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[rafesteddy]

Banana Bread Theory… 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓪 𝓼𝓾𝓼𝓹𝓲𝓬𝓲𝓸𝓾𝓼 𝓯𝓻𝓪𝓽 𝓫𝓸𝔂

𝒻𝓇𝒶𝓉!𝓇𝒶𝒻𝑒 𝓍 𝓇𝑒𝒶𝒹𝑒𝓇 ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆.

3.6K words

{{𝚌𝚛𝚘𝚜𝚜𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚘𝚗 𝚖𝚢 𝑜𝒻𝒻 𝒸𝒶𝓂𝓅𝓊𝓈 𝚊𝚌𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝}}

c/w ᝰ.ᐟ fluff!!, online trends, former hookups mentioned, language, pet names (sweetheart), no y/n, rafe cameron vs. baked goods, chronically online!jj, pope saves the frat house from a small fire + rafe cameron patootie allegations ‧₊ ⋅ ౨ৎ

Ding Dong!

“Comin’,” Rafe calls out.

He pushes himself off the couch and heads toward the front door. Class had ended an hour ago, and he still hasn’t done much besides shower and answer texts, already thinking about getting back to the conversation waiting on the couch when he reaches for the handle and pulls the door open.

The smile on the other side catches him slightly off guard.

Summer stands on the porch holding a loaf pan wrapped carefully in aluminum foil, both hands tucked underneath it like she’s presenting something important.

Her expression brightens the second she sees him, shifting her weight forward expectantly while Rafe stares back at her for a beat too long.

They haven’t really talked in weeks, not since the last time they’d hooked up, and seeing her standing on his porch on a random Tuesday afternoon is confusing enough that he has to glance around briefly to make sure he didn’t forget about some event.

“Hey, Summer.”

“Hi.”

Rafe’s eyes drift immediately toward whatever she’s carrying before returning to her face again. The foil is folded neatly around the edges and tied with a ribbon. He studies it for another second before lifting an eyebrow.

“Uh… What are you doin’ here?”

A nervous laugh escapes her. “I brought you something.”

He looks down at the pan again, then back at her.

“What is it?”

“Banana bread.”

For a moment he genuinely thinks there has to be another part of the explanation coming. Instead she just keeps smiling at him from the porch while he stands there holding the door open.

The silence stretches long enough that Rafe finally reaches forward and accepts it out of pure awkwardness, adjusting it in his hands while trying to fix his expression because he knows his face is already asking the question for him, why did you randomly show up and give me bread?

“Thanks.”

She nods ever so slightly, glancing over his shoulder, begging a silent question of her own. May I come inside?

“Was there something else?” He asks, stepping in her line of sight. Her expression falls just enough for him to notice.

“I just thought maybe we could hang out.”

Rafe blinks a few times, staring at the loaf pan in his hands before meeting her eyes again.

“I’ve,” he mumbles, clearing his throat uneasily. “I got a study session in a few hours.”

“—That’s not for awhile,” she jumps in eagerly, and his jaw tightens.

“Yeah,” Rafe says slowly. “I should probably get ready for it.”

“For a study session?” She chuckles, but it’s paper thin. Rafe can practically see the comparison happening in real time. All those nights she’d shown up at one in the morning and he’d answered the door with untamed hair, post-bar pizza stained shirts, and liquor lingering on his lips, not helping his case.

Rafe finally catches the look on Summer’s face and immediately realizes he’s probably being shorter than he means to be.

His free hand comes up to scratch at the back of his neck while he searches for something nicer to say. The problem is that he really isn’t busy, and the problem underneath that is that he doesn’t particularly want to hang out with her even if he wasn’t.

“Hey,” he says more gently. “Thank you. Seriously. I’ve just got a lot goin’ on tonight.”

Her smile wavers, but she nods. “Another time?”

He gives her a polite nod. A few moments later she’s heading back down the front steps while he closes the door behind her, the latch clicking softly.

His phone buzzes again before he can think about it any longer. Rafe unlocks the screen immediately, his attention shifting right back where it had been before the doorbell interrupted him. A grin tugs at the corner of his mouth as he reads through the newest message, already typing out a response while he walks toward the kitchen.

The loaf pan lands on the counter with a heavy thud. He crosses the rest of the kitchen and drops back against the opposite counter, one ankle crossing over the other while his thumbs move across the screen.

Across the room, JJ lifts his head. His eyes move from Rafe to the loaf pan as a smirk plays on his lips. “Who the hell is that from?”

Rafe doesn’t look up, chewing on the inside of his cheek distractedly. JJ waits, leaning into a counter a little as he looks for a sign of life. Nothing.

“Earth to Rafe,” he says, louder this time. “Who is that from?”

Rafe’s thumbs finally stop moving and he looks up at JJ before looking down at the pan. He shrugs lazily. “Summer.”

JJ’s eyes immediately narrow and Rafe tosses his gaze to his phone fast as another notification rolls in.

“Summer Reed?” JJ asks, reaching a hand out, dragging the bread in front of him as he pulls at the little pink bow on top.

Rafe nods, completely unaware of the grin spreading across JJ’s face. “Damn, dude.”

That finally gets Rafe’s attention, he cocks an eyebrow at him, adjusting his stance a little. “Am I missing something?”

JJ pulls off the tin foil, leaning down to give it a deep sniff. “Fuck… That smells good, dude. You didn’t invite her inside or anything?”

Rafe's nose scrunches a little, brows furrowing. “No.”

“Seriously?”

“Why would I?”

A laugh escapes JJ before he can stop it. “Why are you acting like that’s not a thing? She’s hot. She’s obviously into you. You two still got somethin’ goin’ on?”

“—No,” Rafe steps in fast, shaking his head. “Not for a couple weeks now.”

“Well,” JJ murmurs, grabbing a fork, digging in. “Guess the theory didn’t work.”

“Theory?” Rafe asks, his interest piqued for the moment.

JJ closes his eyes, nodding at the taste. “The theory,” he mutters through a mouthful of food.

Rafe’s brows pull together. “What the hell are you talking about?”

JJ digs in for another bite, eyes rolling back in his head. “This shit’s fantastic—”

“Maybank what theory?” Rafe asks again, his arms crossing over his chest, finally giving him his full attention.

“Internet says banana bread is basically the fastest way to make a guy fall in love with you—S’workin’ on me.”

Rafe lets out a short laugh through his nose, shaking his head. “You shittin’ me?”

“I shit you not,” JJ sighs, taking down another slice in seconds. “It’s thoughtful. Romantic. Delicious. It says I was thinking about you. Here’s some sugar and some old bananas.”

“That’s dumb,” Rafe mumbles.

“Is it?” JJ asks.

“You know how chronically online you sound?” Rafe chuckles under his breath, pushing away from the counter.

Rafe wanders closer, resting both palms against the top while he studies what remains of the loaf, nearly half of it already gone.

The banana bread sits between them, seemingly working its magic on a man with absolutely no emotional attachment to the person who made it.

Rafe squints at it for a second as the wheels start to turn.

What would it do for somebody like him?

𝓣𝓱𝓻𝓮𝓮 𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓻𝓼 𝓵𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓻…

Pope Heyward barely makes it two steps inside the frat house before he stops completely. Something smells wrong. There is definitely banana somewhere in the mix, but whatever else is happening underneath it has gone horribly off the rails.

The air carries a strange combination of burnt sugar, something vaguely chemical, enough smoke to make him wonder if he should already be dialing 911.

His eyes lift slowly to the ceiling, catching the gray haze hanging over the entire first floor. Smoke has gathered along the ceiling in lazy clouds, drifting from the kitchen into the living room like a weather system settling over the house.

The shrill scream of the smoke detector cuts through the house. Pope rounds the corner into the kitchen and immediately freezes.

Rafe’s standing underneath the alarm waving an oven mitt over his head. Sweat drips down his chest and disappears into the waistband of a pair of gray sweatpants. His hair’s damp, curling out underneath his hat, sticking in every direction, shoulders rising and falling with deep breaths like he just ran a marathon.

Across the room, JJ is sitting on top of the kitchen island with his phone in one hand and a slice of banana bread in the other.

The alarm finally cuts off and Rafe lowers the oven mitt slowly before dropping his head, blowing out a long breath.

One hand settles on his hip while the other braces against the counter beside him. Sweat glistens across his chest and shoulders, a rough cough choking past his lips.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Rafe mumbles before Pope can even ask him what happened.

The oven mitt hangs loosely from one hand, the heel of his sneakers digging into the kitchen floor like a kicked puppy.

“You good, Cameron?” Pope asks as he steps closer, assessing the scene, his backpack dropping to the floor.

“I need your help.”

Pope glances around the kitchen once more before rolling up the sleeves of his sweatshirt. “What are we workin’ with here?”

Rafe gestures vaguely toward the counter—toward the mess. “I’m trying to make banana bread.”

“You’re trying to make banana bread?” Pope asks like he never thought those words would leave Rafe Cameron’s lips and honestly, neither did Rafe Cameron.

“Mhmm.”

“—You don’t know how to work a microwave.”

“I know.”

“You asked me how to scramble eggs.”

“Heyward, c’mon,” Rafe mumbles weakly, his shoulders slumping heavily.

“Can you even read?”

“Directions? Yes. And, I can read too. Fuck off or help me.”

He takes the oven mitt off Rafe’s hand and opens the oven door, a thick plume of black smoke billowing out. All three boys cough up a lung, wafting the smoke away, revealing what lies inside.

The inside looks like soup, the outside resembling something that had fallen to earth from space.

“Holy shit,” Pope chuckles, his fist half-covering his smile when he sees how wounded Rafe looks at his first attempt.

“It’s better than I thought it’d look,” Rafe breathes.

“—Nothing about this makes any sense,” Pope whispers as JJ snickers in the back.

“You think it’s salvageable?” He asks, running his hand through his hair anxiously.

“Absolutely not,” Pope answers as he pulls it out, the liquid in the middle jiggling like molten Jello. He rests it on the counter, grabbing a fork, dipping in the middle. “I mean, maybe we could pour it into something smaller and pray.”

“Yeah?” Rafe asks hopefully, watching Pope dip the tip of a spoon into the center.

“Sure—Holy fuckin’ shit,” Pope dives for a water bottle as soon as the liquid hits his tongue and JJ folds over laughing.

“It can’t be that bad.” Rafe rolls his eyes and takes a bite himself. His face twists and his jaw locks. “Oh fuck,” Rafe spats, rubbing the food and the taste off his tongue with a kitchen towel, the man still sweating profusely, his heart rate far too high for bread making.

“What did you put in there?” Pope asks curiously.

Rafe gestures to the counter, pointing as he goes. “Sugar. Flour. Bananas. Eggs—”

“So, salt, flour, bananas, and eggs, bro. That’s salt.”

“Nah.”

“Yah,” Pope breathes as Rafe tests a little for himself from the jar and sure as shit it’s salt.

Rafe closes his eyes and drags both hands down his face. “I’m trying my best.” Pope rests a hand on Rafe's sweaty shoulder, patting him supportively.

“I know you are, buddy. How much time do you have left?” He asks as Rafe glances toward the clock on the microwave.

“An hour and a half—”

“Perfect,” Pope says immediately. “I only need an hour.”

Relief flashes across Rafe’s face for a second before something changes behind his eyes. He straightens up a little, hand resting low on his hip while the other points to the bowl.

“You can’t touch it.”

JJ snorts out a little laugh and hangs his head. “You cannot be serious.”

“M’serious,” he answers. “I gotta make it myself.”

“—Why?” Pope asks, pulling the dry ingredients out of the cupboard.

“Our boy is suspicious,” JJ answers. “Rafe’s about to pull some Etsy witch shit and make his tutor fall in love.”

“Ohhhh,” Pope smiles, pointing at JJ from across the table like the pieces finally clicked. “Banana Bread Theory.”

“Mhmm,” JJ mumbles as he takes the last slice out of the loaf pan.

“Just help me,” Rafe pleads. “Please.”

𝓐𝓷 𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓪 𝓱𝓪𝓵𝓯 𝓵𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓻…

. ݁₊ ⊹ 📱.ᐟ.ᐟ 𝙹𝙹: 𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚢𝚎𝚝?

. ݁₊ ⊹ 📱.ᐟ.ᐟ 𝚁𝚊𝚏𝚎: 𝙰𝚕𝚖𝚘𝚜𝚝.

. ݁₊ ⊹ 📱.ᐟ.ᐟ 𝙿𝚘𝚙𝚎: 𝙳𝚘𝚗’𝚝 𝚍𝚛𝚘𝚙 𝚒𝚝.

. ݁₊ ⊹ 📱.ᐟ.ᐟ 𝚁𝚊𝚏𝚎: 𝙸 𝚠𝚊𝚜𝚗’𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝙿𝚘𝚙𝚎. 𝙽𝚘𝚠 𝙸 𝚊𝚖 🖕🏼

. ݁₊ ⊹ 📱.ᐟ.ᐟ 𝙹𝙹: 𝚈𝚘𝚞’𝚛𝚎 𝚏𝚒𝚗𝚎.

. ݁₊ ⊹ 📱.ᐟ.ᐟ 𝚁𝚊𝚏𝚎: 𝙸𝚝’𝚜 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚋𝚊𝚗𝚊𝚗𝚊 𝚋𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍.

. ݁₊ ⊹ 📱.ᐟ.ᐟ 𝙹𝙹: 𝚂𝚞𝚛𝚎.

. ݁₊ ⊹ 📱.ᐟ.ᐟ 𝚃𝚘𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚛: 𝚆𝚑𝚢 𝚒𝚜 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢𝚋𝚘𝚍𝚢 𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚋𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍?

The loaf of banana bread sits tucked beneath one arm while his backpack hangs from one shoulder. He adjusts his grip on the container, checking the lid before he checks it again, three hours of baking disasters and near house fires doing jack-shit for his confidence.

. ݁₊ ⊹ 📱.ᐟ.ᐟ 𝙿𝚘𝚙𝚎: 𝚃𝚎𝚕𝚕 𝚞𝚜 𝚒𝚏 𝚜𝚑𝚎 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎𝚜 𝚒𝚝.

. ݁₊ ⊹ 📱.ᐟ.ᐟ 𝙹𝙹: 🕯️𝚏𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚒𝚗 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎 🕯️𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚋𝚘𝚢 🕯️𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚔 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 🕯️𝚜𝚞𝚐𝚊𝚛 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚕𝚍 𝚋𝚊𝚗𝚊𝚗𝚊 🕯️𝚖𝚊𝚐𝚒𝚌 🕯️𝚑𝚎’𝚜 𝚜𝚘 𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚎 🕯️🕯️🕯️ 𝚑𝚎 𝚗𝚎𝚎𝚍𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚆 𝚋𝚊𝚗𝚊𝚗𝚊 𝚐𝚘𝚍𝚜 🕯️🕯️🍌

. ݁₊ ⊹ 📱.ᐟ.ᐟ 𝚃𝚘𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚛: 𝙸 𝚍𝚘𝚗’𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚔 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝’𝚜 𝚑𝚘𝚠 𝚋𝚊𝚗𝚊𝚗𝚊 𝚋𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚔𝚜.

. ݁₊ ⊹ 📱.ᐟ.ᐟ 𝚃𝚘𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚛: 𝚆𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚍𝚒𝚍 𝙸 𝚖𝚒𝚜𝚜?

. ݁₊ ⊹ 📱.ᐟ.ᐟ 𝙹𝙹: 𝚁𝚊𝚏𝚎 𝚖𝚊𝚍𝚎 𝚋𝚊𝚗𝚊𝚗𝚊 𝚋𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚝𝚞𝚝𝚘𝚛 𝚏𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚒𝚗 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚑𝚒𝚖.

. ݁₊ ⊹ 📱.ᐟ.ᐟ 𝚃𝚘𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚛: 𝚃𝚑𝚊𝚝’𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚍𝚞𝚖𝚋𝚎𝚜𝚝 𝚜𝚑𝚒𝚝 𝙸’𝚟𝚎 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚍.

. ݁₊ ⊹ 📱.ᐟ.ᐟ 𝚁𝚊𝚏𝚎: 𝙽𝙾𝙱𝙾𝙳𝚈 𝙰𝚂𝙺𝙴𝙳 𝚈𝙾𝚄.

. ݁₊ ⊹ 📱.ᐟ.ᐟ 𝙹𝙹: 𝙸𝚐𝚗𝚘𝚛𝚎 𝚑𝚒𝚖 𝚒𝚝’𝚜 𝚋𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚊 𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚍𝚊𝚢. 𝙷𝚎’𝚜 𝚋𝚎𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊 𝚋𝚒𝚝𝚌𝚑.

. ݁₊ ⊹ 📱.ᐟ.ᐟ 𝙿𝚘𝚙𝚎: 𝙳𝚒𝚍 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚜𝚑𝚘𝚠𝚎𝚛? 𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚜𝚠𝚎𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚜𝚘 𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚍.

. ݁₊ ⊹ 📱.ᐟ.ᐟ 𝙹𝙹: 𝙷𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚜.

. ݁₊ ⊹ 📱.ᐟ.ᐟ 𝚃𝚘𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚛: 𝙵𝚛𝚘𝚖… 𝚋𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐?

. ݁₊ ⊹ 📱.ᐟ.ᐟ 𝚁𝚊𝚏𝚎: 𝙵𝚞𝚌𝚔 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚊𝚕𝚕.

Rafe shakes his head and slips his phone into his pocket. He adjusts his hat nervously as he reaches the top of the stairs.

He looks to the left and there you are, his stomach twisting into nervous knots. Which is insane.

Your legs are crossed, head cradled in your hand as you run your highlighter across the page. The iced coffee he knows you probably snagged hours ago sits sweaty and completely melted on top of a pile of old notes. Your foot bobs along with the music in your earbuds and he can’t help but wonder what you’re listening to.

You bite your lip in concentration, tapping the page as you read, and even though you’re doing something so simple, he can’t take his eye off of you.

You never seem aware of the effect you have on people—on him. You talk about exams, research papers, and internship opportunities like they actually matter. Like the future is something you can plan for instead of something that just happens to you. You are brilliant in a way that makes everybody else seem lazy. Including him. Especially him.

And, it isn’t the fact that you’re the smartest person he’s ever met. It isn’t only your smile, or your eyes he gets lost in if he looks too long. It’s not just one thing. It’s all of it.

A collection of moments shared between him and the woman who’s seemingly too busy for anyone else. But somehow, you share your time with him.

The worst part is that none of this is usually hard for him. Rafe Cameron has never spent three hours making banana bread for a woman before. He’s never stood in a library trying to calm his heart rate before walking over to a table.

And he definitely has never imagined himself working this hard for something this silly to work out in his favor.

He fixes his hat one more time before walking over, immediately annoyed with himself for doing it, his fingers tightening around the container instead. A smile starts pulling at the corner of his mouth when he steps closer to the table.

“Hey.”

Your head lifts from your notes the second his shadow falls across the table.

“Hey, you.” The greeting lands exactly the way it always does. Rafe tries to hide it, ducking his head a little as he drops into the chair beside you.

His backpack slides from one shoulder, to the floor while he settles into the seat, nodding over to your drink, catching the way the cup has essentially waterlogged a pile of old notes. “Coffee flavored water?”

“Ugh,” you grumble, rolling your eyes with a smile. “Got a little lost in everything today.”

“I can see that,” he smiles, scooting a little closer.

Your eyes drift toward the container sitting beside his things. Something is wrapped around it, holding the lid in place, and it takes you a second to realize what you’re looking at. The white lace is tied into an admittedly lopsided bow across the top.

“You brought a snack?” You ask, taking a sip of your drink.

“Nah,” Rafe answers, glancing down at it before sliding the container across the table. “For you.”

“Seriously?”

“The lace is clean. Promise.”

“A little secure for baked goods, Cameron,” you tease as you dig at the knot a little with your nail, loosening it. “You tied a double knot.”

Rafe glances away the second his voice cracks. “I was a little nervous, I guess.”

Your eyes flick up to his, wondering if you caught those seven words just right—and you did.

“Didn’t have a bow layin’ around the frat.”

“It’s perfect,” you smile, tugging the lace free. “Very cute. I love it.”

You glance down at the container again before looking back up. “Thank you.”

“‘Course.”

“It isn’t my birthday,” you whisper, saving him the embarrassment.

He chuckles and nods, drumming his fingers against the table. “I know.”

“So what am I missing?”

“Nothing.” The smile never leaves his face, instead it gets a little bigger. “I just wanted to make it for you.”

The words settle, breathing through the library while a hundred tiny moments suddenly start rearranging themselves in your memory. The way he always shows up early. The way he remembers things you’ve mentioned once and never brought up again. The way he somehow finds reasons to stay after your study sessions end. The way he looks at you sometimes when he thinks you’re focused on your notes instead.

Your hands come up and cover part of your smile.

“Did Pope help you make this?” You ask.

“I made it.” Rafe points at his chest. “He supervised… aggressively.”

You bite your cheek, holding back a smile but the thought of him taking time out of his day, asking his friend for help to make something, the shoelace bow, the little nervous way the corner of his mouth trembles each time he smiles, it’s sweet.

“This smells amazing,” you praise, pulling back the top, and the relief that crosses over his face has you holding back a nervous laugh yourself.

You break off a piece and take a bite as Rafe holds his breath, waiting for your verdict.

“Hmm?” He asks before you can even assure him.

“This is incredible.”

You take another bite and Rafe watches you chew. His blue eyes drop toward your mouth, lingering for a moment before they veer away, like he caught himself doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing.

The moment lasts less than a second but it still makes your pulse stumble.

He looks back at you like he’s about to say something, then thinks better of it.

“What?” You ask.

“Uh… You—Umm… You got a crumb.”

Your hand immediately lifts, brushing at your lips.

“Nope,” he chuckles, leaning in a little more, cupping your cheek in his hand, brushing his thumb gently against the corner of your mouth. “There you go.”

His hands fall away and your heart skitters and all you can think about is the contact, and how you can get that again. You stare at him for another second before breaking off a piece and holding it toward him. “You want some?”

His attention flicks to the piece in your hand, then back to your face, nodding yes. The proximity is close enough that the only option is to eat it off your fingers.

For a second he looks almost surprised that you’re serious. Then he leans forward and takes the bite directly from you.

Rafe sits back slowly, chewing once before dropping his gaze to the table. Like he suddenly isn’t sure what to do with himself.

“Good?” You ask quietly.

Rafe finishes chewing before a grin starts pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Definitely worth three hours.”

You gasp, half-teasing half-genuinely surprised. “You’re joking,”

“Forget I said that.”

“I can’t,” you giggle, tilting your head a little, watching him melt into his palm as he relaxes a little more.

“Almost burned the house down,” he chuckles.

“Oh my god.”

“Worth it,” he breathes. “Your smile’s incredible by the way.” Your cheeks warm up instantly, your lips tilting, finding yourself having to turn away for a moment. “Stunning.”

“You’re sweet. This… This is seriously so thoughtful,” you whisper, playing nervously with the lace between your fingers. “Thank you.”

And for a moment the library fades into the background, and for the first time in a long time, none of it feels particularly important.

Rafe’s still leaning toward you from where he took the bite, his elbow resting on the edge of the table. And just like before, his eyes drift down for a second before lifting back to yours again, and this time neither of you looks away.

And, in the back of his mind he can’t help but wonder how sweet your lips would taste.

He smiles softly to himself. One thing at a time.

“Of course, sweetheart.”

🍌🍞 tag list on my pinned post 🧸 @rafesthroatbaby @hockeygirlyyyy @drewstarkeyswife-7 @ornellastreet @cokewithcameron @loserboysandlithium @buckybarnessweetheart @torturedpoetism @slut-4-rafey @americanboz0 @taliescapes @slxttfadustin @cdiaz18 @tangledinmyfeelings @harrrrystylesslut @st8rkey @obsessedwrafe @my-name-is-baby @dollforafe @abbottjunior01 @seulbeomie @pillowprincess4him @moondustbaby @premiumshitt @gigislover08 @lilithblackkk @babygoddam @harringtonsbowgirl @yesimeasyy @angelicameron @ashleyytatum @stace-041193 @rafesbabygirlx @lhhlver @raf3cam3r0n @rafesbuzzcutseason @jscasmth @bunnyx2 @diasnohibng @ariieeesworld @ilovehughbiggs @willowpains @esmerai-artemis @simp4f1 @mochachocalat @sexychickenmagnet @isastarset

[puckinghell]

My Side of the Fence | Elias Lindholm

Plot: With a boyfriend like Elias, surely it’s not strange that you can get a teeny tiny bit jealous sometimes… Based on the song with the same name. Word count: 1890 Note: I’m literally not even a Flames girl but damn this boy is a dream. Feel free to send Lindy recs cause i swear i’ve read every imagine there is on him?? There’s not many. It’s a tragedy. 

Elias really was perfect in every single way. He was gorgeous, funny, charming, sweet, and did you mention gorgeous? Sometimes, you still couldn’t believe that of all people, he’d picked you to be with.

And when he was talking and laughing with a girl a million times more beautiful than you, that feeling got a little worse.

You knew he wasn’t the type to run off and leave you all by yourself at a party. In fact, usually he clung to your side, dragged you around as he talked to his friends, his hand on the small of your back or your hand tugged in his. He was always touching you, in some way. You scolded him for it, told him that you could be left alone, as you were not a child; but right now you would give about anything for him to come cling to you, to come annoy you.

You hadn’t even really wanted to go to this party, but Sean and Britt were both good friends to you, and Elias had basically begged you to go, saying it wouldn’t be much fun without you.

Well, you thought bitterly, he seemed to have fun now.

Keep reading

[writingsforfandoms-multi]

the thing with kate | tyler seguin

requested: yes [2 requests into 1]

prompts:

17. “i just need some time to myself”

24. “i don’t blame you, i wouldn’t love me either” and

25. “go on. tell me you don’t love me”

summary: you get a message from kate saying her and tyler are a thing while he’s in a relationship with you

a.n: this isn’t me hating on kate (i honestly don’t care about their relationship, whatever it may be, because it’s not my business) so please don’t come at me

—-

the messages started a few days ago.

you were getting DM’s from a girl named Kate Kirchof and at first you didn’t believe the things she was telling you about her and tyler, but then she started telling you very intimate details about him. you went to her profile and she was private, but you did have mutuals like some of the players and their wives and girlfriends.

you didn’t believe this kate girl in the beginning, there were always people in your DMs saying tyler was cheating on you but since there wasn’t proof you never believed them. you figured kate was someone who wanted to stir things up in your relationship, but after she gave you proof of sleeping with him, you were starting to believe her.

you didn’t know how to act around tyler which is why you were avoiding him. you were angry, confused, and most of all hurt.

So what did you do? you texted the wags group chat.

you all decided to meet at your place; you and tyler weren’t living together yet so you had your own space to just talk with the girls.

once all the ladies are settled, you take a deep breath before you start.

“I’ve been getting messages from someone saying they’re sleeping with tyler” you pause for a moment, “it’s not like it hasn’t happened before, but this time the girl gave proof” you say as you fumble with your bracelet.

everyone starts asking questions at once like ‘who was it?’ ‘are you sure?’ ‘what proof?’

“someone named kate kirchof” you look at their reactions and they all look uncomfortable. “you guys know her?” you ask

they all look at each other, avoiding your gaze. “who is she?” you ask calmly even though you’re starting to get nervous.

allie cogliano hesitates before she speaks, “her and tyler used to be….a thing” she tries to find the word for it

“a thing?” you ask

“their relationship was complicated. they were never official but they were something.” katie hoaldridge says as she looks carefully at your reaction

“like a friends with benefits type of thing?” you clarify

“something like that” one of the girls says

“but i’m sure tyler broke it off once he started seeing you, that’s why you don’t see her at any of the team activities anymore” another one says as she tries to reassure you, but it doesn’t do much.

after the girls tell you more about kate, you feel hurt. you knew tyler slept around before you started dating, but kate wasn’t just someone he was sleeping with, she was someone important in his life and he didn’t tell you about her in these two years you’ve been together.

letting go of someone who was important in your life was hard, so you weren’t really sure if they were truly done with each other. although the majority of you knew tyler would never cheat on you, there was the small chance that he would. old habits die hard.

after the girls left, you decided to open a bottle of alcohol and drown your sorrows while being wrapped in a big, fluffy blanket with netflix on the tv.

you glance at your phone when you get a text notification. it was from tyler:

are you avoiding me?

you don’t respond and a few minutes later another text comes in:

are you mad at me?

then:

i’m worried about you, at least let me know you’re okay please

you finally decide to reply:

i’m fine, I just need some time to myself

with that, you turn off your phone and continue to drink and watch netflix, not wanting to deal with anything until tomorrow.

—

“i don’t know what's going on with her man” tyler says as he stands in Jamie’s kitchen.

“have you asked her about it?” he says as he grabs a water bottle from the fridge.

“I can’t, she’s been avoiding me like the plague” tyler sighs, frustrated.

as jamie is about to answer, katie walks in, “babe?”

“in the kitchen” jamie says in her direction

she freezes when she sees tyler in the kitchen and then her gaze turns hard. “where’d you go?” jamie asks as he gives her a hug and a peck on the cheek

“i was out with the girls” tyler perks up at hearing this

“was y/n there?” he asks as he steps towards her

katie crosses her arms, “yes and right now she just wants time to think” she adds, knowing he’d ask about you.

“I don’t even know what I did” tyler defends

“maybe you should ask kate” katie can’t help but mumble under her breath, but tyler heard her.

“what?” he says as his eyes grow wide.

“forget it” she sneers as she turns around to head into the living room but stops when she feels jamie grab her hand and spins her around to face him.

“if it was you, i’d want someone to tell me” he says and her eyes soften.

she glances over at tyler who tries to plead with her, “it’s been killing me these past few days not knowing what I did. she means everything to me katie, I can’t lose her” he shakes his head

she looks at jamie before nodding and telling tyler about the conversation that happened earlier.

tyler races out of their house and gets in the car to go to your apartment. Tyler's pissed, he couldn’t believe kate would do something like that. even though they don’t have a romantic relationship anymore, they were still friends, until now.

he reaches your place in record time and starts knocking on your door.

“who is it?” you yell as you sit up on the couch

“it- it’s me” you hear tyler’s voice

you put the bottle on the table and stumble your way to the door.

your mind is jumbled by the alcohol that you forgot why you were mad until you opened the door.

“wait, I'm mad at you” you pout as you try to close the door on him but he sticks his foot in the way and pushes the door open.

“leave” you say as you point at the door

“not until we talk” he says and goes quiet.

you scoff “well go on. tell me you don’t love me, that’s why you’ve been seeing kate behind my back isn’t it”

he furiously shakes his head but before he can say anything you continue, “i don’t blame you, i wouldn’t love me either” you say quietly

he cups your cheeks and tries to get you to meet his gaze, “I’m in love you y/n, I could never cheat on you”

you look into his eyes, “then why would kate tell me otherwise” you say as your lip begins to quiver, damn you hated being an emotional drunk

“I don’t know baby, but I sure as hell am gonna find out” he says as he wipes your tears away. he brings you to his chest when he sees that the tears don’t stop flowing.

he takes you to the couch where he sits you on his lap, “you believe me, right?” he says as the panic he had of losing you comes back.

you nod your head where it’s tucked into his neck, “I trust you” you say and he breathes a sigh of relief and holds you tighter against him.

tyler wanted to talk more about the situation, but you wanted to hold off, “i’m too drunk for this conversation we’re about to have and i’ve already cried once” you tried to joke.

he gives you a sad smile, “okay baby, we’ll talk when you sober up”

even though you said you believed him, he had no idea how’d you react or if you would even remember the conversation in the morning, but he hoped to god that your relationship would be able to move forward like this situation never happened.

—

nhl masterlist

[cheekybarnes]

habits of the heart | bucky barnes x reader

Summary: You and Bucky both know what it means to wake up haunted after a nightmare. over time, taking care of each other through it becomes second nature.

MCU Timeline Placement: Thunderbolts-ish

Master List: Find my other stuff here!

Warnings: nightmares, panic attacks, vomiting, nausea, PTSD, flashbacks, HYDRA and Red Room-related trauma, implied past torture / past conditioning, smoking, kind of two parts smashed into one, angsty af but with lots of comfort, two idiots in love it’s borderline painful

Word Count: 10.6k

Author’s Note: HIIIIII <3 crawling out of my nearly six-month hiatus to throw this at the wall and scuttle away like a goblin. life has actually been really good, which is WILD, and somehow my brain said guess what we have time for again?? bucky barnes! honestly, writing fics again felt so refreshing and familiar and sweet, and i missed this more than i realized. love you all dearly, thank you for still being here :’)

Your knees hit the tile hard enough to sting, but the pain barely registered over everything else.

The toilet bowl blurred in and out of focus beneath you, white porcelain swimming at the edges of your vision as another violent spasm tore through your stomach. Your body folded in on itself with brutal, helpless force, one hand braced against the seat, the other slipping against the floor where cold tile had already gone slick beneath your palm. 

Your throat burned. Bitter acid clung to the back of your tongue. Tears dripped hot and useless down your face, dragged there by strain more than grief, though the two had long since learned how to wear each other’s skin.

By the time the heaving slowed, your lungs felt flayed open.

You stayed bent over anyway, forehead nearly touching the rim, breathing in harsh, ragged pulls that wouldn’t quite fill your chest. The sound of it crowded the tiny bathroom, too loud in the middle of the night. Wet, ugly, shaking. Every inhale snagged like there was something lodged behind your ribs, some leftover shard of fear your body hadn’t realized was no longer lodged in blood and bone but memory instead. 

You tried to swallow and nearly gagged again. Your stomach cramped, empty. A tremor ran through your arms so hard your elbow buckled, and your shoulder knocked the side of the vanity with a dull thud.

For one disorienting second, the cramped bathroom wasn’t a bathroom at all.

It was a concrete floor slick with something darker than water. It was the sterile burn of antiseptic threaded with iron and something sour beneath it. It was the sharp, echoing crack of a baton striking bone, the clipped Russian commands that never needed to be loud to be obeyed. It was the snap of a restraint at your wrist, the bite of it, the cold certainty that your body was no longer your own—but something trained, sharpened, used.

Things you’d never truly forget, no matter how many nights you slept in clean sheets with Bucky Barnes’ arm draped heavy over your waist, his breath steady at the back of your neck: boots against concrete, measured and unhurried, the kind that meant someone was coming for you—or worse, that you were being sent for someone else. The soft click of a chamber being checked. The silence just before a command was given, before you moved without thinking, before you became something you could never quite scrub out of your skin.

Your stomach lurched again on pure reflex.

Nothing came up this time, just a dry, painful wrench that bowed your spine and pulled a strangled sound out of you. You squeezed your eyes shut, but that only made it worse. 

The dark behind your lids fractured into pieces. Broken glass. A blood-slick knife. White lights. Red orders. Your hands steady around a throat, a trigger, a blade. The shape of Bucky turning back for you when every instinct in the world should have sent him the other direction. The heat of his hand catching yours. Gunfire. Fire licking up the walls of a place that should never have existed.

You knew where you were.

You did. You knew the apartment. Knew the soft yellow light above the sink. Knew the curtains Bucky kept meaning to replace because the bottom hem had started to fray. Knew the towel hanging crooked because he always tossed it there instead of folding it. Knew the dark blue bathmat under your knees and the way the grout line by the baseboard had a hairline crack running through it.

But knowing and feeling had never been the same thing. Not on nights like this.

Your hands had gone numb. You curled them into fists anyway, then flattened them again, fingertips pressing into tile like you could anchor yourself by force. Your pulse hammered so hard it made your teeth ache. 

The room felt too small. Your skin felt too tight. Something hot and frantic clawed up the inside of your throat, and before you could stop it, another sound broke loose—thin, raw, humiliated by how frightened it sounded in the quiet.

The bed creaked in the other room.

You heard it faintly through the rushing in your ears. Then the rustle of sheets. Then footsteps—quick, heavy, instantly awake in the way only Bucky ever seemed to be, as if some part of him never fully slept at all. The door creaked open. It was silent for all but a second.

“Hey.”

His voice came rough with sleep and immediate concern from the doorway, low enough not to startle, but there was already movement in it, already urgency. “Hey, sweetheart.”

You didn’t turn.

A fresh wave of nausea and panic hit at once, and you coughed hard over the bowl, one hand flying to your chest like you could physically hold yourself together. The bathroom light was suddenly brighter. Had you turned it on? Had he? You couldn’t remember. Your vision had gone watery again.

Bucky crossed the space in two quick steps and dropped to his knees beside you before you could protest, bare shoulders tense, dog tags shifting against his chest. His hair was sleep-mussed, face still soft with the remnants of rest, but his eyes were already sharp, already searching you for damage.

His hand landed first between your shoulder blades. Steady. Warm. Broad enough to cover half your back.

You flinched anyway, not from him, just from the overload of sensation, and his palm immediately softened, not leaving, just easing into slow, grounding pressure. 

“It’s okay,” he murmured, closer now. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”

Your throat worked uselessly around words that wouldn’t form. The air still wouldn’t come right. You tried to drag in a breath and choked on it, lungs hitching into that horrible in-between state where you weren’t quite hyperventilating, but every inhale was getting thinner, shallower, feeding the panic instead of easing it.

Bucky noticed in seconds. He always did.

“Don’t force it.” His voice stayed calm, even as you heard him shift, turning more fully toward you. His other hand came up to cup the side of your face, cool vibranium cradling your skin with impossible care as he coaxed your head away from the toilet just enough to see you. “Hey, look at me.”

You couldn’t. Not really. Your gaze skittered somewhere near his collarbone, then the hollow of his throat, then the edge of his mouth. But it was enough for him to catch on to where you were, enough for him to angle himself more squarely in front of you, making himself impossible to miss.

“Good,” he said softly, like you’d done something far harder than simply lift your head. “That’s it.”

Another tremor wracked through you. Your eyes squeezed shut.

Bucky reached blindly for the flush, handled it one-handed, then leaned back in without complaint the moment it was done. His fingers slid from your cheek to brush damp hair back from your face. There was no disgust in him, no hesitation, no trace of the sharp awkwardness other people might have carried into a moment like this. 

“Can you breathe with me?” he asked.

You let out something between a laugh and a sob, because if you could do that, you wouldn’t be on the bathroom floor shaking apart in the middle of the night. But Bucky only huffed the faintest breath through his nose, not quite a smile, not quite amusement. Just recognition. You’d both been here before.

“That bad, huh?”

His thumb stroked under your eye, catching at the wetness there. You nodded before you could stop yourself, small and miserable and angry at how quickly the motion made more tears spill.

“Okay.” He shifted again, arm sliding around your ribs, careful of the way your muscles were still seizing, gathering you in his arms. “Come here.”

There was no room for pride in the state you were in. No strength left for pretending to protest.

He pulled you sideways, away from the toilet, not in one jarring motion but gradually, giving your body time to follow. The tile was freezing beneath your bare feet as they dragged over it. Then you were half turned, then fully turned, and then Bucky sat back against the side of the tub and brought you with him until you ended up in the space between his legs. 

He adjusted instantly, one arm around your waist, the other cradling the back of your head, guiding you down until you were tucked against his chest like he could fold his whole body around yours and wall the rest of the night out.

The second you felt the solid heat of him, something inside you cracked.

A sob tore loose, ugly and helpless and far too loud for the hour, muffled into his shoulder. 

His heartbeat thudded against your ear, fast enough to tell you he was scared too, or had been when he first woke and found the bed empty, but his hold never tightened in a way that trapped. One palm flattened between your shoulder blades again, rubbing slow circles. The other stayed at the nape of your neck, thumb brushing there in absent, cold-soothing sweeps.

“I know,” he whispered into your hair. “I know, sweetheart. I know.”

You hated how much your body needed that. Hated and loved it in equal measure. The softness of his voice. The way he anchored every word like it could keep you from slipping under. 

You pressed closer instead of fighting it, face buried against his chest, and the scent of him—soap, detergent, something warm and sleep-soft, and the faintest lingering trace of gun oil that never seemed to leave his skin entirely no matter how long it had been since his last mission—hit you with such fierce familiarity it made your lungs stutter again.

Only this time, the breath came.

Still shaky. Still broken around the edges. But it came.

Bucky felt it and adjusted to that too, his own breathing turning deeper, slower on purpose so you could borrow the rhythm if you wanted it. He never made a performance out of helping. He never talked to you like you were fragile glass or some skittish thing that might bolt if handled wrong. He just offered himself, over and over, in small physical certainties your body could understand when words became useless.

Your stomach churned once more. You tensed immediately.

“Still sick?” he asked quietly.

You nodded hesitantly against him.

He reached without fully letting go of you, snagging the wastebasket next to the toilet with one arm and setting it within reach near your knee. It was such a practical, ridiculous little act—so unromantic, so matter-of-fact—that fresh tears burned at the backs of your eyes. 

Bucky, still half asleep, sitting bare-chested on cold tile in the middle of the night, dragging the trash can closer in case moving back to the toilet was too much. Bucky, who knew what it was to wake with someone else’s orders still clawing under his skin, treating your panic with the same seriousness he would a wound.

You swallowed hard and finally managed a hoarse, “M’sorry.”

His hand stilled for half a second, then resumed its slow path up your spine.

“For what?”

The question came immediate and flat in that way he had when he thought something you were saying was fundamentally absurd.

You couldn’t answer. For waking him. For being like this. For the mess. For the fact that the past kept reaching into your throat and pulling you out of bed by the ribs no matter how safe the apartment was, no matter how many nights ended with his lips on your temple and his arm heavy over your waist and a quiet promise that he was here.

Bucky exhaled softly through his nose, like he’d heard every apology you hadn’t said anyway. He tipped his head until his lips pressed against your hairline.

“None of that,” he murmured. “You hear me? Not for this.”

Your fingers tightened around him. His skin was damp now where your tears had fallen. He didn’t care.

For a while, neither of you said anything else.

The silence wasn’t empty. It was full of your breathing evening out by degrees, the hum of the vent overhead, the muted city noise filtering in through the apartment windows. Bucky kept touching you the whole time, never restless, never distracted. Slow circles over your back. A steady palm at your side when another tremor hit. 

His thumb at the base of your skull, rubbing little arcs there that made some of the locked tension in your neck begin, reluctantly, to loosen. Every now and then he kissed your temple or the crown of your head, quiet little presses of his mouth that asked for nothing and gave everything.

When the worst of the shaking finally passed, the exhaustion underneath it crashed in hard.

It settled over you like wet concrete, thick and immediate. Your limbs felt hollowed out. Your throat throbbed. There was sweat cooling at the base of your spine. 

The adrenaline that had ripped you awake was draining now, leaving behind a full-body ache and that awful raw vulnerability that always came after, when you were no longer actively drowning in the panic but still stranded in what it left behind.

Bucky eased back just enough to look at you.

His hair was a mess, dark strands falling into his eyes. His face still carried the softened edges of sleep, but worry had sharpened the rest of it into something painfully tender. There was no impatience there. No strain. Just the familiar crease between his brows and the kind of attention that made you feel seen all the way down to the bones, even when you wanted to disappear from your own skin.

“Can I get you some water?” he asked.

You hesitated, then nodded.

“Okay.” He brushed your cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Think you can sit on your own for a second?”

Under any other circumstance, you would have rolled your eyes at the question. Bucky could make shifting you off his lap on a bathroom floor sound as careful as disarming a bomb. But tonight there was no teasing in him, only sincerity.

“I can sit,” you whispered.

“Yeah?”

You gave the smallest nod.

“All right.”

He helped you move slowly, one hand steady at your waist while the other guided your shoulder until your back rested against the side of the tub instead of his chest. He waited there a beat, making sure you didn’t tip sideways, then rose from the floor.

The bathroom felt colder without him around you.

He filled a cup from the sink, rinsed it once, then filled it again. When he came back, he didn’t hover over you. He lowered himself right back onto the tile beside you, shoulder pressed lightly to yours, close enough that his warmth found you again.

“Small sips,” he said, holding the cup near your mouth instead of handing it over immediately.

You did as told. The water tasted metallic at first, your mouth still sour and stripped raw, but it helped. Cooled some of the acid burn. Gave you something simple to focus on. Swallow. Breathe. Swallow again.

“Better?”

“A little.”

He took the cup and set it back on the sink, then moved to pick up a washcloth hanging over the edge. He ran it under warm water, wrung it out, kneeled in front of you, and brought it to your face with a gentleness that nearly wrecked you again. 

He wiped under your eyes first, then your mouth, then the damp skin at your throat where sweat and tears had dried sticky-cold. The cloth was warm enough to coax a shiver out of you. Not from discomfort. From relief so deep it hurt.

You watched his hands because you couldn’t bear not to. Flesh and vibranium. Knuckles scarred, plates shifting soft and quiet when he moved. Capable of terrible things. Capable of this too. That was what ruined you most, how the same man who had been made into a weapon, who knew exactly what blood looked like under his own hands, could sit on a bathroom floor at three in the morning and clean your face like gentleness had always belonged to him.

When he was done, he set the cloth aside, gathered you back into his lap, and curled both arms around you again.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

The question stayed soft, neutral. No pressure either way.

You let your head tip against his shoulder and stared at the wall for a moment, at the shadow of the towel rack cast under the bathroom light. Pieces of the nightmare still clung like cobwebs, not a coherent story so much as a collage of every worst thing your body had cataloged and refused to forget. Fear rarely cared about chronology. It only cared about finding old wounds and pressing until they split.

“It was everything,” you said finally, voice scraped thin. “Not one thing. Just… all of it.”

Bucky went very still in the way he did when he was listening with his whole body.

“The room,” you whispered. “The lights. Somebody reading out orders like they were grocery lists. Girls screaming behind walls you couldn’t get through. Me with blood on my hands and no idea whose it was supposed to be.” Your throat tightened hard enough to hurt. “You turning around when you shouldn’t have. Over and over again.”

His hold on you changed in some subtle way, not tighter, exactly, but deeper. More deliberate. His jaw brushed your temple when he rested his cheek against your hair.

“I was always going to turn around.”

The words were so simple they lodged under your ribs.

You shut your eyes. “That’s not comforting.”

A faint breath left him, the closest thing to a tired little laugh. “Yeah. I know.” His mouth touched your temple again. “Still true.”

Something in your chest ached at that—at the awful, inevitable certainty in him. Bucky had never been good at preserving himself when someone he cared about was on the line. You knew that. He knew that you knew it. There was no use pretending otherwise. But there was something wrenchingly honest in the way he said it.

You turned your face into the line of his neck, pressing there until his skin warmed under your mouth.

“I hate when it follows us here,” you said, so quietly the words almost vanished.

His hand slid up to cradle the back of your head again. “Me too.”

That, more than any grand reassurance, made your eyes sting fresh. Because he didn’t lie to you. Didn’t tell you it was over in ways either of you knew weren’t real. Didn’t promise that the nightmares would stop for good if you just wanted hard enough. He met you where you were and stayed there.

After a moment, he shifted carefully and rose to his feet, bringing you with him before you could protest. One arm hooked under your knees, the other around your back, lifting you off the floor as if the effort cost him nothing. A startled breath caught in your throat.

“Bucky—”

“I know you can walk,” he said, already stepping out into the dim hallway. “Let me do it anyway.”

His voice had gone that little bit firmer, not unkind, just decided. Protective in a way that made warmth spread weakly through the cold aftermath inside you. 

You were too wrung out to argue. Your arm slid around his neck instead, and he adjusted your weight closer to his chest.

The apartment beyond the bathroom was different in the dark, softer at the edges. The bedroom door stood open, the lamp on the nightstand casting a low amber pool across tangled sheets. Your side of the bed was still thrown back from where you’d bolted out of it. Bucky had clearly turned the lamp on when he went looking for you. The sight of that—evidence of his immediate search, his immediate response—hit something tender in you.

He carried you to the bed and lowered you onto the mattress with a care that still had the power to undo you, one arm behind your shoulders, the other under your knees until your head found the pillow. He pulled the blankets back, eased them over you, then climbed in beside you.

The mattress dipped under his weight. He gathered you in almost before his own head hit the pillow. One arm went under your neck. The other crossed your waist, pulling you flush against him until your face was tucked against his chest and one of his thighs bracketed yours. He was warm everywhere. Solid. The weight of him, the familiar architecture of his body around yours, made the room feel more real.

His fingers threaded into your hair and began smoothing it back from your face in slow passes.

“You cold?” he asked after a second.

“A little.”

He tugged the blanket higher around your shoulders, then reached back to snag the extra throw bunched at the side of the bed and draped it over both of you. The movement shifted him just enough that you could hear his heartbeat again when he settled, still slightly faster than normal, still not entirely come down from the rush of waking to find you gone and hurting. That frightened, fiercely controlled part of him never quite disappeared on nights like this. He just refused to let it become your problem.

Your body gave one last, exhausted shudder. Bucky’s hand immediately moved down your spine.

“Easy,” he murmured. “You’re okay.”

You stared at the hollow of his throat in the lamplight, at the faint shadow of stubble there, at the old scar just visible near his collarbone. The world had taken so much from both of you. It had left marks everywhere. Some visible. Some not. 

“I’m sorry I woke you.”

There it was again, the apology you couldn’t seem to stop offering, though this one came softer now, less frantic. Just tired.

Bucky tipped your chin up enough that you had to look at him.

“Hey.” His voice was quiet, but there was steel under it now. “You don’t have to apologize. Not tonight. Not ever.”

The force of that hit you so hard your throat closed.

He must have seen it happen, because his expression changed instantly, the firmness melting back into warmth. His thumb traced once over your cheekbone. “Come here.”

You were already there, but you went anyway, pressing closer until there was no space left between you. His mouth touched your forehead, then lingered. Not a quick kiss. A long, deliberate press, like he was sealing something in place.

The silence that followed was different from the bathroom silence. Softer. Heavier with sleep. Your body still buzzed unpleasantly in places, adrenaline residue and lingering nausea and the deep ache of old fear reawakened, but it was no longer swallowing you whole. 

His hand kept moving in your hair.

After a while, he said, very quietly, “You want me to talk?”

You knew what he meant. Sometimes, on nights when the nightmares left too much room in the dark, he’d fill it for you. Not with reassurance, but with small, ordinary things. The kind of details that pinned you back to the present. 

He’d tell you about the coffee he meant to buy tomorrow, or the neighbor’s dog that had barked at him from the elevator last week, or the awful movie he’d half watched on a hotel television months ago and still hadn’t finished. Mundane things. Gentle things. Proof that life had continued after all the blood and terror, however unevenly.

You nodded.

So Bucky talked.

He told you he needed to get groceries because the two of you had somehow managed to end up with five different hot sauces in the fridge and nothing you could actually make for dinner. He told you the plant by the window was still alive, which he said in a tone suggesting he considered this a personal triumph, even though you were the one who remembered to water it. He told you he’d finally call the landlord about the kitchen light that kept flickering because if it shorted out while one of you was cooking, he was pretty sure that would be the stupidest possible way to survive everything else and die in your own apartment.

A weak, real sound escaped you at that. Not quite a laugh, but close.

Bucky’s mouth curved against your hair.

“There you are,” he murmured.

You kept listening.

He talked until your breathing had fully lengthened and the tight clench in your stomach eased into something survivable. Talked until your fingers loosened against his skin. Talked until the fear no longer felt like something standing over the bed, only a bruise left behind by a thing that had passed through. 

His voice stayed low and rough and close, vibrating through his chest into your cheek. Sometimes he paused to kiss your temple. Sometimes his words blurred together as sleep began to pull at him again.

At some point, your eyes slipped closed.

The darkness was still there behind them. Of course it was. Memory did not vanish because you were tired enough to stop fighting it. But now there was the warmth of Bucky’s arm over your waist, the slow drag of his thumb just above your hip, the rise and fall of his breathing under your ear. There was the bed. The apartment. The lamp still glowing low on the nightstand. The familiar scent of laundry detergent and his skin. There was the shape of his promise, unspoken now because he had already proven it.

I’m here.

Your last waking thought was not of the nightmare.

It was of the way Bucky’s hand had found yours beneath the blankets and held on, even as his own breathing finally began to deepen, like some part of him refused to sleep unless he knew you had made it back too.

You woke to absence before you woke to anything else.

It was not a sound that pulled you up out of sleep, not at first. It was the shape of missing warmth beside you, the place in the bed where Bucky should have been and wasn’t, the subtle but immediate wrongness of sheets cooled too quickly in the dark. 

Your hand moved before your mind did, sliding across the mattress in a half-conscious search for his chest, his shoulder, the easy, familiar weight of him. Your palm met only wrinkled cotton and a dip in the bed that had already started to rise. That alone was enough to sharpen you. 

Your eyes opened to a room washed dim and blue by city light bleeding through the curtains, and for one disorienting second your heart kicked hard enough to hurt.

The apartment was quiet.

Too quiet in the particular way the middle of the night always was, when every ordinary sound seemed louder. The refrigerator humming in the kitchen. A pipe ticking faintly in the wall. The distant hiss of tires on wet pavement far below. The bedroom door stood cracked, the narrow slice of hallway beyond it dark, and the stillness pressing in around that darkness made something old and defensive stir under your ribs before you could stop it.

You pushed yourself up slowly, blankets dragging down into your lap, and let your eyes adjust. 

Bucky’s side of the bed was empty down to the flattened pillow. He had been gone long enough for the heat to leave but not long enough to have done it quietly enough to fool the part of you that had learned, over time, exactly how his absence felt. There was a glass on the nightstand with water halfway gone. His phone lay face down beside it. He would not have left it there if he had gone anywhere beyond the apartment.

You listened harder.

There was no television. No running water. No cabinet doors in the kitchen. No soft scrape of his steps on hardwood. His shirt from earlier in the day had been draped over the chair in the corner. His belt lay half-looped through the top of his jeans where he’d dropped them. 

You slipped out from under the blanket and stood, the floor cool beneath your feet. The apartment’s shadows shifted around you as you moved. You didn’t bother with the lamp. A pale wash of city light filtered through the curtains, enough to keep you from stumbling as you stepped into the hallway.

The bathroom was empty. Door open. Light off.

The kitchen too, when you reached it. The counters were dark. The sink was empty except for the two mugs you’d left there before bed. One cabinet stood open an inch, not enough to suggest he’d been rifling through it recently, just the normal lazy forgetfulness of your shared life together. A thin stripe of moonlight cut across the tile from the living room, and a breeze caught your arm.

The balcony door was cracked open.

Only by a few inches, but enough for the curtain beside it to stir in the night air. Enough to let in a ribbon of colder wind that made the fine hairs on your arms rise.

You crossed the living room quietly, heartbeat beginning to thud harder for reasons you didn’t entirely want to name. The city beyond the glass spread out in muted lights and dark shapes, buildings stacked in shadow, distant lone cars threading gold and white through the streets. And there, just outside, was the silhouette of Bucky.

He sat in the chair near the railing with his elbows braced on his knees and his hands clasped loosely between them, head bowed. He had thrown on a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants sometime after leaving the bed, but neither seemed to be doing much against the cold. 

The line of his shoulders was rigid, tension drawn tight and inward, every muscle held under a lid that looked deceptively calm from a distance. Moonlight caught in the dark mess of his hair, turning the edges pale where it fell loose around his face, bent at the crown where he’d probably dragged a hand through it too many times.

A cigarette smoldered in the ashtray on the little metal table beside him—nearly gone, burned down more than smoked, the ember at the tip pulsing red every few seconds in the dark.

Bucky didn’t smoke anymore.

Not at all. Certainly not often. Not unless something had him by the throat.

He should have heard you already. Bucky heard everything. The fact that he hadn’t turned yet meant he was farther gone than he wanted to be.

The thought made something deep and aching soften in your chest.

For a moment, you just stood in the doorway and looked at him. Not because you were unsure what to do, but because the sight of him like that always reached into something bruised and complicated inside you. Bucky carried himself with so much control in the daylight, so much deliberate stillness, all dry muttered humor and quiet restraint and that hard-won ability to make himself look solid even when the ground under him had every reason to give way.

But every now and then, usually in the middle of the night, when there was no mission to focus on and no immediate danger to cut through the noise, you caught glimpses of what lived underneath it. Not weakness. Never that. Just the kind of exhaustion that came from being turned into a weapon and surviving it. Something old enough to have settled into his bones.

You slid the door open.

The track gave a soft scrape. Bucky’s head lifted immediately.

Even half lost in whatever had dragged him out here, he still turned fast, still alert in that way that never really left him. His posture changed on instinct before his eyes found you—subtle, automatic, the ghost of a defensive response already fading by the time recognition softened his face.

“Sorry,” he said, voice low and rough with disuse. “Did I wake you?”

It was such a Bucky thing to say that it almost hurt. Sitting alone in the cold at an hour no one should have been awake, a cigarette burning itself to ash beside him, and his first concern was still whether he had disturbed your sleep.

You stepped out onto the balcony and let the door slide shut behind you until the two of you were left with the distant city and the whisper of wind between buildings. The balcony floor under your feet was freezing. You folded your arms loosely against the cold, more out of reflex than discomfort, and moved toward him.

“You weren’t in bed,” you said quietly.

Bucky watched you come closer, and something in his expression shifted—some small guarded thing tightening and loosening at once. His eyes were shadowed in the low light, bluer in the moonlight than they ever looked during the day, ringed by the kind of tiredness sleep didn’t fix. He looked devastatingly awake for someone who should have still been in bed.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he said.

You stopped in front of him, close enough now to see the faint flex in his jaw, the way one thumb rubbed once across the side of his opposite hand and then stilled, like he’d caught himself doing it. Tiny tells. 

Bucky was full of them if you knew where to look. The mistake most people made was expecting his distress to look dramatic. It almost never did. It was quieter. Straighter. More contained. Everything in him drew inward until the only evidence left was in the details: the sleepless eyes, the cigarette he wasn’t really smoking, the tension at the base of his neck, the way he kept his gaze fixed somewhere just past the railing like looking at you too directly might split something open he was trying to keep sealed.

You reached past him and pinched the cigarette out in the ashtray.

He made a faint sound that might have been a humorless little exhale.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “Probably for the best.”

Then he leaned back just enough to look up at you properly. “You should be inside. It’s cold.”

You could have smiled at that, if the ache in your chest had left room for it. There he was again. Half frozen on the balcony in the dead of night, clearly unraveling in some private, disciplined way, and still trying to make sure you weren’t chilly.

Instead of answering, you moved closer until you stood between his knees. His gaze tracked you automatically. The city lights touched the edges of his face, caught along the bridge of his nose, the line of his mouth, the stubble that had come in a little darker by night. 

“Hey,” you said, softer now.

Something flickered behind his eyes at the sound of your voice that close. Not surprise. Recognition. A yielding he didn’t always grant himself but gave you more readily than anyone else.

You lifted your hands and touched his face.

Just the pads of your fingers at first, brushing his cheeks, letting him feel you there before your palms settled fully against the sides of his jaw. His skin was cool from the air outside, but there was warmth underneath it, a pulse you could feel where your thumb rested near his temple. Bucky’s eyes shut for one brief, helpless second.

That tiny, involuntary reaction nearly broke you.

“You okay?” you asked.

He opened his eyes again, and for a moment you saw the instinctive answer rise—the automatic yes, the deflection, the practiced, manageable version of himself that had gotten him through years of surviving things no one should have had to survive. It reached his mouth, paused there, then died before he could give it shape.

His flesh hand came up instead, covering one of yours where it rested on his face.

“Not really,” he admitted.

The words were quiet. Controlled. But there was a nakedness to them that only made the restraint more painful.

You swallowed hard.

“Can I sit with you?”

Bucky looked at you like the question itself undid him a little. Like there was still some part of him, after everything, that expected to weather the worst nights alone unless someone explicitly chose otherwise.

“Yeah,” he said, almost immediately. “Yeah, of course.”

He shifted back in the chair, making room. It was a tight fit, the balcony chair not built for two people, but that hardly mattered. You settled sideways onto his lap, one leg tucked carefully along the outside of his thigh, the other bent at the knee against the edge of the seat. 

The second your weight rested against him, Bucky’s arms came around you on instinct. Not as tightly as he held you when he was the one comforting you, not at first. There was a hesitation there, a fragility to the movement—as if he was trying not to need too much all at once.

You answered it by leaning fully into him.

Your chest against his. Your cheek near his temple. Your arms winding around his shoulders until there was no ambiguity left in the gesture. You felt the breath leave him. Felt the way his body gave, just slightly, the rigid line of his back easing by a degree as the contact settled into something real.

The wind threaded through the balcony railing in cool, intermittent currents. Far below, the city kept moving with the distant hush of tires and the occasional pulse of headlights crossing an intersection. Somewhere in another building, a television flickered blue against an unseen wall. The world went on, indifferent and ordinary, while you sat in Bucky’s lap in the middle of the night and felt the careful control in him slowly, reluctantly soften beneath your hands.

His face turned into the curve of your neck.

The movement was small. So small someone else might have missed the significance of it. But you felt it all the way through you—the way his forehead came to rest briefly against your shoulder, the way his breath hit your skin warmer than the night air, the way one hand spread over your back and stayed there as if grounding himself by the fact of you.

It was never easy, seeing Bucky like this.

Not because it made him less himself. If anything, it made him more. But because loving him meant learning the shape of all the things he carried, including the ones he didn’t have language for until they were already dragging him under. 

It meant knowing that some nights the ghosts rose too close. That the body kept score in ways even he couldn’t out-stubborn forever. That beneath the training and the dry humor and the endless, exhausted competence was a man who had spent years surviving catastrophe after catastrophe and had somehow never learned how to believe he was allowed to simply fall apart in someone else’s arms.

You put your hand in his hair and stroked it back from his forehead.

“How long have you been out here?” you asked.

“A while.”

“That doesn’t answer me.”

He raised his head and let out a breath through his nose, looking out over the city like maybe the exact shape of the skyline might help him answer honestly. “Twenty minutes. Maybe thirty.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” you asked.

Bucky’s grip tightened once at your waist, then loosened. His mouth moved back to brush your shoulder when he answered, words muffled against your skin.

“It’s stupid.”

“No, it isn’t.”

He let out a faint breath that stirred the collar of your shirt. “I know that’s the right answer.”

“It’s also the true one.”

That drew the barest huff from him, something dry and tired enough to almost qualify as amusement. Almost.

His silence stretched a little longer after that. You didn’t rush to fill it. Bucky needed space to reach for things in his own time. Pressing him too hard only made him retreat farther inside himself, not out of distrust, but out of habit. 

“Just… one of those nights.”

The answer was so him you nearly laughed, if it hadn’t hurt.

One of those nights. As if there weren’t decades buried under a phrase like that. The snow. The train. Cryo fog and fluorescent lights. Russian in his ear. The names he didn’t know he remembered until they came back bloodstained. The things he had done with someone else’s hand on the back of his neck. The things done to him until choice had been peeled down to the nerve. Bucky had always had a way of making ruin sound smaller than it was, like if he kept his voice low enough it might not take up so much space between you.

“And what kind of night is it, exactly?”

His jaw moved once beneath his skin. “The kind where my brain decides I should’ve done everything differently.”

There it was.

Not the whole truth, not all of it, but a real piece. Enough to open the door.

His voice had gone flatter on the last word, not cold but tired, worn down by an argument he’d clearly already been having with himself for the better part of half an hour. You knew that tone. Knew the shape of the guilt that lived under it. Bucky’s ghosts were rarely the loud kind. They did not always arrive as vivid nightmares or violent wakeups. Sometimes they came as stillness. As silence. As the terrible calm of a man sitting out in the cold, replaying the things done to him, the things done through him, and all the pieces of himself he still couldn’t quite separate from the weapon they made.

You slid your hand from his neck to his cheek, turning his face toward you with gentle insistence until he looked at you fully.

The city light caught in his eyes, pale and far away. There was no deflection in him now. No muttered half-joke, no practiced flatness, none of that careful distance he sometimes pulled around himself like armor. You saw the moment he almost reached for it anyway. Then your thumb brushed beneath his eye, and whatever thin defense had started to lock into place went still.

“Do you want to tell me,” you asked, “or do you want me to just sit here and keep you company until your brain stops being an asshole?”

That got you something real.

Small, but real. A tired pull at one corner of his mouth, brief enough to vanish almost as soon as it appeared. His gaze dropped to your lips and back up again. “You make a compelling second option.”

“I know.”

His hand at your waist tightened slightly, not possessive, not restraining. More like he needed to feel something solid and chosen under his palm before he answered. When he spoke again, his voice had lost some of its flatness.

“I was dreaming,” he said slowly, as if deciding each word before he released it. “I was back in Siberia, except it wasn’t exactly. It was every place layered on top of each other. All of it wrong in that dream logic way where you know it doesn’t make sense and it still feels real.” He paused. “And I knew you were there somewhere. I could hear you, but I couldn’t get to you.”

Something tight and cold slid through you at that, but you kept your face open and your hands gentle.

His eyes dropped to the line of your shoulder, unfocused now, seeing something else. “Every door I opened led somewhere it shouldn’t. Every turn was the wrong one. And I kept being just a little too late.” The last four words came quieter. Rawer. “That part felt familiar.”

The understatement of it nearly broke your heart.

You let silence hold for a beat, giving the confession room to settle between you rather than rushing to patch it over. Bucky did not need false reassurance. He needed truth met with truth.

“And then you woke up,” you said softly.

He nodded. “And you were asleep. And for a second I just…” His throat worked. “I don’t know. I couldn’t shake it.”

The words thinned there, fraying around the edges, and you knew exactly what he meant. That first split second of waking had left something behind—something sharp enough that he’d gotten out of bed and come outside rather than risk lying in the dark beside you with it still climbing his throat. Maybe because he hadn’t wanted to wake you. Maybe because he hadn’t trusted himself to settle. Maybe because after a lifetime of associating love with danger, there were still nights when having something precious under his hand made the fear worse before it made it better.

He had probably laid there beside you, staring into the dark, trying to settle himself without moving enough to wake you. Trying to swallow it. Manage it. Handle it alone. Then finally given up and come outside instead, not because he wanted distance from you, but because he had wanted to contain the damage. Not to let the night touch you if he could help it.

The tenderness of that hurt. The stupidity of it hurt more.

You shifted just enough to take his face gently between both hands and draw him back so you could look at him.

Bucky let you, though the movement clearly cost him. His eyes met yours at last, and the sight of the strain there was almost unbearable. Not because he was crying—he wasn’t. Bucky’s pain rarely looked like that. It lived in the tension around his mouth, the exhaustion in his stare, the way he seemed to be holding himself together one deliberate breath at a time. But the emotion in him was no less fierce for being contained. If anything, the effort of containing it made it ache more.

“You didn’t have to come out here alone,” you said.

His gaze flicked over your face, searching it in that intensely attentive way of his, like he was testing for judgment, for pity, for anything that might make him retreat. He found none. After a beat, his expression changed—small, almost invisible. Something in him softened with a kind of weary disbelief.

“It was late,” he said, and the excuse was so weak you almost loved him for it.

A breath of incredulous affection escaped you. “Buck...”

A corner of his mouth pulled faintly, not enough for a smile. “I know.”

“No, I don’t think you do.”

He leaned into your hand just a fraction, a motion so subtle it would have been easy to miss if you hadn’t been watching for exactly that. Then, as if some final line of resistance gave way, his forehead lowered until it rested against yours.

The position stole what little distance remained. Your breath mixed in the cold air. His lashes lowered. One of his hands slid up from your back to the nape of your neck, fingers spreading there, warm and steady despite the chill.

“I hate that you have to deal with this,” he murmured.

The confession sat between you, heavy with everything beneath it. Not just tonight. Not just the nightmare. The whole ugly web of loving someone whose life had been shaped by violence and loss, by years of being dropped into impossible situations and expected to keep moving afterward like survival alone was enough. Bucky’s guilt had always been like that—expansive, indiscriminate. He blamed himself for damage done with his own hands, even when those hands had never truly been his to command.

Your throat tightened.

“You are not something I deal with,” you said.

His eyes lifted to yours again.

You held his face gently, making sure he saw all of it. “You’re the person I love.”

The hand at his cheek slipped back into his hair again, fingertips scratching lightly at his scalp the way you knew he liked, the way that pulled the tension from him without forcing him to admit he needed it. His eyelids lowered halfway at once. The man was impossible. You wondered if he knew how transparently he betrayed himself in small comforts, in the way he leaned almost imperceptibly into the things that soothed him.

“You take care of me like it’s breathing,” you said quietly. “Like it never even occurs to you not to. And then the second it’s your turn, you act like making room for me in it is asking too much.”

He went still under that. Really still. Not rigid this time. Listening.

“It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

He looked at you for a long moment. When he answered, there was no self-protection left in it, only exhaustion and honesty worn raw.

“I spend enough of my life feeling like trouble follows me into every room,” he said. “I don’t want it following me with you too.”

The words landed with quiet force.

You stared at him, breath catching somewhere under your sternum. There it was. The heart of it. Not just guilt. Not just control. Fear. Not of his own pain, exactly, but of what it might do to the fragile pocket of peace the two of you had built together in this apartment, in this bed, in the ordinary domestic intimacy that both of you had earned the hard way and still sometimes looked at like it might vanish if held too tightly.

He thought he was protecting it by stepping away.

He thought he was protecting you.

Your hand slid from his hair to cup the back of his neck, holding him there, close enough that your noses almost brushed.

“Listen to me,” you said, and your voice came low and steady, leaving no room for him to turn the meaning aside. “The worst things that ever happened to us were never the nights we woke each other up.” His eyes did not leave yours. “The worst things were all the times we had to be alone in it.”

Something in his face changed.

It was small. A minute shift in the mouth, the brow, the stare he held on you like he was trying to absorb the shape of the sentence from every angle at once. But you felt it. The hit. The place where the truth had found him.

You stroked your thumb along the line just under his ear.

“I don’t care if it’s three in the morning,” you whispered. “I don’t care if you wake me up because you can’t breathe, or because you had a dream, or because your head won’t shut up and you need to hear something real. I don’t care if all I can do is sit with you on a freezing balcony in one of these terribly uncomfortable chairs.” His mouth twitched faintly at that, and you kept going before he could hide inside the almost-smile. “You do not have to try and be less heavy just because I love you.”

For one suspended second, he looked like he had forgotten how to breathe.

The hand on your thigh tightened. Enough to tell you exactly how hard he was holding himself together. Then he let out a breath so slow it seemed to drag out of him from somewhere much deeper than his lungs, and his forehead dropped against yours once more.

His eyes closed.

“Jesus,” he said quietly, the word more exhale than sound.

You felt the tremor in him then—a fine, internal shake that ran through his arm around your waist and into your ribs where you were pressed against him. The kind of tremor that came when the body finally stopped bracing quite so hard against being seen.

Your own throat tightened.

Without thinking, you shifted again and drew him down, one hand at the back of his head, guiding until he let himself fold into you as much as the awkward chair allowed. His face turned into the curve of your neck, breath warm against your skin despite the cold air around you. The position forced him to bend, broad shoulders crowding close, and there was something so starkly intimate in the sightless trust of it that your chest ached. Bucky was not a man who surrendered weight easily. Not physical weight. Not emotional. Yet here he was, head bowed into your shoulder, letting himself be held in the dark.

Your arms wrapped around him fully.

You held him the way he held you on bad nights: one hand in his hair, the other sliding slow and steady up and down his back. You could feel every line of tension there, muscles drawn tight beneath his shirt. You let the touch stay consistent. Grounding. Unhurried. The kind of care that asked for nothing except his continued presence.

The silence was not empty. His breathing was in it, gradually changing. The first few pulls were shallow, too high in the chest. Then deeper. Then deeper still. You felt his hand at your side start to move, not restless now, just tracing absent little paths over the fabric of the shirt you wore, as if reassuring himself by touch that you were really here, warm and living and within reach. 

His other hand slid from your thigh around your back, settling there with a careful pressure that made the chair protest softly beneath you both. He was holding you now too. Not because he had to be strong again. Because comfort, with the two of you, had never been a one-way act.

The wind picked up just enough to stir your hair across his temple.

After a while, he lifted his head. His face stayed close to yours, not quite touching now, eyes open but softer than before. The distance in them had not vanished entirely—those things rarely did, not all at once—but it had eased. He looked more present. More here.

“You always know when I’m trying to pull that stoic bullshit,” he murmured.

A laugh escaped you then, quiet and a little wet around the edges. “You’re not as subtle as you think you are.”

He huffed a faint breath that almost resembled a laugh of his own. “That’s not what I hear.”

“That’s because everyone else is afraid of you.”

One brow lifted slightly.

You touched the crease between them with your thumb. “I’m serious. You do this whole brooding, emotionally-constipated, stare-at-the-wall-like-it-owes-you-money thing and people mistake it for mystery.”

That got you the closest thing to a real smile yet, brief and crooked and so achingly familiar it made warmth flood through you despite the cold. He dipped his head and pressed a kiss to the corner of your mouth.

“Emotionally constipated?”

“You heard me.”

“Wow.”

“You’ll survive.”

“I don’t know,” he said, dry now in a way that felt more like him, more daylight-Bucky creeping back in around the edges. “That one was brutal.”

You smiled in spite of yourself, but the softness in you never left. Neither did the ache. It sat there underneath the humor, the knowledge of what it had taken for him to open even this much. You brushed your lips to his cheek, then lingered there for a second, feeling the coolness of his skin and the faint roughness of stubble.

“You don’t have to be okay all the time,” you said into the space beside his mouth.

His eyes closed again at that. Not in pain. In acceptance of the thing he still didn’t know how to give himself, but maybe, slowly, could take from you.

“I know,” he said, and for once it didn’t sound like automatic agreement. It sounded like a man trying very hard to let the truth land somewhere it might stay.

Bucky’s mouth parted slightly, then closed again. His hand at your neck tightened, not enough to hurt, only enough to keep you close.

“C’mere,” he said.

You were already close enough to feel the shape of the word against your mouth, but you went anyway, and he met you halfway.

It was quiet, the first press of his lips. Careful in that way Bucky had when he was giving you something real. His metal hand settled more firmly at your waist, not pulling, just holding you there while his mouth moved against yours like he was trying to remember what it meant to stop bracing for impact. You felt the breath leave him, warm and uneven, felt the way he leaned in a fraction more when your fingers slid into his hair.

Something low caught in his throat.

You kissed him back gently, your hand at the nape of his neck, your thumb brushing skin still cool from the night air. He stayed close when it broke, forehead falling to yours again, breathing slow enough now to feel the difference.

After a moment, you said, “Your lips are freezing.”

That got a genuine, tired little exhale from him. “Says the person who came out here barefoot.”

You shifted one foot pointedly against the balcony floor. “And whose fault is that?”

That earned you the faintest ghost of a smile. There and gone, but enough to loosen something inside you. Enough to know he was coming back toward himself.

“I didn’t ask you to follow me.”

“No,” you said, brushing your nose lightly against his. “You just vanished in the middle of the night like a deeply concerning man.”

Bucky actually laughed then—quiet and brief, but real. It hit you with absurd force, relief moving through you so fast it almost made your eyes sting. He must have seen something of that on your face, because his expression softened immediately afterward, the humor fading into something warmer and deeper.

“Sorry,” he murmured, and you knew he meant for leaving the bed, for worrying you, for all of it.

You kissed him once more, quick and soft. “No apologizing. I think I’ve heard that somewhere before.”

His eyes narrowed a fraction in that sleepy, rueful way that told you he recognized his own words being handed back to him. “Using my own stuff against me?”

“Absolutely.”

“Cold.”

“You taught me that too.”

Another tiny, helpless smile. Then it slipped away as his gaze lingered on you, on your bare legs, your arms prickling in the night air, the fact that you had come out here without hesitation the second you realized he was gone. The look in his eyes changed with that realization—not guilt exactly, but something more fragile and more profound. A quiet wonder he’d never quite gotten good at hiding when the depth of your care caught him off guard.

He drew you closer until your chest pressed flush to his again and tucked his face into the side of your neck.

You sat with him in the cold and let the night pass around you. Your fingers moved lazily through his hair. His flesh hands slid beneath the hem of your shirt to rest warm against the small of your back, the touch intimate in its simplicity. You felt the gradual slowing of him there—the breaths evening out, the tension draining by fractions, the restless edge that had driven him from bed wearing down under the quiet persistence of being held.

Eventually, you drew back enough to brush your thumb over the crease between his brows.

“Come back to bed with me.”

Bucky looked out over the city for one last moment, as if checking whether there was anything left for him to outrun out here. There wasn’t. Not tonight. When he looked back at you, the sharpest edges in him had dulled.

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”

He stood with you still in his arms, steadying you automatically as your feet met the balcony floor. Before you could protest, he bent and scooped you up under the knees and back in one practiced motion. The sudden lift pulled a startled breath from you, and his mouth brushed the edge of your jaw.

“You’re cold,” he said simply, as though that explained everything.

“Bucky.”

“You can yell at me once we’re under a blanket.”

You huffed a laugh despite yourself and looped an arm around his neck as he carried you inside. The apartment was warmer the second the balcony door shut behind you, cutting off the wind and the noise. He locked it without even looking, all muscle memory and habit, then walked you back toward the bedroom.

The room was still dim, the sheets still half thrown back from where you’d woken. Bucky set you down gently on the mattress, then climbed in right after you, tugging the blankets up and around both of you until the trapped warmth began to gather again. 

You turned into him immediately, one arm across his middle, your leg sliding between his. Bucky settled onto his side facing you, his hand spanning the back of your ribs, thumb moving in slow, absent strokes. Up close like this, the last traces of strain were still there in his face, but softer now, threaded through with exhaustion instead of active hurt. His eyes searched yours once, lingering.

“You okay?” he asked.

It was almost enough to make you laugh again. There it was. Even now.

“I’m okay,” you whispered. “Are you?”

He was quiet for a beat. Then he tipped his head in a small, honest half-shrug.

“Better.”

It was not a complete fix. Neither of you needed to pretend it was. The past didn’t vanish because the night had softened. Nightmares didn’t lose their teeth in a single hour. But there was something sacred in the smallness of that answer. Better. Not perfect. Not fine. Just better, because you had come looking for him. Because he had let you find him.

You reached up and smoothed his hair back from his forehead.

“Good.”

Bucky’s gaze moved over your face with that same impossible gentleness, and then he gathered you closer until your forehead tucked beneath his chin. His mouth brushed the top of your head. One kiss. Then another. The third lingered.

His breathing slowed.

You stayed awake a little longer, listening to it. Feeling the steady rise and fall of his chest against yours. The weight of his arm over you. The way his fingers, even half asleep, curled lightly into the fabric at your back as if some deep instinct in him needed to keep contact even in rest.

And when sleep finally began to pull at you again, softer this time, less sharp at the edges, your last clear thought was not of the empty bed or the cold balcony or the shadows he still carried.

It was of the way Bucky had let himself be held.

Of the way he had come back inside with you.

Of the fact that for all the things the world had carved out of both of you, this—your hand in his hair, his body warm around yours, the dark made bearable because neither of you was facing it alone—was still here.

And that was more than you could ever ask for.

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