait… this is my—this is my birthstone,” you said softly, voice already wobbling. “How did you even know?”
You looked up at him with wide, glistening eyes, and Bucky’s stomach dropped.
“I—I never told you my birthday.”
He shifted awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. “I remembered. You mentioned it once. In passing.”
That did it.
You blinked quickly, but the tears came anyway, slipping free with no real warning. “Oh God,” you whispered, pressing your fingers to your mouth, eyes going glassy. “That’s actually… really sweet. Why would you…?”
Your voice cracked. Right in the middle of a sentence. Just folded in on itself.
And Bucky panicked.
“Hey—” he murmured, stepping closer, voice low and careful, like you were a fragile object he might accidentally break with the wrong tone. “Hey, don’t cry. Don’t—don’t do that.”
You let out a small, broken laugh, brushing at your cheeks. “Sorry, I just—this is so thoughtful. And you remembered. And now I’m crying in a club like a weirdo—”
“You’re not a weirdo,” he said quickly, awkwardly, like he was saying it on instinct and didn’t even believe he was qualified to offer emotional reassurance.
Still, he reached out—tentatively—and touched your elbow. Just barely. Like he was scared of overstepping.
You were sniffling now, trying to dab at your eyes with the corner of a cocktail napkin that immediately disintegrated. “I’m just—God, I’m such a mess—”
“You’re not,” he muttered, more firmly this time. “It’s just… a lot. I get it.”
You nodded, wiping at your nose with the back of your hand in a way that made his heart twist in his chest.
“I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he added, a little helplessly. “I was just… trying to say goodbye.”
That last word came out rougher than he meant it to.
Bucky didn’t know what to do with the way your face crumpled again.
The tears came back—hot and fast—and though you were trying to smile through it, you clearly weren’t managing. You swiped at your cheeks with both hands now, uselessly, still holding the jewelry box in one.
He hesitated. Then stepped in a little closer, hand hovering awkwardly near your back.
“Hey,” he said gently, “come on. Let’s get some air.”
You nodded, a hiccuped little sound catching in your throat, and let him guide you with a light touch on your back. You were too busy trying not to sniff too loudly, muttering something about God, I probably look insane right now, as he led you carefully past the crowd and toward the door.
The outside air hit cool and sharp. The street was quiet in comparison—just the low hum of traffic and the faint pulse of music through the walls behind you.
You sniffled again, eyes still glassy as you blinked up at him, half apologetic. “Ugh, my makeup is definitely ruined,” you mumbled. “I knew I shouldn’t have worn this mascara. But it was waterproof! It was supposed to be—why do they even say that if it’s a lie?”
Bucky gave a short breath—almost a laugh, almost not. He looked at you, really looked.
Your cheeks were a little streaked, sure. Lip gloss a bit smudged. But your eyes were shining. And that necklace—the one he’d spent way too long choosing—sat against your skin like it had always belonged there.
“You look fine,” he said, voice quiet but certain. “You look like… you.”
You smiled weakly. “That bad, huh?”
He shook his head, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets. “No. That good.”
You looked down at your heels, a soft little laugh escaping from behind your hand.
Then, a little quieter: “You really didn’t have to come, you know.”
“I know,” he murmured. “But I wanted to.”
You sniffled once more and tilted your head back, resting it gently against the brick wall behind you. The chill of it made your skin rise in little goosebumps, but you didn’t mind. It helped ground you.
Bucky stood a step in front of you, hands in his pockets, close but not quite touching. He looked like he was trying to memorize the shape of you in this light—the heated cheeks, the still-damp lashes, the faint shimmer of highlighter on your collarbone.
You smiled at him, a little shy now, still damp-eyed but back to your usual, airy self. The kind of smile that could make someone forget everything they were angry about.
“You’re gonna miss me, huh?”
You meant it like a joke. Playful. Light.
But he didn’t laugh.
He looked at you like the weight of that sentence had knocked the wind out of him.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah, I am.”
That stopped you. Just for a second. Like you hadn’t expected honesty from him—not that much, not here.
The smile on your lips faltered.
He stepped a little closer. Just a half-step. Just enough to feel his presence around you. He wasn’t touching you, but he didn’t need to. You could feel it anyway. Could feel him—his stillness, his warmth, his quiet restraint.
And then he said it.
“Are you sure,” he asked, voice barely audible, “there’s nothing I can say to change your mind?”
Your breath caught in your throat.
The question hung in the air between you. Not loud. Not desperate. Just there.
You looked up at him, blinking too fast again. “Bucky…”
But you didn’t finish the sentence.
Because it was already happening again—your eyes glassing over, that familiar sting building behind your nose.
You sucked in a shaky breath, the cool air burning your lungs. You looked away from him, blinking rapidly, willing the tears not to spill—but it was already too late. Again.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered, voice cracking. “God, I’m sorry, I don't wanna cry again—this is so embarrassing.”
Bucky said nothing.
Just stood there in front of you, still as stone. But his eyes… they were softer than you’d ever seen them. And it hurt.
“I would stay,” you choked, voice trembling with the weight of the truth you’d kept tucked away for weeks. “I want to stay. Of course I want to stay.”
You were crying now, tears falling hot down your cheeks as your chest tightened. “But it wouldn’t work. It can’t. It’s unethical now. It’s inappropriate. Because I—”
Your throat clenched, but you pushed through.
“—because I have this stupid crush on you, okay?”
You didn’t dare look at him.
“I have this dumb, awful, unprofessional, completely humiliating crush on my boss. I think about you way too much, and it makes it hard to do my job. I bring you coffee I know you like and highlight your notes so you won’t panic during speeches and I try to make you smile because when you do it’s like—it’s like the world gets quiet for a second.”
Your hands fluttered uselessly as you spoke, as if your body could catch your words and stuff them back in your mouth.
“And I know it’s one-sided, okay? I’m not stupid. I know you don’t feel that way, but I—”
He kissed you.
Just like that. No warning.
A sudden, quiet press of lips that silenced your breath, your words, your panic.
His hands didn’t even touch you. Not yet. He just leaned in and kissed you—firm, sure, warm—like it was the only way he knew to make it all stop.
You froze, heart crashing into your ribs, eyes wide for just a moment.
And then you melted.
Mouth softening into his, breath catching in your throat. Tears still clinging to your lashes, your hand clutching the front of his jacket like it was the only solid thing left in the world.
He pulled back slowly—barely an inch—his forehead resting lightly against yours.
“You’re wrong,” he whispered, voice rough. “It’s not one-sided.”
Your lips parted to speak—to say something, anything, maybe to ask if this was real—but you didn’t get the chance.
Bucky kissed you again.
This time deeper, firmer, more certain. His hand found the side of your jaw, fingers brushing just behind your ear, grounding you in the moment like he couldn’t stand to be any farther away. Your back pressed gently against the wall behind you, breath caught somewhere between your lungs and your throat.
It wasn’t careful now.
It was warm and urgent and real, and it made your head spin, your knees wobble. You let out a tiny noise against his mouth, your fingers curling into the front of his jacket again, clinging like you couldn’t bear to stop.
When he pulled back—slowly, reluctantly—his breath mingled with yours, foreheads still close.
“You taste like strawberries,” he murmured, lips brushing against yours as he spoke.
Your heart stuttered. Your brain, still floating somewhere behind your eyes, couldn’t string thoughts together fast enough.
You blinked up at him, eyes hazy, lips still parted. Then, barely above a whisper, you murmured against his mouth,
“I think it’s ‘cause of my strawberry daiquiri.”
That made him smile.
Small, crooked, and stupidly tender.
And for the first time in what felt like weeks, you smiled too—real and a little dazed, like you couldn’t believe this was happening.
Bucky looked like he was about to say something else.
His mouth opened, barely.
And you didn’t let him.
You moved fast—tipping forward and throwing your arms around his neck before he could even breathe, your body colliding into his with enough force to make him stumble half a step back. His hands shot out instinctively, catching you by the waist, holding you steady.
Then you kissed him again.
Harder this time. Messier. Mouth opening against his, tongue slipping past his lips like it had been building in you for months.
He grunted softly into the kiss, grip tightening at your sides like he couldn’t quite believe this was happening—but wasn’t about to let go, either.
You pressed into him, fingers curling into the back of his neck, pulling him closer like it wasn’t close enough. His hand slid up your spine, the other anchoring at your hip, both of you half-pinned against the brick wall and completely lost in the feel of each other.
It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t sweet.
It was heat and tension and all the things you’d both been swallowing back for too long.
Your mouth moved against his like you’d been waiting for this exact angle, this exact pressure. He kissed you back with equal weight, tongue meeting yours, breath shallow, one of his hands fisting lightly in the fabric at your lower back like he needed something to hold onto.
You pulled back for half a second—just enough to breathe—then dragged him right back in, catching his lower lip between yours before deepening it again, another sweep of your tongue making him tighten his hold on you.
When you finally pulled back, just enough to catch your breath, your foreheads were still touching, your fingers still curled at the nape of his neck. His hands were warm against your waist, thumbs absently brushing your sides like he didn’t want to stop touching you.
Your lips hovered against his—still wet, swollen, parted.
“My heart is going tachycardic right now,” you mumbled, voice breathy and half-delirious.
Bucky blinked, a slow exhale brushing over your cheek as he gave a short, low laugh. It was half a huff, half a genuine what are you even saying, but there was nothing mocking in it.
He had no idea what that meant. Not really.
But still, without missing a beat, he murmured against your lips, “Yeah. Me too.”
Then he kissed you again.
Soft this time. Lingering. Then again, just below your mouth. And again, near the corner. Like he couldn’t decide which part of you he wanted to taste more.
Your breath hitched, arms tightening briefly around his neck as his mouth found yours again—more lazy now, indulgent, like you had all the time in the world to learn each other one kiss at a time.
You smiled into it. Couldn’t help it.
And he didn’t stop kissing you.
Didn’t want to.
────────────────────────
Six Months Later
Bucky still couldn’t figure out how he ended up here.
The Watchtower.
New York.
Leader—unofficially—of the most emotionally unstable group of enhanced individuals the government could dig up. He didn’t want the job. Didn’t ask for it. But somehow, it was always his name they called when something needed handling.
He leaned against the kitchen counter, arms crossed, eyes heavy from a sleepless night. Not that anyone here noticed. Ava phased through walls at 3 a.m., Walker trained like rage was cardio, and Yelena had made it her personal mission to ignore authority unless she gave it to herself.
He sighed, long and low, ready to go back to pretending he didn’t exist.
Then his phone buzzed in his pocket.
He pulled it out instinctively, screen lighting up.
Finally—cleared my schedule. I’m coming to New York this weekend. Hope you’re ready for excessive cuddling and making out and me refusing to let go of you for like 48 hours. ❤️
Bucky’s lips pulled into the faintest smile as he read your text, thumb tapping the screen just once in response.
Can’t wait.
And of course, that’s when Yelena walked in.
She stopped mid-stride, immediately squinting at him like she’d spotted a security breach.
“What the hell is that?”
Bucky didn’t look up. “What?”
“That thing on your face.” She tilted her head, arms crossed. “Are you… smiling?”
He pocketed the phone quickly. “It’s nothing.”
“No, no, no.” She was already circling him like a predator. “You look—God, what’s the word—pleasant. That’s not your baseline.”
He sighed, already regretting not hiding in the gym.
“Who texted you?”
“None of your business,” he muttered.
Yelena didn’t even pretend to buy it. She crossed her arms, watching him like he was a broken vending machine she intended to fix with violence.
“You smiled. I’ve never seen you smile. Not like that. It was very suspicious.”
Bucky took a slow sip of coffee. “Wasn’t smiling.”
“Your face moved, Bucky,” she said flatly. “It was unsettling.”
He turned away, walked over to the fridge like it held answers.
Yelena followed.
“Was it a dog video?” she asked. “No. You’re not soft enough for dogs. A meme? A mission update with someone dying? No—wait. It was a person. You smiled like someone flirted with you.”
He didn’t answer.
“Is it serious? Is it secret? Is it dangerous?“ Yelena asked, suddenly in front of him, leaning slightly into his space, “I will find out. I am very good at finding things. And people.”
Bucky just sighed, long and tired, and walked out of the kitchen without a word.
Yelena stared after him for half a beat before turning sharply and locking eyes on the next available target.
Walker.
He’d just wandered in, hoodie half-zipped, chewing on a protein bar like he hadn’t had a thought in days.
“You,” Yelena said, pointing at him. “You’ve known him longest. Does Bucky have a girlfriend?”
Walker blinked. “What?”
“A girlfriend,” she repeated, slower. “A woman. He dates her. Romantic?”
He squinted slightly. “Bucky? Uh… I mean… I dunno.”
“You don’t know?”
He shrugged, genuinely baffled. “I mean, maybe? He’s quiet. One time he left early and said he had ‘plans.’ That could mean anything though. Like… groceries. Or laundry.”
Yelena stared at him, unblinking. “You are completely useless.”
Walker nodded, still chewing. “That’s fair.”
────────────────────────
Bucky had just settled onto the couch, bowl of something vaguely edible in hand, eyes on the muted television where an old war documentary flickered across the screen. It wasn’t exactly entertainment—it was just quiet.
He barely got through three bites before he felt it.
The shift in the air.
Then the voices.
Yelena entered first, of course—arms crossed, wearing the face of someone who’d appointed herself lead investigator in a murder case that didn’t exist.
She was followed by Bob, Alexei, Ava, and Walker, who trailed in like a herd of very uncoordinated cats.
Bucky didn’t even look at them. “No.”
“We haven’t said anything yet,” Bob offered, smiling too nicely.
“Still no.”
Yelena dropped onto the armrest beside him, eyes sharp. “We’ve been talking.”
Bucky stared straight ahead. “Tragic.”
“And we’ve decided,” she continued, ignoring him completely, “that we don’t know anything about your personal life.”
“That’s because it’s personal,” he said dryly.
Alexei huffed, already pacing. “This is concerning. You are team leader. We need to know if you are emotionally stable.”
“I’m not. None of us are.”
Walker plopped into a chair. “He did smile the other day. That was weird.”
“That’s what started all this,” Yelena snapped. “He smiled. At a text. And now he won’t tell us who sent it.”
Bucky turned up the volume on the TV. Barely.
Ava appeared on the other side of the couch, silent as usual, but she arched a brow that said she was equally invested.
Bob, cheerful as ever, leaned forward with a grin. “We’re just saying… if there’s a special someone, you can tell us. We’re fun. We’re emotionally safe.”
“You’re emotionally nosy,” Bucky muttered.
“We are team,” Alexei boomed. “And you—our glorious yet emotionally constipated leader—should share with group!”
Yelena leaned in closer, narrowing her eyes. “Is it serious? Like, does she know you have zero social skills? Does she like that? Is she in therapy?”
Walker nodded. “Is she hot?”
Everyone looked at him.
“What?” he said. “It’s a valid question.”
Bucky's phone buzzed in his pocket.
He didn’t check it right away—not with five pairs of eyes watching him like he was the last episode of a series they weren’t supposed to binge but did anyway.
But then he did glance. Just one look at the screen.
And something shifted in his posture. Barely.
The corners of his mouth twitched. Not a smile, not quite—but something loosened in his shoulders. He stood up, sliding the phone back into his pocket.
“I’ve gotta go,” he said simply.
“Go where?” Yelena asked instantly, sliding off the couch and following with military-grade suspicion. “Where is Winter Soldier going all dressed up in… black?”
“I’m always dressed in black.“
But it didn’t matter.
They were already following him.
Bob was at his side with his usual skip in his step, Walker tagging along behind like a golden retriever who wasn’t sure what game they were playing. Alexei caught up quickly, talking to himself about trust and emotional openness. Ava materialized near the elevator, silent but present. And Yelena, of course, was right on Bucky’s heels.
“You’re deflecting,” she said as the elevator doors closed around them. “I can smell secrets. And this smells like a woman.”
Bucky didn’t respond. Not a word.
Just faced the elevator door, arms folded, jaw tight, clearly regretting every life choice that led him here.
“Where exactly are you going?” she pressed, arms crossed. “Is she here? Is she real?”
“You’ll see,” Bucky said flatly, not bothering to face them.
The elevator doors opened on the ground floor, and they all spilled into the main lobby of the Watchtower, a wide, sleek expanse of glass and metal and polished silence.
Then a sound cut through the air like a missile.
A high, joyful squeal.
“Bucky baby!”
Everything stopped.
The team froze.
Yelena’s face scrunched in real time. “Bucky baby?”
Before anyone could process that phrase, there was movement.
A blur of color streaked across the marble lobby. Heels clicking, earrings swinging, hair bouncing—you, in full tilt.
And without hesitation, you launched yourself straight at him.
Bucky barely had time to catch you, but he did—one arm wrapping around your waist, the other under your thighs as you jumped up and clung to him like gravity didn’t apply.
And then, right there in front of everyone, your lips were on his.
Not shy. Not sweet.
Mouth open, tongue in, both hands in his hair as you kissed him like you’d been holding your breath for hours and he was the only oxygen you wanted. You tilted his head, deepened it, bit his bottom lip and everything. It was messy and loud and had absolutely zero awareness of space or audience.
Bucky just held you there—like he’d been waiting for this all day. One hand squeezing your hip, the other steady under your thigh, mouth moving against yours like he couldn’t get enough.
Silence behind you.
Long.
Awkward.
Unblinking.
Walker looked physically stunned, eyes wide, lips parted like he couldn’t figure out what dimension he’d fallen into.
Bob had both hands over his eyes. “I feel like I’m watching something x-rated.”
Alexei, meanwhile, was grinning ear to ear. “Ah, love! Powerful! Raw! Very virile. I respect it.“
Ava stood slightly to the side, arms crossed, expression twisted into something between a wince and a grimace. “This is disgusting.”
Yelena just raised one eyebrow. “What the fuck?”
The kiss finally slowed—just a little. You pulled back to catch your breath, your forehead pressing against Bucky’s as you grinned, lips swollen, eyes dancing.
“Hi,” you whispered.
He huffed out a breath, still catching up. “Hi.”
Then, finally, he turned—still holding you, still slightly dazed—and glanced over at the very silent, very stunned lineup of teammates.
No one said anything.
You blinked, just now noticing the five-person audience.
“Oh,” you said cheerfully, breath still short. “Hi.”
Silence.
The kind that settles like static. Thick, charged, slightly horrified.
The team’s eyes slowly, almost comically, shifted from you to Bucky.
All at once.
Yelena stepped forward half a pace, pointing without subtlety. “This is your girlfriend?”
Bucky’s jaw flexed. He didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.
You were still curled in his arms like you lived there, bright smile lighting up your entire face, makeup slightly smudged from the kissing, lipstick faded along Bucky’s mouth.
You held up your left hand like it was the most casual thing in the world.
Thought to myself: Oh, I'll just bang out a quick one-shot and try writing smut for the first time, and it somehow turned into this monstrosity (sorry for the word count)
Pairing: Avengers!Bucky x Scientist!Reader
Summary: The experimental neurobond was an accident. Getting stuck with Bucky Barnes was just your luck. Now you’re linked—body, mind, and something worse: sexual tension. You’ve got 72 hours to resist him. And every hour, it gets harder to remember why you should...
Warnings: 18+ (mdni!). Explicit Sexual Content. Enemies to Lovers. Forced Proximity. Accidental Neurobond. Shared Dreams. Shared Physical Sensations. Angst. Mutual Pining. Female Masturbation. Oral Sex (f receiving), Dirty Talk, Vaginal Sex. Praise Kink. Creampie. Multiple Orgasms. Post Thunderbolts Setting. Fluff.
Word Count: 16k
You’re three sips into your too-hot coffee when you see him.
He’s leaning against the wall outside Lab 4, all broad shoulders and brooding posture, like some kind of noir detective who wandered into a government facility and refused to leave. Tactical black from neck to boots. That infamous metal arm crossed over his chest like it has something to say and no one brave enough to contradict it.
Tall. Sharp. Sullen.
James Buchanan Barnes.
You stop mid-step. Your brain short-circuits just long enough for the lid of your coffee cup to betray you—a small dribble of liquid lava hits the edge of your hand.
“Shit,” you hiss, wiping it on your lab coat. Not the best look, but frankly, it’s not like he can judge. You have your flaws. He has a kill count.
Captain America’s ex-best friend. The Winter Soldier turned Avenger. The human embodiment of a sealed file. Exactly what your overclocked nervous system needs at seven in the damn morning.
You don’t hate him. That would require too much emotional investment. What you feel is more like… persistent irritation mixed with a healthy dose of distrust. He’s everything you resent about agents: cocky, haunted, prone to unpredictable violence, and somehow still glorified in every agency briefing and classified report.
But more than that—it’s the Budapest symposium.
Two months ago, you were presenting a closed-door session on the ethical implications of biometric surveillance overlays in the field. You’d made a case for data-limited neural interface protocols—no deep emotion-mapping without consent, no unconscious tracking. You had charts. Citations. A damn good argument.
And Bucky Barnes? He was in the back row, arms folded, face unreadable. Before the time even came for questions, he stood up and asked—in front of a dozen international regulators—
“Aren’t you just trying to build a better leash?”
The room had gone quiet. You’d gone cold. Because the worst part was—he hadn’t been wrong.
He walked out before you could answer, leaving you to field the fallout with a thin smile and a throat full of fury. You spent the next week drafting three different sarcastic emails you never sent.
So no, you’re not thrilled to see him outside your lab. Especially not looking like a government-issued mistake you’d almost make twice.
“You’re here,” you say once your voice decides to cooperate. You hold your coffee like a weapon—or a shield. “And scowling. Which I think breaks at least two of our site protocols.”
He turns his head slightly. Those icy blue eyes flick toward you, unreadable behind the scruff and the perpetual shadow of something heavier than war. You’ve read the file. But seeing him again in person is different. Less haunted soldier, more statue carved from tension.
“Security assignment,” he says, voice low and gravel-rough. “I’m with you today.”
You blink. “Excuse me?”
“Protocol says highest-risk assets get an escort during internal breach investigations.”
And by ‘protocol’, he means Val.
You stare at him. “I thought that meant someone like Ava. Or Lena. Not…” You gesture vaguely at all of him. “This whole glowering thing.”
He doesn’t answer. Just steps forward, pushes the door open, and holds it for you with exaggerated politeness—like a gentleman or a prison warden. You’re not sure which is worse.
You walk past him muttering, “I’m not a high-risk asset. I’m a scientist who got stuck in the crossfire of a bureaucratic dick-measuring contest.”
He follows close behind, boots heavy on the linoleum. “You designed a compound that links neural responses across two brains. That’s high-risk by definition.”
You spin on your heel to face him. “It was theoretical. You know what theoretical means, right? No human trials. No deployment. No volunteers. The compound is locked down in cold storage with three redundant containment protocols.”
There’s a beat of silence.
“You sound defensive,” he goads mildly.
Your jaw drops. “I sound correct.”
He raises one eyebrow, expression neutral—which somehow makes it worse. “You always this wound up?”
You glare. “Only when former assassins are breathing down my neck before breakfast.”
He gives the faintest shrug, like it’s not worth arguing. You turn away again, heels clicking faster now as you head for the secure wing, hoping you look more in control than you feel.
God, you haven’t even had time to check your email.
The corridor stretches long and bright and sterile, lined with reinforced doors and retina scanners, every square foot designed to scream classified. You reach the final keypad and punch in your code, a practiced sequence that usually calms you. But this morning it just makes your fingers itch.
The door slides open with a quiet beep—
And the air hits you like a punch to the face.
Your nostrils flare instinctively. Sharp. Acrid. A faint metallic tang riding the edge of the ventilation.
Chemical.
You freeze. One second. Two. Your brain connects the dots a hair too late.
Gas.
“No, no, no—”
You drop your coffee—cup and all—and sprint into the lab. Your eyes lock instantly on the containment cabinet against the far wall. The red emergency light above it pulses in warning, casting the walls in sickly, flickering hues.
The cabinet—where the prototype compound is stored under triple-sealed cryo-containment—is open. Not wide. Just… cracked. A whisper of vapor hisses from its seams like breath from a sleeping monster.
You spin toward the door. “Barnes, get the door sealed—”
But he’s already inside, scanning the room, eyes sharp and military-fast, and it’s too late anyway.
The soft whoomp of emergency ventilation kicks in, the system responding to your alert. You stagger as the remaining aerosolized compound bursts into the air in a rapid pressure release—microscopic particles blooming invisible around you like a deadly fog.
You cough. Once. Twice. The taste hits the back of your throat. And then you feel it.
Not panic. Not exactly. More like a tug just behind your ribs. A subtle wrongness threading through your consciousness like a splinter sliding in the grain.
Not pain. Not fear. Something else. Something other.
You turn—and Bucky Barnes is staring at you like you’ve both just heard the same gunshot.
His pupils are blown. His stance off-kilter. He looks—
Connected. Like he feels it too.
“Oh shit,” you whisper.
Because there’s only one thing in that cabinet capable of inducing a shared neuro-emotive feedback loop between two human brains.
And now it isn’t theoretical anymore. It’s happening.
To you. And him. Together.
—-
You’re ushered into quarantine within six minutes of exposure.
By minute seven, your blood pressure has been taken, your pupils checked, and your ego thoroughly trampled by a flurry of panicked lab techs—and one very smug containment officer who keeps muttering, “Told you this was going to happen,” like your entire life’s work exists solely to vindicate his mediocre career.
By minute ten, you’re sitting on the edge of a cot in Isolation Chamber A, glaring through the reinforced glass at James Buchanan Barnes in Chamber B like you can will his lungs to stop working out of sheer spite.
He, unfortunately, looks fine.
“You don’t look like you’re dying,” he says blandly.
You fold your arms. “Neither do you. Tragic oversight.”
He doesn’t smile. Of course not. He just leans back on his cot with that frustratingly composed, ex-assassin posture. Like stillness is a performance and he’s performing it at an Olympic level.
It makes your teeth itch.
“You feel anything?” he asks, casually. Too casually. As if he’s not currently entangled in a theoretical neural tether that was never supposed to reach human trials, much less him.
You hesitate. “Not really.”
Which isn’t a lie. But it isn’t the whole truth either.
Physically, you feel fine. No nausea. No tremors. No limbic misfires. But there’s something else. A buzz under your skin. Familiar, because you modeled it. Dismissible—until it isn’t.
A quiet frequency, just at the edge of perception. Like pressure. Or breath on the back of your neck.
Mental static. Not yours.
“I feel something,” Bucky says. He frowns—an actual expression—and taps his chest once, distracted. “Not pain. Just… something else.”
You arch a brow. “Let me guess. Low-level irritation and the overwhelming urge to be left alone?”
His eyes flick to yours. “Exactly.”
You scowl. “That’s me, genius.”
He blinks. Then frowns harder. “Shit.”
You groan. “Nope. This cannot be happening. Absolutely not. No thank you.”
You stand up abruptly and start pacing. The cot creaks behind you like it also hates this.
Because this is bad. Not theoretically bad. Functionally. You know what the compound is designed to do—and how unstable it gets at full potency. This isn’t an accident. It’s a worst-case scenario.
The door hisses open.
Dr. Yen, the Chief Medical Officer of your division steps in, tablet already lit, lips pressed thin. You’ve seen that look before. It means the results are in, and you’re not going to like them.
“Vitals are stable,” she says. “No visible cellular breakdown. But limbic scans are confirming cross-resonance.”
You close your eyes. “So it’s real.”
“It’s real,” she confirms. “You’re linked.”
Across the glass, Bucky sighs. “Linked how?”
Yen barely looks up. “Emotionally. Neurologically. The aerosolized bond agent was absorbed via mucosal membranes—eyes, nose, mouth. Maximum contact.”
“You’re saying we’re… what? Reading each other’s minds?”
“Not minds,” you say automatically. “Emotional states. Neural fluctuations. Maybe low-level somatic impulses.”
She nods. “Shared dreams are possible. Mirror physiology. Elevated empathy. Possibly even localized reflex responses.”
Bucky raises an eyebrow. “So if she stubs her toe, I feel it?”
“Not unless your motor cortex overcompensates. Which is unlikely. For now.”
You sit back down, hard. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Yen gives you a dry look. “No, but your name’s still at the top of the protocol. I believe the phrase you used in your original paper was ‘temporary adaptive tethering of live-state neural patterns via synthetic limbic resonance.’”
You mutter, “God, I hate myself.”
“You invented the scientific version of a psychic handcuff,” Bucky says.
You glare at him. “Trust me, if I could break it off and throw it in a volcano, I would.”
He leans back again, exasperated, like this is just another mission gone sideways. But you see it now—underneath the irritation. Not just annoyance.
Curiosity. Amusement. And something quieter that you can’t place yet.
Dr. Yen taps through her readings. “We’re transferring you to Observation Room One. Together.”
“What? Why?” you ask.
“Because separating you could intensify the neurological drift. The bond is responding to proximity—removing it might trigger feedback escalation.”
You blink. “Escalation?”
“Increased bleed. Emotional volatility. Uncontrolled synching. You remember, the time we tested on mice, one started trying to dig a tunnel with its face when the other was removed.”
You stare.
Bucky sighs. “Great. Can’t wait.”
Dr. Yen continues, already halfway out the door. “I’ll monitor for spike activity. Try not to kill each other.”
The door hisses shut behind her.
You look at Bucky. He looks at you. And just like that, the hum gets louder. Not in the room. In your chest. Like the tension between you has grown teeth.
“Don’t talk to me,” you mutter, grabbing your duffel.
He smirks. “I don’t have to. You’re already broadcasting loud and clear.”
“Then prepare to suffer.”
You follow the guards out of the chamber, still vibrating with dread, loathing, and a pressure you absolutely refuse to call attraction.
He falls in step beside you.
And just before the door closes behind you, you hear him mutter, “Could be worse.”
You don’t look at him.
He finishes anyway. “You could be stuck with Walker.”
—
The room isn’t big. Two cots. One bathroom. A table with bolted-down chairs. A surveillance camera blinking red in the corner like a passive-aggressive metronome. The air’s too cold, the lights too bright, and the fluorescent hum drills straight into the base of your skull.
Everything about the room says safe and neutral. Which really means sterile. A trap.
You sit across from Bucky at the table, arms folded tight across your chest, as if sheer compression might keep your thoughts from bleeding into the air between you.
It doesn’t work.
There’s that tug behind your ribs—low, persistent, off. Not pain. Not even discomfort, really. Just… dissonance. Like your body’s tuned to the wrong frequency and can’t stop resonating. Or, more accurately: someone else is doing the vibrating, and you’re just along for the ride.
Barnes stretches out in his chair like he’s got nowhere better to be, shuffling a deck of cards with infuriating calm. His hands move slow and steady. Like he’s done this before. Like it centers him.
You don’t want to know what he needs centering from.
The silence builds, heavy and electric. Until finally, you crack.
“So,” you say, deadpan. “This is awkward.”
He doesn’t look up. Just keeps shuffling. “You think?”
“You’re taking this very well for someone who just got mentally handcuffed to basically a complete stranger.”
His jaw flexes but he only shrugs. “Not the weirdest thing that’s happened to me.”
There’s no bravado in it. Just tired truth.
You sigh. “God. What a comforting standard.”
He cuts the deck with a flick of his wrist, then holds a card out toward you without even glancing up. You narrow your eyes. Then take it anyway.
Blackjack. Of course.
“Is this how you pass time in high-security quarantine?” you mutter. “Gambling with unwilling civilians?”
“You’re not unwilling,” he replies easily. “You’re just pissed it’s your own fault you’re stuck with me, Doc.”
You open your mouth—then close it again. Because the second he says it, you feel it: a jolt of annoyance. Not just yours. A flicker of his, folded inside something steadier. Something infuriatingly composed.
Your irritation rebounds like a ricochet—hits something calm. Anchored. And softens.
You feel it. His quiet, bone-deep stillness sliding under your skin like heat through a vent. Not comforting. Not invasive. Just there.
You stare at him, breath catching. Then drop the card on the table. “God. This is real.”
He finally meets your eyes. “Yeah. It is.”
“It was just a theory. I never meant for it to get to this… But y’know, Val.”
He jerks out a nod. Your pulse kicks. “You can feel me.”
He nods once. “And you can feel me. Can’t you?”
You don’t answer right away.
Taking stock of what’s resonating through your body. A pressure you want to think is just the room, the strangeness of proximity, the humiliating weight of a containment protocol gone wrong.
But it’s not the room. It’s him.
You can feel his focus when he watches you—that heavy, unblinking heat of attention, like standing too close to a silent engine. You can feel his amusement when you snap at him, like your temper tickles something buried and patient beneath the surface. You can feel the effort it takes for him to stay back—to keep his emotional distance while you’re sitting three feet away. Like he’s building a wall in real time, plank by plank. You can feel him trying not to feel you.
Biting your lip, you take a few deep breaths, trying to calm your rapidly rising pulse. It’s intimate in the worst possible way. The kind that makes privacy a joke and pretending pointless.
Every flicker of discomfort. Of defensiveness. Of attraction—
Wait.
Your stomach flips. That wasn’t yours.
It comes in hot and sharp, a spike of want so visceral it knocks the breath out of you. Frustration tangled with something lower. Needier. You haven’t felt anything like that in months, maybe years.
For one stupid second, you want to crawl out of your skin. And then it’s gone. Or suppressed. Or masked. Or—
“You okay?” he asks.
His voice is lower now. Cautious.
You nod too fast. “Fine.”
You can tell he doesn’t buy it. Doesn’t need to. He probably feels the spike in your chest, the flicker of your pulse when it jumps. You’ve lost your poker face. And not because of the cards. God, you are never going to survive this.
“So we're just stuck here?” you ask, trying to steady your voice. “We just sit here for three days and try not to think about anything incriminating?”
He tilts his head, the corner of his mouth twitching. “That’s not really how brains work. And just a gentle reminder—you’re the one who built this little science fair nightmare.”
You groan and bury your face in your hands. “I am going to kill Dr. Yen.”
“She said it’s temporary.”
“She also said we might share dreams.”
Bucky makes a face. “Don’t dream much anymore.”
“Well, I do,” you mutter. “And I don’t need you wandering through my subconscious.”
A beat.
“You think I want you in mine?”
That shuts you up. Because no. You don’t think he wants anyone in there. Not even himself.
The silence settles again. But it’s not empty.
You can feel his discomfort now. Quiet and low-grade. But there. Wrapped around something denser. Guilt, maybe. Something that sticks. And underneath it—just barely—curiosity.
You sit back, exhaling. “We need ground rules.”
“Like what?”
“Like no thinking about sex. Or trauma. Or childhood pets.”
He snorts. “In that order?”
“Especially in that order.”
You catch the edge of a smile before he looks down again, resuming his slow, steady shuffle. The cards whisper against each other like they’re in on the joke.
You try not to notice how your chest feels a little less tight. How the noise in your head quiets when his focus drifts. How the hum beneath your skin feels less like static and more like something alive, because you’re feeling him. And—God help you—he’s feeling you.
—
The lights never fully shut off. They dim, sure, but the surveillance camera stays on, its little red eye blinking in the corner like it’s watching your soul unravel in real time. The overhead fluorescents are on a slow cycle, just soft enough to lull your brain into thinking it can rest—until the second you close your eyes and they flicker again.
You’re not sleeping. And judging by the restless way Bucky shifts on his cot every few minutes—blankets rustling, jaw grinding—he isn’t either.
The silence is loud. Not peaceful. Not companionable. Just dense. Like the air itself is waiting for one of you to say something that will tip the whole room over the edge.
You’ve tried reading. Tried meditating. Tried breathing exercises, even though you usually hate those with a passion reserved for line-cutters and PowerPoint animations.
None of it helps. Because whatever thin emotional boundary once existed between you and Bucky Barnes has long since dissolved.
His emotions creep into you like fog—quiet, heavy, invasive. You don’t get specifics, not clearly, but the mood is unmistakable. Guilt. Anger. A bone-deep ache compressed into something sharp and humming under the surface.
You feel it. And worse—you can tell he’s trying not to let you.
You roll over for the hundredth time, then give up. Sit up. Rub your hands over your face. The room feels like it’s shrinking. Or maybe it’s just the part of your brain still screaming about boundaries.
From across the room, his voice finally cuts through the quiet.
“You feel that too?”
It’s rough. Quiet. Worn raw from disuse.
You blink into the dim. “The… what? The vague, awful sense that I’m about to start crying for no reason?”
A beat.
“Yeah,” he says. “That.”
You press your fingertips to your temples. “God, is that you or me? I can’t even tell anymore.”
“Me,” he says immediately. “Sorry.”
You shake your head, rubbing your hands down your thighs. “Don’t be.”
And you mean it. Sort of.
“Do you wanna talk about it?” you ask, still not looking up. You’re not sure which one of you will flinch harder at the offer.
He’s quiet long enough that you figure it’s a no. A nerve hit. A wall closed.
Then, “No.”
You nod, the cot creaking beneath you. “Fair.”
A breath passes.
“But I might anyway,” he mutters, so low you almost miss it.
That makes you look. He’s sitting now, hunched forward with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor like it might disappear if he looks hard enough. His vibranium fingers twitch—absent, reflexive.
“It’s like…” he starts, then stops. You wait. “When I was the Soldier, there were days I didn’t feel anything. Years, probably. Just… silence. Nothing in my head but orders.”
You stay still. Hold your breath.
“And then it all came back. All at once. Like my brain had been hoarding it in a box and someone finally kicked it open. And I couldn’t breathe under it.”
The weight of it lands between you like ash.
“And this?” He looks up at last. His face isn’t cold. It isn’t angry. It’s just tired. Raw.
“This feels like that. Too much. Too close. Like I can’t shut the door.”
Your throat tightens. Because you feel it too—his overwhelm, his fear of being seen, his instinct to slam every door before someone gets inside. It isn’t unfamiliar.
His jaw ticks. His eyes stay locked on yours. “And now you’re in my head."
“And now I’m in your head,” you echo.
There’s a beat before a low, dark laugh escapes him.
“Well. Fuck me.”
You smile—tiny, reflexive. “Tempting.”
His gaze sharpens at that. And instantly, you regret it—not because of the joke, but because of the response it pulls.
Want.
It hits like a shock to the chest. Sudden. Warm. Unmasked. Not lust. Not crude. Longing.
You flinch. Inhale sharply.
He looks away fast. “Shit. That wasn’t on purpose.”
You shoot to your feet, pulse kicking. “You’re not supposed to broadcast things like that.”
“I wasn’t!” His voice rises—gritty, strained. “I’ve been locking everything down since this started. But apparently your brain’s running on the emotional equivalent of a glass wall.”
You stare at him, heat rushing up your neck. “Jesus, Bucky.”
“You think I want you to know that I—” He cuts himself off, jaw clenching hard. Shakes his head like he’s trying to shove the feeling back down his throat.
You cross your arms tightly over your chest. “I don’t want to feel this.”
“Yeah, well, me neither.”
The silence snaps tight. You stand there, two hearts hammering in unison, locked in some terrible emotional feedback loop neither of you asked for. It doesn’t break. It pulses harder.
“I think I need a wall,” you mutter. “A mental one. Like an internal firewall.”
“I tried that already,” he says. “Didn’t hold.”
You look at him. He’s watching you again. Still. And it’s not anger on his face anymore. It’s grief.
“This is a violation of literally every HR protocol in existence,” you mumble, arms still crossed.
“Good thing I don’t work here.”
You snort. It escapes before you can stop it. And you feel it—that flicker of relief from him. Small. Fleeting. But real.
You sit down hard on the edge of your cot. “I’m not good at this.”
“Neither am I.”
“I don’t want you to feel what I’m feeling.”
“I already do.”
You fall quiet. Because, for better or worse, you’re in this together now. You don’t know what’s scarier—that he can feel your loneliness. Or that you can feel his.
—
You’re dreaming.
You know it without knowing how. It’s the stillness that gives it away. Like the air is too weightless, the light too diffuse—nothing casting shadows, nothing fully real. The kind of hush that doesn’t exist in waking life.
You’re standing in a field you’ve never seen before. It’s not specific. Just green. A meadow with no wind, no scent, no sound. Every color softened at the edges like an unfinished rendering. It doesn’t feel like anything.
And that’s what tells you it’s yours. A liminal space. Peaceful. Barely conscious.
You close your eyes. And that’s when you feel it. A presence. A pulse.
Not in the dream—in you. Tapping against your thoughts like someone knocking softly on the inside of your skull.
Not words. Not movement. Just pressure. Steady. Coiled. Heavy with something unsaid.
Your eyes open. You turn in place, scanning the edges of the field, expecting—Nothing.
But the weight gets stronger. You feel it in your chest. Low. Familiar. Tense.
Bucky.
But you don’t see him. You just know he’s close. Or maybe not even close. Maybe just… bleeding in.
Your dream flickers.
A breeze picks up—impossible in a dream that’s never moved before. The grass ripples once, unnatural and out of sync, like the physics here are starting to break.
Your pulse stutters. And then—
It hits.
The air tears. The color drops. The field vanishes like someone cuts the feed.
And suddenly you’re underground.
A corridor. Narrow. Stained concrete walls. The ceiling is low, the light sharp blue and sterile. The air tastes like iron and rust. You stumble. Your knees scrape. You catch yourself on a wall that shouldn’t be cold, but is. It’s disorienting. Wrong. You know this isn’t your dream.
It’s his.
“Bucky?” you call out.
No answer. But the pressure behind your ribs spikes. You push forward anyway. Each step echoes. Your own, but also—his. Mismatched. Heavy. You turn a corner and see him.
He’s not looking at you. He’s walking in the opposite direction, body rigid, head bowed, like he’s being led. Or dragged.
He’s not dressed like the man you know. No tactical black. No soft tee and boots. Just bare arms and restraints. Fresh bruises. The remnants of blood not his own.
He’s not Bucky. Not here.
You try to speak but your voice fails. He turns the corner ahead. You follow.
The room you enter is stark. Cold. A chair in the center—stripped down and inhuman. Restraints hanging like dead vines. A spotlight fixed directly above it.
He’s standing beside it now, still not looking at you. The air is too still. Too thick. The bond hums so loudly you want to scream. And then he speaks.
“Don’t look.”
You freeze. His voice is quiet. Barely audible. But it’s him.
He still won’t face you.
“Bucky, this isn’t—”
“I said don’t look,” he says again. Sharper this time. A command—not to control you, but to protect himself. To hide. “You don’t want to see this.”
But it’s too late. The dream—his memory—wraps around you like wire. Sharp and invasive. You feel it like it’s your own. Not a picture. Not a scene. A flood.
Pain. Control. The snap of identity stripped away. Screams that echo without sound. The weight of command phrases burned into neural pathways like rot beneath the skin.
You stagger backward. But the bond holds. You feel it all. The moment he gave up trying to remember his name. The moment he forgot why it mattered.
“Please,” he says. He’s still facing away from you. Shoulders tense. Fists clenched.
“I’m sorry,” you whisper, tears blurring the edges of the dream.
“This isn’t yours,” he grits out. “You shouldn’t be here.”
You take a step closer anyway. That makes him turn. Not all the way. Just enough for you to see it—his face. Younger. Blank. Terrified.
“I didn’t want you to see,” he gestures to himself. “This.”
“I didn’t mean to,” you say, voice shaking. “I fell asleep and… you pulled me in.”
He winces. Like that makes it worse.
“I tried not to,” he admits. “I’m sorry.”
You reach out, slowly, not to touch him—just to offer your hand. Because right now, you’re in this together. And the bond doesn’t care what either of you want.
His gaze flicks to it. Then to you. His jaw flexes. And he takes it.
The second your fingers touch, the dream shudders. The restraints flicker. The chair vanishes. The floor beneath you cracks—just hairline fractures, like the nightmare is losing hold.
“I’m still here,” you say.
“I know,” he says softly.
And then—
—
You jolt upright in your cot, heart hammering. Breath sharp. Palms sweaty.
Across the room, Bucky sits up just as fast—like something yanked him out of deep water. He’s already breathing hard, sweat darkening the collar of his shirt, jaw clenched like it might hold something back if he just bites down hard enough.
You lock eyes. Neither of you speak. Not at first. The air is thick with something raw and invisible. Or the kind of silence that settles after a confession neither of you wanted to make.
He runs a hand over his face. “So. That happened.”
“Yeah,” you rasp.
You don’t say what that was. You don’t need to. You felt it. Lived it. Not as a witness. Not even as a passenger. As a part of him. And now you can’t un-feel it. Can’t shove it into a clean corner labeled ‘his problem’. It’s in you now. In your chest. Threaded through your ribs like something grafted there on instinct.
You shift slightly, fingers curling into the edge of the blanket, grounding yourself in anything that isn’t his memory. But it doesn’t help. The emotional weight is still there, even as the dream fades. A dull ache under your skin. The echo of metal restraints and too-bright lights.
He exhales, rough and low. “I didn’t want you to see that.”
You don’t answer right away. Instead, you lie back slowly, eyes on the ceiling. Cold. Pockmarked. Real. And for the first time since this started, you stop trying to block him out. Because the truth is, you don’t want to. Even now, with the weight of what you saw still lodged somewhere between your lungs. You don’t want to pretend you didn’t see him.
“It’s not your fault,” you murmur. “That I saw it.”
“No. But it’s still mine.”
You turn your head. He’s staring at the floor now, hands braced on his knees, elbows sharp beneath the sleeves of his shirt. His metal fingers twitch slightly. Barely a motion, but it radiates with tension. You feel that, too. Of course you do.
“Do you think if we sleep again…” you start, then trail off.
He finishes it. “We’ll go back?”
You nod once.
He shrugs. “Don’t know. I’ve never had to share a nightmare before.”
You breathe in. Then out. Neither of you moves.
The hum of the overhead lights seems louder now. The surveillance camera ticks faintly in the corner. Somewhere, two hearts beat in rhythm without trying.
“I’m not tired,” you say.
He glances up at you. “Me neither.”
It’s a lie, on both ends. You can feel it in your body. The ache. The heaviness. The way your limbs sink just a little deeper into the mattress. But sleep isn’t safe now. Not when it might mean pulling each other into things neither of you are ready to carry, let alone share.
You sit up again. Curl your legs under you. Bucky shifts to do the same. It’s not planned. It just happens.
No one speaks for a while. And then—
“I’m sorry you had to,” he starts, so quietly it barely lands. “Feel that.”
The words linger, fragile but deliberate. They hang in the air like breath held too long.
Bucky doesn’t look at you. Not right away. His shoulders stay tight, his stare pinned to the floor like he’s trying to unsee what he knows you saw.
You study him. And something shifts in your chest. It’s not sympathy. Not even admiration. It’s deeper than that. Stranger. Something close to awe—and not the clean kind. The complicated kind. The kind that unsettles.
Because now you’ve seen him. Not the soldier. Not the sarcasm and shadow. The person. The fear. The memory. The grief.
And somehow, that makes him feel… real. Not more fragile. Not smaller. Just clearer. You’re seeing him now in a way you hadn’t before. And it’s doing something to you.
Is it the link?
You want to say yes. Want to blame the synaptic bleed, the proximity, the dream. Want to label it as data and side effects and bad timing. But deep down, you’re not sure. Not anymore.
You shift. Your voice, when it comes, is quieter than before.
“Do you have them a lot?”
He stills for a beat too long. Then he exhales, the sound low. “Used to. Nightly. For years.”
You nod, eyes tracing the seam of your blanket. “But not anymore?”
“Not like that,” he admits.
Something in your chest lifts, but only a little.
“So…” you hesitate, careful not to make it sound like anything more than what it is.
“Was it easier this time? With me there?”
This time, he looks up. Direct. Steady. No evasion. His voice is quiet. Almost reluctant. “Yeah.”
You blink. It shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t land the way it does. But it does. Because it means something. Or it might. Or maybe it only feels like it does because your brain is lit up on synthetic empathy and shared neural architecture. But still. It means something.
You nod, barely. “Okay.”
You don’t say what’s spinning in your chest: I see you now. I don’t want to look away. I don’t know if that’s you or me or both.
You can feel that he doesn’t want to ask either. Not yet. So neither of you does.
You both just sit there, in the dimmed silence. The bond—a quiet, pulsing presence between your ribs. And this time, you don’t try to shut it out. You just let yourself feel it. Feel him.
—
You wake up suddenly—hot, restless, throat dry. Your skin is flushed. Your pulse a little too fast. Your legs tangled in the blanket like you were shifting more than sleeping. It takes you a second to orient. The cot. The hum of the lights. And the slow burn pulsing under your skin.
You press your palms to your eyes. Shit.
You’re not dreaming anymore, but your body hasn’t gotten the message. Everything feels hypersensitive. Like someone turned up the volume on every nerve ending and forgot to turn it back down.
You exhale. Try to steady your breathing. But then your gaze shifts—and you see him.
Bucky’s still sitting where he was when you drifted off. Back against the wall. He looks calm, but there’s a sharpness in the set of his jaw, a tension in his posture.
He never went to sleep. He’s watching you now. Quiet. Steady. Like he already knows what you’re feeling.
You shift upright on the cot, trying to tamp it down—the warmth low in your belly, the ache that has no business being this loud, this early, in a lab-grade holding cell with your unintentional telepathic security detail.
“Did I…” you start, voice scratchy, “did I fall asleep again?”
He nods, slow. “Around four. You didn’t mean to.”
Your mouth goes dry. “Did you…?”
“No. You didn’t dream loud enough this time.”
It’s a joke. You think.
But then he tilts his head a fraction, brows drawing slightly together. “You feel… okay?”
You hesitate. Because yes. You do feel okay. You feel too okay. Your heart is kicking a little faster than it should and you know without looking in a mirror that your pupils are probably dilated.
There’s no fear. No adrenaline. Just— Want. Need. Aching. And you’re not entirely sure where it’s coming from.
“I feel… weird,” you murmur.
He shifts a little. You feel the ripple before you see it.
“Yeah,” he says. “Same.”
You glance at him again and your stomach flips. Because now that you’re paying attention, you can feel it. The thrum. The tension. That low, slow ache in your bloodstream that isn’t just yours anymore.
You clear your throat. “This doesn’t feel…emotional.”
“No,” he agrees. His voice is lower now. Rough. “It feels physical.”
Your breath catches. You both look away at the same time. The air thickens.
And then the door hisses open.
Dr. Yen steps in like a fire alarm, holding her tablet like a shield. “Morning,” she says briskly. “Vitals check.”
You sit still while she scans you. Bucky does too. Her eyes narrow slightly as she reads, her mouth pressing into a thin line.
Then she sighs. “Okay. So. Bit of a development.”
You wince, already bracing for whatever comes next.
“The bond’s progressing faster than expected. Your convergence scores are spiking well ahead of baseline. You’re already presenting signs of full-spectrum neural and somatic reciprocity.”
You blink. “Somatic?”
Yen nods. “Body-based responses. Sympathetic systems syncing. Neurochemical fluctuations. Endocrine bleed.”
You just stare.
Bucky crosses his arms. “Translation?”
“You’re not just feeling each other’s moods anymore,” Yen says. “You’re reacting to each other’s hormones.”
You freeze.
“So this…?” you ask, gesturing vaguely to your whole overheated, vibrating situation.
She nods. “Elevated oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin—both of you. You’re experiencing mutual physiological… arousal.”
You swear under your breath. Bucky exhales through his nose, sharp.
Yen scrolls. “This is accelerating. You may experience projection next. Sensory cross-talk. Physical feedback from imagined stimuli.”
You and Bucky don’t move.
“You mean—” you start.
“Yes,” she says. “If one of you starts thinking about something… the other might feel it.”
You shut your eyes. Hard. Bucky shifts.
Yen closes the tablet. “We’re working on a counter-agent. In the meantime—stay calm. Avoid escalation. Try not to, y’know, spiral.”
She gives you both a tight smile that’s not a smile and ducks out the door.
The moment it hisses shut, silence slams back into place. You don’t look at him. He doesn’t look at you. But you feel each other. Your blood still buzzes, warm and quick, like something is sparking just under the surface.
“I need a cold shower,” you mutter.
“If you’re feeling what I’m feeling,” he says, voice low and tight, “that’s not gonna help.”
Neither of you laughs. Because it’s not funny anymore.
You don’t move and neither does he. You stay on opposite cots, both too still, both too aware. You can feel the bond buzzing like a live wire behind your ribs—no longer subtle, no longer background noise.
Not just his mood. Not just tension or restraint. His thoughts. Vague, half-formed shapes brushing up against your mind like fogged glass. You don’t get detail, not really—but there’s pressure behind it. Focus. Heat.
You swallow. Hard.
He shifts again, one leg stretching out, and your eyes flick to the motion without meaning to. Just his hand. Just his thigh. Just some insane amount of muscle in a pair of extremely not regulation sweatpants. And that’s when it hits you. A spike of awareness.
Low. Sharp. Direct.
Not yours. Yours now, but not originally.
Your breath stutters. Because that wasn’t your thought. That was his. You close your eyes, but it doesn’t help.
Now you can feel it more clearly: the way his thoughts catch on your bare legs, on your neck, on the way you just bit your bottom lip without realizing it.
The image forms before you can stop it. Your body reacting to his body. His gaze. His mind. A flash of heat coils low in your stomach. You shift suddenly. Sharp, fast, like that might reset something. It doesn’t.
He feels the shift in you. You know he does. You feel his whole body tense in response. The link thrums, nearly audible in your skull.
“Stop,” you whisper, breath catching.
“I didn’t mean to,” he says, voice hoarse.
You press your palm to your sternum. It’s like trying to press out a heartbeat that isn’t even yours.
“I can feel it when you look at me like that,” you mutter.
“I’m trying not to,” he says through gritted teeth.
“Well, try harder,” you snap—but it’s shaky, breathless.
Your thighs press together unconsciously. And that, he feels. He lets out a breath—low, ragged, like it hurts to hold it.
“Don’t do that,” he says.
“Don’t what?” you snap, voice high and tight.
“That. The thing with your legs.”
You go still. And the heat spikes. The thought now forming in your head is yours. It’s real. Immediate. Something to do with him between your knees, his hands on your hips, his mouth at your throat. The sound he’d make if you pulled his shirt off. The look in his eyes when—
He jerks upright like he’s been electrocuted.
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters, scrubbing a hand over his face.
You slap a hand over your own mouth, mortified. “I didn’t mean to think that.”
“I know,” he growls.
And still—your body pulses. That awful, exquisite feedback loop. Want ricocheting back and forth until you don’t know whose it was to begin with.
You drag your blanket up like its armor. “We can’t do this.”
“No,” he agrees immediately. “We can’t.”
You lock eyes. And don’t look away.
The silence that follows is different now. Charged. Taut. It’s not that the attraction is new. It’s that there’s nowhere left to hide it. No denial. No wall. Just each other. You lie back slowly, exhaling through your nose. Trying to calm your heart. Trying not to think of him. It doesn’t work.
Bucky’s breathing is heavier now. Not dramatic—but deeper. Controlled. You feel it against your own skin. You know—you know—he’s thinking about you too. But neither of you moves. Not yet.
Your heart won’t settle. It keeps pushing against your ribs like it wants to say something first. And then, before you can stop yourself:
“You drive me insane.” The words hang there. Blunt. True.
Bucky shifts slightly on his cot, but doesn’t speak.
“Not in the way you’re thinking, but okay—in that way too.” You pull the blanket tighter around you, trying to hold your voice steady. “You’re cold. Condescending. You don’t say anything unless it’s to poke a hole in something I’ve spent months building.”
His mouth twitches. “You’re a scientist who’s not used to people poking holes?”
“I’m not used to people doing it like you.” You glare at the ceiling. “You just—show up. And stare. And judge. And then disappear before I can even argue back.”
He exhales through his nose. “And you like arguing.”
“That’s not the point.”
“It feels like the point.”
You turn your head and look at him. “You didn’t even stay for the full hearing. Just blew it up and walked out.”
He meets your eyes. “Didn’t need to.”
Your chest tightens. “God. You’re impossible.”
There’s a long pause.
And then he says, quieter: “You were right, though. About the link. About what it could be.”
You blink.
“I didn’t go to that hearing to get in your way,” he says. “I went because what you said scared the hell out of me.”
“Right,” you mutter. “Thanks.”
He shakes his head. “No. I mean—it was good. You were right. You had every angle covered. You didn’t flinch. And the more I thought about it afterward…”
His eyes lift to yours.
“About you.”
Your stomach flips.
He leans forward slightly, elbows on his knees. “So when Val mentioned they needed an internal breach detail at the site—”
“You asked for this assignment,” you state, stunned.
He nods once. “Yeah.”
Silence stretches again—but now it’s different. There’s heat in it. Yes. But also something else. Something real.
Your head falls to your hands in defeat. “I don’t want to like you.”
“Yeah. That’s not working out too well for me either,” Bucky mutters lowly.
You peek up at him through your fingers. “This is a disaster.”
His mouth twitches. “A highly classified, emotionally compromising disaster.”
You stare at him. And he stares right back. Something hums between you, low and molten. Not as sharp as before—but deeper now. Grounded in knowing. Seeing. Feeling. Your eyes flick to his mouth. Just for a second. Just long enough to make it dangerous.
He sees it. Of course he does.
“Don’t,” he says softly.
“Don’t what?”
“That.”
You blink, innocent. “Look at you?”
“Look at me like that.”
You tilt your head, heart pounding. “Like what?”
“Like you want to see what else I’m hiding under these very official sweatpants.”
You suck in a sharp breath. A flush climbs up your neck before you can stop it.
“I wasn’t—”
“You were.”
You narrow your eyes. “You’re imagining things.”
“You’re broadcasting things,” he says, voice low and rough around the edges. “Loud.”
You shift on the cot and feel his breath hitch now.
It’s too much. Too close. And it’s not the bond anymore. Not entirely.
“You think about it too,” you say quietly.
He nods, once. “All the time now it seems.”
You don’t know if you want to slap him or kiss him—or let him press you back against the wall and do everything you’ve already imagined and more.
“So what the hell are we supposed to do about it?”
He smiles—just barely. It’s crooked. Dangerous.
“Nothing reckless.”
You lift a brow. “You’re telling me not to be impulsive?”
“I’m telling you not to do anything you’ll regret.”
You lean forward, like you’re settling into something casual. But you know what you’re doing. You can’t help yourself. You know he can feel it—your heat, your hunger, your restraint wrapped in silk.
“Then maybe stop giving me reasons to want to,” you murmur, voice light. Teasing.
His jaw ticks. His eyes darken. The silence that follows is sharp. Not a pause. Not a delay. A held breath.
You smile, small and smug, and stand up slowly—too slowly.
“Anyway,” you say, heading toward the small attached bathroom, “I’m going to take a cold shower and try to remember I’m a professional with several advanced degrees.”
You stop in the doorway. Look back over your shoulder, just enough to make sure he’s still watching.
He is.
“Try not to think about me while I’m in there,” you add, voice all fake innocence. And then you shut the door behind you.
—-
The water is cold. Brutally so. You step into the spray like it’s punishment—hands braced against the tile, jaw locked, breath held.
Because you’re still trying to wrap your head around the words that just tumbled out of your mouth a minute ago and why the fuck you even said them. The heat in your body needs to burn off or be drowned, and freezing water feels like your last rational defense.
It doesn’t work.
You gasp as it hits your skin—tight, cutting, and sharp. Your nipples pebble instantly. Your muscles tighten. But the cold doesn’t pull you out of it. It sharpenes it.
Every drop feels like a shock, like a wire pulled taut under your skin. Your thighs clench. Your breath trembles. Because Bucky is still out there.
And you can still feel him. Not with your hands. Not with your eyes. But with your mind. Your body. The thread still connects you. Hot under the cold. Deep under the logic. It pulses low in your belly, electric and alive. Dragging your thoughts right back to him.
You try to redirect—try to count the tiles on the wall, name the amino acids in a protein chain, recite your grant proposal backwards.
But your body betrays you. Your hips rock, searching for friction that doesn’t exist. Your hand drags down your chest without permission, sliding over wet skin, slick nipples, the curve of your stomach.
And suddenly he’s there. Not really. Not consciously. But you feel him. Watching. Wanting.
And worse—you want him to.
You bite your lip, hard. Try to shut it down. But your hand keeps moving. Between your thighs now. Water trailing down your skin like a thousand fingertips. The ache blooming sharp and impossible. You press your palm to yourself, just for a moment. Just to quiet it.
But something flares like it’s hungry too.
Your legs almost buckle. Shit. Shit. He felt that. You pant against the tile, eyes squeezed shut.
You can feel his attention spike like a spotlight behind your eyes—his breath, his pulse, the jagged edge of his restraint grinding against yours. You try to pull back. You try. But now you’re imagining it.
The wall behind you pressing into your shoulder blades. His mouth dragging heat up your neck. One hand on your hip—no, both hands. One flesh, one metal, holding you still while he whispers how much he’s been thinking about this.
How he knew you were going to touch yourself in the shower. How he wanted to be the reason you couldn’t help it.
Your breath hitches. A whimper escapes you. Just a sound, high and desperate and real. A surge.
The sensation that hits you is dizzying—like your nerves are suddenly on fire, like your own want is being echoed back tenfold.
You slap the water off fast, heart hammering. Your skin prickles as the cold air licks over it. You lean your forehead against the tile, panting. You’re shaking. Not from the cold. Not from fear. From restraint. From everything you didn’t let yourself do. And everything you know he felt anyway.
You press your hands over your face.
“Fuck.”
You stay like that for a long moment. Trying to breathe. Trying to pull yourself back into your body. Into the present. But even now, with the water off and your hands gripping the edge of the sink, you can feel the bond pulsing low behind your navel like it’s waiting. Like he’s waiting. And worst of all— You’re thinking about opening the door.
You want to know if he’s sitting there as wrecked as you are.
But you don’t yet. You reach for the towel. Wipe your face. Pull it tight around your body like it might hold you together. And you promise yourself you’ll be calm when you step back out there.
You wait a full minute before stepping out of the bathroom. You make sure your skin is mostly dry, your breathing sort of steady, and your towel tightly secured like a barrier that might still mean something. You open the door like you’re composed. You’re not. But it doesn’t matter.
Because the second you step into the room, you know. Bucky’s posture is wrecked. No more monk-like stillness. No more composed soldier routine. He’s pacing. Shoulders tense. Shirt clinging to him in places like he’s been sweating. His jaw is tight. His hands—both of them—are curled into fists like he’s holding back from breaking something. Or doing something.
His head snaps up the second he sees you. And then—he stops moving altogether. Freezes.
You feel it before he says a word: the punch of arousal, the crash of restraint, the friction of denial and desire grinding together behind his ribs like a blade.
His eyes sweep over you. Just once. Slowly.
The towel. The water still glistening along your collarbone. The flush on your cheeks that has nothing to do with temperature.
You feel his restraint falter—just for a breath—and it slams into your chest like a jolt of electricity.
“You…” he says, then stops. Swallows. His voice is hoarse. “That wasn’t fair.”
You blink, playing innocent. “What wasn’t?”
He steps forward once. Not touching. Not even close. But the bond pulls at you like gravity.
“So you felt that,” you say lightly, trying not to lose your footing on the slick edge of this moment.
He lets out a sharp breath. “You think I somehow didn’t feel that?”
The tension crackles between you—raw and thick and already past the point of pretending.
“I tried to shut it down,” you murmur.
He laughs. Just once. Bitter and breathless. “Yeah, I could tell ya tried really hard, sweetheart.”
You grip the edge of the towel a little tighter. “So what, you just sat there and…?”
His gaze drops to your mouth. And stays there.
You feel the burn of it behind your knees, in the pit of your stomach, deep between your thighs where the ache hasn’t fully gone away.
Your voice comes out smaller than you mean for it to. “And?”
His jaw clenches. His nostrils flare. You feel him fighting it again—fighting you. But he doesn’t lie.
“I wanted to come in there.”
The breath leaves your lungs in a shudder.
“I wanted to touch you,” he says, stepping closer. His voice drops lower. “Everywhere you were touching yourself.”
You swallow hard.
“But I didn’t,” he adds roughly.
You look up at him. “Why?”
His eyes search yours. Not angry. Not even pleading. Just—holding back.
“Because if I had…” He exhales, jaw tight. “I wouldn’t have stopped.”
The silence that follows isn’t empty. Your body hums. Your fingers dig into the towel like it’s the last shield between you and a decision you might not be ready to unmake. And all you can do is whisper:
“…Okay.”
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t touch you. But something shifts in his posture—like he’s caught between instinct and decision, body wired forward even as his mind throws up a stop sign.
You see it all happen. The way his eyes flick to your mouth. The way his breaths become deeper. The way every muscle in him says yes while the rest of him fights to say no.
And then, finally—he steps back. One short, sharp step. Like distance will save either of you.
“Shit,” he mutters, dragging a hand through his hair. “We can’t.”
Your heart punches your ribs. “Why not?”
He doesn’t look at you right away. Just shakes his head, pacing once, hands flexing.
“You just came out of the shower like that, thinking what you were thinking, and I—” He stops. “I felt everything. You know that, right?” he repeats yet again.
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“I know. And that’s the fucking problem.”
You blink. “So what, now you’re mad about it?”
“No,” he snaps. “I’m not mad. I’m trying not to lose my goddamn mind.”
You fold your arms over the towel. “You think this is easy for me?”
“I think our minds are so fried that we can’t tell what’s ours and what’s this,” he bites, gesturing between you two. “And if I touch you right now, I don’t know whose choice I’m making. Yours, mine, or the damn compound’s.”
That stops you. Because he’s right. Because you don’t even know anymore.
His voice drops. Still rough. Still wrecked.
“I’m not gonna take advantage of something that’s most likely not real. Not with you.”
You shift your weight, heartbeat hammering. You want to argue. You want to push. But part of you respects the hell out of it. So you just nod once. Clipped.
“Fine.”
His mouth twitches. Not quite a smile. More like restraint in physical form.
“Fine.”
And that’s it. You don’t close the distance. You don’t say anything else. You just turn away, heart still racing, skin still hot, towel still clutched like armor, and try like hell to pretend your body isn’t already halfway to betraying you again.
—-
Just perfect. Now there’s only a few more hours of pretending you’re not fully horny for the government-assigned menace in the corner.
You’re sitting cross-legged on the cot, earbuds in, blasting white noise loud enough to drown out your own thoughts—and hopefully his. It doesn’t work.
You can still feel him pacing. The slow, deliberate kind, like he’s working something out of his system. Like he’s hunting a problem he can’t solve. You can feel the heat of his attention every time your shirt rides up when you stretch. Every time you shift just a little too far sideways and your thigh brushes bare against cool air.
Every time your breath catches and his does, too. You know what he’s thinking. Or trying not to think.
So you decide to mess with him.
You think louder—sweet and smug, like you’re painting it across the bond on purpose: That shirt looks really good on you, soldier.
He flinches. Physically. And then stops pacing.
You smirk, tug the hem of your shirt down with exaggerated innocence. Small victories.
But then he drops to the floor and starts doing pushups. Which is so not fair.
You glance over and immediately regret it. His shirt stretches across his back like it’s apologizing to no one. Sweat clings at the collar. His arms flex, contract, flex again—slow and steady. Every controlled breath pushes heat through the bond.
You are trying to read a report. You are actively attempting productivity. But it’s hard when every line blurs around the mental image of his hands braced on either side of your head. You close the file. Try again.
He switches to pull-ups on an overhead bar. You throw your tablet at the wall.
“You’re doing that on purpose.”
He doesn’t stop. “Doing what?”
“Weaponizing your arms.”
His mouth twitches. “Maybe I’m just trying to stay in shape.”
You scowl. “This is psychological warfare.”
“You started it.”
You grab a pillow and launch it at his head. He dodges without breaking rhythm.
“Unbelievable.”
Later, you fall asleep. Not on purpose. Just long enough for your body to betray you. The dream is hot. Too hot. Lips at your throat, a mouth on your hipbone, hands everywhere you shouldn’t want them. You wake up gasping, sweat pooling at the base of your spine.
And he’s watching you. Sitting in the corner, arms folded, expression like stone. Except for his eyes. His eyes are a slow burn. He doesn’t say anything. But you feel it. The echo of your dream still pinging between you. Not graphic—just emotional residue. A leftover ache.
And maybe the worst part is: you feel his too.
The loneliness under it. The way he felt it right along with you. The part of him that wanted it to be real. To be his hands. His mouth. His weight on top of you instead of the memory of a shared hallucination. You shift on the cot, heart still pounding.
“Did you…?” you ask.
He doesn’t move. Just nods once. “Yeah.”
You pull your knees to your chest and try not to shake.
Five hours in, you almost lose it.
You’re pretending to read again. You’re biting the inside of your cheek to keep your breathing steady. He’s sitting on the other cot now, towel around his neck, shirt wrung out and tossed somewhere in the corner like it wronged him personally. His skin is flushed. His forearms are braced on his knees. His head is tipped back slightly.
You can feel it through the bond—he’s trying not to think about how your skin looked glistening after the shower. Trying not to remember the sound you made. You try to be good. You really do. But then you snap.
“You have to stop thinking about my mouth.”
You don’t even look up. You don’t have to. There’s a long pause.
“I’m not,” he says.
You glance over. He’s biting his lip. You both groan.
He covers his face with one hand. “Okay, you have to stop doing the thing with your tongue.”
“What thing?”
He waves a hand vaguely. “That thing you do when you’re concentrating. You lick your bottom lip slowly like you’re trying to kill me.”
You throw a blanket at him. He catches it with a smug little grin, but you feel the way his chest tightens under it. The way he’s fighting not to lean into the tether—into the pull of you.
You flop onto your cot face-first. “This is the worst horny hostage situation I’ve ever been in.”
“Been in many?”
You scream a muffled “FUCK” into the mattress.
His chuckle is low. Rough. Warm.
It rolls down your spine like a confession you weren’t ready to hear. And when your hand slips between your thighs a minute later, just to relieve the pressure, just to breathe, you feel his breath hitch in your mind.
“Stop.” His voice cuts through the air, hoarse. Strained. Not angry—pleading.
You freeze. But don’t pull away.
“I can’t,” you whisper.
A pause. Heavy. Loaded.
“You can.”
You roll your head toward him, half-lidded, flushed, and exhale: “Then say it.”
He doesn’t answer.
“Tell me not to touch myself,” you say. “But say it like you mean it.”
You feel his restraint buckle. The desire choking the back of his throat. You move your hand again, slow, under the blanket. The wet slide of your fingers deliberate.
“You already know what I’m thinking,” he grits out.
“Say it anyway.”
He’s still across the room, sitting rigid on the cot, fists clenched on his knees like it’s the only way to stop himself from moving.
You close your eyes and moan—quiet, bitten-off. You can’t help it.
And that’s when it breaks him.
“God,” he growls. “You don’t know what you’re doing to me.”
“I have some idea,” you tease back and squeeze your eyes shut.
And in your mind, you can feel a switch flip in his.
There’s a sudden metallic crack—a sharp, violent sound that echoes off the walls. Your eyes fly open. The security camera in the corner is shattered—glass fractured, wires exposed, the red recording light extinguished. His chest is heaving, fists clenched like he didn’t even think before moving.
“I want to be over there,” he rushes out hoarsely. “I want to rip that sheet off and watch you fall apart for me.”
Your breath stops but he keeps going, like his tongue is unable to stop.
“I want your legs open. Want your fingers soaked because you were thinking about my mouth.”
He rises, takes one step forward, then stops himself—grabbing the edge of the table like it might anchor him. You whimper.
“I’d put my hand between your thighs,” he says, lower now. Rougher. “Press my fingers into you until you begged me to fuck you.”
Your mind hums, white hot. You feel it in your ribs, your spine, your throat.
“You’d take it, wouldn’t you?” he murmurs. “All of it. My fingers, my cock—”
You cry out softly, thighs twitching, chasing friction.
“I’d have your back arched and your hands in my hair and you wouldn’t even be able to say my name without sobbing.”
You grind down harder now, pulse pounding in your ears. You feel him feeling you—his hips twitching, cock hard and aching, brain flooded with everything you’re giving him.
“Touch your clit,” he commands.
You do. Gasping. The pleasure punches through your body like a current.
“Just like that,” he says, voice shaking. “Rub slow. You don’t need to come yet. I want to hear you say what you want.”
“You already know,” you choke out.
“Tell me, doll,” he says again, dark, wanting. “Tell me how wet you are.”
You almost sob. “So wet—Jesus—Bucky—”
“That’s it,” he says. “Let me hear it. I want every filthy sound you’ve got.”
You move faster, breath catching, the heat coiling tight and hard and close.
“I’d eat you out so slowly you’d scream. Then fuck you with my fingers until you begged for more. You want that?”
“Yes.”
“You want my cock?”
“Yes.”
“You want me to come in you, fill you, make you feel it for hours?”
Your whole body locks—back arching, legs tightening—
And you shatter.
White-hot pleasure rips through you, shattering like glass behind your ribs—louder and deeper than anything you’ve ever felt. It’s not just the orgasm. It’s also his body responding to yours, his want echoing through every nerve ending like a second heartbeat.
You can feel what you’re doing to him. The hunger. The ache. The way his restraint unravels with every sound you make, every twitch of your fingers.
The bond lights up like an explosion—flooding both of you. There’s no separation. No inside or outside. Just youandhimyouandhimyouandhim in one long, gasping pulse of release.
His groan is feral. Raw. Wrecked. You’re still trembling when you open your eyes. And he’s right there.
Closer than he was. Right in front of you. Breathing hard, eyes dark, hands clenched like it took everything in him not to touch you. Not to throw himself into the wreckage and keep going.
He’s about to move. About to drop to his knees. About to make good on every filthy promise he just breathed into your bones—
Then a chime sounds at the door.
You both freeze. A beat. Then Dr. Yen’s voice comes crisply over the intercom.
“Just a heads up—I’ll be entering the room in ten seconds for dampener prep. Try to look less… elevated.”
You let out a strangled noise and yank the blanket over your face, legs still shaking.
The door hisses open. Light spills in. Footsteps. Dr. Yen walks in like she didn’t just catch you mid-meltdown.
“Good evening,” she says, clipboard in hand, eyes respectfully trained downward. “Time for neural dampener administration.”
Bucky turns away like he’s been gut-punched. You lie there in silence, half-covered, half-exposed, pulse still thundering.
Dr. Yen pauses. Looks up.
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t just watch both your biometric readings spike like you ran a marathon while getting tased.”
You groan louder.
She sighs. “I’ll return in ten minutes with the equipment. Maybe try some breathing exercises.”
She turns and walks out, boots clicking.
The door shuts, and the silence she leaves behind could crush a mountain. You’re both wrecked. Glowing. Silent. Not comfortable. Not even heavy. But pressurized. You shift on the cot. Pick at the edge of the blanket, like you’re unthreading a thought. You cough once. Clear your throat.
“So…” you say. Then instantly regret it.
Bucky doesn’t look up from where he’s now sitting, arms braced, jaw tight. His eyes are fixed on some invisible point across the room.
You try again, softer this time. “That was… intense.” Still nothing.
You roll your eyes at yourself. “God, sorry. That sounded like the end of a bad first date.”
Finally, his voice cuts through the silence. Low. Flat.
“I shouldn’t have said what I said.”
You blink. “What, the part where you told me everything you wanted to do to me while I was—?”
He exhales sharply. “Don’t.”
You pause. Watch him. “Why?”
“Because it wasn’t fair,” he mutters. “I didn’t have to make it worse.”
“You didn’t make it worse.”
He glances at you. Briefly.
And you feel it—what he won’t say. The guilt. The self-loathing. The fear that he wanted it more than he should’ve, and the shame that he let himself say so.
You try to keep your voice light. “It hasn’t been all bad, you know. Feeling like this.”
Something flickers in him—shame, maybe. Sadness. But it’s gone before you can name it.
“It’s not real,” he says. “You know that.”
You shift again. “You think I can’t tell the difference?”
“I don’t know, Doc. But you should. You wrote the fucking book on it!” He’s not angry. Just tired.
“You’re reacting to a synthetic neurochemical tether.” He says it like he’s quoting a file. “It wires your empathy straight into mine and floods your body with cross-sensory feedback. Of course it feels like something.”
“Yeah,” you say. “It feels like you. Like… warm static. I didn’t think I’d get used to it, but I have.”
His jaw clenches.
Something bracing inside him tickles through your bones. Like he’s locking the door before you even finish knocking.
You hesitate, before adding, carefully, “Maybe that’s not so terrible.”
He turns toward you now, finally, and there’s something in his face—tired, closed off, already half gone.
“Look,” he sighs. “In a few hours, you’re going to feel normal again. This’ll wear off, we’ll detox. And you’ll go back to thinking I’m a prick.”
You stare at him. “Is that really what you think I’m going to walk away with?”
“It’s what I’ll walk away with,” he says.
How certain he is bounces back at you. The way he’s already convinced himself this was a mistake. Not just a misstep, but a flaw in his wiring. Something he’s trying to undo before it’s too late and your resolve starts to melt.
His voice softens, but not in a comforting way. In that quiet, beaten-down way that says he’s already written the ending and doesn’t want to hear another version.
“I crossed a line,” he says. “And you’re going to wake up tomorrow and wish I hadn’t.”
You feel it. In your ribs, your throat, your teeth. Not the tension from before—but a dull, hollow echo of finality. He believes this.
You don’t answer. There’s nothing left to say that won’t bounce off the wall he’s putting back up. You nod once. Slowly. Then lie back on the cot and turn your face to the wall. The link hums faintly behind your ribs—tender, uncertain. But you don’t follow it. You just let the silence settle between you again. Thicker than before. Colder. Final.
—
You’re sitting across from him when the door opens. Same cots. Same sterile walls. Same ten feet of silence between you. You haven’t looked at him but you still feel him linked. Quiet, almost gentle now. Like it knows it’s dying. A breath too deep. A flicker of guilt. A spike of regret. It doesn’t matter that he won’t meet your eyes.
Dr. Yen steps into the room with her tablet in one hand and a hard-sided case in the other. She’s in scrubs this time. Hair tied back. Movements clipped and practiced.
You don’t speak. Neither does he.
The case opens with a soft click. Two injectors inside, small and sleek. She pulls one out and checks the dosage.
“Once administered, the dampener will suppress all synthetic limbic resonance. You’ll feel a shift within thirty seconds. Disassociation. Numbness. Maybe a little nausea.”
You exhale through your nose.
“And then?”
She meets your eyes. “Then the link breaks.”
You nod. She walks to you first.
“Roll up your sleeve,” she says gently.
You do. The motion feels surreal—like you’re watching yourself from somewhere outside your body. She presses the injector to the soft skin inside your elbow.
You take a breath, hold it. Click. A whisper of compressed air. Cold floods your arm instantly—icy, clinical, creeping up your bicep like frostbite. It spreads into your shoulder, your neck, your spine.
And then—
Something inside you flickers. The hum. The warmth. Him. It begins to fade. Not all at once. It drains. Like light slipping out of a room. Like someone slowly turning the volume knob on a song you didn’t know you’d memorized. You feel the difference before you can process it. Your thoughts stop echoing. Your heartbeat feels… alone.
Bucky says nothing when it’s his turn. He doesn’t ask what it’ll feel like. He doesn’t hesitate. Just rolls up his sleeve, still pitched forward. Dr. Yen administers his dose with quiet efficiency. Click. Hiss. And then it’s quiet again. Except it’s not the same.
Because now, the silence is dead. No hum. No pulse. No emotional feedback or flicker of awareness. No him. He’s still there, physically. Still sitting across from you. Still wearing the same black T-shirt, the same unreadable expression. But you can’t feel him anymore. And the absence hits harder than you expect.
Dr. Yen checks the readings on her tablet. Taps a few buttons. Then nods.
“That’s it,” she says. “Connection is terminated.”
You nod, slowly. There’s a ringing in your ears that wasn’t there before.
Yen doesn’t linger. She packs up and walks out without another word. The door hisses shut behind her. And that’s it. It’s over.
You look at him. He’s not looking at you. There’s no warmth where your chest used to light up every time he almost met your gaze. Now it’s just empty space. You wait. A beat. Two.
He finally stands. Moves like he’s stiff. Or maybe he’s just trying to control the way his body reacts now that you can’t feel it.
His eyes flick toward you, just once. And then away.
At the door, hand hovering near the panel, he pauses. Just long enough to let hope get in one last swing.
“You’ll feel like yourself again soon.”
You blink. Straighten slightly. But before you can respond, he’s already gone. The door shuts behind him. And this time, you feel nothing at all.
—
Two weeks later and you definitely don’t feel like yourself again. Everyone said you would. That the dampener would work, that your neural pathways would recalibrate, that within a few days you’d forget what it felt like to share your mind with someone else.
They were wrong. The silence is worse than the bond ever was.
It isn’t just quiet—it’s hollow. There are no phantom thoughts, no flickers of static behind your ribs. No heat curling in your stomach when someone else walks in the room. You’re not buzzing anymore. You’re just… still.
You’ve tried to distract yourself. Buried yourself in lab reports. Filed updates. Pretended the whole thing was a chemical anomaly that didn’t matter.
You haven’t heard from him. You haven’t reached out, either.
Mostly because you’re not sure what you’d say—and partly because the last time you saw him, he all but told you that everything you felt was fake. You were still deciding whether to be mad or hurt when Valentina Allegra de Fontaine’s name lit up your encrypted line.
And now here you are. Walking into the new Avengers Tower for a mandatory debriefing.
You strut through the sleek white corridor with polished concrete floors, reinforced glass walls, surveillance cameras tucked into every corner. A place designed to look like freedom and security, while quietly reminding everyone who’s in charge. And Val’s definitely in charge.
You press your thumb to the biometric reader. The door clicks open. And then you’re in the room.
Seven chairs. One long table. Your team’s already there—Dr. Yen, Dr. Deenan, and Dr. Morales, seated stiffly with laptops open and half-expressed concern on their faces. You nod to them, then catch sight of the others.
The New Avengers. Ava’s leaning back with her boots up on the chair next to her, scanning her phone like she’d rather be anywhere else. Yelena twirls a pen in her fingers while whispering something to Bob, who stifles a laugh. Alexei ie eating something from a foil pouch. John Walker’s in full uniform, arms crossed, eyes narrowed like he’s waiting to be pissed off.
And at the head of the table—Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. She smiles when she sees you. It doesn’t reach her eyes.
“Doctor,” she purrs. “Right on time. We were just getting to the fun part.”
You arch an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize this was a party.”
Val gestures to the empty seat across from her. “Take a load off.”
You sit. The chair’s cold. So is the room.
She taps her tablet, and the wall monitor comes to life—schematics, biofeedback logs, simulated overlays of two bodies in sync.
Yours. And his. Your heart gives a tiny, involuntary jolt.
“We’ve reviewed your data,” Val says. “The bonding agent was more successful than projected. Real-time empathic mirroring. Linked adrenaline response. Even synchronized aggression modulation. Fascinating.”
You glance at your team. No one meets your eye.
“Fascinating doesn’t mean safe,” you say.
“No,” Val agrees, tapping to the next slide, “but it does mean viable.”
Your stomach drops.
She keeps going. “We’ve had early conversations with R&D. We think we can refine it. Pull the limbic entanglement into tighter constraints. Give our agents an edge in the field. Total tactical unity. Real-time mental synchronicity in squads of two to five. Imagine it.”
“I’d rather not,” you say flatly.
Val tilts her head. “That’s surprising. You invented it.”
You cross your arms. “I invented a theory. Not a weapon. That compound was never designed for field ops. It was meant to test artificial empathy synthesis in high-stress environments. I never signed off on deployment.”
“You didn’t have to,” she replies, sweet as poison. “You tested it. That’s what matters.”
Your jaw tightens. “What do you want from me?”
Val smiles.
“I want you to stabilize it.”
The room goes quiet.
You don’t answer.
Because your fingers have curled into fists under the table, and the muscle in your jaw is working too hard.
Val’s smile sharpens. “Don’t make that face. You’re not the first brilliant mind to regret what they’ve built. That’s why we’ve brought in oversight.”
You glance around the table, pulse ticking higher. “This is oversight?”
Val gestures lazily toward the door. “Speak of the devil.”
It opens. He walks in. Bucky.
Same stride. Same black tactical pants. Same expression that says he’d rather be anywhere else. But not quite the same. Tighter. Like something inside him is coiled and hasn’t uncoiled since the dampener. You sit straighter without meaning to. He doesn’t look at you. Just nods to the room like it’s a formality. Takes the seat across the table from you, beside Ava, who gives him a quick look. You can feel the space between you stretch like a fault line.
Val keeps going, too casual.
“As most of you know, Sergeant Barnes was one of the two bonded during the prototype incident.”
No one speaks. Ava tilts her head, intrigued. Alexei is still chewing. John looks like he’s waiting to laugh. Bob’s the only one scribbling anything down.
Val turns toward Bucky, her voice silk-wrapped steel. “You submitted a full statement. Care to summarize for the room?”
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink.
“It’s not stable.”
“Define ‘not stable.’”
He looks directly at her now. “There’s no shut-off switch.”
Val smiles like she’s waiting for that. “The dampener worked.”
“Eventually.”
You feel a tug in your chest—but not from the bond. Just memory. Just him.
Val leans back. “Let’s talk about the psychological aftermath.”
You freeze. So does he.
“I read your report,” Val continues. “There were some… interesting observations. About your partner.”
You glance at him, breath catching. He doesn’t speak. Val does.
“‘Responsive. Precise. Too quick to hide discomfort behind sarcasm. Wants to be in control but softens under pressure. Harder to ignore than expected.’”
You stare at her. Then at him. He’s not meeting your eyes. His jaw is tight.
Val keeps reading, but her eyes are on you. “‘I think she felt it too. I think we both wanted it to stop, and neither of us wanted it to stop.’”
The room is silent. No one breathes.
She closes the file with a tap and smiles. “Romantic. Almost poetic.”
Bucky shifts in his chair. “That wasn’t meant for discussion.”
Val keeps going, tapping her tablet again. “Of course, Sergeant Barnes wasn’t the only one who filed a report.”
Your eyes narrow. She scrolls casually. “Let’s see here…”
Your team shifts awkwardly. Ava raises an brow. Walker leans back, already skeptical.
“Ah—found it,” Val says, lips twitching. “‘Post-dampener vitals returned to pre-bond baseline within 48 hours. No lingering physical effects. Subject reports successful cognitive decoupling.’” She glances at you. “Very clinical so far.”
You say nothing. Your throat is tight.
Val continues reading, voice just loud enough to carry. “‘Subject notes difficulty adjusting to emotional silence. Persistent phantom resonance. Reports occasional insomnia, sensory misfires, and…’” She slows. “‘…a recurring sense of loss with no identifiable origin.’”
You feel the breath leave your lungs.
Val looks up, smile gone. Her tone shifts—mocking, just slightly. “‘It’s strange. I should be relieved to have myself back. But some part of me feels like it’s still looking for him.’”
The silence in the room shifts. Heavy. Sharp. Bucky turns to look at you. Not subtly. Not just a glance. He looks at you like you’ve just said something dangerous. Like you’ve handed him a key he didn’t know he was allowed to touch.
You look back. And for the first time since the bond broke—you really see him seeing you.
But then his expression shutters. Clean. Cold. Gone. Like he’s pulled the wall back up in one brutal breath.
Val closes the file with a flick of her fingers.
“Well. This answers my question. If it worked that fast on two unsuspecting individuals—one emotionally distant, the other the one who wrote the damn rules about boundaries—what do we think it’ll do to a trained field team under fire?”
You exhale through your nose. “You’re not trying to refine it. You’re trying to weaponize it.”
Val shrugs. “Tomato, tomahto.”
Your pulse spikes. “You want to use forced bonding as a tactical tool. You want soldiers to feel each other die in real time, feel pain that isn’t theirs, emotions that aren’t theirs—”
“They’ll be trained.”
“They’ll be broken.”
Now the room shifts. Ava sits forward. Yelena’s brow lifts. Even Walker glances sideways at Val.
Val only smiles. “Everyone breaks differently, doctor. That’s the point.”
You can’t help it. You turn to Bucky. He’s looking down. Still silent. Still locked. But you know that posture. You’ve felt it. The way he retreats. The way he steels himself before walking away.
Val’s voice cuts back in. “Final reports are due in forty-eight hours. Including yours, Doctor. Whether you cooperate or not, this is moving forward.”
You don’t answer. She rises. The others begin to move.
But Bucky doesn’t. Not until the last chair scrapes back. Then he stands. And walks out without looking back. This time, you don’t hesitate.
You catch him in the hallway just outside the briefing room.
“Barnes.”
He keeps walking, boots steady on the polished floor like you’re not behind him, like he didn’t just bolt from a public dissection of your most private thoughts. You pick up the pace.
“I said—”
“Don’t,” he mutters without turning. “Not here.”
You follow anyway. Right past the security checkpoint. Into the common area of the residential wing.
Then you hear them. Voices behind you—low, not subtle. Bob. Alexei. You’d bet money Walker’s loitering just out of view, arms crossed and dying for gossip.
“Wow,” Yelena says from behind the coffee bar. “Very dramatic storm-off. Ten out of ten.”
Bucky still doesn’t stop. You catch up beside him, matching his pace. “You’re seriously going to act like none of that meant anything?”
“I’m not doing this in front of an audience,” he snaps, still not looking at you.
You ignore it. “What did you think was going to happen? You walk away and I just go back to being a line item in your report?”
He reaches the end of the hallway. Stops. Jaw locked. Hands at his sides.
“I’m not doing this,” he says again, quieter now. Less sharp. More tired.
You hesitate. And then you say it—just low enough for him to really hear it.
“Bucky, please.”
His head turns. Slow. Measured. Like he didn’t expect you to use his name. Like it broke through something.
You stare up at him. One beat. Two. And then he grabs your wrist—not rough, not rushed—and pulls you with him through the nearest door.
His quarters. The lock clicks behind you. He doesn’t let go. You’re both breathing too hard for how little either of you has moved. His fingers tighten around your wrist.
“I don’t need a debrief,” he says flatly. “Whatever Val’s hoping you’ll get out of this—”
“Don’t do that,” you say.
His shoulders go rigid. “Do what.”
“Shut me out.”
He finally turns. And the look on his face makes your heart falter.
He’s not angry. He’s gutted.
“I told you, once this wore off—”
“I didn’t say it because of the link,” you snap. “I said it because it’s true.”
He shakes his head. “You think it’s true. Because it’s recent. Because you’re still sorting it out.”
“No,” you say. “I said it because I miss you. Because I can’t sleep. Because the silence feels worse than the noise ever did.”
He goes quiet. You take a step closer.
“And don’t tell me it’s not real. Don’t tell me it’s just feedback. I’ve been through every model of post-synthetic resonance in the literature. This isn’t detox.”
Bucky stares at you like he wants to believe you. Like he’s aching to. But the wall is still up. Tighter than ever.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “You’re going to walk out of here and get over it. And I’m going to remember everything I said. Everything I wanted. And wish I hadn’t said a goddamn word.”
That knocks the air out of you. You feel the urge to step back—but you don’t. You root yourself there.
“I’m not over it,” you say, quietly. “And I don’t want to be.”
He looks at you. Really looks. And something shifts in him. But he still doesn’t move. So you step closer. Not too close. Just enough to make it clear you’re not afraid of the space between you. Not anymore. You don’t touch him. Not yet.
“I’ve spent two weeks trying to shut you out of my head,” you murmur. “Pretending I didn’t miss you. That I wasn’t checking every hallway and every email, wondering if you’d say something.”
He exhales sharply through his nose and looks down.
“And when you didn’t,” you add, voice tighter now, “I told myself you were just being careful. That you were trying to do the right thing.”
A pause. Then, lower.
“But maybe it was just easier for you.”
That hits. You see it—right in his eyes. Still, he doesn’t speak. So you finish it.
“Either you felt what I felt or you didn’t,” you say, chin lifting. “But don’t stand there and act like it was just some side effect. Like all of it—everything between us—was just my body misfiring.”
You take a final step closer to him.
“I know who you are now—not just the version you show, not the file, not the soldier. You. I felt every part you tried to hide. And it only made me want you more. And if that was all fake, I don’t know what the hell is real anymore.”
That’s when he moves.
It’s not gentle. It’s not rehearsed. It’s like something inside him snaps, and before you can take another breath, his hands are in your hair, his mouth crashing against yours like he’s been holding back for years—not weeks.
You stumble into him with a gasp, grabbing the front of his shirt like you need it to stay standing. His kiss is rough, hungry, almost frantic—like he’s trying to erase the silence with his teeth.
He spins you, walks you backwards until your shoulders hit the door, and then he’s bracing one arm beside your head, the other sliding down to your hip like he needs to feel you, all of you, right now.
You kiss him back with everything you’ve been holding in. Anger. Frustration. Hunger. Something dangerously close to relief. He pulls back just long enough to look at you, lips swollen, breathing hard.
“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he says, hoarse.
“Yes,” you whisper, dragging your fingers down the line of his stomach. “I do.”
His mouth reclaims yours. This time, the kiss is slower. Hungrier. Less desperation, more purpose. His tongue traces the shape of your lips, parting them before diving in. His hands move, rough and reverent. Skimming your jaw, down your neck, across your chest. They slide beneath your shirt, palms splayed wide like he’s trying to cover all of you at once, like he can’t decide what to touch first. You feel the heat of him through every inch of fabric, and it lights you up from the inside.
He hesitates Just a little. Like it costs him something to stop. A breath caught in his throat. Fingers curling into fists where they’d just been on your ribs. Everything is vibrating with want. No bond. No compound tether. Just this. Just him. And he’s shaking. Not visibly. But you feel it in his breath. In the way his hands flex when they grip your hips. Like he’s holding back with every ounce of control he has left.
“You sure?” he rasps, low and wrecked.
You nod. He doesn’t move. So you press your mouth to his ear.
“Bucky,” you whisper. “I’ve been sure since I looked you in the eye and told you not to think about sex.”
He exhales, a bit shaky, but lifts you, guiding you backward toward the bed. Walking you slow and blind, like he’s memorized every inch of you and he’s finally getting to touch what he learned.
You hit the mattress. He’s on you a second later, crowding you down with the weight of his body, the strength of his stare.
“Don’t move,” he murmurs, mouth brushing your cheek. “I want to see you.”
Your heart stutters as he starts to undress you. Slow at first, like he’s unwrapping something fragile. Fingers dragging over skin with intention. Mouth kissing every new inch he uncovers.
“You’re fuckin’ beautiful, sweetheart,” he murmurs. “You don’t even know what you do to me.”
You whimper, hands reaching, but he pins your wrists lightly to the bed.
“Let me,” he says. “You’ve had your hands on yourself enough, haven’t you?”
Your face burns but your thighs twitch. He clocks it.
“Oh, you liked that,” he murmurs, voice like velvet. “Liked making me feel it. Every fuckin’ second.”
“Bucky—”
“You wanna know what it did to me?” he asks, trailing his fingers down your stomach, your hip, your thigh. “The way you touched yourself? Knowing I couldn’t stop you. Couldn’t help you. Couldn’t taste you.”
Your breath hitches as his lips graze your inner thigh.
“I almost lost it, doll.”
He groans as he spreads you open, thumb teasing, mouth following. He’s slow at first. Too slow. Licking soft circles like he’s memorizing the shape of your pleasure.
And then he dives in.
Moans into you like it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted. Holds your thighs apart, firm and unrelenting, while his tongue works in perfect rhythm. Watching you. Murmuring praise between licks and gasps. Your hips twitch, a whimper slipping through your clenched teeth.
“Already?” he murmurs, breath hot against you. “You that close, sweetheart?”
You try to answer, but it’s useless.
“God, look at you,” he groans. “So fucking wet.”
You arch up in response, gasping.
“Needy little thing,” he laughs, brushing his fingers through your folds. “Bet this is all you’ve been thinking about the past two weeks, huh?”
He plunges a finger inside of you and curls, as do your toes while you rasp out.
“Bucky, please!”
“You gonna fall apart for me, doll?” he murmurs against you, the words so filthy and tender they almost make you cry. “I want it. Want to feel you shake. Want to taste every bit of it.”
He flicks his tongue in tight circles, then flattens it low and slow. Adding another finger to your weeping core. Your hips start to shake, lifting off the bed. He feels it and grips you tighter.
“Don’t fight it,” he gasps into you. “Don’t you fucking dare. That’s mine.”
He sucks hard—just once—and your vision whites out. You try to warn him. A gasp, a stuttered breath, a twist of your hips. But it’s already too late. You come with a cry, fists clutching the sheets, legs locked around his shoulders, everything inside you unraveling at once.
It’s too much. Too sharp. Too good. And he groans into you like he’s the one coming. You’re limp, gasping, still shaking—and he’s still there, mouth wet, fingers brushing your hip.
“Shit,” you breathe. “That was…”
He kisses the inside of your thigh. Then again, a little higher.
“You’re not done yet,” he says, voice thick with hunger. “Not even close.”
He keeps going, softer now—just enough to draw the aftershocks out of you, murmuring things you can barely hear over your own heartbeat.
“So perfect. So fuckin’ sweet”
You blink through the stars behind your eyes, chest rising in fast, uneven bursts.
“Bucky—”
He finally comes up for air, his eyes are darker with something deeper than just heat as his gaze locks on yours. And for a second, neither of you moves.
You’re still panting, still wrecked from his mouth and fingers, but there’s something in the way he looks at you now. Like he’s trying to memorize you, even as his restraint starts to crack again.
“Still with me, sweetheart?” he murmurs, voice hoarse.
You nod, breath caught in your throat.
“Good,” he says, fingers sliding up your sides. “Because I’m not done learning how you fall apart.”
You whine when he pulls away. But when his own shirt comes off, followed by the rest, your breath stutters—because even now, with the link broken, you’re still wrecked by your need for him.
Not like before. Not a shared mind or emotion. But like muscle memory. Like your skin knows him now. His mouth tilts up—barely a smile, more like relief bleeding through restraint.
Then he climbs your body like he owns it, skin dragging over skin. Not rushing. Savoring. Like he’s been starving for you and doesn’t want to miss a single fucking bite. His chest brushes yours—bare, flushed—and you both exhale hard, the contact so electric it knocks the air from your lungs.
You reach for him, aching, but he catches your wrists—not to stop you. To feel you. To anchor himself. His thumbs press into your palms, grounding hard.
“You still want this?” he murmurs.
You nod. But that’s not enough. Not for either of you.
“Yes,” you breathe. “I want you.”
He kisses you like he means to brand it into you, deep and claiming. His whole body comes down over yours, pinning you into the mattress with his weight like he’s trying to fuck the memory of him into your bones.
His hand trails down your side, over your hip, gripping your thigh with purpose. Holding you there, keeping you open for him.
“You feel that?” he whispers against your jaw, slowly dragging his cock against your sensitive heat. “That’s real. Not chemicals. Not the compound.”
You nod again, blinking up at him.
“I felt you before, doll,” he murmurs, pressing the head against your entrance. “But now? Now I get to have you.”
Then he pushes in slowly. Inch by inch as it steals the air from your lungs, not realizing how you could ever feel this full. He’s everywhere. It’s not artificial. It’s just him. Just this. And it’s overwhelming in a completely different way.
“God, you feel so fuckin’ good,” he groans, as his hips finally meet yours. “Like you were made for me.”
He moves slow at first, watching your face, chasing every gasp, every arch of your body. Letting you relax into the stretch as he drags himself in and out of you. Your body answers him before your mouth can. Nails digging into his shoulder. The pressure already building, faster this time, hotter. And he feels it, responding with a low, rough growl in your ear.
“Got used to feeling everything,” he murmurs. “Now I’ve gotta earn it. Every sound. Every twitch of those perfect fuckin’ hips.”
You can’t even speak. You moan, hips tilting up, greedy for more.
“That’s right,” he breathes, rougher now. “Show me.”
He rocks into you again, harder this time. You gasp, cry out softly against his shoulder.
“Bucky—please—”
“You begging already?” he groans, continuing to pound you deeper into the mattress. “Thought I was just a side effect.”
“You weren’t.”
He freezes, just for a moment. Kisses you again, softer now, but more desperate.
“Say it again.” His forehead presses to yours.
You touch his face, thumb brushing the hard line of his jaw. “You weren’t.”
He exhales like it hurts.
“You gonna come for me again, sweetheart?”
You whimper, helpless as your walls begin to flutter around him.
“Yeah, you are,” he breathes. “I can feel it. So tight around me already.”
And the way he looks at you—wrecked and reverent and just this side of feral—makes your whole body stutter. You want it. Want to be ruined by him. Claimed by him.
You tighten around him again, and his hips snap harder. His hand slips between your bodies. Finds your clit. Zeroes in without mercy.
“Give it to me,” he whispers into your throat. “Let me feel you fall apart.”
It hits like a freight train—loud and messy and devastating. Your back arches, your breath catches, and you cry out his name like it’s the only word you’ve got left.
He fucks you through it—long, dragging thrusts that keep you trembling. Your body’s oversensitive now, every nerve frayed, but he doesn’t stop. Keeps going, holding you there like he’s afraid you’ll vanish.
“Bucky,” you moan, hand in his hair, nails dragging over his scalp.
He breaths into your mouth—kissing you like he’s starving.
“You drive me fuckin’ crazy,” he pants. “You know that?”
You whimper, thighs shaking.
“I tried to keep it together,” he growls, voice ragged. “I tried—”
Every thrust is brutal now. Precise. Shattering.
“Fuck,” he breaths. “When you were—”
“Buck—”
He kisses you again, biting your lip. His hand moves between you again, thumb rubbing fast and perfect.
“God, baby—” His voice cracks. “You’re gonna make me fuckin’ lose it.”
“Then lose it,” you whisper. “I want you to.”
He growls your name, broken and wrecked, hips jerking once, twice—And you shatter. It slams through you—raw, loud, everything burning at the edges. Your body seizes, clenching around him, sobbing his name as you fall apart in his arms.
He buries himself inside you. You feel the heat. The flood. The way he tries to hold himself together and can’t. He’s trembling over you, muscles locked tight, jaw clenched as he pulses deep in you, riding it out with a low, wrecked moan.
You’re both gasping now. Shaking. Tangled up and clinging. And still—he doesn’t pull away. He stays. Forehead to yours, still buried deep, arms wrapped around you like you’re the only thing keeping him grounded.
“I’ve never thought—” he starts, voice ragged. “That wasn’t just—”
You touch his face, soft now. “I know.”
Because you do. This wasn’t adrenaline. Wasn’t science. Wasn’t the bond. It was him. It was you. He lifts his head slowly. Looks at you like he’s still afraid to believe it. So you cup his face, kiss his temple, and whisper, “Don’t you dare vanish on me now.”
His throat works, jaw clenches. But he doesn’t run.
He stays right where he is. Wrapped around you.
—-
The room is warm. Quiet. You’re lying on your back, one leg tangled with his, the sheets kicked halfway off the bed. Bucky’s fingers skim slow circles over your hip, like he hasn’t figured out how to stop touching you yet. Or doesn’t want to. You stare at the ceiling.
“Tell me again how this wasn’t a terrible idea,” you murmur.
He huffs out a laugh. “It was a terrible idea.”
“Oh, good,” you say. “So we’re on the same page.”
He shifts, rolling just enough to look at you. His hair is a mess, his chest still rising a little fast, like he hasn’t fully come down. There’s a smudge of dried sweat at his temple and your teeth marks fading on his neck, and you have the completely inappropriate urge to kiss both.
“Can’t believe I got to sleep with the woman who called me a glorified blunt object,” he says dryly.
You smirk. “Wasn’t planning to sleep with the guy who implied my life’s work was an emotional leash.”
“Touché.”
You sigh. Close your eyes for a second. The weight of it all—what came before, what you just crossed into—settles somewhere behind your ribs. He’s still watching you when you open them again.
“I’ll deal with Val,” he says suddenly. “If she tries to pull anything with the compound, I’ll shut it down.”
You blink. “You’re serious.”
“I usually am.”
You study him for a beat. “You don’t have to fight my battles, Barnes.”
“No,” he says. “But I want to.”
Something about the way he says it. Casual and quiet, like it isn’t a big deal, makes your stomach tighten. He’s not pushing. Not performing. He just means it. You shift closer, resting your chin on his chest. “You know, if you’d told me two weeks ago I’d end up in your bed—”
“You would’ve laughed in my face.”
“I did laugh in your face.”
“You told me I looked like a government-issued mistake.”
You snort. “Well. You kind of did.”
He smirks, fingers brushing a line along your spine. “Still think I’m a mistake?”
You glance up at him. He’s smiling, but it’s tentative. Like he’s not sure if you’ll dodge or hit back. So you lean up, kiss him—soft, but real. Honest.
“Maybe not a mistake,” you whisper against his mouth. “Maybe just… statistically improbable.”
He laughs against your lips. You both fall back into the pillows, tangled up and far too warm, but neither of you moves.
Eventually he murmurs, “This thing between us—whatever it is—it’s real now, right?”
You stretch a leg over his, sighing. “I mean, if it’s not, then I’m still having incredibly vivid sex dreams while awake.”
“That’s flattering.”
“That’s science.”
He kisses your forehead and mumbles, “Then let’s see what happens without science.”
You let that settle. No neurobond. No link. No forced proximity. Just choice. You curl in closer. And this time, when you breathe him in, you don’t feel afraid.
Just steady. Just… okay. You smile. And he feels it.
summary: based on this request — as bucky’s best friend, you had the honor of being subjected to his constant teasing and charms, none of which you thought were truthful. it all comes to a head when he starts distancing himself from you after a night out.
warnings: 18+, mdni, smut, piv, oral (f receiving), unprotected sex, pull out game is very strong, praise, pet names (sweetheart, baby, doll, pretty girl, handsome), alcohol consumption, language, bucky big flirt in this fic, reader is a little dramatic, jealous bucky, you and bucky have an? argument?, no use of y/n
word count: 11.6k
a/n: YIPPPEEE my first request finished <3 (everyone disregard that it took me like two weeks to finish this i got stuck at the argument scene and didn't know how to progress bc i didnt wanna make bucky an asshole)
masterlist
Distance is not something that you know when it comes to Bucky. In fact, your first meeting with him was him pretending to be your boyfriend.
You had a particularly rough day at work. You weren’t with your friends or anyone else– you just wanted to spend a night alone at the bar near your apartment before going home for the night. However, men in New York just didn’t enjoy giving you a chance of peace.
You leaned away from the man that was giving you advances that you didn’t want, trying to deny drinks that you were sure he had tampered with. You gave dry responses to the man that you don’t even remember anymore, but you supposed you have to thank him.
A scent of cedarwood and clean soap filled your nostrils as a warm arm gently slipped over your shoulders. A body was beside yours, standing protectively. Someone that you didn’t know.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he said, giving you a small smile. His words were spoken loud, as if he was giving a performance. “Thanks for waiting for me. Who’s your friend?”
You blinked at him, momentarily thrown off. Then, you saw the look in his eyes. He was giving you an out. In a matter of a few seconds, you weighed your options. It was either this man with dangerously striking blue eyes that smelled good, or the drunkard that smelled like throw up and shit. So, you leaned into this stranger’s embrace, gave him a pretty smile, and hummed.
“Didn’t wait for too long, baby,” you sighed. “Missed you.”
You didn’t even answer the question about your “friend,” and the two of you just ignored him until he took the hint, and walked away. Except the hint was your savior glaring at him with murderous intent in his eyes. You didn’t know it at the time, but Bucky was fully capable of committing those kinds of crimes for you.
When the drunkard was far enough away, his arm slid off your shoulders, his hand moving down your back, but not low enough to make you uncomfortable.
“Can I buy you a drink?” you asked him, grateful. “You kinda saved me back there, handsome.”
He laughed at your words. “I was going to ask you if you wanted a drink since you just went through something traumatizing, pretty girl.”
“I’ll pay for yours, you pay for mine?” you offered.
“Deal,” he grinned.
The two of you introduced yourselves to each other not too long afterwards, toasted, and found out that you were both alone that night. Bucky spent the rest of the night by your side at the bar, the two of you just chatting.
It was the start of a friendship that you weren’t looking for, but welcomed easily with open arms. Bucky was easy to talk to, easy to get along with, and he was comfortable for you to be around.
Around the beginning of your friendship, you noticed he would sometimes come to hang out with you with a busted lip or a cut on his face. You were sure there was another injury somewhere under the layers of clothes he was wearing, too. When you finally asked– when you finally felt ready to ask, he was honest with you when he told you what he did for work. At first, you thought he was shitting with you. Then, he told you to look up his name online.
“You’re ancient,” you said, your eyes falling on the birthdate of the man titled as Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the 107th Infantry Unit in World War II. Then, the name of the Winter Soldier came next on the articles you were reading.
“Yes, because every man wants a beautiful woman to call them old, sweetheart,” he said, rolling his eyes at you.
“You look good for being over a century old though, handsome,” you grinned.
“I’m like, ninety-something. Don’t age me up.”
Bucky showed you his metal arm that night. He took off the gloves he wore, and took off the jacket that seemed to be glued to his body. You inspected the dark metal in awe– asked if you could touch it.
He was patient with you. Answered all of your questions. You learned that he could feel sensations on the prosthetic– that his friends in Wakanda made sure of it. He told you it was made of vibranium, which was the same material made of Captain America’s shield– his best friend.
You learned a lot about Bucky that night. That night, you became more than just his friend. You became someone important to him. He didn’t know it, but he was already important to you before the confessions of his past.
He asked you if you were scared of him. If you wanted him to leave.
“Where would you go if you left?” you asked, frowning at him. “We’re supposed to watch those shitty reality shows tonight. Are you going to leave me to watch them by myself?”
You’ve never felt more relieved to see that smile come back to his face, to watch the tension leave his shoulders. Bucky shifted on the couch, assuming the same position that you two always did.
Distance was not something that you two were familiar with from the start of your friendship together. Whenever you waited for him at your meeting spots, he would come up behind you like some sort of ghost. You started to get used to it– being randomly held by him.
“Sweetheart,” he would greet you, an arm slipping over your shoulders. “Missed me?”
“Take a lap, Sarge,” you’d tell him, shoving his arm off of you only to loop your arm through his. “Who would miss your face around here?”
“Ouch,” he chuckled, shaking his head at you. “And here I thought– I believed you when you said I was handsome.”
“Oh, you are,” you hummed, tugging him along to get in line for the aquarium– Bucky’s choice for your hangout that day. “I’m trying to keep you humble.”
Most of your time would be spent hanging out in your apartment. The two of you would talk about anything and everything. Well– you were talking. Bucky was listening to you.
“Sounds a little stressful,” he said, patting his lap once you were finished with your long winded tirade about how your girl friends were horrible on night outs, and you weren’t looking forward to next Saturday night.
“Very,” you agreed, and dropped your head on his thigh, just as he was indicating for you to do.
You closed your eyes, sighing deeply as he started to card his hands through your hair, gently massaging your scalp. To comfort you, maybe. You were certain that he had no idea how to navigate the struggles of a friend group of five women– your four friends– that were trying to get laid, while you were desperately trying to make sure none of them ended up kidnapped or dead by the end of the night.
“You gonna find someone to spend the night with on Saturday, too?” he murmured to you, and you opened your eyes.
You raised an eyebrow at him, and smiled teasingly. “Why? You want me to include you in the same girl talk debrief that the other girls get on Sunday mornings?”
“Gross,” he scoffed, clasping his entire hand over your face, making your entire body jolt with surprise.
“You’re the one that asked,” you huffed. You grabbed his wrist, pulling it away from your face and raising it up in the air. Bucky let you, his limb being pliant under your touch as he allowed you to flail it around like it was made of nothing at all. You watched as his fingers moved like noodles in the air, mildly amused for a few moments. “I’d tell you if you’re really interested, y’know.”
“I’m just asking so I know where you’ll be, doll. You’re stressin’ about your friends, so let me stress about you,” he said, his voice going softer for just a moment.
You stopped thrashing his hand around the air, and looked at him. He was looking down at you, eyes never leaving your face. There was something unreadable in his gaze that made you pause. Your lips parted, closed, then you gave him a smile.
“I’ll text you if I go home with someone, handsome. I don’t think I will, but I’ll let you know if I do,” you promised him, dropping his hand to your stomach.
Bucky hummed, a little noncommittally as he patted your abdomen a few times before resting completely. His other hand continued to run through your hair, sending shivers down your spine.
“I’m sure it won’t be difficult for you if you do decide for it,” Bucky said. “Guys flirt with you all the time.”
“That was one time, and I was alone at the worst bar on the street, Buck. It wasn’t even flirting. That was harassment,” you corrected him, raising an eyebrow.
Bucky shrugged. “You’re a little oblivious when people flirt with you, pretty girl.”
The rest of the night was spent arguing over the fact that you were not oblivious towards men flirting with you. Bucky was very adamant that you were. You denied all accusations like a politician that had something to hide.
Neither of you managed to find common ground, and you ended up falling asleep on his lap. Woke up the next morning to find that Bucky didn’t leave. In fact, he didn’t even move you off his lap. He fell asleep, sitting upright, and refused to move in fear of waking you up. He refused to accept any apology from you and swore your couch was comfortable. You disagreed, but quickly shut up when he said that it was better than the hard dirt grounds of World War II.
You hated it when Bucky pulled that shit on you. Bucky loved doing it. He always had a smug grin on his face.
Other times would include quieter moments. Where you both ended up in your bed. By this point in your friendship, Bucky had a drawer in your dresser of spare, comfortable clothes. He would get changed in pajamas for the night, and you two would be laying in bed. Bucky would be reading one of your more raunchy fantasy novels with confusion all over his face as to why you read these books, but still continued to turn the page. He’d have his head against your shoulder, and you’d scroll through your phone watching videos before falling asleep.
Flirting and touching was his default, you believed. Your assumption was only strengthened when he told you stories about the forties, and how he used to try to get Steve to go out on dates with girls that he set him up with. You managed to get him to admit that he was quite the charmer back in the forties.
The only time there wasn’t any flirting was when he opened up about himself– when the conversation went serious on both of your ends. Then, the banter would stop and you both would give each other your undivided attention.
The touching wouldn’t stop, though. Even if he was the one leading the conversation, exposing you to the depths of his mind, he would play with your fingers. Touch your hair. You figured it was to busy himself from the fact that he was being so vulnerable with you. You never brought attention to it, allowed him to do what he needed to get through the words that he was forcing out of his throat– to tell you the things that he wanted you to hear.
You generally assumed that Bucky was just a touch starved man once you learned about his past. Coupled with him returning to the world and coming back to his personality, you figured he was just returning to his roots as a charismatic guy. You never thought anything of it, if you were being honest. Until you did.
You should’ve realized it when you started taking pictures of him during your outings together. Your camera that only shot still life or animals gravitated towards him without even noticing. Your very first photo of him was a candid shot.
Bucky wasn’t looking at you. He was smiling at the cat that you both had taken interest in, that was at the park that you two were strolling through. He had crouched down, holding a hand out for the cat to come to him if it wanted to. And it did. Came and sniffed his palm, then nuzzled the warmth of his hand. Bucky smiled. A soft, gentle smile that took your breath away– and you took the picture without thinking.
It started your collection of photos of Bucky.
Bucky, the only person you had ever taken pictures of. The only person you wanted to take pictures of. He became your subject matter overnight. Your phone camera roll was filled with photos of him from your apartment— pictures of him on your couch, in your kitchen cooking, asleep in your bed.
Your favorite picture of him right now was when the two of you went out to a bookstore together. He was walking down the aisles in front of you, and you meant to take a picture of his back. Another candid photo, another photo where he was unknowing. Except, he turned around. He was going to point out something to you, but stopped when he saw you had your camera in hand. You were caught.
“What are you doing, pretty girl?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at you.
“Smile. You’re looking exceptionally handsome right now,” you said, lifting your camera to your eye, so you could see him through the viewfinder.
Bucky let out a small laugh, shaking his head at your words. However, he didn’t argue. Didn’t fight back. His hands found their way naturally into his pockets. He tilted his head at you in a kind of boyish way that reminded you of the old photos you saw at the Smithsonian when the two of you went together.
And just like you asked him to, he smiled. Not at your camera, but at you. Your heart stuttered for a few moments, your finger froze over the button, and you had to remind yourself to take the picture.
You were forever glad that you did.
You stared at the photo for a long time, smiling to yourself– smiling back at Bucky’s face caught in time. You had the picture printed out on a mini Polaroid printer, and attached it to the back of your phone, but turned around so only you would know what was there. That was enough for you. You simply wanted to carry his smile with you wherever you went.
“What does it mean when your closest guy friend is always touching you, but doesn’t seem to like… make a move?” you brought up one day during a Sunday brunch with the girls.
Your friends looked up at you, raising an eyebrow. It was only the three out of the five of your group– you’d known the two of them since the beginning of high school. The three of you were generally closer since the other two had joined your little circle during the last couple years of university.
“Is this about your mysterious best friend that you won’t tell us anything about?” Leah teased you, a fat grin on her face. “What was his name again? Jamie?”
“James,” you corrected, clearing your throat. “And there’s nothing to tell about him. Just answer the question.”
“Well,” Mel hummed, picking up her mimosa. “What kind of touches are we talking about? Like just accidental hand brushing or…?”
You were thankful that Mel was taking you seriously at least.
“Like… Cuddling on the couch during movies. Head on each other’s lap when we talk. He has a drawer at my place because he sleeps over sometimes– not intentionally. It just gets late, and I tell him it’s fine and to just stay over. So I told him to just bring a change of clothes, and I just wash his stuff whenever he uses them.”
“He sleeps… on your couch?” Leah asked slowly.
“No, we sleep in my bed together. Like when you guys come over…” you trailed off, voice dying down, looking down at your breakfast.
“Like when we— when all of us cuddle in your fucking bed? Like when we were in college cramped onto a twin bed?” Leah demanded, eyebrows shooting to her hairline.
You don’t answer her. You stab a fork into your pancakes, and poke the inside of your cheek with your tongue awkwardly. You can’t look at either of them in the eyes right now. They’re a little too judgmental for your taste.
“How does he talk to you? Like sweetly or?” Mel asked, frowning at you.
“I mean– he calls me all these pet names. All the time. Calls me pretty and beautiful.”
“So you sleep next to the guy in the same bed, he’s always touching you, calls you all these sweet and cute things– never popped a boner or anything? Never tried to get a little handsy with you?” Leah asked.
“Leah!” you hissed, looking around at the other patrons in the restaurant to see if anyone heard her. “We are in public. Can you keep your voice down?”
“No, but she’s right though,” Mel said quickly, placing a hand down on the table. Her eyebrows are furrowed as she leans in, “Is he gay?”
You’re taken aback for a moment. “Uh– I… I don’t know. It never came up. I don’t think so? He’s had girlfriends before.”
You’re suddenly brought back to memories of your conversations with Bucky where he talks about Steve and Sam very fondly.
He has plenty of memories with Steve that he speaks of with nostalgia. There are times when he talks about not Captain America, but Steve Rogers with so much pride in his voice that you can’t help but smile. At this point, you were certain that you could meet Steve on the street at any time, and you would know him like he was your own childhood friend.
Then there’s Sam. Bucky swears he hates the man, but you can hear the smile trying to crack through his words. Like he’s trying to hide how he really feels for a long winded bit that he’s doing. Despite all his sharp words, Bucky still talks about Sam. That has to count for something.
“He might swing both ways, maybe leaning towards men,” Leah hummed, leaning back in her seat like the code was just cracked. “I mean, has to be, right? You’ve known him for almost what, an entire year now and nothing’s happened? Men don’t just befriend women at this age just to be friends.”
“I disagree with that last statement, but I do think that you’re reading too much into him,” Mel quickly said, nodding. “Men and women can definitely be friends without expecting anything from each other.”
You drown out the rest of their talk– the debate of whether or not men and women can just be friends. You’re spiraling. The polaroid hidden in the back of your phone case is weighing your purse down exponentially as the realization hits you.
You were in the perpetual friendzone. Bucky didn’t bat an eye at you. He flirted with you, touched you without flinching, and laid down next to you in your own bed without his gaze lingering.
This was a man that was raised in the forties, and if you were correct in the little that you knew about that time period, anything premarital was some sort of sin. People were shamed. Disowned. Stoned. Excommunicated from the church.
And here Bucky was– doing just that. Doing all that and much more.
Yeah.
You were fucked.
A light buzz within your purse caught your attention. You reached for your phone, eyes falling onto the notification of the man you were just talking about.
You read the message over and over again, unable to believe what you were seeing for a few moments.
Handsome [11:32am]: Stark’s throwing a party next Friday night. Do you want to come meet everyone?
The jet landed down, and the sound of the decompressors of the jet doors opening signaled the end of a successful mission.
While the others clambered off with ease, good moods, and joy, Bucky couldn’t help but feel a wave of irritation wash through his body. The mission wasn’t difficult by any means, but the load of missions was what pissed him off.
It’d been two weeks since he last saw you.
Bucky was simply surviving off of stupid images that he learned were called ‘memes’ that you sent him every day. That, and your cute good morning! and sleep well :) text messages which never failed to truly make him have a great morning and a well rested sleep.
Sometimes, if he got lucky, you sent him a picture of yourself. The first time that you did, he had to Google how to save images to his camera roll. After that, it was over for you. It didn’t matter what kind of picture that you sent. Even if you weren’t the full subject, he saved it.
There was a picture where you were only partially in it, and you were trying to show off the matcha lavender drink that you bought. Another photo where your face was cut off at the top because you were cuddling with Mel’s puppy at her house. Some more stupidly angled photos of just your eyes— Bucky learned those ones being sent to him meant you wanted his attention.
He also had pictures that he took of you. None of which, you were aware that he took. It was easy to hide. You often walked ahead of him when you were together, or your attention was focused on something else. It wasn’t difficult for a trained assassin to steal a photo or two.
Besides that, you slept like the dead next to him. Slept on his shoulder, and his lap like you owned the space. Bucky had a collection of you sleeping, though he wouldn’t admit it. It sounds creepy, but he found it endearing.
The first time he was in your bed, and you sleeping beside him— he couldn’t fucking close his eyes.
Were you stupid? That oblivious?
Bucky knew that you were comfortable with him, but to invite him into your bed without assuming anything? Yes, he was your friend, yes he was respectful, but he’d also been flirting with you for months on end waiting for you to pick up on the hints.
Obviously, he wasn’t going to do anything. With each repeated time, it got a little bit easier. He found himself being able to take a small nap beside you in your bed.
It was a comforting feeling— the warmth radiating off of your body. He was surrounded by the smell of your clean sheets, the scent of the laundry detergent that you used mixing with the shampoo you washed your hair with, and the perfume that stuck to your skin.
You moved in your sleep. Towards him. He would wake up to find you curled up beside him, like you would be if the two of you were cuddling on the couch and watching something. Bucky never pushed you away during these moments, but he never pulled you closer.
Part of him felt guilty, if he really thought about it.
You were normal. Someone that trusted him outside of the heroics. You treated him like any other guy on the street. You didn’t expect him to be anything else other than your friend.
And Bucky was. He was a damn good friend to you, and he considered you one of his closest friends, too.
Simply, somewhere along the way… it shifted. He couldn’t tell when. There was no epiphany. Just a quiet realization one day. When he looked at you… he saw peace. A possible future with him, as something more than just a weapon.
Beside you, he felt different. As if the years and the war hadn’t affected him, hadn’t altered his brain in some sort of way that made him headstrong and tough around the edges the way he acted with the rest of his friends.
With you, he felt softer. As if the walls were broken down without any fanfare or gracious ending. There wasn’t anything special that you needed to do or say to him. You just existed, and made breathing easier for him.
Bucky quietly decided that even if you never looked his way, that it was okay. He would stay by your side, simply as another friend of yours if that’s all you’d ever want from him. Your presence alone was all he needed. You, without even realizing it, gave him something that he didn’t know was possible anymore.
You gave him hope.
“We’re gonna meet your so-called friend that you always bail on us tonight?” Sam asked as Bucky came out into the common areas.
The mission was finally showered off of him, and Bucky felt a bit lighter now. He just needed to change into that semi-formal attire that Stark shoved into his hands— the same clothes that were tied with a threat if Bucky didn’t wear it.
“She said she would,” Bucky replied.
“Are we sure she’s even real?” Natasha asked, walking by to grab an apple from the fruit bowl. “Pretty sure Barnes is just strolling through New York getting fresh air by himself these days.”
“Sure,” Bucky shrugged, ignoring the chuckles of laughter at Natasha’s half-hearted jab.
Bucky fished his phone out of his pocket, turning it back on. There should be some texts from you, waiting for him after his mission. And he was right.
Pretty Girl [12:03pm]: what do the other girls wear
Pretty Girl [12:05pm]: i googled iron man parties and they look rly fucking fancy sarge WHAT DOES BLACK WIDOW WEAR
Pretty Girl [12:27pm]: i think ur saving the world… save my outfit when ur free pls </3
Bucky couldn’t help the smile that came onto his face, trying to imagine the panicked look on yours as you floated through your closet.
Bucky [6:42pm]: Natasha and Wanda wear dresses.
Your reply comes instantaneously. Bucky still can’t understand how you text so quickly.
Pretty Girl [6:42pm]: like?? floor length???
Bucky [6:45pm]: No. I’m wearing just a button up and slacks, if that makes you feel better.
Pretty Girl [6:45pm]: what color
Bucky [6:46pm]: Black
Pretty Girl [6:47pm]: mmm.. very nice. brings out your eyes
Pretty Girl [6:47pm]: i’ll see you in a couple hours :)
Bucky hated Stark’s parties with a passion. Despised them. This time? He couldn’t wait for it to come any sooner.
In fact, he turned straight back to his room and got ready like a teenager waiting for his very first date to come. And he sat there, on the edge of his bed, waiting for the time to come.
When the sounds of the party started, he went outside. Slowly but surely, guests started filtering in. Tony put on his best facade, greeting everyone with much vigor. Bucky didn’t understand how he could do it every single time.
“Why are you hanging by the door for?” Sam asked, clapping a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “She’ll come when she comes— and she’ll find you when she does.”
“Just… making sure she gets in safe,” Bucky grunted.
“Ugh. Just drink, dude,” Sam groaned, pushing a glass of amber liquid into his hands as he guided him towards a group of them— Natasha, Clint, and Rhodey. All three of them were sitting together at the conversation pit, chatting together.
Bucky supposed he could wait here. You would text him if you didn’t find him right away, too. He relaxed beside Sam, though he was still on edge.
He couldn’t focus too much on the conversation in front of him. They were talking about Rhodey’s most recent date, if he was correct. A disaster, by the sounds of it. Bucky let out a chuckle when they all laughed, just to sound like he was absorbed into the conversation just like the rest of them.
“Speaking of dating— looks like Cap’s found someone he’s finally interested in,” Natasha said, a smirk on her face. “She’s cute. Anyone know who she is?”
Bucky’s eyebrows raised. “No way. Steve?”
“Turn around,” Natasha said, pointing behind him. “They’ve been chatting for the past ten minutes.”
Both Bucky and Sam turned to look, only for a pit to form in Bucky’s stomach.
You were there. Absolutely beautiful— dressed so effortlessly stunningly in a way that made the breath get caught in his throat. Then again, you could be in pajamas and an old hoodie, and Bucky would be a fool for you.
You sat at the bar counter, absolutely flushed. Not from drinking too much alcohol, no, the drink in your hand was completely full. The skin of your cheeks are tinted a shade of red from embarrassment and shyness in a way that Bucky had never been able to see before. Your eyelashes are fluttering against your cheeks as you struggle to maintain eye contact with Bucky’s oldest and longest friend.
Steve stood beside you, so fucking close. He leaned onto the bar counter with an elbow, a small smile on his face as he talked to you. His eyes never left your face, even when you couldn’t look him in the eyes.
The conversation between you two is never ending. You’re both responding in quick succession despite the fluttering party around you, ignoring the noise and the chatter. You two are completely absorbed in each other’s words. It’s like nothing else matters.
You say something that makes Steve chuckle. His head hangs low just for a moment, and he shakes his head. You have a shy smile on your face as you trace the rim of your glass, speaking to him softly. You’re nervous. You’re shy. You look almost a little scared of what he’ll say next.
When he does respond, you let out a soft laugh, pulling your lip between your teeth before shaking your head shyly. Your cheeks are getting redder by the second.
Then, Steve leans in— whispers something in your ear.
You freeze for a second, your lips part, and you stare at Steve. You’re flustered. Steve’s grin goes even wider as he pulls back to look at you, and he finishes the rest of his drink.
Steve looks quite satisfied with himself for your reaction, the pure flushed and embarrassed look on your face. You’re unable to react for a few moments before you’re turning away from him quickly, unable to look him in the eyes— and Steve is laughing at you while you’re fanning your face with your hands.
“Since when has Steve had moves like that?” Sam asked, eyebrows raised. “She’s like butter for him.”
Bucky has never seen you like this before. There’s never been a moment where you have ever acted like this for him before. Not once, not ever.
Despite the fact you’re so embarrassed at whatever he had to say to you, you’re still talking to him. You can’t even look him in the eyes, but you’re responding to each and every single thing he’s saying to you. Just like Sam said— you’re melting for his words.
Bucky has a pit of despair in his gut. He has to look away. He can’t watch the scene in front of him anymore. A long breath enters and exits his chest as he slowly tries to think rationally.
Rationality fully leaves when Sam’s voice breaks his meditation.
“There he is!” Sam exclaimed, standing. “Introduce us to your friend, Steve!”
Steve’s walking over, with you. Steve’s hand is on your back, leading you over to the group of them. You look relaxed, the blush is mostly gone from your cheeks, but Bucky can’t focus on anything except for the fact you’re extremely close to Steve.
Sam moves to greet Steve, and two hands clap together before chests hit in a brother hug, their other hands hitting each other’s back.
“Well, I’m not the one who should introduce her,” Steve chuckled, shaking his head.
You give Sam a polite smile before sidestepping both men, going around them, dropping onto the couch beside Bucky. Immediately, he shifted over to give you space. You notice, and Bucky tries not to react to your gaze.
As you settle, you give a nod to Natasha and Rhodey on the opposite couch. Natasha gives you a smile in return, but she looks a bit confused.
You introduce yourself as Bucky’s friend— the one that Bucky goes to see all the time.
“The one that’s not real?” Sam asked, surprised.
“You tell them I’m not real?” you asked, looking at Bucky as you lean back into the cushions.
“They say it on their own,” Bucky muttered. You stared at him for a few moments. You heard the edge to his voice, and he cursed in his head for being so blatant with his irritation.
“Are you okay?” you whispered, your voice softer, only for him to hear. He wanted to scream. Not at you, but at himself.
Bucky doesn’t look at you. Instead, he gets up, handing you his drink before walking away without another word. He can feel your eyes on him, feel the way you straightened on the couch in panic as he left without warning.
He fucking hates this.
Only two tells. He only needed to do one thing, say one thing, and you immediately could tell something was off about him. He hates even more that he just walked away from you without even saying a word, but he needs a second to collect his thoughts.
For the rest of the party, Bucky avoided you like the plague. He felt your eyes on him. He refused to look at you. Even when the crowd thinned out, and the party dwindled down to just the team and you, Bucky avoided you.
Eventually, you took your leave.
It was Steve who saw you to the door. Steve offered to give you a ride home. You rejected, giving him a smile and saying you’ll just call an Uber or something, and wait in the lobby. Steve wasn’t having it. Something about it being too late at night, and he was right.
Bucky could see, out of the corner of his eye, you looking at him. He didn’t look back.
So, you left with Steve, Steve’s jacket on your shoulders to keep you warm for when the night air hit you.
Shortly after, Bucky excused himself to his room, and his phone went off in his pocket. He re-read your text, feeling more and more like a fucking asshole with each read.
He tossed his phone to the side, dragging a hand down his face. Bucky couldn’t answer you. Not tonight.
Pretty Girl [1:32am]: is everything okay?
Just like you thought, you and Steve became extremely good friends right away. You practically knew him and everything about him right away from the very beginning, thanks to Bucky.
You didn’t even mean to approach him first, but your eyes found him when you were looking in the crowd when you arrived. He was attempting to get a drink when you dropped in on the bar, and opened up with—
“Is Bucky gay and not telling me?”
Steve choked on the water he originally had in his hands before looking at you. You belatedly introduced yourself to him, telling him who exactly you were to Bucky before repeating yourself, asking him if he and Bucky were dating or if Bucky and Sam were dating or if all three of them were in some… throuple… situation.
Thankfully, Steve took it like a champ. He laughed so loud it made you grin before he shook his head and confirmed that Bucky is indeed single, and has been since the forties.
Then, he asked you why you even assumed.
Your next question—
“How the hell do I get your dumbass friend to like me then?”
Steve looked intrigued at that point. Leaned against the bar, hooked on your every word. You told him about your situation with him— how touchy Bucky was with you. The cute names he called you. How he was always at your place.
You told him how your friends thought he must not like girls, which is why you even had to ask Steve in the first place.
Then he whispers to you, in your ear for only you to hear—
“I’m certain he’s already in love with you if he’s doing all of that.”
Steve had such a big grin on his face after saying it— and he couldn’t stop telling you how happy he was to meet you. How he’d noticed how Bucky was just a generally brighter guy these days, but wouldn’t say much about you, as if he wanted to keep you to himself.
Steve said he understood why Bucky fell for you, from how you were talking about him.
“My words don’t mean much,” Steve said, smiling at you, “but thank you for looking at Bucky like this. Like he’s a man.”
That first half of the party was almost like a blur for you. You had practically reached enlightenment just by speaking to Captain America. All of your world’s issues had been solved by your conversation with the man, and you could only remember bits and pieces from how scrambled your brain was.
You were so embarrassed from admitting all of it to Bucky’s friend. Your feelings about having to ask for advice on how to get Bucky to look your way to Steve telling you that you already had Bucky wrapped around your finger. All of it had you on a euphoric level that you had never experienced before.
Yet, if Steve’s so fucking certain, then why is Bucky ignoring you?
You remembered the second half of the party better than the first. Bucky moving away from you on the couch. At first, you thought it was because his friends were around. You tried not to let it bother you– the way that he created distance between the both of you.
Despite the fact your heart was racing because you received verbal confirmation from Bucky’s best friend that Bucky had feelings for you, you tried acting normal. The same way that you always acted with him. Touchy. Casual. The same flirting routine that you two always use.
Yet, you don’t think he looked your way once the entire night. You tried. You desperately tried to corner him, to talk to him. You should’ve known better to try to get the former Winter Soldier alone.
Bucky doesn’t know this because you’ve never told him, but he has read receipts on. You know he’s seen every single one of your text messages. You know he’s read every single one of them the second you’ve sent them, which means there’s no mission.
You’ve gone over a week without contact with him. You’ve gone longer without seeing him, but never without any form of communication. There was always some sort of text or call, something to connect the two of you together.
You didn’t have the clearance to go in and out of the Avengers compound. You couldn’t just waltz in there. All you could do was text and attempt to call him, and wait for him to text you back.
But you don’t want to bother him if he doesn’t want to talk to you anymore. You’re better than that— you’re not going to chase attention from someone who clearly didn’t want yours. You’re still not sure what you did to offend him, but you’d try one last time.
Feelings aside, you valued him deeply as your friend. You thought he felt the same way. You weren’t sure if you were hurt from feeling a friend breakup, or having to get over your crush over him. Either option fucking sucked.
You call him one more time during your lunch break, only for the phone to go immediately to voicemail. You let out a deep sigh, and wait for the prompt to allow you to record your message.
“I’ll stop calling and texting you now,” you said, your heart beating so wildly in your chest you’re certain that your phone’s microphone can pick it up. “I don’t know what I did, but… Yeah. I’ll leave you alone now. I wish you the best, I guess. Stay safe, handsome.”
You hang up, sending the message. You turn your phone off next. You don’t want to know if he’s texted you or called you back, and you don’t trust yourself by just simply turning on the do not disturb feature on your phone. You’re the type to still look at notifications to see if you were disturbed.
You try to power through the rest of your day on autopilot.
Your plan is to complete your menial work tasks. Tasks that should have been so easy to complete without a single bat of an eye, but no. The universe wanted to make your life harder. As if to just laugh at you, add onto your plate, and make you feel even more miserable.
The emails you received from your team were full of dumpster fires that you needed to put out for your clients. You were pulled into emergency meetings that you didn’t have time for. Those same clients were calling you, frantic and fucking pissed that your company wasn’t delivering what you had promised them.
All at the same time, your upper management was cracking down on your boss, who was then taking it out on all of you— and you had no time to deal with his tantrum. You were one fucking person, dealing with your own meltdown in your own personal life, but expected to deal with everyone else’s.
You didn’t get out of work on time. You couldn’t. It was impossible. You had a mountain of tasks that had no end in sight. You didn’t take your final break at the end of the day. Honestly, your head was pounding.
Still, you didn’t go home right away. Didn’t turn your phone back on. You went to the grocery store instead. You couldn’t handle the thought of sitting in your lonely home, by yourself with your own thoughts.
You should’ve just gone home.
You roamed up and down aisles that you didn’t need to go down, only for a rambunctious child to slam into you with an open container of fruit juice in his hands, spilling all over your clothes before falling backwards. The kid’s parent had the audacity to yell at you.
You barely had half the mind to walk away before breaking down in tears yourself because why is your kid drinking unbought juice in the store and running around unsupervised? while the kid’s mom screamed at you to pay for the juice.
You didn’t even buy anything at the store. Just dropped your basket off at the register and left before you ended up exploding. Apologized to the cashier for the inconvenience before making the walk home.
A soft curse fell from your lips as you shoved your key into the door— it was fucking jammed again. You shook the door, tears prickling in your eyes. You were sticky, uncomfortable, angry, overstimulated, and so fucking sad. You’re about to slam your fist into the door in utter rage and frustration when it opens.
“You really need to tell your landlord to fix your door, doll,” Bucky murmured to you, “Even I had trouble getting in earlier.”
You’re staring at him, like a deer caught in headlights. He looks sheepish, eyes trained on the ground at your feet. For a moment, you wonder how the fuck he’s in your apartment. Then you remember you gave him a key a long time ago for emergencies.
Your silence must’ve alerted him. His eyes finally drag upwards, and widen when he sees the state you’re in. His eyebrows furrowed. He’s quiet, for just a moment. Then, his inner thoughts come forth.
“You look like shit.”
“Yeah. Because that’s exactly what I want to fucking hear from you after uncalled for radio silence,” you said dryly, coming to your senses. You watch him cringe at your tone before you push past him, walking into your apartment.
Your work bag is unceremoniously dropped onto the nearest chair, and you shrug off your cardigan next. You can hear Bucky shuffling behind you as you make your way to your bedroom for another change of clothes before you drown yourself in hot water.
By the time you come out of the bathroom, no longer sticky, muscles slightly relaxed from the spray of the water, you find that Bucky had made dinner for the two of you. It’s nothing fancy or extreme– just some pasta and chicken that you definitely didn’t have in your fridge before. You vaguely wondered if he had gone shopping before he even came over.
You want to press him. Tell him to get the fuck out of your house. But God, the food smells good, he looks good in his stupid fucking sweatshirt and jeans that screams boyfriend material, and you’re so tired.
You can feel his eyes on you, cautious. The tension in the air is thick. You could probably eat it for dessert, if you wanted to. For now, you take your time stabbing into the pasta in front of you and bringing it to your lips. You fill your stomach, ignore his stare, and ignore the way that he doesn’t eat his own share of food.
“I got your message,” Bucky finally spoke.
“Great. Why are you here then?” you replied, dropping your fork onto the plate. It clattered loudly against the ceramic, and you finally sat back in your seat. Your arms crossed over your chest as you finally looked at him.
Bucky was still looking at you. His lips were parted, as if he was trying to come up with the words to speak. His fists were clenched on either side of his plate, and then his mouth shut. He took in a deep breath from his nostrils, and shook his head, lowering it as he did.
“Are you here to return my apartment key? Didn’t have to make me dinner to do that. You could’ve slipped it through the mail slot, but whatever. Hand it over,” you said, holding out your hand to him.
His head immediately snapped up, and a crease formed between his eyebrows. He looked hurt– but not in a kicked puppy kind of way. Almost scandalized, like he was offended that you even suggested that to begin with.
“I’m not returning your fuckin’ key,” he responded, voice a little tight.
You frowned, raising your eyebrows at him. You lowered your hand back down, and tilted your head at him as you observed him for a few moments. You were both in a quiet standoff, one that you didn’t fully get.
“I’m sorry, did I misunderstand something between us?” you finally asked, tone clipped. “I’ve texted you. Called you– like an obsessive fucking girlfriend for nearly two weeks now. I can’t even say that you ghosted me because ghosting is a term that you use for people in relationships or people in talking stages, and we clearly aren’t in either of those–”
“What the fuck is ghosting?” he cut you off, exasperated.
“I just fucking told you!” you shouted back, throwing your hands into the air.
Then, you looked at him. Really looked at him. Despite his tone, he was genuine. Confused. He wanted to know, and you were going off on a tangent on him. It wouldn’t be fair to him or you to keep going if he had no clue what you were saying. So, you took in a slow breath of air before you explained.
“It means you ignored me. Fell off the face of the Earth without any explanation– no rhyme or reason. I had no clue what happened to you, or if I did something to hurt you. There was no closure, no understanding. I don’t know what I did to piss you off, so now I’m pissed off at you,” you said, trying to keep your voice as even as possible. “And now, you come into my fucking apartment, make me dinner, and try to act like everything is okay? That’s just a load of bullshit, James. I have to get texts from Steve to make sure that you’re alive, and not dead in some random country!”
Bucky’s eyebrow twitched, and he sat back in his own seat. You watched as he sucked on his teeth, and slowly exhaled.
“You and Steve text? How often does that happen?” he asked, his voice low.
“Are you for real?” you asked, a laugh escaping your lips. You couldn’t even try to mask the confusion that was on your face now. You stared at him, blinking. “Out of everything I just said– that’s what you’re going to take away from that? Not that I’m mad– you’re not even going to apologize?”
“Just answer the question, please,” he murmured, his shoulders rising as he took in another, small breath.
Your eyebrows furrowed as you stared at him. You couldn’t read his face. There was something distant in his eyes. He was guarded, far away, and not the Bucky that you knew.
“I’ve texted him more than you’ve texted me these past couple weeks,” you answered, clenching your jaw. “Which, by the way– you texted me absolutely nothing. So you can guess how often me and Steve text.”
“So you two really hit it off then, huh?” Bucky said, though it sounds more to himself than to you. He’s looking down at this full plate of food now, avoiding your gaze as his tongue is poking at his cheek. He almost looks pissed off.
“What the hell are you even talking about?”
His eyes flickered up. “You and Steve. At the party. That’s where you met, right? He brought you home, didn’t he?”
“He did, since the person that I assumed was going to be my ride home avoided me all night,” you shot back. You could feel your already thinning patience dissolving into nothing at all. “How is this relevant to the conversation that we’re having?”
Silence settled like a stone wall as you stared at each other. The two of you met another dead end to your conversation, with nowhere to go. This was the first time you had ever argued with Bucky like this, and you could feel your relationship with him slipping through your fingertips. You don’t know this side of Bucky. Your agitation was already through the roof, and Bucky was mad about something that you didn’t even understand, but you could see it in his eyes.
Then, you watch his anger dissipate. It cracks, like he’s conceding. Like he doesn’t want to be mad. He’s fighting an internal battle, struggling with himself in his mind. You don’t know which part of him is winning yet.
Bucky scrubs a hand down his face as he slouches in his seat, and rests his elbows on the table, burying his face in his hands for a few moments. He takes two, slow, deep breaths as he tries to compose himself.
“Steve’s a good guy,” he finally spoke through a clenched jaw. “A great guy even. I’m glad you two seem to be getting along.”
Your temper freezes in its place as you stare at him. What?
Bucky lifts his head, lacing his fingers together in front of his mouth. He’s still not looking at you, eyes trained somewhere behind your head.
“I– I haven’t seen someone make him laugh like that in so damn long, and I know you really well, so I don’t doubt that you’ll make him happy either. And I’ve never seen you act so fucking shy in front of guy before, and I’m glad it’s Steve that made you act like that–”
The words are spilling out of Bucky’s mouth faster than you can comprehend. Your mind is trying to keep up with the clusterfuck of information that you’re suddenly receiving from him. You’re doing your best to decipher what he’s saying to you, while sitting in front of you, looking like a sad, lonely, kicked fucking puppy. He looks like you’ve just abandoned him.
“–and God I just wish that it was me that you looked at like that because I’ve been with you this entire time for over a year now, and I’ve been flirting with you every single fucking day that I’m with you and you never seem to notice–”
“You’re jealous?” you finally cut him off, your mind finally catching up with his words. “You’ve been ignoring me because you’re jealous that I was talking to Steve at the party?”
You watch as Bucky’s lips part, and he slowly falls backwards into his seat. His chest rises and falls rapidly as he attempts to catch his breath from the long winded, incoherent rant. He clenches his jaw like he’s about to break his teeth into pieces. Then, he nods once, swallows thickly, and looks you in the eyes. Nervously.
You can't believe what you're hearing. He's jealous. The guy you've been ripping your hair out over, the one you've embarrassed yourself in front of Captain America over is jealous.
You got up from your chair, and went over to your bookshelf. You could feel him watching you as you pulled out one of your photo albums– a black binder. Sleek, inconspicuous, unassuming. You brought it back to the table, dropping it down in front of him before sitting back in your seat, taking a slow breath.
Silently, you gestured for him to open it, looking down at it before looking back at him. You watched as he slowly reached for it, moving his plate away to make more space.
Then, he saw it.
Your possession of candid photos, spanning over the last five months. Just Bucky, and Bucky alone. In nearly all of them, Bucky wasn’t looking at you. You thought that he would have been aware that you were taking the photos, with his assassin senses, but Steve told you otherwise– he trusts you, he said.
You watched as Bucky continued flipping through the photo album, page by page, confusion riddling his features with each turn, each new photo that he saw. There were photos from your excursions together.
The photos taken on your DSLR camera were the ones where he wasn’t facing you. Where he had no clue that you were even pointing the camera at him. These photos were taken outdoors, when you were outside doing something else in the world. At an aquarium. At the park. At a nice cafe that you saw online that you dragged him to. You had made sure the flash was turned off on your camera, made sure that he wouldn’t be able to see you sneaking photos. You always tried to be sure there was something near him that you could pretend to be taking a photo of instead, too.
In some of the recent photos, his face was clearly shown. At some point throughout your process of sneaking photos of him, you realized that he thought you were just tapping away at your screen. It was one of the many benefits that you had from the fact that Bucky didn’t use his phone often, other than to contact you.
These were photos of him in your kitchen when he made dinner or of him on your couch, your legs on his lap. Some photos were of him sleeping on the other side of your bed, completely unaware that you had put your camera to his face
“You don’t take pictures of people,” he murmured, fingers brushing over the photos. “You told me you think people become the fakest version of themselves on camera.”
“You’re right. I don’t. I fucking hate it,” you answered with a shrug. “And they do.”
“Then what’s all this?”
“Photos of you through my eyes– exactly how I see you. An entire collection of it, actually. I hoard those photos. I have more of them that I need to go get developed, and add to that album, actually,” you admitted.
“Why?”
You could only stare at him for a few moments, your heart thumping wildly in your chest, threatening to crawl up your esophagus and show itself to Bucky. He looked like he was putting together the pieces, just as you had done yourself. But he needed the confirmation.
“I asked Steve if you two were dating. That’s what we were talking about at the party.”
You watched as Bucky’s head snapped up towards you, eyebrows raised up to his hairline. You’re certain that if he had water, he would’ve choked like Steve did.
“Sweetheart, what the fuck–”
“And then we kept talking about you,” you cut him off, looking away from him, clearing your throat. “And I asked Steve how I could get you to like me– to notice me– and stop just flirting with me like a friend. He told me that if you were flirting with me at all, there’s a pretty good chance that you already like me. Which is why I got shy.”
You can feel heat crawling up your neck, blossoming under your cheeks, and on either side of your head to your ears. It was your turn to avoid his gaze. You kept your eyes down on your hands, which were folded onto your lap. You could hear your heart in your ears. Your stomach flipped over in your body in unnatural ways, and you wish you didn’t eat any of the food Bucky made.
Then, you saw Bucky’s metal hand on top of yours. You didn’t even hear him stand or get out of his chair. It was moments like this that you forgot how quiet he could be– how he made himself loud for you, how he made his presence known for your own comfort. It was one of the many things that he did for you without you even realizing it.
Your breath hitched as you turned, finding him on one knee beside your chair, looking up at you. His thumb brushed over your knuckles, gently, comfortingly, sweetly, in a way that made your heart stutter in your chest.
You met his eyes. They were soft. Just like how he had looked at you that day in the bookstore, when you told him to smile for you. A small smile was on his lips as he looked up at you, unguarded and raw.
“I’m really sorry, doll,” he whispered, and you released a soft breath. “I didn’t– I should’ve just talked to you instead of running from you. I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. I… didn’t want to be rejected by you.”
“So you thought pushing me away completely would be better?” you shot back with a frown, but there was no real anger to your words, and Bucky could tell.
“Can I make it up to you?” he asked. “Take you on a date? An actual date– maybe one where we can take a photo together instead of you taking ones of me like a creep hiding something.”
A laugh fell from your lips as Bucky squeezed your hands. His smile only grows at the sound of your laughter, and you can’t find it in you to be a brat to him. Not when he’s kneeling beside you, holding your hands, and asking so nicely. Then again, you were always soft for him.
Then, you reached for him. You grabbed him by the collar of his sweatshirt, pulling him up as you leaned down, meeting him somewhere in the middle. His lips are on yours within seconds, and they’re as soft as you had imagined– as you know they are because you’ve put your lip masks on his lips with your fingers more times than you can count. But God, feeling them directly on yours is a different sense of euphoria that you never would’ve known until now.
You slowly slink out of your chair for comfort, until you’re on the floor with Bucky, body pressed against his. Your hands are on his shoulders, his wrapped around your back to hold you tight against him. You’re breathless against his lips, slotted against him perfectly like he was made for you. You could probably stay like this forever. Kissing him slowly in the dining area of your apartment.
When you finally parted, his forehead pressed against yours. Your breaths mingle, fanning against each other’s faces as you look at each other. The tension is back, but different. You both react at the same time.
Bucky dives back in for another kiss, a hand coming to cradle the back of your neck to support you. You can feel his tongue swipe the seam of your lips, requesting entry that you would never deny him. He immediately takes the chance to explore, while your hands explore underneath his clothes, searching for skin.
A low, guttural groan escapes his throat. “This is backwards, baby,” he murmurs against your lips. “We should be going on dates first before all of this.”
“Are you complaining?” you asked, hands moving up his abdomen, and resting on his sides.
“No, but I wanna be a gentleman for you, make it up to you for the bullshit I put you through–”
“Technically, we have been going on dates this entire time,” you reassured, peppering a series of kisses along his jaw and down his neck. Bucky lets out a soft sigh, moving his head to the side to allow you space to keep pressing your lips to his skin. “Since we both liked each other, we just never said it out loud.”
You can feel his resolve of being a gentleman breaking with each kiss. His hands tighten around you, and you can feel his pulse quicken under your lips. Gently, you nip onto a soft spot, listening to him let out another groan before you placate the ache with your tongue.
Then, you’re being hoisted off the floor with a shriek falling from your lips. You grab onto Bucky’s shoulders quickly, and you look at his face– there’s determination all over his features as he makes his way down the hall to your bedroom. The resolve has shattered. You’ve broken him.
Bucky’s been in your bedroom before. He’s been in your bed before, been under your sheets, slept comfortably through the night with him on the other side of the bed– but God, this is so much better.
Clothes are thrown off, damn near ripped at the seams, littered all over your floor, and Bucky’s hands are all over you. He’s laid you down onto your pillows, and his head is between your legs before you can come to your senses– and you feel the warmth of his tongue flattening against your aching core.
You both moan into the room at the same time, almost in harmony. You weakly push yourself onto your elbows to look at him, to watch him, and he’s hooking your thighs over his shoulders, pulling you deeper into him to lock you in place. Then, you meet his eyes as he takes another pass.
Bucky doesn’t need to say a single word for you to understand that he’s been waiting to taste you on his tongue for months. He eats like a man that’s been starved, like a man that had spent years in the desert, and you were the first drop of water that he’s had.
You can only fall back against the pillows, reaching for him, grabbing onto his hair– which makes him groan against you. The vibrations alone make your body tremble against him. He’s enjoying every single moment, eyes falling shut. His hand shifts, thumb moving to press against your clit, and your body reacts instantly, thighs clenching around him.
“Bucky– fuck–” you gasped out, and you fall apart instantly. He groans into you, almost in approval as he licks up all of your arousal and juices until there’s nothing left. You’re twitching, sensitive, and pushing on his head– damn near sobbing for him to give you a break.
Reluctantly, he does get up. And he looks like he’s the one who just came. He’s breathless, chest rising and falling, expression fucked out and beautiful. Bucky licks his lips, then wipes the area surrounding his mouth before he slots himself between your legs, lowering himself down to you.
“So good for me, baby,” he praised softly, kissing your forehead as his elbows rested on either side of your head. His kisses moved further down your face until his lips met yours again in a slow, gentle kiss. “So, so good for me. Can you keep going?”
“God, if you don’t fuck me I might kill you.”
You could feel him grin against you as he slowly shifted, and you felt him slowly drag the length of his cock against your folds, coating himself in your slick. A soft gasp fell from your lips as he moaned out your name. He dropped his head into your shoulder, trying to ground himself as he lined himself up with your aching hole, and pushed in.
You can feel him deep– every ridge and vein, pulsing inside of you. He’s thick and girthy, long, stretching you out more than you’d ever been before, and it’s too much, and not enough at the same time. You need him painting the inside of you, staining you, claiming you– you can’t tell him that right now. Not yet. You just got the man.
You know that you’re not much better. You’re wet around him, walls twitching and crying at the feel of him. Your legs are trembling around his hips, fingernails clawing at his shoulders and digging deep as you try to catch your breath. You’re impossibly full, but you need him to move.
And he does.
The first pull back has you seeing the gates of heaven. When he sinks all the way back in, you’re sent straight to hell.
Bucky fucks you into the bed like a man on a mission, full of sin and no regrets. His hands are all over you, grabbing at your waist to hold you in place while his lips are busy marking your chest in places where only you and he will know. When your back arches off the bed, his lips close around a stiff nipple, tongue lapping around the hardened peak and sucking.
You’re sensitive, breaths erratic, and he’s too good.
“I can’t– I can’t–” you whimpered, fingers digging into his chest.
“Oh, but you’re doing so well, baby,” Bucky praised softly.
You can barely open your eyes to look at him, but when you do? There’s a light sheen of sweat that’s coating his skin, and his eyes are on you, watching every single part of you, burning you into his memory– the way you look under him as he fucks you– how your breasts move in correspondence with each thrust of his hips, how fucked out and cock drunk you look, how your body spasms and twitches under his ministrations. He’s compartmentalizing every single detail of you.
“Bucky, please,” you moaned out, a shaky breath escaping your lips.
“Gimme one more, doll– Can you do that for me?” he groaned, his hips picking up speed, “Need you to cum on my cock, pretty thing.”
There’s a neediness in his voice that makes your walls flutter around him, that shoves you off the edge a second time that night– just like he wanted you to. A curse falls from his lips as his hips stutter against you, and he rides out your orgasm as long as possible before he’s pulling out of you, his own release spilling all over your stomach and chest. Bucky catches himself on his elbows before he collapses on top of you, breathing heavily.
Part of you wants to tell him what a waste. You keep it to yourself for now.
“Kiss, Bucky,” you muttered instead, reaching for his face.
He chuckles, almost breathy, and leans back down to you. He’s careful to avoid the hot, sticky mess that he’s left behind on your body, but he kisses you regardless. A sigh escapes your throat as he meets your lips.
Before long, he’s completely leaving you, muttering something about needing to clean you up. You stay there, boneless and sated, drifting off to sleep. You don’t even realize he’d come back until you feel a warm washcloth on your skin, wiping away the remnants of misdeed that you two had committed just moments prior.
Then, you’re being hoisted into his arms again, and the sheets are pulled over your bodies. His lips press against your forehead as his arms wrap around you, tugging you closer to his chest. Once again, Bucky is in your bed. Like he’s been countless times before, but this is different. It’s changed. You like it better this way.
You’re listening to the steady beat of his heart, allowing it to be your lullaby for the night when he breaks the silence.
“Is this a yes to the date?” Bucky whispered.
A grin breaks out on your face, and you press a kiss to his bare chest. “Yes, handsome. You can take me out on a date.”
✮ synopsis: he's the Winter Soldier, and you're just you. but when your skin touches his, he becomes bucky barnes again.
(or: the soulmate fic where touch is everything and bucky barnes will fight his way back to you, one broken memory at a time.)
✮ pairing: ca:tws!bucky x soulmate!reader
✮ disclaimers: fem!reader, soulmates, violence/action sequences, graphic descriptions of torture/memory wiping, PTSD, panic attacks, dissociation, past torture, brainwashing, heavy angst, touch deprivation, references to past violence/assassinations, hurt/comfort, fluff, eventual happy ending, bucky is down horrendously bad
✮ warnings: (18+) MDNI, explicit sexual content, unprotected sex, p in v, oral (f receiving), overstimulation, multiple orgasms, soul bond sex (enhanced sensations), touch-starved bucky, possessive behavior, marking/bruising, praise kink, body worship, emotional sex, crying during sex (in a good way), size kink if you squint, bucky has a dirty filthy mouth
✮ word count: 14.3k
✮ a/n: re-uploading all my fics to this blog so i'm posting a ca:tws-era oldie but goodie (the last 4k of this is straight smut, so if that's not your cup of tea feel free to stop at the **)
bonus drabble
main masterlist
The library basement feels like a crypt tonight—all dead air and fluorescent buzz that makes your molars ache.
You've been down here so long your bones have started to match the temperature of the concrete, cold seeping through your jeans where you've been sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by a semi-circle of photocopied articles that all essentially say the same nothing in different ways.
3:17 AM according to your phone, which you check compulsively every twenty minutes like maybe time will take pity and skip forward to your deadline. The security guard made his last round two hours ago—Gerald? Gary? Something with a G—his whistling fading up the stairwell along with any pretense that you're not completely alone down here.
Your neck cracks when you roll it, vertebrae protesting the last six hours of hunching over sources that shouldn't be this hard to parse. But your advisor had smiled that sharp little smile when assigning this topic, the one that says let's see if you're really cut out for this, and spite is a hell of a motivator.
Even if your eyes are burning. Even if the coffee tastes like battery acid. Even if your soul bond has been aching since midnight with that peculiar emptiness you've learned to ignore.
The lights flicker—building's older than sin, held together by asbestos and prayer—but the air changes with it. Shifts. Like all the oxygen just remembered it had somewhere else to be.
Your fingers still on the keyboard mid-sentence.
Don't be stupid. It's a basement. In a library. The scariest thing down here is your browser history.
But your body knows things your mind pretends it doesn't. Every hair follicle suddenly awake, skin prickling with the kind of ancient warning that kept humans from being eaten in the dark. Your heartbeat kicks up, stuttering from normal to concerned between one breath and the next.
You turn.
He stands at the edge of the stacks like violence in human form.
Black tactical gear eats the light, makes him look like someone cut a hole in reality and taught it how to hunt. The mask covering the lower half of his face should make him less human, but somehow it's worse—forces you to focus on the eyes that track your movement with the kind of empty precision that makes your hindbrain scream predator predator predator.
"Oh." The sound punches out of you, high and strangled.
He doesn't speak. Doesn't need to. Just moves toward you with the kind of lethal economy that makes you understand, suddenly and completely, why rabbits freeze when hawks circle overhead. No wasted motion. No hesitation. Just purpose distilled into muscle and intent.
Your body tries—God, it tries. Scrambling backward, papers scattering, laptop sliding off your thighs to crack against the floor in what feels like slow motion. Three months of work fracturing into digital garbage as you crab-walk backward, palms slipping on photocopies, knee catching on your backpack hard enough to send you sprawling.
He crosses the space between you like it's nothing.
Like you're nothing.
His hand finds your throat before you've even processed standing, leather and pressure sending you backward into the wall hard enough to knock the air from your lungs. Old brick catches your hair, pulls it, but that barely registers against the feeling of being pinned like an insect, specimen for examination before disposal.
Both your hands fly to his wrist, fingernails catching on tactical fabric that won't give, won't move, won't budge. He's not crushing your windpipe—not yet—but the promise is there in the careful placement of his thumb, the calculated pressure that says I could, if I wanted to.
"Please—" It comes out thin, reedy. Your right hand abandons his wrist to push against his chest, trying to create distance that doesn't exist, will never exist. "I don't know what you—I'm nobody, I'm just—"
His head tilts. Minute. Considering. The eyes stay empty, stay cold, but something flickers there—assessment, maybe. Calculation. How long it will take. How quiet you'll be.
Your left hand keeps clawing at his grip while your right slides up his chest, finds the edge of his tactical vest, pushes uselessly at a shoulder that might as well be carved from stone. But the movement makes you stretch, makes your hand slip higher, past the collar of his gear, past the edge of the mask, until—
Your fingertips brush his jaw.
Skin against skin.
The world breaks apart.
Heat races from that point of contact like lightning seeking ground, if lightning could rewrite your DNA as it traveled. Every nerve ending lights up at once, not with pain but with recognition so profound it feels like drowning in reverse. Like every cell in your body suddenly remembers how to breathe.
His entire body locks. The hand at your throat spasms, loosens, and you hear him make a sound—sharp, bitten off, like someone just slid a knife between his ribs. Those empty eyes blow wide, pupils expanding until there's barely any gray left, and his chest heaves against your palm like he's just broken the surface after being underwater too long.
He rips the mask off with his free hand. Tears it away like it's burning him, revealing a face that makes your chest cavity feel too small. Sharp jaw, soft mouth, stubble that catches the shit fluorescent lighting and turns it into shadow. Beautiful in the way broken things can be beautiful, in the way that makes you want to cut yourself on the edges.
The leather glove at your throat disappears—he tears it off with his teeth, movements gone jerky and desperate where they were smooth before. Then his bare hand is cupping your face, thumb brushing your cheekbone with the kind of reverence reserved for holy things, impossible things, things that might disappear if you breathe wrong.
He pulls you forward, or maybe he falls into you—either way, your foreheads meet in the space between one heartbeat and the next. His breath fans across your face, ragged and hot, and you can feel him shaking. This man who moved like death incarnate thirty seconds ago is shaking.
"Oh," he breathes, and his voice—Christ, his voice is nothing like you imagined during those empty nights when the bond ached worst. Rough like he hasn't used it in years. Soft like he's afraid it'll break something. Accent pulling at the vowels in ways that make your chest hurt. "Oh, no. No, not—not like this."
You can't move. Can't think. Can't process anything beyond the electricity still racing through your veins, the place where his thumb traces your cheekbone like he's trying to memorize the architecture of your face through touch alone. Your hands are caught between you, one still fisted in his tactical vest, the other pressed flat against his chest where you can feel his heart hammering out a rhythm that matches yours.
He pulls back just enough to look at you, and the devastation in his eyes makes your throat close for reasons that have nothing to do with violence. Gray like winter mornings, like grief, like the moment before the sky breaks open.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, wrecked. His thumb catches the tear you didn't realize was sliding down your cheek, and the tenderness of it makes you want to scream. "I'm so fucking sorry, I didn't—I couldn't—"
"Who are you?" Your voice comes out destroyed, barely recognizable. The soul bond hums between you like a live wire, like coming home to a place that's on fire, and you don't know whether to run toward it or away.
His jaw works, muscles tightening and releasing like he's fighting something immense. When he speaks again, it's careful. Measured. Like each word costs him something irreplaceable.
"Someone who's going to disappear." His forehead presses against yours again, harder this time, desperate. Both hands frame your face now, holding you like something precious, something he's about to lose. "Someone who needs you to run. Now. Before—"
A sound echoes down the stairwell. Footsteps. Multiple sets.
The change in him is instant and terrible. The softness vanishes like it was never there, replaced by the same lethal efficiency that brought him here, but now there's something else in his eyes. Something that looks like anguish.
"Forgive me," he says, and before you can ask for what, his thumb finds a spot behind your jaw.
The world tilts. Your legs go liquid. But he catches you—of course he catches you—lowers you to the ground like you're made of spun glass while your vision tunnels to nothing.
The last thing you feel is his mouth pressed to your forehead, words whispered against your skin in a language you don't recognize but somehow understand.
I'll find you again.
I promise.
I'm sorry.
When security finds you four hours later, you have bruises on your throat that look like purple-black fingerprints, a concussion that makes the world swim, and no memory the EMTs will accept of how you ended up unconscious in a locked basement.
But you remember.
You remember the way his hands shook when he held your face. You remember the devastation in winter-gray eyes. You remember the electricity of recognition, the soul bond snapping into place only to be severed, leaving you with a phantom ache that feels like dying in slow motion.
There's a leather glove clutched in your fist that no one can pry from your fingers.
You tell them you don't remember where it came from.
You lie.
The world had always been divided into two types of people: those who'd found their match and those still waiting.
You'd grown up watching the found ones move through life with that particular brand of settled confidence, like they'd discovered some fundamental truth the rest of you were still stumbling toward.
Your mother used to tell the story at dinner parties, after her second glass of wine made her sentimental. How she'd been twenty-three, working at a bank in downtown Brooklyn, when a man came in to dispute an overdraft fee. Their hands touched when she passed back his paperwork. The bond snapped into place like a rubber band that had been stretched across decades, just waiting to contract.
She'd knocked over her coffee. He'd forgotten his own name for thirty seconds. They'd been married six months later.
"You just know," she'd say, fingers intertwined with your father's across the table. "It's like every cell in your body suddenly remembers what it was made for."
You'd wanted to believe her. Spent your eighteenth birthday waiting for that recognition to hit, for your body to suddenly make sense in a way it never had before.
But days turned to weeks turned to months, and all you felt was the same low-grade emptiness everyone without a bond carried—that constant, quiet ache of incompleteness.
By twenty-one, you'd stopped looking for it in every accidental touch.
By twenty-three, you'd convinced yourself you were one of the statistical anomalies. No bond. No match. Just you and your dissertation and a future that looked exactly like your present, only with better coffee and maybe tenure if you played your cards right.
The bruises have faded to sick yellow-green by the time you make it back to campus. Two weeks of medical leave that you spent staring at your apartment ceiling, trying to make sense of something that refuses to be made sensible. The official report sits in your email, cc'd to your advisor and the department head and probably half the university's legal team: Student found unconscious in library basement. Possible assault. No cameras functioning. Investigation ongoing.
You don't correct them. Don't mention the glove hidden in your nightstand drawer. Don't explain that the bruises on your throat match the exact span of fingers that had held your face like you were something holy, something worth breaking for.
Your body remembers even when your mind tries to forget. The soul bond, severed as quickly as it formed, has left you feeling like someone hollowed out your chest cavity with a melon baller. It's worse than before—before was just absence. This is active loss. This is knowing exactly what you're missing.
The dreams start the first night home from the hospital.
Not nightmares—that would be easier. These are soft things that leave you gasping awake at 3 AM with tears on your face and your hand pressed to your cheek where he'd touched you. Dreams where those gray eyes find yours across impossible distances. Where his hands shake as they frame your face. Where he whispers apologies in languages you don't speak but somehow understand.
Sometimes you dream of snow. Of cold so profound it burns. Of a voice saying his name—names?—until there's nothing left but the mission.
Sometimes you dream of falling. Of a train that screams through mountain passes. Of reaching for something—someone—who's always just beyond your fingertips.
But mostly you dream of that moment. The mask coming off. The devastating gentleness of his forehead against yours. The way he breathed you in like his lungs hadn't recognized oxygen until then, like you were the first real thing he'd touched in decades.
You become an expert in lying about the nightmares. "Trauma response," you tell the university-mandated therapist. "Yes, I'm processing. No, I don't remember details. Yes, I feel safe on campus."
Lies. All lies.
You remember everything. The weight of him. The contrast between violence and tenderness that shouldn't have existed in the same person. The way the soul bond had sung between you for those impossible seconds—not the gentle hum your mother described, but something desperate and raw, like two halves of something broken trying to fuse back together.
The research starts three weeks after the incident. You tell yourself it's academic curiosity. Tell yourself you're not the first person to lose a soulmate before really finding them. There are support groups. Statistics. An entire subset of psychology dedicated to severed bonds and what they do to the human psyche.
Increased rates of depression. Anxiety. Insomnia. Some subjects report physical pain at the site of initial contact. Others experience what researchers call "phantom bond syndrome"—the persistent sensation of a connection that no longer exists.
You check every box. Feel him in every room you enter, just a second too late. Wake up with your hand pressed to your face, trying to hold onto the ghost of leather and gunpowder and something metallic you couldn't place then but can't stop tasting now.
The databases give you nothing. Facial recognition software turns up empty. You sketch what you remember of his face—strong jaw, soft mouth, eyes like winter—but it feels like trying to draw music, like something essential gets lost in translation.
"Maybe he was military," Katrina suggests over coffee that tastes like disappointment. She's trying to help, your best friend since undergrad, but she looks at you with the kind of careful concern reserved for people about to break. "Special ops or something. That would explain the tactical gear."
You don't tell her about the way he moved. Don't mention that special ops soldiers don't usually have metal arms—you'd felt it when he caught you, the strange whir of plates adjusting beneath the fabric. Don't explain that whatever he was, military doesn't quite cover it.
December bleeds into January. You submit your dissertation proposal late, blame the incident, receive an extension wrapped in sympathetic looks. The bruises are long gone but you wear scarves anyway, can't stand the feeling of air against your throat where his thumb had pressed.
Your google search history becomes a testament to obsession:
But late at night, when the world sleeps and you're alone with the ache that lives between your ribs, you pull out the glove. Run your fingers over worn leather that's been softened by use and something else—care, maybe. The kind of attention that comes from having nothing else to focus on.
It smells like winter. Like violence. Like the ghost of cologne that might have been nice once, before it mixed with gunpowder and fear and whatever else clings to people who move through the world like weapons.
You press it to your face and breathe deep, eyes closed, trying to summon those impossible seconds when he'd looked at you like you were salvation and damnation all at once. When his voice had broken on an apology for something you didn't understand. When he'd promised to find you again in words you shouldn't have been able to translate but did.
The bond throbs. Phantom pain for a phantom connection.
You fold the glove carefully. Place it back in the drawer. Go to bed knowing you'll dream of gray eyes and the kind of gentleness that only comes from people who've forgotten they deserve it.
Tomorrow you'll get up. Go to class. Pretend your chest doesn't feel like someone excavated it with rusty tools. Pretend you don't scan every face on campus, looking for winter eyes and a jaw that could cut glass.
But tonight, you let yourself remember. Let yourself feel the echo of his forehead against yours, the desperate press of his mouth to your skin, the way he'd held you like you were worth breaking the world for.
I'll find you again.
You touch your throat, the memory of leather and promise.
I'm waiting.
The asset doesn't fight anymore.
Hasn't for years. Learned the hard way that resistance only makes it worse—more voltage, longer sessions, deeper cuts into whatever remains of the person he might have been.
Better to go limp. Better to let them position him like a doll, open his mouth for the rubber guard, wait for the electricity to wash it all away.
The asset craves it sometimes. The blankness. The nothing. Easier than carrying the weight of what his hands have done.
But Bucky Barnes fights.
Screams himself raw before they get the guard between his teeth. Thrashes against the restraints hard enough to bend the metal table, to make the technicians step back with wide eyes because the asset never does this, hasn't done this in fifteen years, not since they perfected the chair's calibration.
"Hold him!" Pierce's voice cuts through the chaos, sharp with irritation. "Get those restraints tightened before—"
Bucky's metal arm tears through the leather strap like tissue paper. Swings wild, catches a handler across the jaw with a crack that sends him spinning into medical equipment. Two more rush forward and he fights them with everything he has, everything he'd forgotten he could be.
Soft hands on his face. Bright eyes wide with recognition. The soul bond singing between them like coming home—
"No!" The word tears out of him, accent thick with desperation. Russian, English, something older—he doesn't know anymore, doesn't care. "Please—please, I can't—"
A needle finds his neck. Sedative, fast-acting, enough to drop an elephant. His knees buckle but he keeps fighting, keeps reaching for—what? The memory's already going slippery, falling through his fingers like water.
Someone. There was someone. Wasn't there?
"Interesting." Pierce circles him as four handlers wrestle him into the chair, voice clinical. "What happened on the mission? You terminated the target, but something affected you. The timeline's off by forty-three minutes."
Bucky's jaw works around the guard they're shoving between his teeth. Can't tell them. Won't tell them. But what is he protecting? The feeling's there—urgent, desperate, worth dying for—but the shape of it keeps shifting.
A face. Soft mouth parted in shock. The way she'd—
The electricity hits before he can finish the thought.
White-hot agony races through every nerve ending, bows his back against the restraints they've doubled, tripled. The scream locks in his throat, comes out as a sound that doesn't belong to anything human. But underneath the pain, worse than the pain, is the feeling of something essential being carved out of him.
Don't take her, some part of him begs. Take everything else, but not her, not this—
But the machine doesn't care about please. Doesn't care that he's crying—when did he start crying? The asset doesn't cry. The asset doesn't feel. But Bucky Barnes is sobbing, choking on the rubber guard as memories start to fracture and fade.
Her hand against his jaw. The world breaking open. Recognition so profound it rewrote thirty years of programming in seconds—
Another pulse. Stronger. Pierce has turned the dial past safety parameters, past sanity, past anything they've done before.
"Sir," one of the technicians ventures, nervous. "The readings—"
"Continue."
Forehead to forehead. Breathing her in. The apology scraping his throat raw because he'd never wanted to meet her like this, never wanted her to know him as a weapon first and a man second—
Gone. It's gone. He reaches for it, desperate, but there's only white noise where her face should be. Only the echo of something precious he'd held for minutes—hours?—seconds?—he doesn't know anymore.
The machine winds down. Silence except for his ragged breathing, the drip of something (blood? tears?) hitting the concrete floor.
"Asset."
He doesn't respond. Can't. There's something wrong with his chest, like someone reached in and scooped out everything that mattered.
"Asset."
Training kicks in where consciousness fails. His head lifts, eyes focusing with effort on the man in the suit. Pierce. Handler. The one who holds the leash.
"Ready to comply." The words come out broken. Mechanical. But correct.
"Mission report."
"Target eliminated. No witnesses." A pause. Something scratches at the back of his mind, urgent, important. But when he reaches for it there's nothing but static. "Extraction successful."
Pierce studies him, pale eyes narrowed. "And the deviation? You were off-schedule."
The asset blinks. Searches the white noise of his mind for an answer that makes sense. "Unexpected resistance. Handled."
"I see." Pierce doesn't look convinced, but he waves to the technicians. "Run a full cognitive recalibration. I want him stable before the next deployment."
They unstrap him eventually. He doesn't fight. Doesn't do anything but stare at his metal hand, trying to understand why it feels wrong. Why everything feels wrong. There's an ache in his chest that wasn't there before—or was it always there? He can't remember. Can't remember anything but the mission, the chair, the readiness to comply.
But that night, locked in cryo-prep, he dreams.
Fragments. Glimpses. A basement that smells like old paper and fear. Someone pressed against a wall, hands pushing at his chest. The feeling of skin against skin and the world exploding into color he didn't know existed.
He wakes with her ghost on his lips—no name, no face, just the shape of an apology in a language he's not supposed to know.
The asset reports for cryo on schedule. Lies still as they prep the chamber, ice already forming in the tubes that will freeze him until the next time he's needed. But as consciousness fades, as the cold takes him under, one thought persists:
Someone. There was someone. And I've lost them.
The machine hisses. Frost spreads across the glass.
The asset sleeps.
Bucky Barnes screams.
The Starbucks on 42nd doesn't have soul bonds on the menu, but they do have overpriced lattes and witnesses, which is why you're here instead of home, staring at your bedroom ceiling and trying to parse nightmares from memories.
Six months.
Six months of the glove under your pillow losing his scent. Six months of your advisor asking pointed questions about your "lack of focus" and your therapist prescribing sleeping pills that don't work because how do you medicate a severed soul bond?
How do you explain that you're mourning someone you knew for less than five minutes?
You're arguing with yourself about the merits of a fourth shot of espresso when the world explodes.
Glass shatters inward, the windows becoming a thousand diamonds catching afternoon light. Your coffee hits the floor—there goes eight dollars you don't have—as your body moves on instinct, dropping behind the counter with five other people who smell like fear and pumpkin spice.
Screaming. So much screaming. Cars screeching outside, the percussion of something that might be gunfire but sounds too wrong, too close, too real for a Tuesday afternoon in Manhattan.
You peek around the espresso machine and your heart forgets how to beat.
He's standing in the middle of the street like death dressed for winter. Same tactical gear, same casual violence, same way of moving that makes everyone else look like they're traveling through molasses. The mask covers the lower half of his face again, but you'd know those eyes anywhere. Have been seeing them every night for six months, after all.
A cop raises his weapon. The soldier—your soulmate, your ghost, your nightly torment—disarms him with an economy of motion that's almost beautiful. The crack of breaking fingers carries even through the shattered windows.
Get up, your brain screams. Run. Move. Do something that isn't standing here like a deer watching headlights come to claim it.
But your body has other plans. Your treacherous, soul-bonded body that recognizes his even across thirty feet of chaos and broken glass. You're moving before conscious thought catches up, stumbling through the destroyed storefront on legs that feel like they belong to someone else.
This is stupid. Monumentally stupid. The kind of stupid that gets psychology PhD candidates killed in broad daylight. But your hand is already reaching, already grasping, because maybe—
Your fingers close around his wrist.
The barest slip of skin where his sleeve has ridden up, your thumb finding his pulse like it was made for nothing else. The connection slams through you—heat and recognition and yes, finally, yes—
The gun clatters to the asphalt.
His whole body goes rigid, that same terrible stillness from before. You watch his pupils dilate, watch six months of careful nothing shatter in his eyes as a stranger crashes back into existence.
He moves so fast you don't process it. One second you're standing there, thumb on his pulse, the next you're spinning, back slamming into his chest as his metal arm locks across your body. The gun—when did he pick it up?—presses cold against your temple.
You stop breathing.
Around you, cops and civilians alike freeze. Weapons lower incrementally because now there's a hostage situation, now there's a girl who was stupid enough to touch the Winter Soldier and—
"Name." His voice in your ear, so quiet you almost miss it under the sirens. That sound that had haunted your dreams, rougher now, desperate. "Your name. Please."
Your lips barely move, sound threading between heartbeats. You tell him, soft as a whisper.
The gun doesn't waver. To everyone watching, he's perfectly still, a predator considering prey. But his metal thumb moves against your bare arm where your shirt has ridden up. Gentle. Deliberate. Tracing letters maybe, or just feeling, and you wonder if he can—if there are sensors in the metal that let him—
"My name is James Buchanan Barnes." Each word careful, precious, pressed into the space below your ear like a secret. Like a gift. "Bucky. My name is Bucky. I won't remember, so I need you to—you have to remember for me."
James Buchanan Barnes.
It tickles something in your memory. A history class, maybe. Something about World War II, about Captain America, about—
"What have they done to you?" The words slip out, horrified, because the pieces are trying to fit together but the picture they're making can't be right, can't be possible—
"Find me." Urgent now. His realness, his hereness makes your chest ache with completion even as your mind screams danger. "When I—after they—find me. Please. I can't—"
His voice cracks.
The gun leaves your temple.
The crack of the shot makes you flinch, but it's the cop to your left who goes down, clutching his knee, screaming. Bucky shoves you—not hard, but enough to send you stumbling into the crowd as he moves the opposite direction, using the chaos as cover.
You hit the ground hard, knees cracking against asphalt, palms scraped raw. Around you, people scatter like startled birds. Someone's hands on your shoulders, pulling you back, asking if you're hurt, if you need medical attention.
You can't answer. Can't do anything but stare at the place where he'd stood, where he'd held you, where he'd given you his name like it was the only thing he had left to give.
Your arm throbs where his metal thumb had traced patterns. When you look down, you can see the faint red marks—not bruises, just pressure. Just proof.
"Miss? Miss, we need to get you checked out—"
"I'm fine." You're not. You're the opposite of fine. You're shattering in slow motion, held together by adrenaline and the phantom feeling of his chest against your back. "I'm—he didn't hurt me."
The EMT looks skeptical. "He held a gun to your head."
"He didn't hurt me," you repeat, and you're not sure who you're trying to convince.
They take you anyway. St. Luke's emergency room, where you spend four hours being poked and prodded and questioned by people who look at you like you might break or explode. The FBI shows up eventually, two agents in bad suits who ask the same questions fifteen different ways.
"Did he say anything to you?"
My name is James Buchanan Barnes.
"No."
"Are you sure? Even something small could help."
Find me.
"He didn't say anything."
They don't believe you. You can see it in the way they exchange glances, the way their pens hover over notepads. But what are you supposed to tell them? That the most wanted man in America is your soulmate? That he gave you his name like a prayer? That even now, hours later, you can still feel the phantom press of metal against your skin?
They release you near midnight with a card and instructions to call if you remember anything. You take a cab home because the subway feels too exposed, too dangerous, like maybe he'll be there in the shadows between stops.
Your apartment is exactly as you left it. Laptop open on the counter, half a cup of cold coffee growing something ambitious by the sink. Normal. Safe.
Empty.
You sink onto your bed, still fully dressed, and pull out your phone. Your search history is already damning, but what's one more nail in the coffin?
James Buchanan Barnes
The results make your stomach drop.
Born 1917. Best friend of Steve Rogers, Captain America. Sergeant in the 107th Infantry Regiment. Fell from a train in the Alps in 1945. Presumed dead.
Except he's not dead. He's not dead because you touched him today, felt his pulse under your thumb, heard him breathing in your ear as he held you like something breakable and precious all at once.
You dig deeper. Past the official records, past the Wikipedia entries, into the conspiracy forums and leaked documents that only half-load on your shitty wifi.
The Winter Soldier.
HYDRA.
Seventy years of ghost stories.
An assassin who appears and disappears like smoke, leaving bodies in his wake.
Your soulmate is a century-old brainwashed assassin. Your soulmate is Bucky Barnes, who died in 1945. Who didn't die. Who was turned into something else, something violent and beautiful and dangerous.
Who fights back to consciousness every time you touch him only to be dragged under again.
What have they done to you?
You close your laptop. Lie back on your bed, fully clothed, and stare at the water stain on your ceiling that looks like a rabbit if you squint. Your arm still throbs where he touched you. Traced letters, maybe, or just—
You bolt upright.
Grab a pen, try to recreate the pattern from memory on your other arm. It takes three tries before the movements feel right, before the shapes resolve into something recognizable.
Numbers.
He'd traced numbers on your skin. Coordinates.
Find me, he'd said.
Your hands shake as you type them into your phone. A location upstate, middle of nowhere, the kind of place where no one would look twice at an abandoned building or hear the screams from underground.
You should leave it alone. Should forget his name, forget the numbers, forget the feeling of being whole for thirty seconds in the middle of chaos. Should be smart and safe and boring and alive.
Instead, you screenshot the location. Book a rental car for tomorrow. Pack a bag with things that might matter—the glove, pepper spray that won't do shit against a super soldier but makes you feel better, a first aid kit you probably won't get the chance to use.
Find me.
You're going to. God help you, you're going to find James Buchanan Barnes.
Even if it kills you.
(It probably will.)
(You're going anyway.)
The HYDRA facility squats in the pre-dawn darkness like something that crawled out of the Cold War and forgot to die. You're crammed in the back of a tactical van between enough weaponry to level a city block and Captain America's guilt, which somehow takes up more space.
Forty-eight hours. That's all it took from wine-drunk-email-to-vague-Avengers-PR-listing to this—body armor that doesn't fit right, your heart hammering against ceramic plates, and the ghost of coordinates still throbbing on your arm where he'd traced them.
"Two minutes to insertion." Natasha's voice crackles through comms you're not supposed to have. But Steve had insisted, jaw set in that way that apparently nobody argues with. Not even Fury.
Steve Rogers had shown up at your door with Natasha Romanoff and Nick Fury, your roommate had screamed in her towel, and you'd told them everything. About the library. About the way Bucky's entire being had shifted when you touched him, like watching someone break the surface after drowning.
About how he'd held you in that Starbucks, whispered his name against your ear like a secret, like salvation, like the only thing he had left that was his.
Steve had gone very, very still. Then: "We're finding him. We're bringing him home."
Now he's sitting across from you, shield balanced against his knee, and you can see why people follow him into impossible situations. It's not the shoulders or the jaw or the way he fills out tactical gear like he was born to it. It's the way he looks at you—not through you, not around you, but at you. Like you matter. Like your connection to his best friend makes you worth protecting.
"Remember," he says quietly, pitched below the engine noise. "The moment we find him, the moment you make contact—"
"I know." Your fingers won't stop moving, tracing and retracing the numbers Bucky left on your skin. "Skin contact. Bring him back." Don't let go."
What you don't say: What if it doesn't work this time? What if they've wiped him too many times? What if whatever's left isn't enough to—
The van stops.
Everything happens too fast after that. Doors flying open, bodies moving with practiced precision, you stumbling to keep up as Steve's hand on your elbow guides you through pre-dawn shadows toward a concrete mouth that looks like it's waiting to swallow you whole.
The facility is worse inside. All industrial fluorescents and that particular kind of silence that sounds like screaming if you listen too hard. Your soul bond, quiet for months, starts to ache with proximity—a deep, bone-level recognition that makes your teeth chatter.
"Southwest clear." Someone else, call sign you didn't catch.
"Movement in the lower levels." Another voice. "Looks like they're mobilizing—"
A sound cuts through the chatter. Not quite human. Not quite animal. Something between a scream and static that makes your hindbrain light up with warnings to run.
Steve's already moving. "That's him."
You follow because what else can you do? Down stairs that smell like rust and terror, through corridors that branch like diseased arteries. The ache in your chest intensifies with each level down, soul bond pulling taut as piano wire.
Then—
The room opens before you like a wound. Medical equipment that belongs in museums next to things that belong in nightmares. And in the center, strapped to a chair that looks more like an electric chair than anything medical—
"Bucky." Steve's voice breaks on it.
He's shirtless, sweat-slick and shaking, with enough electricity running through him to light up half of Brooklyn. His hair hangs limp around his face, and even from here you can see the way his muscles lock and release in waves as current pulses through the chair. Fresh burn marks lattice across his chest where the nodes attach, and there's blood—so much blood—dripping from where he's fought against the restraints.
There are bodies on the floor. Technicians, by their white coats. The blood is fresh enough to still be spreading.
"Stay back." Natasha has her weapon trained on him, all business. "He's still the Winter—"
Bucky's head snaps up.
His eyes find yours across twenty feet of blood and machinery.
Time stops.
Those aren't the empty eyes from the library. Aren't the desperate clarity from the coffee shop. These are something else entirely—feral and frightened and so fucking broken under all that damage. He looks like something that's been torn apart and reassembled wrong, like an animal that's been in a cage so long it's forgotten what sky looks like.
You're moving before conscious thought catches up. Dodging Steve's reaching hand, slipping past Natasha's outstretched arm. Your feet slip in blood—whose blood? His? Theirs?—but you don't stop. Can't stop. The soul bond is screaming, every cell in your body reaching for its other half.
"Don't—" Someone shouts. Might be Steve. Might be God himself. Doesn't matter.
Because Bucky's watching you approach with the kind of stillness that precedes violence. His metal arm—and this close you can see how it's grafted to flesh, red and raw and infected at the edges—flexes against the restraints. The leather creaks. His chest heaves with each breath, and there's a wild look in his eyes like he can't decide if you're real or another torture.
You collapse on the arm of the chair. His breathing is ragged, chest heaving, and this close you can see old scars layered on new ones, a roadmap of decades of damage. Seventy years of this. Seventy years of being unmade and remade into something sharp and wrong.
Your hand reaches up, slow as you'd approach a wounded animal.
He flinches.
Actually flinches, this assassin who's probably felt every kind of pain there is. A sound escapes him—small, wounded, barely human. But when your fingertips brush his cheek—skin to skin, that electric recognition—his whole body convulses.
"Oh," you breathe, and it's inadequate, it's nothing, it's everything. Because the bond slots into place like coming home if home was a person who'd been carved hollow and filled with ghosts.
His eyes clear incrementally. Pupil contraction, focus sharpening, and then—
The noise that tears out of him is inhuman. Seventy years of grief and rage and desperate loneliness condensed into a single sound that makes your bones ache. His metal hand shatters the restraint like tissue paper, then the flesh one, and before you can process the movement he's dragging you up, up, into his lap, crushing you against his chest with desperate strength.
"You," he's saying, over and over, voice wrecked beyond recognition. "You, you, you—real, you're real, you're—"
His hands are everywhere at once. Metal fingers tangling in your hair, flesh hand splayed across your back hard enough to bruise, holding you like you might dissolve if he loosens his grip for even a second. He buries his face in the curve of your neck and the sob that escapes him is pure agony, seventy years of touch starvation hitting him all at once.
You can feel him shaking—no, not shaking, convulsing, like his body doesn't know how to process gentle touch anymore. Doesn't know what to do with softness after decades of nothing but pain.
"I'm here," you whisper against his temple, your own tears falling freely. "I'm real. I found you. I've got you."
His response is to hold you tighter, tight enough that breathing becomes difficult, but you don't care. Can't care when he's falling apart in your arms like this. The metal hand fists in your tactical vest and you hear fabric tear, but he doesn't seem to notice. He's pressing his face harder into your throat, breathing you in like you're air and he's been suffocating for seventy years.
"Thought I dreamed you." The words come out destroyed, muffled against your skin. "They said—they said I made you up. That the pain was making me see things. But you smell real. You feel—" His flesh hand slides up to cup the back of your head, holding you in place. "Please be real. Please, please be real."
"I'm real." You press your lips to his temple, just a brief touch of comfort. "James Buchanan Barnes, you're real and I'm real and I found you."
His breath hitches at his full name, and suddenly he's pulling back just enough to look at you. This close, you can see everything—the burst blood vessels in his eyes, the way his pupils can't quite focus, the decades of accumulated scars. He looks ancient. He looks young. He looks absolutely shattered.
"Don't know who that is anymore." Raw honesty, delivered while his thumbs trace your cheekbones with desperate reverence. "Don't know who I am when I'm not killing. When they're not—" He breaks off, jaw working. "I've been empty for so long. So fucking long. And then you touched me and I remembered what it felt like to be human and they took it away—"
"They can't take it away again." You frame his face with your hands, forcing him to meet your eyes. "We're leaving. Right now. Together."
"You don't understand." He's crying openly now, no shame in it, just pure emotional overflow. "Seventy years. Seventy fucking years of this chair, this room, these walls. They put me in the dark and take me out to kill and put me back and I can't—when they say the words, I disappear. Everything disappears."
"Then we don't let them say the words."
"I've killed so many people." He presses his forehead to yours hard enough to hurt, but the contact seems to calm something in him. "Children. Civilians. Good people. Bad people. So many I lost count. The things they made me do—the things I did—"
"I don't care."
"You should." His metal hand comes up to wrap around your throat, gentle but present. "This hand has strangled innocent people. These fingers have pulled triggers that ended lives. I'm not—I'm not good. I'm not worth—"
"Stop." You turn your head to press your lips to his metal palm, and the sound he makes is pure agony. "You're worth everything. You're my soulmate. You're—"
He makes a broken noise and crushes you against him again, like he's trying to crawl inside your skin. His whole body trembles with the effort of holding you close enough, like no amount of contact will ever be sufficient after seventy years of nothing.
"They're gonna wipe me again." Matter-of-fact. Resigned. "Soon as they realize what happened here. They always do. And I'll forget you again. Forget this. And next time—" His voice breaks. "Next time they'll make sure I can't touch you. They'll find ways to hurt you through me. They'll make me—"
"No." Your hands tighten on his face. "No, they won't. We're leaving. Steve's here. Natasha. We're getting you out."
"Stevie?" For the first time, his eyes flicker past you, landing on his best friend. The confusion there is heartbreaking. "But you're—you're supposed to be—"
"Hey, Buck." Steve's voice is thick with emotion. "It's me. It's really me. We're taking you home."
But Bucky's already looking back at you, like he can't bear to look away for more than seconds. His flesh hand hasn't stopped moving—tracing your face, your neck, tangling in your hair like he's trying to memorize you through touch alone.
"I don't want to forget again." It comes out small, broken. "Please. I can't do it again. Can't lose you again. It'll kill me. It'll—"
"You won't forget." You shift in his lap, wrap your arms around his neck, and he makes a sound like you've given him salvation. "I won't let them take you. I won't let them hurt you anymore. I promise."
"We need to move." Natasha's voice, soft but urgent. "Security response in two minutes."
Steve's at your side instantly, but when he reaches for Bucky, the soldier flinches back violently, metal arm coming up in defense. The only thing that keeps him from lashing out is your hand on his chest, your voice in his ear.
"It's okay. It's Steve. He's safe. He's here to help."
"Can you walk?" Steve asks, careful to keep his distance.
Bucky nods against your shoulder, but when you try to move off his lap, his arms lock around you with desperate strength.
"No." Panicked. "No, please. Need to—need to touch—"
"I'm not going anywhere." You run your fingers through his hair, and he leans into it like a cat. "We're walking out of here together. But you have to let me stand up."
It takes visible effort for him to loosen his grip. When you stand, he follows immediately, swaying slightly. He towers over you even hunched with exhaustion, and when his hand finds yours, it's with the grip of a drowning man finding driftwood.
You start moving as a unit, but Bucky can't stop touching you. His free hand keeps finding your face, your hair, your shoulder, like he needs constant confirmation you're real. At one point he stops entirely, pulls you back against his chest, and just breathes you in for several seconds while Steve and Natasha stand guard.
"Left," he says suddenly as you reach a junction, pulling you down a side corridor. "Service tunnel. I've—I've tried before. Three times. No. Four? They always—" His free hand comes up to his head, pressing against his temple.
"Hey." You squeeze his hand. "Doesn't matter. Which way?"
The service tunnel is narrow and dark. Bucky pulls you through it like muscle memory, but halfway through he stops, pressing you against the wall. His hands frame your face in the darkness.
"What if this isn't real?" Desperate. "What if I'm still in the chair? What if this is just another way they're breaking me?"
You reach up to cradle his face in return, thumbs brushing over his cheekbones. "Does this feel like a dream?"
"No." He breathes the word against your mouth. "No, it feels—it feels like waking up."
The exit spills you out into pre-dawn forest. The quinjet looms out of the darkness, and for the first time in seventy years, Bucky Barnes runs toward freedom instead of away from it.
But even on the jet, even safe, he can't stop holding you. He pulls you into his lap on the bench seats, ignoring the medical team, ignoring everyone, and just holds on. His face stays buried in your neck during takeoff, his arms locked around you like prison bars in reverse—keeping the world out instead of keeping him in.
"You're free," you whisper, over and over, like a prayer. "You're free. You're safe. You're mine."
"Yours," he agrees, and finally, finally, his death grip loosens just enough for you to breathe. "Yours. Always yours. Even when I couldn't remember. Even in the dark. Somehow I was always yours."
The sun breaks the horizon as you fly toward home, and for the first time in seventy years, Bucky Barnes believes he might actually make it there.
The first time Bucky Barnes calls you at 3 AM, your body knows it's him before your mind catches up.
The phone vibrates against your nightstand, and your hand's already reaching, heart already racing—not with fear but with recognition. That soul-deep pull that's been your compass for three months now.
"Bucky?" Your voice comes out sleep-rough, concerned.
Just breathing on the other end. Ragged, like he's been running. Or fighting. The sound makes your chest tight.
"Can't—" His voice cracks like splintered wood. "Can't remember if the blood on my hands is from yesterday or a decade ago."
You're already moving, sheets tangling around your legs as you hunt for clothes in the dark. "Where are you?"
"Steve's. The Tower. I'm—" A shaky exhale that you feel in your own lungs. "I'm safe. Everyone's safe. Just needed—"
"Me." Not a question. The bond thrums with his distress, a phantom ache under your ribs. "I'm coming."
"You don't have to—"
"I'm coming."
Twenty minutes later, Happy's pulling up to the Tower's private entrance. You're wearing the first things your hands found—pajama shorts with snowflakes on them that you stole from your roommate, one of Bucky's hoodies that still smells like him (cedar and gunpowder and something indefinably him).
The elevator ride feels eternal. Your skin prickles with proximity, the bond pulling taut as you rise through the floors. By the time JARVIS deposits you on the residential level, your hands are shaking with the need to touch him, to soothe whatever's tearing him apart.
You find him on the couch, knees drawn up to his chest like he's trying to make himself smaller. His metal hand is clenched so tight you can hear the recalibration whirs, flesh hand buried in his hair. Steve hovers nearby, hands opening and closing like he wants to help but doesn't know how.
"Buck," you breathe.
His head snaps up, and oh—his eyes are winter-wild, pupils blown with panic, caught in some liminal space between then and now. You watch him catalog you in pieces: face, voice, the way you're already moving toward him like gravity's reversed its pull.
You don't speak. Don't need to. Just fold yourself onto the couch beside him, close enough that the line of your body presses against his from shoulder to hip. His flesh hand finds yours immediately, desperate, fingers lacing between yours like maybe if he holds tight enough he won't drift away.
The effect is immediate—a full-body shudder, his breathing starting to sync with yours. The bond hums, warm honey spreading through your veins. Steve makes a sound—relief wrapped in something more complicated—and quietly retreats.
"Sorry," Bucky murmurs after a moment. His thumb finds your pulse point, traces it like he's counting heartbeats. "Shouldn't have woken you."
"Yes, you should have." No reproach, just fact. "That's what this is."
He turns to look at you then, really look, and you watch him surface by degrees. His metal hand comes up without conscious thought, fingertips ghosting along your jaw with impossible gentleness. The cool metal makes you shiver, but you lean into it, letting him map the reality of you.
"There you are," he whispers.
Something fractures inside you. He pulls you in—careful, always so careful with you—until your foreheads touch. His breathing ghosts across your lips, and you stay suspended in that space, sharing air and warmth and the indescribable thing that ties soul to soul.
It becomes your new normal.
The calls come at all hours. Sometimes Steve's the one calling, voice carefully controlled: "Can you come? He's asking for you." Sometimes it's Natasha, brusque but not unkind: "Barnes needs you." Once, memorably, it's Tony: "Your touch-starved assassin is having a moment. Also, he may have broken my espresso machine."
You always go.
The team adapts to your presence like you're a new piece of furniture—necessary, functional, occasionally in the way. You learn to read Bucky's tells from across a room: the way his eyes go distant when memory bleeds through, the micro-flinches when sound becomes too much, the careful way he holds himself when he's fragmenting.
But more than that, you learn the language his body speaks when it's seeking yours.
He's always careful at first, tentative as a feral cat learning to accept kindness. A brush of fingers, testing. The barest press of his palm to yours. But once that first contact is made, something in him unravels.
He touches you like he's mapping a new world.
It starts innocuous enough—fingers tangled together during movie nights, his thumb painting absent patterns on your wrist. His hand finds the small of your back when you walk, not possessive but anchoring, like he needs proof you're real. He pulls you between his knees when he's sitting, arms banding around your waist, chin notching over your shoulder while you chat with Sam about nothing important.
But as weeks become months, the touches grow bolder. Hungrier.
"Does it bother you?" he asks one afternoon.
He's had a brutal therapy session—three hours of guided recall that left him shaking and grey-faced. You'd spent the past hour with his head in your lap, your fingers carding through his hair while he pieced himself back together. His flesh hand has found its way under your shirt, palm spread wide over your ribs, and his metal fingers trace delicate patterns on the inside of your wrist.
"Does what bother me?"
"This." He gestures vaguely at the negative space between you that stopped existing weeks ago. "How much I need—" He stops. Swallows. Tries again. "How I can't stop touching you."
The question deserves honesty, so you give it consideration. Think about how your life has restructured itself around these points of contact. How you've started wearing layers just so there's always fabric to push aside, skin to find. How your body anticipates his touch now, turns toward him without conscious thought.
"No," you say finally. "It doesn't bother me."
He studies your face with those searching eyes, looking for the polite lie. You let him look, keeping your expression open.
"I've been thinking," you continue, adjusting so you can see him better. His hand immediately shifts, fingers splaying wider across your ribs like he needs more contact to make up for the movement. "About touch. About deprivation."
A muscle in his jaw ticks.
"Seventy years," you say softly. "Seventy years where touch meant pain. Programming. Violence. Where hands on you meant—"
"Stop." Rough. His hand presses harder against your ribs, feeling your heartbeat.
"—so is it any wonder you're hungry for something else? Something good?"
His exhale shudders out of him. "The doctors say it's codependence."
"The doctors haven't had their souls systematically unmade and remade." You cover his flesh hand with yours, pressing it more firmly against your skin. "You're not codependent, Bucky. You're human. You're healing. And if touch helps—"
"It's not just that it helps." The words come out jagged, confessional. "I want—" His metal hand comes up, traces the line of your throat with one careful finger. "I want to touch you all the time. Want to know the texture of every inch of your skin. Want to map you like territory, like—" He cuts himself off, jaw clenching.
Heat pools low in your stomach, but you keep your voice steady. "Like what?"
"Like you're mine." Barely audible. His eyes won't meet yours. "Like I have any right to—"
"You do." You turn into him more fully, catch his face between your palms. His eyes flutter closed, and he leans into the touch like a man starved. "You have every right. We're soulmates, Bucky. That means something."
"What if I never get better?" Raw, honest. "What if I always need this? Need you?"
"Then you'll always have me."
His eyes snap open, winter-blue and desperate. "You can't promise that."
"Watch me."
The trial is excruciating. You watch from designated seating as Bucky sits statue-still, hair pulled back severe, wearing a suit that makes him look like someone else entirely. They read names, show photographs, detail missions that exist in his memory like shattered glass—some pieces clear, others reflecting nothing but blood.
The days he testifies, he comes to you after.
Never speaks about it. Just shows up at your door looking hollowed out, and you let him in without questions. He wraps himself around you like you're the only solid thing in a tilting world, face buried in the curve of your neck, breathing you in like oxygen.
These are the times his hands grow bold.
Not inappropriate—never that. But searching. He maps you like a cartographer charting new territory. Palms skimming your sides, memorizing the curve of waist to hip. Fingers tracing the ladder of your ribs through thin fabric. Metal thumb finding the hollow of your throat where your pulse flutters hummingbird-quick.
"I need—" he'll say against your skin, words muffled and desperate.
"I know," you always answer. "Take what you need."
So he does. His flesh hand slips under your shirt, finds the warm plane of your stomach, spreads wide like he's trying to absorb your steadiness through osmosis. His metal fingers trace patterns on whatever skin he can find—the inside of your wrist, the nape of your neck, the sensitive spot behind your ear that makes you shiver.
Sometimes you'll find his hand at your sternum, metal fingers splayed over your heartbeat like he's using it to calibrate his own. Sometimes he'll trace the boundary where clothing meets skin, fingertips ghosting under hems and necklines but never pushing further, just needing to know there's softness underneath, that not everything in the world has sharp edges.
"Is this okay?" he asks every time, even as his touch grows more familiar, more certain.
"Yes," you answer every time, even as your skin heats and your breath catches and you want—
You want.
"So are you two fucking yet?"
You choke on your coffee, hot liquid searing your throat. Across the kitchen, Bucky's shoulders go rigid where he's making eggs with the kind of focus usually reserved for defusing explosives.
"Tony," Steve says, warning clear in his voice.
"What? It's a legitimate question. All that touching, the eye-fucking across every room, the way Barnes goes feral if anyone else so much as—"
"We're not." Your face burns. "That's not—we haven't—"
Tony's eyebrows achieve escape velocity. "You're telling me you've been playing the world's most intense game of grabass for three months and haven't—"
"Stark." Bucky's voice is winter-quiet, dangerous in the way that makes smart people reevaluate their life choices.
But Tony's never been accused of survival instincts. "I'm just saying, that level of sexual tension could power—"
The plate in Bucky's metal hand shatters.
Silence rings out, broken only by the drip of egg yolk hitting tile.
"I'll just." Tony backs toward the door, hands raised. "Workshop. Important things. Very important things."
He's gone before anyone can blink, leaving you, Bucky, and Steve in a kitchen that suddenly feels airless. Bucky stares at the ceramic shards in his hand like they've personally betrayed him.
"Buck—" Steve starts.
"I need air."
He's out the door before you can process the movement, leaving you with cooling eggs and Tony's words hanging in the air like smoke.
Steve sighs, the sound of a man who's aged a century in the last minute. "He's an idiot. Tony, I mean. Though Buck's also—" He stops. Runs a hand through his hair. "This is none of my business."
"But?"
"But." Steve fixes you with those earnest eyes that probably ended wars. "He thinks he's protecting you. From himself. From what he's done. He doesn't think he deserves—" A gesture encompasses you, the kitchen, the entire situation.
"That's not his decision to make."
"No," Steve agrees. "But when has that ever stopped him?"
You find Bucky on the roof because of course that's where he goes. He's sitting on the edge, legs dangling over nothing, and your heart does something complicated in your chest.
"Most people have their existential crises at ground level," you say, settling beside him carefully.
His mouth twitches—not quite a smile, but close. "Most people haven't fallen off a train."
"Fair point."
The city spreads below like a circuit board, all light and movement and life. Without looking, his hand finds yours, fingers interlacing with the ease of long practice. The bond settles, that constant thrum of rightness that comes with skin meeting skin.
"Tony's not wrong," he says eventually.
You wait, let him find the words in his own time.
"I think about it." His voice is carefully controlled, but you can feel the tremor in his hand. "Touching you. Not just—not just to ground myself. Not for the bond. I think about touching you because I want to. Because you're—"
He stops. His throat works, and when he speaks again, his voice is rougher. "Because you're beautiful. And kind. And you laugh at my terrible jokes even when they're not funny. You come when I call at 3 AM. You let me put my hands on you even though these same hands have—"
"Bucky—"
"I dream about it." The confession comes out raw. "Dream about kissing you. About how you'd taste. How you'd feel. Wake up with your name in my mouth and my hands reaching for you, and it's not about the bond, it's about—" He turns to look at you then, eyes dark with something that makes your breath catch. "It's about how much I want you. How much I want things I have no right to want."
"What if," you say, voice steadier than your pulse, "I want those same things?"
His breathing stutters. "You don't. You can't."
"Don't tell me what I want." You turn toward him fully, free hand coming up to his jaw. He leans into it helplessly, eyes falling closed. "I know exactly what I want. Who I want."
"I'm held together with duct tape and trauma," he says, but his resolve is crumbling. You can see it in the way he presses harder into your palm. "I can't take you on normal dates. Can't promise I won't have panic attacks. Can't even sleep through the night without—"
"I don't want normal." Your thumb traces his cheekbone, feels him shudder. "I want you. Every piece, every edge, every nightmare and bad day. I want the man who hums old songs when he thinks no one's listening. Who makes terrible eggs but keeps trying. Who touches me like I'm something precious and looks at me like I'm a miracle."
"You are," he breathes. "You're—"
You kiss him.
Or maybe he kisses you.
Maybe you meet in the middle, drawn together by forces older than choice.
The first press of lips is tentative, a question asked and answered in the same breath. His flesh hand comes up to cradle your face, and the tenderness of it makes your chest ache. But then you make a sound—small, needy—and something in him breaks.
Or maybe something in him finally fixes itself.
His metal arm bands around your waist, pulls you against him with desperate strength. The kiss deepens, and oh, you understand now why people write symphonies and wage wars. Because Bucky Barnes kisses like he's drowning and you're air, like he's been starving for seventy years and you're sustenance, like maybe the universe knew exactly what it was doing when it tied your souls together.
He kisses you like he's trying to crawl inside your skin.
His tongue traces the seam of your lips and you open for him without thought, and the sound he makes—broken, grateful—sends heat racing down your spine. He tastes like coffee and something indefinably him, and you chase that taste deeper, hands fisting in his shirt.
He doesn't surface for air. Doesn't pause. Just tilts his head to find a better angle and kisses you deeper, harder, like he's trying to memorize the shape of your mouth, the texture of your sighs. His metal hand spans your lower back, pulling you impossibly closer, while his flesh hand maps your face, thumb stroking your cheek even as his mouth devastates you.
You're half in his lap now, twisted awkwardly on the ledge, and you don't care. Can't care about anything beyond the heat of his mouth, the way he groans when you nip at his lower lip, the way his hands shake where they hold you.
"Wanted this," he gasps against your mouth, not pulling back enough to actually stop kissing you. "Wanted you. Before I even knew you. So long, so fucking long—"
You answer by sliding your hands into his hair, nails scraping his scalp, and he shudders against you, kiss going a little sloppy and desperate. He's not cold, not controlled, not careful. He's burning, pressing against you like he wants to fuse at the molecular level, like the soul bond isn't enough and never could be.
When you finally break apart—only because oxygen is apparently necessary—you're both wrecked. His lips are swollen, eyes dark and dazed. You probably look the same. His forehead drops to yours, and you can feel him trembling against you, all that careful control finally, beautifully shattered.
"Okay?" His voice is destroyed, rough like he's been screaming.
"So far past okay," you manage. "Though your timing—we're on a roof, Barnes."
He laughs, the sound surprised out of him, and presses kisses to your cheeks, your jaw, the corner of your mouth like he can't quite stop now that he's started. "Sorry. I'll plan better next time."
"Next time?" You're going for teasing but it comes out breathless, hopeful.
His eyes find yours, and the intensity there steals any words you might have had. "Every time. Any time. All the time, if you'll—if you want—"
You press your mouth to his again, swallowing whatever self-deprecating thing he was about to say. He makes a noise of pure relief and hauls you closer, and you think maybe Tony Stark has exactly one good point in his entire existence.
Not that you'll ever tell him.
**
The science had been clinical, sterile words on a page that you'd skimmed in college while nursing a hangover and trying to make sense of your Behavioral Psych reading.
Academic language that utterly failed to capture this—Bucky's mouth hot and slick and desperate against your throat while his hands relearn territory they've been mapping under cotton and denim for months, each touch sending electricity racing down your spine like lightning seeking ground.
"Fucking finally," he growls against your pulse point, and you feel the words more than hear them, vibrating through skin into bone, into the very marrow of you. His metal hand spans your ribs, each individual plate recalibrating against your skin with tiny whirs and clicks, like even the machinery of him is trying to get closer.
"You know what it's been like? Having you close enough to smell, to taste in the air, but not—Christ, the way you tremble each time I touch you, like you're starving for it—"
You try to form words but he's already peeling your shirt away with hands that shake despite their practiced efficiency, and the first full press of his bare chest to yours—scarred skin against soft, furnace heat against cool air—whites out anything resembling higher thought.
The soul bond doesn't just sing—it screams, every nerve ending recognizing its other half and lighting up like a constellation, like a neural map catching fire.
"Oh," you gasp, and it's inadequate, it's nothing, but Bucky goes rigid above you like you've shot electricity straight through his spine.
"Yeah," he agrees, voice absolutely wrecked. His forehead drops to your shoulder, dog tags dragging cold metal across your overheated chest as he pants against your skin, each exhale making you shiver. "Yeah, that's—fuck, is it always gonna feel like this? Like touching a live wire, just—"
"More," you manage, arching into him until there's no space left between your bodies, and you feel his control splinter like ice under pressure.
His mouth finds yours again, hungry and graceless, all that careful restraint from months of chaste touches finally, blessedly gone. His tongue slides against yours and you taste coffee and something metallic—blood maybe, from where he's been biting his lip. When you nip at his bottom lip he makes a sound like something wounded, something primal, hips rolling into yours with zero finesse, just pure need, his cock hard and insistent through too many layers of fabric.
"Sensitive," he warns against your mouth, but it comes out more like a plea, like he's begging you to understand. "Everything's dialed up to eleven, I can—I can hear your blood moving in your veins. Can feel every place you're warm and wet and—fuck—" His whole body shudders when you rake your nails down his back.
Your fingers find the scarred terrain of his back and he actually whimpers, muscles rolling under your touch like water, like something liquid and desperate. That's when the second revelation hits: whatever you're feeling, he's feeling it magnified. Seventy years of sensory deprivation plus enhanced everything plus a soul bond that's been stretched taut for months—
"Gonna lose my mind," he mutters, mouthing at your jaw, your throat, anywhere he can reach, leaving wet trails that cool in the air and make you shiver. His stubble scrapes against sensitive skin and you gasp, hips bucking up involuntarily. "Already lost it. Lost it the second you touched me in that library. Do you know? Do you have any fucking idea what it's like, having someone reach inside your skull and turn all the lights on? Like going from black and white to color, like—Jesus—"
His flesh hand fumbles with your pants, clumsy with urgency, while his metal hand grips your hip hard enough to leave marks—and god, you hope it does, hope you wear his fingerprints for days. The button pops free and he makes a victorious sound that might be funny if you weren't so desperate, if you weren't already so wet you can feel it soaking through your underwear.
His hand slides lower, fingers slipping beneath elastic, and when he finds you soaked and swollen, the noise that punches out of him is pure animal—a growl that starts in his chest and rumbles through both your bodies where they're pressed together.
"Christ." His fingers slip through wetness, exploratory and reverent, and you can feel the tremor in his hand. "This is—this is for me? You get like this just from—" He circles your clit with his thumb and you cry out, hips jerking. "Fuck, you're dripping. Can feel your pulse in your cunt, baby. So swollen, so ready—"
"From you," you gasp, grinding down against his hand as he slides two fingers inside without warning. The stretch makes you moan, makes your walls clench around him immediately. "Always from you. Only from you."
Something fractures in his expression—something raw and possessive and desperately vulnerable all at once. He hooks his fingers, finding that spot that makes your vision white out, and watches your face like he's cataloging miracles, like he's mapping the geography of your pleasure. "Say that again."
"Only you." It comes out breathless, edged with desperation as he finds a rhythm that has your thighs shaking, has wet sounds filling the air between you. "Only ever you, Bucky, please—"
"No." His thumb finds your clit and circles with devastating precision, pressure just the right side of too much. "Not yet. Not when I've been imagining this for—do you know how many times I've jerked off in the shower thinking about this? About how you'd sound when you're desperate? How you'd taste?" He adds a third finger, stretching you wider, and grins dark and feral when you sob. "Bet you thought about it too. Bet you touched yourself thinking about me, didn't you? Tell me."
"Yes," you admit, face burning, and his pupils blow even wider.
He drops to his knees between your thighs suddenly, metal hand holding you open like something precious, like an offering. The first swipe of his tongue has you jackknifing off the bed, but he just pins you down with his metal arm across your hips and does it again, slower, a long drag from entrance to clit that has you seeing stars.
"Fuckin' knew it," he groans against you, and the vibration of his voice makes you clench around nothing. "Knew you'd taste like heaven. Like mine. Knew you'd shake for me just like this." He spreads you wider with his fingers, looking at you with dark eyes. "So pretty. So perfect." He spits on your cunt, watching it mix with your wetness, and the filthy intimacy of it makes you moan. "Gonna ruin you for anyone else. Gonna make it so you can't come without thinking of my mouth, my fingers, my cock."
His words dissolve into action, mouth working you over with single-minded focus. He eats you out like he's starving, like he's dying, all lips and tongue and just the edge of teeth. The soul bond makes it devastating—you don't just feel the physical sensation, you feel his hunger, his satisfaction at finally being allowed to give pleasure instead of pain. His metal fingers dig into your thigh hard enough to bruise and you hope they do, hope you wear his marks for days, hope everyone who sees them knows exactly who put them there.
"Close," you warn, though he probably knows—can probably taste it in the way your cunt's clenching, feel it in the bond that's gone molten between you. Your thighs are shaking, muscles pulled so tight they hurt, and there's a sound filling the room that you distantly realize is you, making noises you've never made before.
He pulls back just enough to speak, lips glossy with your wetness, chin soaked, eyes wild. "Yeah? You gonna come on my tongue? Gonna let me taste it?" He slides three fingers in, curling with devastating intent, and your back arches off the bed. "Come on, sweetheart. Give it up. Let me have it, don't be greedy."
You shatter with a sound that might be his name, might be pure noise. The orgasm rolls through you in waves, each crest higher than the last, and he works you through it mercilessly, not letting up even when you try to squirm away from oversensitivity. Through the bond you feel his echoing pleasure—not physical, not yet, but something bone-deep and satisfied and proud.
"Atta girl," he murmurs against your inner thigh, pressing kisses to sweat-slick skin while his fingers still move lazily inside you, drawing out aftershocks. "So fucking beautiful. Look at you, all fucked out and soft and mine. Could do this for hours. Will do this for hours. Keep you here, coming apart on my hands, my mouth, until you're so sensitive you cry, until you forget there was ever a time we weren't—"
"Bucky." You tug at his hair, need making your voice rough despite the orgasm still sparking through your nerves. "Get up here. Need you inside me. Need—"
He's moving before you finish, shucking his pants with graceless efficiency. The first glimpse of his cock—thick and long and leaking steadily—makes your mouth water and your cunt clench with fresh want. When you reach for him he catches your wrist, gentle but firm.
"Next time," he promises, reading your intent with unnerving accuracy. His voice is strained, like he's hanging on by a thread. "Let you taste me next time. Let you choke on it, fuck that pretty mouth until you're drooling, until—" He cuts himself off with visible effort, chest heaving. "But right now I need—if I don't get inside you in the next ten seconds I'm gonna fucking die—"
"So do it." You spread your legs wider, shameless, showing him how wet and open you are, how ready. "Come on, sergeant. Follow through."
His control snaps audibly. He's on you between one breath and the next, pinning you down with his weight, cock nudging at your entrance. The head catches on your rim and you both groan, but he stops there, trembling with effort, forehead pressed to yours.
"Look at me." It's not a request—it's a command, rough and desperate. You force your eyes open, meet his gaze—winter blue swallowed by black, raw and vulnerable and fierce. "Need to see you when I—need to know you're here, that you're real, that this is—"
"Real," you confirm, wrapping your legs around his waist, heels digging into his ass to urge him forward. "I'm real. You're real. This is—oh fuck—"
He pushes inside in one long, devastating slide, and the world reconstitutes itself around this moment. Around the stretch and burn and perfect fullness of him, around the broken sound he makes against your throat—half sob, half growl—around the soul bond lighting up like a supernova, like every nerve ending suddenly discovering what it was made for.
"Fuck." His metal hand grips the headboard hard enough to crack wood, splinters raining down. "Fuck, you're—tight. So fucking tight. Hot. Perfect. Can feel—God fucking damn, I can feel everything. Can feel how good it is for you, can feel how your cunt's trying to pull me deeper—" He shifts his hips and hits something devastating inside you, makes you clench around him involuntarily.
He laughs, breathless. "Yeah, right there. That's it, isn't it, baby? Right fucking there."
He moves experimentally, just a slow roll of hips, and you both moan at the drag of him inside you, at how your bodies fit together like they were made for this, only this. The angle is perfect—he's reading your body's responses in real-time, adjusting until every thrust has you climbing higher, until you're making noises that would embarrass you if you could think.
"Not gonna last," he warns, rhythm already getting ragged, desperate. Sweat drips from his forehead onto your chest, mixing with the sheen already there. "Not this time. Too much, too long waiting, too—the way you feel—" His flesh hand finds your throat, rests there warm and possessive, thumb pressing just enough to make your pulse flutter. "Like velvet. Like coming home. Like I could fuck you forever and it would never be enough—"
"Don't care." You pull his head down, bite at his jaw hard enough to leave marks just to feel him shudder, to watch his control fracture further. "Just want you. Just need—"
"Tell me." His grip on your throat tightens fractionally, not enough to restrict breathing but enough to make you aware, to make you feel it. "Tell me what you need. Want to give you everything. Want to be so good for you, sweetheart. Want to make up for every night you went to bed empty when you should've been—"
"Full of you," you finish, and his hips stutter, lose rhythm entirely for a moment.
"Yeah?" His thumb presses against your pulse, feeling how fast your heart's racing. "That what you need? Need me to fill you up? Keep you full and fucked out and dripping with my come? Make sure everyone knows you're mine, that I'm the only one who gets to—"
"Yes." You're beyond shame, beyond anything but the building pressure where he's driving into you harder now, each thrust shoving you up the bed. The wet sounds of your bodies meeting fill the room, obscene and perfect. "Yes, Bucky, please—"
"Say my name again." He's fucking you harder now, chasing his release with single-minded intensity. The bed frame creaks ominously with each thrust. "Want to hear it when you come. Want to feel it when you—fuck, you're clenching around me, baby. You close? You gonna come on my cock? Gonna be good for me?"
You nod frantically, words lost to the slide of him inside you, the relentless pressure against that perfect spot, the way his pubic bone grinds against your clit with each thrust. His metal fingers find your clit, cold against overheated flesh, and the contrast makes you scream.
"That's it," he growls, working your clit in tight circles while maintaining that punishing rhythm. "Come for me. Come on my cock like a good girl. Let me feel it, let me—fuck, there it is, I can feel it starting, you're getting so tight—"
You come with his name on your lips, back arching off the bed so hard you think you might snap in half. The orgasm slams through you like a freight train, like dying and being reborn, every muscle locking up as pleasure whites out your vision. The bond makes it circular—your pleasure slamming into him and reflecting back, amplified, until you're both shaking with it, until you can't tell where you end and he begins.
"Oh fuck—" His rhythm breaks entirely, becomes something desperate and animal. "Fuck, I'm gonna—gonna fill you up, gonna—"
"Inside." You dig your nails into his shoulders hard enough to draw blood, hold him deep even as oversensitivity makes you want to squirm away. "Want to feel it. Want all of it."
He comes with a sound that's half your name, half prayer, half roar, hips grinding deep as he spills inside you. You feel it all—not just the physical sensation of his cock pulsing, filling you with warmth, but the emotional avalanche through the bond. Relief and want and mine mine mine and something that feels dangerously close to devotion, to worship, to complete and utter belonging.
He fucks you through it, shallow little thrusts like he can't help himself, like his body won't stop even though he's already given you everything. Each movement makes more come leak out around his cock, makes wet sounds that have you hiding your face in his shoulder, embarrassed and aroused in equal measure.
The aftershocks last forever, little sparks of shared pleasure that have you both gasping, twitching, clutching at each other like lifelines. When he finally stills, he doesn't pull out, just shifts enough that his weight isn't crushing you, keeping you plugged full of him.
"Stay," he mumbles into your neck, words slurred like he's drunk. "Just—stay exactly like this. Please. Need to—need to keep you full. Need to know you're here, that this is real, that I get to—"
"Not going anywhere." You card your fingers through his sweat-damp hair, feel him shiver at the gentle touch after all that intensity. "Never going anywhere. You're stuck with me, Barnes."
His arms tighten around you, and you can feel his smile against your skin, feel the way his cock twitches inside you with renewed interest. "Good. Because now that I know what this feels like, what you feel like—" He rocks his hips experimentally, and you both groan as you feel his come shift inside you, feel how wet and open you are. "We're not leaving this bed for a week. Gonna fuck you in every position I've imagined. Gonna map every inch of your body with my mouth. Gonna find out exactly how many times I can make you come before you beg me to stop—"
"What about—"
He kisses you quiet, slow and thorough and filthy, tongue fucking into your mouth in a pale imitation of what his cock just did. When he pulls back, his eyes are dark with promise and his cock is fully hard inside you again, enhanced recovery time making itself known.
"Nothing else matters," he says simply, starting to move again, slow and deep and devastating. You're so sensitive it borders on too much, but the soul bond floods you with his pleasure, his desperate need, and suddenly you're right there with him again. "Just this. Just us. Just how many times I can make you come before sunrise. How full I can keep you. How loud I can make you scream."
You clench around him involuntarily and his eyes flutter closed, hips stuttering.
"Gonna kill me," he mutters, picking up speed, the wet sounds even more obscene now with his come easing the way. "Seventy years of nothing and now—" A particularly deep thrust has you seeing stars. "Now I've got a soulmate who looks at me like I'm worth something, who touches me like I'm not a weapon, who lets me use her however I need—"
"Who loves you," you interrupt, watching his face crumble and rebuild itself, watching him fight back what looks suspiciously like tears.
"Yeah?" Barely a whisper, so vulnerable it makes your chest ache.
"Yeah." You pull him down for another kiss, pouring everything you can't say into the contact, letting him feel it through the bond. "So much. So long. Even before I knew you, I think I loved you. Think I was waiting for you."
He makes a broken sound and starts fucking you in earnest, like a man possessed, like he's trying to climb inside you and never leave. "Say it again."
"I love you."
"Again." Harder now, each thrust shoving you up the bed.
"I love you, Bucky Barnes."
He fucks you like a promise, like a prayer, like maybe if he does it right the universe will let him keep this. You come apart under him again and again, until time becomes meaningless, until the only reality is where you're joined, where the soul bond burns brightest, where his come leaks out of you with each thrust only to be fucked back in, marking you inside and out as his.
When exhaustion finally claims you both, he's still inside you, still hard, wrapped around you like armor and apology all at once. You're going to be sore tomorrow—hell, you're sore now—but you wouldn't move for anything.
The last thing you feel before sleep takes you is his lips against your temple, his voice rough with wonder and satisfaction:
"Love you too, sweetheart. More than I've got words for. More than I probably should. Gonna spend the rest of my life showing you, if you'll let me. Gonna take such good care of you. My girl. My soulmate. Mine."
"Yours," you mumble, already drifting, clenching around him one last time just to feel him shudder.
His arms tighten, and you feel his smile against your skin, feel the way his cock twitches inside you with interest despite everything.
"Forever," he promises.
"Forever."
Outside, Brooklyn wakes to another morning, unaware that two souls have finally, fully, found their way home.
✮ synopsis: bucky's gotten good at keeping his distance from his harmless, sunshine-y neighbor. but when you get taken because of him—because someone figured out you're his weak spot—he realizes how spectacularly that plan backfired. turns out the winter soldier's soft spot is a lot more dangerous than he thought.
✮ pairing: post-thunderbolts!bucky x fem!reader
✮ disclaimers: violence, kidnapping, blood and injury, torture (not graphic), angst with a happy ending, emotional hurt/comfort, established feelings but complicated relationship, second person POV, fem!reader, miscommunication, intense yearning, emotionally constipated!bucky, past trauma, mild language, fighting sequences
✮ word count: 10.6k
✮ a/n: first fic on this blog and it's basically just 10k words of soft bucky yearning xoxo
The first time Bucky Barnes sees you, you're trying to shove a couch through a doorway that's at least six inches too narrow, and losing spectacularly.
He's coming home from another pointless congressional hearing—the kind where everyone talks in circles about defense budgets while carefully not mentioning the alien invasion from three months ago—when he spots you in the hallway. You're wedged between the arm of what looks like a vintage velvet monstrosity and the doorframe of 4B, hair escaping from whatever you'd tried to contain it with, muttering a stream of increasingly creative profanity.
"Fucking—come on—you absolute bastard of a—"
The couch shifts. You yelp. Bucky's halfway down the hall before he realizes he's moving.
"Need a hand?"
You twist around, and something in his chest does this stupid, inconvenient flip. Your face is flushed, one cheek smudged with what might be dust or maybe yesterday's mascara, and you're looking at him like—well. Like he's not Bucky Barnes. Like he's just some guy in the hallway who might know how geometry works.
"Oh thank god," you breathe, and the relief in it makes his mouth twitch. "I've been battling this thing for twenty minutes. I think it's winning."
He assesses the situation with the same tactical precision he'd use for a Bulgarian arms deal, if arms deals came upholstered in emerald green and smelled faintly of vanilla perfume mixed with fresh sweat. The angle's all wrong. You've been trying to force it through horizontally when it needs to go vertical, then rotate.
"Here." He steps closer, and you shift to make room, your shoulder brushing his chest in a way that absolutely doesn't make his pulse stutter. "If we flip it—"
"Oh, you're strong," you say, like an observation about the weather, as he essentially deadlifts one end of your couch. The metal arm whirs faintly. You don't flinch. "That's convenient."
Convenient. Right. He maneuvers the couch through the doorway in three efficient moves, trying not to notice how you smell like coffee and something floral, how you hover just inside his peripheral vision like you're trying not to crowd him but can't quite stay away.
"There." He sets it down in what's clearly the only spot it could go in your tiny living room. The space is chaos—boxes everywhere, art leaning against walls, books stacked in precarious towers. "You just moving in?"
"Yeah, from—" You wave a hand vaguely eastward. "Nicer neighborhood. Turns out freelance graphic design doesn't pay for Manhattan rent. Who knew?" The self-deprecation comes with a grin that transforms your whole face, and Bucky has to look away, focus on the box labeled 'KITCHEN SHIT' in aggressive Sharpie. "I'm—well, you probably don't care what my name is."
He does, actually. Cares in a way that makes his teeth ache.
"Bucky," he offers, even though you clearly already know. "4C."
"The grumpy congressman." Your grin goes wider, teasing. "I've seen you on C-SPAN. You look like you're being held at gunpoint during those hearings."
"Feel like it too," he mutters, and the laugh you give him hits like a shot of whiskey—warm and slightly dizzying.
"Well, Congressman Barnes of apartment 4C, you've just saved my Saturday. Can I pay you in beer? I've got—" You dig through a box, emerge triumphant with two bottles. "Hipster IPA or hipster IPA?"
He should say no. Should maintain boundaries. Should remember what happened the last time he let someone get close—the scar on his ribs from Belgrade still aches when it rains.
Instead, he finds himself accepting a bottle, listening to you chatter about the neighbor who warned you about the rats (definitely real) and the ghost (probably not real but who knows), watching how you gesture with your whole body when you talk, like you're too much for your own skin.
It's dangerous, how easy you are to be around. How you look at him like he's just Bucky, not the former Asset, not the killer, not the congressman who can't pass a single fucking bill. Just a guy who helped with your couch.
He stays too long. Drinks two beers. Helps you unpack exactly three boxes before some long-dormant self-preservation instinct kicks in and he makes excuses about constituent emails.
"Thanks again," you say at the door, and there's something in your eyes—curiosity, maybe. Interest. "For the couch. And the company."
"No problem."
He's halfway to his own door when you call out: "Hey, Barnes?"
He turns. You're leaning against your doorframe, backlit by the disaster zone of your apartment, smiling that smile that makes his chest tight.
"I make really good coffee. You know. If congressional hearings ever drive you to caffeine dependency."
It's an offer. An opening. Everything in him screams to close it, lock it down, maintain operational security. Instead, his traitorous mouth says, "I'll keep that in mind."
He's so fucked.
The thing is, Bucky's gotten good at keeping people at arm's length. Seventy years of being a weapon teaches him that distance equals safety—for them, not him.
When you're already dead, what's a little more damage?
So he shouldn't notice when you start leaving your apartment at 7:23 every morning, shouldering a bag that's always slipping off your shoulder. Shouldn't time his own exits to avoid those encounters, then feel like an asshole when he succeeds. Definitely shouldn't lie awake listening through the thin walls as you sing along to whatever pop music you play while cooking, off-key and enthusiastic.
But here's the other thing: you make it really fucking hard to maintain distance.
You leave cookies outside his door with notes that say things like "for emergency constituent-induced rage" and "survival fuel for C-SPAN." You knock when you know he's home, ask to borrow sugar or vodka or a screwdriver, then stay to chat like his apartment isn't just bare walls and a couch Sam made him buy. You touch—casual, constant. A hand on his arm when you laugh, fingers brushing when you hand him things, like physical contact isn't something that makes his brain static out.
"You're a really good listener," you tell him one evening, three weeks into whatever this is. You're sitting on his floor, back against his couch, because you'd knocked asking for wine and then somehow ended up staying. Your knee presses against his thigh. He's catastrophically aware of every point of contact. "Like, actually good. Not just waiting for your turn to talk."
"Not much of a talker," he says, which is true and also easier than explaining that he's memorizing everything—how you twist your rings when you're nervous, the way your voice drops when you're saying something real, how you look in his space like you belong there.
"Bullshit." You bump his shoulder. He doesn't flinch anymore, which is either progress or a sign he's completely fucked. "You're just selective. Quality over quantity."
You say things like that—observations that feel like being seen, really seen, not just looked at. It's terrifying. It's addictive. It's going to get you killed.
Because here's the thing Bucky knows down to his bones: everything he touches turns to ash. Everyone he cares about becomes a target. And you—with your sunshine laugh and your disaster apartment and your way of looking at him like he's worth something—you're exactly the kind of light that attracts the worst kind of dark.
He should stay away.
He doesn't.
"So," Sam says, watching Bucky check his phone for the third time during their coffee meeting. "Who is she?"
"What?" Bucky pockets the phone. You'd texted asking if he knew how to fix a leaky faucet. He knows seventeen ways to kill a man with a faucet. Fixing one can't be that different. "Nobody. Work thing."
"Uh-huh." Sam's doing that face, the one that means he's about to be insufferably perceptive. "That's why you just smiled at your phone. Over a work thing. You. Smiled."
"I smile."
"No, you do this thing with your mouth that's like a smile's evil twin. This was an actual smile. So. Who is she?"
Bucky takes a long drink of coffee, considering how much lying is worth the effort. "Neighbor."
"Neighbor." Sam leans back, grinning. "Cute neighbor?"
The memory of you last night, paint in your hair and gesturing wildly about your latest client, flashes unbidden. His silence is apparently answer enough.
"Buck. Man. This is good. You need—"
"I need to not get people killed," Bucky cuts him off. "I need to remember that anyone who gets close to me ends up hurt. I need—"
"You need a life," Sam interrupts right back. "You need to stop punishing yourself for shit that wasn't your fault. You need to let yourself have something good."
Bucky's jaw works. The phone buzzes again. He doesn't check it.
"She doesn't know what she's getting into," he says finally. "She's—" Bright. Warm. Good. "She's not part of this world."
"So keep her out of it." Sam makes it sound simple. Like there's a way to compartmentalize, to have you without putting you at risk. "Be her neighbor. Be normal. Be happy, for once in your goddamn life."
Normal. Right. Because nothing says normal like a centenarian ex-assassin with more kills than most armies and a metal arm that could crush a skull like an egg.
But then he thinks about your smile when he fixed your garbage disposal last week. How you'd said "my hero" in this teasing, fond way that made him want impossible things. How you treat him like he's just Bucky, not a weapon someone else aimed.
"I don't know how," he admits, quieter than he meant to.
Sam's expression softens. "Nobody does, man. You just try anyway."
The faucet thing turns into a whole production.
You answer the door in tiny pajama shorts and an oversized t-shirt that says "FEMINIST KILLJOY" in glitter letters, and Bucky's brain shorts out for a solid three seconds. Your hair's piled on top of your head in what might generously be called a bun, and there's toothpaste at the corner of your mouth, and he wants to—
"Oh good, you're here," you say, grabbing his arm and pulling him inside. Your fingers are warm through his henley. "It's making this noise like a dying whale. I tried YouTube tutorials but I think I made it worse."
The kitchen is a disaster. Tools scattered everywhere, water pooling on the floor, YouTube still playing on your laptop ("—sure to turn off the water main first—"). You've clearly been at this for a while.
"Did you turn off the water?" he asks, already knowing the answer from the growing puddle.
"I turned off a valve," you say defensively. "Several valves. None of them seemed to be the right valve."
He finds himself fighting a smile as he locates the actual shut-off. You hover behind him as he works, close enough that he can feel your breath on his neck, keeping up a running commentary that's part apology, part stand-up routine.
"—and then the wrench slipped and I maybe screamed a little bit, and Mrs. Nguyen next door started banging on the wall, and I had to yell that I wasn't being murdered, just defeating by plumbing—"
"Hand me the—" He turns to ask for the wrench at the same moment you lean forward to see what he's doing. Your faces end up inches apart. Time does that thing where it forgets how to work properly.
Your eyes are very wide. There's a water droplet on your cheek. Bucky's hand twitches with the urge to wipe it away.
"Wrench," he manages, voice rougher than intended.
"Right. Wrench. That's a—" You scramble backward, nearly slip on the wet floor. He catches your elbow automatically, steadying you, and your skin is so warm under his fingers it feels like a brand. "Thanks. I'm not usually this much of a disaster. Actually, that's a lie. I'm exactly this much of a disaster, you've just caught me on a particularly disastrous day."
He fixes the faucet in under ten minutes. You insist on making coffee as payment, which turns into leftover pizza, which turns into three hours on your couch watching some reality show about people making elaborate cakes. You provide running commentary that's funnier than the show itself, and Bucky finds himself actually laughing—not the dry chuckle he's perfected for public appearances, but real laughter that comes from somewhere deep in his chest.
"See?" you say during a commercial break, grinning at him. "I told you this show was addictive. Next week they're making a life-size dragon cake that actually breathes fire."
"Next week?" The words slip out before he can stop them, too revealing.
Your grin softens into something else, something that makes his chest tight. "Well, yeah. You can't miss fire-breathing dragon cake. That's un-American."
It becomes a thing. Thursday nights, your couch, increasingly ridiculous cooking shows. You always have too much dinner ("I'm terrible at portions, shut up"), he always fixes something that's broken ("it's not broken, it's just temperamental"), and somewhere between cake disasters and your laughter, Bucky forgets to maintain distance.
"Your boyfriend's here," Mrs. Nguyen announces loudly when Bucky knocks on your door a month later, because apparently the entire floor has decided they're invested in whatever this is.
"He's not my—" Your voice cuts off as you open the door. You're wearing a dress, which is new. Red, which is newer. Lipstick, which is going to kill him. "Hi."
"Hi." His brain's stuck on the curve of your shoulder, the way the fabric clings. "Going out?"
"Wedding. Old college friend." You're fidgeting with your earring, a sure tell that you're nervous. "I hate weddings. All that optimism and overpriced chicken."
"So don't go."
"Can't. I already RSVP'd, and I'm a good friend even if I'm a wedding-hating gremlin." You pause, still fiddling with the earring. "Unless..."
He knows what's coming by the way you're biting your lip. "No."
"You don't even know what I was going to ask!"
"You were going to ask me to go with you."
"...okay, so you did know." You lean against the doorframe, giving him a look that's probably supposed to be convincing but mostly just highlights how your eyes catch the hallway light. "Come on. You're a congressman. You must love overpriced chicken and small talk."
"I really don't."
"There's an open bar."
"Still no."
"I'll owe you one. One big favor. Anything."
That makes him pause, but not for the reason you think. The idea of you owing him anything makes his skin itch. You already give too much—your time, your laughter, your casual touches that rewire his brain. But the idea of watching you navigate a wedding alone, of other people getting to see you in that dress...
"Fine," he hears himself say. "But I'm not dancing."
The smile you give him could power Brooklyn for a week.
He's absolutely, catastrophically unprepared for how you look in candlelight.
The wedding venue is one of those rustic-chic places that thinks exposed beams equal personality. You're at table eight, which puts you safely in "college friends but not close enough for the wedding party" territory. You've been providing whispered commentary all through the ceremony ("five bucks says she wrote her vows the night before"), your shoulder pressed against his in a way that makes paying attention to anything else physically impossible.
"See that bridesmaid?" You nod toward a blonde who's definitely already three champagnes deep. "That's Amber. We were roommates sophomore year. She once tried to seduce our RA by leaving Post-it poetry on his door."
"Did it work?"
"Depends on your definition of 'work.' She did get his attention. Also a conduct violation." You're playing with the stem of your wine glass, fingers tracing patterns. "Thanks for this, by the way. I know wearing a suit and making small talk isn't exactly your idea of fun."
He could tell you that wearing a suit is nothing compared to tac gear, that small talk is easier than Senate hearings. Could mention that the way you keep unconsciously leaning into him makes any discomfort worth it. Instead: "It's fine."
"Such enthusiasm." But you're smiling, soft and maybe a little fond. "Dance with me?"
"I said no dancing."
"You said that before you had champagne. And before they played—" You tilt your head, listening. "Oh my god, is this Bon Jovi? We have to dance to Bon Jovi. It's the law."
"That's not a law."
"It's a law of wedding physics. Come on, Barnes. One dance. I promise not to step on your feet much."
The thing is, he can't say no to you. It's becoming a problem. You want him to fix your sink? Done. Need someone to hold your laptop while you Skype your mother? He's there. Want him to dance to "Livin' on a Prayer" at some stranger's wedding? Apparently, that's happening too.
You're a terrible dancer. Genuinely awful. You have no sense of rhythm, keep trying to lead, and you're laughing too hard to even pretend otherwise. It's perfect. He spins you out just to watch your dress flare, pulls you back too close, and for a moment—your hand in his, your face tilted up, surrounded by fairy lights and other people's happiness—he forgets why this is a bad idea.
"See?" you say, slightly breathless. "Dancing's not so bad."
His hand is on your waist. He can feel your pulse through the thin fabric. "No. Not so bad."
Someone bumps into you from behind, pushing you fully against his chest. Your hands come up to steady yourself, one landing over his heart, and he knows you can feel how it stumbles. Your smile falters, shifts into something else. Something that looks dangerously like realization.
"Bucky—"
"They're cutting the cake," he says, stepping back. The loss of contact feels like losing a limb. "Should probably watch. For your show."
You blink, then recover. "Right. Yeah. Cake."
But you're quiet for the rest of the reception, and he catches you looking at him with this expression he can't decode. Like you're working through a complex equation and not liking the answer.
He drives home. You spend the ride fiddling with your phone, uncharacteristically silent. When he pulls up to the building, you don't immediately get out.
"I'm sorry if I—" you start.
"Don't." It comes out harsher than intended. He tries again, softer: "You didn't do anything wrong."
"Feels like I did." You're still not looking at him. "I forget sometimes, that you're—that we're—"
"Friends," he supplies, even though the word tastes like ash. "We're friends."
"Right." You finally meet his eyes, and there's something careful in your expression now. Guarded. "Friends."
You're out of the car before he can figure out what to say to fix this. He watches you disappear into the building first, red dress like a wound in the grey evening, and knows he's fucked everything up without quite understanding how.
You pull back after that.
It's subtle—you still smile when you see him in the hall, still text him memes at inappropriate hours. But you stop knocking on his door for impromptu dinners. Stop touching him casually. When he offers to fix your eternally-dripping showerhead, you say you'll call the super instead.
"You're moping," Sam tells him two weeks later, during one of their mandatory "make sure Bucky's not spiraling" brunch dates.
"I don't mope."
"You're the Black Widow of moping. The Michael Jordan of emotional constipation." Sam pauses. "That neighbor you mentioned?"
Bucky's silence is damning.
"What'd you do?"
"Why do you assume I did something?"
"Because you always do something. You get close to someone, panic, and pull some self-sabotaging bullshit." Sam's voice gentles. "Talk to me, man."
Bucky stares at his coffee like it holds answers. "She wanted to dance."
"...okay?"
"At a wedding. And I—we danced. And it was..." He doesn't have words for what it was. How you felt in his arms, how the world narrowed down to just the two of you, how for a moment he forgot he was dangerous. "And then I shut it down."
"Why?"
"Because." He sets the mug down too hard, coffee sloshing. "Because she's sunshine, Sam. She's late-night cooking shows and glitter pens and leaving snacks for the delivery guy. She has no idea what I've done, what I'm capable of—"
"Did you ever think maybe she does know and doesn't care?"
"Then she's naïve."
"Or maybe she just sees you better than you see yourself." Sam leans forward. "Buck, you can't protect people by pushing them away. That's not how it works."
"It's worked so far."
"Has it? Because from where I'm sitting, you're miserable, she's probably confused as hell, and nobody's actually safer."
Bucky wants to argue, but then his phone buzzes. Your name pops up: my smoke alarm is having an existential crisis. is it supposed to beep in morse code?
He's already standing before he realizes it.
"Go," Sam says, shaking his head but smiling. "Fix her smoke alarm. Talk to her like a human being. Maybe try not to fuck it up this time."
Your door is already cracked when he gets there, smoke rolling out in lazy waves.
"I'm not on fire!" you call before he can knock. "Well, the oven mitt was, but I handled it."
He finds you on a chair, ineffectively fanning the smoke detector with a dish towel. You're wearing those little pajama shorts again and his brain still isn't prepared for the sight.
"How does an oven mitt catch fire?" He reaches up, disables the alarm with practiced ease.
"Well, when you forget it's on your hand and rest it on the stove burner..." You shrink a little at his look. "I was distracted."
"By what?"
You don't answer, just hop down from the chair. This close, he can see the flour in your hair, the way you're worrying your bottom lip. "Thanks. Sorry for texting, I know it's late—"
"Why are you apologizing?"
"Because—" You make a frustrated gesture. "Because I'm trying to give you space. Because you clearly regretted the wedding thing and I'm trying not to be that neighbor who develops inconvenient feelings—"
"Feelings?" His brain snags on the word like cloth on a nail.
You go very still. "Shit. I mean. Not feelings. Just. You know. Neighbor...ly concern. Very platonic. Super appropriate."
"You're a terrible liar."
"Yeah, well, you're terrible at—" You stop, visibly collecting yourself. When you speak again, your voice is carefully level: "I like you, okay? More than I should. And I know that's not what you want, and I'm trying really hard to be okay with that, but you standing in my kitchen looking all concerned while I'm having a feelings crisis is really not helping."
The words hit him like a physical blow. You like him. More than you should.
"You don't know me," he says, defaulting to the easiest argument.
"Bullshit." There's heat in your voice now. "I know you reorganize my bookshelf when you think I'm not looking because the chaos bothers you. I know you bring me coffee on Tuesdays because you noticed I have early meetings. I know you have nightmares—yeah, the walls are thin—and I know you pace afterwards like you're trying to walk off whatever you dreamed about."
Each observation feels like being flayed open.
"I know you're careful," you continue, softer now. "I know you think you're dangerous. And I know you've probably got reasons for that. But Bucky? I also know you'd never hurt me. Ever."
"You can't know that."
"Why? Because you're what, too damaged? Too dangerous?" You step closer and he should step back but he's frozen. "You carry my groceries. You fixed my faucet. You danced with me at a wedding even though you hate dancing. Really dangerous stuff there, Barnes."
"You don't understand—"
"Then explain it to me." Your chin juts out, stubborn. "Give me one good reason why we can't—"
He kisses you.
It's the wrong thing to do. Selfish. Stupid. But you're standing there in your flour-dusted pajamas, looking at him like he's worth fighting for, and his self-control just...snaps.
The sound you make—soft, surprised, maybe relieved—shorts out every rational thought in his head. Your hands come up to frame his face, fingertips cool against his burning skin, and then you're kissing him back like you've been waiting for this, like you've been drowning too.
You taste like smoke and whatever you were baking, sweet with an edge of burn, and he's dizzy with it. His hands find your waist, fingers spreading wide against the soft cotton of your shirt, and he pulls you in until there's no space between you, until he can feel your heartbeat hammering against his chest. You're so warm, so alive, radiating heat like a small sun, and he wants to map every degree of it with his mouth, his hands, his—
Reality crashes back like ice water.
He jerks away, but his hands won't let go of your waist, like his body's in revolt against his better judgment. You're both breathing like you've run miles—harsh, ragged pulls of air that fill the space between you. Your lips are swollen, kiss-bruised, and he did that, he marked you, and the savage satisfaction of it wars with the knowledge that he's just made everything infinitely worse.
Your eyes are huge, pupils blown wide, and you're looking at him like he's just rearranged your entire understanding of the universe. One hand is still on his face, thumb pressed to the corner of his mouth like you're trying to hold the kiss there, keep it from escaping.
"That's why," he says roughly. "Because I want—because you make me want things I can't have."
"Says who?" Your eyes are very bright. "Who decided what you can have?"
He doesn't have an answer for that. Doesn't know how to explain the mathematics of survival, how everyone he's ever cared about becomes a liability, a target, a grave.
"I should go," he manages.
"Or," you say, "you could stay."
The offer hangs between you like a lit fuse. He can see the future unspool in both directions: leave now, go back to safe distances and polite nods in the hallway, watch you eventually move on with someone who doesn't come with a body count. Or stay, and risk you realizing what a mistake you're making. Stay, and selfishly take whatever you're willing to give for however long you're willing to give it.
You're still looking at him, patient and terrified and hopeful all at once.
He leaves.
The word echoes in his head all the way back to his apartment. Coward. Coward. Coward. But it's the right thing to do. The safe thing. You'll hurt for a while, maybe hate him a little, but you'll be alive to do it.
He doesn't sleep. Just sits on his couch, staring at the wall that separates your apartments, listening to the muffled sounds of you cleaning up. The shower runs at 2 AM. He knows you cry in the shower when you think no one can hear—learned that three weeks into being neighbors, when your freelance client stiffed you on a big project. He'd wanted to break the fucker's legs then.
Now he wants to break his own.
You're a better person than he'll ever be, which is why you still smile at him in the hallway.
It's careful now, contained. The kind of smile you'd give any neighbor, not the one that used to light up your whole face when you saw him. You don't knock anymore. Don't text about your smoke alarm or your leaky faucet or the rat you're convinced lives in the walls. You just...exist, parallel to him, in a way that makes his chest feel like it's full of broken glass.
"Fixed it myself," you say one morning when he catches you wrestling with a new deadbolt installation. Your drill slips, gouging the doorframe. "YouTube University, you know?"
He could fix it in under a minute. Could show you how to align the strike plate properly, how to test the throw. Instead: "Good for you."
Your smile flickers. "Yeah. Good for me."
Mrs. Nguyen gives him dirty looks now. The whole floor does, really. Like they know he's the reason you don't laugh as loud anymore, why your music's quieter, why you started getting grocery delivery instead of making three trips up the stairs, arms overloaded, dropping things and cursing cheerfully.
It's fine. It's working. You're safe.
He tells himself that every night when he hears you through the walls, moving around your apartment like a ghost of the person who used to dance while cooking.
Three weeks post-kiss, Valentina calls them in for a mission that's barely legal on a good day.
"Weapons shipment," she says, sliding photos across the conference table with her usual theatrical flair. "Enhanced tech, off-market, very much not supposed to exist. The kind of toys that make governments nervous."
"So we're stealing them," Walker states, not asks.
"Recovering," Val corrects with a smile sharp enough to cut. "For the safety of the American people, of course."
Yelena snorts. Alexei's already studying the compound layout like there'll be a test. Bob's doing that thing where he shrinks into himself, trying to become invisible. Bucky catalogs exits, counts guards in the surveillance photos, and tries not to think about how you looked last night, hauling groceries with your hair falling in your eyes.
The mission goes sideways in minute three.
"Intel was wrong," Ava's voice crackles through comms, too calm for the situation. "Triple the guards. And—"
The explosion cuts her off. Then another. The "barely defended warehouse" is a fucking fortress, crawling with military-grade security who definitely got the "shoot to kill" memo.
"Fall back," Bucky orders, but Alexei's already charged ahead, yelling something about Soviet glory. Walker's trying to flank, Bob's panicking, and somewhere in the chaos, Yelena starts laughing like this is the best thing that's happened all week.
It takes two hours to fight their way out. By the end, Bucky's left arm is sparking, his ears are ringing, and he's pretty sure at least three ribs are cracked. Yelena's favoring her right leg, Walker's bleeding from somewhere he won't admit, and Bob—Bob's dissociating so hard Bucky has to physically guide him to the extraction point.
"Well," Val says over comms, observing from her safe distance, "that was bracing."
Bucky doesn't trust himself to respond.
They limp back to New York in sullen silence. No debrief—Val's already spinning the disaster into something palatable for the brass. Bucky goes straight home, ignoring Sam's calls, ignoring everything except the need to get somewhere quiet before he starts breaking things.
His hands are still shaking when he reaches his floor. Adrenaline crash, probably. Or the delayed realization that they'd all nearly died for some bureaucrat's idea of asset recovery. Or—
Your door is open.
Not open-open. Cracked, like it didn't latch properly. Like someone left in a hurry. Or—
The deadbolt is broken.
The one you installed yourself three weeks ago. The one he'd watched you struggle with, pride keeping you from asking for help.
Bucky goes utterly still.
His body moves before his brain catches up. He's through your doorway, cataloging details with mechanical precision: lamp knocked over, books scattered, coffee table shoved sideways. Signs of a struggle. Signs of—
Blood.
Not much. Just droplets on the hardwood, leading toward the kitchen. But enough. Enough to make his vision tunnel, his chest compress until breathing becomes theoretical.
"Sweetheart?" The pet name slips out, raw. No answer. He clears each room like he's back in Hydra facilities, except his hands won't stop shaking because this is your space, your things, your—
Your phone is on the kitchen floor, screen cracked. There's a handprint on the wall—bloody, smeared. Too small to be anyone's but yours.
Something inside him breaks. Clean, sharp, like a bone snapping. The careful distance he's maintained, the walls he's built, the conviction that keeping you at arm's length would keep you safe—all of it crumbles in the face of your empty apartment and that small, bloody handprint.
He's already moving, phone out, calling in favors he's been hoarding. Because someone took you. Someone came into your home—the home he was supposed to be protecting by staying away—and took you. And they're going to learn exactly why the Winter Soldier's name still makes people flinch.
His phone rings. Unknown number.
"Barnes." He doesn't recognize his own voice.
"Ah, the infamous Winter Soldier." The voice is male, amused, completely at ease. "I was hoping we could talk."
"Where is she?"
"Safe. For now. Though that really depends on you, doesn't it?"
Ice spreads through his veins, familiar as an old friend. This is what he was trying to prevent. This exact scenario. You, hurt because of him. You, taken because someone figured out—
"What do you want?"
"You've been playing house, Barnes. Getting soft. Forgetting what you are." A pause, calculated. "I'm going to remind you. And your little neighbor? She's going to help."
The line goes dead.
Bucky stands in your ruined apartment, surrounded by the evidence of his failure, and feels something fundamental shift. Not break—he's been broken before. This is worse. This is the cold clarity that comes after, when there's nothing left to lose.
Someone made a mistake today. They touched you. They made you bleed.
He's going to paint the city red for it.
"Buck, slow down—"
"No." He's already moving, gathering gear with brutal efficiency. The weapons he's not supposed to have. The tech that's definitely illegal. Every favor, every resource, every skill Hydra beat into him over seventy years.
Sam's on speaker, trying to be the voice of reason. "You can't just go in guns blazing—"
"Watch me."
"This is exactly what they want. You, isolated, operating without backup—"
"They have her, Sam." The words come out raw, flayed. "They took her because of me. Because I was stupid enough to think distance would keep her safe."
Silence on the other end. Then: "What do you need?"
That's why Sam Wilson is Captain America. No more arguments, no more trying to talk him down. Just immediate, unwavering support.
"Intel. Cameras in my building, surrounding blocks. Last twelve hours." He straps a knife to his thigh, then another. "And get me backup."
"I can rally your team. Get Walker, Yelena—"
"No." The word comes out sharp. Another knife. Extra magazines. "The Thunderbolts are compromised. That clusterfuck of a mission proved it."
"Buck—"
"They're not ready for this. Half of them can barely work together without Val pulling the strings." He's checking his tactical vest, muscle memory taking over. "This isn't a government op. This is personal."
"So what, you're going in alone?"
Is he? Bucky stops, considers his options. The Thunderbolts are a mess on a good day—Walker's still trying to prove something, Bob's hanging on by a thread, and Alexei treats everything like a performance. They're not who he needs for this.
"They touched her," he says simply.
"I know, man. I know. But—"
"Get me what intel you can. I'll handle the rest."
"Buck, come on. At least let me—"
"They have her, Sam." His voice cracks, just slightly. "Every second we waste talking, they could be—"
"Okay. Okay. Intel coming your way. But Barnes? Don't do anything stupid."
"Too late for that."
Bucky stops in your doorway, looks back at your apartment. There's a photo on your bookshelf—you and him at the building's July 4th party. Mrs. Nguyen had insisted on taking it. You're laughing at something, leaning into him, and he's looking at you like—
Like you're everything he never thought he'd get to have.
"I'm coming for you," he tells the empty room. A promise. A threat. A prayer to whoever might be listening.
Then he disappears into the night, and the Winter Soldier goes hunting.
The trail goes cold in six hours.
Whoever took you, they're not amateurs playing at being dangerous. They're ghosts—professionals who know exactly how to disappear in a city of eight million people. Every camera angle's been scrubbed. Every witness suddenly develops amnesia. Even the blood in your apartment leads nowhere; cleaned of DNA markers by something that makes Bucky's teeth ache with familiarity.
"Talk to me, Buck." Sam's voice through the earpiece, carefully level. "Where are you?"
Bucky stands on a rooftop in Queens, staring at another dead end. Another empty warehouse that should have had something, anything. "Nowhere."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I've got." His metal hand clenches, servos whining. Below, the city keeps moving, oblivious to the fact that you're somewhere in it, hurt, taken because of him. "They're good, Sam. Too good."
"We'll find her."
We. Like this isn't Bucky's fault. Like his past isn't bleeding into your present, staining everything he tried so hard to keep clean.
He drops from the rooftop, lands hard enough to crack pavement. A passing couple startles, hurries away. Good. He doesn't feel particularly human right now anyway.
Hour twelve. Yelena finds him in your apartment, sitting on your couch like a grieving statue.
"This is pathetic," she says, stepping over the crime scene tape he'd ignored. "Even for you."
"Get out."
"No." She perches on your coffee table, uncharacteristically serious. "You think sitting here feeling sorry for yourself will find her? You think guilt helps?"
"I said—"
"I know what guilt looks like, Barnes." Her voice cuts, precise as the knives she carries. "I know what it is, failing someone you—" She pauses, searching for the English word. "Care about. But this?" She gestures at him, at the apartment, at the bloody handprint he can't stop staring at. "This is just... как это... self-pity? No, worse. Useless."
The laugh that tears out of him is ugly. "Thanks for the pep talk."
"Someone needs to knock sense into your thick skull." She leans forward. "Whoever has her, they want you like this. Emotional. Sloppy. Making mistakes."
"I know that."
"Then stop giving them what they want."
Easier said than done when every surface in this apartment carries your ghost. The mug on the counter with your lipstick stain. The book splayed open on the side table, marking your place. The sweater thrown over the chair—his sweater, actually, stolen three weeks ago when you'd claimed your apartment was freezing.
"Keep it," he'd said, trying not to notice how it made something primal in him satisfied, seeing you wrapped in his clothes.
"Just until I fix my radiator," you'd promised, but you'd worn it three more times that week, and he'd never asked for it back.
"Barnes." Yelena snaps her fingers in his face. "Сфокусируйся. Focus."
"I am focused."
"You're spiraling." She pulls out her phone, shows him surveillance footage he's already memorized. "Look again. Really look. Use your brain, not your bleeding heart."
He wants to tell her he's looked at nothing else for twelve hours. Instead, he watches you leave your apartment at 6:47 PM, mail in hand. Watches you come back at 6:53. The timestamp jumps—7:31 to 8:15, forty-four minutes missing. By 8:15, your door's ajar and you're gone.
"Professional crew doesn't need forty-four minutes for grab," Yelena says, her English getting rougher as she thinks. "So why take so long? What were they doing?"
Bucky's phone buzzes. Unknown number.
His blood turns to ice, then flame.
"You're going to want to watch this alone," the familiar voice says. "Though I'm sure your friend is lovely. Hi, Yelena."
She stiffens. Bucky's already moving, putting distance between them, some instinct screaming danger.
"Just me," he says. "Let her go."
"See, that's your problem, Barnes. Still trying to protect everyone. Still thinking you can control who gets hurt." A pause. "Check your messages."
The video file is already there. His hand shakes as he opens it.
You're in a concrete room—could be anywhere, everywhere, the kind of place that exists in every city's bones. Sitting in a metal chair, wrists zip-tied but not apparently hurt beyond the cut on your temple still sluggishly bleeding. You're still wearing his sweater.
"Say hello, sweetheart." The voice comes from behind the camera.
You look up, and the defiance in your eyes makes his chest seize. "Go fuck yourself."
The slap comes fast, snaps your head sideways. Bucky's phone creaks in his grip.
"Language." The camera shifts, focuses on your face. "Try again."
You spit blood, manage a smile that's all teeth. "Hi, Bucky. Nice weather we're having."
Another slap. Harder. Your lip splits.
"I told you he made you weak." The voice continues conversationally as you work your jaw, testing damage. "The Winter Soldier, reduced to playing house with some nobody. It's embarrassing, really."
"You talk a lot for someone hiding behind a camera," you mutter.
This time it's a fist. Your head rocks back, and when you look up again, your nose is bleeding. But you're still glaring, still unbroken, and Bucky loves you so fiercely in that moment it feels like drowning.
"Here's what's going to happen," the voice continues. "Every hour Barnes doesn't come alone to the address we'll send, things get worse for you. And before you get any ideas—" The camera pans to show three other men, armed, professional. "—we've planned for contingencies."
Back to you. Blood drips onto his sweater. You notice the camera returning, look directly into it. "Don't you fucking dare," you say, and despite everything—split lip, bloody nose, zip-tied to a chair—you mean it. "You hear me, Barnes? Don't you—"
The video cuts.
Bucky stands very still in your empty apartment, phone in pieces at his feet.
"That bad?" Yelena asks.
He can't speak. Can barely breathe around the rage threatening to tear him apart from the inside. Somewhere in the city, you're bleeding because of him. Hurt because he was selfish enough to let you close, stupid enough to think distance would be enough.
Another text. An address in Red Hook. Come alone or we start cutting.
"Is trap," Yelena says, dropping articles like she does when she's focused. "Obviously trap."
"I know."
"You can't just walk in there like idiot."
"I know."
"So what's plan?"
He looks at her, and whatever she sees in his face makes her step back. "I give them what they want."
"Barnes—"
"They want the Winter Soldier?" His voice sounds wrong, mechanical, like something dredged up from permafrost. "They've got him."
The address leads to a warehouse because of course it does. These people, whoever they are, lack imagination. Bucky counts heat signatures through thermal imaging—six outside, unknown inside. Doable, if he's what he used to be. If he's willing to be what he used to be.
"Don't you fucking dare."
Your voice echoes, but it's drowned out by older programming. By muscle memory that never quite faded, no matter how many therapy sessions or good days or shared dinners with someone who looked at him like he was worth saving.
"In position," Sam's voice, because fuck going alone. Fuck giving them what they want. "West entrance."
"Rooftop," from Yelena.
"Back door," Walker, surprisingly. "For the record, I think this is stupid."
"Noted," Bucky says, and walks through the front door.
The space is exactly what he expected. Concrete floors, exposed beams, the kind of place that swallows sound. They're waiting for him—five men in tactical gear, no identifying marks. Professional contractors, not ideologues. Which makes this personal.
"Dramatic entrance. I respect that." The voice from the phone materializes into a man in his forties, military bearing, forgettable face. He's standing next to a metal table laid out with tools that make Bucky's scars ache. "Though you were supposed to come alone."
"Yeah, well." Bucky spreads his hands, easy target. "I've never been good at following orders. Ask anyone."
"Funny." The man circles him, predator studying prey. "That's not what your files say. 'Perfect compliance.' That was the phrase, wasn't it?"
Old wounds, precisely targeted. These people have done their homework.
"Where is she?"
"Close. Alive. For now." The man stops in front of him. "You know, I studied you. The Winter Soldier. Hydra's perfect weapon. And then you just... stopped. Became this." He gestures dismissively. "James Barnes, failing congressman. Playing superhero. Pretending you're not what we made you."
"We?"
The man smiles. "Not Hydra, if that's what you're thinking. Hydra was sloppy. Cult-like. No vision beyond control." He pulls out a tablet, shows Bucky a logo—a chimera, three-headed. "Cerberus. We're more... refined. We deal in weapons, not world domination. And you, Barnes? You're a weapon pretending to be human."
"Cool speech." Bucky's cataloging angles, distances, how fast he'd have to move. "Must've practiced in the mirror."
The man's smile tightens. "Bring her out."
Two more men emerge from a side room, dragging you between them. You're conscious but barely, feet stumbling, head lolling. They drop you on the concrete, and you don't get up.
Everything in Bucky goes very, very quiet.
"So here's the deal," Cerberus continues. "You're going to work for us. Exclusive contract. Your particular skills in exchange for her life."
"No." Your voice, cracked but clear. You push yourself up on shaking arms, meet Bucky's eyes across the warehouse. "No deals. No trades."
"Sweetheart—"
"Don't you 'sweetheart' me." You manage to get to your knees, swaying. Blood's dried on your face, but your eyes are blazing. "You think I don't know what they're asking? You think I'd let you—" You have to stop, catch your breath. "I'd rather die than be the reason you become that again."
"How touching," Cerberus says. "But not your call." He nods to one of his men, who pulls out a knife. "Barnes? Your answer?"
The knife moves toward you.
The world explodes.
Flash-bangs through windows, smoke grenades, the distinctive whine of repulsor beams. Cerberus shouts orders, but it's too late—the Avengers don't do subtle when one of their own is threatened.
Bucky moves. Not the measured approach of a soldier, but the brutal efficiency of a weapon. The man with the knife goes down first, arm snapping under metal fingers. The second barely has time to scream. He's not thinking, just reacting, just removing threats between him and you.
Someone shoots him. Barely feels it. Someone else tries hand-to-hand, which is adorable. He puts them through a wall.
"Barnes!" Sam's voice, sharp. "Shield up!"
He spins, catches the thrown shield, uses it to deflect a spray of bullets meant for you. You're trying to crawl to cover, leaving bloody handprints on the concrete, and the sight shorts out whatever restraint he had left.
When the smoke clears, Cerberus is the only one left standing. Backed against the wall, gun trained on you because of course it is. These people are predictable to the last.
"Come any closer and—"
Yelena drops from the ceiling, lands on him like gravity given form. The gun goes flying. Cerberus goes down choking on his own blood, Yelena's knife finding the gap in his armor like it was designed for it.
"Predictable," she says, wiping the blade clean. "I told you they were predictable."
But Bucky's already moving, dropping to his knees beside you. You're conscious, breathing, alive. That's all that matters. Everything else—the mission, the cleanup, the questions—fades to white noise.
"Hey," he says, hands hovering over you, afraid to touch. Afraid to hurt. "I've got you."
"Took you long enough," you manage, then promptly pass out in his arms.
He catches you, holds you against his chest, and something in him breaks. Or maybe it finally, finally mends. Either way, he's done pretending distance keeps anyone safe. Done acting like he deserves to make choices about your safety without you.
"Med team's three minutes out," Sam says quietly.
Three minutes. He can hold you for three minutes. Can keep you safe for three minutes.
After that? After that, everything changes.
But for now, in the blood and smoke and aftermath, Bucky Barnes holds the person he was stupid enough to fall in love with and makes a promise:
Never again.
Never fucking again.
The medical bay at the Tower is too bright, too sterile, too full of people who keep looking at Bucky like he might snap. Maybe he will. He's been sitting in the same chair for four hours, watching machines monitor your breathing, and every beep feels like an accusation.
"You need to get that looked at," Sam says, nodding at the blood seeping through Bucky's shirt. Gunshot wound, probably. He honestly can't remember.
"I'm fine."
"You're bleeding on their fancy floors."
"I'm fine."
Sam exchanges a look with Yelena, who's been uncharacteristically quiet since they arrived. She's cleaned the blood off her hands but keeps flexing them, like she can still feel it.
"At least change your shirt," she says finally. "You look like extra from horror movie."
He doesn't move. Can't move. Because what if you wake up while he's gone? What if you open your eyes and he's not there, again, like he wasn't there when they took you?
"Barnes." Dr. Cho's voice cuts through his spiral. "She's stable. Three broken ribs, concussion, various contusions, but nothing life-threatening. She's lucky."
Lucky. The word tastes like copper in his mouth. Lucky is winning the lottery, not surviving a kidnapping because you had the misfortune of living next to him.
"When will she wake up?"
"Soon. The sedatives should wear off within the hour." She pauses, studying him with that look medical professionals get when they're about to say something pointed. "You, however, need treatment. You're actively bleeding on my floor."
"Sam already made that joke."
"It wasn't a joke." But she moves on, knowing a lost cause when she sees one. "I'll send a nurse with supplies. Try not to die before she wakes up. The paperwork would be tedious."
She leaves. Sam leaves. Even Yelena eventually wanders off, muttering something about vodka and terrible life choices. And then it's just Bucky and you and the steady beep of machines he'd tear apart if they stopped working.
Your hand is smaller than his. He knows this—has known it since the first time you grabbed his wrist to drag him to see some neighbor's new puppy—but it feels more pronounced now. More fragile. Your knuckles are split from fighting back, and there's still blood under your nails. His blood? Theirs? He doesn't know, and the not knowing makes him want to put his fist through the wall.
"You're spiraling again."
Your voice is hoarse, barely above a whisper, but it might as well be a gunshot for how hard it hits. His head snaps up to find you watching him, eyes half-open but alert.
"You're awake."
"Mmm. Kind of wish I wasn't." You try to sit up, wince, immediately abort that mission. "Fuck. Did anyone get the number of the truck that hit me?"
"Don't—" He's hovering, hands fluttering uselessly, afraid to touch you. "You shouldn't move. Dr. Cho said—"
"Dr. Cho can kiss my ass," you mutter, but you stop trying to sit up. Your eyes track over him, cataloging damage. "You're bleeding."
"It's nothing."
"It's literally dripping on the floor, Barnes."
"It's fine."
You stare at each other. Four hours of practiced speeches evaporate in the face of your actual consciousness, leaving him with nothing but the memory of your blood on concrete and the sound you made when they hit you.
"So," you say finally, voice carefully neutral. "Cerberus. That was fun."
"Don't."
"Don't what? Make jokes about my kidnapping? Process trauma through humor? Acknowledge that you're sitting there bleeding because you decided to Rambo your way through—"
"You could have died." It comes out louder than intended, raw. "You almost died because of me."
Something shifts in your expression. "Bucky—"
"No." He's standing now, needing distance, needing space between him and the way you're looking at him. "You don't get to—to act like this is fine. Like this is some funny story you'll tell at parties. They took you because of me. They hurt you because of me."
"They took me because they're assholes who thought they could use me as leverage." You're struggling to sit up again, ignoring whatever pain it causes. "That's on them, not you."
"You're only leverage because I was selfish enough to—" He stops, runs his hand through his hair. "I knew better. I knew what would happen if I let someone close, and I did it anyway."
"Let me get this straight." Your voice is gaining strength, and with it, heat. "You think you 'let' me get close? Like I didn't have any say in it? Like I didn't practically force-feed you cookies until you acknowledged my existence?"
"That's not—"
"And what, you think keeping me at arm's length would've magically made me safer? News flash, Barnes: I live in that building because it's what I can afford. That makes me a target for regular criminals on a good day. At least with you around, I had someone who actually gave a shit if I made it home."
"Don't." The word cracks. "Don't act like I was protecting you. I'm the reason you were bleeding. I'm the reason they—"
"You're the reason I'm alive!" You swing your legs over the side of the bed, bare feet hitting the floor with determination that makes his chest tight. "You think they took me because they wanted leverage? They took me because they were cleaning house. Because they knew you'd gotten soft, gotten close to someone, and that made you unpredictable."
You stand, sway, catch yourself on the bed rail. He moves forward instinctively, and you hold up a hand.
"No. You don't get to touch me right now. Not when you're about to do something stupid and noble and self-sacrificing." You take a step, then another, closing the distance between you despite your own warning. "They were going to kill me either way, Barnes. Whether you came for me or not. The only difference is that you did come, and now I'm alive to be really fucking pissed at you."
"You don't understand—"
"I understand perfectly." You're close enough now that he can see the bruises forming on your throat, the way you're holding your ribs, the tears you're refusing to shed. "You think you're poison. You think everyone you touch gets hurt. You think the best thing you can do is be alone forever because that's what you deserve."
"Stop."
"No. Because here's the thing, James Buchanan Barnes—you don't get to make that choice for me." Your voice breaks, just a little. "You don't get to decide I'm better off without you. You don't get to kiss me in my kitchen and then run away like a coward. And you sure as hell don't get to sit there bleeding and act like it's some kind of penance."
The medical bay feels too small suddenly, like all the air's been sucked out. You're looking at him with eyes that see too much, that refuse to let him hide behind the careful walls he's rebuilt in the last three weeks.
"They hurt you," he says, quieter now. Lost.
"Yeah. They did." You reach up, slowly, telegraphing the movement. Your hand cups his face, thumb brushing over the bruise on his cheekbone. "And it wasn't your fault."
"How can you say that?"
"Because blaming you for what they did is like blaming a bank for getting robbed." Your other hand comes up, framing his face, forcing him to meet your eyes. "You're not responsible for other people's evil, Bucky. You're only responsible for what you do about it."
"I should have protected you better."
"You literally threw yourself between me and automatic gunfire."
"I should have never let them take you in the first place."
"Oh, so you're psychic now? Can predict the future?" Your laugh is watery. "Add that to the resume. Congressman, ex-assassin, part-time fortune teller."
"This isn't funny."
"It's a little funny." But your smile fades, replaced by something fiercer. "You want to know what's not funny? Spending three weeks watching you shut me out. Sitting in that chair, knowing you were hurting, and not being able to do anything because you decided I was better off without you."
"You are—"
"Finish that sentence and I swear to god, Barnes, concussion or not, I will punch you in your stupid, self-loathing face."
He almost smiles. Almost. "You could barely stand five seconds ago."
"Adrenaline's a hell of a drug." But you're swaying again, and this time when he reaches for you, you don't stop him. His arms come around you carefully, mindful of injuries, and you lean into him like you've been waiting for permission. "I'm so fucking mad at you."
"I know."
"Like, incandescently furious."
"I know."
"You don't get to leave again." It comes out muffled against his chest, but he hears the steel underneath. "I don't care if the entire population of supervillains decides I'm their new favorite target. You don't get to leave."
His arms tighten fractionally. "Sweetheart—"
"No." You pull back enough to glare at him, and even bruised and exhausted, you're the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. "No 'sweetheart.' No soft voice and sad eyes. You're either in this with me or you're out, but you don't get to half-ass it anymore. You don't get to knock on my door at 2 AM because you had a nightmare and then pretend we're just neighbors. You don't get to dance with me at weddings and then act like it meant nothing. You don't get to—"
He kisses you.
There's no grace in it—just collision, pure physics as his mouth finds yours with the same brutal efficiency he'd use to take down a target. Except this isn't violence, it's something worse. It's capitulation. It's three weeks of want compressed into the space between one heartbeat and the next.
The noise that escapes you—half gasp, half sob—unlocks something feral in his chest. Then your teeth catch his lower lip, sharp and unforgiving, and his vision whites out entirely. You kiss like you fight: dirty, determined, taking no prisoners. Your tongue slides against his and his knees actually buckle, what the fuck, he's faced down alien armies without flinching but you're going to be what finally kills him.
His hands fly to your face, metal and flesh cradling your jaw like you're something precious even as he devours your mouth like you're anything but. You're pressed so tight against him he can feel every hitch in your breathing, every shudder that runs through you when he angles his head and deepens the kiss into something filthier, something that has you making these broken little sounds that he wants to bottle and keep.
The medical bed hits the back of your thighs—when did he walk you backward?—and you use the leverage to pull him down, down, until he's curved over you like a question mark, like gravity itself has reorganized around the heat of your mouth.
When you finally break apart, it's only because biology demands it. You're both wrecked—breathing like you've run marathons, lips swollen and spit-slick, staring at each other like you're not quite sure what just happened.
Your pupils are blown so wide he can barely see the color of your irises. There's a flush spreading down your throat, disappearing beneath the hospital gown, and he has to physically stop himself from following it with his mouth. His hands are trembling where they frame your face, thumbs pressed to your cheekbones like he's checking you're real.
"That's not an answer," you manage, but your voice is thoroughly fucked, and your hands are still twisted in his vest like you'll shoot him if he tries to move away.
"Yes, it is."
"No, it's really not. It's a deflection. A really nice deflection, but—"
"I'm in." The words feel like jumping off a cliff. Like defusing a bomb. Like coming home. "I'm in. Whatever that means, whatever that looks like. I'm in."
You study him for a long moment, and he tries not to fidget under the scrutiny. Finally: "You're going to therapy."
"I'm already in therapy."
"You're going to actually talk in therapy instead of just staring at the wall and hoping Dr. Raynor gets bored."
"...fine."
"And you're going to let me have a say in my own safety. No more unilateral decisions about what's 'best' for me."
"Okay."
"And you're going to teach me self-defense. Real self-defense, not just how to throw a punch."
"Deal."
"And—" You sway again, this time more dramatically. "Oh. Okay. Maybe sitting down now."
He guides you back to the bed, hands steady even if nothing else is. You let him fuss, let him adjust pillows and pull up blankets, and he tries not to think about how easily you fit into his hands. How right this feels, even with blood on his shirt and bruises on your skin.
"For the record," you say as he settles back into the chair beside your bed, "I'm still mad."
"I know."
"Like, really mad. There's going to be yelling. Possibly throwing things."
"I can take it."
"And groveling. Lots of groveling. I'm talking flowers, chocolates, the works."
"Noted."
You reach for his hand, lace your fingers through his. "And you're going to tell me you love me."
He freezes. You squeeze his hand.
"Because I know you do. I've known since you reorganized my bookshelf by genre and then pretended you didn't. And I love you too, you absolute disaster of a man, but I need to hear you say it. When I'm not concussed and you're not bleeding. When we're both safe and no one's trying to kill us and we can actually have a real conversation about what this means."
His throat feels tight. "I can do that."
"Good." You close your eyes, exhaustion finally winning. "Now get your gunshot wound treated before you bleed out on my watch. I'm not explaining that to Sam."
"It's not that bad."
"Bucky."
"Fine."
But he doesn't move. Not yet. Instead, he sits there holding your hand, memorizing the way your fingers fit between his, the steady rise and fall of your chest, the fact that you're alive and here and somehow, impossibly, still want him around.
The sun's coming up by the time a nurse finally corners him, threatening sedation if he doesn't let her treat the gunshot wound. You're properly asleep by then, fingers still tangled with his, and he lets the nurse work around your grip rather than let go.
"She's tough," the nurse comments, applying what are probably too many bandages.
"Yeah."
"And stubborn."
"Definitely."
"Good." She pats his shoulder, maternal despite being half his age. "You're going to need it."
He doesn't ask what she means. Doesn't need to. Because you're right—he's a disaster. A work in progress on his best days, a barely controlled catastrophe on his worst. But you looked at all that and decided he was worth fighting for anyway.
The least he can do is try to prove you right.
When you wake up again, he's there. When Dr. Cho kicks him out so you can rest, he goes to therapy and actually talks. When Sam asks if you're together now, he says yes without qualifying it.
And when you're finally released, when you're back in your apartment with its new locks and its carefully cleaned floors, when you knock on his door at midnight because the nightmares found you too—he opens it. No hesitation. No distance.
"Hey, neighbor," you say, and the smile you give him is worth every risk, every fear, every moment of doubt.
"Hey yourself."
You step inside, and he closes the door behind you, and for the first time in longer than he can remember, Bucky Barnes stops running from the possibility of happiness.
oh, it's hard to leave you (when i get you everywhere!)
pairing: congressman!bucky barnes x pr manager!reader
summary: you tweet one (1) mildly unhinged critique of congressman james buchanan barnes’ pr strategy—something about ghosting the press and weaponizing cheekbones—and three hours later he’s in your dms asking if you want a job. now you manage his social media, his public image, and occasionally his existential spirals. he’s got a metal arm, a rescue cat named alpine, and the digital instincts of a dad trying to facetime from the tv remote. somehow, against all odds, he’s good. earnest. dangerously hot. you're so screwed.
word count: 10.6k
content warnings: 18+ mdni, fem!reader, soft dom!bucky, sloppy make-out sesh for the win, fingering, oral (f!receiving), face riding, praise kink, unprotected sex, rough sex, size kink, creampie, use of pet names like sweetheart and pretty baby, unprecedented levels of yearning, overstimulation, multiple orgasms, unhinged tweets
You don’t mean to go viral.
You really don’t. It’s not a bit or a career move or a desperate plea to the algorithm gods. It’s just that you were in line for coffee at 8:47 a.m., hungover from exactly one and a half spicy margaritas (because you're a real adult now and your liver hates you), and the man in front of you was vaping indoors. You needed to direct your rage somewhere. That somewhere happened to be Twitter.
Well. That and the soft target of Rep. James B. Barnes.
Your actual tweet really isn't that scathing, in your opinion:
“Not to be rude before 9 a.m., but Rep. James B. Barnes has the digital strategy of a man who thinks ‘radio silence’ is the same as ‘messaging control.’ Ghosting the press isn't mysterious, it's lazy. And the Instagram? Sir, it's giving retired uncle who discovered portrait mode last week. You're hot, sure—but public goodwill isn’t built on brooding black-and-white cat photos and the occasional quote that reads like it was ripped from a thirteen year old's diary. Hire literally anyone.”
You hit post, tuck your phone away, and move on with your morning, which includes trying not to scream during a client call where a fitness influencer earnestly asks if she should “lean into a divorce arc.”
By the time you check Twitter again, it’s… carnage. In the good way.
The notifications are stacked like an avalanche. A dozen quote tweets, then a hundred, then you stop counting because your phone is hot to the touch and your Slack has stopped functioning. You’re about to text your best friend when you see it:
@RepBarnes:
Noted. Would you like to try fixing it?
You stare. Blink. Blink again. Surely not.
Surely the Winter Soldier, now U.S. House Representative for New York’s 9th Congressional District, is not quote-tweeting you like this is a casual Tuesday.
Surely the man who once jumped off a highway overpass and punched a terrorist in the face is not lurking on Twitter Dot Com past midnight, scrolling his name like a sad girl with an ex-boyfriend playlist.
You reread it.
Then again. And again. Your fingers are shaking a little, like you’ve had three too many shots of espresso, which—fine—you have.
You’re halfway through an existential crisis about how a minor PR manager can possibly be noticed by a former Avenger turned Congressman when your phone starts vibrating off the desk. Nina texts you first:
NINA
DUDE
DUDE
HE KNOWS WHO YOU ARE
do you think he read your pinned tweet where you said you’d marry Thor in a Walgreens parking lot???
You don’t answer. You’re too busy spiraling. Because now your professional website is getting hits. And your LinkedIn. And, insult to injury, your ancient Tumblr blog from college, where you once posted a 2,000-word thinkpiece on how Steve Rogers is a metaphor for millennial burnout. You know this because someone found it and tagged you with a screenshot.
You’re spiraling when your phone pings again.
This time it’s not public.
@RepBarnes has sent you a direct message.
If you’re interested, I could use someone like you.
NY/DC split. Health benefits included.
Let me know.
You read it once. Then again. Then walk away from your desk, lie down on your kitchen floor, and stare at the ceiling like it might have answers. It does not. It has a water stain from your upstairs neighbor’s failed attempt at DIY plumbing. You feel that deeply.
You, who spent three years post-grad slowly circling the corporate America drain—clutching your Communications degree like it’s a winning lottery ticket while negotiating brand partnerships for YouTubers who think “millennial” means “anyone over 26”—have just been headhunted by Bucky Barnes.
You should probably be flattered. Or terrified. Or calling your mom. Instead, you fire off the only response that makes sense:
are u joking?
His reply comes five minutes later.
No.
You’re good.
And I’m very tired of people telling me to post more cat content.
You stare at your screen.
You should absolutely say no. This is clearly a trap. At best, a weird stunt. At worst, the kind of surreal pivot that leads to you being mentioned in Politico under “questionable staffing decisions.”
But also… your rent just went up. Again. Your clients are spiraling. You haven’t had health insurance that covers dental since 2021.
And Bucky Barnes wants to hire you?
You exhale. Then type,
i'll clear my schedule. when and where?
A beat.
Meet me in D.C.
I’ll have coffee. You bring strategy.
You stare at that last part and—God help you—you start to grin.
You're pretty sure you’ve just accepted a job from the Winter Soldier.
.
Once upon a time, you had hopes.
Real, annoying ones. Back when you still believed in upward mobility and the promise of networking events with warm chardonnay. You were going to climb the ranks. Not to the top, necessarily—you were realistic, not delusional—but to a place with an actual title. "Director" maybe, or "Head of Strategy." Something crisp and important-sounding that could be printed on business cards without irony. You’d wear smart blazers and carry a leather tote that didn’t smell like stale granola bars. You’d have power lunches.
Instead, you’re three years out of grad school with an inbox full of “circling back”s, a calendar that reads like a sacrificial offering to the content gods, and a job that involves convincing lifestyle micro-influencers to stop posting QAnon-adjacent smoothie recipes.
You had dreams. Now you have bills.
Which is why the Bucky Barnes situation feels less like a win and more like a symptom. A brain glitch, maybe. You refresh your inbox. Again. You’ve been doing that for the last hour and a half. The DM is still there, as if it might disappear if you blink too hard.
You open a Google Doc. Title it “Project: Barnes?” with the tentative, quizzical punctuation of someone who is very much not okay.
And then, like any self-respecting PR person who has just been contacted by a former war hero turned sitting U.S. Representative, you type the most professional research query you can think of:
bucky barnes political platform site:gov
Then:
bucky barnes cat
And then, after five minutes of increasingly weird search results, you cave:
bucky barnes shirtless
For research purposes, obviously. To understand the optics. You are nothing if not committed to analyzing the full spectrum of a person's public persona.
(Also, look. It’s not your fault that James Buchanan Barnes is stupidly, distractingly attractive in a way that should be a federal offense. The man has the bone structure of a war-weary marble statue. The jawline of a vintage cologne ad. And don’t even get started on the arm—the arm—because that’s a whole separate thesis.)
It’s Wakandan tech, sleek and black with gold accents that catch the light like something out of myth. You’ve seen pictures of him at press conferences, sleeves pushed up, glinting like some kind of tactical Greek god. It is, objectively, an optics goldmine. Which makes it even more baffling that his current social strategy is “post like a cryptid and hope people like based on vibes.”
You learn that he’s been in Congress for just under six months. That he ran on a progressive platform with a heavy emphasis on veteran care, climate resilience, and “actually listening to the people,” which, yes, is vague—but less vague than the average politician, so that’s something. You find clips from a debate where he tells a super PAC-backed opponent, with all the calm menace of a man who once fought a Nazi on top of a train, “I didn’t survive a handful of wars to let people like you sell this country for parts.”
It’s not fair. He shouldn’t be allowed to be hot and principled and grumpy in a compelling way. That’s too many character traits. You’re fairly certain it violates some kind of congressional ethics code.
You click out of the tab. Open another.
Watch a video of him dodging a question on CNN with a non-answer so blunt it circles back around to being honest. He has a dry, clipped delivery. A little awkward. A little old. Not in a cringey, old-man way—but like he hasn’t quite caught up with the TikTokification of discourse.
You hate how much you want to fix it.
Your fingers twitch. You scroll through his feed. It’s mostly retweets of policy initiatives, local labor union updates, and cat pictures—grainy, candid shots of a very fluffy white feline with the disdainful elegance of old money and the personal boundaries of a cryptid. She’s usually perched somewhere she shouldn’t be: on top of his kitchen cabinets, wedged behind a stack of legislative binders, once half-asleep inside his empty duffel bag. Once in a while, he posts a weirdly poetic thought. Like:
Not all roads lead to war. But I remember the ones that did.
You stare at it.
It has thirty-two retweets, all from mutuals you know to be deeply online. One has responded “who’s running this account and do they need therapy.” Another has written simply: “sir.”
You breathe out a laugh.
You should be panicking. Or preparing. Or calling someone smarter than you. But instead you’re refreshing his feed and scrolling like a girl with a crush.
Which—no. Nope. Absolutely not. This is research. Professional curiosity. Intellectual rigor.
You check your calendar. Nothing but a call at four with your client who wants to rebrand herself as an “edible wellness guru” and refuses to define what that means. You sigh. Close the tab.
Then reopen it. One more scroll for the road.
In one photo, his cat is curled up in Bucky’s lap, a fluffy white loaf of judgement and chaos, her paw resting on his vibranium arm like she owns both it and the man it’s attached to. The caption reads:
She snored through my security briefing. I wish I could too.
Jesus Christ, you think. I’m in trouble.
.
You spend the next forty-eight hours overthinking everything.
Your research doc is now twenty pages long. You’ve compiled notes on his legislative record, his key voting blocs, public sentiment analysis, and—because you are fundamentally broken—a list of his most viral thirst tweets. There’s one that simply reads “he could kill me and I’d say thank you.” You are not proud to admit it made you snort.
You board the train to D.C. with your headphones in, your anxiety clutched to your chest like a carry-on, and your very best business casual. You don’t even read on the train. You just sit there and wonder what the hell you’re doing.
By the time you arrive, you’re exhausted from spiraling.
The coffee shop is in Capitol Hill—of course it is. Quiet and wood-paneled, with the kind of soft lighting that makes everyone look like they’re about to confess something.
You’re early. He’s not there yet. You order a black coffee and a croissant you won’t eat and choose the table in the back, where you can see the door.
Five minutes later, he walks in.
And yes, fine. It is a little cinematic.
James Buchanan Barnes in the flesh is not the brooding, hyper-composed figure from press photos. He’s rougher around the edges in person, like someone who never quite got used to peacetime. His hair is slicked back but starting to come undone at the edges. The navy suit jacket he’s wearing is slightly creased, like he’s been rolling up the sleeves and taking it off and putting it back on all morning. No tie. Just the white collar of his shirt open at the throat, exposing the soft brush of stubble across his neck and jaw.
God. This is so unfair.
His eyes land on you and something flickers—recognition, maybe, or skepticism. You can’t tell.
He walks over. You stand too quickly. Your chair makes a horrible screech.
“Hi,” you say, then—because you’re flustered and your brain is full of static—“I almost didn’t recognize you without the strategically vague tweets.”
His brow lifts, just slightly. The corner of his mouth pulls. Could be amusement. Could be confusion.
“You came,” he says, as if the possibility you wouldn’t had been very real.
“Of course,” you reply, forcing a half-smile. “I go where the digital crises call.”
He nods once, slowly. Watches you as you open your laptop and set your coffee down. It’s too quiet for a moment—the hum of the café, the hiss of the espresso machine, the clink of someone stirring sugar behind the counter. You pull up the notes you made at two in the morning while spiral-reading his press history, trying not to fidget.
“I figured,” you offer, “we’d start with a social audit. Clarify some core messaging, maybe put together a soft content strategy for the next two weeks. We’ll do a tone reset, pull the last six months of analytics, identify what’s actually landing—because no offense, but your engagement rates are being carried by your cat.”
A pause.
“I mean, I get it. She’s adorable. But still.”
He huffs something that could be a laugh, if it weren’t so dry. Then leans back slightly, the line between his brows easing as he studies you.
Then he says, slowly, like he’s still feeling out the words: “You actually know what you’re talking about.”
And you blink. “You thought I didn’t?”
He shrugs, glancing out the window for a beat before returning to you. “I kind of thought you were… just someone online. Making noise.”
You sip your coffee. “I mean. I am. But I also have a master’s in communication strategy and ten thousand hours of dealing with manchildren who think posting a thirst trap is a branding pivot.”
His mouth twitches. “Sounds promising.”
You smile. Tight. “So. What exactly do you really need help with?”
And just like that—you’re in it.
You expect him to start with a question. Or a joke. Or maybe something awkward and vaguely threatening, like “how do you know so much about me?” (You don’t. You just have Wi-Fi and a dangerous relationship with your search bar.)
But instead, Bucky leans back in his chair, crosses his arms, and says, “It’s just not working.”
You blink. “You’ll have to be more specific. What’s not working?”
“My comms strategy. My messaging. All of it.”
He sounds vaguely exasperated, but not angry. Just tired. You get the sense that’s his baseline. He gestures with one hand, the movement sharp and utilitarian. “I’m supposed to be building a digital presence that connects with people. Makes them trust me. Instead I’m getting tagged in memes about how hot I am.”
You nod, solemn. “To be fair, you do look like that.”
He doesn’t laugh, but he quirks an eyebrow like he’s maybe a little impressed you said it. “Thanks.”
You swallow the lump in your throat with a sip of coffee. It’s going lukewarm. “So what was the issue? Your team too old school? Too hands-off?”
He gives you a look that’s equal parts apology and confession. “I don’t really have a team.”
You blink again. “You… don’t have a team.”
“One guy. Used to run PR for a congressman from Montana. Thought hiring someone low-profile would keep things clean.”
You squint. “You’re a former Avenger. There’s no such thing as clean.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Starting to notice that.”
You press your fingers to your temples. “Okay. So let me get this straight. You have no digital strategy lead, no content calendar, no brand consultant, and you’re navigating one of the most publicly scrutinized jobs in America with a guy whose last success story was getting a local paper to stop calling his boss ‘the Beef Tariff Czar.’”
He shifts. Slightly. Doesn’t deny it.
You put your coffee down. Carefully. Deliberately. Then say, as diplomatically as you can:
“With all due respect, Mr. Barnes—this is a disaster.”
He meets your eyes. Dead-on. “That’s why I messaged you.”
It’s almost… earnest. That quiet, unflinching way he says it. Like he knows just how far in over his head he is. Like he doesn’t enjoy asking for help, but he’s smart enough to do it anyway.
That, more than anything, is what knocks you sideways.
Because the guy sitting across from you does not radiate “competent politician.” He’s stiff in the way people are when they’re always anticipating a fight. He looks like someone who’s only recently stopped treating doorknobs like potential traps.
But he also looks at you like he’s listening. Like he wants to get this right, even if he doesn’t know how.
And you hate how that pulls at you.
You fold your hands. Steady your tone. “If I take this job, I’m not just managing your Twitter. I’ll need full access—messaging, public statements, policy framing. You’ll have to be okay with me pushing back. Hard.”
He nods. “Understood.”
“And I’ll need to redo everything your current guy’s done.”
“I was hoping you would.”
You raise an eyebrow. “Including the website that looks like it was designed in 2007?”
A ghost of a smirk. “I designed that one myself.”
“Of course you did.”
A beat. Then—quietly, without the usual edge. “I didn’t expect to win. When I ran. It wasn’t about the campaign. I just thought… if I could stand up, maybe someone else would too.”
It’s not a speech. It’s not even polished. But it hits.
You sit with it for a second. Then say, “That’s the part people need to hear.”
He frowns. “What, the not-expecting-to-win part?”
“No. The rest. The standing up.” You pause. “You want to help. And that’s rare. It’s worth something. We can build on that.”
There’s a shift then, subtle but real. He straightens a little. Like your words have landed somewhere deep. Like maybe—maybe—you’re the first person who’s said that in a while.
You don’t say anything else. Neither does he.
But something’s settled between you. A quiet, unspoken agreement.
You’re in. Actually.
God help you.
.
Your first day working for Congressman James Buchanan Barnes begins with a minor existential crisis and a yogurt you eat standing up.
Capitol Hill is less glamorous than it looks on TV. A lot more beige. A lot more linoleum. Everything smells like government-grade carpet and desperation. You get stopped at security twice. First because of your laptop. Then because you muttered “kill me” under your breath in line and a very serious-looking man with an earpiece asked if you were making a threat.
You’re not. But it’s touch and go.
Bucky’s office is on the third floor of the Cannon Building. It’s functional in the same way a DMV is functional—technically operating, but held together by anxiety and one overworked assistant. The plaque outside his door reads:
REP. JAMES BARNES
New York’s 9th District
Inside, it’s… chaos.
Not loud chaos. Weird chaos. Subtle. Like someone tried to copy a normal congressional office from memory but forgot a few key details. There’s a framed photo of Brooklyn from the ‘40s. A desk with approximately forty-nine paperweights—no papers, just the weights. A bowl of wrapped Werther’s Originals. You are immediately suspicious.
Before you can process that, Bucky appears in the doorway, sleeves rolled up, tie in hand like he hasn’t figured out if he’s putting it on or strangling it.
“You made it,” he says. Deadpan.
“No thanks to Homeland Security,” you mutter, stepping inside.
He gives you the tour, if you can call it that.
There’s the bullpen (three desks, one of which has a sword leaning against it for reasons no one explains), a coffee station with a “don’t drink this, it’s poison” Post-it, and his actual office, which is larger than you expected and somehow still incredibly bare.
You spot a half-empty bookcase, a red file folder labeled “CRISIS?” and a punching bag tucked behind the door.
“Is that for stress relief or intimidation purposes?” you ask, pointing at the bag.
“Yes,” he replies.
The next hour is a whirlwind of introductions, vague directives, and increasingly unhinged email threads. His comms inbox is a minefield.
You get a badge, a desk, and a monitor that still has a Post-it from your predecessor that just says, Good luck, you’re gonna need it. You also learn that the thermostat in the office only has two settings: Arctic Military Base and Surface of the Sun.
By the end of your first day, your inbox has refreshed for the fifth time and you’ve flagged three crisis-adjacent threads—one involving a scheduling mix-up, one involving a meme account, and one involving a conspiracy theory about cyborgs in Congress.
Maybe, just maybe, this job might be more than you bargained for.
The next week is only slightly less chaotic.
Your—well, his, technically—first press briefing is scheduled for 2 p.m. sharp, but by 1:17 you’re already mentally preparing the post-mortem. You’ve seen the rehearsal footage, such as it was—him standing in front of his desk, arms crossed like a bouncer, muttering responses like they physically pained him.
When you gently suggested he try smiling, he looked at you like you’d asked him to perform open-heart surgery with a spoon.
“It’ll be fine,” An intern chirps, shoving a protein bar in your hand as they breeze past. “He does better under pressure. Like a reverse soufflé.”
“What does that mean,” you whisper, but she’s already gone.
You’re standing behind the curtain in a room that smells like too many folding chairs and not enough trust in government when he walks in, adjusting the cuffs of his shirt. No tie today. He says it feels like a leash. His sleeves are rolled with military precision, though. His hair’s slicked back. He looks more like a man going to war than one about to deliver a ten-minute statement on infrastructure funding.
“You ready?” you ask, clipboard clutched like a lifeline.
“No,” he says. “But I’ll do it anyway.”
You almost smile.
The press corps is already seated, eyes trained, pens poised. He walks out with the focus of someone trained to enter dangerous rooms. You can see the shift in him—quiet alertness, head high, every movement efficient. There’s still something a little stiff in the way he grips the podium, like he doesn’t fully trust it not to fall apart under his hands.
Then he starts to speak.
And damn.
Okay.
You hadn’t expected this.
It’s not polished. He stumbles over a couple phrases. Uses “ain’t” once. Drops a note card and mutters “shit” under his breath into a hot mic.
But he knows his stuff. Not just the numbers. Not just the bill. The context. The human angle. He tells a story about the neighborhood he grew up in, back when it still had corner shops and streetcar tracks. Talks about a single mom who wrote in last week about her building’s pipes freezing every winter. Doesn’t make promises—just outlines what he’s doing and what he won’t let happen again.
And it’s good.
It’s honest.
He doesn’t charm the press. He earns them.
You see it in the way pens pause halfway through notes. Phones lowered. Eyebrows raised. There’s a moment—a beat in the middle of a sentence—where he talks about reconstruction efforts in Red Hook and says, “We don’t need heroes. We need decent plumbing and warm classrooms,” and it lands like a punch.
You feel it, too.
By the end, they’re asking thoughtful questions. Real ones. He handles them with a dry kind of grace. Doesn’t deflect. Doesn’t lie. Says “I don’t know” more than once, but follows it with “I’ll find out.”
When it’s over, he steps backstage, exhales slowly, and immediately unbuttons the top of his shirt like it’s a reward.
You hand him a bottle of water.
He takes it with a nod and says, “Well?”
You blink. “You were… actually incredible?”
He raises an eyebrow. “That so shocking?”
“Yes!” you blurt, then soften. “I mean. A little. You’re not exactly a poster child for press-friendly vibes.”
He leans against the wall, sipping. “Yeah, well. I’m not a fan of the stage.”
“But you like the mission.”
He looks at you. And for once, doesn’t deflect.
“I like helping people. I like when things are fair. And if this is what I gotta do to make that happen…” He shrugs. “Then I do it.”
You file that away. Noted: Bucky Barnes does not enjoy politics, but he endures them for the sake of something bigger.
You offer, “You want to decompress? There’s a decent café two blocks away. You’ve earned, like, three cookies.”
He tilts his head. “You buying?”
“I work for the government now. I’m broke.”
“Fair,” he says. “I’ll buy the cookies.”
You walk the few blocks in relative silence, save for the traffic and your boots scuffing against the pavement. The café is small, warm, full of people with laptops and disillusionment. You order coffee. He orders a black Americano and two oatmeal raisin cookies, like a war crime.
“Don’t judge,” he says, catching your expression. “I like raisins.”
“Of course you do,” you mutter. “You probably eat Bran Flakes and think they’re spicy.”
He gives you a look over the rim of his cup. “Didn’t realize I hired a bully.”
You grin. “Not a bully. Just aggressively helpful.”
He snorts. And you sit there, in the quiet aftermath of his first real public win, watching him pull the napkin apart like it personally wronged him. There's something calming about it—like you’re both still wound a little tight, but not as tight as before.
You let the silence stretch a beat longer before speaking. “Can I ask you something?”
He glances at you. Shrugs. “You’ve already asked me worse.”
You huff a soft laugh. “Fair.”
He waits.
You roll your cup between your palms. “Why’d you hire me?”
There’s a pause. Not the kind that makes you nervous—just one that feels like he’s actually going to answer. Eventually. When the words are ready.
When he does speak, his voice is low, deliberate. “You were honest.”
You blink. “About what?”
“That tweet,” he says. “About me ghosting the press. Most people either kiss my ass or assume I’m gonna punch them in the face. You didn’t do either.”
You snort. “I did call you hot, though.”
A small tug at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah. That, too.”
Then, quieter, “You said what everyone else was thinking. But you said it like it wasn’t personal. Just... necessary.”
You don’t speak. You’re not sure he’s done.
“I’ve had a lot of people tell me who I am. What I’m supposed to be. Some of them were wrong. Some weren’t. Doesn’t mean I liked hearing it.”
His fingers tap against the cup once. Twice. “But you were right. I didn’t have a handle on any of this. The job, the people watching, the way it all gets twisted. You called it out.”
“And that worked in my favor?” you ask, half-joking.
His gaze flickers to yours. “You didn’t lie to me. That means something.”
It lands heavier than expected.
You look down at your lap. Then, after a second: “I thought you were gonna say it was because I tweeted about your cat.”
He huffs. “That helped.”
You smile, and when you glance back up, he’s watching you. Not like he’s searching for something. More like he’s found something and isn’t sure what to do with it.
“I could tell that you'd keep me grounded,” he says.
It’s simple. Uncomplicated. But your chest goes tight anyway.
“Thanks,” you say softly.
“Don’t get used to the compliments,” he mutters, sipping from his long-cold coffee. “I’ve got a reputation to maintain.”
You nudge his shoulder. “You mean the mysterious, broody one?”
He arches a brow. “Better than ex-assassin with a PR manager.”
“Hey,” you say, mock offended. “I'm rebranding you.”
And this time, his smile is small—but real. The kind that says you’re staying.
.
Briefings, memos, social strategy calls take up the next month. You update his official bio, overhaul his campaign site, start a new newsletter format that doesn’t look like it was designed in the throes of dial-up internet. You start drafting tweets in his voice, but you’re surprised at how often he wants to write them himself.
Sometimes he sends them to you first, via email, labeled “draft?” and rarely punctuated.
The kids who emailed about lunch debt were right.
They shouldn’t have to be the ones fixing it.
You write back:
it’s missing caps and grammar and polish
…it’s also perfect. i hate you a little
He replies ten minutes later:
Good.
Keep hating me.
Makes your edits stronger.
You start seeing him more. At first, it’s meetings. Then lunch breaks. Then you’re just… there.
In his office while he sorts through constituent letters. Sitting across from him on the Capitol steps, scrolling through your phone while he mutters about zoning regulations and offers you the second half of whatever sandwich he’s picked up from the Hill café.
One Thursday, around 6:45 p.m., you’re still at the office. Your laptop’s overheating. Your shoulders ache from the stress of trying to politely tell a PAC liaison that no, Bucky will not be attending the “Patriots for Policy” fundraiser, and no, their “Star-Spangled Selfie Station” is not an appealing incentive.
You lean back in your chair, eyes closed, and say out loud, “If one more intern sends me a Google Doc titled ‘shitposts to own the opposition,’ I’m going to walk into traffic.”
“That bad, huh?” comes Bucky’s voice from the doorway.
You open one eye. He’s holding two cups of coffee. It’s late. His sleeves are rolled again—he does that a lot, like he’s always preparing to do something with his hands. He sets a cup on your desk.
“It’s decaf,” he says. “I’m not trying to kill you.”
You sit up. “Decaf? Wow. You are learning.”
He doesn’t smile, but the corners of his mouth twitch. “Baby steps.”
You sip. It’s good. And quiet stretches out between you. The lights overhead buzz faintly. Someone’s laughing two rooms over. The city is folding in on itself outside, another day’s worth of bad traffic and moral compromises settling over D.C. like a weighted blanket.
.
Another few months pass in a rhythm that starts to feel dangerously like routine.
He insists on responding to every constituent letter about veterans’ benefits himself, even the ones written in glitter gel pen. One morning you find him on the floor of his office, surrounded by stacks of envelopes, Alpine curled up on a pile marked “urgent.”
“Just scanning,” he says, gesturing vaguely at the chaos. “She likes the important stuff.”
You start to learn things about him. Little things, dropped like breadcrumbs.
He hates cilantro. Keeps a dog-eared copy of All the King’s Men on his desk. Organizes his paperwork with military precision but leaves mugs half-finished all over the office. He’s still learning to take a break during the day. Sometimes he doesn’t.
One evening, while you’re both trying to pick a header image for the new landing page (he hates stock photos, insists they feel like “hollow propaganda”), he mutters, “I used to think if I could just disappear, I’d stop hurting people.”
You freeze. “And now?”
He doesn’t look away from the screen. “Now I’m trying to build something instead.”
Your throat tightens. You change the subject. You always do.
The tension between you simmers. Unspoken, unnamed. He starts saying your name more often. You start noticing when he does.
He always says it like it matters.
One Friday, he brings you a donut. Doesn’t mention it. Just leaves it on your desk and walks away like a man who doesn’t realize small gestures are dangerous.
You stare at it for a full minute before a staffer walks by, clocks the look on your face, and mutters, “Oh, you’re gone-gone.”
You pretend not to hear her.
One night, you find yourselves outside a community rec center after a Q&A event, both of you too wired to go home. You walk a few blocks together, hands brushing once. Neither of you acknowledges it.
“You ever think about leaving?” you ask, staring up at the streetlight.
“Sometimes,” he says. “Then I remember I already ran for almost fifty years.”
You laugh. He looks over, soft.
And then, quietly, “Not sure I’d want to go anywhere without you anyway.”
You blink. “You mean… as staff?”
He hums, like he’s choosing not to answer that.
He looks at you too long sometimes. Like he’s memorizing you. You assume it’s habit—old instincts. Soldier’s reflex. You don’t let yourself think about what else it could be.
Because it can’t be. He’s your boss. You’re his PR handler. This is all fine. Normal. Entirely professional, except for when he looks at you like that.
Which is how it builds—slow, steady, suffocating.
Until one night he’s sitting too close. You’re laughing too hard. His hand brushes your knee, and he doesn’t move it. And you still don’t realize.
Not really.
.
It’s a Tuesday night.
Well—technically Wednesday. 1:12 a.m., according to your phone. Your apartment is dark except for the glow of your laptop and the soft blue from the streetlamp outside your window. You should be sleeping. Instead, you’re re-reading policy notes and trying not to think about the email from your landlord marked “urgent.”
The city is quiet, but your mind is loud.
Your phone buzzes.
BUCKY
Are you awake
No punctuation. Of course. You stare at it. It’s not like him to text unprompted—especially not at this hour. You wonder for a second if it’s a mistake. Or if something’s wrong.
You call him.
It only rings once.
“Hey,” he says, voice rough with sleep or something that isn’t quite.
“You okay?” you ask, softly.
A pause. “Yeah. Just… couldn’t sleep.”
You settle back against your pillows. “Bad dream?”
He doesn’t answer right away.
Then, quietly. “More like a bad memory.”
You let the silence stretch, but you don’t fill it. You’ve learned that about him—he’s not afraid of quiet. He just doesn’t always know what to do with it. You hear a faint rustle, like he’s sitting down, maybe at his kitchen table. Maybe the couch. Maybe the floor. He’s the kind of guy who sits on the floor without thinking about it.
“You want to talk about it?” you ask.
“Not really.”
You nod, even though he can’t see it. “Okay.”
A breath. Then, with a strange kind of gentleness: “You ever feel like you’re… still in the middle of something, but everyone else thinks you’re past it?”
You exhale, slow. “Yeah. All the time.”
Another pause. And then: “I thought when the shield went to Sam, that was it. That was my end point. Like I’d done my part and now I could just… blend into the wallpaper. Fix things. Be useful. Pay back some debt I can’t ever really name.”
He exhales.
“But I still wake up and feel like I’m waiting for orders.”
Your throat tightens.
“I’m not a soldier anymore,” he says, like he’s trying to convince himself. “I know that. But sometimes it feels like I lost the war and no one told me.”
You sit with that. It’s a kind of grief, what he’s saying. The loss of purpose. Of identity. You think about what it means to carry history in your body. To be made of violence and guilt and memory, and still try to build something from it.
“You’re not wallpaper,” you say. “And you’re not a soldier. Not unless you decide to be.”
A faint, surprised sound. “You think I can just choose who I am now?”
“I think that’s what healing is,” you say. “It’s not forgetting. It’s choosing who you are in spite of it.”
It’s quiet again. But softer, this time.
“Thank you,” he says, and he means it.
There’s a beat.
Then he says, “You want to come over?”
Your heart stumbles. “Now?”
“I just…” he trails off. “I don’t want to be alone.”
You hesitate. Not because you don’t want to. You do. Too much, maybe.
“I’m in sweatpants,” you warn.
“I don’t care,” he says. “I’m in worse.”
.
Which is—not fair.
He’s in flannel pants and a faded Brooklyn Public Library tee, hair damp like he just stepped out of a shower, like this isn’t his worst week in office or the worst day in months. He looks too human. Too close. Not like Congressman Barnes, not like the Winter Soldier—just like a man who lives here. Alone.
“Hi,” you say, because you’re a coward with a communication degree.
“Hey,” he replies, voice low.
He steps back. You step in.
You move past him. He doesn’t touch you, but he lingers close as you settle onto his couch. There’s a record playing low in the background—something instrumental. Maybe jazz. Maybe something older. He sits next to you. Not quite touching, but near enough that you feel it.
Neither of you says much at first.
You sip the tea he makes you. Let your shoulders drop. And after a while, you’re both leaning back, side by side, staring at the ceiling like maybe it’ll explain something.
“I don’t let people in here much,” he says, out of nowhere.
You glance at him. “Why not?”
He shrugs. “Used to be a habit. Kept things safe. Controlled.”
“And now?”
He looks at you. Really looks. Like he’s cataloguing something important.
“I trust you."
The silence sharpens.
You feel it—somewhere between your chest and your breath and the skin of your palms, warm where they rest against your knees.
He turns toward you, like he’s going to say something. His thigh brushes yours. Your heart skips.
You say his name. Soft.
“Bucky.”
He leans in. Slow. So slow it hurts. His eyes flicker to your mouth.
And then—
He stops.
You’re close enough to feel the warmth of his breath.
Close enough to break.
But he doesn’t kiss you.
He just sits there, tension in his jaw, fingers curling against his leg like he’s holding himself back.
“I don’t want to mess this up,” he says, barely a whisper.
You nod. You understand.
.
You don’t sleep well that night. You don't even know how you got home.
Not because anything happened—and maybe that’s the problem. Something almost did. Something close enough to taste. But close doesn’t keep you up at night. Hope does. Ambiguity. The memory of his breath near your cheek, the exact second he pulled away, and the way your name sounded in his mouth just before it.
You wake up tangled in sheets that smell like lavender detergent and stress. Your shoulder aches from the way you curled in on yourself, as if pretending sleep would solve the question of him.
It hasn’t.
So you do what you always do: you compartmentalize. Ruthlessly. Viciously. Like a goddamn professional.
You slap concealer under your eyes, burn your tongue on gas station coffee, and tell yourself that you’re not thinking about Bucky Barnes. You are not thinking about how he almost kissed you. How his hand hovered at your knee like a promise he wasn’t ready to make. How you wanted him to make it.
No. You’re thinking about agenda items. Press follow-ups. Intern drama. Your inbox, which has gone feral overnight.
You’re halfway through drafting a media roundup from your phone when your car buzzes with an intern's name.
You answer on instinct. “Hey. Yeah, I’m on my way in—”
“Have you seen the op-ed?” they cuts in.
Your fingers still on the steering wheel.
“I—what?”
They don't wait. “I’m sending it now. Check your messages.”
You pull into a spot on the shoulder, the coffee cup sloshing as you brake. Your phone dings.
The link stares back at you. Your thumb hovers.
You already know it’s going to be bad. You can feel it in their voice. In the silence after their breath. You tap anyway.
And there it is.
Is the Winter Soldier Still Lurking Beneath Congressman Barnes?
It’s from a major outlet. Not a fringe blog, not some anonymous account online. It’s written by a seasoned journalist, someone who’s covered politics for two decades. The tone is surgically polite. It doesn’t outright accuse him of anything, but the subtext is razor-sharp: can a man with his past truly be trusted with power?
There’s a pull quote in bold, center-page:
“A reformed weapon is still a weapon. No amount of legislation can erase that history.”
The rest of the article is worse.
It dredges everything. Not just his Hydra years, but the killings. The photo evidence. The old footage. The Wakandan reprogramming is mentioned—briefly, half a paragraph, like it’s a footnote in a larger narrative of violence.
The author's polite language makes it more brutal. Less a hit piece and more… a thesis. Something cold. Inarguable.
You call him. He doesn’t answer.
You call again. Still nothing.
So you go to his apartment.
Bucky answers the door in that old gray sweatshirt and a pair of worn sweatpants that could belong to any decade. His hair’s half-tied, his mouth set. No smile, but no walls up either. His eyes are dark. Tired in a way that goes bone-deep.
He steps aside and lets you in. You don’t say anything about how he looks. You just take off your coat, make yourself at home, and sit down at the kitchen table.
The place is clean, quiet. Too quiet. Alpine is curled on the armrest of the couch like she’s keeping watch.
“I didn’t read it,” he says eventually. “Didn’t need to.”
“It’s bad.”
He nods.
He doesn’t sit. Just stands there, arms crossed, head bowed like he’s waiting for a verdict.
“You’ve been through worse,” you say. “This is—politics. It’s dirty.”
“It’s not about politics,” he replies, voice flat. “It’s about who I used to be.”
He says it like a fact. Not even bitter—just exhausted.
“I spent so long trying to fix things,” he continues. “Make it right. Every day, I get up and try to be something new. Someone new. And it doesn’t matter. All it takes is one article, one photo, and suddenly I’m the fucking Winter Soldier again.”
His fists are clenched now. You can see the tension in his frame, the way he’s holding himself together like it’s a full-time job.
“They didn’t say anything that isn’t true,” he adds. “That’s the worst part.”
You stand. Cross to him slowly. Carefully. He watches you with that guarded look he gets when he’s bracing for a hit that’s already landed.
“They used the truth to tell a lie,” you say. “You’re not that person anymore.”
“Then why does everyone keep seeing him?” His voice cracks on the last word. It shatters something in you.
You don’t know what to say. Not right away. Because it’s not your job to fix what was done to him.
But maybe it’s your job to remind him what’s changed.
So you touch his arm. The metal one. He flinches—but only for a second.
“You said you didn’t read it,” you say gently. “So you didn’t see the comments.”
His brow furrows.
“Thousands of people,” you say. “Calling it a smear job. Defending you. Saying they trust you more than half the people in office. Veterans. Civilians. Kids who look up to you. People who believe in second chances because of you.”
You feel the shift before you see it. His shoulders slacken, just slightly.
“You’re allowed to be upset,” you add. “You’re allowed to be angry. But you’re not alone in this.”
He looks at you then. Really looks. And whatever wall he was holding up—whatever mask he puts on for C-SPAN and strategy meetings—it drops.
His voice is rough when he finally says, “Can you stay?”
“Yeah,” you say. “Of course."
You stay right where you are—your hand still resting on metal that hums faintly beneath your fingers, warm from him. He’s quiet, but not calm. Not really. There’s tension in the way he breathes, in the slight tremor running down his arm. Like his body still remembers how to brace for impact, even when it’s just words.
Minutes pass like that. Long enough for the quiet to settle around you. For Alpine to leap silently onto the sill and stare out like she’s keeping watch for both of you.
Then he shifts—just slightly—and the couch creaks under the movement. He leans forward, elbows on knees, head bowed. The line of his spine curved like it’s bearing more than just his weight.
“Bucky,” you say, tone softening. “Talk to me.”
He’s not looking at you. His gaze is on the floor. Like if he meets your eyes, it’ll all unravel.
“I say or do one wrong thing,” he says, “and suddenly I’m a threat again.”
That last part is barely above a whisper.
You pause. Let the silence stretch.
“Hey,” you say, carefully. “You’re not a threat. You’re a congressman.”
He lets out a dry laugh. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“I don’t know how to do this without screwing it up,” he says.
“Then let me help,” you say. “That’s what I’ve been trying to do, Bucky. Every day.”
That’s when his eyes meet yours—really meet them.
“You always come when I need you,” he says.
It’s a simple sentence.
But it lands like a match dropped in a dry field.
You stare at him. His face. The way his hair’s falling loose at the front. The soft curve of his mouth, the line between his brows, the glow of his vibranium arm in the lamplight—gold against black against skin.
You stand, like you’re going to fetch water or pace or do something, but you don’t make it far. You’re near his bookshelf—he’s got a handful of novels, mostly well-worn, a few classics. One spine is cracked down the middle. Another’s bent in half. You reach for one, just to touch something, ground yourself.
“You read a lot,” you say, just to fill the space. Just to breathe.
“Yeah,” Bucky murmurs, and the sound of his voice—that low rasp, Brooklyn tugging at the edges—rakes down your spine. “Helps. When my head’s loud.”
“What’s your favorite?”
There’s a pause.
Then, quietly: “You.”
You blink.
“You,” he says slowly, “you walk into my life and it’s like someone hit the off switch on the noise. Like there’s finally room to think again. To want things.”
Your throat goes tight.
He swallows. You hear it. Feel it.
“I didn’t mean to—” he stops, drags a hand through his hair, fingers brushing over the back of his neck. “I didn’t plan on hiring you. Thought if I kept it distant, maybe I wouldn’t…”
You glance over your shoulder. He’s watching the floor like it holds answers. His jaw is tight, that line above his brow catching the lamplight. He’s flushed high on the cheeks. His hair is curling a little from the heat of the day. It softens him.
You can’t stop looking.
“Wouldn’t what?” you ask.
“Wouldn’t get attached.”
The words fall out of him, too quick, too raw. His accent thickens when he’s like this—unguarded, unraveling.
He looks up at you then. And you swear—swear—you’ve never seen anyone look more exposed.
“I think about you,” he says, voice hoarse. “All the damn time. Your voice. The way you talk when you’re excited. The way you wrinkle your nose when you read something stupid. And I try—believe me, I try—not to want any of it. Because you work with me. And you’re good. And I don’t want to drag you down with my shit.”
“Bucky—” you start, but it breaks apart in your throat.
“But you just kept coming. And you’re kind. And smart. And funny in a way that makes me feel like I’ve been asleep for years. And now I sit in meetings half-listening because I’m wondering if you’re cold. Or if you ate. Or if you still think I’m some idiot with a shiny arm and bad instincts.”
You’re already turning. Reaching for him.
His eyes are so blue. Tired. Beautiful. Like storm glass worn smooth.
And his mouth—God, his mouth—is parted, breathing shallow, like he’s already halfway to ruin.
“I don’t know how to stop,” he whispers.
You don’t want him to.
So you close the space, press your mouth to his like it’s the only thing that makes sense anymore.
He answers in kind. Gentle at first—so careful—but then hungrier, hands finally finding you, clutching like maybe you’re real after all. Like maybe he gets to keep you.
His hands find your waist, one warm, one cool. He breathes you in like it’s the first breath after surfacing. You hold onto him, to the solidness of him, to the truth in everything he just said.
When you part, you rest your forehead against his, breathless.
“I didn’t plan on you either,” you murmur. “But I want this too.”
He opens his eyes. And there’s something there—tentative, but real. Hope, maybe.
You kiss him again, slow and sure, and this time, you don’t stop.
The kiss deepens, and you feel it — the tension of months unspooling all at once. The press briefings, the late-night calls, the shared silences. It’s in the way his mouth moves against yours, all reverence and restraint barely holding.
Then restraint snaps.
He groans into your mouth, low and rough, the sound vibrating through your chest. One hand slides to your waist, the other cradling the back of your head, fingers threading into your hair with a kind of reverence that borders on desperate. You gasp when your back hits the edge of the bookshelf, books shifting and thudding behind you. His body presses close, firm and solid, muscle molded to muscle.
You don’t breathe. You inhale him—his scent, his heat, the way his tongue strokes into your mouth like he’s trying to stake a claim.
Your hands are greedy, curled into the soft cotton of his shirt before they slip under, dragging over warm skin and the defined ridges of his back. He shudders, hips pressing forward, and the answering moan that slips from your mouth is embarrassingly loud.
His mouth moves to your throat, hot and open, tongue dragging over the place your pulse stutters wildly. He kisses there once, then again, a third time just to hear the way your breath catches.
The shelves dig into your back, but you don’t care. His mouth is on your throat now, slow, deliberate, like he’s trying to memorize the shape of your pulse.
“Bucky,” you whisper.
His breath stutters. His forehead rests against your jaw for a second, and his voice is rough when he speaks.
“You have no idea,” he murmurs, lips brushing your skin. “How long I’ve wanted this.”
Your breath catches. Your hands grip his hoodie like you’re afraid the floor might drop out. There’s a pause—something delicate in the air—and then you say, just to ground yourself:
“Wow. That almost sounded like a line.”
He pulls back just enough to look at you. Eyes dark, lips kiss-bruised. And then—finally—a real smile. Crooked. Devastating.
“You think I say that to everyone I push against my bookshelf?”
You grin. “I don’t know, Barnes. You’ve got a lot of books. Could be a whole system.”
He laughs. Really laughs. And then kisses you again, harder this time, a groan low in his throat when your hands slip under the hem of his sweatshirt. Skin meets skin and he makes a sound that short-circuits your brain.
Somehow, you make it upstairs.
It’s clumsy and desperate in the best way. A trail of clothing, soft gasps, hands mapping territory that’s been off-limits for far too long. He kisses you like you’re something precious and half-forbidden, and you can feel it in every press of his mouth, every whispered praise against your skin.
"Sweetheart, you're killing me," he groans while pressing those lips, those fucking lips, against your collarbone. "Need you to tell me this isn’t a dream.”
By the time you hit the bedroom, you’re breathless. Dizzy. Grinning like an idiot.
And Bucky?
He’s looking at you like he’s just figured out the world’s best-kept secret.
You barely hit the mattress before he’s on you again, mouth dragging down your neck, hands urgent but careful. Like he’s cataloguing every inch of you, filing it away somewhere behind all the noise. His vibranium hand slips beneath your shirt, cool at first but quick to warm against your skin, gliding up your ribcage with reverence that makes you shiver.
“You okay?” he murmurs, breath warm against your cheek.
You nod, maybe too fast. “Yeah. Just—processing.”
He freezes. “Processing what?”
“That I used to mock your social media presence,” you whisper, grinning up at him. “And now I’m about to get railed by the human embodiment of a Roman statue.”
His laugh is choked and surprised. “Jesus.”
“What? You set yourself up for that.”
He drops a kiss to the hinge of your jaw, then your neck, then lower—his stubble scraping just enough to make your breath catch. “Remind me to fire you later.”
“You can’t afford me.”
“Not true,” he says, one hand sliding up the back of your thigh, warm and sure. “You’re already here.”
You open your mouth for a reply, but then his mouth is on you again—tongue tracing a line down your collarbone, fingers tugging at your waistband like he’s been waiting forever.
“Tell me if anything’s too much,” he says, voice low and serious at your ear. “Or if I—”
“You’re not,” you breathe. “You’re perfect.”
That earns you another groan, and then he’s kissing you again, deeper, tongue sliding against yours with filthy precision. You feel him smile against your mouth when you gasp, hands tangling in his hair, thighs bracketing his hips like you were built for this. Built for him.
Clothes disappear in pieces. His sweatshirt, your shirt, the rest in a tangle neither of you cares enough to untangle. And then it’s just skin. Heat. The stretch of him over you, under you, hands braced, mouth hot on your jaw, your throat, your chest. He takes his time.
"Bucky," You whisper, searching for the right words. "I want you inside me. Please."
He pushes out a sound akin to pain between his teeth. "Getting there." So impatient, goes unsaid.
The moment his hand falls in between your legs, digging past soft cotton and lace, where you're dripping and soft and needy for him, you don't think you'll ever, ever have enough of him. He's slow, at first, just bordering on exploratory. Stroking the pads of his fingers through your wetness until he finds your clit—oh, fuck—and goes to town, making you moan and clench around nothing.
"There you go. That's it," He coos. "You're doing so good."
You close your eyes, his hand pressing in deeper, harder, finding just the right rhythm to drive you insane, switching between your clit and your entrance until you're going mad. Then you hear him spit, the sound obscene and dripping against your skin—then, a slap. "Oh my god," You murmur. "Oh, fuck."
"You're so wet," His brows furrow, like he can hardly believe it. Acting like he's not sinking his fingers inside of you, stretching you open with one, two fingers. "Soaked. Like I knew you would be, god. You're so tight and I—I bet you'd feel better around my—"
He hits a spot that makes you keen, fast and rough and fucking you open. "Yes, yes, oh my god, please—"
"There?" His breath fans across your cheek. "Right there, huh?"
You nod, delirious and breathless and you black out the rest of the world, lost in the way he looks at you like you're the best damn thing in the world. You clench once, twice around his fingers until you're at the brink and—
Come on my fingers, come on, sweetheart.
And who were you to resist?
For a moment, you just lay in the aftershocks, his fingers granting you enough mercy to slip out. You think that maybe he'll give you a break, maybe just for once second, but then his whole body shifts downwards, momentarily leaving you confused, and then his breath fans across your thighs—"Just want a taste."
Those four words cause something in you to snap.
His mouth is sloppy and hot and wet, more focused on cleaning you up and licking up the remnants of your orgasm, leaving your clit sorely, sorely alone in a way that's too purposeful. In a way that has you bucking against the soft stubble of his face, desperate for any kind of stimulation.
It doesn't even seem like he's doing it for you, it's like he's doing it for himself. But then you beg and whine, the words reverberating in your throat, "Bucky, please—higher, please, baby, I need you—"
A graze of his teeth and a sharp, tugging suck around your clit then and you cum again. Shaking and sighing and falling apart in his mouth.
When you look down, you can see just how much of a mess you've made, his face glistening with you, even in the dark. And he's looking at you so earnestly, so sweetly, like you've just given him the whole entire world.
"Do you—do you think you can take more?" His eyes look at you, filled with concern, and that's all you need for your legs to start waking up again. "I didn't—I dind't bring a condom and I—"
"I'm clean and I'm on the pill," You smile, lopsided and silly until he's mirroring yours, like he didn't just wrench the two best orgasms of your life out of you. Like he's not about to do it again. Just the way you like it. "And I want you to cum inside me. I wanna feel it. Shut up and get over here."
Bucky clucks his tongue, ever the dutiful man. "Yes, ma'am."
There's a moment—and then he's slotting the head of his cock into your entrance and you try not to be overwhelmed. He's hard and heavy and thick in a way you've never really experienced before, and for a minute, your brain short-circuits, in disbelief. You're doing this. You're really doing this. And suddenly, his cock goes all the way inside you with a pained groan.
His first thrust against you is messy, his hands having to spread your legs wide until you're arching against him. "Jesus, you're so—tight."
Then he's thrusting back in, his hands solid and heavy against your hips, not necessarily like a hammer, but in a way that makes your eyes roll back, slow and steady that you can feel every vein on his cock, lighting you up and finding places that not even your vibrator's been able to reach before. It's mind-numbing, it's relentless, it's perfect.
"Good girl," He whispers, pressing kisses up your neck to soothe the pressure of him inside you. "Taking me so well."
And then, like a reward, his vibranium hand leaves its place on your hip and starts caressing your clit, large fingers made impossibly gentle and finding a rhythm that parallels the way he ruts inside you.
"You're so good to me, so sweet," His words land like a sucker punch, and it makes you clench tighter, his pace faltering just the slightest bit. But he keeps going. "Always looking at me like that, don't know what you do to me, don't know how I can go without this. So much better than my dreams. Fuck."
"Can you come again for me? Pretty baby, can you do it again?"
It takes a harsh, rough swipe against your clit until you arch off the bed, eyes clenched shut and mouth wrenched open in a whine, and you bear down, coming for the third time that night.
And he's right there behind you, it doesn't take long before he speeds up, getting more frantic and desperate, and oh—he's shoving himself inside you as deep as he can go and you can feel him pulse, aching—"God, I love you. I love you so much, take it all for me."
You collapse underneath him, spent and so, so full. So perfect.
.
You go viral again.
Not for a tweet this time, but for a thirty-second clip someone posted from a town hall two weeks later—Bucky leaning in to answer a kid’s question about public transit, earnest as ever, saying something about “freedom meaning more than just car ownership,” with Alpine meowing in the background because she’d escaped her carrier under the table.
The quote is fine. Thoughtful, even. But it’s the look he gives you afterward—off-camera, off-script, soft in a way that has no business being soft—that turns the internet into a firestorm.
The caption?
sir. control yourself. your pr manager is right there.
You wake up to three missed calls, four texts from Nina (two of which are just screaming emojis), and one from your mom:
call me when you’re up
You do. Because you are a good daughter, even when half-asleep and mostly buried in a man’s too-soft duvet that smells like cedar and coffee and very recent sex.
“Morning,” your mom says, casual, like she didn’t text you three times in a row at 6:13 a.m. “How’s the job?”
You blink. “The—job?”
“Yes, the job,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “The one you got after insulting a congressman on the internet.”
You glance over at said congressman, currently shuffling out of the bathroom shirtless and towel-damp, rubbing his head with one hand while Alpine chirps at his feet like she owns him. Which she does.
“Uh,” you say, eloquently. “It’s going… well.”
“Good,” your mom replies. “You should call your aunt. She saw him on TV and keeps asking if he’s single.”
“Mom.”
In the background, a faint beeping. “Gotta go. Someone’s coding. Love you!”
The line goes dead.
You flop back into the pillows, groaning into Bucky’s comforter like it can absorb your entire soul.
“Everything okay?” he asks, voice still rough with sleep.
“Yeah. My mom thinks we’re married now.”
He raises an eyebrow. “We’re not?”
You shoot him a look. He grins.
Then, like it’s nothing: “What are you up to today?”
Technically, he’s your boss. A sitting congressman. You manage his image, his agenda, his occasional tendency to go off-script and say things like “burn it all down and start over” to a room full of journalists.
But now he’s shirtless in grey sweatpants, handing you coffee with Alpine perched on his shoulder like a parrot, and asking you to stay.
Not just for breakfast. For the day. Maybe longer. Maybe always.
It shouldn’t hit you like it does. But it does.
“You’re assuming I can concentrate,” you say, taking the mug like it’s a peace offering. “In your bed. With you. Shirtless. Existing.”
He smiles—that rare, lopsided thing he gives you when he’s caught somewhere between amusement and something gentler. “You’ve worked through worse.”
“True,” you mutter. “Once wrote an op-ed from a TikTok house while one of my clients sobbed over a brand deal and a frat boy tried to deep-fry a toaster.”
“See?” He leans down, presses a kiss to your temple like it’s just another part of your morning routine. “You’ll be fine.”
You look at him. At the man with a metal arm, a rescue cat, and a city full of people who expect him to change the world.
And he’s looking at you like you’re the thing that matters.
You exhale. “You’re lucky I believe in workplace flexibility.”
“Is that what this is?” he says, already walking toward the kitchen, voice full of barely contained laughter. “Workplace flexibility?”
You grin into your mug.
God help you, you’re in so deep.
You open your laptop from the warmth of his bed. Bucky pads away, Alpine trailing behind him like a tiny, loyal shadow. You draft emails. Sip coffee. Watch sunlight crawl across his floors. Like this was always where you were meant to be.
if you leave something behind (you gain something too.)
pairing: bucky barnes x multiverse! reader
summary: you’re a TVA agent—meant to observe, never interfere—but you fall for him in every universe. every iteration. every version of james buchanan Barnes. and across centuries, across collapse and convergence, that love stays. steady. inevitable. written into the code of the multiverse like a rule it can’t break. (multiverse!) inspired by past lives (2023) and the ministry of time. for an expanded explanation and playlist, click here.
word count: 15.7k
content warnings: 18+ mdni, fem reader, heavy angst w/ a happy ending, oral (f and m receiving), creampie, piv, praise, overstimulation, hair pulling, breast worship, use of pet names, mentions of death and loss
This is it.
The glamorous, sparkling career of a TVA precision-field agent.
Emphasis on “precision.” Emphasis on “field.” Emphasis, mostly, on “agent,” because the term “analyst” was deemed too misleading after what happened in 1806 Prussia (one rogue spreadsheet, a very confused Napoleon, and three weeks of bureaucratic bloodshed).
You’re not like the Minutemen, stomping into timelines in those tactical chic jumpsuits, pruning anomalies with the self-satisfaction of people who still think “delete” is a solution. You’re not an auditor—thank God—squinting at branching event charts and muttering about entropy coefficients over cold tea.
No. You’re the needle. The thread. The hand that sews.
Your job is surgical. Your presence is a whisper. Where others correct by erasure, you correct by inclusion. You enter the timeline. You become part of it. You don’t push the dominoes over—you walk by, breathe funny, and trust the air will tip them just right.
There’s no glory in your work. No medals. No mission logs, either.
Everything you do is redacted—even from you. You carry the residue of other people’s lives under your fingernails, and sometimes forget which memories belong to whom.
Sometimes you wake up choking on grief that was never yours. You learn to live with that.
It’s the first thing they ask you in training, during the psych filters: Would knowing the future help you grieve less?
No one answers yes. Not honestly.
You understand now why. There’s no solace in foreknowledge, just the burden of it. Knowing that someone dies doesn’t stop you from loving them. It just makes every moment feel like a countdown.
You specialize in delicate convergences: moments in history so precariously balanced that a sneeze in the wrong direction could avalanche into centuries of collapse. Your handlers call them “softpoints.” You call them “the edge of the knife.”
Sometimes you’re a midwife in 1421. Sometimes you’re the barista who smiles just enough to make a physicist reconsider her route to work. Sometimes you’re a corpse at the right place, the right time, to remind a man of the past he keeps trying to forget.
Right now, you're really fucking hungover.
You started having the dream again.
Not a dream, exactly. A memory with the edges worn smooth. At first it came in pieces—clipped sounds, filtered light, the low hum of something old and mechanical beneath your feet. You dismissed it. Just timeline residue. A misplaced echo.
But it kept returning.
Always the same: a red-brick apartment building. New York—no file, no mission tag—in winter. Brooklyn, more specifically, from your view of the bridge. You’re on a stoop. Someone calls your name and you turn just in time to see a shadow disappear around the corner. A laugh rides the wind, low and familiar.
You wake up before you follow. Every time.
Your mouth tastes like floor polish and betrayal. Your eyes open one at a time, not out of coordination, but protest. Your skull seems like it's determined to play a high-stakes game of ping-pong against itself.
You groan.
This is how your days usually start.
You sit up slowly, bones cracking like old film reels, and assess the carnage around your quarters.
Clothes: on the chair, on the floor, one boot in the sink.
Timepad: blinking faintly on the nightstand, still charged.
Your hair is somewhere between “ungovernable” and “formerly respected.” You run a hand through it and immediately regret that decision. Your reflection in the tiny wall mirror is a damning indictment of last night’s choices. Smudged eyeliner. A smear of something neon-orange near your jawline. You shower quickly — TVA-issued water pressure: inconsistent, ironic. You pull on a button-up and slacks instead — neutral, inoffensive.
You’ll blend into whatever century they throw you into next. For now, you settle for looking like you might belong in the TVA cafeteria line.
By the time you lace your boots (twice — the first attempt ends in a mild panic attack and a missing sock), the hangover’s down to a dull roar. Your breath smells like expired mint gum and broken dreams, so you down two cups of black coffee and chew on one of those flavorless temporal hydration tablets like it might save your soul.
You do your job. Reliably. Unremarkably. The way they like it.
And sometimes you drink enough that for a few hours, you don’t remember how you got here. Or how you’ve always been here.
You toss your timepad into your holster, slap a mediocre patch on your face to cover the worst of the under-eye shadows, and mutter something vaguely threatening at your own reflection.
Time to go.
Three mugs deep into lukewarm cafeteria coffee that tastes like regret and the glue holding office furniture together, you’re hunched over yet another Form G-17 — “Suspected Non-Nexus Deviation: B-Class Branch.” Your fourth this week. You’ve logged more hours categorizing existential anomalies than actually interfering with any, which is particularly unusual, for you anyway. You've been dormant for much longer than you're used to.
The previous G-17s included such branch classics as “cow develops rudimentary consciousness,” “Steve Rogers blinks twice during a televised 2013 speech instead of once,” and “Loki starts a book club.” (Unauthorized self-improvement remains a hot-button issue.)
This one, though—this one’s different.
The case file reads:
CASE FILE: #616-BE0
MISSION CLASS: Softpoint Convergence
LOCATION: Siberia, USSR
DATE: February 1955
SUMMARY:
A low-grade temporal softpoint has been detected. Origin ambiguous. Energy output consistent with pre-convergent instability. Divergent potential is not yet sufficient to trigger a Nexus Event, but the timeline is exhibiting signs of local timeline ‘fraying.’ Mission parameters suggest passive stabilization through presence, not correction. Duration: 3 hours. Environmental hostility high.
NOTES:
Embed into local context. Observe anomaly behavior. Maintain temporal camouflage. Apply Softpoint Integration Protocol if deviation escalates.
You stare at the file.
Cold, quiet dread coils low in your stomach. Siberia. February. 1955. No glamour in that assignment—just ice and silence and the kind of untraceable damage that leaves timelines limping.
Across from you, Casey is organizing his pen caddy by weight again. You catch a glimpse of the sticky note on his lunchbox: “Please do not eat my croissant. Please.” The second “please” is underlined three times.
You stole that croissant yesterday.
Honestly, he should thank you. It was a little dry.
You turn your eyes back to the file and eye the temperature index: -43°C. S. “Oh good,” you mutter to no one. “Toe amputation weather.”
You stand, suit creaking as you shift, and tug on your tie with practiced resentment. You snap your timepad into place on your wrist. The UI pings with a mild hum — dull orange light, sanctioned and soulless.
Casey looks up.
“Heading out?” he asks, hopeful. He always wants your desk when you’re gone. You have the only chair that doesn’t squeak like a dying goose.
“Yup,” you say. “Brad flagged something ‘mildly interesting.’ We’ll see if it’s another raccoon wasted off shrooms.”
“Or a bear,” Casey offers.
You click your timepad open, keying in the Siberia coordinates. “Or a hallucinating bear.”
Casey nods gravely.
The door opens, temporal energy flaring in its signature burnt-orange halo. You take one last swig of your bad coffee, grimace as it hits your tongue, and mutter, “Let’s go see what broke this time.”
Then you step through.
The light swallows you whole.
And you forget, for a second—just a second—that you were ever anything else.
EARTH-616 | SIBERIA, 1955
The walls groaned when the wind pressed against them. Not urgently. Not like they were in danger of collapse. More like an old man muttering in his sleep.
You didn’t trust the ship, not entirely. It had been retrofitted for temporal operations, but barely—still more icebreaker than chronal vessel. The insulation was patchy in places, and every vent exhaled a little breath of cold that bit at your ankles. If the TVA had a top-shelf of deployment crafts, this wasn’t on it. This was bottom-shelf. Dusty. Dinged up. Probably cursed.
Still. It was warm. Warm enough.
Outside, Siberia stretched like a battlefield already lost. White, endless, blank. Indifferent to watchers, to wanderers, to time itself. It didn’t care that the threads of history bent here. That the TVA had deemed this place a convergence zone—a softpoint where multiple outcomes were forming brittle overlaps. No Nexus spike yet. But something was pulsing.
You leaned back against the wall and let the thermos rest against your chest. The rhythmic thump of the engine hummed through your bones. You liked that. The vibration reminded you that you were still solid. Still here. Still someone with a job to do.
Observe. Do not interfere.
And yet. A flicker on the monitor caught your attention.
Unidentified movement—Quadrant C. Low thermal. Not vehicle. Not patrol. One heat signature. Steady. Moving through the storm.
Human-shaped. Probably.
You didn’t move yet. Just watched. Let it crawl across the display while you listened to the wind.
You checked your timepad again. No nexus flare. No spike. But there was a pulse. Faint, irregular. Like the anomaly was alive.
You didn’t believe in fate. But you believed in gravity. In the way some people pulled history around them like cloaks. This place? It felt pulled.
The door behind you hissed open, then shut again with a metallic shudder—just a shift in cabin pressure, but your body went still anyway. One hand tightened around the cooling thermos; the other hovered near your holster. Not paranoid. Just prepared.
You took a breath. Let it sit in your lungs like steam.
The blip on the monitor moved closer. Still slow. Still steady.
Somewhere out there, in that wide, white nowhere, something was walking toward you.
Before you can focus or fixate on the blip, you hear the bang. It’s not the ship groaning this time. Not the distant thunder of ice shifting. This is close. Inside.
You didn't run. Running was noise, panic, a rookie move. Instead, you moved swiftly and fluidly, silent as frost.
The corridor narrowed as you descended, metal groaning beneath your boots, the walls sweating condensation from the sudden temperature drop. Ahead, you heard clear sounds of intrusion—boots scraping against metal, something sharp and metallic snapping like bone.
Voices shouted orders in Russian, clipped and urgent.
You pressed against the wall outside the sub-hold entrance, flicking your wrist to pull up the heat signatures on your timepad. Four—no, five—distinct signatures flickered on screen, scattered and frantic, like dropped matchsticks.
Far more than the single blip you'd tracked earlier.
You move anyway.
Quiet. Calculated. Not to neutralize—just to see.
Inside, the hold is chaos: crates overturned, equipment flickering, something sulfuric in the air. A soldier stumbles into your path, disoriented, eyes wrong—like the mind inside doesn’t fit anymore. You sidestep, smooth and practiced, letting him fall without intervention. Another crashes through the smoke and doesn’t even register you.
Your breath clouds the air. The hold smells like ozone and rust and something sharper—like old blood sealed in with frost. And then you see it.
In the corner of the hold, something hums—low, persistent, and thoroughly annoying. Not a cryo chamber, thank god. You've had enough encounters with frozen bodies this fiscal quarter.
Instead, it's a pulse field generator—standard TVA gear, uncomfortably grafted onto mid-century Soviet tech. You frown deeply, which is practically your default expression at this point. This thing was supposed to be dormant.
According to the updated log, this thing is officially a Temporal Dissipation Node—a fancy TVA euphemism for a safety valve that bleeds out timeline tension. Supposedly passive, no-contact. The kind of setup they drop into delicate softpoints, relying entirely on subtlety and minimal human interaction.
This node, however, isn't subtle at all. It's malfunctioning, stuttering irregular pulses instead of smooth ones. Perfect. You crouch, eyes narrowing as you spot obvious manual overrides and Soviet tampering. Wonderful. Someone's been messing around inside the casing.
“Great,” you mutter under your breath, tasting bitterness that has nothing to do with your morning coffee. “No wonder they didn’t send backup. Needed someone expendable.”
Before you can fully embrace the gravity of the situation, the far wall explodes inward in a decidedly dramatic fashion—metal screeching, smoke filling the room. You whip around, baton raised instinctively, already calculating how much paperwork this will generate—
—and freeze.
Because someone's standing there. Just standing. Breathing hard, like he ran the whole way here through the ice.
His hair is long and damp at the ends, curling slightly where the frost is starting to melt. His clothes are frayed at the edges—standard-issue Soviet combat gear, only half-zipped, soaked through. There’s snow clinging to the edges of his sleeve. His stance is wide, solid. Familiar in a way that makes your blood run cold.
But it's his eyes that hold you still.
Not the metal arm, titanium and deadly. Not his sharp-edged stance, nor the rifle slung almost forgotten across his back. It's the eyes—pale blue, intensely focused. Clear. Too clear.
Just staring.
Like you’re an answer to a question he hasn’t been able to phrase. Like he’s seen you before and forgot until now.
And maybe—you freeze, stomach folding in on itself—maybe you forgot too.
The Winter Soldier. James Buchanan Barnes.
It’s not recognition, exactly. Not full-blown. But something in you shifts, quiet and tectonic. The sensation of stepping into a half-remembered dream. Or maybe it's the ache you’ve been waking up with lately, the dream you can never hold onto, just shapes and colors and a voice you almost know.
You’ve heard plenty about Bu—the Winter Soldier from hushed whispers in break rooms and blurry security footage in restricted archives. Never once did you picture him looking so… aware.
At the TVA, he’s quietly regarded as a tragedy. Not a threat, not a glitch—just a sorrow too persistent to be useful. His story, in every version they’ve managed to scrape together, is one long unraveling. Grief braided into duty. Identity shredded and rebuilt, over and over, never the same way twice. He’s the man who keeps losing himself and somehow finding his way back—bloodied, wrong, resilient.
Maybe that’s why he doesn’t replicate well. His story’s too heavy to echo cleanly across timelines. The trauma calcifies too early or never forms at all. He fractures, or fades, or dies too soon. The man doesn’t scale. Whatever makes him who he is—the loyalty, the guilt, the staggering, stubborn will to keep trying—it’s never quite transferable.
The few variants that do emerge feel more like flickers than full lives. Glimpses. Reverberations. None of them last long. Some of them are never quite right.
In all your missions, all the cautious mentions of him across different centuries and realities and debriefs and documents, you’ve never actually met any versions of him.
Not directly. Not face-to-face. You’ve seen the aftershocks he leaves behind—cratered timelines, corrupted code, confused agents muttering about ghosts with metal arms. You’ve traced the outlines of his story across so many fractured worlds, each one slightly wrong. The scent of smoke where he should’ve stood. A silhouette in archival footage. A name carved into a resistance wall in a language long dead. But never him. Not until now.
It should be insignificant. It shouldn't matter. There should be no correlation, not even a twinge of paths intertwining.
Except now he’s standing in front of you, and it feels like being struck clean through the chest with something invisible and ancient.
In one smooth movement, he dispatches a soldier—a precise blade across the throat. No wasted motion. No hesitation. Then his eyes sweep the hold again, landing on you and locking in place like he couldn't stand to take his eyes away.
You take in the rest of him.
His face is younger, but that's to be expected. Well, not young, exactly—but preserved, like a man caught mid-sentence and left on pause. Strong jaw, a haunted set to his mouth, cheekbones that look sculpted more by winter than by genes. He looks like he hasn’t shaved in a week and hasn’t cared in far longer. You run a mental calculator, it must've been only about a decade since… the thing.
But it’s the eyes again—flicking over you, sharp and clinical. Blue, frostbitten, edged with something you’d almost call suspicion, if there wasn’t so much… exhaustion in it.
And finally—his silence. Not blank, not confused. Just... watchful. Like he's seen this play out a hundred times already. His head tilts slightly. Just a fraction. Like he’s cataloging the shift in your body language.
Realization hits you with an unpleasant jolt: he’s uncertain. Of the timeline. Of the mission. Of you.
Whatever brutal conditioning was poured into him hasn’t fully rebooted yet. There’s still too much of the man bleeding through the programming. His breath’s too ragged. His movements, a fraction too slow. His gaze—not vacant, not robotic, but… blinking too hard. Like the world’s coming in too fast, too bright, too much.
Your timepad buzzes insistently, a sharp vibration at your wrist—twenty minutes and some change until convergence. You lower your baton slightly, resigned, and open your mouth.
“Look—”
But your sentence is abruptly cut short as a shadow drops from the walkway above, gun raised. Before you can react, a powerful arm wraps across your mouth, hauling you sharply back against a solid chest. The bullet punches into the floor exactly where your head had been, sparking furiously.
“Quiet,” he rasps. His voice is rough-edged, wind-scoured—hoarse from disuse or screaming into nothing or god knows what else. The metal arm presses lightly against your abdomen. Not pinning. Just… grounding.
You nod. One deliberate motion. A signal that you understand. That you’ll play along.
There’s a beat—one heartbeat, maybe two—before he releases you. The contact disappears like breath off a mirror. Quick. Clean.
Two more figures drop from above—armed, definitely not TVA or Soviet. Fantastic. A third-party complication. Just what this mission needed.
Bucky moves first, a blur of ruthless precision. You watch him take down an attacker effortlessly: elbow, weapon disarm, throat strike. Smooth, clinical, deadly poetry.
The air shudders again—an ugly crack in the hull overhead. Your timepad screams: fracture line detected. asset instability threshold imminent. Everything’s shaking. You grab his arm and mutter, “We have to move.”
He hesitates—but only for a second.
Then he runs.
You don’t speak as you sprint through the corridor, ducking falling beams and sparking lights. He stays close. Too close. Like he’s guarding your back on instinct. Like he hasn’t figured out yet that you aren’t the one who needs protecting.
You hit a collapsed hallway and double back, darting into a maintenance shaft. The walls here sweat condensation. Bucky’s chest is heaving from exertion, breath coming too fast.
You glance back.
He’s stopped.
He’s leaning a hand against the wall, eyes shut. Not from exhaustion. From something else.
His metal fist clenches tight—so tight the plating groans—and he presses it to his temple like he’s trying to block something out. His whole body shakes, just once. A full-body flinch. Like his brain’s short-circuiting.
“Hey,” you say, softly now. No command. Just presence. “Hey.”
Nothing.
“Bucky.”
It slips out before you can catch it.
And it works.
He startles. Freezes. His eyes snap open—and they find yours instantly.
Something ancient and aching floods his expression. Not anger. Not threat. Just confusion. Recognition. Fear.
Not of you. For you.
His lips part like he’s going to speak—but no sound comes out.
You move toward him. Slowly. Hands up. Nonthreatening.
You reach him slowly, each step cautious, deliberate. His back is against the bulkhead now, shoulders rigid like he’s trying to hold himself together through sheer force of will. You stop just short, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his body.
The lighting flickers, painting sharp angles across his face. For a moment, he looks nothing like a weapon. He just looks... young. Tired. Worn raw from too many ghosts.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” you say quietly. “I swear. I’m not.”
His jaw twitches. His eyes won’t leave yours. That look again—like he knows you. Like he’s trying to dig the truth out of your face with nothing but instinct and desperation.
“I know this place is loud,” you continue, softer still. “I know your head must feel like a war zone right now. But you’re doing fine. Better than fine.”
A sharp breath. His fingers twitch at his side, metal knuckles flexing like he’s fighting the urge to reach for you. Or to run. You’re not sure which would be worse.
And then the timepad on your wrist pulses—a slow, resonant tone. The kind it only makes when a divergence has been successfully reabsorbed. You glance down.
Of course. That’s what this was. The system was waiting for the moment he didn’t break. For the second he chose not to collapse, or kill, or disappear. A single, improbable outcome unfolding exactly as needed.
It was him. He was the pulse.
You let out a shaky exhale. The node in the hold must’ve gone inert—no more timeline bleed, no more irregular pulses. Outside, the storm’s intensity drops by half in minutes. The hull creaks as pressure stabilizes. Everything’s slowing down. Calming.
It’s over.
The right call now would be to leave. Every protocol you’ve ever memorized is screaming at you to disengage, to extract clean, to leave no mark and make no memory.
But.
You’ve already—fuck, you’ve already. The moment he looked at you like that—like you were familiar, like you mattered—it was over. You are so utterly, catastrophically screwed.
“I don’t know what they told you,” you say, and your voice barely clears your throat. It’s quieter now. Gentler. Like you’re afraid of scaring him back into whatever shell he crawled out of. “About this place. About this mission. I don’t even know if you’re going to remember this tomorrow. But I wanted you to know—”
You don’t finish.
Because he speaks.
“Will I see you again?”
The words are soft. Barely voiced. Like he had to haul them out of someplace deep and rusted shut. They land heavy—denser than sound has any right to be. It knocks the breath out of you.
You blink. “What?”
He steps forward—just one measured step—but it’s enough to change the air between you. Close now. Close enough to see the uneven skin at the corner of his mouth, the wind-chapped crack at his lower lip. Close enough to notice how his left hand shakes, barely-there tremors betraying the tension he’s trying to lock down.
He doesn’t say it again. He doesn’t need to.
You could lie. You could make it easier. There are a dozen lines you’ve used before—smooth, forgettable, safe. But you don’t reach for any of them.
Instead, you smile. It’s lopsided, weary, born of too many years being the one who leaves first. It’s your shield and your surrender, both.
“Only if you start talking more,” you say, a half-hearted tease wrapped in something much more fragile. You flip open your timepad as the breach activates, casting soft gold light against the hallway walls.
The portal hums. Warm. Waiting.
But your heart’s a thunderclap now. Relentless. You’re already tucking away the tilt of his head, the way his gaze softened—not like surrender, but like a question. Like maybe he’d found something in you worth staying awake for.
And you know better—god, do you know better—but your feet don’t move. You hesitate. Just a second. Just enough to feel it. Then you step through.
You don’t look back. You never do.
But the image of his eyes—ice-clear, impossibly human—follows you like a ghost you didn’t mean to keep.
.
You wait for the hammer to fall.
You expect it in the usual ways—a recall order, a message from Oversight, a polite but unambiguous invitation to report to Subsector 8 for disciplinary review. You expect the breach notice, the system ping that says unauthorized designation use or noncompliant field contact, maybe even timeline contamination: agent-induced.
You expect something.
Because you said his name.
Because you looked at him like a person, not a variable. Because you touched him. Not in passing—not incidental. You chose to.
You’ve seen people get demoted for less. Scrubbed out. Timeline reassigned, memory wiped, consigned to desk duty or worse—shunted into the Void or the Nullspace, that softly brutal end-of-line where broken things go to dissolve.
And you—you—let your guard down in the middle of a convergence zone and called the Winter Soldier by his name. That’s not oversight. That’s not mission drift. That’s a lapse.
And yet… nothing happens.
Not a single alarm. No reprimand. No haunting message from Internal Realities. No pulled credentials. No veiled threats in Performance Management.
Instead, your timepad pings three days later with a new assignment.
Business as usual.
You run it back a dozen times, trying to parse the angle—waiting for the catch. It never comes. You go on a mission in Year 3830 where the only threat is a sentient vine and a mild temporal rash. You document a collapsing micro-timeline in 1994 Missouri. You sit through three mandatory debriefs and a cross-departmental cultural sensitivity training that somehow lasts six hours.
Nothing.
Just… more work.
You fall back into the rhythm, the TVA's particular brand of unremarkable eternity. The recycled coffee, the endless corridors, the clipped dialogue, the dozens of agents who all look slightly frayed around the edges in the same way. The paperwork is never-ending, the bureaucracy divine in its pettiness. Time moves strange here—like chewing on tinfoil. Sometimes it gallops. Sometimes it forgets you entirely.
But there’s something different now.
It’s you.
You keep seeing him—in flickers and echoes, half-formed thoughts you don’t realize you’re having until they hit the page. You start reviewing your field notes only to find entire paragraphs written in shorthand about the moment he tilted his head. About the way he said Will I see you again?
You shouldn’t care. You don’t care. It’s just a glitch in your focus. Just… inertia.
Still, you pull up his file. James Buchanan Barnes.
It’s a fractured thing. Not quite whole, like someone took sandpaper to the edges. Parts redacted, others duplicated. A timeline that can’t seem to decide if it wants to be linear. No two missions involving him look the same. There are strange annotations. Personal tags from long-retired analysts. Notations like non-repeatable trauma pattern and event recursion index unstable.
Some entries are missing dates.
You read through anyway. Not for duty. Not even for curiosity, really.
You just want to.
And then, one standard TVA cycle later, it lands. Another assignment. This time the seal is embossed in gold—Causal Preservation Division. Low-risk, softpoint reinforcement. Routine.
You flick through the details:
CASE FILE: #456-TH9
MISSION CLASS: Softpoint Reinforcement
LOCATION: British Isles, Kingdom of Latveria Borderlands
DATE: JUNE 1602
ASSIGNED COVER: Itinerant Herbalist, non-native, licensed under local superstition codes
SUMMARY:
Objective is limited to passive timeline stabilization: ensure delivery of a restorative tonic to a six-year-old child suffering from swamp fever. This act preserves a familial survival event critical to a downstream medical lineage. Mission does not intersect with major temporal figures.
You are not to interfere with core narrative threads. You are not here for Bucky Barnes.
(But the file doesn't say that last sentence. You just write it down anyway.)
You frown at the file. It feels… small. Intentionally. A clean mission. An easy one, all things expected. No soldiers, no storms. Just a timeline that needs a nudge.
Still, you hesitate.
Not because it’s dangerous. Because it’s not. And because part of you wonders—quiet, insistent—if he’ll be there again. Not as the Winter Soldier. Maybe as something else. Someone else.
The TVA says every mission is randomized.
But it never quite feels like that, does it?
EARTH-456 | BRITISH ISLES, 1602
The first thing you register is the smell. Damp earth. Horse sweat. Pine sap and someone nearby frying something questionably birdlike in lard.
Your boots sink into wet loam as the time door closes behind you with a dull sigh. It’s quiet here, beneath the canopy—just birdsong and the faint crackle of something cooking over a badly constructed fire pit.
You scan the clearing.
They call it a "camp," but it’s more aspirational than functional. A few makeshift tents, some scattered crates stamped with the royal crest—recently liberated, if the smashed locks and missing inventory are any clue.
You move quietly, cloaked in the nondescript garb of a traveling herbalist—dirt under your nails, satchel full of fake tinctures, a few well-placed knives.
You watch from the shade of the trees as he crouches beside the firepit, running a cloth along the edge of a short dagger. His hair’s tied back, rough and practical. There’s mud up to his knees and blood on his knuckles, dried like old guilt.
He doesn’t see you, not yet.
Later, after setting up a modest stall in the village square (all intentional smoke and drying herbs, designed to blend in more than stand out), you’re told by a fellow field agent to visit the pub.
“The mead’s surprisingly tolerable,” they say, nudging your satchel. “Also, your contact’s not due for another twelve hours, so don’t just sit there and brood. Blend in.”
You go.
The pub is suspended in a towering yew, three stories up a gnarled trunk, accessible only by a ladder that looks like it hates everyone who uses it. The structure groans in the wind but holds, its branches creaking like tired bones. The inside smells of firewood, old ale, and something herbal—probably the same bitterroot tincture you’ve been pretending to peddle all day.
The mead is surprisingly tolerable. You settle into a booth carved into the wall, lit by low-burning lanterns. It’s warm. Quiet. You sip and let yourself feel anonymous.
Right up until the door slams open in that unmistakably theatrical way only someone with a chip on their shoulder and too much presence can manage.
You look up—and still, somehow, you’re not ready.
He’s changed, of course. That’s the constant.
His hair is pulled back in a low tie, streaked with ash and caught with a bit of red cloth. He wears a leather cloak patched with scavenged velvet. The left arm, impossibly, is still metal—but shaped like something out of myth. Not sleek. Not sterile. Forged. Etched in old runes that flicker faintly in the lantern light.
A blacksmith’s nightmare. A knight's inheritance.
And then there’s the way he moves—like someone used to silence, used to watching the world from its edge and only stepping in when absolutely necessary. He doesn’t walk so much as arrive, and the moment he does, the tavern seems smaller. Quieter.
His eyes—those same pale, searching eyes—find yours almost immediately.
He pauses, mid-step. The look on his face isn’t surprise. It’s that ache of recognition, buried too deep to name. Like catching your reflection in a mirror that doesn’t quite match.
He walks toward you without invitation. Controlled. Coiled. Not hostile. Just inevitable.
“My lady, you shouldn’t be out this late,” he says, voice worn at the edges, smoke-scoured and rough from a life that’s clearly involved too many cold nights and too few comforts. “Not alone.”
You take a slow sip, meet his gaze. “It’s always late here. And rarely alone.”
He studies you. Not just your face, but your posture, your stillness. The way you speak like you’ve been somewhere else too long to fully belong here.
Something flickers in his expression. Not memory. But something adjacent.
He lowers himself into the seat across from you without asking. He’s still damp at the collar—rain, or sweat, or both. He’s got a scar running from his jaw to the hollow of his throat, clean and straight like a blade meant to silence. But his voice doesn’t shake.
“Have we met?”
You offer a small, unreadable smile. “I don’t believe so.”
But he keeps looking. You can feel him doing it—mapping the angles of your face against some invisible sketch, something etched into his bones that refuses to fade.
“You look lost.”
“Just passing through.”
His mouth pulls tight at the corner, like that answer doesn’t satisfy. You can tell he doesn’t believe you—but he doesn’t press.
He nods toward a table in the back, where a small crew drinks from shared mugs and watches the door. They wear scraps of stolen uniforms and carry themselves with the weight of people who’ve stopped pretending they’ll live long lives.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he says again.
You glance at them. “Neither should you.”
His silence is telling. It confirms what you already guessed.
He’s part of something. A resistance, sure, but not just that. He’s the center of it. The calm in the chaos. The one who moves supply through enemy lines and burns bridges behind him. His coat bears a crest he’s tried to remove—once royal, now repurposed. His fingers twitch when he’s still too long, and there’s something reverent in how the others look at him when they think he’s not paying attention.
This version of him is no less dangerous. But more visible, somehow. More known. To these people, he’s a savior. To himself, probably a liability.
Always the same story: a man pressed into myth by the weight of his own regrets.
And still, he looks at you with that same protective wariness. Like something in him knows you don’t quite belong here—and wants to guard you anyway.
“Come on,” he says quietly. “I’ll walk you home.”
The words strike you harder than they should. Like something remembered from a dream that felt real long after you woke.
The night outside is so still you can hear the wind whispering between the boughs.
He pauses under the lantern hanging from a bent branch. Looks at you, shadow-draped and silent.
“Why are you here?”
You should lie. You want to lie.
But instead, you say it softly. “Because I said I would be.”
He blinks. The words hit something deep. Maybe he doesn’t understand them. But he feels them.
You step closer. Just close enough to reach up, cup his jaw gently, feel the sharp edge of his breath catch in his throat. And then you kiss him.
The moment your lips touch his, the rest of the world blanks. Not gone—just irrelevant. The pub, the low burn of lanterns, the sound of rain tapping against the wooden slats—it all slips away. All that remains is this.
His mouth is warm, unexpectedly so, and still. Cautious. As if he’s holding still for a test he doesn’t know the answer to.
You’re the one who moves first. Just slightly. Just enough to let it mean something.
And gods—it does.
It means everything you haven’t said aloud. Every hour you spent since Siberia rewatching that moment when he looked at you like he knew you. Every line of his file you traced with your eyes long after you were supposed to close it. Every anomaly he left in his wake, the hollow prints he pressed into timelines like fingerprints you couldn’t scrub clean.
You’d told yourself it was curiosity. Professional interest. A harmless fixation. Just trying to cover your own ass in the event that the TVA catches up to you, foolish, foolish girl. But now you know better.
Because kissing him feels like gravity finally catching up to you.
He doesn’t pull away.
His hand twitches—just once—like he might lift it, might anchor you there with the metal one, or with the other, the one that remembers touch. But he doesn’t. He just breathes against your mouth like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Like no one’s kissed him like this in years.
Like no one’s ever kissed him like they remembered him.
The kiss is brief. You make yourself pull back before it deepens, before it turns into something hungrier, something you won’t be able to file away as incidental.
But you linger close.
He sends you off with a kiss to your forehead.
You complete the mission in silence.
The child is easy to find—just as the file described. Freckled nose, limp in his mother’s arms, fever-bright. You hand over the tonic with a reassuring word and a warm enough smile to pass for human. The woman weeps when the boy stirs minutes later, the color already returning to his cheeks.
And just like that—it’s done.
Softpoint reinforced. Future intact.
The door opens in a grove just outside the village, where moss curls over tree roots like sleeping hands. Golden light hums at the edges of the breach. You don’t look back. You’ve learned your lesson there.
But as you step through, the last thing you hear—carried faintly on the wind—is his voice.
“I never got your name,” he says into a room that’s not as empty as he thinks it is. Not yet.
.
You try to stay detached. Try to mark each version of him like a data point—distinct and catalogued, filed neatly beneath coordinates and context. But it never works. The lines blur.
There’s the one with the scar over his brow and the wild dog stare, who watches your hands like they’re a threat and touches you like they’re a prayer.
The one in 2049 who doesn’t speak until the third encounter but holds out his hand like he’s known you forever. The one who plays cello in a city that shouldn't exist, who smiles only for children and flinches at thunder. The one who dies before you can reach him. You stay by his body anyway, until the timeline resets.
Each time, it’s different.
Each time, it’s him.
You start to think: maybe he’s not a variable. Maybe he’s the constant. The fixed point the multiverse can’t help but echo. A gravitational pull in human form—tethered to something your soul must have signed onto long before the TVA ever handed you a timepad.
You wonder if the multiverse is trying to teach you something. Or if it’s punishing you instead—showing you every version of the thing you can’t quite keep. Like a lesson in longing, rerun on loop.
You try not to hope. But the hope comes anyway. It always does. Soft and bright, a bruise you press on just to feel.
Then you get your next assignment.
The file is clean. Neat. Sanitized in that way TVA summaries always are—euphemisms in place of grief, percentages instead of people. But you read between the lines. The divergence happened on the train. Or rather, didn’t.
You read it twice. Three times. It doesn’t change.
This Bucky Barnes didn’t fall. The train held. The mission succeeded. Captain Carter rescued him and helped dismantle the remains of Hydra’s European cell before the war even ended. He was never captured. Never reprogrammed. Never dragged through a Hydra chamber like something to be melted down and reforged.
You try to imagine him without the weight.
You picture Bucky Barnes smiling easily, untethered to the guilt of fifty years of carnage he never chose. A man who still cracks his knuckles but not because they ache with remembered pain. One who walks into sunlight without flinching.
You wonder what that would be like.
So you go.
Of course you go.
You always do.
EARTH-838 | LONDON, 1944
You’ve never liked the long assignments.
Short ones are surgical—get in, disrupt or observe, slip out before the timeline notices the echo of your footsteps. This one, though, is different. Your mission folder is three times thicker than usual. Paper-clipped pages in brittle brown envelopes. Dossiers printed on carbon-smudged letterhead. Photographs tucked inside, blurred by time and memory.
You’re embedded with the 107th, slotted in as a specialist from Intelligence, the kind who shows up with forged credentials and a quiet knack for being in the right place just before things go wrong. Your cover holds. Mostly. They think you’re here to coordinate logistics for Hydra base strikes. They’re not entirely wrong.
The first time you see him again, he’s making a sarcastic remark about British rations and butterless toast. He’s not in uniform—just a pressed shirt with rolled sleeves and a cigarette dangling loosely between two fingers, a smear of grease on his wrist. He laughs when Howard Stark tosses a wrench and almost breaks a window.
It’s different sound from what you've heard over the years.
But then Bucky Barnes notices you.
Not all at once. Not like in the stories people tell themselves after the fact—love at first glance, magnetic fate, sparks across a battlefield. No, it starts in pieces. A glance held a beat too long during mission briefings. A muttered thank you when you slip him a replacement knife requisition that definitely wasn’t cleared. The way he starts lingering near your tent in the evenings, offering lazy conversation while the others clean weapons or sleep.
“You always write that fast?” he asks once, elbow braced on the flap of the entrance like it’s casual, like he didn’t cross half the camp just to talk to you.
You don’t look up. “Only when I’m trying to drown out poorly played harmonica.”
He grins. “Hey, Dugan’s doing his best.”
You snort. “His best sounds like a wounded mule.”
He laughs again, quieter this time. You feel it settle between your ribs like a warm coin. It’s nothing. Just noise. You tell yourself that.
Weeks pass like that. Quiet orbit. You take longer walks to the mess hall because he always times his exit to meet you halfway. He asks questions—about where you're from (a place you name off a pre-approved list), what brought you to London (the war, obviously), if you believe in fate.
You lie when you can. You dodge when you must.
But not everything you say is false. You like coffee too bitter and books too sad. You write letters you never send. You don’t sleep well. You’ve lost people.
He listens. He remembers. He starts showing up with extra coffee. Offers to walk you back to your quarters even though it’s technically against regulations. You start lingering in his doorway.
He never pushes.
And you hate it—how much you want him to.
The first time he touches you, it's an accident. Your fingers brush as he passes you a pen. Your skin sparks. It’s stupid, how much you feel it.
He notices.
"You ever get that sense," he says one night in the empty mess, voices low, "that you’ve known someone longer than you’re supposed to?"
Your breath catches.
You laugh it off. "I get that about my dentist."
He grins. But his eyes stay on yours too long.
You’re not supposed to fall in this one.
But God, it’s so easy. So familiar.
Bucky tells you about his family. His sister. The stoop of his childhood apartment and how he used to sneak Steve a flask when the nurses weren’t looking. He draws out your laugh like it’s a map, like he's been trying to find it for years.
And all the while, you feel it coming.
One night, two months in, he walks you back and you don’t stop at your door. You let the silence linger. The city is dark and rain-slicked, war planes humming overhead like ghosts.
"You’re not like anyone I’ve met before," he says, leaning against the wall.
You smile sadly. "You’ve said that to a lot of girls, Sergeant."
"Yeah," he murmurs, voice suddenly quieter. "But none of them felt like déjà vu."
You almost kiss him. But not yet.
The war ends not with silence, but with song.
London spills into the streets like a wound unstitched—men and women dancing in front of blown-out buildings, children painting flags onto brick walls, sailors kissing strangers with the urgency of borrowed time. The city doesn’t sleep. Neither do you.
You’ve stayed longer than planned.
Your official timeline expired a couple of hours ago. But your timepad’s been blinking quietly in your coat pocket since sundown, like a secret you’re not quite ready to confess. For long-term infiltrations, the TVA grants a small window of flexibility—two to three extra hours, soft margin. Enough to wrap up loose ends. Enough to say goodbye without saying it.
Bucky doesn’t know. He’s too busy laughing—really laughing—face lit by the amber glow of the pub sign behind him, arm draped lazily around your shoulders. He’s had two pints and a victory cigar, and you’ve never seen him look so alive.
He’s in his shirtsleeves again, collar open at the throat, hair mussed from the wind. He smells like tobacco and soap and something citrusy he must’ve stolen from Stark’s ration stash. His hand grazes your shoulder as you step outside the crowded pub and into the cool night air. He’s warm, even in the London chill. Always warm.
“I’ve been thinking,” he says, suddenly serious, voice low in your ear.
You turn, startled by the shift. “About?”
He runs a hand through his hair, eyes flicking to the cobblestone street, then back to you. The revelers blur behind you—drunk joy and blurred music, a world gone soft at the edges.
“You could come with me,” he says. "To New York. Brooklyn."
Your stomach drops.
“We’ve got peace now. There’s gonna be rebuilding. A hell of a lot of it. I know it’s chaos but… I don’t know. I thought maybe…” He trails off, then forces a laugh, too bright. “Forget it. It’s dumb.”
You step in close. The timepad at your hip vibrates again—EXIT NODE ACTIVE. TEMPORAL STABILITY REACHED. RETURN IMMEDIATELY. You ignore it.
“Say it,” you whisper.
“I’ll get a job,” Bucky says.
His Brooklyn accent is thick with hope, slipping out between the cracks like sunlight through boarded windows. His voice is rough and low, but urgent—like if he stops speaking for even a second, this moment might collapse under the weight of everything it’s not allowed to be.
“You’re so… so fucking smart it gets me dizzy sometimes. I watch you in a room and—Christ, I’ve seen tacticians, I’ve seen war heroes—but no one moves the way you do.”
He’s closer now, just a breath away, like proximity might be enough to anchor you to this place.
“I’ll get us a place of our own. A tiny walk-up with drafty windows and floors that creak every time you step wrong. The kind of place where no one knows our names, but we’ll learn the neighbors’. I’ll fix the heater when it breaks. I’ll learn to make your coffee the way you like it—two sugars, not too sweet, extra hot. I’ll write it down if I have to. You won’t even have to ask.”
He swallows, his voice breaking just a little.
“I’ll make pancakes on Sundays, even if I suck at it. I’ll burn the first batch every damn week and pretend I meant to. We’ll fight about the dishes and who left the radio on. I’ll learn to fold the sheets the right way, your way. I’ll leave notes on the fridge. I’ll rub your feet when you’ve had a long day, even if you pretend you don’t want me to.”
His eyes are wet now, but he doesn’t blink them away. He wants you to see.
“I’ll build a life where you can rest,” he says, so softly it barely carries over the celebration in the street. “No secrets. No war. Just mornings and bad coffee and a bed we don’t have to leave unless we want to.”
His hand lifts, hovering like he wants to touch you but doesn’t dare. He’s unraveling. And he’s never been more sure of anything.
“You walk around like you don’t belong to anyone,” he whispers. “But you belong somewhere. You belong with someone who sees you.”
His eyes search yours, bright and raw.
“Darling,” he breathes, “I just want—”
You don’t speak. You want to. You want to say yes so badly your teeth ache with it.
Instead, your hand reaches for him—cups his cheek, thumb brushing the scrape of stubble there. You lean in before you can stop yourself.
The kiss is molten.
Not soft, not chaste. It’s everything you aren’t supposed to want: greedy, aching, desperate. It tastes like smoke and honey and war’s aftermath. You can feel the imprint of his hands at your waist, grounding you, like he already knows you’re slipping.
You gasp against his mouth when he deepens the kiss, his hand moving to cradle the back of your neck like he’s afraid you’ll vanish if he lets go. And you—you clutch at his coat, fingers fisting in the fabric like it’s the only solid thing left in the world. The city roars around you—drunken songs, laughter, heels on cobblestone—but none of it touches this moment. It belongs to you. To him.
He kisses like he’s starved for something he can’t name.
Like every version of himself has been waiting for this.
Somehow, you make it back to his quarters—barely remembering how. The door slams shut behind you and he’s on you again, mouth warm and insistent, hands trembling now as they trace your jaw, your hips, the shape of your spine like he’s mapping it to memory. You let him. You want to be remembered.
“Tell me this is real,” he murmurs against your throat, breath hot. “Tell me I’m not dreaming you.”
You tip your forehead against his, eyes fluttering closed. “You’re not dreaming.”
You pull his shirt free from his waistband, palms skimming over bare skin, warm and ridged with scars you recognize from dossiers—scars you’ve imagined tracing with your mouth, with your hands, in every universe that told you not to.
Bucky's mouth finds the edge of your jaw, your collarbone, the hollow of your throat. Each kiss feels like a confession, like an apology, like a promise. "You're so fucking pretty," he moans into your skin, moving and moving and moving, until you feel his thigh part yours, giving you just the right amount of friction to drive you crazy.
Your shirt's off in turn, and all at once, he drifts down to your tits, cupping them with both palms and burying his face in them. For a moment, your brain short-circuits—he's groaning, tender kisses against your nipples and sucking, nipping at the swell of your breasts. "You taste so good, darling. God, I can taste you all day."
You pull on his hair—hard. "Bucky, please. Give me more."
"Ask and you shall receive."
You're rewarded with a beautiful view of him shedding the rest of his clothes off. You can't—won't—look away. It never ceases to amaze you, how pretty his cock is. You lick your lips as he gives it a stroke, slow and soft and positively ready for you.
Then Bucky leans forward, capturing your lips again with a certainty that makes your heart near burst out of your chest.
Your hand wraps around the base of his cock and you smile when he wrenches his head back, eyes shut in almost agony. Bucking against your hand, like he can't get enough of it. He says your name, and despite yourself, you grin before pulling yourself away from his kiss to lower your head, tongue swiping out to taste what leaks from him at the tip.
"Oh, god," His hands come to twist around your hair, the pull making your eyes water with something delicious, something filled with need. You keep going deeper, until he hits the back of your throat and you both moan. "You're so good to me. So, so good."
He's babbling now, as your lips stay wrapped around your cock and you're pressing the flat of your tongue against his veins, a hand stabilizing you underneath. "Sweetheart, you're perfect. I'm going to—oh, yes, right there—god, I'm gonna marry you. We're never gonna stop doing this. I'm never gonna get enough of you."
You take him there, all the way up, until he's almost to the edge and he has to ground his hands against your cheeks and pull you off. He looks down at you with that goddamned earnest look that makes you fall in love with him in the first place. "Not—not like this. I want to be inside you."
Of course, of course. "Of course, James."
He pushes you onto your back, and you can't help the giddy feeling in your chest, seeing how much of a mess you've made of him. His cock's shining with your spit and saliva, your wetness all over him. When Bucky sees where you're looking, he licks his lips. A preliminary swipe against your folds when you, very intentionally, thrust forward against his hips impatiently.
"So eager."
You glare at him, lips curling even as he takes both of your thighs until he's slotted between them. "There's no need to be a tease—Oh."
He sinks in, inch by agonizing inch, and you're moaning, jaw dropping as his cock disappears inside of you. You're so full. You've never been this full before and it makes you pant, sighing breathlessly, and when his thumb finds your clit, you whine and clench around him. Both of you moan in harmony.
His pace speeds up from there, hard and fast, and it's intensified by the way he looks at you. Eyes dissecting you carefully, trying to remember every expression, every second, every move that makes you keen further into his touch.
"Look at me, baby, please," Bucky growls and you do. "Look at me when you make me come."
You can't look away, feeling the stars gather up behind your eyes as your own orgasm catches up to you—fuck, it's nothing compared to how his release feels inside of you, the warmth, the way he feels so strong under your fingertips. His chest vibrating, mouth falling open in a prolonged, beautiful groan. He pushes himself deeper inside of you, until you feel his release slipping out of you onto the mattress.
You press a kiss to his forehead and let yourself fall asleep like that—him inside of you, tangled up in him.
The light is different when you wake up in the morning.
Soft, pale, almost shy. It seeps through the parted curtains like it doesn’t want to intrude, spilling over the uneven floorboards and up the rumpled edge of the blanket half-draped across your hip.
His arm is still around you. Heavy in sleep. Warm. Bucky Barnes is still asleep.
You don’t kiss him goodbye.
Instead, you whisper something he won’t hear. “I wish we had more time.”
And then you activate the timepad.
.
Time passes strangely in the TVA.
There are clocks, yes. Digital ones on walls, analog ones in desks, internal ones ticking behind your eyes. But none of them matter. Days don’t pile up here—they just... repeat, under different names. Tuesday is a fiction. Sunday doesn’t exist. Lunch breaks happen when the lights flicker just right, and sleep is what you do when your body gives out mid-report.
You stopped counting after the first month. You stopped pretending to count after the second.
Instead, you worked.
Harder than anyone. Longer than anyone. You took missions no one else wanted—scrubbing nexus events off apocalyptic wastelands, ghosting through centuries where empires rose and fell before you’d even finished breakfast. You volunteered for side branches, anomaly audits, recursive sync loops. Anything to keep moving.
It didn’t go unnoticed.
A plaque went up in the Hall of Merit. "Agent of the Month." Your name, etched in fake gold. Mobius clapped you on the shoulder with a proud little smile. Brad brought you the worst celebratory cupcake you’ve ever tasted. (Vanilla. Dry. Sprinkles like gravel.)
You smiled. You always smile.
You don’t let yourself say what you’re really thinking.
That all of it—all the assignments, all the accolades, all the long nights pinning divergent strands back into place—is just inertia. Just mass multiplied by pain. Because you know what happens when you stop moving.
And you’ve tried. God, you’ve tried.
You dodge his branches when you can. You pass them off to junior agents, citing temporal redundancy. You tell yourself it’s not cowardice if it’s protocol. You let yourself believe it, for a while.
Until the file lands on your desk.
CASE FILE: #2149-BE0
MISSION CLASS: Collapse Softpoint Reinforcement
LOCATION: Earth-2149 — Brooklyn, United States / Geneva, Switzerland
DATE: April 2018 (Post-Outbreak +1 Day)
ASSIGNED COVER: Civilian logistics runner, no official alignment, false survivor credentials
SUMMARY:
Objective is to reinforce critical softpoint during global collapse event: ensure Scott Lang, Peter Parker, and T’Challa successfully board Wakandan quinjet. This evacuation preserves three downstream nexus threads essential to limited multiversal salvage.
Do not interfere beyond softpoint parameters. Infected superhumans active.
You stare at it for a long time. You could say no. You should say no.
But your hand moves anyway. Signs the form. Accepts the mission.
No backup. No reassignment.
Just you.
EARTH-2149 | BROOKLYN, 2018 (+1 DAY POST-OUTBREAK)
Out of all the missions you've had so far, you think you hate this one the most. Which is saying something. Zombie apocalypse timelines are the worst.
The air reeks of ash and ozone. You’re used to strange skies by now, but this one feels wrong in your bones. The light doesn’t fall the way it should—too sharp at the edges, like the sun’s been split into shards and you’re walking through the aftermath.
You arrived forty hours ago. Standard infiltration and alignment. The assignment brief was brutal in its simplicity.
Bucky doesn’t make it out of this timeline. He dies at Camp Lehigh. He buys them time.
And you’re supposed to let that happen.
Your first glimpse of him isn’t cinematic. No slow reveal, no stirring strings. Just a sliver of profile through the cracked door of an old deli, combat boots pacing, rifle slung over his back, the metal arm glinting dull and scratched. He’s talking to Parker—low and firm, the kind of voice meant to ground someone younger, more fragile.
When you step into the light, he turns toward you like he was already waiting. Eyes blue, shadowed. Jaw set. And there it is again—that look. Recognition.
Your breath stutters. You don’t say anything. You just nod, like you’ve been here all along. Like you’re meant to be here.
You don’t know if you can watch him die.
Not when you’ve held versions of him in your arms, heard him laugh half-asleep beside a campfire, watched his hands shake after battle and pretended not to notice.
Peter introduces you. A name you chose at random from a TVA list. He doesn’t flinch when Bucky says it aloud. But something shifts behind his eyes—quiet and soft and gone before it settles.
You get through the introductions. Kurt, smiling nervously. Sharon, bloody but unbowed. Okoye nods once at you, sharp and appraising. Happy makes a joke that doesn’t quite land.
For the next two weeks, you stay with them.
You don't mean to get close to Bucky in this one. (You mean it this time. Seriously.) For the first couple of days, you try your best to stay away. You do your best to focus on the mission and he's… he's just another person in the crowd. You think that would make it easier, when he—when he eventually—You can't even say it.
But it happens one morning, anyway—fog pooling low across the park, the air thick with that awful, metallic smell of rot. You’re both on perimeter watch, standing on opposite ends of a shattered greenhouse. He catches you glancing toward the skyline, what’s left of it, jagged teeth against the pale pink sky.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” he says, voice low, scratchy from disuse.
You blink from your thoughts. “In a doomed, post-apocalyptic sort of way.”
He huffs a laugh. Almost smiles. “I was gonna say the same.”
Silence settles between you, but it’s a companionable thing. Not awkward. Not forced.
You speak first this time. “You always this poetic?”
“Only when I’m tired. Or scared.”
You glance at him. “Which is it now?”
He doesn’t answer right away. Just shifts his weight, runs a hand through his hair, and says, “Both.”
You don’t touch. You don’t need to. It’s all there in the space between you—heavy with implication. Unspoken, but not unfelt.
You sleep on opposite ends of the same room. He never touches you. Never asks. But some nights you wake up to find his jacket draped over your legs. Once, during a particularly bad storm, he nudged a cracked thermos of lukewarm coffee toward you without a word.
He doesn’t have to say anything. You feel it.
All of it.
And the worst part—the most unbearable—is knowing it’s temporary. You feel the convergence approaching like a bruise beneath your ribs. Two days now, maybe three, before you lose him again. Before he dies. Before you vanish back into the timeline like a ghost leaving no fingerprints.
You try not to show it. You smile when Peter cracks a joke. You run drills with Sharon. You help Kurt fix a busted radio, even though it’s hopeless.
But every time you look at Bucky, your heart tightens in your chest like it’s trying to keep him there.
And then it's here.
The journey to Camp Lehigh was fucking gut-wrenching.
You've lost practically everyone—Sharon, Hope, Kurt, Happy, Okoye. It sits in you like a shard of ice. Not grief—there’s no time for grief. Just weight. Just the bitter gravity of survival. The quinjet is prepped and waiting. The remaining survivors—Peter, T’Challa, Lang’s floating head in a jar—are already climbing aboard. You’ve done everything the mission brief demanded. You met the moment. You held the line.
You’ve done everything the mission brief said—down to the minute, the location, the final headcount. And you… you’re standing beside Bucky.
And still, you’re standing beside him.
Bucky’s chest rises and falls with the kind of steadiness that makes you ache. His metal arm glints in the firelight, streaked with ash and blood, fingers twitching in a rhythm you can’t decipher. There’s soot on his cheek, a rip in his sleeve, and when he turns to you, there’s something too clear in his eyes. Not fear. Not even pain.
Resolve.
You taste it in the back of your throat: the copper of a timeline ending.
“We have to go,” you say softly, not to him, not really. Just to the air.
Bucky doesn’t move.
He turns his head slightly, enough for you to see the hard line of his jaw. The wear around his eyes. There’s something about this version of him—familiar, but not calloused like the others. Still earnest enough to believe in sacrifice. Still sharp enough to choose it without flinching.
You hate that.
“I’ll hold her off,” he says, and you feel something break, neat and irreversible, in your chest.
“No,” you breathe. Too fast, too raw.
His brow furrows. “Someone has to. You said it yourself—if we don’t get the jet off the ground, we lose everything.”
“That doesn’t mean it has to be you.”
He smiles, and it’s that same damn smile that’s followed you across time. The one that says it’s already decided.
“I think it always was.”
You want to scream. You want to tell him he’s not disposable, not fated, not just a name on some cosmic itinerary that keeps getting torn out and rewritten. You want to confess that you’ve met him over and over, and every time he’s left a bruise somewhere deeper.
But the timepad at your hip begins to beep.
MISSION END: T-MINUS 2 MINUTES
You ignore it.
“You’ll make it,” he says gently, like a goodbye.
“No, I won’t,” you whisper. “Not really.”
There’s shouting near the quinjet ramp. Peter calling your name. Bruce waving you over. The others are loading in. You should be there. The moment is closing. The window is narrowing.
You don’t move.
Instead, you step forward and press your hand to his cheek. Your skin is cold from the wind, but he leans into it anyway. His eyes flutter closed for half a second—just long enough for you to memorize it.
Then you kiss him.
It’s not gentle. It’s desperate. Greedy. A kiss that says remember me. Your hands fist in his jacket. His mouth moves against yours like it’s something he’s missed without knowing. You drink in every inch of him—the scrape of stubble, the roughness of his palms against your back, the low sound he makes when you pull away.
“I’ll find you again,” you say. It's a promise.
He nods once. His hand lingers at your waist for a breath longer than it should. Then he turns back towards Wanda.
You watch him go. You always watch him go.
The quinjet door hisses shut behind you. The engines roar to life. The pad at your side flashes, like some sick, fucking joke—
Mission Successful. Extraction in Progress.
You don’t look back at the ground. You’ve learned that much, at least. Looking back doesn’t stop the bleeding. But when the jet lifts, when the trees blur below and you can’t see him anymore—
You swear something rips loose in you.
And this time, you don’t think it will grow back.
.
You’ve seen him in snow.
In bloodied ice, in rusted Soviet hulls, in the shadow of burning quinjets and crumbling castles. You’ve seen him with death behind his eyes and guilt threaded into every line of his face. You’ve seen him careful, methodical. Kind in all the ways no one notices—quiet in a world that demands noise. Someone who doesn’t ask for gentleness, but gives it anyway.
And now you’ve seen him in the dark, too. In 1602, under soot-smudged moons and flickering gaslights, a knife twirling between clever fingers. He hadn’t known you—not really. Not as the woman who’d held his gaze in a cryo chamber. Not as the silhouette slipping into the quinjet before he turned to face the Scarlet Witch. But he’d looked at you like he wanted to.
The thread stays taut between you, no matter the timeline.
So when you get the assignment to go—
It doesn’t land with ceremony. No formal debrief. Just a flicker on your desk monitor, a soft chime that cuts through the static hum of the TVA’s perpetual fluorescent haze. You almost miss it. You almost ignore it. Because everything still hurts.
The kind of hurt that doesn't pulse—it seeps. It rots. You move like you’re wearing someone else’s body, like your own bones are too loud. You haven’t been sleeping—not really.
You open the file with a numb hand. Just procedure, you tell yourself. Just another timeline. Until you see the numbers.
CASE FILE: #616-SV1
MISSION CLASS: Passive Observation
LOCATION: Bucharest, Romania
DATE: March 2016
ASSIGNED COVER: Independent tenant, upper flat
SUMMARY:
Subject Barnes, James B., presumed alive and in civilian hiding following HYDRA data exposure and the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. Timeline approaching critical inflection. Target is not actively breaching; no temporal instability present. Assignment is preventative: monitor for signs of deviation or catalyst behavior.
Do not engage. No interference unless softpoint destabilization occurs.
You let out a sound that might be a laugh. Or a sob. It’s hard to tell.
There’s a reason TVA protocol avoids revisiting timelines. Too risky. Too messy. History isn’t built for recursion. But this—this is a spiral. A closed loop. Like something unfinished trying to write its own end.
And now you’ve been assigned to watch him again.
After all this time. After what you felt splinter through you like glass.
You should tell someone. Flag the conflict of interest. Recuse yourself.
You don’t.
You close the file and begin packing for Bucharest.
EARTH-616 | BUCHAREST, 2016
You land in Bucharest in the dead quiet of early morning, the sky still purpled with sleep.
The city feels brittle—like something trying very hard not to splinter. Your cover’s thin again: traveling contractor, repair work, nothing that draws attention. You rent a room across from a narrow building with stained windows and a faulty streetlamp that flickers at 2 a.m. every night like clockwork.
And you wait.
The first time you see him again, he’s carrying plums.
You’re leaning on a railing, nursing coffee that’s more soot than bean, watching the street in that not-watching way you’ve perfected over decades. And there he is. Gray hoodie, boots worn to the stitching, a canvas bag slung across one shoulder.
He walks like someone trying to be smaller. Eyes down. Shoulders rounded. Every muscle still taut beneath the fabric, but pulled inward. Controlled.
You almost don’t recognize him like this. Then he glances up. Brief. Casual.
But it slams into you anyway.
Because there it is—that flicker. That impossible, unplaceable pull. Like gravity, but sideways. Like someone whispering your name in a language you forgot how to speak.
He doesn’t stop. Doesn’t linger. But you feel it. That taut little wire between your ribs goes taut again, humming faint and low.
You’ve seen him across centuries, across madness and ruins and impossible skies. And now, here he is, just... buying fruit.
You observe him for seven days. No contact. No breach.
Each morning, he walks the same path. Plums one day. Bread the next. He pauses at the corner every time—checks the shadows, the mirrors. Still sharp. Still trained. But dulled at the edges like he’s trying not to be. Like he’s tired of being a weapon, and doesn’t quite know how to be anything else.
He never takes the same route home.
You map them all anyway.
There’s a rhythm to his caution. It’s not paranoia. It’s preservation. You know the difference. You’ve watched enough shattered timelines to recognize when someone’s not trying to escape the world—just survive it.
And through it all, you pretend not to ache.
You keep the timepad dim, tucked under your coat like a second heart. The updates are clean. No deviations. No instability. He’s not a threat. Not a spark.
Just a man. Still whole, somehow. Still holding.
But you find yourself watching anyway. Not for fractures or fault lines—but for the quiet, ordinary proof that he’s still him. The way he double-checks his change at the fruit stall. The soft apology he gives a stray dog he nearly bumps with his boot. The habit of pausing in the stairwell, just long enough to listen for another pair of footsteps behind him. You memorize all of it like it’s going to disappear.
You don’t. Of course you don’t.
Until the night you lose him.
It’s raining. Thin, indecisive drops that fall more like static than water. You’re two streets behind, just enough distance to not spook him, when someone yells, and a car backfires, and you look away for a single goddamn second.
And he’s gone.
You circle three blocks. Then six. Nothing. It’s half an hour later when you feel the grip.
Quick, precise. A hand closes over your arm and pulls you sideways—into a narrow alley between buildings that still wear their war damage like it happened yesterday. The wall hits your spine. The air knocks out of you. And then he’s there.
Close. Too close.
Hood down. Eyes sharp. Rain slicking through his hair.
You don’t move. Don’t breathe.
Because he’s looking at you like he’s been waiting.
“You’ve been following me,” he says, voice low, rough. No heat in it. Just truth.
Your mouth opens. Closes.
He tilts his head, studying your face like he’s comparing it to something half-forgotten. Then he says, quiet, like a memory. “Siberia. 1955.”
The words gut you.
“I remember,” he says. “You said my name.”
His name. That night. The way he shook—like his own mind was something turning against him. The tremor in his breath. The metal arm pressed tight to his temple, like he could hold back whatever wave was cresting inside. And then your voice, just a whisper: Bucky.
And it worked.
He startled like the sound reached deeper than his programming. Like it found something still human.
You don’t mean to—but you reach up, slowly, and press your hand over his where it still grips your coat. His fingers tighten for a second. Then release.
You look at him. Really look.
The rain has soaked through everything, and he’s shivering. Not from cold. From memory. His breath ghosts in the narrow space between you, and his eyes—God, his eyes—don’t look like a stranger’s.
It looks like home.
He takes a step back and mutters, “Come on.”
You follow him through back alleys and slick cobblestone streets to a squat building with iron balconies and doors that stick. His apartment is a few flights up, small and clean in the way that feels practiced—surfaces scrubbed, not decorated. A cot, a kettle, a folded stack of shirts too neatly pressed. No photos. No noise.
He doesn’t speak at first. Just watches you watch the space, like he’s trying to guess what you’ll say.
“Not what you expected?” he asks eventually, voice rough.
You shake your head. “No. It’s exactly what I expected.”
He scoffs. Sits on the edge of the cot, elbows on knees. “How do you know me?”
And you could lie. You could stall. But you’re tired of running out of time.
But you’re tired of running out of time. Siberia. The hold. The pulse. The kiss in 1602. The quinjet, the gaslight, the plague-soaked rooftops and the boy who lived because you were there. The mission you botched. The rules you broke. The dozens of timelines where he didn’t make it. The handful where he almost did. The way it was always him. And when you finally stop—when the words have left you empty and open and raw—he doesn’t flinch.
He exhales, long and deliberate. His fingers twitch against his knee. Then he looks at you—really looks, and you can feel the moment shift.
“When I saw you again,” he says, voice quieter now, but steadier, “on the street… it wasn’t like remembering something. It was like finishing something.”
You blink. “Finishing?”
He nods, slowly. “Yeah. Like… you know when you’ve had a song stuck in your head for days? Not the lyrics—just the feeling of it. The rhythm. The echo. And then one day it comes on the radio, and your chest just—unlocks. Like something you didn’t know was broken gets put back together.”
He glances down at his hands, then back at you.
“That’s what it felt like. Seeing you.”
You stay silent, afraid to interrupt the thread he's following.
“At first I thought I was losing it,” he admits. “Some hallucination leftover from Hydra. A ghost memory I couldn’t place. But then you moved, and—Jesus—I knew it wasn’t just in my head. The way you looked at me. Like you knew me. Like you weren’t afraid of me.”
His jaw clenches, not from anger, but from something deeper. Held longer.
“I’ve seen that look before,” he says. “Fear. Disgust. Pity, sometimes. I’m used to people stepping back. Or pretending they don’t see me. But you… you didn’t flinch. Not even in the alley. You looked at me like I was—” He falters, and then tries again. “Like I was real. Like I had a name worth saying.”
Your chest aches.
He laughs, a short, unsteady breath. “God, and hearing you say it again—Bucky—like it was the first time all over. I don’t know why that hit so hard. But it did. It felt like… like I’d been underwater for years, and suddenly someone opened a window.”
You don’t say anything.
You’re still trying to breathe around the weight of him.
“I don’t remember everything,” he says. “Not clearly. Flashes, maybe. Cold metal. Smoke. That light—on your face, in that hallway. But I remember how I felt. I remember peace. For like… five seconds. It was the only thing that made sense.”
His gaze flickers to your lips, then back to your eyes.
“I think I’ve been looking for that feeling ever since.”
You don't answer—not with words. There's nothing left to say that would hold the weight this moment needs. So instead, you cross the small stretch of floor between you, slow and deliberate, and sink to your knees in front of him.
Your hand finds his, trembling with some emotion neither of you dares to name, and he lets out a sound—half-breath, half-confession—as your fingers thread together.
“Okay?” you murmur.
He nods, once. But it's not enough. His hands rise, hesitant, then hungry—one brushing the curve of your cheek, the other settling at your waist like he’s still afraid you might vanish. Like if he touches you too hard, you’ll be another dream, another phantom gone by morning.
And then he kisses you.
It starts soft, reverent—his lips just ghosting yours, like he's asking permission. But the second you respond, the second you lean in and kiss him back with everything you’ve carried through centuries of almosts, it shatters something in both of you.
He surges forward.
Kisses you again, deeper this time. More desperate.
Your back hits the wall with a muted thump, and suddenly his hands are everywhere—one splayed across your lower back, the other cradling your jaw. He kisses you like he’s starved for it, like he’s trying to map your mouth, your breath, the corners of your teeth. Like he's trying to memorize you from the inside out.
And then—God—he breaks away just enough to kiss the line of your jaw. The soft spot beneath your ear. Your temple. Your forehead.
“You’re real,” he breathes against your skin, almost like a prayer. “You’re here.”
His lips trail lower, find the bend of your knee as you hitch your leg around his waist. He presses a kiss there too, slow and aching, like it means something. Like everything means something.
You’re both breathing hard now, hands roaming, hearts pounding in rhythm too fast to be calm, too synchronized to be coincidence. He kisses your collarbone. The corner of your mouth. The space beneath your eye, where something like grief still lingers.
He's so gentle. Gentle all the way through until he manages to shove you to the bed, kissing his way down the column of your throat and then it shifts. His hands find their way inside your jeans and he gasps, shakily. "You're so wet, fuck—you're so wet. For me?"
You nod, breathless.
It's another slow dance, as he rolls your jeans off, only to quickly find his way back like he can't stand to be parted from you. His fingers find your entrance, the rough pads of them swiftly finding your entrance and spreading the heat, the wetness around, like he's playing with his meal.
Then Bucky brings his mouth, that beautiful, beautiful mouth, to your cunt to replace his fingers and you swear you may have just died. He's so—he's so passionate, devouring you with a hunger until your spine's arching off the bed, your hands tangling in his soft brown hair. He doesn't stop licking and sucking.
"Bucky, please—oh god, please, don't stop."
You get closer and closer to the edge, hips rutting against his jaw. You feel everything so, so deeply. The way his stubble leaves goosebumps in its wake, his hands digging into your thighs to keep you in place—and then, he slides a finger back inside you as he hums, satisfied with the moans he's wrenched out of you.
It's like coming home. Your orgasm's like a strike of lightning, crying out as you release, close to tears as he laps up the rest of your orgasm.
When he finally stands to start taking off his clothes, you've been reduced to nothing more than a boneless heap on his bed. Your knees are wobbling slightly, but you force yourself to get up anyway, helping him shed the rest. "I'm–here. Let me help."
Bucky smiles. Softly.
"You're so sweet. You're too good for me."
You think you lose another shred of your sanity.
The look in your eyes lights something up in him. He joins you back on the bed and you can feel him, the weight of him, and it's all so familiar. He rests heavy on your thigh and your heart feels like it's about to come out of your chest.
"Bucky, please."
His cock slips inside of you, with a gasp and a groan, and suddenly, Bucky's locking his hands with yours. "Promise me you'll stay."
It's almost overwhelming, but he keeps you grounded. There's just so much of him. There's his teeth on your neck, the burn of his stubble on your collarbones, the way he sucks off marks against your skin and looms over you, like he never wants you to leave him again. His strength is addicting, the way he pushes you so close to breaking.
He says your name again. "Promise me."
You tell yourself—you're never letting him go again. You wrap your arms around him like something fierce, kissing him as he thrusts deeply, hitting the spot that makes stars light up behind your eyes. "Bucky—fuck—I—"
Your name falls from his lips with a groan. "Sweetheart, I'm—"
"Me too," You nod, whining when his pace quickens and it—you don't mean to, but it makes you clench around him. "Let go for me. It's okay."
Bucky looks at you, his grip around your hands tightening, and suddenly, it's a rolling wave of pleasure, over and over and over until you're trembling. You can feel him, his warmth, so fucking much of it, it's addicting. He's still groaning, hips thrusting, like he's trying to carve a home out of you.
You’re not sure how long you stay like that—twined together in the stillness, forehead pressed to his, breath shared in the hush of a room that suddenly feels too charged, too fragile to last.
You don’t want to break it. But you have to.
“Bucky,” you whisper, your voice threading through the quiet like a thread pulled taut. “They’re going to try to take me away.”
His eyes snap open. “What?”
You rest your hand against his chest, feel the beat of his heart stutter beneath your palm. “The TVA. They monitor softpoint drift. I’ve pushed too many lines. Stayed too long. This—” You gesture softly between you, “—this isn’t sanctioned.”
He stares at you like he wants to argue. But he doesn’t. Because he knows you’re not wrong.
“Let them try,” he mutters, jaw tight. His hands tighten where they rest on your waist, grounding. Possessive in the way a storm anchors to the sea. “I won’t let them.”
You smile—sad, crooked, fond. “You might not get a choice. But I will. I always find a way back.”
He swallows hard. “You promise?”
You nod. Press your lips to his again—gentle this time, slow and deliberate, like sealing a vow with your breath. Then you whisper against his mouth:
“I’ll come back. I always come back.”
His eyes close for half a second. And when they open again, they’re full of something wild. Unspoken. Undeniable.
“Next time,” you say, voice shaking with certainty, “next time I’ll stay.”
THE NULL SECTOR | TVA DETENTION LOOP C-9
You broke protocol.
Not for the mission. Not for the stabilization of a softpoint. For him. For a man with a haunted gaze and a heartbeat you should never have memorized.
And the TVA caught up to you.
They always do.
They didn’t drag you out of the field. There was no team of Minutemen, no sirens or threat display. Just a pulse through your timepad, a freeze-frame of motion—and then static. You never even got to say goodbye. Just watched as his apartment in Bucharest faded from view. The world around you disassembled. You didn’t fall through time; it collapsed around you.
And then: nothing.
But nothing wasn’t quiet.
Nothing was the absence of coordinates. A place with no variance, no measurement, no entropy. A sealed chamber of cognitive suspension—standard punishment for agents who breach emotional integrity clauses.
They called it “nullspace” in the manual. But that word doesn’t tell the whole story.
Sometimes you remembered his voice. Sometimes you forgot your own. Time didn’t move here. Not in any way that mattered. You floated in it—bodiless, unraveling, stitched together by a thousand what-ifs that all ended in silence. At first, you tried to count days. Then heartbeats. Then regrets.
You stopped when you couldn’t tell which were yours and which belonged to the lives you’d watched but never lived.
You thought of his hand on your back. His voice rasping low when he asked you to stay. The way his eyes crinkled when he smiled—not every Bucky, but that Bucky. The one who knew without knowing. The one who held out hope like it was a knife and an offering both.
Maybe they’d left you there forever.
But something changed.
When the light shifts again, it’s not like waking.
It’s like surfacing—like clawing your way out of a dream that was also a coffin. You blink against it, vision blurred and lungs tight with the phantom taste of ozone.
The TVA fell, you realize. Or maybe it evolved. The pruning stopped. The sacred timeline shattered. The multiverse stretched open like a wound and you—like so many others—were set loose without fanfare.
Just a blinking cursor on a timepad.
You’re on a bench. Clean metal. White walls. No restraints. Just a single timepad laid neatly on the seat beside you, like it’s been waiting.
You reach for it cautiously. No alerts. No directives. No timeline embedded. The screen flashes once and then settles.
“Welcome back, Agent.”
“Status: Cleared.”
“Assignment Log: Vacated.”
You sit in the silence that follows, your fingers trembling.
“You are free to go.”
They’ve never said that before.
There's no debrief. No memory wipe. No analyst knocking at your door to escort you back to a cubicle and a world of recycled coffee and unread reports. Just… release.
It doesn’t feel real. Then you notice the neatly packaged case file.
When you wrench it open, your eyes gaze upon a few simple words. Your name. Not your alias. Not your designation. Your name. Next to a birthplace.
Earth-616. Brooklyn.
And suddenly that dream… that dream you've always had isn’t a metaphor. It isn’t psychic bleed or misaligned memory. It’s real.
The stoop. The red-brick building. The muffled laughter on the wind. It wasn’t timeline residue.
It was home.
You see it all now: the way the sun hit the side of that building in the dream—your building. The stairs you must’ve climbed a thousand times before the TVA unmade you. The shadow rounding the corner wasn’t just any figure. It was him. That version of him. Bucky Barnes in his sergeant uniform, calling for you before you could catch up.
And you never did. Until now.
The words fall into your chest like stones. Every suppressed instinct, every redacted name, every unexplainable ache when Bucky looked at you like you were someone he’d loved in a dream—all of it clicks into place.
You were never a ghost in the machine. You were a person. You were his.
You stare back at the screen of your timepad. At the quiet, singular prompt at the bottom:
“INPUT COORDINATES.”
Your breath shakes.
For the first time in your life, there’s no mission waiting. No protocol. No watchers behind two-way glass. Just the choice you were never allowed to make.
You don’t hesitate.
EARTH-616 | BROOKLYN, 2026
You're not sure when you first fell in love with him. Maybe it was the 1940s, maybe it was in 1602, maybe it was earlier than language and names.
But you’ve always been sure about how he looks in silhouette—how his shoulders hunch slightly when he’s thinking, how his hands twitch when he’s fighting the urge to reach for something he knows he’s not allowed to want.
And maybe that’s why you keep searching for him in the in-betweens.
In lives that never finished writing themselves, in branch timelines that evaporated before they touched soil. You comb through the TVA archives like a woman possessed—not for intel, not even for closure, but for slivers. A timestamp where his name is scribbled in the corner. A blurry photo of someone with his gait. An anonymous field report that ends with, “target disappeared into snow.”
Everywhere, he disappears. And still, you follow.
You love Bucky Barnes the way fire loves oxygen: recklessly, instinctively. Not just for who he is now, but for every life he never got to live.
For the kid in Brooklyn who dragged Steve out of alley fights, for the soldier who fell off a train and was turned into a ghost, for the man who woke up decades later in Wakanda with a name that felt too big for his mouth. You love him for the quiet moments the world didn’t see—chopping wood in the forest, feeding stray cats on apartment balconies, the way his thumb brushes over his dog tags when he thinks no one’s watching.
Bucky, who made you laugh over terrible coffee in a mess hall in 1943. The one who handed you a damp handkerchief in a zombie-scarred train depot, saying nothing as you wiped blood off your hands. The one in 1602 who watched you from beneath a soot-black hood, eyes squinting through torchlight, and still let you pass.
You remember something he once said—maybe it was in 1955, maybe in 2016, maybe in a fever dream. “People like us… we don’t get soft landings.” And you think that’s the tragedy of it.
He has always been built to break. And you—you keep getting assigned to the wreckage.
There’s a concept you came across once, while embedded in a minor deviation out of Seoul, 1957. Not part of the assignment—just a detail on a bookstore receipt someone left behind.
In-yun. Fate through friction. The belief that even a passing graze between strangers means your souls have already brushed, thousands of times before.
It’s nonsense, by TVA standards. Sentiment dressed up as spiritual determinism. No measurable coefficient. No supporting data. But you haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
You’ve crossed paths with James Buchanan Barnes in more than a hundred timelines. You’ve logged the hours, cataloged the events, archived the footage. On paper, it’s coincidence. Strategic convergence. The mathematics of softpoints aligning with the gravitational pull of significant individuals. He is, after all, a heavily-indexed Variable.
But paper doesn’t account for the way he looks at you—each time new, each time the same. Like he recognizes your silence before you speak. Like your presence reads to him not as anomaly, but inevitability.
He's not supposed to remember you. He can’t. And still, he always sees you.
That’s the part that undoes you.
You ache because in every timeline, you find him. In every universe, you lose him.
But you think—no, you know—if you had to live and comb through thousands more universes just to stand in front of him again, in the year 2026, you’d do it. You’d do it a thousand more.
Because even if all he says is, “Took you long enough,” you’d still believe it was worth the wait.
EARTH-616 | BROOKLYN, 2026
The year is 2026. This Earth breathes uneasily in peacetime. Stark’s foundation has pivoted to disaster relief and neural rehabilitation tech. Wakanda opens its fourth embassy—this one in Seoul. Post-Blip survivor benefits have just passed preliminary legislation in three states. And James Buchanan Barnes—former assassin, occasional Avenger—has just won his election for the U.S. House of Representatives.
Redistricting helped. So did the veterans’ vote. So did the way he looked people in the eye when he told them he remembered what it was like to be used, to be weaponized, to be hollowed out and told to smile for the cameras. But mostly, it was him. The myth re-forged as man.
You find him at the VA in Brooklyn. Technically off-duty, technically supposed to be celebrating. But of course he’s here. Rolling up shirt sleeves to take constituent questions. Translating bureaucratic-speak into something that feels like compassion. He looks like a U.S. History textbook illustration—white dress shirt, tie slightly loosened, blazer draped over the back of a chair.
And somehow still the same soul you’ve met in a hundred different guises. The same gravity. The same ache. Like no matter the universe, he’s always trying to make something right.
You step into the lobby, boot heels echoing on tile, and the gravity of him pulls you forward before you’ve fully decided to be brave.
He’s facing away, head slightly bowed in conversation with a nurse, his hair still too long for Washington norms, tucked neatly behind his ears. The sight of him hits low in your stomach—familiar and wild, as always. The sound of his laugh, rare and rumbling, sends a tremor through your ribs.
“Excuse me,” you say, steadying your voice like it’s just another assignment. “I’m a deeply concerned constituent, and I’d like to register a complaint about your policies.”
He turns.
And the moment lands like gravity reasserting itself.
His eyes go wide. Then narrow. Then go soft in that way only you’ve ever seen—like he’s witnessing a miracle he doesn’t trust yet. He doesn’t say your name. Doesn’t need to.
You only just open your mouth to say something else when he’s already in front of you. And then—
He kisses you.
Not tentative. Not questioning. Just real. Like this has always been the ending he was holding out for. His hand cups the back of your neck like he thinks you might vanish again if he doesn’t keep contact. You let yourself press into it—mouth to mouth, memory to body. The weight of the years falling off both your shoulders.
You pull back, breathless. Smiling.
“You came back,” he says, wonder tucked beneath the rasp of his voice. “You came back.”
Your hands are on his chest now, smoothing fabric just to touch him, to confirm he’s real. “Took me long enough,” you echo, and his smile breaks wide and unguarded, rare and all for you.
Then he stills, just a little.
“You staying?” he asks.
You don’t hesitate.
“Yes.”
And that, his laugh, short and disbelieving, his forehead pressed briefly to yours like a prayer, is the softest landing either of you has ever known.
Chapter Summary/Warnings: You go back to your place, and start to make a choice. Usual warnings, slight emphasis on mental health/emotional abuse.
Tags: Bucky Barnes/Female Reader, enemies to friends to lovers, canon divergence, slow burn, smut, angst, fluff
Chapter 13 - Chapter 15
Read on A03!
You didn’t want to leave.
Happy had gotten all of your security together—although it wouldn’t matter if Miles got his way, which he usually did—and you had to go back to your apartment.
It’s so big. So needlessly cold and big. And you’ve always liked it for the view, but suddenly you just feel like you’re being suspended over the world, never allowed to rest down somewhere soft.
And you’d been given that, for a few nights. Bucky’s place had been small, and a little bare, but it also hadn’t been lonely. You hadn’t gotten as much work done, but he’d been right about that. No one had died. And the pain hadn’t eased, with the rest, but it hadn’t worsened either. It had simply become on almost low, constant hum up your spine as the Mist rioted. And you’d still wake up with your lungs being ground to dust and sweat on your brow, but then you’d stumble to the bathroom and strong arms would catch you halfway there, helping you settle onto the ground and holding your hair out of your face.
Miles never did that. You’d be vomiting in the bathroom after the longer and darker nights, a different type of pain in your body—bigger and hollower and made of you, this is your fault, fucking waste of space—and Miles would pretended he couldn’t hear you.
Although people don’t normally aid the pain they cause.
Bucky would never do that. Hurt you like that. At all. You have evidence for it now, and it’s not helping anything. He cares, and you can know it, but it doesn’t matter. If Miles tugs on your leash, you’ll have to follow.
But you want to stay. And be cared for.
It’s pathetic.
You don’t need it. You don’t. You’ve survived the bond your whole life, and you saved yourself from your past, and you don’t need Bucky. Making someone else care for you has never ended in your favor, because they couldn’t. Your parents are gone, and all your partners saw you as a good, shiny little investment, and you don’t know if Miles ever cared for you, or if he’d simply seen how malignant you were from the start and decided to put you down.
But Bucky had seen you too.
And he cares.
For you.
It’s a little easier to be you when he’s there, and you’re not forcing yourself to stifle or strange anything for the sake of the Show. It’s nice to fall apart and not worry you’re going to be thrown onto the street for it. It’s good to be known, and reassured, and not feel like you’re committing a hedonistic and foul crime for it.
You don’t need this.
But fuck, it feels good.
And you don’t want to go back to your apartment. To looking at the cameras and wondering if anyone is watching you. If you’re going to be saved from this high, barbed tower that you can’t stop building, or if you’ll just have to keep going up and up and up until you either tumble down, or walk straight into the Sun.
You don’t think Bucky’s been checking them. The cameras. There are odd, lingering elements of him being from the 40s, and while one of them isn’t modestly, it’s something close to it.
Chivalry.
That’s why he always opens the door for you. While when you’d changed at his place—in the bathroom, behind two closed doors—he’d always be keeping his back to you until you returned to the living room. You got to choose dinner, and TV, and he’d always carry you to bed instead of just letting you sleep on the couch.
“I know you’re fakin’.” He’d muttered in your ear on the second night, and you hadn’t been able to stop your eyes from flying open. “There she is-“
“Shut up.” You’d grumbled, rolling slightly until your face was pressed to Bucky’s chest.
It wasn’t cheating. And Miles wasn’t a hound dog. He wouldn’tsmell Bucky on you. By the time he got back, this would just be a memory you’d buried in your arteries, to be dug up on lonelier nights and make you feel more alive. And Bucky hadn’t protested. He’d only held you a little tighter.
It hadn’t helped the slowly growing and spreading feelings. It was starting to bloom in your intestines.
Dangerous.
But Bucky had laughed, and you couldn’t really be fucked to try and stop it.
“And there’s the smart mouth. And it’s a good try, but I’m not sleepin’ on the bed.”
“But it’s your bed.”
“And you’re my guest, and the one bein’ body guarded. You get the bed. End of discussion.”
You’d sighed, grumbling against his body. “This is an abuse of power.”
Bucky had chucked, and it had vibrated in his chest, dislodging something that sent a new wave of the Mist flooding through your body.
It had clouded over your head and drowned out most of the world, almost knocking you out with the sheer force of it.
Bucky’s words had still made it through.
“We both know I don’t have any real power here, Butterfly.”
You don’t know if you’d responded.
You do know that he’d been wrong. So incredibly wrong. Bucky cared, and you trusted him, and he was the only person you’d met who didn’t try to grab you and hold you down like your parents, run faster than you like Tony, or allowed you to roam with watchful eyes like Sam.
Bucky just matched you, step for step, bite for bite, grin for grin. And he had power, because you wanted him to know you, and stay.
He could break you, you think. If he looked through all your stained glass and folded tapestries, all the way down to that winged, loud, beaten-down core, and decided you weren’t worth it. You’d survived worse.
You really don’t want to find out if you could survive that.
And you hadn’t wanted to be his guest. You wanted this to, maybe, be it. Everything. And Bucky would sleep at your side and be there when you woke up, just like in your dreams, and maybe the bond would kill you, but you’ve died before.
You think you’ve died before.
You’ve been having a lot of really, really strange dreams.
There’s no one left in the world but you, and the flowers. Blooming through the ash as it turns back to air, then to dirt, then to soil, and everything starts to grow once more.
Everything but you. Wandering this prison alone.
It’s one you created. And there’s no life left but you, but it will return. Everything will recover, and maybe civilizations will be built once more, and you will become nothing more than a ghost story. A lonely phantom at the edges of the universe, more alive than anyone else, except where it counts.
They’ll give warnings about you. Whatever evolves into the next dominate form of life will tell tales about the strange looking girl that all the shadows move towards, how the wind is haunted by Her tears, and how She never moves from Her place. How they should dread the day She does, for everything will feel it when Her grief becomes too much to bear once more.
Then it won’t matter, for them. They’ll all be ash, just like those before them, and you’ll sit here another million years.
Barely more than a stature with a heartbeat, although your heart is buried in the dirt, blooming with moonflowers and never holding you again.
You wake up from this one with only blood-burning pain and the Boy, nudging your face with his nose and curling on your chest when you start to pet him.
You’re back in your apartment. In the big bed you hate sleeping in, with the longest shadows creeping over the mattress and under your skin until dawn breaks the sky.
You’re starting to worry about the dreams more. How they’re getting more and more vivid, and echoing in the world around you, and how—the more they come—the more pain there is in your body. But you can’t tell anyone. It would involve talking about how fast the bond is fraying and snapping, even when Miles has barely been gone a week.
And Miles wouldn’t care. You can’t even get him on the phone to help with the bond.
And you know you can’t tell Bucky. He would try to do something about it. You’re sure of that now.
He cares, and he’d try to free you, and it would end horribly.
“Listen.” He’d said the morning you were heading back, and you hadn’t missed the way he’d angled himself over you at the table, as if he was trying to give himself more authority.
It had been kind of adorable. For him to think he didn’t need to just use the commanding voice and eyes, and you wouldn’t feel like some sort of hazy spell had been cast over your body.
“Are you listening-“
“I’m listening.” You’d crossed your legs under your body, raising your brows. “You need to talk, though.”
He’d rolled his eyes, but pressed on. “Alright, smartass. You need to listen-“
“I just said-“
“All the time.” Bucky had snapped, narrowing his eyes. “Not just now. I know we’re past our deal of how this works, but I’m fuckin’ serious. If I tell you not to do somethin’ for your safety, you listen. And if you’ve got a problem with it, you use that mouth of yours to tell me. We’re a team. Stop tryin’ to do everything by yourself.”
“I- I’m-“ Your heartbeat had been in your ears, and it hadn’t been the pain. It had been Bucky’s glare, driving right into you with care. He cared. For some fucking reason, Bucky really cared, and his jawline was really sharp when he glowered, and his eyes were so blue and focused on you and-
He’s looking at you again. The way only Bucky’s ever looked at you, where he can see right into you and find nothing but beauty in it. There’s nothing to be said. Nothing that needs to be said. Your breathing is shallow and the world is spinning, but when you stumble, Bucky catches you and doesn’t let go. There’s a sound like a drum building in your ears. A feeling like you’re being frozen and burned alive all at once, and it’s coating your skin like poison, but Bucky just keeps holding you. You could hurt him. He knows you could hurt him. And there’s nothing to stop you, but he’s still just holding you, and he needs to let go-
You must say that aloud, because Bucky shakes his head, and only holds you tighter.
“I’m keepin’ you, Butterfly.” He picks you a little up off the ground, and you drop your brow to his shoulder without thought. “I know, sweet girl. I’ve got you.”
The vision had faded back into nothing, Bucky had grunted your name, and you’d nodded nervously.
“Okay. I- I’ll stop pushing it-“
“No, that’s not-“ Bucky had sighed, shaking his head. “I don’t care that you’re pushin’ it. I know you’re going to push it, kid. Just stop trying to push it without me. I meant it.” He’d leaned forward, his features neutral but nostrils flaring slightly —you still didn’t know what that Look meant—and held your wide-eyed gaze. “You’re important. And I’m not letting anything happen to you. So stop trying to test that.”
You’d swallowed and nodded, a small fear in your chest that if you spoke, you’d tell him. The truth. All of the truth. About the bond and Miles and how you’d like some help there too, please.
That was too much to ask. That wasn’t something a friend asked of another friend.
Although the lines between what friends did and didn’t do was becoming blurred.
The week continues to pass, and Bucky’s boots are living next to your door.
You don’t know if he misses you too, when you’re not there. You know you miss him. You know that when he parks in the garage after work, and you both stare at each other for an impossibly long moment, there’s always a fear in your body that he’ll just go, and you’ll spend the rest of the night alone.
But he doesn’t go.
For three nights in a row, he’s helped you out of the car, rolled his eyes as you hummed what a gentleman, and followed you upstairs.
He might just be trying to keep an eye on you.
If he is, you can’t really bring yourself to be mad about it.
It means that Bucky, at the end of it, just cares. Enough to make you go to bed the moment you yawn. To not snap at you when you talk over the TV, looking at you with a vague amusement and small grin on his face, his arm over the back of the couch and his own comments short and dry and easy.
Having Bucky here is so easy.
He’s slotted himself into your life with an impossible ease, and now you can’t imagine him being anywhere else. Next to you, holding your hair back, driving you up the wall in a way that makes you feel—for the first time you can remember—comfortably alive.
“No.” Bucky grabs your laptop from your hands before it’s even fully out of your bag, holding it high over your head with the vibranium arm. “You’re takin’ the night off, kid.”
You scowl, crossing your arms over your chest and raising your chin. “You’re not my boss, Buck. Give me back my computer.”
“You can have it if you can take it.”
“I- You fucking asshole-“
“I know.” He grins down at you. “C’mon, sweetheart. Give it a shot.”
There’s no way you can physically take it from him. He’s a super solider, and you’ve been getting lightheaded when you stand up.
He’s smirking. He knows that.
“Asshole.”
“You already said that.”
“I’m saying it again.” You stick your tongue out at him, holding your ground. “What can you possibly be gaining from this, James? Do you feel like a big man, keeping my computer hostage?”
He just laughs. “Yeah, I do. You were going to type it to death, I’m doin’ it a favor.”
First plan of attack, a failure. “You suck.”
“I’ve also heard I’m an asshole.”
“Shut up.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The Mist rushes you, and suddenly you’re swaying slightly on your feet.
Bucky catches you. He always catches you. And when the dark spots over your vision clear he’s frowning down at you in his arms, the laptop moved somewhere you can’t see as the vibranium hand brushes hair from your eyes.
“You alright?” Bucky mutters your name, and your fingers curl in his neck.
You’re alright. Bucky’s got you.
He’s got you. He’s always got you.
There’s something worse than Hell roaring for you in the ash, but Bucky’s got you.
And nothing is going to hurt either of you again.
Something is happening to you. Something with the Mist, and Bucky, and so much pain that’s never going to stop.
“This.” Bucky mutters your name, so soft you’re not sure if you’re supposed to hear. “This is why you need to slow down. You’re gonna burn yourself out.”
You won’t. You’ve moved faster and faster for far longer and through more pain.
But now it’s Bucky asking you to rest. With him.
So you can only nod, and hum an okay.
“Good girl.” He mutters, helping you fully to your feet, and that’s not helping anything.
Now all you can imagine doing is jump onto him and seeing how he’ll catch you then. If he’ll receive the building pressure between your thighs, every time bare skin brushes yours or he smiles at you from his eyes.
He keeps smiling at you from his eyes.
“If I gotta take a night off, you do too.” He drawls, herding you to the couch. “But, in case you’re thinkin’ of being a brat, I brought you shit.”
“You-“ It takes a second to compose yourself. You think Bucky might be trying to kill you. “Are you trying to bribe me, Sargent Barnes?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not very ethical.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He gives you a flat look, dropping down to fumble through his backpack. “You want your bribes or not?”
You swallow, and give him a small nod. “Yes, please.”
“Sit.”
He’s using the voice, but you don’t think he even knows there is a voice. His eyes even flash with slight surprise when you listen immediately, and his nod is slow.
“Alright.” Bucky draws back up from his bag, his hands set behind his face. “First, for the Boy.”
“For the-“ You squeak as Bucky tosses you a small bag. “Oh.”
Cat treats.
Bucky bought you cat treats.
And that shouldn’t be making a small lump form in your throat, but it is. He bought you cat treats. The same cat treats you’d been giving the Boy, when you’d been at his place. He’d noticed what treats you bought, and he’d gotten them for the Boy, and this isn’t fair. It would be so nice to make this permanent, but it won’t be, and you’d love for Bucky to be yours for a long time—maybe until that end of world you’ve been dreaming about—but he can’t be.
“Shit, I- Are you-“
“I’m good.” You whisper, offering him a small smile. “I’m really good, Buck. Thank you.”
He blinks at you, a small frown on his lips and his stance a little more tense than usual, but he still nods slowly.
“Yeah. That’s- alright. You want the other thing?”
You nod—words don’t seem wise right now—and Bucky clears his throat.
“I know you said this a while ago, and you mighta been jokin’, but I figured best to give it a shot. So, uh- Here.”
Bucky holds out a small stack of papers, and you frown up at him. “I have paper, Buck. You got me paper.”
“This isn’t paper. It’s got words.”
“It’s-“ You lean forward, and it does indeed have words.
Not typed, though. Written in a tight, neat script, signed JBB at the top.
“Bucky?” You glance up, and find him shuffling awkwardly on his feet. “Is this a book report?”
“Yeah. I- You said I could know the Boy’s real name. If I did the book report.”
“Oh.” You didn’t think he’d actually do it.
There’s no way is hell you’re going to be able to not tell him now.
“Do you want me to… go get him?” You ask, fighting a smile at Bucky’s confused expression. “The Boy. For the big name reveal.”
Bucky’s nostrils flare, his voice suddenly a little hoarse. “You’re gonna tell me?”
“I said I would, didn’t I?” You give him a mock-offended expression. “I’m wounded you’d think I’d lie.”
His lips twitch. “Yeah. Don’t know where I ever woulda gotten that idea.”
“I know.” You give a full, unrestrained smile, and you really don’t care if he sees you anymore.
You want him to.
“Are you ready?”
“Born it, Butterfly. You want me to guess, first?”
“No, you won’t get it.”
“You’ve got so much faith in me, sweetheart-“
“Shut up. It’s Behemoth.”
Bucky blinks at you. “Beeheemot.”
“Beh-heh-mot.” You correct, and as if he was summoned, the Boy jumps right up to your lap. “It’s a biblical sea monster. Just like you.”
You boop the Boy’s nose, he blinks at you slowly, and Bucky clears his throat. He’s staring at you, an odd, heavy Look—maybe confusion, although he’s not blinking enough—written over his face, and you frown.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, uh-“ He coughs, shaking his head slightly. “Just not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“Not sure.” He’s still making a strange face. “How’d- Uh- How’d you come up with that?”
“I dunno.” You shrug. “Read it somewhere, I guess. Don’t really remember.”
“Huh.”
You nod absentmindedly, the Boy nudging your hand with his nose. “Yeah, it’s um- It’s one of those glossy memories I was talking about. I- I just try not to think about them-“
“You don’t have to,” Bucky mutters, dropping onto the couch at your side. “Just an odd name. But,” he gives you a small grin, and it’s still from his eyes. “You’re kind of an odd person.”
You smile at him. “You’re an odd person too, Sargent Barnes.”
“It’s the metal arm, isn’t it.”
“No.” You hum, scratching behind the Boy’s ear, and Bucky sighs.
“You’re gonna make me guess, aren’t you.”
“Maybe.” You throw him an open, teasing look. “You gonna tell me why I’m odd.”
“You wanna know?”
You shrug, holding his gaze, and Bucky leans forward.
Far forward.
His knee is bumping yours, and it’s a little mind numbing, and suddenly nowhere in the worlds exists outside of Bucky, and his deep, amused voice.
“I think you’re odd.” He drawls your name, holding your gaze. “Because you’re mean, and the kindest person I’ve ever met.”
“I- Oh.”
“Never seen someone be so mouthy and sweet all at once,” he hums, and it’s good you’re already sitting down. “It’s fucking captivating, Butterfly. Didn’t understand why everyone loves you at first, but now I do. You’ve got some sort of spell. Doesn’t make any sense otherwise.”
Your voice is small, when you respond. “Everyone doesn’t love me, James-“
“Yeah, they do.”
“No-“
“Only people that don’t are the suits, and they don’t love you cause they know you’re better than they are. Everyone else? You’ve got them hooked.”
You can only stare at him. People don’t love you. They tolerate you, because they haveto. Because you’re the boss or the toy or the charity case. The too alive girl that’s eating Herself in the corner, and is best left alone or She’ll eat you too.
But Bucky’s saying it like it’s a fact. A given.
And the Mist is going to split your nerves apart.
“Why am I odd? C’mon, I showed you mine-“
“I like you.”
Bucky blinks, frowning slightly, but you push on before he can speak.
“I- I don’t like a lot of people. Not really. Not to talk to, or hang out with, or-“ You swallow, shaking your head. “I just prefer being alone. Easier. But I- I don’t want to be alone, if talking to you is an option.”
And that’s dangerous. Is what you should add. I can do things no one person should be able to do, and it’s all under the control of a vile man I can never escape, so you should run before I hurt you more than you’ve already been hurt. More than you deserve. Please run, Bucky, now.
He doesn’t run. He just stares at you, and whatever spell he was talking about, you’re the one under it. Bucky’s holding your gaze, and you’re like a fly in a trap. You’re not going to be the one to move. You can’t be.
You’ll do something really, really stupid if you’re the one to move.
Maybe it’s good, the door flies open when it does. That you kick into the show based on pure instinct and scramble back across the couch, because no one else walks with those stomping steps and barges in without knocking. Like they own the place.
And they don’t. You do.
But it’s Miles.
So that schematic doesn’t matter at all.
“Honey, go put on the red dress, we’re going-“ Miles freezes when he sees you.
With Bucky.
And freezes is the wrong word. He goes still. Like a fucking predator.
Bucky doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t know he should. That with one word from Miles, you might be turned into a cruel, unforgiving animal.
He has no way to know. You haven’t warned him.
“Barnes.” Miles says, his voice cool, and your blood shivers when his attention turns to you. “What’s the sidekick doing here.”
Bucky shifts in your periphery. “I was-“
“Didn’t ask you, buddy.” Miles snaps, not looking away from you. “What’s he doing.”
“I- We’ve been getting some extra threats at the office,” you whisper. A half-truth is better—and safer—than a lie. “Sam asked him to do a sweep of our apartment. To make sure we’re safe-“
Miles snorts at that. “Tell Wilson to keep that shit to himself.”
Bucky tenses, but you know Miles’ dismissal isn’t for the reason he’s thinking. It’s not that Miles doesn’t care if you live or die—he does, though mostly because you’re a good asset—it’s that he knows if someone were to try and hurt you, at least while he was here, they’d be the one in danger.
How you’ll fare on your own doesn’t seem to occur to him though, as he stomps across the carpet and you keep your eyes fixed on his shoes.
“We’re going out.” He snaps your name, and you keep your head bowed. “Go put on that dress. I got a party I need you at. And you,” his voice turns venomous, and you know he’s looking at Bucky. “Get out of my apartment.”
Bucky doesn’t move. And you can feel his gaze on yours, giving you a silent permission he doesn’t understand the weight of. If you ask him to stay, he will.
You can’t ask him to stay. It will get him hurt. You don’t care about the punishment that will follow as well—Miles either abusing the bond until you’re worn thin, or neglecting it until you’re too weak to get out of bed—but you care what will happen to Bucky, if you’re to selfish, and beg him to stay.
To save you.
And in all those stories with happy endings, where the Princess gets saved from the dragon, the Princess and the Dragon are never the same. She’s never asking to be saved from the chain she wrapped around her neck, that painted itself as blanket, then wound itself a little too tight.
Bucky can’t save you. But by just standing and walking to your room—the Boy squeaking and following after you—you’re saving him.
And you need to find a way to tell him that. Somewhere no one else will hurt either of you, where you’ll explain it and beg on your knees for him to do nothing. But he can’t think you’re just walking away. You never want to walk away. Not from Bucky. He’s slowly becoming the best place in the world to be, and you’re not strong enough to fight that anymore.
So you’ll tell him.
Somehow, you’ll figure out how to tell him everything. If he sees this pathetic, weak part of you and somehow stays.
He might not stat. Not after this. He might be angry for how you just let Miles kick him out, and you won’t be friends anymore.
And you have bigger things to worry about than if Bucky will still like you. But that doesn’t stop the thought from looping in your head, over and over, until you’re certain you’ll have driven yourself insane by the end of the night.
“Why was he on the couch,” Miles spits your name as he stomps into the room, and you flinch slightly.
You messed up your eyeliner.
Now you have to start over, or the entire Show will fall apart.
“I was being polite.” You don’t look away from the mirror as you scrub everything off, and then go a little further. Until your skin is stinging and red. “He finished the sweep, and it felt rude to kick him out-“
“I don’t give a fuck what’s rude.” Miles is standing behind you. His hand has found its way to hold your waist, and you have to give him a sweet smile.
It looks wrong on your face. Like it’s more rotting than really, truly sweet. Like opening the core of an apple to find it filled with worms.
But Miles doesn’t seem to think anything is wrong.
So you’re playing your role well.
“Next time that ass shit tries to make a move on you, say no.”
The flush rising up your cheek is, for once, genuine. “I- He wasn’t-“
“Don’t be stupid.” Miles rolls his eyes, squeezing your hip. “I know men, honey. He wants to get into your pants.”
No, he doesn’t. You would have noticed if he did.
You would have.
You’re not sure what Bucky wanting you would look like, but you’d be able to figure it out. You think you’d be able to figure it out. He may stare at you all the time, but he stares at everyone. He always drawls your name, but he drawls everything. It’s the Brooklyn accent. And it slips out when he’s comfortable, so-
Comfortable.
Bucky’s comfortable with you.
That doesn’t mean anything.
But it could.
And you’re lucky Miles never really looks at you deeper than the surface. Otherwise he might have seen that tiny break in the show, and it would have ended in a locked bathroom door and a lot more makeup.
“I bet he made the threat himself.” Miles is muttering, changing out of his blood-red tie into a different blood-red tie. “Just to have an excuse to push his way into you. Grab the damsel then bend her over the couch.”
Bucky hadn’t bended you over any couch. He’d carried you to bed, then held your hand.
You’re not allowed to do anything but focus on your mascara.
“You know, this is exactly fucking why you should quit that stupid fucking Stark job and move with me. I’d be able to keep an eye on you, and Barnes would never know where the hell you went. Would leave you the fuck alone, keep his grimy metal hands off my shit-“
Your hands are shaking slightly.
Deep breaths. Swallow the vomit, and take deep breaths. You can’t slip a second time.
“Hogan’s been fucking avoiding me. I’ll track the dipshit down. Just because he was in Stark’s circle doesn’t mean he gets to ignore me, and Stark’s fucking dead-“
Shit.
There’s a stain of mascara on your upper cheekbone. If you’re careful, you can turn it into a beauty mark.
“Do my tie.”
That’s an order. And it’s not a pull on the bond, but you still can’t disobey. It’s not like you’ve never done Miles’ tie before. You know exactly how to force your fingers to be steady, and keep yourself small and meek as you stand before him. When you’re done, you’ll take a step back and keep your eyes on the ground until Miles approves your own outfit, and then the real show begins.
It's a tightrope. You belong to Miles, but you’re not the creature he’s beaten into submission. You’ve chosen to latch to his side, and there will be crude things said behind your back—questions of how wide your legs can spread to fit Miles and Tony, jokes about you being a secret dominatrix behind closed doors that Miles can’t be allowed to hear—but you’re okay with them. They certainly don’t sting a layer deeper than anyone can ever see, and any hitch in your breath is from public arousal rather than fear.
Miles keeps himself around you because you’ve asked him to. Because you like the sensation of his body—always so strangely white-hot, feeling more like stone than flesh—over yours. And you only smile at him pathetically because you are, always, just a lovesick little girl.
“How’d you manage to put a leash on the Cattle Prod, Toper?”
Miles laughs, and you keep your smile plastered on your face.
It’s funny. You’re too ditzy to understand how it’s funny, but you’re still supposed to be aware that it’s funny. The Show means that you just keep fucking smiling, and when Miles’ hand wanders down to squeeze your ass in front of all these other suits, you like it.
No bile can make it past your throat. No pain can do more than fog your vision and cause your head to spin.
You just giggle like some silly idiot, and flutter your eyes up at Miles as he spares you less than a glance.
“You just need a whip, Johnson.” Another squeeze of your ass. Keep fucking smiling. “You got the right one, then they just come back begging you for more. Isn’t that right, honey?”
“Hm?” You bat your eyelashes—too long, and little sticky on your face—up at Miles, and he laughs.
You nailed your line.
You just have to keep getting through the night.
And these parties are almost always the exact fucking same, so you’ve had practice. Stay at Miles’ side like he’s glued you there. Never look him or anyone else in the eye, or they’ll take it as an invitation. Keep walking that line of sweet, small little bunny for Miles and lustful, whoring bitch without stumbling, or everything will fall to the ground. If someone asks you about the Foundation, don’t answer unless Miles repeats the question. If you need to go to the bathroom—for any reason—hold it. Eat and drink whatever is handed to you. Never say no, or there will be consequences, but don’t do anything where people think you might say yes.
Miles says if men think you’ll say yes, they’ll ask. And in your experience, he’s not wrong.
But Bucky doesn’t do that.
He’ll ask when he knows you’re going to say no. He holds your gaze and stays a pace behind you all the time, letting you lead the way then grabbing you whenever you stumble.
Catching you.
Bucky always catches you, and he lets you talk all you want, and if you need to go the bathroom he waits at the door until you’re done.
And when you no, he may push it, but he still respects it. No cameras until you say so. No questions about your past until you’re volunteering the information. No days off until you’re crashing and burning, and he’s fucking catching you.
He’d hate this as much as you do. He’s hate all the suits and their over-postering, and mutter in your ear that it’s not even proper posture. That in the military the shoulders go back, and the chest puffs out naturally. If you’re puffing out the chest on its own, you’re doing damage.
Bucky would agree that the food was shit. Tiny portions that taste like either nothing, or shit. Not a single bit of flavor or spice to be found.
And you’d tell him that Sargent Oatmeal isn’t allowed to grumble about flavor, and he’d say that he’s earned it. And all these assholes are babies compared to him. There’s no spice because they couldn’t handle it.
You’d agree with that. Miles can’t handle spice. He refused to even touch it.
And all these assholes are babies, compared to Bucky. Throwing tantrum about their money and trying to show off their shiny toys.
Bucky would stand with you silently in the corner. No forced conversation with strangers who might want something from you.
It could just be you and Bucky, in the dark, talking about whatever you wanted.
But Miles wants you to meet someone. And it’s not useful to compare them, but that doesn’t stop you. Bucky’s hand wouldn’t feel like an intrusion on your body, and he’d be guiding you rather than pushing you. It would be easier to keep your pace in these too-high heels, because Bucky would match your pace.
And he wouldn’t shove you out onto the roof without a jacket-
The roof.
Why the fuck are you on the roof.
“Miles.” You whisper, and your voice possible lost to the wind. “I- I’m not-“
“Quiet.” He grunts, his voice in your ear crawling over your very bones. “We’ve got some business to take care of, honey. The more you behave, the sooner we go back to the party.”
You bite on your inner cheek, and nod. You should have fucking known. It’s never just a party. It’s a place for Miles to remind you of your place. Remind you that you’re his attack bitch, and it’s only when you remember it that everything can be easy. If you don’t fight your leash, and don’t bite his hand, then that’s it. You do go back inside, and he’ll leave soon, and the pain gets to lessens as the edge from the bond is removed.
But the pain has been so much worse. The bond has been fraying too fast, and there’s always another party, and your leash has always felt like more of a noose.
It doesn’t matter.
You always have too much to lose. And you’re always still just the vicious, ugly, bitch.
So you bow your head, and close your mouth.
There’s a small, weedy man pacing back and forth. He’s positioned himself away from the edge of the building—he must have heard, for somewhere, that Miles Toper doesn’t do clean business—but it won’t matter.
You’re the real danger here.
“Listen, Toper, I-“ The man cuts himself off, his eyes widening on you. “Who the hell is this? You said we’d be meeting alone.”
“We are meeting alone.” Miles sighs. He’s keeping you in front of him.
A shield.
“I don’t know if you’re blind or stupid, but there’s a fucking lady-“
“This is my girlfriend, Eric. And don’t worry, she’s just a pretty face.”
You’re not a pretty face. There’s something hideous ripping its way up your spine in anticipation. It knows what’s coming, just as you do. Just like Miles does.
Poor Eric hasn’t quite caught on yet.
“She might say something, Toper-“
Miles laughs. “No, she won’t. She doesn’t bark, isn’t that right, honey.”
You keep your smile wide and sweet, even if it’s all full lips and no teeth. You’re not supposed to have teeth yet. Not until Miles orders them out.
“See?” Miles drawls. “Isn’t she pretty?”
Eric shakes his head. “Man, I just- I want to get this over with-“
“Tell her she’s pretty.” Miles repeats, and you don’t have to look back to see the sneer on his face.
“You- You’re very pretty, miss-“
“Say thank you,” Miles says in your ear, and you can’t fall over from the dizzying fucking pain. It’s everywhere, and it’s biting at all the nerves over your skull and driving like an ice pick into your brain.
“Thank you.” You whisper, and Miles chuckles.
“See? We can all have civil conversations, can’t we? Have you given my offer anymore thought, Eric?”
“I- I can’t- You’re asking for more than I can afford-“
Miles scoffs. “You’ll be able to afford it. Everyone can afford it-“
“I can’t-“
“Even you’re not that bankrupt.” Miles snaps, and Eric flinches. “And you’re desperate. I know you’re desperate. And I’ll be able to take care of everything, if you’d just fucking sign you human ballsack.”
Eric swallows, and—in a feat of bravery you don’t think the man knows he’s doing—stands a little taller, and shakes his head. “No. I won’t.”
Miles sighs, but you know he expected this.
He wouldn’t have brought you if he didn’t.
And he says your name, his grip bruising on your arm, and you just have to keep fucking smiling. “Make him understand.”
You nod, and it’s right at the edge of your fingertip, trying to sear its way into the air. If you don’t let it out, it will turn in and kill you.
But still, even as you look Eric right in the eye and he sees it—you, the last part of you, the hateful and dark and bloodied part that even Bucky hasn’t been able to find—you mouth I’m sorry.
You truly are.
This is going to hurt you, too.
Eric’s mind is made of files. It’s neat, and cold, and mostly empty. From in here, he seems like a lonely, boring little man.
But as you wander the halls—god, it’s annoying when people are halls, but it’s better than the mazes—all the brightest bits of him are blinding. He has a son, and the kid has the same bump on their forehead that your little brother Tommy always used to get. The one that means they move too fast and always get right back up, before sporting the lumping bruise like it’s a badge of honor. Eric has a dog, too. And it’s a loyal little thing that, in all the files you can open and find, is always trailing after him and wagging its tail.
He thinks mostly in fear. In what ifs. What if he’d gone to a different collage. What if he’d moved away from home. What if he hadn’t run that night, what if he’d been braver and said how he felt. But it’s quiet. The fear of a man who’s already accepted it’s all he’ll be.
It’s even more impressive that he told Miles no.
And even more tragic that it doesn’t matter.
God, you don’t want to do this. He volunteers at soup kitchens and eats from the same Greek restaurant every Friday night, because he has a crush on the owner. And he knits, and he’s shit at it, but he still does it because it makes him happy.
Miles said you had to make him understand, though. He’d shoved you in here, and now if you don’t, you’ll die. And your brother won’t have anyone, and the Boy will be put out on the street because Miles hates him. You may deserve this fate, but they don’t. You’re here for them. For anyone but yourself.
It’s easier to do this quick. To do as you’re told, and get out.
Eric’s center is a big, white room with a lot of faded images pinned neatly on a corkboard. You place your palm flat on the floor, and whisper into the soupy torment of this poor, sad man.
“Be more open. Be more careful. Be a little selfish, and do as he asks.”
You fly back out, you’re on the floor. Miles hadn’t caught you, when you’d gone under. You wish you knew how to do it without going into a mind—your mother said you’d been able to do that before, but the secret of how is gone with her—but you don’t hate how you can’t see it happen. The only visible aftereffects on Eric are the scratch marks on his face and the clump of hair in hands.
It would be nice to make it not hurt, too. But at least you don’t have to hear them scream.
And Eric’s not a strong enough man to fight what you did. His eyes open slowly, a cautious, but curious expression on his face, and Miles grins.
It’s such an ugly fucking smile. It’s like a shark. Sharp, white teeth, and a dead look in his eyes right before he swallows his prey whole.
Miles says your name, and doesn’t even spare you a glance. “Go inside. I’ll get you when I’m done.”
You nod, and stumble away. Back into the glittering lights and stifling air that’s too hot and too cold.
The pain should be gone, now. You used your power, and the bond should be like an iron chain, and you should be better.
You’re not. The Mist is back, and it’s churning in your gut and making your throat ache, and why the fuck isn’t the pain gone. It should be gone.
There’s an open bar. Miles might be a while, and even if he’s not and you get in trouble for drinking, there’s nothing he’ll do to you that you don’t fucking deserve.
The first whiskey burns, but not more than the pain, and not enough to numb it. So you take another. And another. And a woman with lipstick that’s a really ugly shade of red comes up to you and ask for your name, and you’re not sure if you tell her. Then another man puts his hand on your waist, and you stumble away to a dark corner of the room.
A waiter finds you there. Offers you champagne on a fancy silver tray.
It still hurts. You just want it not to hurt.
You take the glass.
And the fourth whiskey shot. And the vodka shot. And Miles is taking forever, and you just want to go home but you’re not allowed to yet, so when another woman with curly hair in the bathroom offers you some absinthe, you take that too.
The room is spinning with light like a disco ball. The Show isn’t dropping yet. It has to keep going, until you crash and crash and crash.
You’re getting closer.
You’re never quite there yet.
Someone grabs your wrist, and you smile at them. The Show doesn’t let you say no.
It’s a strange, older looking man. Broad. A worn face and heavy features, scanning over you with his brow furrows. His skin is clammy on yours, and his eyes are beady, and the whiskers of his beard look like they’re trying to fall off his face.
“You.” He whispers, scanning over your face. “Are so beautiful, Левиафан.”
“Левиафан.” Another man is standing over you. This one is wearing gloves.
That must be your fault.
You must have touched something, or someone, and now they’re trying to put it back together. This man doesn’t want to be broken too.
“Tree.” He nods to the sapling in front of you. “Kill it.”
You don’t want to. But if you don’t, they won’t let anyone visit you.
People barely visit you at all.
You still don’t think you can stand to keep being alone.
Your fingers rest on the weaker bark, and you’re never sure how to do this. It’s just a hum under your skin, cool and soft and turning all the time, and if you can weave it into something beautiful in your head, then-
It happens suddenly. A leaf twitches. Then a second leaf sprouts out.
Then the tree shoots up. The trunk grows thick, and the ground shakes as roots break through the concrete floor, and the man is shouting for you to stop but you don’t know how. Everything is just waxing and turning in your body and grabbing it back down would hurt so fucking much, and-
Something releases into the air with a hiss, and white smoke clouds your vision, before it all goes dark.
When the vision clears, you’re stranded. In the middle of the crowded room, with hundreds of people who are better than you—who have never felt all this fucking pain—blurring around you and never once sparing you more than an odd glance.
The man is gone.
And nobody can fucking see it. See how you’re going to bend, going to bow, going to fall to your knees under the weight of this and never be able to get the fuck back up. They’re all moving so fast, but still too slow, and you want to scream but your voice is stuck to the walls of your fucking throat and-
Your knees are weak. And you can’t tell if it’s the drinks that are making your every step unsteady, or the way you’re so lightheaded you’re sure you’re going to be pushed violently down, but your balance is off. You’re bumping into sharp corners, and you’re going to fall-
The door of the coatroom slams behind you, and your fingers fumble for the lock.
There’s a click.
And you stumble back, and sink down to the floor with a hand over your mouth.
It hurts. Everything hurts, and you’re cold and alone and trapped.
You want to be saved, but you can’t even stand or call out. And you certainly don’t deserve it.
You’ll have to drag the Show back together. Just enough to get home and collapse like this on bathroom floor. Maybe, if Miles leaves right after of passes out, you’ll be able to call Bucky.
Maybe he’ll pick up.
Maybe if you ask him to save you, he will. Maybe if you tell him what you are, he somehow won’t hate you. Won’t finally see just how fucking evil you are.
It doesn’t matter right now. Not much does.
You certainly don’t.
Right now, you stay huddled on the floor of the dark room, alone and all too much, and try to pretend you’re not in pain.
It’s getting so hard.
But you have to. Until you tell Bucky—and only if he decides to stay—you have to.
If you fall down alone again, you’re not sure you’re going to get back up.
End Note: I'm soft launching her powers. Is it working. AND HI!! THANK YOU GUYS FOR WAITING! I'M BACK!
Thank you so much for reading!! If you like this story, please reblog, share, or leave a comment! <3
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Taglist (If you want to be added, please fill out the form!)
Tags: Bucky Barnes/Female Reader, sex pollen, smut (fingering, oral f!receiving, handjob, p in v sex), angst, light fluff, humor, no use of y/n, love confessions
Summary: After you get hit with a chemical on a mission, Bucky has to take care of you. But he won't do the one thing that will fix it, no matter how much you want him to.
And he wants it too. Maybe more. And, at some point, something has to break.
Author's Note: Sex pollen won the poll. First Thunderbolts fic. Big things happening. Enjoy!
Word Count: 11.4k
“I told you this was a bad idea, Walker.”
“Yeah, you’re a genius. Do you want a trophy that says I knew it was a bad idea, or a sash-“
“Can I have a trophy?” Alexei pops into the screen, and you really don’t think this has to be a group activity. “I could make it into a very fancy cup!”
You’re lying flat on the granite counter of the safe house, Bucky stiff at your side as he glowers to the video feed, and you might be dying. Or just burning alive. There’s a hot prickle over your skin that’s only getting worse, a series of cramps in your gut that feels like you’re being shredded apart then slammed back together, and an ache between your legs that isn’t foreign—at least, not when Bucky’s present—but is far too powerful given the circumstances.
Maybe you’ve just lost it. You had been giggling an awful lot while Bucky killed all those Hydra agents, but he’d also called you doll again, and there had been a blissful, fuzzy feeling over your skull. And you’d moaned—really loudly, too—right in Bucky’s ear when he’d hauled you over his shoulder and carried you out of the building.
“Fuckin’- Gonna throw Walker off a roof- We all told him this was a stupid new protocol-“
You’d hummed along to his grumblings, and most of your attention had been fixed on his hair. It was longer now. And he’d been taking care of it, so it was soft, and kind of smelled like vanilla. You’d wanted to tug on it. To run your fingers through it and see if he’d hum. Maybe yank on it while he was deep inside of you-
His muscles had flexed around you, and you’d whined that time.
Whined and buried your face in his neck, before biting back tears as he’d tensed.
The line.
You’d had to remember the line.
Bucky smiles at you more than most people, but the line means that smiles are all you get. He sticks to your side most days, but you’re pretty sure he just feels responsible for you. You’re the lost puppy they picked up off the street. Sweet and likable, but mostly useless.
You aren’t useless.
You try not to be useless.
That’s part of the line, too.
You do a little more for Bucky than the rest of them. You’ll make sure Yelena has all the hamster food she needs, track down Bob all those coloring books he likes so much, and explain to Alexei that no, the government does not know how this season of Yellowjackets is going to end, so you’re not going to ask. But they can figure those things out themselves.
You think.
The point of your job is that none of these people have ever lived normal, 21st century lives, and they need to be likable to the public so please teach Ava about knocking, but none of them are stupid.
They could all live without you.
Bucky maybe the most of all. He has lived a life. He managed to—some fucking how—get his way into congress.
So the line is do everything for him, because you’re a pathetic idiot with a crush on her boss, but also don’t do so much that you’re over stepping.
Prioritize all his questions but don’t neglect the others. Return all of his smiles, and talk to him whenever you can, but he always has to initiate it. Always come when he calls—you really are a puppy—but don’t abandon other conversations for him.
Be an idiot, but keep your dignity.
You’ll let him flirt with you—he doesn’t flirt with you, he just makes polite conversation, and you look at him like he’s sprouting gospel—but you won’t encourage it, because you really do like this job. It pays well. It’s morally questionable, but no well-paying job isn’t. And you’re going to use this money to pay off all your debts, and then your family’s debts as well.
So if Bucky offers you his arm at an event, take it, and pretend you don’t want to grab him by the collar and climb him like a tree.
If someone makes a comment—passing jokes from Walker about how you’re supposed to work for all of them, not just Barnes, or a dry look for Yelena when Bucky says good job and you flush like he just called you pretty—brush it off. Don’t make it weird. It’s obvious, and everyone knows, but don’t make it weird.
You’d whined, though. Whined and tried to nuzzle into Bucky as if he’d want that.
You made it weird.
And you’d pulled back with a mumbled apology, but Bucky had just grunted. You hadn’t spoken for the rest of the walk back to the safe house. If Bucky’s hand on your thigh had been squeezing on purpose, you’d bitten your tongue until you’d tasted the tang of blood. He couldn’t have been doing it on purpose. And you couldn’t make it weird. Again.
You’d gagged yourself with a cloth, when Bucky had set you down on the counter. If he’d thought anything of it, all you’d gotten was raised brows and a small frown before he moved on. Gotten you a second cloth—cold and wet and resting on your brow to combat the dry fever—and called the tower to report that the new protocol was, in fact, a stupid fucking idea.
“Nobody’s getting any trophies.” He grunts, his arms crossed over his chest, and you want to spring up and tackle him.
Maybe the metal arm could go inside of you, while the other one wrapped around your neck and kept you still against his chest, and that low, commanding voice would be right in your ear-
You’re moaning again. And your hips are jerking off the counter.
It’s a good thing Bucky positioned himself where he did. You don’t need everyone to see you humping the air to the thought of metal fingers inside of you, cold and hard, pressing deep into your cunt at an abusing pace and-
That might have been another moan.
The sound might have been too close to Bucky.
Fuck.
“Hey, I’m not handing them out,” Walker raises his hands on the screen. “And Yelena’s the one who started it-“
“No, I did not-“
“Uh, yeah you did. You said my idea was stupid-“
“It was stupid! It is going to get the bumblebee killed-“
Walker voice becomes almost a whine. “She’s not dying, she just got drugged! We’ve all been drugged, it’s not that big a deal-“
“Walker.” Bucky grunts, and that’s his everyone shut the hell up and listen voice, and your nails are digging into your skin with the effort not to grinding onto your hand. “Shut up. It was a stupid fucking idea-“
“But-“
“She’s a civilian-“
“She should know how to defend herself-“
“She shouldn’t have been here.” Bucky’s yelling now. The world is blurring slightly, and he’s not mad at you, but it’s still making your heart howl.
He’s not mad at you.
He still said he didn’t want you here. With him.
The line says you should swallow that, then cry in your room later.
But whatever is making your heart burn and your skin feel raw doesn’t care about the line. It’s just pressing on your eyes and feeding the sting behind them, lumping in your throat and shaking at your lips-
The first sob is soft, and weak. Muffled in the gag. If you’re lucky, too quiet to hear-
You’re not lucky.
Bucky turns to look at you with wide eyes, his brow furrowed in tight lines your fingers are literally fucking itching to trace, and you shake your head.
No attention. If he’s kind, he’ll pretend he can’t see the tears rolling down your cheeks and he’ll ignore you and let you just choke on it. On the overwhelming soreness in your chest and the way your heart is pressing into itself until hairline fractures start to form, and soon they’re going to turn into chasms and why is he moving, he’s a good man that should let you deal with your own problems, so why the fuck is he moving-
A warm, calloused hand rests on your face, wiping your cheeks before moving to your brow, and you have to squeeze your eyes shut. If you look at Bucky hovering above you, you’ll either cry more, or moan his name again. If you turn your head you’ll see the rest of the team on the computer, and they’ll be looking at you with all that sympathy—the kind that calls you weak—and you’ll scream.
Eyes shut.
Don’t lean into his touch, even when his finger tangle slightly into your hair. Even when thumb brushes over your lips—why the fuck is he doing that too, he must secretly fucking hate you—hold the line. Don’t open for him. Don’t moan his name into the gag. Don’t-
“Shit.” Bucky’s voice is low, and you squeeze your eyes tighter. “You’re- Shit-“
“What is wrong with the bumblebee?” Alexei calls from the computer, and you can hear Yelena’s sigh.
“Walker’s brilliant plan got her exposed to something. She’s sick.”
“It was a brilliant plan-“
“She is crying, you dickshit-“
“I think you mean dipshit-“
“I am going to kill you-“
“Alexei.” Bucky grunts, his hand still on your face. You’re losing resolve. You’re going to lean into his touch. “Don’t let them kill each other.”
“Do not worry, Barnes. I will stand right between them, and their attack will not affect- Ow!”
Bucky’s hand moves away.
Thank Christ.
“Yelena, why did you punch me-“
“I was trying to punch John, and you were in the way-“
“Yelena.” Bucky’s voice is a little further away now.
You’d wanted him to move away. It was best for everyone that he moved away. You can open your eyes and stare at the ceiling now.
But where his hand had been now feels white-hot, like he’d lit you on fire then poured liquid nitrogen over your skin. And it’s spreading. Through your blood before pooling in your gut, then leaking between your thighs-
“I need you to focus. Walker, shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything-“
“Good. Keep doing that.”
“Whatever-“
“That’s not shutting up.” Bucky says your name, and you really hope he’s still blocking you from view. You’ve started to palm at your breasts—just for something—and you don’t really want to be a full, on display sex show. “We need to focus on her.”
Fuck. Your eyes roll back in your head, and his words are sending shivers through your whole body. Up your spine and over all your nerves, and he’s nowhere near you now, but he’s still fucking talking, and that seems to be more than enough.
“Whatever was in that gas, it’s making her- She can’t walk without falling over. And she’s got a fever.”
“A fever?” You can hear the frown in Yelena’s voice. “How bad of a fever?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a thermometer. But,” you turn your head slightly to see the screen, just in time to watch Walker’s mouth snap shut. “I can feel her skin burning. It’s bad. I need options.”
“Options?”
“What can we do.” Bucky mutters, and you can’t see his face, but there’s a strain in his voice that just makes you want to moan for him again. “We’re miles from a hospital, and it’s a two-day flight back. I gotta know how to make it better until we get pickup.”
Yelena hums, her eyes meeting yours through the camera. “Why is there a gag in her mouth.”
“I- Uh-“ Bucky glances over his shoulder, and you choke on another whimper. “She did that. To herself.”
“Can she talk?”
“Yelena-“
“Take the gag out.” Yelena shrugs, still holding your gaze. “She can tell us what she feels.”
No.
That’s a horrible idea.
And you’re trying to tell Bucky that, before it’s too late. Trying to plead with him, using an open, desperate expression. Begging him with your eyes to ignore Yelena and say that he can see that you’re in pain, so the best thing to do is just send the jet.
But he just glances at you, his jaw tenses, and he shakes his head.
It doesn’t look like it’s for you.
It still pulls an almost broken howl from your throat. Like he’s driving a blade right into your chest.
His knuckles brush your lips as he moves the cloth out of your mouth. He won’t look you in the eyes.
The howl splits through the room, falling into more of a whimper by the end, and if the ground opened up, you’d jump down to hell without a second thought.
There’s a long, taut silence—Bucky still won’t look at you—and Yelena clears her throat.
“Are you in pain?” She says your name carefully, and you nod. “Can you speak?”
“Yes.” Your voice is barely a breath, and Yelena’s lips move into a thin line.
“Bucky, she needs to be closer. I cannot hear her from there.”
Bucky grunts, and suddenly you’re being scooped up into his arms. Your face is near his neck again, and you’re being cradled right against his chest, and you can’t tell if that’s your heartbeat, or his-
“Why didn’t you just move the computer, man.”
Bucky tenses around you. “Shut up, Walker.”
“No, I’m not insane about this one. I mean, Alexei, he could have moved the computer right- Fuck!”
“You are not helping.” Yelena snaps, and Walker groans from somewhere off the screen. “Be quiet, or go.”
Walker sighs, but doesn’t move away. There’s a tightness to his face that’s mirror on Bucky and Yelena’s, and that can’t be a good sign. You haven’t even said anything yet.
Yelena says your name carefully, leaning closer to the camera. “What are you feeling.”
“A- a lot.” You whisper, and someone’s—you’re still not clear on if it’s yours or Bucky’s—heart stumbles slightly. “My- Skin. It’s on fire. And, um- I- My throat hurts, and it’s so much and empty and cold-“
“Cold?” Yelena cuts you off with a frown. “You are feeling cold?”
You nod, then shake your head. “It- I’m feeling everything. I- It’s- It’s like I’ve been turned up to a million and it all hurts-“
“Does anything feel good?”
Bucky. Bucky feels good. The feeling of him all around you and the smell of that shampoo and his woodsy body wash. The strength of him around you. Bucky feels so good-
The line.
You nod, and bite your tongue again. You can’t say it. Everything falls apart if you say it.
And Yelena sighs, scanning over you carefully, and shakes her head.
“Bucky, leave the room.”
He goes rigid. You don’t love the idea either. “What.”
“Put her back on the counter and go outside.”
“I am not-“
“Do you want to help her?”
“Of course I-“
“Then go.”
No.
No, no, no. He can’t leave. If he pushes you away it will be like shooting you with a toxin, he can’t, no-
Bucky sets you down with far too much care, and you’re not fast enough to squeeze your eyes shut. He’s cupping your face. Forcing your gaze onto his, looking right into you with an unreadable expression, and your mouth is falling open—a split second from begging him to stay—but he shakes his head.
“Call for me. If you need anything.” His grip tightens, and your hand flies up to his wrist. “I’ll be upstairs. I-“
“Bucky.” You whisper, and something flashes over his face. “Please.”
You don’t even know what you’re asking for. It doesn’t really matter anyway.
Bucky flinches back as if you’ve burned him, grumbles something to Yelena you can’t hear over the ringing in your ears—it was his heartbeat—and then stomps away. When your vision clears—it’s unclear when you started crying, but you’re really starting to lose track on everything—the laptop is right next to you, and nobody is on the screen but Yelena.
“Are you done?”
You nod, wiping your nose with your sleeve, and she lets out a slow breath.
“Good. I mean, keep… Letting it out. As you have to. But if you are done, we can talk.”
“Yelena-“
“I am going to ask you a question.” She holds your gaze, and your arms wrap around your stomach. It’s honestly a miracle you haven’t collapsed to the side. “And you will need to be honest.”
Your voice is still too soft. “Okay.”
“What are you thinking about, right now. And,” Yelena raises her brows before you can answer. “Honest. Whatever you are thinking, I have seen and thought worse-“
“Bucky.” You whisper, and the floodgates open. “And his hands. And arms. And legs. And his face, his face is so nice, and his beard and hair look so good, and I- I need him- His hands- In me. And he smells so good, and I think he’ll taste good too, and if he kisses me I’m going to die- And if he doesn’t touch me I’m going to die- and he- he won’t look at me-“ You’re fucking crying again. You can’t stop. “And if he doesn’t look at me I’m going to die- But if he does look at me I’m going to- Shit, I want him to look at me and touch me and kiss me and his hands-“
You take a long, shaking breath as darkness creeps at the corner of your vision, and Yelena blinks at you.
“So you are… Thinking about Bucky.”
Fuck.
You give a tiny nod, and she-
Grins.
“Oh, thank God.” Yelena leans back in her chair, running a hand over her face. “I was actually worried. I mean- If I say Bucky’s cock, what-“
You let out a loud, lewd moan, and Yelena’s still grinning.
“And if I say we all hate you-“
It’s immediate. The rush of pain tightening in your chest, almost like an electric shock. You burst into tears, pulling your knees right up to your chest, and Yelena’s eyes widen.
“Oh, shit-“
Something slams, and Bucky’s shouting your name far too close to your body. He shouldn’t be close to him. He hates you, they all hate you, you’re going to get fired and die alone and empty and you can’t breathe-
“What the fuck did you do to her-“
“I was testing it! I’m sorry, I didn’t think-“
“Obviously you didn’t fucking think-“
“Don’t yell at me, Bucky, I was helping-“
“She’s fucking crying-“
“I know, I-“ Yelena says your name, and you curl into a tighter ball. “We don’t hate you. Nobody hates you. You’re the bumblebee. You do all the work, and you’re sweet, I was- I was just kidding-“
“Just-“ A hand rests on your shoulder. You’d recognize it as Bucky’s even if there were a million others, pulling you right down into Hell. “You told her we hate her?!”
“It was a test-“
“What the hell, Yelena-“
“I can fix it! Listen,” she repeats your name, and you choke on the air. “We do not hate you! Shit, it’s- Bucky loves you!”
That’s your heart. Doing the scratch and break and rewind. Stumbling over itself before kicking up to pace that’s going to burst right out of your chest. And the silence in the air is too long, and too heavy, and you want to keep crying but you also feel like you’re sort of high. He loves you. Yelena might be lying, but she’s not the type to lie about that, so Bucky loves you-
You’re giggling again.
Something is seriously fucking wrong with you.
“Yelena.” Bucky grunts, and at least he’s still touching you. Because he loves you. “What the hell is wrong with you.”
“A lot, but- Look! She’s smiling! And I know what she got hit with!”
There’s a long pause, the only sound your soft, breathy laughs—Bucky’s starting to rub circles on your back, and you can feel the moan building back up—and Bucky clear his throat.
“Are you going to fucking tell me?”
“I was getting to it. Keep your pants on.” Yelena laughs. “I mean, for now-“
“Yelena-“
“It is an old gas. The red room used to use it for torture.”
Broad, strong fingers still on your back. “Torture.”
“Yep, that is what I said-“
“What kind of torture-“
“Physical and mental. Her brain is scrambled soup. All of her feelings have been dialed up to a bajillion, so she is going to be very suggestive, and very overwhelmed.” Yelena sighs. “Emotionally. And, ah- Her reservations maybe be… Broken.”
Bucky’s silent for a little too long, and all you can do is focus on your breathing. That explains a lot. You really wish it didn’t.
“Do we wait it out?” Bucky’s voice is impossibly neutral. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t love you, Yelena had been lying to calm you down, and the tears are pricking back into your eyes-
“No. It has to be sweat out. Exercise or torture.”
Fuck. Something low and heavy, dreadful and tight, is starting to bubble in your gut. You can’t walk, let alone exercise. And you’re not strong enough to withstand torture. Not from anyone, but definitely not from Bucky, that’s going to shatter you into nothing more than scattered sand and glass on the floor-
“Or,” there’s a drawling kind of glee in Yelena’s voice, and you keep your face buried in your knees. “Sex. Sex should work.”
Your head shoots up, your eyes land on Bucky’s own, wide ones, his mouth hanging open and something that’s either sweat or the other thing is wet between your legs. He’s still touching you.
“I-“ He coughs, still staring at you, and you’re feeling a little light-headed. “I can’t-“
Oh.
Okay.
You don’t get a chance to cry this time.
Everything just goes black.
———
“No.”
“Bucky-“
“I won’t.” He snapped, narrowing his eyes at Yelena. “Stop trying to convince me.”
“I’m not trying to convince you, I am trying to get you to save her life-“
Bucky shook his head. She didn’t get it. Didn’t understand that what was being painted as the solution was really just the worst crime he could ever commit.
He’d done a lot of fucked up things, as the Soldat. And being at war hadn’t exactly been a picnic before that. But he’d never crossed that line. There were some fogged over memories—the kind that stung at his brain when they bubbled to the surface—where Hydra had told him to, but he’d resisted. Throttled that last bit of his humanity by the throat, and said no. He wouldn’t.
It had been the only thing he’d always been able to fight back against, even when he couldn’t remember his own fucking name. The last thing he’d been able to identify as wrong.
And doing it to Her- When She was trusting him to take care of Her, and it was his own fault this was happening at all, because that gas had been meant for him-
Bucky would rather jump off a tower or shoot himself in the goddamn skull.
“This isn’t saving her life.” He muttered. “It’s ruining it. We’ll wait it out until you can send a jet to us, and then we’ll put her in a sauna or some shit.”
Yelena’s nose wrinkled. “Or you could just fuck the girl you are obviously in love with-“
“I am not-“
“Yes, you are. Do not lie to me, Bucky. You make a really pathetic expression at her, it’s all-“
Yelena’s face went slack, her brows raising and drawing slightly, and Bucky scowled.
“I’m hanging up-“
“No, wait- Just-“ Yelena sighed. “I know you’re a man, and feelings are scary, but this gas is- It will be the worst days of her life, if you do not just get over yourself, and stick your dick inside of her.”
Jesus Christ. If She hadn’t been trying to kill him before—moaning his name and opening Her mouth when he touched it, looking at him with pretty eyes and snuggling into his chest—Yelena was trying to kill him now. All Bucky could see was Her sprawled out below him, Her eyes blown-out with lust as he slid into Her, head thrown back as she whined for more, and Bucky gave it to Her with his lips biting and sucking on Her throat-
These were the type of things he shouldn’t be thinking about. Not now. Not when She was rolling around in bed upstairs, and the last time Bucky had checked on Her, he’d gotten too good a look at Her breasts. Flushed with peaked nipples as the sheets stuck to Her skin, and he could’ve goddamn sworn She’d moaned his name in her sleep-
Not thinking about it. He couldn’t think about it. For so many reasons, Bucky couldn’t think about it, and he’d never do it.
He’d sworn to himself he’d never do it. That the well-played fantasies would remain fantasies, because he had no right.
He was Her boss had been the first reason. The obvious one, when She’d been bouncing in Her heels and looking around the meeting room with an open, sweet expression. Valentina had said meet your new admin, it had clicked in Bucky’s head what that meant, and then suddenly asking Her to get a drink or something had been forcibly tossed out the window.
Then that reason had become… less effective. She’d kept being beautiful—which just wasn’t fucking fair to anyone—and She was smart and charismatic and patient, and her hips swayed a little when she walked, and Bucky’s attraction had grown. Bloomed and spread and burrowed roots over his ribs, where it was impossible to dig them out. He liked Her wide smile, and he liked Her voice, and he liked how She could shut Walker up with just a look.
He liked Her enough to take risks. Risks like walking closer to Her than he needed to, and convincing the rest of the team that She did actually need a room in the tower. And they’d all seen right goddamn through him—he’d heard Bob whisper to Yelena it’s because he has a crush on her, right, after the meeting was over—but they’d let it slide. So he’d taken more risks. Eating lunch with Her in a very professional way. Bringing He to events and keeping Her on his arm, for safety. Casual, flirty comments that were nothing if She didn’t want them to be, but did manage to take an edge off of his own pent-up hunger for Her.
Boss hadn’t been enough.
So he’d turned to young. She was too young. Bucky was over a hundred and She was younger than Bob.
Then he’d walked in on Her watching a TV show with Alexei and Ava, the former looking downright terrified about the comments that were being thrown at the screen. About how hot the actors were. And She’d pointed to one with a beard and longer hair—this hadn’t helped the situation—and said I’d let him do whatever he wanted to me.
Bucky had been a fucking idiot and googled the actor. The guy was almost fifty.
He’d needed another reason.
Too kind. She was nice to everyone, and it wasn’t just for Her job. She never got frustrated at stupid questions, and She’d listen to anyone’s stupid rants—She’d somehow sat through a whole I just think I’d have been a good Roman General speech from Walker without one eyeroll—and Bucky wasn’t rude, but he didn’t deserve that.
The too kind reason had lasted the shortest amount of time. She’d kept being kind, and then She’d made Bucky cookies for his birthday, and he’d wanted to kiss Her right goddamn there.
His current reason was She deserved better. That one had been serving him well. She deserved someone who hadn’t done the things Bucky had, who was all smiles and kindness, who She’d want. That was a second, incredibly useful reason. She didn’t want Bucky.
So he wouldn’t think about Her breasts anywhere but in the privacy of his own room, alone, while he beat his cock into his hand. And he wouldn’t stick his dick in Her, because it would be wrong. He’d be taking advantage of Her while she was vulnerable.
He wouldn’t cross that line.
“Just send the jet.” He grunted, moving his hand the top of the laptop. “I’ll call you if anything changes.”
Yelena’s eyes narrowed. “Bucky-“
He closed the laptop, and let out a long, heavy breath.
He wouldn’t.
No matter how much this was one of his fantasies come to life, Bucky had to remember that it was really more of a nightmare.
For Her.
For Her, she was stuck in a painful looking state of unpredictable emotion. Bucky tried to bring Her tea, and She’d started crying again because he’d remembered the way she liked it and that was apparently tear-worthy. Then he told Her that she needed a shower—she was drenched in sweat and other things that Bucky was trying really fucking hard pretend he couldn’t smell—and Her odd, soft and happy tears changed to weak, broken sobs.
“Shit- What’s-“
“You think I’m disgusting.” She looking up at him with glossy, watering eyes and trembling lips, and Bucky felt like he was being goddamn shot. “You- You hate me-“
“No.” He grunted. “I don’t hate you-“
“Yes, you do-“
“No. I don’t.” Bucky grabbed Her face between his hands, forcing Her attention onto him. “Trust me. You’d know if I hated you, doll.”
It was a sight, before him. Her lips parted, literal drool falling from them—that Bucky would like to kiss away, but he wasn’t allowed to—and Her hands wrapped around his wrists with an almost strangling grip.
“I don’t hate you.” He muttered, forcing himself to hold Her gaze. “Got it?”
She nodded, sitting up a little up She was on her knees, and Bucky didn’t have enough willpower for this-
His thumb moved of its own accord. Wiping just a little bit of drool from away.
She moaned.
Fuck.
“Bucky.” Her voice was breathless, and almost songlike. “Please. I- I need it, I need it so bad-“
“Doll-“
“Please.” Her eyes were welling with more and more tear, and a few were starting to slide down Her cheeks. “I- I’m sorry- It just hurts- You can fire me after or call the cops-“
He frowned. “Why the hell would I do that?”
“Because I’m-“ She hiccupped slightly. “You’re saying no, and I’m asking again-“
“Jesus- I know you can’t help it, doll, it’s the gas-“
“So fuck it out of me.” She rose higher, and Bucky wasn’t sure if she was pushing Her boobs up on purpose or not. “I- I’m sorry- I need you, Bucky, I’ll do anything, I’ll suck your cock first or after and it can be however you want but please-“
Bucky had to let go of Her. He had to release Her and take a stumbling step back, or else he would have damned it all and listened to Her. She was drugged. Her mind was being altered, and when it left her system, She’d already be embarrassed about what happened. Bucky would rather still be at Her side to assure Her, then cast out into the dirt because he’d been a selfish dick and taken advantage of Her. She only wanted him because he was the only option. If Walker was here, She’d be throwing herself at him, too.
That made Bucky feel fucking sick. Walker wouldn’t do that—at the very least, they all seemed to clear that last, impossibly low bar—but now Bucky was fucking thinking about Her on her knees, whining for Walker to fuck Her. Promising to suck his dick. And now he was thinking about Her under Walker, and there was a bad taste in the back of his throat, and he didn’t even care that it was Walker, Bucky just goddamn hated that it wasn’t him-
No right. Bucky had no goddamn right over the sour feeling in his chest, or the sickness in his gut. If he had a right, none of this would be a problem. She’d actually want him, and there wouldn’t be any complexities, and Bucky could help Her.
But this was Hell for Her. And all Bucky could do was help Her.
She was all that mattered.
So he wouldn’t cross the line.
The rest of the night was hell. The two days for a jet thing hadn’t been an exaggeration. It was even looking more like three. They were trapped together. And Bucky was doing everything he could to make it better, but it only seemed to be getting worse. Bringing Her more tea just led to Her begging for sex. Avoiding Her just meant he could hear Her crying about how much he hated Her, but when he’d try to remind Her that he didn’t, She’d just ask him to fuck Her again. Then She’d start apologizing for asking, all while still pleading, and Bucky would shuffle away to hide in his own room.
A lot of sleep was lost trying not to get a boner to the sounds of Her fucking herself into Her pillows. As the next day progressed, Her activities seemed to be limited to cry, beg for sex, sleep, masturbate.
It was going to drive Bucky goddamn insane.
And She had no way of knowing. No way to understand exactly what She was doing to him.
She’d plead with him, and he said no, and his heart split in two as She’d start crying once more. There had to be some way he could help. He couldn’t just fucking sit here and-
“Bucky.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. She was calling for him again, and he couldn’t ignore Her—what if something was actually wrong—but he didn’t know how many more Bucky, please fuck me’s or I’m sorry, I shouldn’t ask, it just hurts he could take.
He murmured Her name as he opened the door, but She didn’t respond.
The whole room smelled like sex.
He had to ignore it.
“Bucky.” Her voice was breathy. Soft.
And when he moved to the mattress, She was knocked the hell out. Holding the sheets bunched around Her legs and pressing her face into the covers.
Bucky whispered Her name, moving to pull a little hair out of Her mouth, and she snuggled further into the mattress.
But his knuckles brushed Her cheek, and she let out a sweet little sound that was going to haunt him for the rest of his goddamn life.
She was shivering. Breathing too shallow, with Her fever building, and Bucky didn’t know what the hell to do. Yelena said She needed to sweat, but She was only shaking and whimpering. Running wasn’t an option. They didn’t exactly have warm, sunny days outside. Torture had never even been on the table, and touching Her-
She leaned into his hand. The human one, cupping Her cheek because Bucky had gotten lost in thought, and failed to realize what he was doing.
But She leaning into him. Into the warmth of his skin.
That wouldn’t be crossing any line. Body heat was body heat. Soldiers shared it all the time. It was a necessity.
He stared at Her for another long moment, trying to weigh it out in his mind, and then She whispered his name again. Whispered it and shivered, and that was enough. Bucky wouldn’t do that.
But he wouldn’t just let Her fucking suffer either.
“Hold on, doll.” He muttered, and She shifted slightly on the mattress. “You’ll be alright.”
She would be. Bucky would make sure of it.
He detached his metal arm, first. She’d never had a problem with it—that was one of the things he’d liked about Her a lot, at first—but it wasn’t warm.
Then he crawled into bed at Her side, and used his remaining arm to pull Her right into his body. Her face tucked under his chin and Her fingers curled against his chest. She wasn’t sweating, but She was getting warmer. She stopped shaking, then a lot of the tension left Her body, and within what could only be an hour, Her breathing was steady.
Bucky should go now. His work was done.
He couldn’t move.
And maybe if he moved, he’d have to come back. They hadn’t gotten it out of Her system. It might be better, just for it to worsen the moment he was gone.
It was a good an excuse as any. The closest he’d ever get to Her without losing Her.
So Bucky stopped trying to force himself to move. She felt to right in his arms to push Her away.
And he held Her until morning.
He’d like to hold Her longer.
But he could also die a happy man with only this.
———
He was here. It wasn’t a fever dream.
You know Bucky was here.
The mattress is still dipped where he’d lain. The sheets have been more awkwardly shoved into your arms than caught in them by restless sleep.
You can fucking smell him. Vanilla and cedar, hanging in the silent air around you.
He was here.
But he’s gone.
You don’t understand why he’d be here, just to go. Why he won’t help you.
He must know about your crush, and he thinks that once he indulges you, you’ll be weird. You won’t be weird. You’ll suck it up. You know he’s off-limits, and this would just be a favor to stop how much this hurts. He can see that you’re just in pain from the drug, and it’s amplifying all your emotions, and one of your emotions just happens to be love for Bucky.
Maybe he’s disgusted by that.
By you.
Maybe he hates you, and that’s why he won’t just save you from this hell and fuck you.
But if he hated you, he wouldn’t have been in bed with you. He would have heard you moaning his name—you’ve done that before, only in the privacy of your own room, but the drug doesn’t seem to be doing wonders for your self-control—and curled his lip and turned a blind eye.
He hasn’t turned a blind eye all day. He’s brought you food and made you drink water and helped you stumble to the bathroom. He checks on you every hour, and his jaw always clenches whenever he tells you no, and you burst into tears.
It could be frustration. He’s told you no, and you keep asking, and that isn’t cool. It’s mean. Cruel. Wrong. And a lump is forming in your throat because he’s trying to take care of you and you’re pushing him-
But he crawled into bed with you. Without you asking him to.
And you don’t know why.
You don’t call for him. Your legs feel like paper underneath you, but you’re standing on them. Taking shaking steps to the door, and-
You fall in a second.
Bucky’s there faster.
“What the hell,” he’s scooping you into his arms. They’re so big. “Do you think you’re doing.”
You swallow, trying to fight off a whimper at the firmness of his tone. He hates you-
The bed. He’d been in your bed.
You’re going to figure this out. Your brain feels like a hazy of very loud songs about pain and Bucky and love and it hurts and Bucky again, but you’re going to get to the fucking bottom of this.
“I was walking.”
“You were walking?” Bucky’s expression is incredulous, as he sets you down. You’d laugh if you didn’t think you’d cry at the same time. “Why-“
“Was coming to find you.” You mumble, staring at your hands, and Bucky sighs.
He’s holding your face between his hands.
Why does he keep doing that.
“Could’ve just called, doll.” He mutters. “Nothin’ is so urgent you gotta hurt yourself-“
“Why were you in bed with me?”
He freezes. “What.”
“You were in bed with me.” You whisper, ignoring the blur in your eyes as you hold his gaze. “I know you were. And I- I don’t understand why you’d do that-“
“I-“
“But you won’t fuck me!” You push up on your knees, and Bucky’s so tall over you. Tall and firm, and you want to him to wrap around you forever-
Not now.
Bucky’s staring at you, and you’re trying not to fall into him, and no matter what this ends—either in your head, or real life—with Bucky over you. Right now you just have to push through the white-hot pain in your gut and over your head, and get through this.
“You-“ Bucky clear his throat, his voice suddenly a little hoarse. “You’re not mad. That I was in bed with you.”
“Yes. No. I-“ You take a shaking breath. You won’t moan. “I- I’m mad you were in bed with me and didn’t fuck me-“
“I’ve told you, I won’t-“
“But you will get in bed with me? Without me asking?” You raise your brows, and Bucky lets out a long breath.
“I- You don’t get it.”
“I don’t. Bucky I- I know you don’t want me like that-“
“I never said that-“
“But it hurts.” You sound pathetic. You can’t remember how to care. “I- I just need it to stop hurting, and I’m sorry, I know it’s- I shouldn’t be asking more than once, but it hurts, and if you really don’t want to I’ll survive, but-“
Stop telling me what I- Fuck.” Bucky snaps your name, and pain shooting through your head. “I never said I didn’t want to.”
You’re both silent. Far too silent, for a little too long, and the air grows thin as you stare at Bucky, and he stares right back. Jaw clenched and arms folded over his chest, and you’re either floating or falling but you can’t really fucking tell. You can still smell him. Feel the heat from his body, only a foot away.
Words come slow. Everything that isn’t Bucky is sort of far away.
“I-“ You swallow, your skin on fire and an iron is wrapping around your lungs. “You- Bucky-“
“Breathe.” He mutters. “Slow.”
You take a loud, stuttering gasp, and his eyes flare in slight surprise.
“You should lie back down, doll-“
“No- I-“ You shift around, bunching the sheets between your thighs to alleviate some of the pressure that’s pounding in your core.
Bucky’s nostrils flare slightly, and you’re really trying to not make him uncomfortable—if not only because, if his lips curl in disgust, you’ll start sobbing again and maybe pass out—but it hurts.
“Bucky.” You whisper, and he grunts, his eyes suddenly fixed right over your head. “Can you please-“
“I won’t.”
“Look at me.” You dig your fingers into your thighs, just to stop them from reaching for him. “Please keep looking at me.”
His throat bobs, and if he says no, that will be fine. Right now it feels like a death sentence, but in the long run you’ll get over it. You will get over it. You’ll change your name and move to Mongolia. You don’t speak Mongolian. You’ll figure out how to speak Mongolian, then move to Mongolia. You’ll build a life there. And Bucky will never find you, and nobody will ever have to think about you ever again except for your future Mongolian husband-
Bucky’s eyes drop to yours, and they’re darkened and pretty, and the whine that escapes your throat is involuntary. But Bucky’s jaw only ticks, and he holds your gaze.
You try to mimic Yelena’s cooperate or die tone when you speak.
“I’m going to ask you a question.” You whisper, and in your voice, the authority just comes out as breathless and needy. “Can you please be honest with me?”
Bucky grunts, giving you a tight nod, and you let out a slow breath.
“Do- Do you want to?”
“Fuck-“ He runs a hand over his face, and your whole body braces for the no-
“I’m sor-“
“Of course I want to.” He snaps, and this is floating, not falling. “You look so- I can fucking hear you, and I’d do goddamn anything to make this better for you-“
“Then please-“
“No.”
You gape at him, your heart shooting right into your throat. No. He wants to, but no, and every single nerve in your body is burning and freezing all at once. You can’t even find tears. It’s all just fogged thoughts and pain, torn between Bucky wants to help, wants to fuck you, and no.
“Why?”
Bucky mutters your name, and you shake your head.
“You don’t have to, Buck, I’d- It’s your choice and I’ll be fine-“ You won’t be. But that’s not Bucky’s responsibility, how you broke your own heart into a million pieces because you were an idiot, and this was how it was always going to end, but picking up the mess you made of yourself is still going to slice your hands open and leave your heart bleeding and lonely on the floor. “I- I’ll be okay, but tell me why-“
“I wouldn’t be right.” He mutters, and your chest is going to split open.
“Why not-“
“Because.”
“That’s not an answer-“
“Doll-“
“Please, just tell me-“ You take a stuttering breath, curling slightly away from him. You can’t be close. It’s only making the pain worse. “I promise, I’ll stop asking, but I- Just tell me why-“
“Be-“
“Don’t say because.” You glare up at him, and his mouth snaps shut.
Now there’s a pain in your gut that’s hot and bitter. Sore. You were mean, and it’s not his fault-
“I- I’m sorry.” You whisper, staring down at his knees. “It hurts, Bucky, and you say you want to, but you won’t, and that doesn’t make any sense-“
He grunts your name, and you wrap your arms around your stomach.
“I just- I want to know why-“
“Because it can’t happen like this!”
Your world does the sane little stutter-stop from yesterday. That must be your own heartbeat in your ears, but- Maybe you’ve just lost your mind, and this is all a dream, yet the sound of Bucky’s ragged breathing is very loud. And you’re leaning forward. To Bucky.
When you drag your gaze up his body—your mouth hanging open and your heart still stumbling in your ears—he’s staring at you. His voice is hoarse when he speaks.
“You’re not in your right mind, sweetheart.” There’s a softness to his words, and this must be a dream. “I’m not gonna do this to you, when it’s not even you askin’ for it.”
“I- I am-“
“No. You’re not. It’s the gas talking-“
“And where do you think it’s getting the words?”
Bucky blinks at you. “What.”
“Nothing I’m feeling is new.” You stare at him, and his frown deepens. “I- I’m not- Yelena said it amplifies things, not creates them-“
“You’re looking for relief-“
“Why do you think I need relief?!”
His stare is cutting right into your body. There’s no fucking way it’s been this easy. That he thought that you just- That you wouldn’t, all the time, every single time you take a breath or lay in bed alone-
“I- I giggled.” You whisper. “And cried. When Yelena said you- That you felt something for me.”
“You were crying about everything.” He counters, but even his voice is dropping to a rasp. “And- Sex is just one of the ways to get rid of it, and I’m here-“
“I wouldn’t be desperate for sex if I didn’t want you.”
Bucky’s eyes widen, his mouth opening and closing, and you push a little higher off the mattress.
“I- I want you, Bucky. It’s not the drugs, it’s me, wanting you, and I- It hurts how much I want you-“
He whispers your name, but you just fucking push on. Too late to turn back now, anyway.
“I want you to touch me and fuck me and use me and let me touch you and- And I want you to sleep next to me and kiss me and l-“
Your words fall into a long, loud moan as Bucky grabs your face between his hands. You don’t fight him. You could never fight him. It’s just waiting for him, and you’re really good at that.
He’s examining you so carefully. Slowly. Trying to give you one last chance to tell him no.
You’re not going to take it.
So you hold his gaze, and let out a soft little sigh when he licks his lips.
That seems to be what he was waiting for.
Bucky leans down, his nose bumping against yours ever so slightly, and then he’s kissing you.
He’s fucking kissing you.
And God, you were right. It’s going to kill you. It’s slow and deliberate, Bucky humming against you as his mouth slots perfectly over yours, taking far too much—and still not enough—time to let you sigh and get lost in the taste of him. Somehow exactly what you imagined—coffee and mint and vanilla—and far, far better.
His tongue starts to trace over your lips before pressing down, and you open for him without a thought. Letting him push in deeper, until you’re moaning into his mouth and he’s eating the sound with low grunts, angling your head in his hands to grant him further access. All you can think about is the warmth spreading through your whole body in a way that doesn’t hurt, and how euphoria is building up like fireworks and light under your skin, and if this is just one kiss, sex might kill you.
It will be a good way to go.
When Bucky pulls back—his gaze blown out and your mouth still hanging open—you’re not above begging again. If he kisses you like that then walks away, you’ll crumble into a million, dented pieces that will scatter on the wind and sink into gutters-
“Is that okay?” His brow is tightened, his thumb toying slightly with the corner of your mouth. “I can do more, but-“
“More.” You nod a little like a bobblehead. “More is good, Bucky, please-“
He shakes his head, and a sob almost breaks out of your throat—he can’t do this to you, not after kissing you first—before you hear the borderline awe in his voice.
“You’re- I can’t believe you’re real.” He murmurs your name, and his hands are so careful on your face. “You need to tell me-“
“I’m real.”
Bucky chuckles, and the sound only spurs your need for him, rushing right between your legs. “Was going to ask if you were sure, doll.”
“Oh.” You swallow, and nod. “I- I’m sure. I’m so sure, Bucky, I- I want you- So bad-“
“How bad?” There’s something dark and hungry in his voice, and you don’t bother to stop your moan.
“So bad, I- I need you, Bucky- Just you, I- I love you-“
There it is.
The second kiss is a little harsher than the first. More demanding, with teeth and spit and Bucky pressing you down onto the mattress. You let him move over you, his hands finding your thighs and slowly pushing them apart-
You gasp into his mouth when the metal hand traces over your core, your hips jerking slightly off the bed your fingers scratching at his back, and Bucky chuckles.
“You like that, babygirl?”
Oh.
That’s nice.
And whatever sound that escapes you must echo that—high and blissful—because Bucky only laughs again.
“Yeah, I think you like that.” He nips at the corner of your mouth, then starts to trail a line of open-mouthed, sloppy kisses down your throat. “Been waitin’ for this so long, think-“
He cuts himself off, pushing up to frown at you.
“You think you can take it slow, doll? Or, uh-“ He slaps your pussy lightly over your underwear, and you squeak. “Y’know.”
He’s still rubbing you with his palm, as he waits for you to answer. And slow sounds like fucking torture, but it’s Bucky asking, and there’s already some sort of relief being offered by him liking you back, he likes you back and it’s making the world slip from under you as your heart floats away-
Bucky grunts your name. “Words would be helpful.”
“Slow is fine.” You whisper, trying to spread your legs a little wider. “Just- Don’t stop touching me, please.”
His nostrils flare, his hand gliding up your stomach to palm at your breasts with a look of what might be wonder on his face. “You want me to touch you?”
You nod weakly, and his tongue flicks over his lips as he mimics the movement.
“Yeah, alright.” His thumb starts to flick over your nipple as he examines your face. “I can do that. Think you can take what I give you?” He lowers back down, just enough for his lips to brush yours as he speaks. “Think you can be good?”
Jesus fucking Christ. “Ye- Yes. Please.”
“Yeah.” His face splits into a wide grin, right as his hand moves away from your chest. “I think you can too.”
You’re about to shove him for the teasing tone—or just whine about how he’s not touching you anymore—but then his hand returns to your core, and he’s just rubbing, but his mouth has attached to your breasts and he’s sucking small marks all over your body, and you’re going to fly out of your skin from nothing at all.
“Jesus, I can feel how wet you are.” Bucky words are muffled against your skin, and you start to grind against his hand. “Slow down, doll, I told you-“
Bucky cuts himself off with a groan that rolls through your body, and in the effort to stop your own movements, you’d yanked on his hair.
Hard.
And you swallow when he tilts his gaze up to yours. He looks like he’s going to eat you alive.
“Don’t stop doin’ that.” His voice is almost a growl. You might be able to cum from only that. “You like these?”
You frown at him. “Like wha- Oh.”
A metal finger shoves your panties to the side, his finger shoving right into your cunt without warning, and your mouth falls open in a silent moan.
He’s moving so slow. Pumping in and out at a torturous pace, holding your gaze as he kisses his way back up your body. Then Bucky slams his lips back over yours right as a second finger splits you open, and his thumb finds your clit.
“Feel good?” He mutters, and you make a weak sound into his mouth. “Words-“
“So good.” You mumble, clenching around him slightly. “I- I like it- want more-“
Bucky hums, kissing the tip of your nose with mock charity, picking up the pace ever so slightly. “Can you tell me what kinda more you want?”
“I- I don’t-“
He slows down again, and you shake your head, your fingers tugging at his hair.
“Bucky-“
“I want to hear you, pretty girl.” His drawl is lighting a small fire over your skin. “Tell me what you want-“
“I-“ He presses his thumb right over your clit, and gasp. “Mouth. Want your mouth. And your fingers. At- Shit- At the same time.”
Bucky’s brows raise, and if it wasn’t for the way his was still slowly pumping in and out of you, you would’ve pleased for the mattress to swallow you whole. “You want my mouth.”
You nod, and then add. “And the metal hand. Keep using the metal hand.”
“You- Jesus.” He shakes his head, and before you can try to take it back, he’s kissing you again. It’s getting rougher every time, and your hips jerk sightly as his fingers find that deep, spongey spot inside of you.
“I- Bucky- Fuck-“
“Such a good girl, using your words.” He starts to kiss back down your body, following the trail of spots he left before with perfect precision. “Hold on, doll.”
Before you can register what’s happening, Bucky’s shoving your legs fully apart, and-
“Oh- Bucky-“
You arch off the bed as his mouth replaces his thumb, and the speed on his fingers triples in half a second. Pumping in and out of you at an inhuman pace, pressing up and stroking inside you as his tongue leaves small, teasing licks on your clit. His free arm is pinning you down with a splayed hand on your abdomen, and his lips are latched around you and sucking, and every time you tug on his hair it only spurs him on-
It’s building so fast. The tight, hot coil in your gut. And it might be built up frustration from the gas, or the hypersensitivity of your body, or just fucking Bucky, but you’re-
“Fuck- I- I’m gonna-“ You can’t get the full sentence out. Bucky doesn’t seem to care. “Bucky- Please-“
He understands. He hums against you and nods slightly, and you know he understands.
But he doesn’t slow down.
And when his fingers press into your already burning g-spot and rub so fast it feels impossible, you cum with a high scream of his name. Stars cloud your vision and warmth crashes through your whole body, but when the fog clears, you’re not coming down.
Bucky’s not stopping. He’s finger-fucking you harder than before, his tongue moving with almost a fervor and his beard scraping at your inner thighs, and before you know what’s happening you’re flying over the edge again, and again, and soon you can’t tell where one orgasm is ending and the next one is rising. It’s all just a rolling, swirling storm of Bucky and heat and perfect, torturous pleasure.
It’s only when you’re shaking below him that he pulls away. Leaving a soft, gentle kiss over your swollen clit before crawling back over you, and you’re a needy, dazed mess, but he’s the best thing you’ve ever seen.
“You doin’ okay down there?” He brushes a little hair from your face, and you nod weakly.
“S’- Yeah.”
He grins. Your arousal is stuck to his beard. “Yeah?”
You hum, finding enough strength to trail your fingers down his chest. “You’re so big. And hot.”
“Thanks.” He says your name, and when you drag your gaze away from his, there’s a slight blush near his ears. “You look like a painting, doll.”
Your smile is love drunk and stupid, and you don’t care. “Thank you. Bucky?”
He hums, and you let your fingers trail a little lower.
“Can I?” You palm him over his pants—why the fuck are those still on—and he jaw clenches.
“You want to?”
You nod and give him your sweetest smile, and he lets out a long, slow breath.
“A- Just a little, but- Shit.” His eyes flutter closed as you squeeze him. “You’re the one who needs to attention, sweetheart-“
“I feel better.”
That earns you a flat look. “Really.”
You hum, your smile widening. “I feel good, Buck-“
“Uh huh.” Bucky rolls his thumb around your clit, his mouth lowering to rest back over yours. “I love you.”
You go slack beneath him in a second, and breathless sound escaping you as tears prick at your eyes and a giggle bubbles out of your lips, and Bucky looks way too fucking smug with himself.
“Look at that.” He hums your name, and you pout up at him.
“That’s not fair, James-“
He groans, his cock jumping against your hand, and that’s a fun discovery.
Your mouth opens, and he silences you with a deep, rough kiss.
“You can touch me a little, baby. Since you’ve been so good for me. But then,” he ruts into your hand, and you moan into his mouth. “I’m fuckin’ you until you can’t walk.”
He’s trying to distract you from the James thing. Trying to make you forget by rising back up and ripping his pants away, displaying his impossibly pretty cock—the perfect length and thick and making your mouth water—before stroking himself over you with a lazy grin. He’s trying to divert your attention by helping you sit up and guiding your hand up to replace his.
The strategy is working.
He fits so well in just your hand, and he’s making the most sinful, beautiful sounds you’ve ever heard as you pump him slowly. His head is thrown back, letting you suck and kiss at his neck, and deep rumbles roll from his chest whenever you squeeze the base of him or swipe your fingers over the angry head of him. You’re all but folded against him, grinding against his thigh as your hand picks up speed and he moans your name-
You’re being flipped back in a second. Bucky grabs your wrists and moves you back to the mattress with your hands pinned over your head and his mouth attacking yours. Bucky teases his cock against your dripping pussy for only a second—sliding between your folds and slapping it against your clit—and then he’s pushing into you with one, long thrust.
“Shit-“ Bucky’s face drops to the crook of your neck, his breaths ragged against your skin. “You’re so tight, and- Fuck.”
He cuts himself off with another groan, and you understand. You didn’t know you could be this full. That someone could fit so right. And he’s staying so still, trying to let you adjust, but-
You clench around him, and Bucky hisses your name in your ear.
“Don’t do that, babygirl, you’re lookin’ to start something-“
You roll your hips, and Bucky draws over you with a narrowed gaze.
“Askin’ for trouble, doll.” He gives you one, sharp thrust, and you gasp. “Yeah, I said you’d take it. And you told me you’d be good. You gonna keep bein’ good?”
You nod, not bothering to hide the eagerness on your face, and Bucky leans back down with one sharp thrust.
“Say it.”
“I- I’ll be good-“
Another thrust, this one impossibly deeper. “Say you love me.”
“I- Bucky-“ His free hand is hiking your legs up, and he’s so big- “I love you-“
He groans, and his movements start to pick up. “Tell me- Fuck-“ His brow presses against yours. “Say you know I love you-“
“You love me, James, please-“
Tears are just starting to prick at your eyes when Bucky kisses you, and this one is borderline feral. The time for words seems to be over.
Now it’s just Bucky.
You can’t move, with his weight a heavy comfort over your body. He’s hammering into you and bruising against your humming and aching g-spot, but your hands remain trapped above you and whenever you try to bite at his lips he only moans and fucks you harder. Splitting you open on his cock as the bed squeaks below you, and twisting his on your thighs to rub furious circles on your clit, and you’re already ruined but now you’re never going to recover-
This orgasm hits you like a hurricane. Flipping the world on its head and drowning you in the high of Bucky, still pounding into your cunt and roaring your name against your lips as he fucks you through your orgasm, and there’s dirty praise falling out of his lips but it only sounds like a song. Then he’s kissing you down into the mattress and you can feel him painting your insides and inner thighs as he jerks a last few times, and a small, sweet aftershock hits you with a fucked-out sigh.
Bucky’s face drops to your neck as he lets out a long, slow breath, and your smile might look fucking insane.
You don’t really care.
You let your fingers tangle in his hair, and you’re going to sit in the feeling of him as long as he lets you. Breathing him in and letting this last, small waves of pleasure wash away the rest of the pain.
There’s still an ache between your thighs, but you wouldn’t trade it for the world. You might need help walking to the jet, in the morning.
You’ll ask Bucky to carry you. And maybe ask him to keep putting that ache there, until he gets bored of you-
“You feelin’ better?” Bucky mumbles in to your skin, and you swat that last thought far away.
He might get bored of you. Right now, he’s still buried in your cunt and kissing a soft line over your neck. You won’t ruin this before you even have it. If you do have it. Maybe you’d just pressured him, and you’re going to lose your job, and Bucky, and he won’t get bored of you because he was never even interested in the first place-
Bucky mutters your name, pushing up over you, and you swallow. “What’re you thinking.”
“I-“ You shake your head, fixing your gaze on his neck. On the little bruises you left there. “Nothing.”
He chuckles, and there’s something so open on his face. Like all the smiles he’s given you in passing, but with a veil lifted. “You’re not a good liar doll.”
You frown at him. “Yes I am-“
“No,” Bucky lowers himself down, ghosting a soft kiss over your lips. “You’re not. You’re thinkin’ about something. Tell me.”
You shake your head, but wrap your arms around his neck all the same. You don’t want him to move away. Not yet. “It’s- It’s stupid-“
“Doubt that.”
“Bucky-“
He repeats your name back to you, his gaze driving right into yours that makes you somehow feel more bare than you already are. “If it’s- If you’re having second thoughts-“
“No!” Your voice is almost a yelp. “It’s- It’s not that-“
“Thank Christ.” Bucky lets out a slow sigh, his grin a little sheepish. “Damn near gave me a heart attack.”
“Sorry-“
“No, you’re not.” He squeezes a hand on your hip, and you all but melt into the mattress. “Tell me, pretty girl. What are you thinking.”
“I- I’m-“ He’s still inside you. And when you squirm slightly, his cock jumps. “Bucky-“
“Shit-“ He groans, and suddenly his hand is pinning you down, stopping your movements. “Nope. No distracting me.”
“But-“
“I won’t fuck you again until you tell me.”
Again.
He’s going to fuck you again.
And some of the drug must still be in your system, because your face splits back into a wide, easy smile, and Bucky raises his brows.
“Did you…” He tilts his head slightly. “Were you worried we were done, doll?”
You nod, not trusting your voice, and Bucky sighs.
“Did you miss the part when I said I love you-“
“No. Told you it was stupid.”
“Yeah, well.” Another kiss. This one softer, and a little more on your cheek. “We’ve both been kinda stupid today. Think I’d like to keep being stupid together, though. If you’re up for it.”
You blink at him. “Like, together together?”
He nods. “You can keep your job. I’ll do all my own shit, or we can get a second admin who’s not fucking me-“
“But what if you fall in love with that admin too?” You whisper, keeping your smile wide on your face, and Bucky rolls his eyes.
“I wouldn’t worry about that. Nothin’ is coming close to you.”
You can’t stop the clench that his deep voice and promise spark in you, and a low groan is pulled from Bucky’s throat.
“You want a round two?”
You nod, and he grunts, rolling his hips slightly.
“Tell me what you want, baby-“
“You. All of you.” Your hands move to cup Bucky’s face. “This and… that. Please.”
He nods, and the last kiss is just as slow as the first. Deep and gentle, filled with the knowledge that now, you have the time in the world.
“You’re mine?” He mutters, and you don’t know why it’s a question.
You have been for months. Maybe, even without knowing it, your whole life.
“Yes.” Your voice is soft against his lips, and Bucky grins.
“Good.” He nips on your lower lip, and the gas might be gone, but you don’t think anything about him is ever going to make you not want more. “Cause I’m yours.”
End Note: his hair in the post-credit scene.... nature is healing.
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