I’m a neurodivergent, queer, Minnesotan, freshman in college (looking to major in Ecology!) Nature is very important to me
I’m a big fandom nerd. I am apart of~
Marvel (Bucky and Logan are my husbands)
Stardew Valley (you could convince me to romance anyone tbh)
Cod (never played the games i just like fanfic 💔)
Warrior Cats (Childhood obsession)
Pokémon (biggest fixation. My favorite is Gastrodon)
Marauders (j.. james potter.. gulp)
Besides fandoms I also like bugs, any animal really, genetics, poetry, and I am an artist!
I’ll probably post a mix of things on here. Feel free to ask me my opinion on anything to do with my fandoms, or give me prompts!
-Boundaries!-
I love to chat, message me with whatever! Be joyful, be horny, be nerdy, be creative. Whatever floats your boat. But! I may not respond right away or at all. Do not take it personally if this happens, I am just a busy person.
I will mostly write fluff and head cannons, but sometimes my stuff is suggestive so please mdni!!
I am comfortable with writing smut I just kinda suck at it- but if you have a request that is horny feel free to still send it, idc :)
What I will not write: Incest, fauxcest, pedophilia, beastiality, extreme gore, angst (i’m a little bitch and it makes me too sad)
What I will not tolerate on my blog: Any hatred of any kind. He respect all ethnicities, skin tones, sexualities, genders, kinks, and religions here. This is a safe space for anyone :).
Any crossing of my boundaries will result in a blocking of your account.
I love when people ask "how did you learn this skill?" I just started, there's no secret. that's it. a vast majority of the time the only thing holding you back is your trepidation to start.
✶ ― SYNOPSIS. bucky can’t help but wonder why they always come running to you,, or your living fossil of a roommate disapproves of your taste in men and its totally not because he wants a taste of you.
warnings.ᐟ mdni! no use of y/n, roommate!bucky, cocky+flirty!bucky, also guard dog!bucky (if that even makes sense) (it doesn’t), frenemies to lovers, smut (pwp, service dom!bucky, unprotected piv, oral sex - f receiving, clothed sex for like a sec, fingering, creampie, tummy bulge, dirty talk, dry humping, possessiveness, dumbification, praise, temperature play, food play, nipple play, pussy pronouns, hair pulling - m receiving, multiple orgasms, consent kink, implied competency kink and cum eating, bucky barnes begs agenda 2025™, both bucky and reader spend the whole fic towing the fine line between horny and pervy), angst, fluff, jealousy, pining, so much bickering, attachment issues, miscommunication bc these two combined have the emotional intelligence of a chihuahua, bucky’s hobby is baking bc i said so. bucky can pick the reader up (but he’s literally a super soldier so 🧍♂️), one mention of bucky trying to grab the reader’s hair, reader has a nut allergy and does not speak russian (neither do i, so please forgive the very small amount of google translated russian)
ᯓ★hyde's input. god bless sabrina for saving the summer again. also don’t let this flop, it’s my birthday tomorrow and i’m not above crying over poorly-received erotica (i’m joking) (no i’m not) (edit: wtf guys)
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Bucky Barnes is not someone you’d call a friend.
He’s more of a nuisance, really. A fossil, dropped off at your door by one Sam Wilson with a simple request: “Can he crash here for a few days?”
That was four months ago, and Bucky’s still living on your couch.
Which is exactly where he’s sat right now, head buried in a book you barely even remember owning. The pages, so full of neglect, give him hassle as he tries to turn them, catching on one another and refusing to be pried apart by vibranium fingers.
“How do I look?” You ask as you step out from your bedroom, hands fastening an earring into your right ear.
Unfazed by your appearance, he doesn’t bother glancing up from his book as he sardonically replies, “With your eyes, like the rest of us.”
You contemplate plucking one of your heels off and throwing it at his head. Knowing your luck, it will fly right past him and smash your coffee table into pieces. Just like your roommate, it’s vintage. Unlike your roommate, you willingly brought it into your home.
“Ha. Ha.” Rounding the couch, you swat his feet off the table before snapping his book closed. “Now if you’re done playing comedian, would you answer the fucking question?”
“That’s your generation's problem, you know? You swear more than you breathe.”
“Better than waging a world war every few years.”
“Considering the current state of the world, I wouldn’t rest too comfortably on that one,” Bucky rises from his seat and squeezes past you, irritatingly close in a way that makes sure you feel each defined muscle in his chest as it brushes against your shoulder. “Anyway, you look fine, as always.”
“I look fine?” You parrot his words and follow his footsteps over to the kitchen. “Careful Barnes, don’t get too excited, it’s not healthy for a senior citizen’s heart.”
“You know what I mean,” a heavy sigh slips out the soldier’s mouth as he busies himself filling the kettle, glancing back at you from over his shoulder as he continues speaking. “I don’t understand why you worry so much about all of… this.” He gestures at you, water splashing off the tips of his fingers.
“God forbid a woman cares about looking good on a date,” you’re becoming annoyingly aware of the pout on your lips and try your best to correct it, whilst prying open the fridge door and fishing out a bottle of beer. “Gee if only it were still the 40s, then I could slap some mercury on my lips and hit the town with a man ready to buy me off my daddy for the cheap, cheap price of two goats!”
The frustration within you only rises as you struggle with the bottle’s cap, the skin of your hand pinching as you put all your force behind removing it. Since when are twist-tops so damn hard to twist off?
Bucky’s by the kettle, pouring boiling hot water into a mug he’s wrongfully claimed as his and looking irritatingly fine surrounded by steam — which has your mind trailing back to a few weeks ago: an early morning, exiting your bedroom to find your lodger stepping out the bathroom with nothing but a towel around his waist and the remnant dew of a steaming hot shower trailing down his very naked, very defined biceps, and pectorals, and- He’s not even trying to mask the amusement on his face as he indulges in your failure.
“Don’t you think you’re being a little ridiculous?” He asks and pries the bottle out of your hold, effortlessly ripping the cap off with a twist of his left hand. A familiar warmth curls between your legs, awakening a response from you that you’ve sworn, under no circumstances, will happen due to Bucky Barnes. You barely want to exchange air with him, nevermind bodily fluids. “There’s no way you’re worth two goats.”
“Every day I wake up and resist the urge to smother you in your sleep.”
Your vitriol is met with a smirk taking over his lips. Watching as he brings the beer up to his mouth, you catch yourself forgetting to blink as the soldier engages you both in a staring contest, all the while he’s tilting the bottle up to steal the first sip. He presses the cold glass back into your hand. You try not to focus on his tongue, peeking out to swipe over his bottom lip and clean up a remnant drop of beer.
In a move that puts you even more on edge, Bucky shuffles closer to you. Delirium floods your mind as the smell of smoke, and musk, and a just a twinge of sweat floods your nose, a smell so masculine it has you debating setting feminism and your own self-preservation back hundreds of years by nuzzling your face into the pulse point of his neck, like you’re some damn animal being exposed to pheromones. Meanwhile, he appears none the wiser to the negative effect he’s having on you, too busy reaching his arm behind you and into the fridge.
“Those boys you entertain, do they ever pay you any compliments?” His voice is so gentle, you almost wonder if that’s how it would sound whispering in your ear. Luckily, you don’t actually wonder about that. Not at all, not even a little. “Or is that your job too, like the bill?”
As quickly as he caged you in against the fridge, he moves away and leaves the cool air to rush over your skin, dragging your mind back into reality and away from whatever thoughts it keeps trying to tempt you with. You track his movements towards the island counter as he sets down a glass bowl, marked by condensation and filled with a batter of some sorts.
It's becoming more and more common to catch Bucky pottering around in the kitchen, a recipe on his phone screen and a personalised ‘Kiss the Baker’ apron — which Sam bought as a joke for his birthday — tied around his waist. He’ll never admit it, but a part of you believes baking helps him relax, to shut off whatever thoughts are floating around in that disturbingly pretty head of his and let him focus solely on measuring, mixing, and making delicious sugary treats. You can hardly complain when he’s gifting you the privilege of an at-home bakery. Fortunately, he gives you plenty of other reasons to complain.
“Boys I entertain? Way to make me sound like a stripper,” you huff, sneaking over to dunk a finger into the batter as he turns to grab his coffee. “And I’ll have you know, they do pay me compliments.”
Licking your finger clean, you can’t fight the humm of approval that creeps up your throat nor the way your eyes slip shut as you savour the cold, tangy sweetness of the cake mix. Something warm presses against your left side as Bucky returns to the island, setting down his mug and a cake tin.
“Really? What kinda things do they say?” Just as you go to double dip, he smacks the top of your hand with a wooden spoon, and you nearly freeze at the contact. For a few short seconds, the factory in your mind goes into lockdown as every single one of your brain cells scramble to not conjure up the image of him smacking that utensil on a very different part of you. “Hands off. It’s a lemon cake, not a lemon and your-dirty-fingers cake.”
You silence your thoughts with a swig of beer before putting a safety distance between Bucky and you, unsure whether to be relieved at his obliviousness to the less than ideal affect he’s having on you, or offended by his complete lack of reaction to being so close to you while you’re all dressed up and waiting for another man to take you out.
Not that you want him to be affected by that, or you in general, though.
Your phone lights up with a text from an unsaved number: im hear, r yu coming down or shuld i com up? You shut it off and stuff it into your purse, deciding it's best to keep a man waiting anyway; he’ll appreciate your presence even more once you finally give him it.
Besides, you’ve yet to answer Bucky’s question.
“I’d tell you but I’m too sober to stomach you yelling ‘Heaven to Betsy!’ and giving me a lecture on your medieval dating ethics.”
You earn a genuine laugh, in which his knees bend a little and his head is thrown back, while his vibranium hand winds up splayed across his midriff. The sun is setting beyond the window, lingering shades of orange warmth frame a heavenly glow around Bucky, highlighting a slight curl in his hair and the piercing blue of his eyes. The view is uncomfortably pleasant, so you bring the bottle back to your lips and turn your head away, suddenly utterly fascinated with the eggshell colouring of the kitchen cupboards.
“I think there’s a leak under the sink,” the comment is absentminded, a meager attempt at steering your mind away from the man and his mixing bowl.
Bucky ignores it and drags you right back to the actual topic at hand.
“That’s funny,” there’s a shuffle of tin behind you. You glance back around to find him smoothing batter into the cake mold, wooden spoon clasped in metal fingers spreading the mix evenly. You’ve never noticed how good Bucky is at spreading things. “Cause I swear I remember Sam mentioning something about the last guy moaning his own name in your ear.”
Beer shoots to the back of your throat.
In a spurt of coughing, amidst the burning pain of the carbonated liquid dripping out your nose, you hurry over to the sink. Mouth dropped open in a dry heave, you lean into the basin and try to minimize the mess you make in search of a breath. Heat envelops you from behind and a pair of sock-clad feet come into view next to your maroon heels. You briefly register the cool brush of metal against the back of your neck as he tries to tidy back your hair and, while you appreciate the action, you can’t help note how completely unnecessary it is. Too distracted to care, your attention shoots straight to the weight of his flesh hand pressing into your lower back. Heavy, warm, large, it pollutes your mind with the knowledge of how it feels to have him soothe your skin — even if there is a layer of silk in the way.
The moment air returns to your lungs, you shoot up straight and ache to step away from him and his wandering-to-all-the-wrong-places hands. The battle against his touch is mute, not even one percent of his strength is put behind the way he grips your forearms and turns you to face him.
Bucky’s eyes scan over you, studying your features. You swallow back whatever feeling brings salivation to your mouth. His thumb reaches towards his own and you watch, transfixed, as a pink tongue darts out to greet it, licking a stripe over the pad of it. A splash of cake batter stains his ring finger. You swallow back more saliva; confusingly, your mouth feels drier than ever. Only when he delicately presses his thumb beneath your eye and swipes over your waterline do you realise you’re teary-eyed.
“See how clumsy you are?” There’s a chastising lilt to his voice that sends blood rushing to your face, and then immediately back down to the overwhelmingly empty space between your legs. “Can’t even swallow properly without ruining your mascara.”
You need distance.
You need to move.
You need to leave.
“He’s here!” The words are almost a gasp as you turn out of his hold. The weight of his gaze trails over your legs as you rush around the kitchen island, fishing your keys out of your purse and rambling out the nerves he’s summoned. “Okay, there’s some leftover pasta in the fridge if you’re hungry, and you’re welcome to the beers if you get thirsty. Big remote turns on the TV, the little one changes the channel. Behave and take care of the place while I’m away, okay?”
“Quit talking to me like I’m some kind of guard dog,” he complains as you pull open the front door and cross one foot over the threshold to safety.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” You cheer back, trailing the door behind you as you go. “I wasn’t aware you were going to start contributing rent, I’ll send you my bank details.”
With that, the apartment door slams shut and you head out for a date in which three things will happen: you’ll flirt, you’ll fuck, and you won’t think about your roommate.
Only one of those things ends up happening.
It’s not from lack of an offer that you wind up taking a cab back to your apartment. Your date had been nice… enough. He complimented your outfit, took a sufficient amount of interest in you, and he even bought you flowers — of course, he’d accidentally left them in his parent’s home. Where he lived. In the basement.
And the thing is, you’re not shallow. Time’s are tough, the economy sucks, and the world is still adjusting to the sudden return to half its population post-Blip. So you were more than game to play sneak-me-into-your-bed-without-waking-your-parents, but, as the pair of you waited on a taxi to arrive, his hand found your waist and your treacherous mind noticed something it shouldn’t.
Bucky’s hand was larger. And warmer. And more welcomed against your skin.
Sick to your stomach by your own thoughts, your night ended with you tip-toeing past the familiar figure sleeping on your couch — definitely not pausing to take in the sheer width of his naked shoulders dangling half-off the cushion — and crawling into bed alone, belly full of Thai and mind full of Winter.
When morning comes, the bedroom door creaks as you pry it open, a fist rubbing sleep out your eye and a yawn announcing your arrival.
“Did you eat my ice cream?” Bucky calls out from somewhere, voice muffled and full of accusation.
Despite barely finishing a glass of wine the night before, there’s a throbbing pain beginning in your temples and souring your already bitter mood.
“Wow, good morning to you too,” you stumble more than walk over to the kitchen, in search of the salvation of ice cold water.
That’s where you find him: laid out on his back, grey sweatpants clinging to bent knees, with everything from his shoulders up inside the open cabinet beneath the sink. His arms are inside too, tinkering away at something above his face.
“Good morning. Did you eat my ice cream?” If ever a thing such as a verbal eyeroll were to exist, Bucky would be doing it. From the lack of seeing his eyes, there’s every chance he is literally rolling them.
Your journey toward the fridge is interrupted by the troubling sight of a glass full of water, a plate hosting a slice of lemon sponge cake, and two miscellaneous white pills that anyone who suffers the unusually cruel punishment of a menstrual cycle is likely familiar with. A post-it note with your name written neatly across it sits next to the unexpected care package.
“So what if I did?” The painkillers go down effortlessly, though there’s a lingering chemical taste that has you gulping down an extra sip of water. “What are you doing, anyway?”
“I paid for it!” For all his outrage, he doesn’t care enough to poke his head out as he chastises you. “You said there was a leak, so I’m checking your pipes. I’m quite good with my hands, you know.”
Is he dense, or is he saying this shit on purpose? The double entendre in his words is glaring, yet you haven’t the confidence nor the will-power to address it, to poke the proverbial bear out of fear. Fear of him scolding your dirty mind, or fear of him doubling down on his suggestive wordplay, you’re not quite sure.
You choose to steer clear of the topic and, more importantly, the unexpected twinge in your chest in response to Bucky’s unrequested help.
“And I paid for the freezer you left it in, the electricity that kept it frozen, and the apartment you live in,” you don’t intend to sound so snappy, like a sulking child fighting against their own self-confessed crimes. “So I think you can spare me some goddamn ice cream.”
You’ve taken to joining Bucky on the floor, sitting across from him, cross-legged and back pressed against the cabinets that surround the kitchen island. In your lap lies the slice of cake, a mouthful already missing and melting its tangy sweetness onto your tongue. You almost moan, but it’s unclear whether the sugary treat just tastes that good or the visual of the soldier laid out on his back and tinkering away beneath your sink is just so stimulating.
If you mention the strange noise your car’s engine has been making recently, would he fix that too? You can already picture him slicked in sweat and oil, hands on his hips as he stands over the opened hood and assesses whatever the damage is. You’d have to watch over the whole thing, of course — not out of your own self-interest but on the off chance something goes wrong and Bucky needs help taking off his oil-stained shirt, or pants, or-
“Your date was that good, huh?” You almost jump out of your skin when he speaks.
“He bragged to me about how he and his college roommates used to play pool,” the pause in your sentences seems to capture Bucky’s attention, coaxing him out from beneath the sink. “Using a shotgun instead of cues.”
As he sits up, elbows finding rest upon his knees, you can’t help but note the five-o’clock shadow he’s sporting. For reasons that have nothing to do with the fraying seams of your sanity, you need him to shave.
To Bucky’s credit, he doesn’t laugh. Yes, his lips glitch somewhere between a cheeky grin and a serious frown, but he does not outright laugh like you expect him to. Instead, he nods down at the half-eaten cake and tilts his head — an unspoken question, is it good?, that only weakens his argument about not being a guard-dog. Between the puppy-dog blue eyes and the yearning for approval, you half expect him to sprout a tail and start panting.
Scratch that last thought, actually. Bucky and panting should not coexist in a sentence together, nevermind in your imagination.
“Mind feeding me a bite?” Yes, actually, you would mind, but one glance at his fingertips stained in whatever-the-hell is going on with your sink leaves you no choice but to tear off a corner.
Bringing the piece of cake to meet his awaiting mouth, you brace yourself for the tentative scrape of teeth stealing it out of your hold. The delicate brush of his lips enveloping your fingers throws you off your axis, and the challenge in his eyes as they hold contact with your own has your thighs involuntarily squeezing themselves together.
For a moment, you swear you catch him glance down at your lips.
Then you remember the health insurance your job provides does not cover the cost of being institutionalised, so you stop hallucinating and come back to reality where Bucky Barnes is not so much a flirt as he is a pest, a stray animal abandoned at your doorstep by a friend who decided to take advantage of your good-natured heart.
“Can you give me the exact phrasing your date used to describe this shotgun-pool?” The soldier is gone in the blink of an eye, flat on his back again and continuing his attempt to seal the leak.
“Why?”
“I’m making this list,” he says, and he must shift his hands higher above his head because suddenly the soft cotton of his white shirt has ridden up his torso, presenting your eyes with a golden platter of sun-warmed skin. “I’m calling it ‘the manchild files’.”
“That’s not even funny,” neither is the way he inches deeper into the cabinet, exposing not only the glaringly white tan-line delineating where the band of his boxers should be resting but also the beginning dark curls of a happy trail.
“Well ‘the stupid files’ sounds so simple, I was worried you’d try to jump into bed with it.”
“Are you seriously about to slut-shame me in my own fucking kitchen?” Whilst slutting yourself out on my floor like your name is Mike and you’re about to show me some magic? is the quiet part you don’t say aloud.
“I’m critical but I’m not hypocritical,” there he does again with that verbal eye-roll. “I wasn’t exactly the image of celibacy when I was your age-”
“Yay, more grandpa lore!” Your interruption earns you a nudge from his leg, but you know it made him laugh because his shoulders gently shake.
“I’m not slut-shaming you, I’m taste-shaming. I swear, being useless must be the precursor to having a chance with you.”
“It is not!” You gasp, yet you’re hardly surprised — Bucky’s not exactly subtle in his disapproval of the men you date.
If there is anything to be thankful for, it’s the alleviation that comes with Bucky shimmying out from the sink again, happy trail redressed and a hand diving into the pocket of his sweatpants. With a dramatic clearing of his throat, he brings his phone up to his face and starts reciting.
“After being told you have a nut allergy, Carter B. said Wait, like, you’re allergic to cum?” You’d always known showing him how to use the notes app would come back to bite you in the ass somehow. “Tommy L. walked into a lampost because he got distracted… watching a squirrel run up a tree. You almost got stood up by Steve K. because he accidentally locked himself inside his own car. Lee B. asked you-”
“Bucky B. is about to lose his other arm if he doesn’t shut up.”
“I rest my case,” and he still has the nerve to open his mouth, awaiting another bite of cake.
You cave with no fight and give it to him.
Because you’re a nice person, not because you want to feel his mouth on you again.
Something cool drips onto the bottom of your naked thighs after Bucky reaches over you and grabs at the glass of water, stealing an obnoxiously large gulp; or is it just exaggerated by your stare zeroing in on the way his Adam’s apple bobs as he drinks?
A thought pops into your mind.
“Did you leave these on the counter because you expected me to be hungover?” Your tone is inoffensive, and unoffended, a simple curiosity you need answered.
“You have a headache, right?”
“Uh-huh,” your eyes narrow skeptically.
“Yeah, I figured you would,” Bucky takes another sip, more condensation trickling down onto your legs. “You always have one after eating Thai food.”
Something inside of you stops.
Your heart, or your lungs, or your mind. Your goddamn liver, for all you know.
This is not supposed to be happening. Bucky is not supposed to fix things just because you mentioned it, once in passing and as a scapegoat from focusing too much on him. And he certainly isn’t supposed to notice things, useless little factoids that not even you know about yourself until he brings them to light. Hell, he’s not even supposed to still be here, sleeping on your couch and criticising your love life.
When the thing inside of you clicks back into place and starts again, a new weight rests atop your conscience.
Maybe it’s not so bad having a roommate, having Bucky be that roommate. Maybe you’re starting to get used to coming home to the smell of baked vanilla and the signature grouchy look he wears as he asks you about your day, about how your co-worker pissed you off, about why you’re home later than usual and not wearing a jacket out in the cold of winter.
“By the way,” he’s calling out from beneath the sink again. “You’ll be happy to know I’m touring an apartment next week.”
“Oh.” The bite you just took turns sour in your mouth. You struggle to swallow it down. “That’s great. Finally! You’re going, and I’m staying here, and I’ll have my apartment back to myself. That’s… Great. It’s great!”
No, really, it’s great.
“You’re joking,” a palm on your lower back guides you to the right, just in time to avoid being trampled beneath a cart.
“I wish,” you say, and saunter over to some colourful packaging that’s captured your eye.
After a moment of inspecting the product in hand from every angle, you put it back on the shelf.
“Let me get this straight,” Bucky pushes the cart along behind you, grabbing that same colourful packaging and dropping it in with the rest of the groceries. “You lean through his window, kiss him goodbye on the cheek and then he just… What, crashed his car?”
“Into a wall with street art of a cliff painted on it,” as you add the most important detail, laughter is already bubbling up your throat. “He literally crashed his car into a cliff without even getting to switch out of first gear!”
The pair of you make up quite the sight.
An entire morning of tiptoeing through the limbo of delirium, after an entire night spent trying to block out the relentless banging from the upstairs neighbours. The door to your bedroom crawled open some time past four and there was Bucky, head poking through the space and looking rather pleased to find you wide awake — despite his claims of just wanting to make sure you were asleep.
Seated on opposite ends of the couch, both of you found a quiet solace in the other’s inability to sleep. While a movie marathon played over the TV, the sex marathon above continued. When exhaustion took claim of your body, you drifted off with your arms resting on the armchair and your head resting on your arms. You awoke atop a pillow and beneath a blanket, legs stretched out over the couch and Bucky curled up on the floor by your feet — like any good guard dog would be.
After a botched attempt to sneak past the soldier, only to have him scare the living daylights out of you by grabbing your ankle as you tried to step over him, you both came to the shocking realisation that the fridge was void of any food.
Which brings you to here: standing in aisle 7, laughing an ache into your ribs over yet another one of your failed dates, with a half-filled cart and matching bags forming under your tired eyes.
“I think it’s time we had an intervention about where you’re finding these men,” Bucky says that last word like it's covered in poison, burning his tongue on the way out.
“They find me!” You say, as he reaches for the box of strawberries you just put down. “As generous as I am, do you want to maybe slow down on how much shit you load into our cart?”
His hand freezes, the box of red fruit clasped in a confusingly delicate grip of vibranium fingers
“You picked it up,” his tone is riddled with confusion. “Don’t you want them?”
“Contrary to popular belief, I’m not made of money.”
“Okay?” He replies, like it’s the most irrelevant piece of information you’ve ever given him — and you once spent an hour ranting to him about the inefficiency of the ink cartridges in your office’s printer. “I’m paying, so do you want it or not?”
“Since when do you have money? Did your pension finally come through? I mean… You are old enough. Also, aren’t you literally a vet?”
“You managed to say all that in one breath, yet you failed to answer a yes or no question.”
A bubble of silence surrounds you both. Bucky blinks, slowly, exaggeratedly. It’s the perfect opportunity to stare at his face and notice the five o'clock shadow has grown. A gruff ‘excuse me’, followed by a man shoving between you both to grab some strawberries, pops the bubble.
Without a word, you snatch the box and place it in the cart.
Half-way up the fruit aisle, Bucky gets the genius idea to open his mouth again: “You wanna know what my theory is?”
“Nope,” you say, popping the p and glancing back at him over your shoulder. “But you’re going to tell me anyway.”
He looks vexingly domestic like this, wearing a sweater and pushing your shopping around. Thoughts betray you, wandering off into dangerous territory as they begin to question how others perceive you from the outside.
What do strangers see: two roommates that quarrel like it’s a biological need, or a couple doing their weekly shop? Two strangers forced together by a circumstance named Sam Wilson, or two lovers unwilling to voice that the metal container between them is too much distance?
“I think you date idiots because they’re idiots.”
“Gee whiz, grandpa, that’s so insightful. I sure do hope I’m as wise as you when I’m your age, but I’ll probably just be dead.” You feel the cart meet your back in a gentle bump, a non-verbal warning to cut the teasing.
“Dating those incompetent men, it’s like…” he pauses, searching for the right words, and plucks a bunch of bananas from your hand, dropping them in with your mounting pile of fruit. “Jumping out of a plane! You get the thrill of falling but, the moment something a little too real and solid appears on the horizon, you pull out the parachute and, that’s it, you’re safe. No danger of falling flat on your face and getting your feelings hurt.”
“I don’t know when you last jumped out of a plane-”
“Remember that Karli situation a few months ago?”
“But not ejecting your parachute leads to a little more than just falling flat on your face.”
“So my metaphor isn't perfect,” Bucky trails off, eyes staring past you and mind lost in thought. You follow his line of sight and find a couple at the end of the aisle, hands intertwined and smiling at each other like they’re the only two people in the world. An unnamed emotion tugs at the soldier’s lips, but he won’t let it take over his stoic features. “But you get my point. If you were actually looking for something serious, you’d date someone better than those men.”
Unprompted and unwarranted, his words spear your heart.
Memories replay in your head, a kaleidoscope of the featureless faces you let take you out, dine you, wine you, kiss you. A handful of immeasurables: how many times you’ve brushed off mispronounced versions of your name, how many excuses you’ve made for the way they talk to you, how many times you’ve lowered your own standards to help a man feel desired. In your wake lies a graveyard of failed relationships, with no proper funeral nor mourning.
You swallow back the lump in your throat.
“Okay, psychoanalysing me aside, what’s left on the list?” You ask, making your way round to Bucky’s side of the cart.
“Well, I still need to write down Jeff G.’s cliff accident.”
“The other list.” You watch as he struggles to fish out the scrap of paper from his pocket.
“Eggs, pasta, feta, toilet roll,” his brows are furled, his eyes are glaring, and with each item he lists off, his words grow more unsure. “Grapefruit? Your handwriting is shit.”
“I was in a rush!”
“And sitting on a jack-hammer?”
“Gimme that,” you snatch the list, he yields it with no protest. As you scan over the scribbled ink, a frustrating truth comes to light. Bucky’s right, your handwriting is shit. “Is grapefruit even in season?”
“Huh,” it’s the sound of hollow amusement.
“What?”
“Just…” His presence looms over you, infecting your senses with the woodsy smell of his cologne and the arduous heat that radiates off of him. When he nods his head to the right, scoffing out a laugh and poking his tongue into his cheek, you find yourself wrestling between temptations of slapping him or pulling him closer. “You really don’t notice what’s right in front of you, do you?”
Lo and behold, on the right side of the aisle, grapefruits.
You make it through the rest of the shopping list in relative silence, with the occasional side-comment from the super soldier that either rouses a grin onto your lips or has your eyes rolling in faux disagreement. Little by little, you peruse the aisles and fill the cart; and, when Bucky picks out the only ice cream flavour void of nuts, you bite your tongue and choose to say nothing.
“I forgot to ask,” you finally speak, standing in the self-checkout zone and struggling to find something to do with your fidgety hands as Bucky scans each item — you insisted on helping and he insisted he’d get it done quicker alone. “How did the apartment viewing go?”
“Oh. Fine,” you grimace as he says your least favourite f word. “The current lease isn’t up yet, so you’re stuck with me a little longer.”
Are you supposed to feel this relieved?
In theory, you were never supposed to feel anything in regards to Bucky Barnes. In practice, it’s a lot more complicated, a pendulum that seems to swing in constant motion between red hot aggravation and red hot something else you refuse to give a name.
All you know is there are times where you wonder if his back is okay sleeping on the couch, and you contemplate asking him to come meet you during your lunch breaks, and you crave to have the anxious shake in your leg quelled by his daily check-in calls whenever he and Sam go off on another misadventure. Whatever reason lies behind your behaviour, the familiarity of ignorant bliss tempts you away from seeking the answer.
Besides, Bucky will be leaving soon. He’ll no longer be your roommate and you’ll both fall out of whatever routine convenience has forced upon you both.
A series of beeps capture your attention.
At the epicentre of the noise stands an elderly woman, grey hair pristinely curled and an outfit that screams Sunday-bests, struggling with the check-out machine. With no employee in sight and no do-gooder fellow customer stepping out of their way to help, the woman’s distress grows with each beep the machine makes at her.
Knuckles brush down your arm, and there’s Bucky at your side, waiting for you to pay him any mind.
“You mind handling the rest?” He asks, in that softly-spoken tone of his that would make anyone feel like swooning. Maybe that’s why it takes you a few moments to notice the wallet he’s holding out to you. “Cash is in the back pocket. I’ll be a few minutes, okay? Just finish bagging everything, leave the carrying to me.”
There’s no time to get a single word out before you’re staring at the back of his head and watching as he makes his way over to the elderly woman.
For every item you scan, you sneak a glance. The butter beeps onto the screen, and you peek how Bucky has effortlessly become the woman’s personal helper. You pass the strawberries through and reward yourself with the sight of Bucky’s cheeky grin — with the way the elderly lady laughs and swats at his arm, you can only assume he’s made some flirtatious comment. Clicking on the option to pay cash, you nearly give yourself whiplash as you turn to watch them again, Bucky’s just about finishing bagging her groceries while the woman opens her shopping-trolley bag.
Waiting on the receipt to print, your reflection stares back at you on the self-checkout screen: a hue of endearment glowing off your features. The smile quickly melts off your face when you realise that he… Oh no.
Bucky is charming.
Part of you has always known he was handsome — you’re stubborn, not blind — yet the sight of him now, all dashing smiles and twinkling eyes playing rescuer to a woman who, despite the difference in their physical ageing, is closer to his own age than you, it troubles you. The acid burn in your throat is not a manifestation of jealousy, no; it’s the queasy feeling of knowing you’ve never looked across at a date, caught him in a moment of content, and felt the unyielding desire to be the reason behind it.
Someone clears their throat beside you, a man with a wrinkle in his forehead and an agitated look upon his face, so you quickly excuse yourself and, with plastic handles digging into your fingers, you approach Bucky and the elderly lady.
Upon noticing you, Bucky’s quick to tug the bags out your grip, a scolding already falling off his tongue: “I told you to leave these to me.”
“Yeah, well, Mr. Frowny-Magoo over there didn’t appreciate me hogging up the cashier,” the comment is meant as nothing more than a lighthearted joke, yet you swear you see something shift in the soldier’s stance, his shoulders tensing and his jaw clenching as he glances back at the stranger.
Fortunately, the elderly woman interrupts whatever he’s contemplating doing to him.
“Она твоя жена?(Is she your wife?)” She’s looking between you both expectantly, speaking words you don’t understand. “У нее лицо ангела. (She has the face of an angel.)”
Whatever she says, it clearly has an effect on Bucky. His head turns to the side, to you, and a visible softness overcomes his gaze as it traces over your face. His shoulders are relaxing, his jaw is unclenching, and he’s switching the bags over to his metal hand, renewing his grip and freeing up the hand that now hangs right by yours, knuckles gracing over your own in a way that feels like a dare, a challenge, a temptation to lace your fingers together.
You clench your fist shut.
“Я знаю. (I know.)” He says, eyes lingering on you a few moments longer than necessary, before he’s back to smiling at the elderly woman.
Halfway home and doubling your pace to keep up with his effortless stroll, curiosity finally gets the better of you.
“What did she say back there, that lady you helped?”
A stranger rushes past you both, phone glued to their ear and stressing down the speaker. Bucky takes grip of your arm and tugs you closer to him.
“Do you spend your time getting bumped into when I’m not around?” His fingers give your arm a squeeze before releasing you. “And, if you must know, she said I was the most handsome man she’s ever seen.”
Little force is put behind the shove you give his shoulder.
You’re too busy agonising over how much you agree with her.
Bucky leaves.
Not forever, but three weeks away on some stealth mission with Sam sure begins to feel like it.
It happens on a Friday. After the week from hell at work, a friend’s mid-week engagement party, and the unexpected downpour of rain during the journey home, you walk into an unlit apartment and a note stuck to the fridge.
Sam needs me. Be safe, don’t bring strangers home. B.
The batch of freshly baked cinnamon rolls sweeten your night up, at least.
There’s a quiet that always seems to blanket the house whenever you lose Bucky to missions.
Before he was dumped on your front door, you’d been used to living alone and the peaceful silence that came with it. Independence, the ability to need no one and want nothing, a trait of yours that once brought pride, now brings you nothing but the static sound of a muted television and the hum of the microwave spinning a meal fit for one.
Mornings become a ritual of waking later yet leaving earlier, no one is there to distract you from drinking your coffee. Though the workload is the same, somehow the slow drag of hours still finds a way to pass quicker than ever, the revolving doors of the office building spit you back out onto the streets of New York before you’re fully ready. Your evenings waste away, starved of noise and company, while you run out of shows to watch and books to read, and count the hours down until all that silence becomes necessary for your eyes to close and your mind to rest.
It’s when darkness rules over the sky and the hour is a single digit that the phone finally rings. A blocked number, untraceable, pulling you out the hands of sleep and filling your room with the noise of your ringtone. He never speaks first, not until there’s an echo down the line of your own sleep stained ‘hello?’.
“You can go back to sleep now.”
You never stay on the line long enough to find out how quickly he hangs up after he speaks. Because it’s only ever meant to be a way to let you know he’s safe, alive, somewhere out there doing who-knows-what and stopping who-knows-who. It’s just an unrequested favour he’s granted you, after the incident in which both he and Sam fell-off the grid for five days and you were nearly rounding up a search party. He’s not missed a call since, once a day while he’s away.
So, when he doesn’t call, it’s only natural that you worry.
The alarm bell rings when you wake up to birds chirping, sun spilling through the crack between the curtains, and not a single missed call nor voicemail awaiting you.
It’s Saturday and there’s no work to occupy your mind, so you force down a bagel, toss a tote bag onto your shoulder, and head out to the local market. But there’s no joy in perusing fruit stands without a six foot soldier trailing your heels and muttering to himself about how exotic fruit has gotten, and how ‘back in my day you had your apples, your oranges, and your pears.’
You wind up home by noon, and the dwelling begins to grow, still no call.
There’s a weight on your chest, and a balloon of anxiety that grows in your throat, and an unwarranted agitation burning at your skin as you read over his note again, still very much stuck to the fridge and taunting you — Be safe, says a man who clearly can’t take his own advice.
Then, why should you?
You agree to go on a date, one you’ve been dancing around agreeing to for a few weeks yet reach for it the moment you decide you’re not pleased with the way Bucky’s lack of a call is ruining your well-earned free time.
And, hey, the guy’s not a complete loser this time. On paper, at least. He’s handsome, tall, and an athlete — ex-athlete, really, but you don’t bother to point that out while he talks about the gymnastic studio he runs. Most importantly, he’s eager to call a cab and get you home, screw Bucky’s warning. If you want to bring a stranger into your home, you’ll do it.
Brooding, uncalling soldier be damned!
After stumbling through the dark of your apartment into your bedroom, and fumbling with your bra long enough for you to grow tired and just take it off yourself, you and Mister Gymnast tumble into the sheets for a performance so lacklustre, it warrants taking all his medals away. At least your date seems to enjoy himself, spilling onto your stomach and falling asleep the minute his head hits the pillows.
“I finished,” last you checked, he hadn't even started.
You lie awake, staring at the ceiling, and try to will the phone to ring. Encased by a stranger’s snoring and a guilty feeling, you let Lady Sleep whisk you away. When your eyes open next, morning has broken and you’re alone in bed with a remnant trace of warmth on the sheets. But the silence is finally gone.
Beyond your door you hear the faint thud of footsteps, the ding of the fridge being opened, the whistle of the kettle. You almost trip in your rush to get dressed, and nearly rip the hinges off the door as you tear it open. Then the smile falls from your face.
“You’re up!” Everyone’s favourite gymnast is there to greet you, a mug in hand as he goes to pull you in for a kiss. The way you swerve is automatic, unplanned, leaving his lips to land on your cheek. “Uhh, I was hoping you’d sleep a little longer, I wanted to bring you breakfast in bed but-”
“He couldn’t figure out how to boil the kettle.”
And there’s Bucky, leaning back against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed over his chest and a smug look on his face. Aside from the butterfly stitches above his left brow, he looks unharmed. Fine, even. Dressed in all black, with a t-shirt that’s hugging his frame a little too tightly for your liking, the double-combo of his dog-tags and vibranium arm on display. Perfectly safe for a man who couldn’t call.
Your date laughs and sheepishly scratches the back of his head before you get the chance to speak.
“Your brother was kind enough to help me.” It’s unclear who laughs first: Bucky or you. “What’s so funny?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing, just…” Bucky says, shaking the laughter away with a nod of his head. “In what world do me and her look related?”
“Wait, if you’re not her brother then, are you-” Fifty shades of horror spill over the gymnast’s face, his head darting between looking over at Bucky and back at you. “Holy shit, is he your boyfriend?”
“Husband, actually,” the soldier’s all too quick-witted, pushing off the counter and reaching for a mug of brewing coffee. “But don’t worry, we’re open. What do you think of our kitchen lights, by the way? My wife here likes them dim.”
Dumb as he is, your date tilts his head up to inspect the light fixtures.
“Oh, they’re nice!”
That does it for you.
“Bucky, shut up!” You snap, finger pointed over at the menace who’s biting back a smirk and stirring away at his mug, face as innocent as sin. Is this some twisted version of revenge, a punishment for bringing a stranger home? You’d prefer the punishment to be a little more… hands on. Preferably in the form of your slapping that twinkle out of his eyes. “He is not my boyfriend, or my husband. He is the bum that lives on my couch.”
“You see how she treats me, Vince?”
“It’s Lance,” the gymna- Lance corrects him.
Moving towards the kitchen, your eyes check over your roommate once more, as though they expect some previously unseen injury to make an appearance on his skin. Come the end of your search, you’re left looking into a face that is sporting a split brow and a cruel level of entertainment from the situation at hand.
There’s a relief to having him back, and it’s wrestling with the exasperating emotions a single missed call conjured up.
“What are you doing here, anyway? Aren’t you and Sam still meant to be… I don’t know, on a homoerotic getaway, fighting crime?” The questions fire out of you as you slip into one of the island’s stools.
“We finished early,” Bucky appears by your side as though from thin air, hand clasping the back of your seat and pushing you in closer to the counter top.
“Aww, don’t worry, big boy, it happens to the best of you,” you tease, an empathetic pat against his shoulder.
The mockery backfires when you notice his brows shoot up and his stare shifts towards your date, who’s too busy trying to open the sugar jar to notice the dig at his own sexual inabilities.
Wait, when exactly did Bucky get home?
“How do you take your coffee?” One-Thrust-Lance asks you over his shoulder.
Before you can answer, a cup is nudged into your grasp and Bucky looks over you with triumph, metal fingers reaching out to drag over a plate of freshly-baked cookies. The smell of warm vanilla pairs well with the soft musk of his cologne, your eyes nearly roll back inhaling it.
“Mmm,” one sip of your coffee is all you need to know it’s perfect, made exactly to your taste. “Coffee and baked goods… I knew I kept you around for a reason.”
In lieu of any verbal response, the soldier takes to dunking one of the cookies into your mug before stealing a bite out of it. You watch as he chews on the sweet treat, head nodding in approval at his own skills. After he dips a second time, you expect him to take another bite, only to find him offering the chocolate chip goodness up to your mouth. Two eyes, blue as any winter, stare encouragingly while you sink your teeth into the cookie.
Heaven couldn’t taste any sweeter, you think, as the perfect blend of coffee stained dough and the sharpness of the dark chips flood your tastebuds.
“So messy,” Bucky tuts quietly, his right hand grabbing a steady hold of your chin while his thumb swipes away the crumbs dusting the corner of your mouth.
That thing inside of you stops again as you watch him bring his hand up to his own mouth, a pink tongue poking out to lick his thumb clean.
Arousal thrums through your blood, a pulsing rhythm that spreads straight to your clit. A squeeze of your thighs brings momentary reprieve, yet the ache fights back with renewed force, drying up your throat and knocking the sense right out of you.
Squirming where you sit, your legs switch position until one foot finds itself tucked beneath the opposite thigh, the heel of it sitting perfectly against your clothed core. You find no mercy, no chance to roll your hips forward in search of the balm only friction will bring to your burning skin. Instead there’s simply Bucky, eyes trailing down the length of you and settling on your short-clad legs. As though his behaviour is not cruel enough, he wets his bottom lip with his tongue
“You like that?” More than you’ll ever know, you almost scream until the logical side of your brain takes the wheel again and you notice him pointing down at the half-eaten cookie. Of course he’s enquiring about his baking skills, what else would this scrambled-egg-for-brains senior citizen be talking about? “Are you gonna make me wait all day for an answer?”
Something smashes behind Bucky, just in time to startle away the racy thoughts from your mind.
“My bad!” Your date — who you damn near forgot was even here — is apologising, bending at the waist and trying his best to collect the fractured pieces of a mug off the floor. “Where do you guys keep your dustpan?”
Bucky pushes away from the island counter, taking the smell of his cologne with him; if you weren’t fully back to your rational senses, you’d miss it.
“I’ll get it, Vince, you just stand there and look pretty.”
“Okay!” Lance, it seems, is just as eager to please the ex-assassin as you almost were a moment ago.
You decide you need to move, to stand up, to stretch your legs. This has nothing to do with the lingering effect of Bucky’s antics, nor the damp patch gathering against your panties.
Slipping off the kitchen stool, you work on chugging down gulps of coffee with every intention of dumping the empty mug into the sink, dashing to your bedroom, and conjuring up the best plan you can come up with to get not only yourself, but also the trash you brought in with you last night out of the apartment and away from an infuriating roommate.
Something on the floor derails you, however, dragging you away from the path to sanctuary. The tiniest red petal, lonesome and neglected upon the cold tile. Three steps over, and there’s another petal. One step until the next petal. You follow the breadcrumb trail all the way over to the garbage can where, with one gentle push of a button, the lid opens up to reveal the unexpected, thrown away like a dirty secret.
A crumpled bouquet of roses.
Everywhere you turn, there’s tension.
In your neck, from sleeping at an unfavourable angle. Within your stomach, where a queasy feeling keeps threatening to spew your guts out onto the bathroom floor. Between you and Bucky, a foreign energy that’s grown over the course of this last week, during which you’ve been avoiding eye contact and his stare is full of accusation.
Retracing your steps, they take you back to the moment Lance left the apartment and you found yourself drowning in Bucky’s company for the first time in weeks. He was barely half-way through poking fun at the choices you made in his absence — most of his focus being on the blubbering fool you brought into your bed — when your patience ran thin and snapped.
Now here you are, bearing the consequence of your own short temper, wiping lipstick off your teeth whilst mentally preparing yourself to go on a second date, planned sheerly out of spite and the need to prove a point.
Poor Lance is none the wiser to his role as pawn in your game of ‘Screw You, Barnes!’.
“Everything okay in there?” Think of the devil and he shall knock on the bathroom door, apparently. “Thought you had your big date at seven.”
The gymnast’s text thread stares back at you, a wall of grey bubbles. You have to swallow down the lump in your throat to speak, “He’s not answering my calls.”
“You’ve been stood up? By that loser?” There’s every chance your storm of emotions is impeding you from thinking straight, but you swear you almost hear a hint of disbelief in Bucky’s voice. Disgust, even.
There’s no point dwelling on the thought.
After a quick wash of your hands, you pry the door open and watch as the soldier leaning against it nearly topples forward before catching himself against the frame. He’s entirely too close for comfort, close enough for you to notice the different shades of blue in his eyes.
“Maybe he broke his phone?” The lack of assurance in your voice has you cringing, the fear of being called out suddenly doubling.
Bucky scoffs, arms crossing over his chest.
“More likely he forgot to charge it.”
Is that what happened to him? Is that why he left you to dwell in the dark over his whereabouts and wellbeing, rendering the usual distraction of a night-time companion useless? Only for you to find him the following morning, right as rain and as annoying as ever, standing in the kitchen and casting judgement-filled glances at your overnight guest?
Thinking about it, about him, brings on an onslaught of anger you’re not willing to address. Not right now.
“Shut up!” It comes across as less independent girlboss and more petulant child, but you’re too busy noticing how firm his chest feels under your palms as you push past him out of the bathroom to care.
Prying open the freezer, you hear the soft click of the toilet door closing. Good, you think, he’s gone away. Out of sight, out of mind. Even if it is only for the short time it takes him to do his business.
That time ends up being even shorter than expected, for only minutes after you’ve dug your spoon into the creamy, frozen goodness of vanilla fudge, the object of both your fascination and your torture is making his way towards the kitchen.
“Didn’t I tell you to stop eating my ice cream?”
“Didn’t I tell you to move out?” Mouth full of vanilla, you shoot him a toothy grin and relish in the grimace it earns you.
Satisfaction melts away when Bucky invades your personal space, metal arm reaching over head and pulling open a cupboard.
“Don’t do that,” you swat at the vibranium bicep, a futile fight that simply makes you all too aware of how smooth it feels beneath your fingertips.
“Do what?” Brain of a caveman, Bucky continues his rustling through the cabinet behind you, features as stoic as a rock as though he’s none the wiser to how your chests brush against one another with each exhale.
“That,” another swat at his arm, though this time he yields. The space between you doesn’t grow, however. It worsens, his attention fully falling onto you now. “Reaching over me like you can’t just ask me to move.”
“Fine, if it really bothers you that much,” are the last words you hear before you’re airborne, two hands squeezing at your hips and moving you two steps over and out of the way.
The soldier doesn’t struggle, not even for a moment, the serum that’s altered his DNA leaving him primed and ready to manoeuvre the most steadfast of objects. Manhandle them, too. Pick them up, turn them over, pin them down, make them scream… Objects, of course, or those big, bad guys he and Sam are always chasing after.
The anger in you is renewed, burning brighter than a star ready to die. You shove his hands off of you and secure another step of distance between you.
“Well aren’t you a ray of sunshine today.” With the rate he’s going at, one would think the soldier makes a living out of deepening the frown on your face. “Is this princess’ first time being stood up?”
You’d slap him, right here and now, if it didn’t mean moving closer and touching his skin; the current top two of your ‘Things To Not Do’ list.
Luckily, the tub of ice cream sits just within reach and your eager fingers take grip of it, sliding it over the counter towards yourself. A mouthful of coolness precedes the burning question on your tongue, “Why didn’t you call?”
“Are you serious?” Now he’s the one scowling and taking a step closer.
“Deadly,” you dig the spoon back into the carton. “Now answer the question.”
“You’re pissy with me for not calling, meanwhile I’m the one who came home to some asshole in your bed?”
He’s moving closer. You try to step backwards.
“Yeah, well, if you’d called like you were supposed to, I wouldn’t have ended up with said asshole.”
Bucky’s eyes narrow, “Oh, so now it’s my fault that you date degenerates?”
The cackle that escapes you could break the soundbarrier.
“Wow! Everybody, give it up for another original dig at my love-life from James Buchanan Barnes!” Voice dripping with seven layers of venomous sarcasm, you give three slow claps of your hands. The cynical smile that overcomes your face feels borderline deranged, something plucked right out of a horror movie. “Okay, yeah, I date losers! Happy? Jesus Christ, Bucky, what do you expect me to do? It’s not exactly like there’s anyone else lining up to date me.”
“I am!” His voice is raised, his eyes are wide, his chest is heaving. “Maybe I’m the biggest idiot, rushing home last week to surprise you. Even brought you flowers. I just… Fuck!”
You don’t move, don’t blink, don’t breathe.
Bucky runs a hand through his hair, knuckles going white as he pulls on the tresses.
There it is again in his eyes, the accusation.
Even though he’s shaking his head, he steps closer.
The kitchen counter is right behind you, there’s nowhere for you to run.
The heels on your feet almost give out beneath you, you try to steady yourself with your hands.
Bucky has other plans and grips both your forearms.
“I am,” he repeats, softer. Slower. The icy exterior of accusation melts away to reveal vulnerability.
A hand meets your cheek and holds you like you are glass, breakable beneath his touch. Your heart’s in your throat, and there’s a current of electricity running down to your toes, and that neglected hunger in your loins creeps in again. His eyes search your face, while his thumb gently swipes over your bottom lip, prying it out an involuntary capture from your teeth.
It’s unclear who reaches for who first, whether he dips and takes possession of your mouth, or you grab him by the collar of his shirt and lay your claim over him. In a matter of seconds, a tentative press of lips against lips divulges into loss of breath, tongues in mouths, and fevered kisses.
The soldier kisses with starvation, like he has walked through the desert of loneliness and at last stumbled upon an oasis, like a bee seeking every last drop of nectar from a flower dying off with the spring, like a body clings to sleep in the throes of exhaustion. It’s a necessity, a human need, a matter of survival to keep your lips interlocked.
The hand on your face holds you steady as he tilts himself deeper into the kiss. Noses brush against the swells of cheeks, eyelids rest close, feet shuffle closer in search of eradicating the crevice of distance between you two. Metal fingers curl around the nape of your neck, a gesture you reciprocate while your spare hand lays flat-palmed against his beating chest. One of his legs winds up between yours and, as he shifts weight from one foot to another, there’s the faintest relief of friction against your cunt and a whine gets caught between your throat and Bucky’s eager mouth.
Despite how you chase his lips, he pulls back and grants you the sight of pure endearment.
“Look at you, whining already. Where’s all that fire gone?” It’s practically a whisper, spoken with fascination. “Or were you just needing Old Bucky to touch you, huh?”
Second-hand embarrassment burns the tips of your ears, while your own unspoken agreement to his question has your stomach twisting up. Survival instincts, that have never been much of a friend, scream at you to flee this feeling, to throw away Pandora’s box before you risk fully opening it and having it consume you.
Bucky intercepts your attempt to push out of his arms.
“Ah, ah, get back here. Not done kissing you,” his words divulge into a barely coherent mumble as he reconnects your lips.
Beneath the heat of his kiss, the discomfort in your chest turns to ashes. Because, while instinct tells you to run from danger, this is Bucky.
Bucky who fixes cupboard hinges, and sleeps with both eyes on the door. Bucky who carries all the shopping, and holds every door. Bucky who calls to hear your voice while he’s away endangering his life, and brings home the silliest trinkets he finds on missions. Bucky who wakes you when you miss your alarm, and knows if you’ve had a bad day simply from looking at your face.
How could you possibly be in danger when it comes to him?
While you’re overcome with epiphany, he’s taken to tracing his lips over the slope of your jaw and mouthing at the skin of your neck. It’s when he lifts you up onto the kitchen counter that your wandering mind is reeled back in, to the physical present where your legs rest on either side of the soldier and the prized possession of vanilla fudge once again sits within reaching distance.
“Are you stealing my ice cream right now?” His lips tickle your collarbone as he speaks, barely a moment after you’ve scooped the spoon into your mouth.
“I’m warm, and it's melting,” his head pops up just in time to accept the spoonful of vanilla you deliver. There’s a glow in his eyes, one that has you questioning if it's been there all along or if it's a consequence of touching your skin. “Don’t want it to go to waste.”
His mouth is on yours again, a rush of three chaste kisses seared against you before he replies, “Then let’s cool you down.”
At a teasingly slow pace, you feel his fingers tug down your dress’ straps, leaving the silky fabric to slip down your frame and pool around your hips. Under the golden hue of the kitchen lights, his gaze studies your bare skin like it's a work of art, an eighth wonder of the world, the greatest poem never written woven into it. Yet it still manages to pale against the face that overcomes him as he removes a final layer of lace.
Unlike Vince, he has no trouble removing your bra.
“So responsive,” he talks as though only his ears are meant to hear it, his vibranium palm gently taking hold of your left breast and rolling the hardening nipple between two fingers.
He’s studying your reaction, bewildered by the goosebumps spreading over your flesh.
When was the last time he truly touched another person? Weeks, months, years, decades? The thought of his hands on a faceless shape makes you sick. First with envy, and then with hypocrisy, an amalgamation of all the men you’ve taken to bed flashing before your eyes. But none of them ever touched you like you were porcelain, and none of them looked at you like you held the key to eternal pleasure. None of them were Bucky.
A chill runs down your spine and a gasp rips out your chest as Bucky swipes the spoon over your skin, leaving a trail of ice cream atop your right breast for his tongue to follow. He plants a garden of kisses along the swell of your chest before pulling away to give the left side equal treatment, another creamy river along your skin for him to clean up.
Moving at their own volition, your hips grind gently against his steady figure as Bucky coats your nipple in vanilla, moaning into your chest as he lays claim over you with his mouth. Spoiling you in his kisses, the soldier begins to yearn for friction, meeting the careful roll of your hips with his own.
Your hand finds his hair and his stare meets yours, intense and all-consuming as he releases your nipple with a scrape of his teeth. You want to soothe his kiss-swollen lips but they’re already wrapping themselves around your other breast, not even patient enough to lather you in the vanilla goodness this time.
Instead, the coldness on your skin stems from metal fingers, perched on your thigh and creeping up the length of it, inch by tormenting inch. A hesitant hand wraps around a vibranium wrist, tightening its grip before you begin guiding his touch inwards, upwards, to where you need it most. Bucky's stronger, more resistant, and holds off your interceptance, left hand continuing its intended path beneath the skirt of your dress and grabbing hold of your naked waist.
He’s everywhere, all over you. Mouthing at your chest, gripping at your hip, rutting into your pussy. The sweet drag of his bulge over your clothed core sires a wet patch against your thong and has your fingers tugging on the roots of his hair, winning you the hair-raising hum of a groan against your breast.
Desperate to feel more, you renew your efforts to lead his hand to the space between your legs and are met with a shake of his head.
“No,” he mutters, and robs you of a hand beneath your dress, using it instead to cradle your jaw while his lips skim over the shell of your ear. “Wanna feel you.”
The warmth of flesh brands your thigh, Bucky’s right arm now leading the charge beneath the silky fabric. With bated breath, you brace yourself against his strong chest and try not to squirm in anticipation of his touch. With one final squeeze at your inner thigh, the soldier’s hand engulfs your clothed cunt and his breath cracks in your ear, a strangled out, feral noise that has your toes curling.
“She’s so wet, darling,” his voice has you delirious, breathy against your ear. His fingers flex against your pussy and a moan catches in your throat. “You gonna let me touch her?”
Something about the way he’s speaking to you, the words he’s choosing, makes you want to fall apart. Your sex-life has always been liberal, you know what it is to have a man’s hands all over you, trying to take ownership of parts of you he thinks belong to him. Men who take, and take, and take, until there is nothing left of you to give, and not once do they care to win your favour, to plead for permission. But Bucky…
“Please, say I can touch her, wanna give her what she needs,” he’s pleading for it, begging for you — wrecked and desperate, breath run ragged from no more than the relief of rolling his groin against your thigh. “Promise I’ll be real sweat, make you feel good.”
Too caught up in his own head, he doesn’t notice you nodding, until you’re granting him salvation verbally, “Touch me, Bucky.”
He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t waste time on taking off your underwear, just moves it to the side and drags the tip of his fingers down the inseam of your pussy. You hear it, more than you feel it, the moment he touches your opening, a sharp inhale at your ear telling you he’s exactly where he wants to be.
As his middle finger slips in, it’s hard to tell which of you reacts louder, both a mess of guttural moans. Once it's fully sheathed within you, he curls it and presses against your soaked walls, grinning against your skin at the reaction it coaxes out of you.
“Don’t hold back,” he chastises you as you bite back another pathetic whimper, a second finger slipping into you. “Let me hear what I’m doing to you.”
He must have a magic touch, you’re sure of it. Thick fingers that fuck into you at a steady pace, curling and teasing at that world-bending spot inside you, while his thumb makes itself useful against your clit, a firm force for your bucking hips to grind up into while you chase the pleasure he’s unleashing on you. In a matter of minutes, the room is alive with your melodic moans, Bucky’s endless hums of approval, and the damn-right embarrassingly loud squelch of him fingering your drooling cunt.
You make the mistake of letting your eyes slip shut, relinquishing yourself to the way he touches you with the rough hands of a soldier yet the delicate stroke of a musician playing his favourite instrument. He must feel the shift in you, for he’s instantly prying his face away from your neck and tightening the metal grip on your jaw, fingertips digging into squished cheeks.
“Look at me,” his words are both a command and a plea. An order you follow and a prayer you answer, eyelashes fluttering open to find his face in front of your own. His lips are a hard line, his brows furrowed in disapproval, and there’s a vein threatening to split down the middle of his forehead, but his eyes. His eyes are affection incarnate, two pools of lust and worship that pose no threat of drowning. “Do you want to cum?”
Never has a more needless question been asked.
You nod into the force of his vibranium hand, but that’s not what he wants, frown deepening.
“Say it,” needy, helpless, spoken like he’s the one on the brink of ecstasy. “Please.”
“Bucky,” it feels good to say his name like this, brain melting into mush and heart racing in your chest. “I want you to let me cum.”
“Let you?” He’s offended by the word, fingers burying impossibly deeper inside of you while he continues to stare you down. “I beg of you.”
No warning precedes the coil in you snapping. The muscles in your core tense, your back arches into his broad figure, your pussy squeezes at Bucky’s fingers with a death grip. He guides you through it, ignoring the cramp in his wrist in favour of continuing to fuck his hand into you, a smile finally cracking over his face as he watches you fall apart atop the counter, nothing but Bucky, Bucky, Bucky surrounding you.
He tries to give you reprieve, a moment to breathe and savour the buzz in your veins, the hand around your jaw shifting to stroke at your cheek while the hand between your legs soothes you with featherlight touches.
You don’t let him, hand pawing down his torso and gripping at the belt of his jeans, delighting in the familiar clang of a buckle being undone, nimble digits that tear leather out its loop and tug down his zipper. Bucky’s bringing his lips back against yours just as you palm at his bulge, his tongue licking into your mouth when you finally release him from the confines of his boxers.
Fingers coated in your own slick grip at your thigh while the soldier makes it his mission to steal your breath, rendering you blind to the sight of his cock. But you can feel it. The weight of it in your hand, the burn of want ingrained in his skin. The width of it, and the length of it, and the perfectly mushroomed tip that has him keening into your touch as your pointer finger drags over the head.
“Is this what I do to you?” Still lost in the maze of your orgasm, you manage to gain back crumbs of your usual confidence watching Bucky fall mute. When he merely nods, you play him at his own game, fingers back in his hair and forcing him to look you in the eye. “Say it.”
He doesn’t.
He says something much better.
“D’you even realise how many nights I’ve laid on that fucking couch, hard as a rock and willing you to come out your room?”
“That’s your generation's problem, you know?” You whisper teasingly, incapable of fighting off your own laughter. “You swear more than you breathe.”
“C’mere,” he’s rolling his eyes and pulling you in, kissing you like it’s been a milenia and not a minute, hand nudging yours out the way to take a hold of himself.
Your teeth graze over his tongue as he drags the head of his cock through your folds, and he groans into your mouth before pulling back. Resting his forehead against yours, he’s teasing you both as his tip brushes over your hole before continuing its rutt up, bumping against your sensitive clit.
A wicked voice takes control of your mouth.
“Lance would have fucked me by now.”
“Vince would have cum by now, too,” he’s still rocking his hips, no sense of urgency behind the way he soaks himself in you.
Meanwhile, you’re a handful of seconds away from screaming at him to just stick it in already.
“You- Oh!” Prayers answered, hallelujah, his cock finally sinks into you. It’s a shallow thrust, barely more than the tip before he’s retreating, yet it's enough to mess with your head. “You heard us?”
“Unfortunately,” and he means it, the most subtle of pouts forming on his lips before he feeds himself a little deeper into your pussy. “I’m not great when it comes to timing.”
“I only slept with Lance because you-” Right on cue, he fucks into you even deeper and your words dissappear before they can reach your tongue.
“New rule,” a hand rests on your knee and encourages you to spread your legs wider. “No speaking another man’s name when you’re in bed with me.”
“Technically, this is the kitchen counter-” The bastard does it again, cuts you off with his dick — if it didn’t feel so damn good, you’d slap him.
He’s bottomed out at last, buried himself fully in your cunt. Hands snake around your waist, one palm flattening against your lower back while the other rests a little further up and guides your spine to arch into him, closer, like there’s anymore space left between you to devour.
His pace is still slow, teasing. A toe-curling drag of his cock out of you, letting you feel every ridge and vein before his hips promptly snap back into you and send your eyes rolling back, your head falling back — and smacking loudly against the cupboard door behind you.
Bucky freezes, one hand quick to cradle the back of your skull while his eyes scan over you.
“Jesus, doll, you okay?”
“Please don’t stop,” you plead, ridiculously unfazed by the faint ache when you’ve got him inside of you.
Even though he rolls his eyes, he complies.
“Might have just given you a concussion and all you care about is getting fucked?” He asks, like you could possibly care about anything else when his arms are hooking themselves under your knees and rucking you up off the counter, away from any rogue cupboard that means you harm.
If anything, you’ll gladly shoulder the burden of any possible injury, if it means being granted the sight of his biceps tensing as he effortlessly stands there and fucks you down onto him. Were you in any sane state of mind, you wouldn’t think it, but god bless that super soldier serum.
“You can give me a cockcussion for all I care,” head perched on his shoulder, you watch your nails sink into the fabric of his shirt and wish it would disappear and gift you the naked view of his back.
“Adding that to the list,” he whispers against your forehead, pressing a kiss against it.
Legs bent at the knee, you watch how, with one particularly deep thrust, they bounce at either side of him and one of your heels clatters to the floor.
The room pivots as Bucky turns, you still in his arms and your ankles locked behind his back. At first, you believe he’s aiming to move things into the bedroom, where the only thing your head will be hitting is the mattress when he lays you down. He proves you wrong, however, the cold press of marble against you once more as he settles you down onto the kitchen island.
Much to your chagrin, he slips out of you, cock now sitting pretty against his clothed abdomen and glistening with the sheen of your essence. In the blink of an eye, the soldier is sinking to his knees, metal finger reaching back for your fallen shoe.
The scene plays out like something stripped right out of a morally dubious, low quality pornography retelling of Cinderella, in which Prince Charming has his dick out, Cinderella’s gown is half-way off, and the infamous glass slipper is just a pair of heels you bought on sale.
Bucky is delicate and slow, mouth tickling at your inner knee as he secures the shoe in place. He rests back on his haunches and fully takes in the sight of you, perched upon the counter, hands splayed out on marble, a tangle of silk around your waist, lips parted in search of steady breathing.
There’s an intensity to his gaze, burrowing itself beneath your skin and becoming part of your bloodstream, spreading throughout your body. It makes you want to hide, flee like you do best, but Bucky has other plans.
“The shoes stay on, but this,” Bucky’s fingertips tug lightly on the hem of your dress, exposing a sliver of new skin. “I need this gone. Am I allowed to take it off?”
There he goes again, face the model of innocence while he asks for permission to your body. If you weren’t already dripping against your panties, you would be now. Luckily, he doesn’t push you to verbalise your agreement this time, more than eager to comply the moment you nod your head.
You wiggle your hips as he pulls the fabric out from beneath you, his grip snagging on the waistband of your thong and dragging it away alongside the dress. When your ass cheeks press back down onto the cool of the counter, reality hits you like a freight-train: you’re completely nude, with Bucky on his knees before you, in the middle of the kitchen.
“Buck,” the y of his nickname disappears as you feel him peppering kisses of your leg, inching that little bit higher each press of his mouth. Squeezing your eyes shut, you try to remember where your rational thoughts are stored, conjuring up images of friends, of Sam sitting at this very surface. “I don’t think we should… I mean, people eat off this counter!”
“Don’t worry,” reaching the threshold of your thigh, his kisses seem to speed up, that sauve and composed exterior chipping away to reveal a man who no longer wants to take his time with you. “I intend to eat.”
No sooner than the words reach your ears, Bucky swipes his tongue up your pussy and any fight left in you melts away as you turn to putty beneath his touch, soft and malleable, willing to sit there and take whatever he wants to give.
Give, he most certainly does. Lips latch onto your clit, hands hold your squirming hips in place, tongue dances over your most delicate areas before dipping into your entrance. He drinks from you like you’re the sweetest honey, the richest of red wines, the Holy Grail promising an eternal youth to a man whose time was stolen from him.
“You should see her, doll,” there’s a rasp in Bucky’s voice, a feral undertone to the growl that rests in the back of his throat. One hand tugs his shirt off while the other snakes between your legs, two fingers spreading your lips open in an obscene gesture that has you clamping down on your bottom lip. “She’s drooling for me, all pretty and wet.”
Dropping both your legs over his shoulders, he tugs you right to the edge of the counter and dives back in. You feel his nose bump against your clit and your hand grabs onto your thigh, nails piercing into flesh as your mouth sings a whined symphony.
Vibranium curls around your wrist, prying harm away from your own skin and silently imploring you to hurt him instead, nestling your fingers back into his hair. He’s renewing his effort, a touch that’s more determined than ever to make you fall apart, on his knees and worshipping the altar of your body — fealty and devotion seared into each lap of his tongue, each brush of his lips, each stroke of his fingers.
Who are you to reject his piety? You welcome it, with closed fist and glassy eyes. The soldier shudders — a full-body shiver that shakes down his spine — as the point of your heel digs into his back and your fingers squeeze at his scalp, no mercy shown as you lose yourself in the throes of lust.
When you cum, a silent scream rips through your chest and a burning-too-bright white light turns you blind. He doesn’t let up, tongue still buried in your convulsing walls as your thighs clamp around his head and your feet kick at his back, shoes flying elsewhere into the kitchen. He pays none of it any mind, content to prolong your orgasm for as long as you’ll allow him, slowly rising off his knees with two hands pinning you back against the counter while he continues to feast on your pleasure.
“Ja-mes,” a fractured call of his name is all it takes for him to stop, pupils more black than blue as they stare down at the picture you paint atop the counter: teary-eyes, swollen lips, heaving chest.
He’s hardly the image of composure either, red lines along the expanse of his back, hair a tousled mess, the scruff on his face covered in a sheen of your juices. And, yet, never have you wanted to kiss him so bad.
All you manage, after minutes of floating atop the cloud of your peak, is a cheeky grin and a comment that makes him roll his eyes: “For a fossil, you’re pretty kinky.”
“War camps aren’t exactly known for being fun,” as he speaks, he slowly lowers your legs off his shoulder. “You find ways to keep yourself entertained.”
“Bet you were quite the pleaser, huh?” Trying your best to play it cool, you lay your head fully back on the counter and stare up at the ceiling, praying he doesn’t notice the hypocritical pit forming in your stomach as you listen to your own words. “Probably had all the prettiest nurses fighting over who gets to tend to your poor, aching, throbbing co-”
“Jealousy looks cute on you,” he interrupts, amused, as his hands soothe over your hips.
“I’m not jealous!” You exclaim, barely believing yourself.
One hand reaching out for him, you watch your fingers intertwine with the prosthetic digits and let him tug you back up, chest to chest when his hand finds your cheek.
“I was,” his confession is crooned whilst staring right into your eyes, the tiniest up-turn to his mouth. “Everytime you walked out the door to go date a new loser.”
“Who knew,” your voice is as gentle as his own, nonchalant as a finger dances down the well-defined muscles of his abdomen and elicits a groan out of him. “All along I had my own loser at home.”
Bucky opts for silence as your hand reaches his groin and pays no mind to his cock, red-tipped and leaking, flushed against his stomach. You’re more interested in his jeans — in removing them, to be exact. It doesn’t take much, a sharp tug at the hem before they’re slipping off, meeting restraint as they cling to his muscled thighs and implore him to finish the job on your behalf, shucking them off blindly to where the rest of your clothes lie.
You must have saved a village in a past life to be rewarded with the view of a completely nude Bucky Barnes, skin stained by lust and laced with gold beneath the kitchen light. You must have saved the rest of the world, too, to watch how his eyes roll back and his mouth falls slack when you take his length in hand and give one slow pump of your wrist, releasing it just to watch it slap back against his abdomen.
As you reach for his dick again, his hand secures itself around your own and guides it up and down the length of it. Once, twice, thrice, till he’s breathing heavily and dripping in pre-cum.
“You must be close,” a statement you make with his own bodily reaction as evidence to back it up, yet there’s still room for doubt — to what extent does that soldier serum interfere with him?
“Put me back down on my knees and I’ll cum to the taste of you,” the soldier certainly makes a tempting offer, one that it almost pains you to refuse.
Almost, if you hadn’t already felt the sweet stretch of him inside you.
“Pretty sure putting you back down on your knees might be considered elder abuse, ole buddy.”
“My age may be a hundred and six but-”
“Exactly my point.”
“But my body isn’t,” he’s using that stare of his, the one Sam always warns you about, while you’re full-on cheesing, a rush of adrenaline shooting through your veins as you wind him up.
“Remind me, who threw their back out a few weeks ago pulling a tray of muffins out the oven?”
His flesh hand grips behind one of your knees and tugs you right to the edge of the counter, while his left one, still clasped over your own, drags his tip over your folds.
“I don’t remember hearing you complain when you drunkenly ate half the tray and then threw up over the rest,” admittedly, not one of your proudest moments.
“Shut up and fuck me, Barnes.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Just like that, you’re drowning in him again, gasping for breath as you lose yourself in a flood of lust. Bottomed out, stuffing you full, Bucky barely graces your pussy with the chance to adjust to his stretch once more before he’s moving, the sweet graze of every inch being dragged along your sensitive walls.
Your nerves are still reeling from his mouth, a quiet hum of electric pleasure reawakened by his throbbing cock and his vulgar mouth.
“She fits me like a fucking glove,” his hands are pawing at your waist, your breast, your face, never in one place for too long as he begins to settle into a rhythm of thrusts. “Doing so good for me, darling.”
The softness put into his term of endearment births an ache in your chest, one that will accept no medicine other than your arms around his neck and his lips on yours. Mouths tangled in kisses and sweat dripping down your skin, Bucky halts — your hips pressed together, the swell of his balls resting right against your swollen cunt, the head of his cock resting right against your sweet spot — and grinds.
Slow, deliberate, delicious. You whine into his mouth and feel how he swallows it, feasts on your ecstasy with a willing tongue, and a smiling mouth, and possessive teeth that tug at your lip as he pulls back. He stretches out the feeling, grinding a second time as your noses bump against one another.
“Bucky,” his name is an anchor, a paperweight, something to ground you amidst the floaty feeling of being two orgasms deep with a third approaching any time now.
“I know,” he says, and you believe him. Believe that he knows, that he’s known, that he always knows when it comes to you.
You lay your head to rest upon on his left shoulder when he returns to chasing a high between your thighs, a renewed vigor behind each thrust that has your hips rolling to meet his and your nails raking over the straining muscles of his back.
“I lied,” an unprompted confession stumbles out his mouth, fingers flexing into their grip on your waist. “About the apartment viewing. I didn’t go.”
“Bucky,” is all you can manage, branded into his skin with a kiss along his neck.
“Is that all you can say? Huh?” His voice carries a teasing lilt, paired to perfection with the pad of his thumb rubbing at your clit. “I’m giving pivotal revelations here, and you’re just gonna reply with that?”
Another echo of his name, walls fluttering around his dick.
“Bucky, Bucky,” he’s mocking you, a torturer’s laugh as he moans his name into your ear. “Keep going, you sound so pathetic it’s almost cute.”
Beyond words and beyond sense, you give in to the weight of his palm splaying against your stomach and guiding your back down onto the island. The soldier hooks your legs over his elbows, deepening the angle that his cock fucks into you, and you swear you see stars dance along the kitchen ceiling.
A hand smooths over your gut and you look back at Bucky to find adoration in his eyes.
“You see that?” You almost want to cry when his movement switches back to a slow drag — innnnn and outtttt — until you notice it: the smallest hint of movement beneath your flesh, a subtle visual of the outline of his tip bulging against your skin from inside you. “See how full she is, how good I’m making her feel?”
Pressing your hand against it, you can’t help but giggle as you feel him poke at your palm, only to fall back into a puddle of incoherent noises when he keeps pushing at that sweet spot, over and over. Harder and faster with each draw back of his hips, you feel rivulets of your own arousal roll down your ass and onto the marble, tainting the counter forevermore in the sins the soldier commits against you, the sins you welcome with open legs.
You’re near the edge again, and he feels it, pushing you closer and closer as he slowly spirals into a mess of phrases that barely begin before he’s cutting them off with something new.
“Don’t deserve this-” He catches himself, rips the insecurity in his voice out by the roots. “C’mon, let me see it one more time. Need to see you fall apart.”
“Want you to fall apart too,” you manage to beg, unwilling to watch him hold back or pull out before he finishes. “Please!”
Like any good soldier, he obeys.
Crashing over you like a wave, he’s doubled-over by the waist and sandwiching you between the counter and him. You feel him spill into you, hot ropes of cum painting your walls white as a third crescendo washes over your body.
Both of you seek out the other as his thrusts grow languid and your walls spasm, milking him for every last drop he’s got. When your mouths meet, it’s less of a kiss and more of you simply breathing into the other, exchanging air and body heat.
“So,” you croak eventually, exhausted and spent atop the counter yet completely unwilling to relinquish him from blanketing you. “Are you gonna do that every time I steal your ice cream?”
Somewhere between jello-ed legs and cold compresses, you wind up in bed.
Skin clammy, lips swollen, lust satiated, you practically melt into the buttery softness of your bed sheets as Bucky lays you down. Despite how you’re still basking in the glow of your third and final orgasm, the soldier seems to think, for a second, you can handle another.
With gentle hands prying open your thighs and a curious tongue diving in for a second helping, licking up the dribble of his own cum spilling out your hole, he’s quick to be corrected when you roll away from his touch with a whine and a plea, “think I might actually die if you make me cum again, Buck.”
He’s unbothered by the rejection, wholly embracing it as he curls up behind you and snakes his arms over your naked skin. It’s you who drags the sheet up and over you both, turning in his arms to plant your head on his chest. His heart races beneath it, but you hold off on teasing — your own isn't any better.
“Sam’s going to kill me,” you whisper out into the room, when moonlight is peeking through your curtains and both of your heartbeats have calmed down.
“I’m sorry,” you feel him shift beneath your head and, though you can’t fully see him, you feel that blue gaze land on you. “Have I not made it clear enough what name you should be saying in bed?”
“There’s a serious chance I’ll die and you’re thinking with your dick,” he squirms as you pinch at his nipple. “You’re no better than the men on your list, Barnes.”
Silence floats back in between you for a moment, peaceful as the slow stroke of his fingers dancing up your spine.
“Why would Sam kill you?” He pauses, hand pressing a little harder down against a knot in your shoulder. “He knows you have a crazy guard dog.”
Your crazy guard dog just pressed a kiss against your forehead, how frightening.
“He made me swear I wouldn’t get involved with you. He said you weren’t in the headspace for a relationship, that you needed to focus on inner peace first.”
“Turns out inner peace is being inside of you,” you pinch at his nipple again. This time, he doesn’t run from it. This time, you almost swear you hear a little moan creep up his throat. “So, Wilson’s to blame? I can get behind that.”
“To blame for what?”
His hand’s now running up and down the back of your arm, leaving goosebumps wherever its tender touch goes.
“Why it took you so long to jump my bones.”
“You think I jumped your-” Your head rises off his chest and you stare into the navy darkness of the room, trying to make a concrete shape out where you see shadows of his face. “Wait, so these past few weeks, I’ve not been hallucinating? You’ve been… flirting?”
“It’s been more than a couple weeks, sweetheart,” Bucky seems to have no problem finding you in the dark, hand cupping your cheek and dragging you up to press a chaste kiss against your mouth. “You don’t seriously think I waited until morning to check that sink without hoping to be caught, do you?”
“So you were slutting yourself out on the kitchen floor!”
“Think the kitchen’s seen worse,” worse might be the understatement of the century.
Clothes still lay discarded, counters unwiped, ice cream completely melted. Cleaning you up had been the soldier’s only priority, and you weren’t in the mood or the mindstate to argue with him on that.
A fingertip tickles down the slope of your nose.
“Stop fighting it, you’re tired,” you hear him whisper.
“I want to hear more about your desperate efforts to get my attention,” it’s nothing but a weak protest.
“We have all the time in the world for that. Sleep,” you don’t hesitate to comply when Bucky’s hand presses you back down against the warmth of his chest. “You’re going to need it. Our upstairs neighbours still need a taste of their own medicine.”
+ extra hyde !
· 70% of this fic is just dialogue, these two losers would not stfu!
· writing banter + sexual tension feels more exposing than writing literal porn.
· lore accurate photo of me whenever bucky barnes exists:
Fear mongering trans men into believing that they won’t pass with dyed hair, piercings or an alternative style is transandrophobia but I don’t think people are ready for that conversation
it’s instinct, perhaps. when he implements his strength, he shouts. he bares his teeth in a snarl when he gets angry. he holds stuff between his teeth often, whether it be a snack he was just eating and his hands were occupied now, or the pen he was just using.
he uses his teeth when his hands are busy.
or compromised.
like they are right now.
you sat on his lap, arms firmly crossed as his hips pathetically shifted against you. his wrists, bound with his own belt, were stuck between his back and the couch’s cushions. you were simply dressed, one of his shirts and a pair of underwear, nothing else. he wore full gear, still on from the mission he’d just gotten back from. he was tired, worn, malleable, weak.
you liked that.
you let him rut up into you, his eyes swirling and teary with frustration. “please?” he begged, and you knew what he wanted.
he wanted to touch you.
“mm-mm,” you shook your head. you relaxed your arms, letting your index finger trail along the seam of his lips. bucky both hated and loved when you got like this—utterly infuriated with his reckless behavior on missions. you always took his autonomy from him, leaving him fully in your hands.
“open,” you whispered.
he loved that, too.
you slid two fingers past his lips, pressing them against his tongue. your fingertips pushed deeper, a sick satisfaction curling in your stomach when bucky choked. the warmth was gone as soon as it came. you removed your hand, shifting closer. bucky breathily groaned when you pressed your center against him.
you lowered your saliva-coated fingers, smiling when you saw him dazedly watching.
his spit was warm on you.
bucky lurched forward, teeth sinking into your exposed neck. you flinched, laughing softly. his wrists jerked behind him, so unbelievably tired of not being able to touch you.
his tongue laved over the marks he made, near whining when you pulled out of reach. bucky watched with teary eyes as you lifted yourself off him, laying on the empty area of couch next to him. your legs fell open.
“what else can your pretty mouth do?” you murmured playfully, eyeing him as he shifted. “whatever you want,” he mumbled. it was difficult due to his bound hands, but he found himself with his knees dug into the cushion, back arched with his face buried between your legs like he was some dog.
you sighed blissfully, hand finding his hair as he lapped at you through your underwear.
“can’t you take them off?” he grumbled. you smiled serenely, shaking your head, “thought you were good with your mouth?” you felt him rut softly against the couch at your words.
bucky’s teeth gripped at the waistband, dragging the fabric down. his pretty eyes gazed at you from below, and you nodded sweetly.
bucky uses his mouth when his hands are compromised.
I don't care what anyone says, brilliance is sexy. Intelligence is sexy. Maturity is sexy. Having a mentally stimulating conversation is sexy. Having a great body is good, being fit is great, health is important. Charm is nice. But intelligence, my God, intelligence is absolutely sexy.
IV. hearding dog
summary: the winter soldier naps, (apparently) and when you wake him up abruptly, he grabs your wrist and says he's sorry. or, you hold his hand and he decides its the best thing since sliced bread.
pairing: winter soldier! bucky x female! reader
warnings: 18+ mdni! fluff, abused dog bucky, guarding, slight injuries, morally grey behaviour, puppy behaviour, guard dog, bucky barnes is whipped already, slow burn, emotional dependence, parasiticesque relationship, coffee as a love language, hand holding, bucky injures reader, bandage, bruise, tony's expensive biscuits, soft touches, lady and the tramp, soft ideas of ws being a second personality, couch cuddling.
inspired by @winterarmyy's winter soldier fanfic
the couch didn't come up again.
neither of you mentioned it, not the tablet or the notes or the blanket that had been pulled over you at some point in the night by hands you hadn't been awake to see. it went where everything else between you went, into the part of things that had no language yet, sitting alongside the jackets arranged on the desk and the kitchen at four in the morning and the way he'd watched you drink your coffee before he tried his own. you left it there and he left it there and that was enough.
what changed in the days after was the distance.
not the following. that had been constant since shuri's assessment, the steady presence of him behind your left shoulder through corridors and the commissary and the briefing rooms you still attended because the work existed whether or not your life had gotten complicated. the following didn't change. what changed was the quality of it. in the first days it had been close and watchful, always slightly forward-angled, always fractionally between you and whatever was ahead. now it had eased. he walked further back sometimes, not far, never far enough that you stopped being aware of him, but enough that there was actual corridor between you when you turned around rather than the immediate wall of him. it had started to feel less like being guarded and more like being accompanied. those were different things and the difference mattered.
shuri sent framework updates every other day in her clipped shorthand. appetite normalising. less reactive to proximity of other personnel. and then, on the third day: he sat in the communal area for forty-seven minutes this morning. this is new.
you hadn't been there for the forty-seven minutes. sam came to your office door in the late morning with the expression of someone who had witnessed something they couldn't file and had decided you were the only person to tell. he leaned in the frame and said "okay, so i went to the communal room because the game was on, and he was just there. on the couch. just sitting there watching the door. so i sat on the other end and he looked at me for a while, you know how he does, and then he looked at the door again. so i turned the game on." sam paused. "and he just stayed. we sat there for forty-seven minutes. he watched the door and i watched the game and it was fine." he stopped. "it was actually fine. i genuinely don't know what to do with that."
"neither do i," you said.
sam looked at you over his coffee for a moment. "shuri thinks it's progress," he said. "that he's learning to be in a space without it being a whole thing."
"i know," you said.
sam left and you sat at your desk and looked at the wall for a while, thinking about forty-seven minutes and a man you'd known as a series of careful distances sitting on a couch watching a door, and the specific quality of sam saying it was actually fine in the tone of someone reporting a small miracle.
you'd started sleeping better, which surprised you.
by every reasonable measure the opposite should have been true. new responsibilities, no timeline, the ongoing uncertainty of a situation that didn't come with instructions. but the sleep was better in the simple undeniable way of something that was just true, and when you lay in the dark and worked out why, you found the answer quickly and then decided not to look at it directly.
you slept.
on the morning this happened you woke up slowly and in stages, surfacing through actual rest rather than the shallow half-sleep you'd been managing for weeks. the room was grey with early light and the city was starting its day outside and you lay there for a while and let it happen around you, more rested than you'd been in longer than you wanted to count.
then you noticed the corridor. the quality of the silence outside your door had a weight to it that empty corridor silence never had. you'd been learning this particular texture for weeks and you knew it the same way you knew the ventilation cycling and the specific sound of the elevator on your floor. you got up, found your socks in the dark, went to the door and opened it slowly just to see that bucky was on the floor, like a cat.
his back had been against the door and had shifted forward when it opened, and he was completely asleep, the deep committed kind that left no room for anything else. legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle, arms folded over his chest with the metal arm on top, chin dropped so his dark hair had fallen over most of his face and moved very slightly with each slow breath. the corridor's overnight light caught the metal arm in flat dull silver. he was very still and very large and completely committed to being asleep on your floor like this was simply where he was.
you lowered yourself down beside him slowly and crouched close. close had a different meaning now than it had in the beginning. you looked at him, just a person asleep on a floor, the jaw set even now, the scar pale at his temple, several days of dark growth across his jaw, and you thought about the room on the sixth floor and the first day and six feet of careful distance and how much had passed between then and this.
you reached out, your hand coming up slowly, giving it time, and you put your palm against his cheek. he was warm the way he always seemed to be, and the stubble was rough under your palm, and you stayed there a moment with your hand against his face and the corridor quiet around you.
but then he woke up. one moment asleep and the next completely not, and the metal hand came up before he'd finished the transition, the plates already moving, and it closed around your wrist. it closed the way it had been built to close. the plates locked with a sharp mechanical sound and the grip was full and certain and there was nothing in it that registered what it was holding, just bone and skin and the fragility of a person built entirely differently to him.
you shrieked. not a word, not anything controlled, just the full involuntary sound of someone whose nervous system had received information it was not prepared for, sharp and genuine and loud in the quiet of the corridor, and you pulled back on instinct before you'd finished making the sound and the grip didn't give at all, not even slightly, and that was when the real understanding arrived, the cold fast knowledge of exactly what was holding you and exactly how much of yourself you did not have available right now.
the plates had locked with a sharp mechanical sound, the specific sound you'd heard before in that building what felt like a lifetime ago, and the pressure across your wrist was immediate and total and deeply real. not a graze, not a close call. the metal had no give in it, no flex, and the grip had closed around your wrist with the full certainty of something built to hold things that didn't want to be held, and for a few seconds you just breathed and went still and waited, your heart going hard in your chest, the pain already radiating up your forearm in the specific way of something that was going to be a serious bruise.
you looked at his hand around your wrist, then you looked at his face.
he was looking at your wrist. he was fully awake, completely awake and he was looking at his own hand and the comprehension was moving through him in real time and you watched it happen, watched the understanding arrive and spread through his face, and something broke the surface that wasn't the soldier and wasn't anything you'd catalogued before. his brow pulled in hard and deep, a furrow so pronounced it changed his whole face, and he was looking at your wrist and the metal fingers locked around it and the expression on his face had no operational category in anything you'd ever seen from him. it was just the face of a person looking at what their hand had done, knowing with complete clarity what it was.
the plates separated one by one, each one deliberate and slow, and the arm came back to him.
you looked at your wrist, turning it over to see that the marks were already there. the plate-edges pressed into the skin in a pattern that was unmistakably a hand, unmistakably his hand, the geometry of the metal fingers printed across your wrist in red-purple that was already dark and was going to get considerably darker. you rotated your wrist carefully, running the internal check with the detached focus you'd learned for exactly these moments. nothing structural. nothing shifting inside the joint. but the bruising was going to be significant, the specific thorough damage of metal with no give, nowhere for the pressure to go, and your wrist was throbbing already with the particular deep ache of tissue that had been compressed against bone.
you breathed out a sigh and then you looked at him.
he hadn't moved. he was exactly where the releasing had left him and he was looking at your wrist and what was on his face stopped you completely. anguish was the only word for it. raw and total and without any architecture of management built around it, just the thing itself, his brow pulled in and his jaw hard and his eyes dark and fixed on your wrist and the bruise forming across it. he looked like someone who could not look away from what they had done. like looking away wasn't available to him. like he was holding himself inside the seeing of it because something in him had decided that was what was required.
you stared at him for a long moment. you'd been startled and you'd shrieked and your wrist hurt properly, the kind of hurt that was going to be with you for a week, and you looked at his face and you felt the breath go out of you in a long slow sigh that had nothing to do with any of that. because you knew. you'd known from the first second after the grip released, really. he'd been asleep. you'd put your hand on his face while he slept and the reflex that had closed around your wrist was older than everything they'd spent weeks trying to bring him back from, built so deep into him there was nothing between it and the world, no gap for a decision to fit into. you knew that and you looked at the anguish on his face and it felt like blaming a dog for biting you once you put your hand in his mouth.
"bucky," you said.
he looked up.
his eyes found yours and the anguish didn't go anywhere, just became the thing looking at you, and you held his gaze and you smiled at him. the real one, the genuine one. "it's okay," you said. "you were asleep. i put my hand on your face and you were asleep and you didn't know it was me." you turned your wrist over slowly, showing him both sides. "it's bruised. i'm not going to pretend it isn't. but i'm okay. nothing's broken. it was an accident."
he looked at your wrist, then he looked at your face and then he looked back at the bruise forming across your wrist with the expression of someone who had received information and filed it somewhere marked not good enough.
"don't," you said. he looked at you. "it was an accident and i'm okay."
he opened his mouth. closed it. then he moved, and the moving was the most deliberate thing you had ever seen from him, slower than slow, his right hand coming up with the palm toward you in the open unhurried approach that gave you every possible moment to see it coming, his eyes fixed on your face the whole time and not on the wrist. asking. clearly and silently asking, with his eyes on yours, for the same reason he'd been asking with his eyes for weeks, because the words hadn't always been there and the eyes had been the only available instrument.
you looked at his hand coming toward yours and held your wrist out. his fingers closed around it and you had to close your eyes for a second, not from pain. from the sheer contrast of it, from the specific and total difference between what this was and what the other thing had been sixty seconds ago. his fingers closed around your wrist so lightly you could have pulled free without effort, the pads of his fingers resting underneath, his thumb settling just above the bruise on the skin above it, barely touching, barely there, the grip of someone handling something they had already broken once and were terrified of breaking again. he turned your wrist in the corridor light and he looked at the bruise from every angle, slow and thorough, his face doing the thing it did when he needed to understand the full extent of something he had caused.
he looked at it for a long time.
then he looked up at you and said:
"i'm sorry."
and you stared at him.
you just stared at him because the words came out rough with disuse and low with something so much heavier than anything disuse could account for, and they sat in the corridor between you with a weight that was nothing like the two words themselves, and you were still holding his gaze and your wrist was throbbing and you stared at him and thought you are speaking to me and then thought no, he spoke before, twice, and then thought this is different and you knew it was different, you could hear the difference in the way it came out, the way it wasn't just sound filling a gap but something that had been waiting and had finally come through.
he was looking at you and waiting. his fingers still barely holding your wrist. his face still holding the anguish that hadn't gone anywhere.
you realised you hadn't said anything.
"i know you are," you said. your voice came out softer than you'd intended. "i know. it's okay. it's going to bruise for a while and look worse before it looks better but nothing's broken and i'm fine. i promise."
he looked at the bruise. he looked at his metal hand at his side, the plates still and quiet, and his face went somewhere private and closed and very old. it only lasted a few seconds but you saw it.
"hey." he looked up. you raised your wrist between you, eye level. "still me. still fine. same answer every time you ask."
something settled in him. not all of it, not even most of it, but enough, the particular easing of someone who has taken in the information even if they haven't finished with it. and then, slowly, palm up and eyes on your face, he reached his right hand toward yours.
you put your hand in his.
and you felt it again, that contrast, the thing that made you look down at your joined hands for a moment just to see it, to look at the flesh hand wrapped around yours with a care that was almost excessive, the thumb resting along the back of your hand, not gripping, just present. just holding, the way you'd hold something you were afraid to grip. you thought about the metal hand and what it had done sixty seconds ago and you thought about this, the flesh hand and what it was doing now, and the gap between the two things was enormous and careful and entirely deliberate.
he was gentle with you.
that was the thing. he was being so careful, so deliberately and consciously gentle, like gentleness was something he was actively doing rather than something that happened, like he was aware of every degree of pressure in his own hand and had decided on each one individually. you looked at his fingers around yours and you thought about how much he was capable of and how little of it was being brought to bear right now, and you thought about all the weeks in the room and the corridor and the kitchen and you thought about this specific morning and this specific hand and you felt, in a way you hadn't quite felt before, the full and particular weight of what it meant that he was trying.
you stood in the corridor in the dim overnight light with his hand around yours and your bruised wrist and the morning a long way off yet, and you looked at him.
he looked back. his eyes dark and the furrow still there, lighter than it had been, and the anguish sitting below the surface of his face like something he was carrying rather than showing, and he was holding your hand like it was the most careful thing he'd ever done.
you took a breath.
"okay," you said, quietly. "come on then."
he stood up and brought you with him, gentle and unhurried, before he started walking toward medical with a very clear goal.
he walked behind, not beside you, not in the usual position at your left shoulder. behind you, close, so that you were aware of him at your back the whole way down the corridor. not oppressive, not crowding you. just there, the specific presence of him, and every time you slowed your pace or your feet started to drift toward a different direction his hand found your waist. not grabbing, not steering roughly. just a hand on your waist, light and brief, redirecting you back toward medical with the patient certainty of someone who had decided where you were going and was not negotiating about it.
you tried it twice. the first time was almost automatic, your feet starting toward the elevator out of some instinct to just go back to bed, and the hand appeared at your waist before you'd finished the step and you were back on course. the second time you did it on purpose, just to see, and the hand was there again immediately, just as light, just as certain, and you looked back at him over your shoulder.
he looked at you with dark eyes and raised his chin very slightly toward the medical bay.
"alright," you said. "alright, i'm going."
the hand stayed at your waist until you were through the medical bay door.
where shuri already was. you didn't know how she knew. you'd stopped trying to work out how shuri knew things because the answer was always that shuri simply knew things, it was a feature of her, and she was standing at one of the stations with a tablet in her hand and she looked at your wrist when you came in and then looked at bucky and said "sit" without any preamble at all.
you sat on the edge of the nearest bed.
bucky positioned himself to the left of the door, arms at his sides, watching.
shuri set her tablet down and took your wrist in both hands and looked at the bruise with the focused clinical attention she brought to everything, turning it carefully, pressing two fingers along the inside of the wrist and watching your face. "does that hurt?" she said.
"it's sore," you said. "not sharp."
"nothing structural," she said, more to herself than to you. "deep tissue bruising, significant. it'll be purple by this afternoon." she reached for the cold pack and the wrap without looking away from your wrist. "you'll want to keep it elevated when you can and don't use it for anything that requires a strong grip for the next few days."
"okay," you said.
she started wrapping, efficient and sure, and she said without looking up: "i need to talk to you about him."
you glanced at bucky. he was watching shuri's hands on your wrist with the focused unblinking attention of someone supervising something that had better go correctly.
"he can't hear you?" you said, quietly.
"he can hear me," shuri said, at normal volume, not remotely concerned about this. "i'm going to say it anyway." she secured a layer of the wrap and said: "he's not dangerous. i want to be clear about that first."
"i know," you nodded along, you and shuri seemed to be the only ones not wary of he famed winter soldier.
"but he's also not predictable," she said. "not in the way a person who has full access to themselves is predictable. he's running on something old and something old doesn't always have the context that something current would have." she looked up at you. "so you need to be careful. not afraid. careful. there's a difference there too."
"i know," you said again.
she held your gaze for a moment, the specific shuri look that was making sure you actually knew and hadn't just said it. then she looked back at the wrist. "he's been coming back in pieces," she said. "it's slow. you probably see it more than anyone else does because you're with him more than anyone else is. but it's happening." she smoothed the end of the wrap and taped it. "whatever you're doing, keep doing it."
you looked at your wrapped wrist. "i'm mostly just making him coffee," you said.
"i know," she said, and the corner of her mouth moved slightly. "keep doing that too."
she let go of your wrist and stepped back and looked at bucky, who was still watching from his position by the door with the arms at his sides and the attentive eyes. "it's done," she said to him, in the same normal voice, and she held up your wrist so he could see the clean bandage from where he was standing. "she's fine."
bucky looked at the bandage. he looked at your face. he looked at the bandage again.
"she's fine," shuri said again, with the patience of someone who understood that some things needed saying more than once.
something in him settled, fractionally. you recognised the settling by now, the specific easing that meant he'd received information he could work with.
you slid off the bed and looked at shuri. "thank you," you said.
"don't thank me," she said, already picking up her tablet again. "just be careful."
bucky fell into step behind you as you left, close and warm at your back, and his hand found your waist briefly in the corridor, not redirecting this time, just there, and then it was gone and he was walking with you toward the elevator and the morning was properly starting around you.
the kitchen light came on low and warm when you walked in.
you went to the coffee machine the way you always did and bucky came with you because that was how this worked now, and you stood at the counter and reached for the drawer with your bandaged hand and he made a short low sound and reached past you and opened it, his body close behind yours, and you looked at the drawer and then at him over your shoulder.
"thank you," you said.
he looked at the drawer, patient and expectant.
you got the grounds one-handed and he was there for all of it, shifting when you needed a different angle, reaching when the carafe was awkward, adjusting the whole geometry of the kitchen around the one-handed operation without making anything of it. you got the machine running and stood waiting for it and his hand came around yours again, the flesh hand, careful and warm, the same as before.
he looked at your wrist. he looked at your face. he looked at your wrist.
"still fine," you said, to the machine.
he made a small sound of acknowledgment.
the machine finished. you poured two mugs and did his the same way you'd done it the first time, matching the colour to yours, the same pale warm shade, and you held it out. he took it in the metal hand because the flesh hand was yours and he had made his position on that clear, and he looked at the mug and then at your joined hands and then at the mug again, working through the geometry, and you looked at the metal arm holding a coffee mug and said nothing about it at all.
"do you want anything in it?" you said. you looked at him sideways. "milk. sugar."
he was quiet, you waited, it was a cute dance you two had started over the days. you'd gotten good at waiting for him, at the gap between him and words that was always worth the time. he looked at your hands, then at the machine, then at you, and his mouth opened and the words came out rough and careful with a small crack in them on the last word:
"i liked how you made it last time."
you looked at him.
he looked back with dark eyes and the set jaw and the faint furrow still between his brows, and there was a full sentence there, a last time in it that meant he'd kept it, that the four in the morning and both hands around the mug and the matching the colour had gone somewhere in him and stayed.
"okay," you said, and you smiled, the small private quick one. "milk it is."
you poured it one-handed and handed him the mug and he took it in the metal hand because the flesh hand was still yours, and he looked down at the mug the way he'd looked at it the first time, and then raised it the same way you raised yours, the same angle and tilt, the muscle memory of a thing learned by watching.
you both sipped on your coffee’s in complete and utter silence. you stood there for a while, just the two of you and the quiet and the city coming in grey at the windows, and you were aware of his hand around yours and the specific weight of the morning, everything that had happened in the last few hours sitting in the kitchen with you, and you thought about shuri's voice saying he's been coming back in pieces, and you thought about the way he'd said i'm sorry in the corridor, rough and careful, like the words had been waiting.
you thought you might try.
"can i ask you something?" you said.
he looked at you.
"what do you think of james?" you said. "as a name. for yourself."
he looked at you for a moment. something moved behind his eyes, some consideration running its course, and then he looked back at his coffee.
"not james," you said, reading it. "okay. what about bucky? does that one feel more right?"
he was quiet, the considering kind of quiet, and after a moment he looked at you sideways, briefly, and away. you took that as close enough to a yes.
"alright," you said. "bucky." you drank your coffee. "i've been reading about you," you said. it was true — shuri had given you access to the parts of the files that weren't redacted, and you'd gone through them carefully, the way you went through everything you thought might matter. "before all of it. before the war."
you paused. "you had a sister," you said.
he went still. not the operational stillness. something different, something that went inward rather than outward, like a word had dropped into deep water and you were both waiting to see how far it went.
"rebecca," you said. "she was younger than you."
the mug in the metal hand didn't move. he was looking at the counter and his jaw was set and his face was doing the closed private thing it did when something was happening inside it that wasn't going to be available on the outside for a while.
"you don't have to say anything," you said. "i'm not pushing. i just thought it might be worth saying out loud. that she existed. that you had her." you looked at your coffee. "shuri says the pieces come back. i thought maybe some of them just need someone to put them in front of you."
the quiet went on. then, very quietly, rough and careful and low: "becca."
you looked at him.
his jaw was tight and his eyes were on the counter and he'd said it the way you said something you hadn't said in a very long time, like finding a word you'd believed was gone and not being entirely certain what to do with finding it. just the one word. just the name, her name, the version of it he'd used, and then silence.
you didn't say anything. you let it be what it was. after a while you said: "what's your favourite colour?"
he looked at you with a dumbfounded expression.
"i'm serious," you said. "does anything come to mind?"
he thought about it. you watched him actually think about it, reaching for something rather than processing something, which was different and recognisable. he looked at the window, the grey morning light coming in, and then he looked at your coffee mug.
"blue," he said. one word, careful, like testing the weight of it. then a slight frown at his own answer, like it had surprised him.
"blue," you said. "that's something."
he looked at the mug. then he looked at the pantry, which you were beginning to recognise as a particular kind of look, and he let go of your hand. you turned to watch him cross to the pantry cupboard and open it. he stood in front of it and looked at the shelves with the focused attention he brought to everything, and then he reached up to the very top shelf and came back with a tin.
dark green with gold lettering; expensive. tony had received it three months ago as some kind of corporate gift, put it in the communal pantry because ‘he didn't eat biscuits,’ and everyone had been silently not opening it ever since out of some collective unspoken agreement that it was too nice to be the thing you just ate on a tuesday.
bucky set it on the counter and looked at it. then he looked at you.
"that's tony's," you said.
bucky looked at the tin, head tilted to the side like he could understand better at an angle.
"i mean technically he put it in the communal pantry," you said. "so technically it's communal. but."
bucky opened the tin with the flesh hand, the metal hand holding it steady, and the smell of very good shortbread filled the kitchen immediately, the buttery expensive smell of something made by people who took biscuits seriously. he looked into the tin. he looked at you and then he reached in and took out one biscuit, a round shortbread with crystallised sugar on top, and he held it out, to you.
not the tin, one biscuit held between two finger, patient and straightforward.
you looked at the biscuit and then his expectant expression.
"are you feeding me a biscuit," you said.
he looked at the biscuit, his expression said yes, clearly, what else would this be?
you pressed your lips together very hard to contain your amusement at this man, at who you imagined james barnes was, and who this twisted winter soldier had become, and you took the biscuit. it was genuinely extraordinary. you hadn't expected it to matter but it did, the kind of shortbread that dissolved rather than broke, rich and slightly salted and exactly what was needed after a bruised wrist and a corridor floor and a medical bay and shuri's careful voice saying be careful, not afraid. you ate the biscuit and looked at him and said: "do you remember steve? before the war. what he was like."
he reached into the tin and got another one and held it out to you and said: "small."
you took the biscuit. "small," you repeated.
"real small," he said. something in the word had texture to it, something old. "always starting things he couldn't finish."
"and bucky finished them for him," you said.
"yeah." he looked at the tin. "yeah, he did."
you ate your biscuit. he held another one out. you took it.
"do those memories feel like yours?" you said. "when they come. do they feel like something that happened to you, or like something you were told?"
he thought about it, actually thought, not just processed. "like looking through glass that's not clean," he said, after a moment. "i know it's true. i know it happened. but." he paused. "mostly it's far away."
"mostly," you said.
"sometimes it's right there," he said. "and then it goes."
you nodded. he held out another biscuit. you took it, ate it, and said: "do you know what happened? in the building, when the debris hit. do you remember that?"
he was quiet for a moment. "yes."
"what do you remember about after?"
"waking up," he said. "and things were different. like something had moved." he paused. the metal arm made a small sound, a plate shifting and settling. "and then the jet. and then your floor." he looked at your wrist. his jaw went tight. "and then this."
"that part wasn't your fault," you said.
he looked at your wrist and said nothing, which meant he was not going to agree with you about that right now and you were both aware of it.
"he feels bad," he said.
you looked back at him. "who does."
"bucky." he said the name the same way he'd said becca, like something retrieved from a long way down. "about — me taking over. about being gone." his jaw was set and his eyes were on the counter and he said it carefully, each word placed. "it's his. this is all his. and he's — underneath. waiting."
you were quiet for a moment.
"you're all the same person," you said. "everything that happened, everything they built, bucky’s underneath all of it. that's not separate things. that's one person with a lot of things done to him." you paused. "when he comes back, if you're worried about it, i’ll talk to him, might give you both some relief."
you ignored the slight sick feeling that arised at him being gone, at the man you’d gotten close with would retreat back into bucky’s mind at some point and never come back again.
the kitchen was very quiet.
you were standing in the communal kitchen at an unreasonable hour of the morning eating tony stark's expensive biscuits while being fed them one at a time by a man built like a siege weapon who was also holding your hand hostage,and you were getting sad at the idea of the killing machine who’d been kind to you disappearing and the specific full absurdity of it rose through your chest and came out as a laugh.
not a polite laugh. a real one, surprised, coming up from somewhere low.
bucky looked at you.
you laughed harder. you laughed with your hand over your mouth and your eyes watering, and bucky stood at the counter and watched you with the expression of someone who wasn't sure what had happened but was watching it very closely. the furrow was lighter than it had been all morning and his head tilted slightly and something was happening around his mouth that hadn't arrived yet but was close.
"i'm sorry," you said, not sorry at all. "it's just." you looked at the biscuit and at him and at your joined hands and at the whole situation. "you're feeding me a biscuit."
he looked at the tin.
"like you specifically went and got tony's biscuits and are now feeding them to me individually."
he reached in and got another one and held it out.
you laughed again, the same laugh, and took it, and ate it, and he watched you eat it and then looked into the tin with the focused considering expression of someone taking this seriously, and selected another one and held it out.
"bucky," you said, still laughing. "i can feed myself."
he looked at you with the level dark eyes and the patient expression of someone who was aware of that and had decided it was not the point, and held out the biscuit.
you took it. you couldn't not take it. you stood there with tears of laughing at the corners of your eyes eating tony's shortbread one piece at a time, and it was, without any competition, one of the funnier things that had happened to you in recent memory. the absurdity of it sat perfectly alongside everything else, all the weight of the past weeks, and didn't cancel it out but existed next to it, and that was its own kind of relief.
bucky got another biscuit.
"i'm going to have to tell tony about the tin," you said.
a small thing happened around his mouth. not a smile, not yet, but the territory was close.
"he's going to be unreasonable," you said. "he put them in the communal pantry which makes them communal, but he's still going to be unreasonable."
bucky held out the biscuit.
you took it. you looked at him eating nothing, just standing there feeding you, and you said "are you not having one?" and he looked in the tin and selected one and ate it in a single go, completely straightforward, and you laughed again, softer this time.
"good?" you said.
he considered this seriously. then he reached in for another one for himself.
"that's what i thought," you said.
you put your mug down and held your hand out, the unwrapped one, and he looked at it and set the tin on the counter and put his hand in yours. his fingers closed around yours the same way, careful and deliberate, and you picked your mug back up and stood at the counter with your coffee and his hand and the tin of tony's significantly depleted biscuits between you.
"we should probably put those back before tony sees," you said.
he looked at the tin.
"after," you said. "but would you want to watch a film tonight?" you said. "something easy."
he looked at you. then he gave the smallest, most minimal nod you had ever seen on a person.
"okay," you said. "tonight then."
you finished your coffee. he finished his, and his hand came back around yours when the mug was empty, finding it again the way it always found it now, without looking, without making anything of it, just there. the tin of biscuits sat open on the counter between you and the city came in grey at the windows and the morning happened around you, quiet and ordinary and enough.
natasha had set up the projector before either of you arrived.
you found this out when you walked into the common room that evening and the big screen was already down and the room was empty in a way that felt curated, the particular emptiness of a space that had been arranged rather than arrived at naturally. there was a blanket on the coffee table that had not been there that morning. it was folded in the specific neat way that natasha folded things when she was doing something she intended to appear casual about. you looked at it for a moment and then you looked at the couch.
where bucky sat.
not at one end or the other. somewhere in the middle, which you'd learned was his preferred placement in every room, never with his back entirely exposed, never too close to an exit to look deliberate about it, and he sat with the metal arm resting on his knee and his eyes moving between the dark screen and the door and you, the three points of a triangle he'd been running since you walked in. you sat beside him, and scrolled through what was available.
you weren't really reading the titles. you were aware of him beside you the way you were always aware of him, the warmth and the specific gravity of a person that large in a space, the way the couch distributed his weight differently to yours, the quiet occasional sound of the metal arm's plates when he shifted. you scrolled and you thought about the kitchen and becca and blue and small, real small, and you thought about the tin of biscuits that was currently sitting on the counter because neither of you had put it back, and eventually you landed on lady and the tramp because it was there and it was easy and sometimes easy was the right call.
you pressed play.
the opening music came on and the screen filled with colour and bucky looked at it with the direct, serious attention he brought to everything, and you settled back against the cushions and let the film start.
four minutes in, his hand came up and found your shoulder.
not carefully, not tentatively. just found it, the hand landing on your shoulder with the calm certainty of someone who had decided where it was going before it left his side, and then the pressure started, gentle and steady and completely without hurry, and you were being moved, just steadily sideways and down, the angle of your body changing by degrees, your shoulder going toward his and your head going toward his shoulder, and the pressure didn't stop until your head was resting against him and his arm had settled around you and then it stopped and stayed. just like before
you looked straight ahead at the screen.
"was that you deciding we were doing this?" you said.
he said nothing.
"right," you said. "okay."
then, with his arm still around you and the film still going on the screen, he reached for the blanket with his free hand and shook it out and settled it over you. he did it one-handed and he did it thoroughly, which was how he did everything — tucking the edge in along your side first, then smoothing the top of it across your lap with the flat of his hand, then checking the edge at your feet, then adjusting the side again slightly, all of it slow and considered and with the focused attention of someone for whom the difference between done and done correctly was not a distinction they were willing to blur. when he was satisfied with it he looked at you, a brief checking look, confirming.
"thank you," you said.
he looked back at the screen.
the projector threw warm soft light across the room and the rest of the tower was its evening self outside the windows and the blanket was exactly as comfortable as it looked and his shoulder was solid under your head and it was, genuinely and without any argument available against it, exactly what the day needed to end on. you'd been fighting the comfortable for about a minute and a half before you gave up and just let it be comfortable.
you watched lady and the tramp.
he watched it and he watched you, the quiet checking that had become so constant you'd stopped registering it as checking and started registering its absence instead, the faint wrongness when a minute went by without it. his thumb moved sometimes against your shoulder, a slow small arc through the blanket, back and forth, and you weren't sure he knew he was doing it. the room was dim and warm and the film played on and you'd mostly forgotten about the day by the time lady was looking up at the big house with the lights in the windows.
the spaghetti scene came on.
bucky went still. not the uncomfortable stillness, not the operational kind. the attending kind, the quality of stillness he had when something had his full and genuine interest, and you felt him go still more than you saw it, the change in how he was sitting, the weight of his attention shifting entirely to the screen. you watched it with him, the candlelit table and the shared plate and the two dogs and the meatball rolling down the strand of spaghetti until they were nose to nose.
then he straightened up slightly, untangled his arm from around your shoulders, and stood up.
you looked up at him. "where are you going?"
he looked at the kitchen doorway. then he walked through it.
you turned back to the screen and listened to him in the pantry. the cupboard, the specific high shelf, the quiet of him moving around in there, and then his footsteps back, and then the couch taking his weight again.
you looked at what he was carrying.
the tin. tony's tin, dark green and gold, considerably lighter than it had been this morning. you looked at it and then looked at him.
"bucky," you said.
he opened the tin. he looked into it with the serious focused consideration of someone taking a task seriously. he reached in and took out a round shortbread with crystallised sugar on the top, and he held it between two fingers and looked at it, and then he looked at you, and then, without ceremony, he put it in his mouth.
not all of it. half of it. the other half sticking out from between his teeth, and he turned toward you with the biscuit and his dark eyes and the expression of a man who had watched a cartoon, identified the relevant information, and was now implementing it with total and absolute seriousness.
you stared at him.
he waited. the half-biscuit was still between his teeth. his face was entirely, completely straight. after a moment he raised one eyebrow.
you laughed.
not a small laugh. the full kind, the one that came up from somewhere low without permission, and you bent forward over your knees under the blanket and laughed with your hand over your mouth and your eyes watering, and he waited with the biscuit and the eyebrow and the total, unhurried patience of someone who had done the maths and was confident in the result. when you came up for air he hadn't moved. the biscuit was still there. the eyebrow was still up.
"you watched the spaghetti scene," you said, when you could, "and that was your takeaway."
the eyebrow stayed up.
you leaned in and bit the other end of the biscuit.
it snapped cleanly and you pulled back with your half and he ate his half and the film was still going on the screen behind you and you were sitting there on the couch with tears at the corners of your eyes and crumbs on the blanket and shortbread dissolving on your tongue, and something at the corner of his mouth was very nearly there.
"that doesn't count," you said. "for the record. completely different category to the spaghetti scene."
he reached into the tin.
"absolutely not," you said.
he put the next one in his mouth.
"bucky."
you leaned in and bit it anyway. you'd made your peace with having no self-control about this. the biscuit snapped, you ate your half, he ate his, and you shook your head at him and he looked nearly, very nearly pleased about something, and then his arm came back around your shoulders and found its position like it had never left and he guided your head back to his shoulder with the gentle steady pressure of a decision already made, and you went, because you had no argument against it and didn't particularly want one.
his thumb started moving again against your shoulder. the slow arc, back and forth through the blanket. the film played on.
after a while his hand moved from your shoulder.
not away. down, the hand travelling from your shoulder to your upper arm, and it stayed there, warm and still, and then after another while it moved again, the same slow deliberateness, coming to rest at your waist over the blanket. not gripping, just there. the weight of his hand at your waist and the warmth of his arm and you looked at the screen and tracked it all with the attention you always paid to him and said nothing.
then he shifted.
the weight of him redistributing, his arm adjusting, the metal hand moving from his knee to the cushion beside you with a quiet sound of settling plates, and you felt the incremental nature of it, the degree-by-degree quality of what he was doing, each small movement given room to be seen and responded to before the next one. his face was close above yours, tilted down, dark eyes and the serious unhurried expression he had for everything he'd decided to do, watching your face at each degree.
you lay back against the cushions.
he came over you slowly, carefully, with the extraordinary deliberate gentleness that had been running through the entire day, through every touch and every held-out biscuit and every slow arc of his thumb, and he kept most of his weight on the braced arm beside your head, and he was very large and very warm and very close, his face above yours and the metal arm quiet at the edge of your vision and the flesh hand near your waist and the blanket still tucked around you from when he'd done it forty minutes ago.
his eyes were on yours. the whole thing, from the first inch of shifting weight to here, had been watched, and you'd been watched the whole way through, and the watching was asking and the asking was patient and genuine and had none of the winter soldier in it, none of the flat operational quality. just him. just this.
"hi," you said.
the corner of his mouth lifted. small and crooked and there for just a second before it was gone, and it was the first time you'd seen it fully arrive and fully commit to being there, not the almost and the territory adjacent to it, the actual thing, and you held it in the part of your mind where you kept things that mattered and did not make a big deal of it. he lowered his head and pressed his nose into your hair. slowly, the same way he'd done everything today after the corridor, and he stayed there, his face in your hair, and breathed, and the film played on behind you and the city was dark and indifferent outside the windows and the projector light was warm and soft and the tin of tony's biscuits was open on the table and neither of you said anything at all.
you thought about pieces coming back.
you thought about ‘small, real small'. you thought about the kitchen and the voice cracking on ‘last time’ and the hand that hadn't let go of yours for most of the day.
Summary: Your husband, Bucky, offers to make you breakfast, except it’s harder than he anticipated.
Genre: tooth rotting fluff
Warnings: None!
Word Count: 1.1k
-.-
Bucky Barnes had made many mistakes in his over one-hundred-year lifetime, but the ones he made this morning were just straight-up comedic.
His first mistake had been thinking the kitchen couldn’t possibly be as complex as you insisted it was last night, when he’d first brought up the idea of making you breakfast in bed.
His second mistake?
The overwhelming confidence he’d had at exactly 7:00 a.m.
You were still peacefully asleep—just as he’d planned—tucked into the shared bed of your apartment in New York City, only a block away from Stark Tower.
Everything was perfect.
Everything was quiet.
Everything was under control.
…Allegedly.
Bucky stood in the kitchen, staring down at the ingredients laid out on the countertop beside the stove. His eyes moved between them as if he were mapping out a tactical operation, mentally planning the order, the timing, the execution.
With a deep breath and a slight roll of his neck, he muttered, “I’ve got this.”
Little did he know—
He absolutely did not.
He stepped forward as he would into any battlefield, reaching for the sheet of paper you’d left out for him the night before. A few simple recipes written in your handwriting.
To you: helpful instructions.
To Bucky: a mission briefing.
“Alright,” he murmured. “First objective—fried eggs.”
He gathered the ingredients and the pan with the same focus he might use preparing for an Avenger-level threat.
“Stay where you are,” he told the four eggs he set carefully on the counter. “No funny business.”
He backed toward the fridge to return the rest of the carton, eyes flicking over his shoulder like the eggs might make a run for it.
He was following your advice, after all.
Clean as you go, Buck. Makes everything easier.
He’d do anything you said when the reward was that soft, pleased giggle you gave him. This is what Parker had once called “princess treatment,” which Bucky still wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about.
Still… he liked it.
A lot.
He turned back to the stove, preheated the pan, and picked up his first egg.
The brunette man took a deep breath and brought the egg down with a little more force and speed this time.
It shattered.
A gooey mess of shell, yolk, and egg white painted the marble surface. Shock covered Bucky’s face as he quickly brought his non-metal hand to stop it from getting on the ground. With precision, he grabbed the paper towel roll with his clean hand and quickly cleaned up the mess. Then afterwards, like he's watched you do many times, he went under the sink, grabbed the cleaning spray and made the counter look brand new.
“That was just a fluke,” he mumbled as he went to try again with egg #2.
Five minutes later 3 eggs were smashed.
Bucky takes a long, deep breath and promises himself that the 5th time is the charm as he brings the egg down with the knowledge of pressure from his past three attempts.
“YES!” he yells in excitement as the egg cracks perfectly, and he places it in the buttery hot pan.
Realisation dawns on his features as he quickly cleans his hands and rushes into the bedroom, where you lie with slightly opened eyes after being rudely awakened.
“Baby, I'm so sorry.” Bucky sits on the bed behind you and runs large soothing circles on your back, futilely attempting to help you fall back to sleep.
You’re actually not as upset as he thought you would be when you respond cheekily, “I assume breakfast is going good then.” You can feel yourself slowly melt into the mattress from just the feeling of his hand on you.
“Uh, yeah, it’s going great,” he half lies, “You should finish resting, I’ll be done soon.” He leans down and gives you a wholesome kiss on your cheek before trudging back to the battlefield.
A battlefield of smoke and burnt food.
Bucky lunges towards the stove and pulls the cord, extinguishing the flames and turns it off with his right foot. The frying pan makes a loud clattering as it lands in the sink, and the sound of running water quickly follows.
“Is everything okay?” you concernedly yell from the bedroom down the hall.
Your husband is quick to answer, “Everything is fine, sweetheart! Don’t Worry!”
Several minutes later, he’s back to square one, menacingly staring down at his mission instructions, aka recipe.
He ultimately settles on just making toast with a simple tea on the side. However, this ended up being anything but simple once again.
Not even five minutes later, the smell of burning bread makes you slide into your slippers and grab the silk robe that hangs on the edge of your bed. You walk into the kitchen, viewing a sight you never thought would appear before you in a million years.
Bucky lies in the middle of the checkered tiles in defeat, surrounded by dirty countertops and inedible food.
“Buck, what happened?” you ask, trying to stifle the laugh that escapes.
He brings his hands to cover his face as he groans, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
He was more upset than you thought he would be; this is far from the Bucky you knew and loved. Where is his confidence and playfulness that he brings to an inconvenient situation?
You kneel down to lie beside him on the cold floor and pull his hands away from his face, “tell me what's wrong,” you softly request while dragging your thumb back and forth on his cheek, slightly scratchy from his stubble.
He closes his eyes and debates even answering, but he knows that would only make things worse for both of you.
“I just want to be good at something normal,” he pauses, opening his eyes to look into yours, “for you.”
“Oh, Honey,” you coo, pulling him close to you, “You are good at normal things, don’t let a bad day in the kitchen let doubts fill your head.”
You lie in a pile on the floor well into the morning, reassuring him that he’s perfect, no matter how good at cooking he may or may not be.
“What do you wanna do today?” You ask, breaking the peaceful silence.
He grumbles, “I don’t know,” but both your stomachs grumble shortly after in unison, “We should probably eat.”
You sigh, looking at the monochromatic clock on the kitchen wall, “Breakfast specials at the Bagel shop down the street ends in 10 minutes, it's now or never.”
-.-
A/N: Shoutout to my friend for forcing me back into writing.
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