A cat is a small creature in the middle of the food chain that is fully aware that you are a very large thing that could stomp its head in at any moment and yet it chooses to rest its tiny little head on your leg for a nap and spreads out on the floor near you exposing its belly and its most sensitive organs. It brings dead mice and bugs to you to share food.
Don’t you get it? This tiny thing trusts you. It wants to help you too. It licks your leg thinking that it’s helping. It kneads on you to find comfort. It shares its body warmth with you in the cold and gives you your space in the heat. It hisses at other mammals it sees outside including other cats in an effort to protect its family.
Cats love you so so much. But they will keep trying to eat plastic.
''there is no righteousness in suffering alone and isolating yourself from everything is never the answer because you'll eventually start to lose sense of who you are as you spiral further into depression and suicidal ideation this is why you need to let people help you and allow yourself to believe in a better future even if it feels impossible at times''
well shit. it does have a good plot
edit: yes i know this is the theme not the plot. i wrote plot, you still get the point. deal with it
Merman AU | Deep-sea merman! Bucky x Marine Ecologist! Reader where Bucky gets caught in your research net.
WC 4.6k
TW mentions of captivity and unethical experimentation, sedation/restraints, institutional dehumanisation, permanent transformation, body horror, mating-bond references, fem!reader
You are a marine biologist aboard a research vessel studying an unmapped trench, expecting your sampling net to come back with cold-water coral, maybe some translucent ocean creature nightmare with too many teeth and no eyes.
Instead, the winch screams like it is being dragged to hell.
The whole deck shudders as the floodlights swing wildly overhead. The crew starts shouting over each other, someone yelling that you must’ve caught a shark, someone else swears it’s simply too heavy to be anything alive. You push through the bodies gathering near the rail, already pulling your gloves on, already thinking like a scientist because that’s what you are trained to do: observe first and panic later.
Then the net breaks the surface…. And there is a man inside it.
Or maybe not exactly a man.
He’s enormous, tangled in the torn mesh, his long dark hair plastered across his face, his chest heaving against the ropes. Eventually, you notice the black scales begin on his ribs and spread down into a tail that thrashes hard enough to dent the deck. You see fins flare along his sides, torn in places like old battle flags. Gills open and close violently beneath his jaw, dragging at air that cannot help him.
A merman. The first recorded one seen in decades. For all you know, he might be the only one left.
…. And his left arm is metal.
It isn’t a prosthetic like ones you have ever seen in medical journals. It’s too intricate, too seamless, as dark plates overlap from shoulder to fingertips, each segment fitted directly into scarred flesh. Thin lines of blue light pulse beneath the metal, matching the frantic glow beneath the scales along his throat.
There are markings etched into the arm: serial numbers and old surgical codes. You finally see a star by a faded symbol you recognise from declassified reports you were never supposed to read.
HYDRA.
Your stomach drops. You’ve heard of them before.
Before their products ever reached the weapons market, HYDRA was infamous for testing them on humanoid and hybrid creatures, from werewolves, to nymphs, anything close enough to human to provide useful data and different enough that the law rarely bothered protecting them.
They had been blacklisted years ago for ethical violations so extensive that most institutions refused even to cite their research.
You had always assumed their subjects were dead. You had never considered that one of them might still be alive.
When the merman wakes, the deck explodes into chaos.
The creature tears through the net with his flesh hand, snarling so low that the sound vibrates through your bones. His metal fingers clamp around the nearest railing to crush it inward. A crewman stumbles too close, and the merman whips around with his teeth bared, not attacking so much as trying to make space, trying to get away from the floodlights.
Someone screams, “Sedate it!”
That’s when Bucky—the name stamped beneath the designation on his metal arm—becomes truly violent.
His pupils contract, and the blue light under his skin flares wild. He throws himself against the deck with such force that two people fall backward. His metal arm snaps out and catches the tranquilliser rifle before the dart can fire, crushing the barrel into useless scrap.
You see the recognition in his eyes now.
He has been on a deck like this before. He must’ve been under lights like these, surrounded by people wearing gloves like yours, holding tools like yours, speaking in calm voices while they decided which part of him to cut into next.
“Wait,” you say, but nobody hears you.
The captain is yelling for the cage while the medic calls for restraints. Your assistant is already asking whether the specimen has lungs or gills, because scientists do that sometimes. They turn the horrors they were committing into knowledge so they don’t have to feel responsible for it.
Specimen.
The merman hears that too, and you knew he’s heard that before.
He makes a broken, furious sound, and you step forward. “Stop calling him that.”
Nobody listens, but you shove the second tranquilliser rifle away.
“I said stop!”
The merman’s head turns toward you.
You expected his face to be blank and animal. Instead, you find blue eyes watching you through the wet strands of his hair.
Eventually, you realise he’s breathing too fast. He’s suffocating.
His gills are collapsing in the open air.
You grab the seawater hose and drag it across the deck, ignoring the captain shouting your name. The merman flinches when you kneel, but metal arm lifts immediately, shaking with the effort of holding himself upright.
You freeze with both hands visible.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” you say, though the words feel pathetic. People like you have absolutely hurt him. People with research grants, with latex gloves, who write reports about how long he survived before his body tried to shut down.
His eyes drop to the knife at your belt.
You unclip it and place it on the deck between you.
Then, just as slowly, you pick it up by the blade and offer him the handle.
His stare flickers, but he takes the knife.
Everyone behind you panics and yet you don’t move
The merman grips the knife in his flesh hand, but he doesn’t use it on you. He only watches as you reach for the hose and turn it toward his gills. Saltwater pours over his throat, and his entire body looks relieved.
“There,” you whisper. “That’s better, isn’t it?”
His metal hand, still buried in the deck, flexes once.
You see the old injuries more clearly now: circular scars along his ribs where monitoring discs must have been attached, thin marks on his throat where restraints rubbed raw, a deep seam at his left shoulder where the metal arm has been fused.
You have spent your entire career loving the ocean. Bucky has spent decades surviving the people who claimed they wanted to understand it.
The net is still wrapped around his tail, tightening each time he thrashes. One of the cords has cut beneath the scales, and dark blood leaks into the water spreading across the deck.
You reach for the rope.
He snarls immediately.
“Okay,” you say. “Okay. I know. I know.”
You do not know, not really, but you can imagine enough to hate yourself for the gloves on your hands.
When you peel them off, he watches every movement.
“I need to get this off you,” you tell him. “That’s all. Then you can go.”
Behind you, your captain says your name in warning.
You don’t look back.
“He goes back in the water,” you say.
“He could’ve killed us!”
You look at them. “He could have already.”
The merman’s eyes stay fixed on you, so you start cutting.
When the final cord snaps loose, he doesn’t flee even when he has every reason to.
Instead, he stares at a cut across your palm where the rope burned you.
“I’m okay,” you say.
He looks at the blood again.
Then, very carefully, he takes your wrist in his metal hand. He lowers his head and presses his mouth to the cut.
A… magical seal, healing it instantly.
The crew goes silent.
Then Bucky releases you and lets you guide him back to the rail.
He drops into the water without another sound. For a moment, the floodlights catch the black fan of his tail beneath the surface. Then he sinks, blue lights fading into the dark.
You think that will be the end of it, but of course it’s not.
The first gift appears at dawn: tuna the size of a child lies on the lower deck, arranged carefully outside the lab door. Nobody knows how it got there. The second gift is a cluster of shells, placed in a neat spiral beneath your window. The third is a jagged piece of deep-sea glass, set directly on top of your notebook.
Your assistant asks if this is some kind of threat.
You look at the offerings and feel something ache inside your chest.“No,” you say. “I think he’s saying thank you.”
Bucky begins following the ship.
At first, he’s only a shadow on the sonar. Then you start seeing him during sample collection, surfacing just far enough away to watch you work. If another crew member approaches the rail, he disappears. If you come alone, he stays.
He never speaks.
You’re not sure he can.
But he understands more than the crew gives him credit for.
When you say his name, he looks up.
You learn it from the old HYDRA file buried in the university research archive. An experimental deep-sea weapons program with the designation: Bucky, The Winter Soldier.
Program abandoned when the labs lost contact with its primary subject in arctic waters.
Primary subject.
You sit in the lab at three in the morning, reading what they did to him with one hand over your mouth.
They replaced the arm he lost with abyssal alloy and pressure-responsive machinery. They studied whether pain, cold and isolation could produce obedience where hypnosis had failed.
The notes describe his distress responses as “aggression.” They describe his attempts to escape as “territorial agitation.” They describe his refusal to eat as “subject resistance.”
Not once does anyone write that he was afraid.
After that, you stop sleeping much.
You find him outside the glass observation window beneath the deck every night, suspended in the black water, one metal palm pressed to the glass. The blue lights beneath his scales pulse whenever he sees you.
The first time you press your hand to the other side, he goes perfectly still.
The metal fingers spread against yours through the glass.
You teach him to sign through the observation window. Simple things first, like food, safe, stay, friend, no hurt.
Bucky learns slowly, not because he is unintelligent, but because nobody has taught him anything with patience in a very long time. He expects corrections to be violent, to the point where the first time he signs something wrong, he jerks back from the glass.
Your face falls.
“No,” you say quickly, pressing both hands up. “No, Bucky. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
He watches your mouth form the words as you sign, Okay.
His throat glows faintly as he signs it back. Okay.
After that, he begins appearing with less fear.
He brings you fish you cannot possibly eat and looks offended when you try to explain refrigeration. He leaves coral samples from depths your equipment cannot reach, then hovers proudly outside the window while you label them. He scares off a shark during one of your dives and then spends the next hour sulking because you scold him for ramming the cage.
“You cannot solve every problem with violence,” you tell him through the speaker.
Bucky’s lights flicker as he signs, Worked.
You try very hard not to laugh.
He’s sweet, even though there’s nothing harmless about the creature who once dragged an entire illegal HYDRA vessel into the trench and left no survivors. But around you, Bucky becomes almost shy. He ducks his head when you praise him. He flinches away from sudden movement, then pretends he didn’t.
The crew still calls him dangerous, but you call him misunderstood.
Then he proves both things can be true.
A private salvage vessel starts following your research ship. At first, the captain says it is probably nothing. Then you catch encrypted transmissions on the radio and realise they are not interested in your samples.
They are interested in him.
Bucky knows before you do.
The night the other ship comes too close, you are in the observation room when he appears outside the glass. His lights are dimmed to near-black. His metal hand is flexing slowly, each plate sliding into place like a weapon remembering itself.
“Bucky?” you whisper.
He looks at you, but frowns before he goes.
The salvage ship loses power three minutes later.
By dawn, it is drifting empty, its hull ripped open below the waterline, its weapons systems crushed. Nobody dies because you once signed no kill to Bucky until he understood you.
But every single person aboard is found locked in the emergency raft, refusing to speak.
Your crew quits within the week. They call him a monster.
You stand at the rail while the replacement vessel takes them back to shore, watching Bucky circle beneath the water in restless patterns. He hasn’t come close since the salvage ship. You think he believes he has frightened you.
Eventually, sick of not seeing him, you climb into the dive cage before anyone can stop you.
Bucky appears immediately, slamming his metal hand around the bars as if he can physically drag you back to safety.
Not scared, you signed.
He bares his teeth.
Liar, his expression says.
You were scared for him. There was a difference.
You reach through the bars, slowly, slowly, until your bare hand rests against his cheek.
He closes his eyes.
After that, everyone knows there is no separating you from him.
When the expedition ends, he whines because he cannot come with you.
The closer your ship gets to land, the worse he becomes. He follows too high in the water for too many days, ignoring the pressure sickness that makes his movements unsteady. Blood leaks from his gills in thin dark threads as his lights flicker unevenly. Every time you beg him to dive, he signs the same thing with increasing desperation.
You leave.
“I have to go back,” you say from the deck.
No.
“Bucky—”
You leave. They take.
You understand then, that he doesn’t think you are returning to your life.
He thinks the surface is another lab, another cage that takes things and doesn’t give them back.
You try to explain leases and universities and funding boards and family, but none of those words mean anything to him, not the way he has started sleeping under the hull because it is the closest he can get to sharing a room with you, even though being so close to the surface for so long makes him feel sick.
On the last night, he surfaces beside the ship in a storm.
He’s shaking so violently that he could barely keep his metal hand curled around the ladder. The waves kept dragging him away from the hull and throwing him back against it, but he refused to let go.
You climb down before anyone could stop you, rain soaking through your shirt and stinging your eyes. By the time you reached the lowest rung, the boat was pitching so violently that you could no longer keep your footing.
“Bucky, you’re killing yourself.”
Another wave struck the hull. Your hands slipped from the ladder, and Bucky caught you instantly, one arm locking around your back as you wrapped your legs around his waist to keep from being swept away.
You gasped.
You had touched him through the observation glass. You had rested your hands against his face while wearing a diving suit and thick protective gloves. But this was the first time there was nothing between you.
Your soaked shirt had ridden up around your waist, leaving your bare thighs pressed against the cold scales covering his hips. Your arms were looped around his shoulders, your chest flush against his. His skin was freezing beneath your palms, but the strange blue light beneath his ribs pulsed warmly against your body.
Bucky went completely still.
Even half-suffocated and trembling from the pressure sickness, he stared at the place where your skin touched his as though he had never imagined you could feel like this. His metal hand spread carefully across your back, while his flesh hand hung on to the ladder, now both of you half-submerged.
Then the boat rocked again, forcing you tighter around him.
His eyes lifted to yours.
“You can’t stay this close to the surface,” you whispered, tightening your arms around his neck. “Please. You have to go back down.”
His forehead dropped against yours.
His eyes are too bright in the dark as he carefully lifts one hand, encouraging you to hold on tighter to him. Stay.
“I can’t live down there.”
For a moment, he looks away.
Then he brings your hand to the centre of his chest, where the blue light glows beneath the scales over his heart.
You have seen that glow before in fragments of the HYDRA file. The researchers called it an adaptive organ. They believed it was the source of his survival in the trench, it was a biological engine of pressure, salt and light.
They also believed that his kind can also share it in a magical ritual, when they mate with non-merpeople.
Bucky signs slowly, each movement careful. Can change.
You stare at him.
He signs again. Depths. Like me.
Your breath catches.
He doesn’t look triumphant. He looks miserable, because this isn’t a romantic offer to him, at least not entirely. It is a wound he is willing to reopen for you, the same biology HYDRA violated.
You, a human.
He seemed to want you to know that The Depths can make a mate, by sharing the living light under the heart, by letting it enter another body and teach it how to survive the abyss.
He can give you eyes that can see without sun and blood that does not rupture under pressure.
But it’s permanent.
Bucky makes sure you understand that.
He signs it again and again, increasingly frantic. No force. Your choice. No hurt if no. I wait. I wait.
The fact that he thinks he has to promise not to force you breaks your heart.
You press your forehead to his. “Oh, Bucky.”
You kiss his salted nose goodbye and tell him you have to go back to land.
And when you do, you try to be normal.
You teach lectures about deep-sea ecosystems while thinking about the man beneath the water. You analyse the coral samples he brought you and find structures no human instrument has ever recorded.
The university asks you to present your findings, and military contractors attend the lecture.
One of them asks whether the organism displayed signs of trainability.
You stop speaking.
The organism?
You look at the room full of people like you. Humans, who are now all beginning to look like monsters.
And finally, you understand why Bucky looked at your gloves and saw a weapon.
You leave before they can ask more questions.
Two weeks later, you return to the trench alone.
Bucky is waiting.
The moment your boat reaches the coordinates, the water beside you lights blue. He surfaces slowly. His hair is longer, and there are new scars across his metal arm. He looks more tired, but so relieved. You climb down the ladder.
He catches you carefully, metal hand braced beneath your back, tail keeping you both steady in the dark water.
“I couldn’t stay up there,” you tell him.
His eyes search your face. You place your hand over the light beneath his heart.
“I want to come home with you.”
His grip tightens for half a second, then loosens immediately, terrified of holding too hard.
He signs with shaking hands. Sure?
“Yes.”
Forever?
“Forever.”
Bucky can only smile.
You kiss his forehead, because he deserves gentleness in every language you have.
The transformation hurts, but not the way HYDRA hurt him.
Bucky doesn’t strap you down or cut you open. He holds you against his chest in the black water and presses his glowing heart to yours. As he sinks with you and begins the mating ritual, light enters you warmly.
Your lungs burn first.
You panic when water rushes into your mouth, when your body tries to reject it, when your legs twist with pain and your bones feel briefly, horribly, breakable.
Bucky holds on, anchoring you.
His metal hand cradles the back of your head, stroking again and again, as the ocean opens inside you.
Eventually, after a long and awful process of two days and two nights, you breathe water.
It fills you, and your body doesn’t die. It changes.
When you gather your thoughts, you’re floating in Bucky’s arms beneath the surface. Your skin glows with the same blue light as his as black scales shimmer along your hips and ribs. Your legs are gone, remade into a tail smaller than his but strong enough to move with the current. When you lift your hands, you find webbing between your fingers and tiny claws where your nails used to be.
Bucky hovers in front of you, looking wrecked as his dark blue lights flicker in a ramble.
For one horrifying moment, you think something has gone wrong. Then you realise he’s waiting for you to hate him for changing you.
You swim to him clumsily.
Bucky catches you before you can drift sideways. Even now, in the middle of his own terror, his first instinct is to keep you from falling in a world where falling is no longer possible.
You take his face in both hands.
Your lights flicker uncertainly beneath your skin. You don’t know what language you’re speaking yet, but you know this much.
Safe. you sign. Home.
His whole body lights up, every marking beneath his scales flares bright enough to turn the water around you blue.
He touches his forehead to yours.
For the first time since you met him, Bucky looks loved.
Then he takes you down into the Depths, past the last reach of moonlight, past cliffs of glowing coral and forests of black anemones, into a trench-city built from volcanic stone and old shipwreck bones. Its towers are shaped from old shipwrecks and the bones of things too large to imagine alive. Windows glow from within the rock, ropes of pearls and polished glass hang between structures, moving gently in the current, and gardens of luminous coral spread across the rooftops.
You barely have time to take it in before the merpeople begin emerging.
You realise, amazed, that he was never some lone monster wandering beneath your ship.
He was one of theirs.
They come from cave mouths, from archways carved into the stone, from the dark spaces between wrecked ships. Some resemble Bucky, with long tails covered in black or silver scales and fins running along their spines. Others have translucent skin through which their glowing organs are visible. Some have delicate fins like veils, while others bear teeth larger than Bucky’s and claws designed for splitting shells.
Many of them carry evidence of the surface world, with old hook scars split their mouths and shoulders, pieces of fishing line remain braided around wrists or woven deliberately into jewellery, transforming from instruments of capture into trophies of survival. One older merwoman has the rusted curve of a fishing hook hanging from her necklace, and another has a section of net wrapped around the handle of her spear.
Your stomach knots.
Of course they know what humans have done to the ocean. Of course they know what scientists did to Bucky. You expect hatred when they see your face, some instinctive awareness that you were born among the people who hunted them, so you press closer to Bucky.
He notices immediately. His arm tightens around you as the lights beneath his scales begin to darken in warning.
Then one of the older merwomen swims forward.
Bucky bares his teeth.
She ignores him completely.
Instead, she takes your face between her hands and studies you with large, black eyes. Her thumbs brush across the new gills beneath your jaw. You brace yourself for anger.
She presses her forehead warmly against yours.
The light beneath her skin blooms gold as if to say, welcome home.
You don’t know what it means yet. By now, you understand that they communicate in colours, but you do not understand any of the colours rippling across her body, or the waves of blue, silver, violet, and green that answer from the merpeople gathered around you. Their language passes, each body responding to the next until the entire trench glows.
For one frightened moment, you wonder whether they are warning one another about you.
Then the elder strokes her thumbs beneath your new gills.
Another fastens a string of polished shells around your neck, and a younger one touches your tail with careful fascination. The smaller merpeople begin circling you excitedly, darting between Bucky’s fins and fleeing playfully whenever he turns toward them.
Beside you, brilliant blue light bursts beneath every one of his scales, illuminating the metal plates of his arm and turning the water around him bright enough for you to see the pride on his face.
The younger merpeople flash rapid patterns in his direction. Whatever they are saying makes Bucky’s fins flatten with embarrassment before he sends them scattering into the coral with one sweep of his tail.
They return almost immediately, glowing with what you are beginning to suspect is laughter.
You realise then that they already know you, because Bucky has been telling them about you for months.
You cannot understand the exact stories moving across their bodies, but you recognise yourself in their gestures.
—
One year later, the language of the Depths moves beneath your skin as naturally as English.
It no longer looks like random colours or disconnected flashes, and each brightness carries tone, each rhythm creates a word.
Sometimes you wake with Bucky curled around you, his tail tangled securely with yours and his metal palm resting over the light beneath your ribs. Dark blue moves across his chest before you have even opened your eyes.
You are awake. Did you sleep well?
You nuzzle into his neck, allowing your baby blue light to answer against his skin. I always sleep well when you are holding me.
Bucky’s arms tighten around you. I missed you while you were asleep.
Your lights flicker with affection.
One year in, you continue your research, technically.
You have filled your cave with stone tablets as journals, labelled samples, pieces of shed scales, and specimens collected from regions no human vessel could ever reach. The Depths have become your field site, an entire ecosystem you’re slowly learning without harming anything inside it.
Bucky appoints himself your research assistant.
Unfortunately, he has little understanding of reasonable sample sizes.
One morning, he proudly deposits an enormous bioluminescent eel across your stone worktable. It is nearly twice your length, still glowing irritably as it coils around your equipment.
You stare at it.
You needed one scale.
Hopeful blue light pulses beneath Bucky’s throat. You asked me to find a specimen with silver markings, so I brought you the best one.
Your lights shimmer with exhausted affection. I only needed a single scale.
His head tilts. This one has thousands.
You smile.
He hovers beside his offering, watching you with those wide eyes. A smaller pulse of uncertain blue moves beneath his ribs. Did I do well?
You look at him, the creature humans had called violent, untrainable, and monstrous. You swim forward and take his face between your hands.
Light blue spreads from your palms and pours across his skin.
You did very well. You are the finest research assistant in the entire ocean.
Bucky glows so brightly that the eel startles.
You kiss the corner of his mouth, then nuzzle your face against his. He ducks his head shyly, but there is nowhere for him to hide the brilliant blue racing through every marking on his body.
Above you, the surface world continues searching for its missing scientist and its missing specimen, never understanding that neither of you is lost.
You are in the Depths, surrounded by people who call him family and who welcomed you as one of their own.
You are home.
—
this is a queued post! I am currently either getting married or on my honeymoon! enjoy! 💕
Merman AU | Deep-sea merman! Bucky x Marine Ecologist! Reader where Bucky gets caught in your research net.
WC 4.6k
TW mentions of captivity and unethical experimentation, sedation/restraints, institutional dehumanisation, permanent transformation, body horror, mating-bond references, fem!reader
You are a marine biologist aboard a research vessel studying an unmapped trench, expecting your sampling net to come back with cold-water coral, maybe some translucent ocean creature nightmare with too many teeth and no eyes.
Instead, the winch screams like it is being dragged to hell.
The whole deck shudders as the floodlights swing wildly overhead. The crew starts shouting over each other, someone yelling that you must’ve caught a shark, someone else swears it’s simply too heavy to be anything alive. You push through the bodies gathering near the rail, already pulling your gloves on, already thinking like a scientist because that’s what you are trained to do: observe first and panic later.
Then the net breaks the surface…. And there is a man inside it.
Or maybe not exactly a man.
He’s enormous, tangled in the torn mesh, his long dark hair plastered across his face, his chest heaving against the ropes. Eventually, you notice the black scales begin on his ribs and spread down into a tail that thrashes hard enough to dent the deck. You see fins flare along his sides, torn in places like old battle flags. Gills open and close violently beneath his jaw, dragging at air that cannot help him.
A merman. The first recorded one seen in decades. For all you know, he might be the only one left.
…. And his left arm is metal.
It isn’t a prosthetic like ones you have ever seen in medical journals. It’s too intricate, too seamless, as dark plates overlap from shoulder to fingertips, each segment fitted directly into scarred flesh. Thin lines of blue light pulse beneath the metal, matching the frantic glow beneath the scales along his throat.
There are markings etched into the arm: serial numbers and old surgical codes. You finally see a star by a faded symbol you recognise from declassified reports you were never supposed to read.
HYDRA.
Your stomach drops. You’ve heard of them before.
Before their products ever reached the weapons market, HYDRA was infamous for testing them on humanoid and hybrid creatures, from werewolves, to nymphs, anything close enough to human to provide useful data and different enough that the law rarely bothered protecting them.
They had been blacklisted years ago for ethical violations so extensive that most institutions refused even to cite their research.
You had always assumed their subjects were dead. You had never considered that one of them might still be alive.
When the merman wakes, the deck explodes into chaos.
The creature tears through the net with his flesh hand, snarling so low that the sound vibrates through your bones. His metal fingers clamp around the nearest railing to crush it inward. A crewman stumbles too close, and the merman whips around with his teeth bared, not attacking so much as trying to make space, trying to get away from the floodlights.
Someone screams, “Sedate it!”
That’s when Bucky—the name stamped beneath the designation on his metal arm—becomes truly violent.
His pupils contract, and the blue light under his skin flares wild. He throws himself against the deck with such force that two people fall backward. His metal arm snaps out and catches the tranquilliser rifle before the dart can fire, crushing the barrel into useless scrap.
You see the recognition in his eyes now.
He has been on a deck like this before. He must’ve been under lights like these, surrounded by people wearing gloves like yours, holding tools like yours, speaking in calm voices while they decided which part of him to cut into next.
“Wait,” you say, but nobody hears you.
The captain is yelling for the cage while the medic calls for restraints. Your assistant is already asking whether the specimen has lungs or gills, because scientists do that sometimes. They turn the horrors they were committing into knowledge so they don’t have to feel responsible for it.
Specimen.
The merman hears that too, and you knew he’s heard that before.
He makes a broken, furious sound, and you step forward. “Stop calling him that.”
Nobody listens, but you shove the second tranquilliser rifle away.
“I said stop!”
The merman’s head turns toward you.
You expected his face to be blank and animal. Instead, you find blue eyes watching you through the wet strands of his hair.
Eventually, you realise he’s breathing too fast. He’s suffocating.
His gills are collapsing in the open air.
You grab the seawater hose and drag it across the deck, ignoring the captain shouting your name. The merman flinches when you kneel, but metal arm lifts immediately, shaking with the effort of holding himself upright.
You freeze with both hands visible.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” you say, though the words feel pathetic. People like you have absolutely hurt him. People with research grants, with latex gloves, who write reports about how long he survived before his body tried to shut down.
His eyes drop to the knife at your belt.
You unclip it and place it on the deck between you.
Then, just as slowly, you pick it up by the blade and offer him the handle.
His stare flickers, but he takes the knife.
Everyone behind you panics and yet you don’t move
The merman grips the knife in his flesh hand, but he doesn’t use it on you. He only watches as you reach for the hose and turn it toward his gills. Saltwater pours over his throat, and his entire body looks relieved.
“There,” you whisper. “That’s better, isn’t it?”
His metal hand, still buried in the deck, flexes once.
You see the old injuries more clearly now: circular scars along his ribs where monitoring discs must have been attached, thin marks on his throat where restraints rubbed raw, a deep seam at his left shoulder where the metal arm has been fused.
You have spent your entire career loving the ocean. Bucky has spent decades surviving the people who claimed they wanted to understand it.
The net is still wrapped around his tail, tightening each time he thrashes. One of the cords has cut beneath the scales, and dark blood leaks into the water spreading across the deck.
You reach for the rope.
He snarls immediately.
“Okay,” you say. “Okay. I know. I know.”
You do not know, not really, but you can imagine enough to hate yourself for the gloves on your hands.
When you peel them off, he watches every movement.
“I need to get this off you,” you tell him. “That’s all. Then you can go.”
Behind you, your captain says your name in warning.
You don’t look back.
“He goes back in the water,” you say.
“He could’ve killed us!”
You look at them. “He could have already.”
The merman’s eyes stay fixed on you, so you start cutting.
When the final cord snaps loose, he doesn’t flee even when he has every reason to.
Instead, he stares at a cut across your palm where the rope burned you.
“I’m okay,” you say.
He looks at the blood again.
Then, very carefully, he takes your wrist in his metal hand. He lowers his head and presses his mouth to the cut.
A… magical seal, healing it instantly.
The crew goes silent.
Then Bucky releases you and lets you guide him back to the rail.
He drops into the water without another sound. For a moment, the floodlights catch the black fan of his tail beneath the surface. Then he sinks, blue lights fading into the dark.
You think that will be the end of it, but of course it’s not.
The first gift appears at dawn: tuna the size of a child lies on the lower deck, arranged carefully outside the lab door. Nobody knows how it got there. The second gift is a cluster of shells, placed in a neat spiral beneath your window. The third is a jagged piece of deep-sea glass, set directly on top of your notebook.
Your assistant asks if this is some kind of threat.
You look at the offerings and feel something ache inside your chest.“No,” you say. “I think he’s saying thank you.”
Bucky begins following the ship.
At first, he’s only a shadow on the sonar. Then you start seeing him during sample collection, surfacing just far enough away to watch you work. If another crew member approaches the rail, he disappears. If you come alone, he stays.
He never speaks.
You’re not sure he can.
But he understands more than the crew gives him credit for.
When you say his name, he looks up.
You learn it from the old HYDRA file buried in the university research archive. An experimental deep-sea weapons program with the designation: Bucky, The Winter Soldier.
Program abandoned when the labs lost contact with its primary subject in arctic waters.
Primary subject.
You sit in the lab at three in the morning, reading what they did to him with one hand over your mouth.
They replaced the arm he lost with abyssal alloy and pressure-responsive machinery. They studied whether pain, cold and isolation could produce obedience where hypnosis had failed.
The notes describe his distress responses as “aggression.” They describe his attempts to escape as “territorial agitation.” They describe his refusal to eat as “subject resistance.”
Not once does anyone write that he was afraid.
After that, you stop sleeping much.
You find him outside the glass observation window beneath the deck every night, suspended in the black water, one metal palm pressed to the glass. The blue lights beneath his scales pulse whenever he sees you.
The first time you press your hand to the other side, he goes perfectly still.
The metal fingers spread against yours through the glass.
You teach him to sign through the observation window. Simple things first, like food, safe, stay, friend, no hurt.
Bucky learns slowly, not because he is unintelligent, but because nobody has taught him anything with patience in a very long time. He expects corrections to be violent, to the point where the first time he signs something wrong, he jerks back from the glass.
Your face falls.
“No,” you say quickly, pressing both hands up. “No, Bucky. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
He watches your mouth form the words as you sign, Okay.
His throat glows faintly as he signs it back. Okay.
After that, he begins appearing with less fear.
He brings you fish you cannot possibly eat and looks offended when you try to explain refrigeration. He leaves coral samples from depths your equipment cannot reach, then hovers proudly outside the window while you label them. He scares off a shark during one of your dives and then spends the next hour sulking because you scold him for ramming the cage.
“You cannot solve every problem with violence,” you tell him through the speaker.
Bucky’s lights flicker as he signs, Worked.
You try very hard not to laugh.
He’s sweet, even though there’s nothing harmless about the creature who once dragged an entire illegal HYDRA vessel into the trench and left no survivors. But around you, Bucky becomes almost shy. He ducks his head when you praise him. He flinches away from sudden movement, then pretends he didn’t.
The crew still calls him dangerous, but you call him misunderstood.
Then he proves both things can be true.
A private salvage vessel starts following your research ship. At first, the captain says it is probably nothing. Then you catch encrypted transmissions on the radio and realise they are not interested in your samples.
They are interested in him.
Bucky knows before you do.
The night the other ship comes too close, you are in the observation room when he appears outside the glass. His lights are dimmed to near-black. His metal hand is flexing slowly, each plate sliding into place like a weapon remembering itself.
“Bucky?” you whisper.
He looks at you, but frowns before he goes.
The salvage ship loses power three minutes later.
By dawn, it is drifting empty, its hull ripped open below the waterline, its weapons systems crushed. Nobody dies because you once signed no kill to Bucky until he understood you.
But every single person aboard is found locked in the emergency raft, refusing to speak.
Your crew quits within the week. They call him a monster.
You stand at the rail while the replacement vessel takes them back to shore, watching Bucky circle beneath the water in restless patterns. He hasn’t come close since the salvage ship. You think he believes he has frightened you.
Eventually, sick of not seeing him, you climb into the dive cage before anyone can stop you.
Bucky appears immediately, slamming his metal hand around the bars as if he can physically drag you back to safety.
Not scared, you signed.
He bares his teeth.
Liar, his expression says.
You were scared for him. There was a difference.
You reach through the bars, slowly, slowly, until your bare hand rests against his cheek.
He closes his eyes.
After that, everyone knows there is no separating you from him.
When the expedition ends, he whines because he cannot come with you.
The closer your ship gets to land, the worse he becomes. He follows too high in the water for too many days, ignoring the pressure sickness that makes his movements unsteady. Blood leaks from his gills in thin dark threads as his lights flicker unevenly. Every time you beg him to dive, he signs the same thing with increasing desperation.
You leave.
“I have to go back,” you say from the deck.
No.
“Bucky—”
You leave. They take.
You understand then, that he doesn’t think you are returning to your life.
He thinks the surface is another lab, another cage that takes things and doesn’t give them back.
You try to explain leases and universities and funding boards and family, but none of those words mean anything to him, not the way he has started sleeping under the hull because it is the closest he can get to sharing a room with you, even though being so close to the surface for so long makes him feel sick.
On the last night, he surfaces beside the ship in a storm.
He’s shaking so violently that he could barely keep his metal hand curled around the ladder. The waves kept dragging him away from the hull and throwing him back against it, but he refused to let go.
You climb down before anyone could stop you, rain soaking through your shirt and stinging your eyes. By the time you reached the lowest rung, the boat was pitching so violently that you could no longer keep your footing.
“Bucky, you’re killing yourself.”
Another wave struck the hull. Your hands slipped from the ladder, and Bucky caught you instantly, one arm locking around your back as you wrapped your legs around his waist to keep from being swept away.
You gasped.
You had touched him through the observation glass. You had rested your hands against his face while wearing a diving suit and thick protective gloves. But this was the first time there was nothing between you.
Your soaked shirt had ridden up around your waist, leaving your bare thighs pressed against the cold scales covering his hips. Your arms were looped around his shoulders, your chest flush against his. His skin was freezing beneath your palms, but the strange blue light beneath his ribs pulsed warmly against your body.
Bucky went completely still.
Even half-suffocated and trembling from the pressure sickness, he stared at the place where your skin touched his as though he had never imagined you could feel like this. His metal hand spread carefully across your back, while his flesh hand hung on to the ladder, now both of you half-submerged.
Then the boat rocked again, forcing you tighter around him.
His eyes lifted to yours.
“You can’t stay this close to the surface,” you whispered, tightening your arms around his neck. “Please. You have to go back down.”
His forehead dropped against yours.
His eyes are too bright in the dark as he carefully lifts one hand, encouraging you to hold on tighter to him. Stay.
“I can’t live down there.”
For a moment, he looks away.
Then he brings your hand to the centre of his chest, where the blue light glows beneath the scales over his heart.
You have seen that glow before in fragments of the HYDRA file. The researchers called it an adaptive organ. They believed it was the source of his survival in the trench, it was a biological engine of pressure, salt and light.
They also believed that his kind can also share it in a magical ritual, when they mate with non-merpeople.
Bucky signs slowly, each movement careful. Can change.
You stare at him.
He signs again. Depths. Like me.
Your breath catches.
He doesn’t look triumphant. He looks miserable, because this isn’t a romantic offer to him, at least not entirely. It is a wound he is willing to reopen for you, the same biology HYDRA violated.
You, a human.
He seemed to want you to know that The Depths can make a mate, by sharing the living light under the heart, by letting it enter another body and teach it how to survive the abyss.
He can give you eyes that can see without sun and blood that does not rupture under pressure.
But it’s permanent.
Bucky makes sure you understand that.
He signs it again and again, increasingly frantic. No force. Your choice. No hurt if no. I wait. I wait.
The fact that he thinks he has to promise not to force you breaks your heart.
You press your forehead to his. “Oh, Bucky.”
You kiss his salted nose goodbye and tell him you have to go back to land.
And when you do, you try to be normal.
You teach lectures about deep-sea ecosystems while thinking about the man beneath the water. You analyse the coral samples he brought you and find structures no human instrument has ever recorded.
The university asks you to present your findings, and military contractors attend the lecture.
One of them asks whether the organism displayed signs of trainability.
You stop speaking.
The organism?
You look at the room full of people like you. Humans, who are now all beginning to look like monsters.
And finally, you understand why Bucky looked at your gloves and saw a weapon.
You leave before they can ask more questions.
Two weeks later, you return to the trench alone.
Bucky is waiting.
The moment your boat reaches the coordinates, the water beside you lights blue. He surfaces slowly. His hair is longer, and there are new scars across his metal arm. He looks more tired, but so relieved. You climb down the ladder.
He catches you carefully, metal hand braced beneath your back, tail keeping you both steady in the dark water.
“I couldn’t stay up there,” you tell him.
His eyes search your face. You place your hand over the light beneath his heart.
“I want to come home with you.”
His grip tightens for half a second, then loosens immediately, terrified of holding too hard.
He signs with shaking hands. Sure?
“Yes.”
Forever?
“Forever.”
Bucky can only smile.
You kiss his forehead, because he deserves gentleness in every language you have.
The transformation hurts, but not the way HYDRA hurt him.
Bucky doesn’t strap you down or cut you open. He holds you against his chest in the black water and presses his glowing heart to yours. As he sinks with you and begins the mating ritual, light enters you warmly.
Your lungs burn first.
You panic when water rushes into your mouth, when your body tries to reject it, when your legs twist with pain and your bones feel briefly, horribly, breakable.
Bucky holds on, anchoring you.
His metal hand cradles the back of your head, stroking again and again, as the ocean opens inside you.
Eventually, after a long and awful process of two days and two nights, you breathe water.
It fills you, and your body doesn’t die. It changes.
When you gather your thoughts, you’re floating in Bucky’s arms beneath the surface. Your skin glows with the same blue light as his as black scales shimmer along your hips and ribs. Your legs are gone, remade into a tail smaller than his but strong enough to move with the current. When you lift your hands, you find webbing between your fingers and tiny claws where your nails used to be.
Bucky hovers in front of you, looking wrecked as his dark blue lights flicker in a ramble.
For one horrifying moment, you think something has gone wrong. Then you realise he’s waiting for you to hate him for changing you.
You swim to him clumsily.
Bucky catches you before you can drift sideways. Even now, in the middle of his own terror, his first instinct is to keep you from falling in a world where falling is no longer possible.
You take his face in both hands.
Your lights flicker uncertainly beneath your skin. You don’t know what language you’re speaking yet, but you know this much.
Safe. you sign. Home.
His whole body lights up, every marking beneath his scales flares bright enough to turn the water around you blue.
He touches his forehead to yours.
For the first time since you met him, Bucky looks loved.
Then he takes you down into the Depths, past the last reach of moonlight, past cliffs of glowing coral and forests of black anemones, into a trench-city built from volcanic stone and old shipwreck bones. Its towers are shaped from old shipwrecks and the bones of things too large to imagine alive. Windows glow from within the rock, ropes of pearls and polished glass hang between structures, moving gently in the current, and gardens of luminous coral spread across the rooftops.
You barely have time to take it in before the merpeople begin emerging.
You realise, amazed, that he was never some lone monster wandering beneath your ship.
He was one of theirs.
They come from cave mouths, from archways carved into the stone, from the dark spaces between wrecked ships. Some resemble Bucky, with long tails covered in black or silver scales and fins running along their spines. Others have translucent skin through which their glowing organs are visible. Some have delicate fins like veils, while others bear teeth larger than Bucky’s and claws designed for splitting shells.
Many of them carry evidence of the surface world, with old hook scars split their mouths and shoulders, pieces of fishing line remain braided around wrists or woven deliberately into jewellery, transforming from instruments of capture into trophies of survival. One older merwoman has the rusted curve of a fishing hook hanging from her necklace, and another has a section of net wrapped around the handle of her spear.
Your stomach knots.
Of course they know what humans have done to the ocean. Of course they know what scientists did to Bucky. You expect hatred when they see your face, some instinctive awareness that you were born among the people who hunted them, so you press closer to Bucky.
He notices immediately. His arm tightens around you as the lights beneath his scales begin to darken in warning.
Then one of the older merwomen swims forward.
Bucky bares his teeth.
She ignores him completely.
Instead, she takes your face between her hands and studies you with large, black eyes. Her thumbs brush across the new gills beneath your jaw. You brace yourself for anger.
She presses her forehead warmly against yours.
The light beneath her skin blooms gold as if to say, welcome home.
You don’t know what it means yet. By now, you understand that they communicate in colours, but you do not understand any of the colours rippling across her body, or the waves of blue, silver, violet, and green that answer from the merpeople gathered around you. Their language passes, each body responding to the next until the entire trench glows.
For one frightened moment, you wonder whether they are warning one another about you.
Then the elder strokes her thumbs beneath your new gills.
Another fastens a string of polished shells around your neck, and a younger one touches your tail with careful fascination. The smaller merpeople begin circling you excitedly, darting between Bucky’s fins and fleeing playfully whenever he turns toward them.
Beside you, brilliant blue light bursts beneath every one of his scales, illuminating the metal plates of his arm and turning the water around him bright enough for you to see the pride on his face.
The younger merpeople flash rapid patterns in his direction. Whatever they are saying makes Bucky’s fins flatten with embarrassment before he sends them scattering into the coral with one sweep of his tail.
They return almost immediately, glowing with what you are beginning to suspect is laughter.
You realise then that they already know you, because Bucky has been telling them about you for months.
You cannot understand the exact stories moving across their bodies, but you recognise yourself in their gestures.
—
One year later, the language of the Depths moves beneath your skin as naturally as English.
It no longer looks like random colours or disconnected flashes, and each brightness carries tone, each rhythm creates a word.
Sometimes you wake with Bucky curled around you, his tail tangled securely with yours and his metal palm resting over the light beneath your ribs. Dark blue moves across his chest before you have even opened your eyes.
You are awake. Did you sleep well?
You nuzzle into his neck, allowing your baby blue light to answer against his skin. I always sleep well when you are holding me.
Bucky’s arms tighten around you. I missed you while you were asleep.
Your lights flicker with affection.
One year in, you continue your research, technically.
You have filled your cave with stone tablets as journals, labelled samples, pieces of shed scales, and specimens collected from regions no human vessel could ever reach. The Depths have become your field site, an entire ecosystem you’re slowly learning without harming anything inside it.
Bucky appoints himself your research assistant.
Unfortunately, he has little understanding of reasonable sample sizes.
One morning, he proudly deposits an enormous bioluminescent eel across your stone worktable. It is nearly twice your length, still glowing irritably as it coils around your equipment.
You stare at it.
You needed one scale.
Hopeful blue light pulses beneath Bucky’s throat. You asked me to find a specimen with silver markings, so I brought you the best one.
Your lights shimmer with exhausted affection. I only needed a single scale.
His head tilts. This one has thousands.
You smile.
He hovers beside his offering, watching you with those wide eyes. A smaller pulse of uncertain blue moves beneath his ribs. Did I do well?
You look at him, the creature humans had called violent, untrainable, and monstrous. You swim forward and take his face between your hands.
Light blue spreads from your palms and pours across his skin.
You did very well. You are the finest research assistant in the entire ocean.
Bucky glows so brightly that the eel startles.
You kiss the corner of his mouth, then nuzzle your face against his. He ducks his head shyly, but there is nowhere for him to hide the brilliant blue racing through every marking on his body.
Above you, the surface world continues searching for its missing scientist and its missing specimen, never understanding that neither of you is lost.
You are in the Depths, surrounded by people who call him family and who welcomed you as one of their own.
You are home.
—
this is a queued post! I am currently either getting married or on my honeymoon! enjoy! 💕
protect short sentence stacking as a stylistic choice.
protect fanfic writers—who are kind enough to share their works with people to read for free—from ai witch hunts, speculations and accusations.
“don’t like don’t read” also applies to any fic that is ai-generated and any fic you think is ai-generated by the way. if you don’t like what you’re reading for any reason, you can always stop reading and exit the fic at any point. but harassment is never ever justified. no matter if you think you’ve found a noble excuse to do it. and also…
witch hunts, speculations and accusations harm the writing community as much as ai does. if not more. I don’t want to see another innocent writer get driven away from the community because someone decides to harass and accuse them for using ai just because their fic happens to have “ai telltales” — the same telltales ai got from having been trained on millions of human-made works to mimic how real humans actually write.
This is so important and occurs outside of the fanfic space as well. I've seen authors get rejected because their book sounded 'too AI' when they're just the type of writer who knows how to use em dashes. I've seen content writers and copywriters spend hours on assignments they submit for job applications that reject them for 'using AI' that they never used to begin with! All while those jobs hire writers who did in fact use AI and prompt it NOT to 'sound like AI' (because yes that is something you can very easily do), and publishers work with authors who have openly mentioned using AI for 'editing and brainstorming' while receiving little to no backlash for it.
Also, no you're not some holier than thou smartass for presuming everyone who does not have em dashes/'not x, not y, but z' writing is writing without AI and vice versa. I especially hate when people in power like publishers, employers, and professors use this presumption to make life miserable for writers who genuinely love writing
idk who needs to hear this but it’s healthier for you to just accept that you’re gonna be kinda fat than it is to live the rest of your life miserably trying to monitor yourself to maintain a skinny weight your body doesn’t want to hold onto
“nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” what feels even better is living a life where your self-worth isn’t entirely dependent on your thinness and you don’t constantly monitor and shame yourself. attaching the tweet that was worth at least five hours of therapy for me
I know we talk a lot about the literacy crisis and the horrible anti-intellectualism happening rn but I think we need to talk more about how much of an entitlement complex the stupidest among us have developed
girl whose type is strictly caretakers but refuses to let herself be taken care of on the principles of being independent and trust issues so she runs away from it for a while before the caretakers coax her into it bit by bit until she's sooo soft and pliant and spoiled from it...
hate to break this to you but if you call yourself self aware but you are only aware of your faults and never acknowledge your strengths you are not self aware. you have repackaged your self hatred
✦Bucky Masterlist - Main Masterlist - Read on aO3!✦
✦summary: bucky isn't your boss, but he's still off limits. and even if he wasn't, there's no way he'd ever go for someone like you. weird that he matched with you on a dating app then, isn't it?✦
✦warnings/tags: bucky barnes x female!reader, modern!au, ceo!bucky, no use of y/n, mutual pining, virgin!reader, dating apps, no description of reader (pictures for aesthetic only), fluff, angst, love confessions, kinda boss x secretary, plot to earn porn, feral level smut, (fingering, teasing, stripping, soft dom!bucky, dirty talk, mean bucky but you're into it, teasing, possiveness, mutual masturbation, pussy spanking, praise kink, manhandling, dumbification, big dick bucky, p in v sex, creampie), soft!bucky outside of smut✦
✦wc: 13.9k✦
✦Author's Note: this one is for all my wound up "want love but afraid of intimacy girlies". we go through it. Enjoy!✦
Bucky Barnes is ruining your life, and he doesn’t even know it.
You wish you could blame him. Slash his tires and scream in his face, maybe drain the oil from his bike or mess up his lunch order. But he wouldn’t deserve that, and you’d just end up homeless on the street. You’d have to sell your body, but you’ve never been that good at sales, and begging Steve for your job back wouldn’t get you anywhere when you’d just given his best friend food poisoning.
And Bucky wouldn’t deserve that. He’s perfect. He’s a mountain you’d love to scale, if you hadn’t always been horrid at climbing. You’d dig your nails into his chest, and maybe just keep him at eye level forever. So you could watch that quiet joy that only shines for the people he really, truly likes.
You’re a member of that rare club. It’s taken years of small kindness’ and lingering in Steve’s shadow to get there.
Even if you wanted to, you’d never risk ruining that just because of some schoolgirl crush. Not when Bucky might make your heart stumble and your face heat, but he hasn’t taken away your wits.
The same wits that tell you, it’s not worth the risk.
It will never be worth the risk. You worked too hard to get where you are. It’s too good a job, to burn up because you have a few fantasies. Steve Rogers famously went through assistant after assistant, before you. When you’d asked Natasha why—Steve’s a perfect boss, he lets you take hour long lunches and use sick time as PTO, as long as you don’t tell HR—she’d just shrugged.
“It’s not Steve that’s making them quit.” She’d hummed, like you were supposed to know exactly what that meant.
You hadn’t. You still don’t. Best guess, he thinks that everyone can keep up with him and forgets to slow down and match pace. But you can keep up with him just fine. Without breaking a sweat. Sometimes you out-pace him, and that earns you a loud, approving laugh and small smirk from Bucky.
Bucky.
James. You’re trying to call him James, in your head. It’s more formal. Creates a larger gap, between private fantasy and reality.
In fantasy, Bucky is a hazy voice that creeps into your dreams and rough stubble that brushes over your cheek. You tangle the sheets and blankets between your legs in bed, and pretend he’s there, holding you tight. Dreams and scenarios play out before you go to sleep, where he backs you against a wall and declares that he’s loved you since he first saw you. Or he shows up at your door in the middle of the night, pleading because he can’t take being away from you anymore. Maybe all his stares at conferences and meetings finally amount to something, and he grabs your jaw and kisses you so brutally you both just fall onto that soft couch in his office.
But Bucky doesn’t just stare at you. It’s one of his weird little quirks that Steve calls just Bucky, and Sam calls creepy and weird, he’s lucky we love him.
You do love him.
Bucky’s perfect. When you’d met him, he’d seemed as if he’d fallen out of a silver screen or leather-bound book. You’d never understood fantasies about powerful men, until one with the brilliance of fifty suns had been adjusting his cuffs in front of you. You’d barely been able to breathe, and it’s only gotten harder since you’ve known him.
At first look, Bucky’s a sharp jawline, dark hair, and eyes that follow you into your sleep. He’s cold and standoffish in that annoying way that makes the fool in your heart babble about how you could melt him. He snaps and orders and doesn’t waste time on things that don’t matter, and you’d like to hear how his voice could go soft, if you could make it.
That fool in your heart is loud. It tends to get the better of you, until the object of it’s fleeting obsession shatters the illusion by itself. Most of your crushes take a sledgehammer and destroy the heroic visage you’ve made of them in a second. You just have to wait for it, and they save you from themselves.
But Bucky likes to ruin your life.
It’s been a year, since Steve hired you. Fresh out of college, nervous, and with what Natasha called doe-eyes.
You love Bucky more than you did at the start, and it’s incredibly rude that he won’t just cut it out so you can focus.
“How’s your mother?” You ask one night, when it’s just you and Bucky.
James. When you’re alone in a room with him, and the white sleeves of his shirt are rolled up to show off obnoxious muscles, it’s important to remember you should be calling him James.
“My… Mother.”
He’s staring at you like you’re crazy. Heat floods your cheeks, but you just nod. He doesn’t get to win.
“You said she was moving.” You shrug, and Bucky’s tongue flicks over his lips.
“I did say that.”
“Yeah. I know.” You pretend to turn over a paper. “I was there.”
Bucky snorts, and it’s enough to yank your attention up. He’s shaking his head with that tiny curve of a smile, and it makes your heart do something that might resemble overdrive.
“What?”
“Nothin’.”
“What-“
“My mother’s doin’ just fine.” Bucky says, staring at you across the room. “She loved those muffins you made her. Got me and my sisters in a lotta trouble, for not bothering to make her a housewarming gift.”
You swallow. “Oh, I- I didn’t mean to-“
“Don’t hurt yourself.” Bucky—James, but it’s impossible to remember when he looks at you like that—smirks. “I’d want you over me every time, too.”
There’s no possible response you can think of, to that. Not one that makes sense, and isn’t humiliating. You look back to your papers, mumble a thank you, and try not to let Bucky’s low chuckle pool heat between your thighs.
You don’t succeed.
But that’s a problem for your vibrator to worry about, when you get home.
Because that’s where the fantasy. And the reality is always starker. Harder to escape.
Bucky is a mountain of a man, but you’ve never climbed anything at all. Not a tiny hill, not a slope, not even a bump in the road. The most basic things, that most people get out of the way in middle school, you’ve never even brushed against. Not on purpose. It’s just… Never happened. And you’re certainly not going to start doing anything now. With your older pseudo-boss and sort of friend. You don’t have a death wish, and you’re certain that rejection will kill you with the humiliation alone.
So in reality, you’re never going to risk anything. You’ve never had health insurance this good before. Steve buys you lunch every day—technically he buys himself lunch, but you’re allowed to get whatever you want—and you got to move out of your rundown apartment with the landlady who kept getting mad you dared to have trash, but refused to fix your broken heater. In New York.
You haven’t had freezing fingers in a year. Because now, you could afford gloves. And in the harsh cold of reality, no dick is worth more than a nice pair of gloves.
Bucky’s might be. Bucky and his smile and low laugh and nobleness and silent kindness and-
No.
Nothing’s worth it. Not when Bucky wouldn’t even want you anyway.
You’d rather have the gloves.
“You get a plus one to this event, you know?”
You look at Steve over the desk, frowning slightly. “Huh?”
Steve’s lips twitch. “You get a plus one.”
“Okay?”
“Wasn’t sure you knew.” He shrugs. Your frown deepens.
“Of course I knew. I send out all the invitations.”
“Hm.”
“What’s hm? What does hm mean?”
“Just hm. Do you have the numbers, about-“
“They’re in front of you, Steven.” You narrow your eyes. “What’s hm mean.”
“Told you, nothing-“
“What.”
Sam says that there are only three people Steve is afraid of. Natasha, Bucky’s mother, and you. At the time, you’d laughed it off and rolled your eyes.
With how his throat bobs and he avoids your gaze, you’re starting to think that last part might be true.
“You’ve just always had that plus one offered.” Steve mutters, looking at the reports like they’ve suddenly turned into something interesting. “Noticed you never used it. Wanted to, uh- Make sure you knew.”
“I knew.” You snap, and Steve sighs.
“Yeah, I thought you did.”
“Then why’d you ask-“
“You wanna get lunch?” Steve’s voice raises, and the conversation is clearly over. “I think I could go for some sushi, or- Mexican. Maybe acai?”
Those are three very different things, and it is your job to figure out which one he really wants. But you can’t stop thinking about it for the rest of the day.
You have never used your plus one. You’ve never needed to.
There’s never been anyone worth using it on, except for one, dumb, handsome man who already has his own invitation to every event, and never has a problem finding his own date. You’ve spent dozens of nights lingering at Steve’s side—because he can tell you all he wants to enjoy yourself, you’ll slack when you’re dead—and glaring daggers at the model hanging off of Bucky’s arm. Giggling at everything he says and trying to drift closer than the polite, respectable distance he keeps them at.
He lets you sit closer to him than he lets them. And they are all a little younger, so maybe he wouldn’t mind that you’re not experienced and-
You stamp those thoughts under your heel. Not worth it.
But is Steve’s noticed how you never bring anyone, maybe he’s noticed how you stare at Bucky as well. And if he’s noticed that, he might start looking closer. And if he looks closer, he’s going to realize that you’re in love with his best friend, and he’s going to tell Bucky, and you’re going to get fired, and lose your cool apartment and fuck, you aren’t emotionally prepared to be a prostitute-
You need a date.
It’s the safest, most logical conclusion. You study Steve across the room, and quickly decide against asking to be set up. That might get back to Bucky, and you don’t want him to know for reason that defy common sense. You can’t ask anyone at work, but all your friends are your co-workers. You could go out to a bar, but that sounds dangerous and exhausting, and you’re not even sure where you’d find the time.
Which leaves one option.
Dating apps.
There are millions of them. You know from college friends and social media that there are about five worth having. You download all of them, and spend the rest of your lunch setting up your profile. You’re by no means ugly, and you’ve got plenty of pictures in exciting locations thanks to Steve being unable to get through any work event without you there. You put down that you’re not sure what you’re looking for, because you’re really not. You lie about your job, because when you tell people you’re Steve Roger’s personal assistant, they usually get weird. You settle just secretary, even though Steve and Natasha would shout at you if they saw.
They won’t see. None of them will see.
And you’ll get a nice, boring date to the next event, and everything is going to be fine.
“You never tell me about your family.”
Bucky’s words are so low you almost don’t hear them. You look up at him in surprise, and hope the dim lighting hides your flush.
“You never ask.”
His lips twitch down. “I’ve told you about my family.”
“So?”
“Usually.” He mutters, glaring at his papers like the did something to personally offend him. “When you tell someone about yourself, it’s an… Exchange of information.”
“An exchange of information?” You snort. “Is that a CIA thing?”
“Not everything I do is a CIA thing.”
“Everything Natasha does is a CIA thing. And you were in the CIA together.”
“Nat was better at it than I was.” He grumbles. His brow does a tight-knit wrinkle thing, when he’s frustrated. For a grown man, it’s always rather adorable. “I’d like to know about your family.”
“I…” You blink at him, your brain turning fuzzy and useless.
He’s staring at you. Saying those words like they matter, and you can barely understand them at all.
“Why?”
“Because. We’ve worked together a while. I know… A lot about you.” He takes a deep breath through his nose, giving you a strange look. “You know about me.”
“Uh huh. That’s usually how being friends works.”
Bucky sighs. “Yeah, well. You’ve met my mother. She adores you.”
“She doesn’t adore me-“
“She adores you.”
He says it like it’s really not up for debate. You flush. “Oh- Okay.”
“Everyone you meet adores you.” Bucky grumbles, like that complete lie of a statement infuriates him. “And I tell you everything about me.”
You don’t think that’s true either. You know a lot about Bucky, but not everything. Steve says Bucky’s just like that—not big on sharing—so you hoard every bit of information he offers you like a dragon with gold, but it’s far from everything. “Bu- James-“
“Bucky.” He corrects, and you sigh.
He’s not making that part easy, either.
“Bucky.” You say, smooth and careful. “You know everything about me that Steve knows. I- I can tell you more. But I’m not all that interesting.”
“I disagree.” He mutters. “You’re impossibly interesting.”
You can only hum, pressing your thighs together as he just keeps staring at you. He shouldn’t be allowed to do that. It makes your brain slow down and all your thoughts turn honeyed and gooey. His hands are right in your eyeline, and he’s got those big, deft fingers that you’ve imagined tracing over your hips and lips, and he’s giving you compliments. Compliments like they’re just breathing, like he doesn’t even have to think about them because you could be all he sees.
“What do you want to know?” You mumble, desperate to move the conversation away from this. If you offer yourself too much of his attention, it’s going to drag you under like quicksand.
“What’s your favorite kind of flower?”
“My favorite flower-“
Bucky grunts, nodding tightly. You take a deep, slow breath, careful not to look him in the eyes.
“I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.”
Bucky grunts. “Well, what kinda flowers have people gotten you before.”
“I- I’ve never been given flowers.”
“You’ve never-“ Bucky cuts himself off, and you risk a glance up to see him scowling. “Ever?”
You can hear the what about that he won’t say. What about a boyfriend.
If he’s not brave enough to ask it—although you don’t understand why he’d care—you don’t have to be brave enough to answer it.
“No. Never ever.” You mumble, and you might dissolve into a mist of humid humiliation and confusing arousal.
You have Bucky’s attention, and you both wish he’d take it back and never want him to stop pushing. You’ve never had someone poke at you this much. It makes your core ache, and you’d rally rather not explore what that means right now.
“You need to sign these.” You shove some papers across the desk, staring at Bucky’s hands again.
They’re curled in fists. You’d like them inside you-
You mentally slap yourself, and force a smile onto your face, nodding to the papers. “Steve told me not to let you go home, until you did.”
Bucky chuckles at that, though there’s still a strange look in his eyes. “Not let me go home, huh.”
“Yes, sir.” You drawl.
Bucky’s knuckles go white. You could swear his voice gets lower.
“And how would you stop me from gettin’ home, kid?”
“With lots of talent.” You shrug, giving him a tiny smile. “And my body.”
Bucky coughs, and the desk jerks suddenly. His knee must’ve slammed against it. You shoot to your feet, ready to check on him, but he waves you quickly back down.
“Fine. I’m fine.” He scowls, scooting forward in his chair. “Papers.”
He makes a beckoning gesture, and you just stare at him.
“James, are you-“
“Bucky.” He grunts. “Papers, sweetheart.”
You nod stupidly, shoving the papers into his hands. You’re not sure what’s happening. Your thoughts are all still made of candy-clouds and goo, so you don’t want to overthink it.
It’s only when you get home, that you realize what he called you. I
Sweetheart.
You can’t blame him. He can’t know what that does to you.
You really need to find that date.
It happens in the middle of work. The worst possible place for it to happen.
Steve’s on a conference call, and you’re lying on his couch, swiping through dating apps. You’re only there in case he forgets something, and you don’t have to pay much attention for that. The voices of old, annoying men drone on and on and on in the background, and you have everything memorized so well that when Steve calls your name, you answer without even realty paying attention to what you’re saying.
The call is three hours for no good reason at all. You get bored.
Hence, the dating apps.
It’s almost as mindless as the call itself. All in all, the experience is turning out to be more of a fun game than an actual method to find a date. The next gala is creeping up, though. You refuse to give up.
But you’re also picky. And you keep comparing every profile you see to Bucky, which is deeply counterproductive.
Michael is handsome, and the exact same height as Bucky, but he’s built with corded muscle instead of the softer, thicker strength you’ve seen straining through Bucky’s suit. Henry has a picture of himself with kids—his sister’s, according to the caption—but you look at it and just think of when Bucky and Steve went to the children’s hospital, and Bucky had become such a soft and approachable person you’d been worried you’d get pregnant watching him.
Leon has nice eyes, but they’re not as pretty as Bucky’s. Cal is in the military, but he’s beaming about it in a way that makes you think he joined so he could run around with a big gun, while Bucky joined because his family needed the healthcare. Jake has a sweet smile, but it doesn’t make you feel bubbly like Bucky’s. Asher and Kyle both have high paying jobs—all their photos showing them driving Maserati’s and drinking expensive whiskey—but one of the things you’ve always loved about Bucky is how he doesn’t brag. His suits are less expensive and more well-tailored. His watch costs $150—he always grumbles that he just needs it to tell time—and he drives a motorcycle that Sam says he built from scratch.
You squint at Damien’s profile, and he’s got a motorcycle too. His caption says that he built it himself, and you don’t know anything about motorcycles, but you doubt he built it as well as Bucky did.
You swipe left with a sigh, and go onto the next profile.
James. 41. Business Manager. You give the picture a quick glance—beefy, shirtless chest that makes you drool a little, only the sharp, bearded jawline of the owner visible in the photo—and squint at the bio. Wealthy bachelor looking for his Queen.
You snort, and scroll lazily down. James’ Interests include music, cars, technology, dancing, family. No kids, but wants them. Looking for casual fun—you can’t be causal, or have fun, but it’s always nice to pretend—located thirty feet away, pet cat, smokes and drinks socially-
Located thirty feet away.
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
You sit up suddenly, rapidly scrolling back up to the photos and main bio. James, 41, Business Manager.
Fucking- Fuck-
You click frantically through the photos, somehow burning alive and freezing to your bones all at once. James’ next photo doesn’t show his face either, instead displaying a fluffy white cat on his bare chest. You know that cat. You’ve fed and pet her, paying her more attention than Bucky himself whenever he brings her to the office. Alpine adores you. You have more photos of her on your phone than you do of yourself.
Next photo.
Bucky drinking at that Italian place he, Steve, and Sam always go to for celebrations. In the background, you can see Natasha flirting with the bartender. You remember that night. She’d taken him home, and you’d heard far too many details about how hot and submissive he was in the morning. You’d been happy for her, and sick with jealousy. You’d spent all of that night standing next to her, trying not to stare at Bucky while he and Steve drank.
Which means-
You pinch in on the photo, feeling a little sick when you find it. Shrouded enough in the background that you can only see it if you look, but you can definitely fucking see it.
Your lovelorn, sad expression as you stare at Bucky like he’s made of stars.
He’s seen this photo. Everyone who’s been on his dating profile has seen this photo.
You feel sick. You unpinch the photo, ready to maybe just fall back into the couch cushions and have them swallow you whole, and then it fucking happens.
Your thumb drifts a little to the right.
You swipe yes on Bucky’s profile.
And a little heart graphic overtakes your screen, the bolded words It’s a Match! Shoved into your face.
You scream, and throw your phone across the room.
Steve looks at you like you’re insane. You feel insane.
“Are you-“
“I need to go to the bathroom!” You shout, and Steve opens his mouth, but you’re already running.
You have to pass Bucky’s office—right next to Steve’s—to get to the bathroom. You pause to stare at him, unable to form any coherent thoughts but fuck and Bucky.
He’s on his phone. Reading something with a knit brow. You might actually be about to throw up.
Like he can sense you, he looks up.
Your eyes meet.
And you run away, as fast as you fucking can.
Steve is a lovely boss. When you tell him you need a week off for vague personal reasons, but that you can still work remotely, he tells you not to bother and just take the time without work.
“But- I can help-“
“I know. I’m telling you not to.” He gives you a small smile. “You’ve earned the break.”
“Steve-“
“You’re allowed to just rest,” he says your name kindly, and you shake your head. No. You’re not.
“Please give me something to do.” You plead, and Steve sighs.
“Kid, you don’t have to prove something-“
“Please.” If you don’t have anything, you’re just going to stare at your match with Bucky the whole time. And that’s a harrowing, deadly prospect of a way to spend your week.
Steve sighs, and gives in. You get a bunch of emails to send, and they’re just enough to distract you.
Barely.
Sometimes, you still manage to falter, and open up the app. Stare at the you matched with James three days ago! Banner at the top of the screen. Maybe he hasn’t seen it at all, and you’re hiding for no reason. He could be someone who never even checks who he matches with unless they message first, because he just gets so many matches. Jealousy stabs through your heart, sour and sharp, and you sigh.
It’s your best hope. That he’ll just never know.
But he matched with you, too.
He could just swipe right on every girl he sees. That’s a thing you hear men do.
Bucky’s not the type to do that.
He’s also not the type to be looking for his Queen. Maybe you don’t know him as well as you thought you did.
But you’re pretty sure you do.
This is making your head hurt.
Your real best bet is that someone’s been catfishing as James Barnes, but there’s no real hope of that with the bar photo. You’re going to have to quit your job and change your name. Maybe Steve can reference you to another similar job if you apologize enough. Maybe you can move to Alaska and learn how to be a fisherwoman. You’re not very patient. And you’re not going to be able to afford your nice gloves anymore. Maybe you should just die. The best option might just be dying-
Your phone buzzes.
Message from James.
You throw your phone again. He knows.
Death is looking lovely right now.
Your days off turn into a week off. Steve checks on you, but doesn’t push you to come back. If anything, he’s still trying to convince you to just take a real vacation.
“It’s going to help more than… What you’re doing right now.” He stands in the middle of your apartment, gesturing at your ice cream and the mess of clothing on the floor.
“This is helping plenty.” You mutter. Steve sighs.
“Look, I’m really not mad about you taking the time. I know you. You wouldn’t take it if you didn’t need it.”
“But?” You give him a pointed look, and his jaw ticks.
“But I wish you’d tell me what was goin’ on.” He says, sounding more sad than annoyed. “So I could help.”
You give him a tight smile. “Steve-“
“Anything you need. If I can’t get it, I’m sure Bucky or Nat could-“
“Steve.” You don’t want to hear about how Bucky can help you. Not when he knows perfectly well why you’ve gone into hiding. “I- I really don’t want to talk about it.”
Steve frowns, but lets it go. In the Steve way, where he keeps asking every time he visits, but always takes the no in stride.
“Can you at least tell me what I should be saying to everyone else?” He asks after a week. “People are noticing I’m missing my brain.”
You laugh softly. “I’m sick.”
“But you’re not.”
Not visibly. Your heart feels sick. Bucky’s sent you two more messages on the app, one into your personal number, and none on Teams, and you’ve read none of them. You don’t want to hear his gentle rejection, because it’s going to crush you into fine, little pieces.
“We’re worried about you.” Steve says. “And again, no rush to come back, but I don’t know how to work my own schedule and Bucky’s started pacing whenever I try to do your job, so-“
“Bucky’s pacing?” You blurt, and Steve blinks.
“Yeah? Think he misses you, too.”
You swallow, and glance at your phone. The unread messages.
Bucky only paces when he feels like something is wrong. Really wrong.
And you don’t want to know. That he’s been thinking about. That he’s been pacing. Because it all ends the same anyway.
“I’ll be back soon.” You mumble, flipping your phone face down. You don’t want to know. “Just- A few more days.”
Steve looks at you like he doesn’t believe you. You don’t believe you.
But you’re a big girl. You can survive a little rejection, and it doesn’t have to be anything at all.
You’re going to keep going, and this won’t have to have been anything at all.
Nobody asks, when you get back to the office. Nat and Sam check in that you’re okay, and Steve lets you pick lunch three days in a row—and you think he’s blaming himself for everything, which at least tells you that Bucky hasn’t snitched about anything—but the only thing waiting for you is a phone full of voicemails and a crowded calendar.
And Bucky.
Bucky, who almost acts like nothing even happened at all.
Almost.
He’s staring more than he used to, and he’d always stared quite a lot. When you’re left alone in a room together, he stares until you look up at him, before immediately coughing and looking back to his own papers. He lingers outside of Steve’s office until you ask if he needs to talk, and he shakes his head and runs off like a teenager caught trying to buy drinks. Nat shouts at him after two meetings where he wasn’t paying attention, and he mutters that he was distracted.
“What?! What could you possibly have been so distracted by that you missed every cue Sam gave you, five times in a row?”
He just shrugs, and you can feel his gaze burning straight into your heart. You bow your head, and pretend you don’t see it.
You still haven’t looked at the messages. You’re not going to. And he hasn’t brought it up, so it’s like nothing ever happened.
Like nothing ever happened.
But it happened. The world ended, but it also just kept spinning, and now you’re suspended in a world where Bucky doesn’t even treat you like a friend anymore.
Steve notices. Of course he does. Asshole.
“Did something happen?” He asks softly. “Did Bucky… Say something to you?”
You look up with wide eyes, mouth going dry. “Wha- What? No, Bucky- James and I, it’s fine.” You laugh, high and nervous. “Everything’s fine.”
Steve hums, and he doesn’t believe you. You can see it, shining in his eyes. “You know… I’ve known Bucky a long time.”
“I know. I’ve read the about page.”
He laughs, shaking his head. “No. I mean, yes, but-“ He sighs. “Bucky’s not good at… Talking. When something matters to him, he shows it.”
“Okay.” He’s shown you nothing but silence and stares.
“And he, um- He’s a good guy-“
“I’m aware.”
“I know you are, but-“ Steve sighs, slumping in his chair. “Just, if Bucky ever says something to you, or asks you to do something, and you don’t want to, don’t. I’d rather you piss him off then feel pressured. Not that he’d pressure you,” he adds quickly. “But if there’s ever… Anything. And I’ve been wrong about… Stuff. Just know you’re as valuable as he is.”
He’s speaking in riddles. This has been a long few weeks. “Okay.”
“Okay.” Steve nods, taking in a deep breath. “And is there… Anything you want to tell me? As my friend?”
It’s a mean card to play. You almost want to. Steve’s kind, and he gives good advice, and you believe him. You know that if you confessed your silent, raging love for Bucky, Steve would just support you.
But you don’t need someone to support you right now. You need someone to smack you in the face and tell you to stop being a baby about your crush not liking you back.
“No.” You give him a strained smile, and it hurts on your face. “Why, is there something you need to tell me?”
Steve stares at you for a moment, then slowly shakes his head. “No. Just… You were missed.”
There’s a long moment of silence, and Steve clears his throat.
“By everyone.”
You nod, useless tears stinging at your eyes, and look back to your work.
Later that day, Bucky goes into Steve’s office and they talk for two hours. You want to eavesdrop, but that would be a new, pathetic low.
You stare at Bucky’s head through the glass, and chew on a pencil until it snaps in half.
When Bucky leaves the office, he stops in front of your desk and lingers. You can feel the heat from his body, and you’d like to fall into it. He clears his throat, and you look up like he’d grabbed your chin and demanded it.
His eyes are shining on yours, and you’ve never seen his jaw clenched so tight. As if he’s disgusted, just from the sight of you.
“You look nice.” He rasps, and you can’t tell if you’re glowing or burning out.
“Thank you.”
He nods, looking up to the ceiling, then back to you. “We all missed you.”
“I’ve been told-“
“I missed you.” He says those words firmer. They sink into your core, molten and demanding, so overwhelming you’re not even sure what to do with yourself.
You’ve been staring at him too long. Words are failing you, thoughts are failing you, and-
“I, uh- I’ll leave you to it-“
“You too.” You breathe out, and Bucky stumbles back like you hit him. “I- I missed you too.”
He blinks. His nostrils flare, and he gapes at you with a red face. For a second, you don’t see the calm, collected man you know and adore so well. You see something closer to a teenage boy, fumbling and gaping and unsure what to do with his own strength.
You like him, just as much as you like the rest of Bucky. Love it.
Endlessly and uselessly love it.
Bucky turns on his heels, and almost runs back to his office. Your nails dig into your palms, and you force your attention back to your work.
It will pass. All of this, like every storm, is going to have to pass.
You get a night off. Steve has a date, and it’s the one part of his life you have and want nothing to do with. You were going to use the evening to catch up on more voicemails, until Sam shooed you out of the building like a bird. Go rest, woman.
You are resting.
By catching up on emails.
There’s a knock on your door, long after anyone should be out doing anything. You don’t move from the couch at first, because you think it’s a mistake.
Then the knock repeats. Louder than the first time. And someone shouts your name, muffled through the door.
Not a mistake.
Bucky. That’s Bucky’s voice.
You fall, trying to get up. Your knees feel like jelly, and you haven’t even seen him yet, but he’s already doing that thing where his attention makes you feel like you’re made of electric static. Sensitive and empty-headed in the best and worst way. You can barely stand it. You can’t really stand at all.
When you finally—somehow—make it to the door, Bucky’s standing on the other side like he’s awaiting inspection. Tall and silent, shoulders squared and arms behind his back, looking at you like you’re holding his life in your hands.
You stare at him. He stares back, and you can measure your every breath in heartbeats. Louder and louder in your ears.
“Hi.” You finally say, shifting on your feet, and his throat bobs.
“Hey.”
“What’re you-“
“I wanted to check on you.” He blurts, and you freeze. “And- Talk.”
You ignore that last part. It’s the last thing you want to do. “I’m fine.”
Bucky’s pretty lips tug down. “You took two weeks off.” He mutters. “You don’t even take sick days.”
You swallow. “I- I was trying to take care of myself-“
“By working the whole time?” He looks past you again, and you follow his gaze.
Right to your laptop, open on an email draft.
“You’re supposed to be takin’ tonight off too.” He says, a little scolding, and you stiffen.
“You’re not my boss.”
Bucky chuckles. Low and deep, shivering up your spine. “Trust me, doll. I’m fully aware of that.”
Oh. That does something nice to your core. You think you might be getting a fever.
“James…”
“Bucky.” He grunts, and you take an unsteady breath. Staring at his chest seems to be the most effective way to speak to him.
“Bucky, I- I’m fine, really-“
“I brought you flowers.” He says suddenly, and his hands shoot out from behind his back.
He’s holding out a large bouquet of roses and lilies, each in about three different colors. It’s a stark contrast to his black suit and neatly pressed white shirt, petals spilling and little bits of yellow pollen clinging to the stems. To the cuffs of his sleeves.
Bucky clears his throat, pushing the flowers a little further forward. You take them with shaking hands, a little worried they’ll dissolve the moment you touch them. They don’t. And Bucky clears his throat.
“I, uh- I gave you options, and-“ He shakes his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “Can I come in? Please?”
You can’t think of a good reason to say no. You don’t even think you’d get out the words, if you tried. So you nod, and step to the side.
And now Bucky’s in your apartment. Looking around at your things and licking his lips, nodding slowly. He fits into it, like a puzzle piece being slowly slotted in, and-
No.
You can’t think like that. It’s not going to help anyone, not by far.
He brought you flowers.
To apologize for breaking your heart.
Bucky looks back to you, bracing his hands on his hips. You swallow, hugging yourself tight, and neither of you dare to move. Bucky takes a ragged breath, looks to the side, and back to you with the strangest, most anguished expression you’ve ever seen on his handsome face.
“Tell me if I’m steppin’ over the line.” He starts, urgent and pleading. “You gotta tell me if I’m steppin’ over the line.”
“Bucky-“
“We both know why I’m here.” He takes a step forward. You take a step back.
Bucky freezes, and you take a shaking breath, staring at his shoes.
“I- I’m sorry.” You mumble. “I didn’t mean to-“
“You didn’t?” Bucky cuts you off, and you glance up to see him frowning. “At all?”
You blink. “No, I- I don’t know.”
“You don’t know if you meant it?”
You nod, and Bucky’s jaw works tight.
“Could you?”
“What?”
“Could you mean it?” He rasps, and your mouth falls uselessly open.
“Ja- Bucky.” You shake your head, stepping further back. If this is a trick, you’re too fragile to fall for it. “I- I don’t know.”
“Why not?” He takes a step forward, your eyes trapped together. “Is it me?”
“Is it you?”
“Yeah, I- I mean- You don’t really date.” He clears his throat. “And Stevie’s never told me why, ‘cause- I’m not your boss, but I’m not not your boss- ‘s what Sam says-“
You’ve never heard him ramble. Never heard him speak like he’s not sure of the next work. It’s just as endearing as the display at the desk, but you’re even less sure what to do with it. “Bucky-“
“If it’s just me that you’re not- That’s the reason.” He’s standing over you now. Bowing his head. “Then that’s fine. I’m not gonna be an ass about it. But…” His shoulders slump. “If it’s not that. Then I- I’d like to…”
He trails off, giving you a hopeful look.
But you’re lost. Nothing he’s saying is making sense, and you’re almost being dragged under by the current of his words.
“What?” You repeat, more pleading than before. Bucky sighs.
“You never answered my messages.” He mutters. “Figured I’d need to ask in person. Needed to hear it.” He clears his throat, lips twitching. “Even if it’s a no.”
“Even…” You frown. “Even if what’s a no?”
His head shoots up, and his frown deepens. “I’m… Asking you out. On a date?”
Oh.
What.
Your surprise must be written all over your face, because Bucky looks bewildered. He can join the club.
You just keep staring at him stupidly, and he says your name, slow and measured.
“You read my messages, right?”
You shake your head, and he groans.
“I- I’m sorry-“
“No, it’s- It’s my fault.” He mutters. “Nat told me you were oblivious-“
You cut him off indignantly. “I am not oblivious-“
“We matched on a dating app.” He drawls, lips twitching slightly. “And you’re shocked I’m askin’ you out.”
You scowl, hugging yourself tighter. “I thought you made a mistake.” You grumble, and Bucky chuckles.
He takes another step forward. Close enough that you can smell him, smell his cologne and aftershave and something deeper that’s just Bucky. You step back more out of fear that you were about to fall forward.
Bucky follows you.
Suddenly your pinned against your counters, Bucky’s arms braced on either side of your body. You swallow. Bucky’s tongue darts over his lips, and you think you did drown in his everything. You’ve been swept out to sea, and there’s no hope of being dragged out to shore.
And with how Bucky’s looking at you, you’re not sure you’d ever ask to be saved.
“You.” Bucky reaches up, brushing hair out of your eyes with a small smile. “Are not a mistake. And if someone’s been tellin’ you that you are.” He leans down, until your lips are almost brushing. “They’re damn lucky you’re lettin’ them make it.”
Dear God. You’re not strong enough for this.
“James…” You breathe out, and his brows knit. “Bucky. Don’t.”
He tenses around you. “Don’t?”
“Don’t.” You whisper, eyes dropping to his lips. They look so soft. “Don’t do this.”
Bucky leans a little back, but doesn’t pull fully away. “Why not? I told you, if it’s not ‘cause of me, we can work it out-“
“Bucky-“
“I’ll quit.” He says suddenly, and you gape.
“You’re the boss, you can’t quit-“
“There are like, four bosses.” Bucky waves you off. “Five if we’re countin’ you, which I am, and you do twice the fuckin’ work. I’ll just quit, and you can have my job, and we can-“
“Bucky.” You grab his shirt, and he falls silent immediately. “Just- Stop. You can’t quit, you shouldn’t-“ You take a deep breath, trying to focus on speaking instead of crying.
Bucky says your name softly, and big hands thread through your hair as you start to sniffle. It’s so pathetic, but you’re tired and overwhelmed and you can’t take him doing this to you twice. You’re not the kind of girl Bucky Barnes is going to want. Not for real. Not for long. And you can’t handle him pretending you are.
“It’s not nice.” You whimper, even as he tugs you into his chest.
Pressing your face into his chest is just as amazing as you’d always imagined. You wish you weren’t crying when it finally happened.
“What’s not nice.” Bucky prompts gently, and you swallow.
“You.”
“Me?”
You nod, wrapping your arms around his torso. Bucky pets the back of your head, words low and cautious.
“What about me isn’t nice?”
You shake your head, hugging him tighter. You can’t stop. It’s like a reflex. “You can’t- You can’t say that stuff. ‘S mean.”
“Me tellin’ you I’d quit for you is mean?”
“You don’t mean it.”
Bucky tenses. “I do mean it-“
“No, it’s not- I’m not-“ You swallow, breathing him in. “I don’t just wanna be…”
You trail off. Bucky prompts you softly. “Be what?”
“Be fun.” You mumble. “I can’t do fun, you know than, and- And if you’re not serious, then-“
“I’m dead serious.” Bucky grunts, and you swallow.
“James-“
“No. Listen to me.” He picks you up without a warning, sitting you on the counter so you’re at his eye level. You grab his shoulders, and he keeps his hands planted on your hips, almost holding you under his words.
Forcing you to hear them, as he watches you like you’re the most important thing in the world.
“I am serious about this. About you.” He grabs one of your hands, holding it between your bodies. “I have wanted you since I met you. Don’t look at me like that,” he squeezes your hand when you give him a doubtful frown. “I have. You are beautiful and smart and bossy, and I’ve been obsessed with you so much, Nat’s slapped me about it twice.”
You swallow, closing your eyes tight. You can’t look at him right now. “Your profile said looking for casual.” You mutter, and Bucky snorts.
“Last year, Sam made that thing for me. ‘Cause I was obsessed with Stevie’s new PA, and I needed to get under someone to get over it.”
“Hm.” You peek at him. He looks sincere. “Did you?”
“I got under many someone’s.” He shrugs. “Didn’t have Sam’s intended effect. Think I just wanted you more, after every time.”
You swallow. That does explain a lot about the profile, in hindsight. Those were all very Sam things to say.
“I want you.” Bucky murmurs, pressing a little closer. Your noses are bumping, and he’s still not looking away. “You’re in my dreams, and days without you are nightmares. Just- One shot. It’s all I need. Please.”
And God, you want to give it to him. More than anything. You want to tell him that he doesn’t even need his shot, he hit a bullseye a year ago and you’ve just been waiting for him to realize it since.
But-
“I’m a virgin.” You blurt, and Bucky blinks.
“Okay-“
“I can’t do what others can. For you. And I- I don’t know how anything works- Well, I know how sex works, I got an A in health class, but everyone got an A in health, but I got an A and paid attention, and-“ You’re rambling. “I just don’t know how dating works, or- Or relationships, and I’m not- You’re very- You.”
You gesture over his everything, and Bucky’s lips twitch.
“That a problem, doll?”
“No. God, no. You’re perfect, I’m just- Not? And that’s not really fair to you-“
Bucky grabs your face, and your cut off in a kiss.
You’ve seen kissing in the movies and on TV. Read about it a million times. It’s always all sweet and romantic, with swelling music and breeze and passion.
And nothing has done it justice at all.
Kissing Bucky is awkward for a second—his lips slotted over yours, your whole body frozen as it shuts down, then reboots—and then it’s like breathing. Your hands fly back to his shoulders, your legs spread so you can lean further forwards, and your lips move without a thought. Pressing against Bucky’s, moving in a dance he seems more than happy to lead, chasing at the slight chance that you could have just a little more.
One of Bucky’s hands finds this back of your head, and the other grabs your waist. Dragging you further forward until your chests are pressed tight, massaging the softness there in rhythm with his lips. You sigh, breathy and content, and Bucky presses further down. He’s all you can feel, muscle under your hands and love pounding in your heart. You nails scrape his neck, and he groans into the kiss.
The sound vibrates against your spread thighs. His hand on your waist flexes, fingers digging into the softness, and you gasp.
Bucky pulls back too fast, and you follow. Tugging him back, unwilling to let him go just yet. He follows for a second, tongue tracing over your lower lip, then yanks himself back.
His brow presses against yours, and you both breathe raggedly.
“I like you.” Bucky almost growls. His thumb presses over your swollen lips, palm cupping your cheek, and you melt further into him than you already were.
“Bucky-“
“You’re what I want.” He leans forward, demanding and pleading all at once. “Your body.” He pushes his hand under your shirt, rough fingers dragging against sensitive skin. “Is a bonus.”
You shiver, whimpering softly. You feel pliant. Dizzy, in a way that no flirting or video has ever rendered you before. You think Bucky might’ve sucked your soul out with that kiss. You’d like him to do it again.
But when you try to lean up, Bucky pushes you gently back down. You whine, and his lips twitch.
“You like me too.” He mutters, watching you like he’s somehow still unsure.
“Mhm.” You say, and he stands a little taller.
“How long-“
“The same.”
“Oh.” He grins. “Good. That’s- Good-“
You slam back up, kissing him with an open mouth and sloppy need. Bucky responds immediately, and heat is starting to build between your thighs. It’s not just going to go away with a little touching and petting. It’s almost painful. You need him.
Bucky pulls away again. You’re going to punch him.
“Jesus.” He mutters, staring down at your desperate expression. “You gotta slow down, baby-“
“Don’t want to.” You breathe, pulling at his shirt. “Want you, Bucky. Want you now.”
His throat bobs, eyes darkening, but he remains composed. “You… You’re a virgin-“
“Then show me.”
Bucky says your name, and now he’s the one begging. But you’re not letting him off this easy.
“Show me, Bucky.” You rest your chin on his chest, giving him your best pout.
He grabs your face between big hands, chest heaving as he stares at you. You offer a sweet smile, and his nostrils flare.
“Please.” You whisper. “Anything. I just want to feel you.”
“Feel me.” He echoes, like he can’t believe it. “You wanna feel me?”
You nod, and he presses his brow over yours his, his eyes squeezed shut.
“And you want me to show you.” He rasps. “All the different ways I can make you feel good.”
You nod frantically, almost clawing at his shirt. Bucky’s eyes shoot open.
“Yeah?” He grunts, and you whine.
“Yeah. Yes. Please-“
He grabs your jaw, grip hard and unyielding, folds over you like he’s trying to fuse your bodies together. His lips move, harsh and hungry, and his hand on your hip starts to knead the skin like he’s trying to leave a mark.
“Wanted this for so long.” He grunts, dragging his hand down to squeeze your ass. “Wanted you. So fuckin’ bad.”
You moan into his mouth, and Bucky sucks on your lower lip. You can’t have enough of him. He’s warm and leaves little fires everywhere he touches. You’d like them to sweep through you, overtake you and send you higher.
“So gorgeous.” Bucky’s hand moves lower, resting on your upper thigh. “Thought about you all the time, hated bein’ in a room and not getting to touch you, was so sure I was going to lose my damn mind not havin’ you be mine.”
“I- I wanted you too.” You breathe out, almost delirious from his kisses. “Always wanted it to be you, never- Oh-“
You lose your ability to speak for a second, when Bucky starts to kiss under your ear. Your body goes pliant and soft, and his growl against your skin sends a shiver up your spine. He’s holding the back of your neck now, guiding it to offer himself better access. You tug on his hair and he moans. It makes your knees wobbly.
“Never anyone else,” you breathe, and he seems to like that. The massive hand on your thigh shifts slightly, so Bucky’s thick fingers are grazing your core through your clothing.
It’s a perfect pressure where you’d been craving any of his attention, and it’s a promise of more later. Your legs give out, eyes fluttering as your brain short circuits with arousal.
Bucky picks you up like you weigh nothing. Your nails dig into the back of his neck as he sits you on the counter, back arching as he captures your mouth in another kiss.
“No one else.” He mutters, hand on your neck slowly, possessively moving down your spine. “Never gonna be anyone else, doll. Not for you,” he nips at your jaw, hand on your thigh teasing the sensitivity under your shirt. “Sure as shit not for me. Been no one else since I started thinkin’ of you.”
Your breath hitches, and you lean back with wide eyes. “Bucky, you don’t have to-“
“I’m not lying.” He says firmly, dropping his brow against yours. You try to lean back, but he grabs your chin, forcing your eyes back together.
You blink at him hopelessly, grabbing at the collar of his shirt like you’re looking for balance. Bucky gives you a tiny smile, pressing his lips sweetly over yours. Another, softer promise.
“No one,” he murmurs. “Was ever gonna live up to you. First few months I’d fuck a girl and feel sick the next day. Like I’d done you wrong.”
“You- You didn’t-“
“Yeah, I did. We coulda been doin’ this a lot sooner.”
You flush, looking down to where your bodies are pressed so tight together. Bucky’s dress shirt and hidden muscle, both hard and gentle all at once. Your sleeping clothes and bare feet, swinging off the counter. You lean a little further into him, suddenly feeling rather small.
“What if I’m not…” You take a deep breath, frowning at the floor. “What if I don’t-“
Bucky says your name, concerned and caring, and you shake your head.
“What if I’m not the fantasy, Bucky.” You look back up with your best pleading eyes. “What if that- That idea of me isn’t worth what you thought?”
His brows knit tight, and you try to shirk away as he studies you. You can’t tell if you like it or not, but you know you feel bare. And you both want him to look away, and never go where you can’t reach him again.
Bucky’s lips twitch. He leans forward slowly, kissing each corner of your mouth before taking it fully under his. The kiss is hot and commanding, almost forcing your brain to slow back down. You dissolve into it, your thoughts a nice haze of Bucky. He guides your legs a little further apart, and takes both of your wrists in one of his hands, pinning them behind you.
“I love you,” he mutters. “I told you. And remember,” he pulls back with that lovely, secret smile. “I’m helpin’ you through it, right?”
You nod, and Bucky leans back forward, bumping your noses together.
“Trust me?”
“Yes.” You breathe, and he grins.
“Good girl.”
Heat floods between your legs, and oh. You like that. You’re shaking a little bit, you like it so much. Want it so much. Want Bucky.
Like he’s reading your mind, he rasps against your lips. “You enjoyed other things before?”
You nod, unable to tell if that’s another flush or just how turned on you are, and Bucky smirks.
“Like what?” He kisses your cheek, massaging your thighs. “Tell me what you like, sweetheart. What you want.”
“I- I want to be under.” You whisper, and you think his hands might be magic. Pulling answers out of you that you would’ve rather died with an hour ago. “Want you over me. Tell- Telling me what to do.”
Bucky hums, nosing at your neck. You close your eyes, forcing on.
“Tell- Tell me how good I’m doing. And- Other stuff.”
He leans back, and your core throbs at the shine in his eyes. Like he’s going to eat you alive. “Other stuff?” He rasps, and you nod weakly.
“If you can- Can do that.” It’s hard to focus, between his piercing gaze and the hand wandering between your legs. Teasing your inner thigh, until you’re voice is high and breathy. “Do that, and- and be-“
“Be a little mean?” He coos, thumb pressing over your aching button. You swallow, and nod.
“A little mean.” You echo, and Bucky grins.
“Yes, ma’am.” He kisses you again, slow and romantic, and you barely notice his hand moving away. “Think that’s enough outta you for now.”
“Wha- Bucky-“
He steps away. Without warning, Bucky just backs up, and you almost fall off the counter trying to chase him. He laughs, and pushing you back into place in a second, then moves away again. Where you can’t follow.
“Bucky, come back-“
“Nope.” He grins, like he knows you’re already too lost to chase him. He probably does. Asshole. “You want me to show you?”
You scowl. “James-“
“Call me whatever you want, baby. You ain’t gonna be able to talk at the end, anyway.” He braces his hands on his hips, raising a brow. “Want me to show you.”
He won’t come back until you answer, so you just nod, crossing your arms like a scolded child. Bucky grins, and you’re hoping for another good girl and kiss, but he doesn’t even lean closer.
“Alright.” He stands a little taller. “Strip.”
You blink at him. “What?”
“Strip.”
“Like, completely?”
“Hm.” He pauses, raking over your body in a way that really shouldn’t make you feel more turned on. “Yep. All of this, off.”
He waves to your body, and gives you a silent, challenging look. Like he’s expecting you to go back, and ask for that date first.
But at this point, you’re going to explode if he doesn’t make you cum. And you’ve never backed down from him before. You have no interest in starting now.
Slowly, you peel off your sweater. Your shirt. The cold air hits your bare chest, and not wearing a bra was the right choice. Bucky’s looking at you like he wants to eat you alive, the evidence of your effect on him straining through his pants.
Your nipples are peaked, and you awkwardly palm at them the way you’ve seen in porn. Bucky shifts on his feet, hand flexing like he’s trying not to reach for you, so you repeat the motion again.
“Pants.” He grunts, and you smile sweetly.
“Please?”
Bucky chuckles, like he can’t believe you. “Jesus, woman-“
“It’s polite-“
“If you don’t take your pants off.” He grunts, giving you a firm look. “I’m gonna rip off your pants and fuck you on this counter right now.”
You swallow. That doesn’t sound all that bad, but-
Something foolish and lovesick inside of your chest demands that tonight be special. So you move on from your breast, but give Bucky a nervous smile.
“Next time?”
He softens slightly, and nods. “Next time. Pants.”
You smile, and he smiles back. But the expression quickly shifts back into desire, as you shuffle out of your pants. You take your underwear down in one motion as well, leaving you completely exposed. At Bucky’s mercy.
And he’s just watching you.
Watching you and rubbing his crotch, where an erection is demanding attention. The lewd sight makes you fuzzy in all the right places, your own legs spreading a little wider apart.
You need him so bad it hurts. Your fingers dip into your wet pussy, clumsily rubbing your clit, and Bucky groans.
Suddenly he’s back against you, staring at your hand between your legs and panting like a dog.
“Look at you.” He groans, dragging his gaze back up your naked body. “Better than a dream.”
“Thank you.” Your hips buck up against your own, suddenly flimsy and useless hand. You’ve touched yourself before. With Bucky all around you, it’s simply not enough. “Bucky- You-You need to touch me-“
“I know.” He grunts, lips ghosting over yours. “Need you to be ready, just-“
His throat bobs as he cuts himself off, his hand on his own hard dick suddenly pressing against your pussy. A spasm shoots through your body, and you almost fly off the counter.
Bucky presses further down, attaching his lips to your neck and collarbone. His tongue flicks against a pulse point as he spreads your pussy lips. Rubbing up and down while his thumb circles around your clit, working you up and up and up. You’re panting in his ear, vulnerable and dazed, and Bucky hums against your skin.
“Shirt.” He grunts. “Get my shirt off.”
You nod, and it should be a simple task. But Bucky’s relentless. He suckles on your neck, leaving possessive bruises on your skin all while working your pussy and drawling in your ear.
“I know exactly how I want you, pretty girl.” He mutters, flicking your clit with his thumb. “Told you I’ve been thinkin’ about it forever. ‘Bout every single way I’d take you if I got the chance. And I’m gonna show you all of them,” he kisses over a bruise, teasing two fingers against your fluttering core. “But tonight, we’re takin’ it easy.”
You whine, fumbling with just the top button of his shirt. “I- I don’t want easy-“
“I know, baby.” He presses just the tip of his finger into your cunt, and you clench around him with a whine. “But you’re so sensitive.”
If you had the power right now, you’d hit him for saying it like that. All mocking and syrupy. Making you try to fuck your hips down onto his fingers. But Bucky just pulls fully out, moving his attention back to your swollen clit.
“You need to take care of the buttons.” He whispers, pushing down hard on the bundle of nerves. “They need a little extra attention.” He rubs his thumb back and forth. “Before we get goin’.”
“Fuck- Bucky-“ You breathe, almost slumped against his chest. Your fingers are shaking, desperate to just hold onto something as thighs spread as wide as they can go. “Fuck you-“
He chuckles, kissing the side of your head as his thumb picks up speed. “We’re getting there, needy girl.”
You scrape at his forearm, one hand still trying to pry his shirt open with no real resolve at all. He knows exactly what he’s doing to you, the asshole. Driving you insane with the teasing over your exposed entrance, never fully offering relief. You manage to get the top button open, but then Bucky pushes down hard on your clit, and an open moan falls from your lips as you double over.
“That’s it.” Bucky laughs, low and dangerous in your ear. “Doesn’t that feel good, baby?”
You nod, watching him move on you. “Bu- Bucky-“ You pull on his collar. “Help…”
“You’ve got it.” He says simply, spreading two fingers and dragging them between your pussy lips. “Just keep tryin’.”
There is no world where you have it, but Bucky’s words are enough for you to keep grasping fruitlessly at the fabric. Your head drops onto his shoulder, as you paw at his shirt. He laughs, rumbling through his chest, and slows his pace on your clit.
“All the ways I’ve pictured havin’ you.” He mutters. “This is the prettiest. Got you nice and ready, barely even touched you.”
“You’re- You’re touching me-“
“Not like I could touch you.” He says, a deep promise in his voice. “Told you, I’m going easy on my best girl. But if I wanted…”
He chuckles, kissing the side of your head. Pushing on your clit as your body starts to wiggle, trying to find more relief. “Bucky-“
“Every time I’ve seen you, layin’ on the couch.” He presses further forward, his bulge against your thigh. “I’ve thought about putting my hands all over your perfect fuckin’ body. Touching these tits,” he ducks his head, and your breath hitches as he kisses over the curve of your breast. “Touchin’ this sweet little pussy.” He plays with your clit like it a toy. “And makin’ you squirt all over Stevie’s nice cushions.”
“I’d look at you.” You gasp, holding onto his shirt for dear life. “In your chair. Wanted to sit on your lap.”
Bucky groans, hips jerking slightly. “Shit, I’ve thought about that too. Pinning you on my cock ‘till you’re sobbing, fucking you over my desk- Christ, whenever you’d bend over I’d just want to drag your ass back and fuck it ‘till you were drooling.”
“Fuck, yes.” You’ve given up on the shirt.
Your hand is wandering down between your bodies, and you rub against Bucky’s crotch, trying to return some of the favor. Bucky moans into your ear, pressing his hand flat over your cunt.
“Shit, you- Can’t just fuckin’-“ Bucky grunts your name, and you roll your hips against his hand.
“Need it. Need it, Bucky- Just- Your fingers, please-“
“No.” He mutters, his own voice gravelly as you squeeze him. “Can’t be patient, can you, sweetheart? Want this cock so bad you’re just grabbin’ for it, wasn’t even able to get my shirt off-“
“It’s a mean game.” You breathe, and he laughs, pushing his lips back over yours.
“You started it.” He brushes the hair from your face, easily moving you backwards until you’re just groping for something of him to hold onto.
“Why can’t you just- Just fuck me-“
“Because you wanted to be a good girl.” Bucky’s kisses are turning slow. Lazy. He’s groping your pussy again, but with far less purpose.
Just spreading your arousal and teasing everywhere you need him, driving you up to an edge you think might take away your mind. A mind you’d be happy to lose for him, if he’d just take it.
“And I want to show you.” Bucky rests his thumb over your entrance, his free hand pushing on your abdomen. Forcing you to stay still. “But you’ve got a greedy pussy, sweet girl. Think you need a little break?”
You shake your head—you do not want a break—but Bucky pushes his thumb a little harder, and you squeak.
“Bu- Bucky-“
“Look at me.” He orders, and you don’t have another choice. His voice is magnetic.
With just the top button exposing his sweaty collarbone and his erection evidence that he cares about this as much as you do, all of Bucky is magnetic. Gravitational. And it makes you feel so unbelievably good, just to be seen by him.
Being fucked by him might kill you.
It’s a risk you’re willing to take.
“Hi.” He smiles, and your lips wobble with need.
“Hi.”
“You still in this?”
You nod, and Bucky’s throat bobs.
“I’d like you to say it-“
“Yes, sir.” You can’t help yourself from saying it.
It’s supposed to be mocking. But your voice is still high, and Bucky looks at you like you’ve lost your mind.
“You’re lucky you’re so pretty.” He shakes his head, tone something between amused and exhausted. “Otherwise you’d be a really fuckin’ brat.”
You flush violently, and Bucky slaps your pussy once. Just enough to make you feel like you’ve been struck by lightning, and mold back into his whims.
“One day.” He drawls, one knuckle pushing up to press on your clit. “I’m gonna get you on my face. Let you ride me, fuckin’ suffocate between your legs.”
You’re shaking, watching him. He’s talking like he’s predicting the weather, but your head is running wild. The image of Bucky under you, forcing your cunt onto his generous mouth. It would be hot and wet, his hands would leave bruises, and, and-
“You’re so reactive,” he mutters, using featherlight swipes of his thumb against your clit. “Think I could make you squirt on me. It’ll be like this,” he starts to move in tiny, rapid motions back and forth. “Like this. But my tongue,” he licks up your neck, nipping at the underside of your jaw. “And your needy clit bein’ sucked like I’ve got some fuckin’ candy.”
He pinches your clit, and starts to roll it back and forth. You can feel a pressure, building and building. It’s almost blindingly good.
“You’re makin’ such nice sounds for me.” Bucky mutters. “Bet you’ll sound even better, coming apart all over my cock.”
You nod, humping into his hand. You need more, but just when you think it’s going to snap, Bucky’s hand moves back down.
“You feel this, baby?” He circles his thumb against your hole, and you hum, eyes flutters. “She’s ready for me.”
“Yes.” You breathe. “Ready, Bucky, please- Wait-“
You almost whine when he pulls away again, but this time it’s for a good cause. Bucky rips his shirt off, tossing it to an unimportant corner of the room.
He’s a work of art. All thick, tanned muscle and scars from his time in the army. They ripple when he moves, decorate him like earned tattoos, and you want to map each one with your fingers. His arms are fucking tanks, reaching out for you, and you tumble into them without a thought.
Bucky hauls you into his arms, hooking under your ass and dragging you off the counter with only a grunt.
“Legs around me.” He orders, and you obey. It’s nice to be this close to him.
Plus the bonus, of getting to try and ride his chest while he carries you to your room. You stumble and giggle, trying to give him directions. Bucky shoves open your door with his shoulder, and you laugh as he walks backwards to the bed, his knees hitting the mattress and sending you both tumbling down.
“Shit- Bucky!” You shriek with delight as Bucky rolls you over, trapping you under his broad body. “Oh- Ooh-“
Your words fall off as he kisses you into the mattress, settling between your spread legs quickly. Your hands wander over the expanse of his back, and it’s a nice wealth to be crushed under. You’re losing cognitive function again, as Bucky ruts his still covered erection against your wet core. You don’t know how he’s kept it together so long. You feel like you’re going to cry with desperation, and you’re fully at his whims.
This is nice, though. It’s a hot pressure—still far from what you need, but enough to tide you over—and Bucky’s wall of muscle around might be the best things you’ve ever felt. Your tits pressed against his chest, his arms braced by your head as you just make out like teenagers. He glides one hand down, rolling your nipple between calloused fingers, and you gasp softly.
“Bu- Bucky-“
“I’m gonna start slow.” He murmurs, low and commanding. “Then pick it up. Fuck you ‘till you can’t walk, baby. Give you what you deserve.” He drops his hips, forcing you to stop grinding up. “That sound good?”
You nod, blinking hopelessly up at him, and he smiles.
“Good girl.” You get a sweet kiss on your cheek, his beard tickling softly. “Stay down.”
You don’t understand the request until he’s moving again, and suddenly it seems impossible. Being naked in front of him had been one thing. Naked, sprawled out in bed below him, and watching him strip is another thing.
Bucky sits up on his knees, never breaking eye contact as he pulls off his belt. You start to chew on your lower lip, and he moves back forward, stopping you with a gentle press of his thumb.
“Easy.” He murmurs. “Relax.”
You whimper, but try to. For Bucky.
And you think you might be turning into a puddle anyway, under the reverence in his gaze.
Bucky gets his pants off with practiced ease, and your mouth falls open.
His cock is thick and big. Veiny in a way you want to feel dragging against you, the head red and angry. Your breath catches as he starts to stroke it, just watching you wait for him.
Your legs close, trying to rub together for some friction. Bucky grabs your knee, and drags them back apart.
“Let me see you.” His thumb rubs in small circles. In a perfect rhythm, with his hand beating his cock. “Nice and relaxed for me, doll. Need you to be relaxed.”
You hum, watching him under hooded eyes. You can’t stop yourself from glancing down to his dick again. You feel empty, waiting for him. You’ve been waiting long enough as it is.
Bucky follows your gaze, and his lips twitch.
“You just walk around all the time?” He teases. “Waiting for some cock to fill you up.”
You nod, breathing through your mouth, and Bucky’s throat bobs.
“Yeah?”
“Mhm.” You whisper, dragging your gaze back to his. “Need to feel you, Bucky. Pleeease.”
He swears under his breath. “Legs a little wider. Now.”
You listen quickly, and Bucky lowers down. He drags his cock between the puffed, slick lips of your pussy, the head bumping against your clit.
“Dirty girl.” He hovers over you, watching your every breath as he plays with you. “So fuckin’ pretty, should be stuffed with cock all the time, shouldn’t you. Gonna keep you in my bed, fuck you full of me.” He kisses you quickly, his words getting rough. “My smart fuckin’ baby, begging for my cock.”
“Don’t- Don’t tease-“ You mumble, and Bucky grins.
“But you’re so pretty when I do.”
He kisses your cheek, and you feel raw. A live nerve, open for him and almost vibrating with desire. But Bucky’s hands are gentle against you. And you know.
He’s going to treat you well.
“You think you can let go for me?” His question is gentle. Almost soft. “Always workin’ so hard.” He notches himself at your entrance, and your breath catches. “I’m gonna take care of you, aren’t I.”
“Yes.” You whisper. “Please.”
Bucky grins, and kisses your lips. “That’s right. You just gotta take it.”
You don’t get to even nod, before Bucky starts to push in.
And you’re not a blushing nun. You’ve used your fingers, and even some toys. Tried to see what the big deal was. But it had just felt like something was inside of you, and kind of heavy, and mostly just annoying.
This is different.
Bucky splits you open, and it knocks the air from your lungs.
“Breathe.” He grunts in your ear, and you nod uselessly. “Breathe, baby.”
You gasp for air, burying your face in the crook of Bucky’s neck, and clawing at his shoulders.
He mutters your name, and you try to arch your back up, inviting more. You need more. Everywhere he isn’t feels cold and hollow. Bucky needs to smear himself all over you, or you’re going to lose your mind.
“More.” You manage to croak out, and Bucky grunts.
“Are you-“
“Yes- Fuuuuck-“
You moan, loud and shameless, as Bucky presses deeper in. He bullies your pussy open, thick cock pressing deep into you and making your feel more full than you could’ve ever felt possible. Your body feels like it’s singing, a shiver of delight pushing up your spine as he hits that spot inside you that you weren’t even sure was real.
Your pussy clenches involuntarily, and Bucky hisses in your ear.
“Shit- Relax.” His thumb snakes between your bodies, massaging your clit. “Let me in, babydoll, come on-“
The massaging helps. You melt into him with a shaking breath, head tipping back when he bottoms out.
Bucky’s head drops into your chest, his breath hot against your breasts. You’re just sitting in each other, in the sticky, feverish heat that might drive you insane.
“You feel… fuckin’ perfect.”
Bucky’s voice is a rasp, and he sounds like a man ruined.
You might have already lost your mind.
“You too.” You breathe out, and he chuckles.
The sound is a vibration, and you bite your lip as pleasure rushes right down to your toes.
“Oh… God.” You squeeze your eyes shut, clenching again, and Bucky grabs your hips.
“You gotta stop doin’ that-“
“Can’t.” You whine. “’S- You did it, you spent forever working me up, and- And now-“
His muscles shift around you, and that’s enough for your body to keen. Your back arches, pussy squeezing, and Bucky makes a guttural sound from his chest.
You squeak, when he pulls the tiniest amount out and slams back in. Your body goes completely limp, and Bucky pushes up over you, his cock still buried deep inside as he stares down at you.
“For someone who asked me to teach her, you’re bad at takin’ directions.”
“You- Bucky-“ He’s fucking you, shallow and slow. Just dragging back and forth. You might cry over it. “You- You knew that already-“
“I did.” He muses, pressing your hips further down. Forcing you to feel every thrust of his cock against your cervix. “It’s something that I love about you, y’know? So sweet and mouthy, all at once. My dream girl. So far outta my reach.”
He angles you a little up, letting him rut against your g-spot, and any chance of a sassy retort is knocked out of your head.
“Not right now, though.” His lips twitch. “Bet you’d tell me anythin’ right now, if I fucked you nice and properly. Fucked you like you deserve?”
Your head bobs, words slurred on lust. “Any- Anything, Bucky, oh my god- mmmmh-“
His thumb swipes your clit, and it’s like a tiny shock you can’t even react to. Your body jerks, but Bucky just pins you back into the mattress.
“Think I don’t want you to talk right now.” Bucky leans down, smirking as you blink with teary eyes. “We’re a little past that, aren’t we sweetheart?”
There’s something mean and powerful, radiating off of him right now. He really knows exactly where he has you right now. And you have no desire to be anywhere else.
“Ye- Yes.”
“Might’ve fucked you nicely, if we’d just talked a month ago.” He raises his brows. “But you made me wait for this pretty pussy. Hurting us both, baby.”
“I- I was-“
“I know.” He kisses your nose. “You are a fuckin’ brat. Bet you thought about this every time you touched yourself.”
“I- I did.” You confess. “Needed your cock, Bucky. You’re- You’re so big-“
You mewl, as he rolls his hips and slams back in. He kisses you, open-mouthed and sloppy, and you can feel your slick need running down your ass. Or just Bucky’s sweat, as he tenses with the effort to hold himself back.
Effort is visibly, slowly slipping.
“You feel that? Feel this dick inside of you?” He fucks a little harder, and your head rolls. “All yours, babydoll. This hard, just for you.”
You whine, and Bucky sucks on a soft spot at the base of your throat.
“You’re a natural.” He groans against your skin. “Made for this cock, made to be my pretty doll, and- shit-“
He rises back up, watching you with a dark, hungry gaze.
“You’re trying so hard, aren’t you. To not choke my dick with your tight little pussy.”
“I- I am, Bucky- Please-“
“You gonna be good and listen to me, now?”
You nod, doe-eyed and cockdrunk, and Bucky hums in satisfaction.
“Hands on my shoulders.” He instructs, and your body somehow finds the strength to listen. “Mouth open. No holding back, wanna hear how you like it. Hear you scream my name.”
He kisses under your jaw, and you moan loudly. Bucky’s lips curve, and he pulls a little further out than before.
“Just like that. Good, isn’t it?”
“So good.” You whine, and Bucky hums.
“Stay just like this for me, doll.” He drags fully out, then slams back in. You think you see stars behind your eyes, and a sound you didn’t know you could make is pulled from your chest.
“Buuccky-“
“I know. Needy girl, wound up so tight.” He sets a slow but brutal pace, his hands bruising into your hips as he holds you down. “I’ve got you now.”
And he does.
Bucky’s got you so good, you’re already ruined for anyone else.
He fucks you the same way he’s been kissing and touching you. Like he’s trying to lay a claim. Make it so there’s no question what he wants, no doubt in your head that this is anything but serious. His hips piston against you, but it’s not rapid. It’s the measured, strong work of someone who knows exactly what he’s doing.
If there’s a pleasure point on your body, Bucky’s finding it and using it. You babble, as he abuses your g-spot with the thick head of his cock. His kisses swallow your every moan and plea, and you can’t think beyond his massive body, completely draped over yours. You’re tangled together, his balls slapping your ass and hands wandering over your body like he owns it.
He drags your knees up to your chest, helping him hit even deeper. You’re so wet it’s smearing all over his cock, and the sight of him driving in and out of you is enough to make that pressure in your tummy feel like it’s going to explode.
Bucky’s beyond words himself, hunching over your and taking one of your nipples in his mouth as he grabs at the other. You mewl, eyes glazed over and body overwhelmed with the need to cum. You might scream if you don’t. You’re probably already screaming.
“I- I need- Bucky, please, please, fuck-“
You scratch at his shoulder, so close to toppling over the edge but unable to figure out how to just fall. Bucky grunts, slamming down harder. His tongue swirls your nipple, sucking the peak between full lips before he crashes back up. His kiss is sloppy and open. You’re writhing in the sheet, edged into complete oblivion and on the verge of tears.
“You having some trouble, babydoll?” Bucky teases, throaty and wrecked.
You nod, shaking with the need to snap. Bucky hums, kissing you too sweetly to be productive.
“Let go for me.” He squeezes your ass. “Just let go.”
Bucky finds your clit, and barely even offers more than a tease before you’re coming with a scream of his name.
Your back flies off the mattress, your hips bucking, and you’ve never cum this hard in your life. The tension in you burst like fireworks, heat pooling down your pussy and your body trembling. Your vision goes white. You might black out for a second, the daze of pleasure clouding your gaze.
There’s nothing but Bucky, still pounding into you. The obscene sounds of it, his guttural moans and the slide of his cock through your spasming cunt. His thrusts are jagged and uneven, his mouth kissing you everywhere he can seem to reach.
He follows you quickly, thick ropes of cum painting your insides and dribbling out of your pussy.
Bucky kisses you one more time, before he pulls out. It’s slower, like he’s trying to memorize you. You reach up to cup his face, smiling against his lips, and he lets out a heavy breath.
“That wasn’t too-“
“Perfect.” You whisper, and he relaxes.
“Good. Good.” He rises back up, brushing away the hair stuck to your face.
For a second, you just watch each other.
And with Bucky looking at you like you’re the most beautiful thing in the universe, you feel like it.
He certainly treats you like it, too. Cleaning you up like you’re a princess, a treatment you never thought you’d want until it was Bucky offering. A warm, wet cloth between your thighs and a glass of water. He carries you into the bathroom, changes the sheets, then brings you back to bed.
He pauses after he sets you down, hovering around the mattress with a frown.
You scoot a little to the side, give him a hopeful look, and his shoulders slump.
He crawls into bed next to you, pressing his face into your breasts and holding you tight.
“We got things to talk about.” He mutters, and you hum, playing with his hair between your fingers.
“I know.”
“I was serious, about all of it-“
“I believe you.”
Bucky looks up at you with tired, but happy eyes. You smile, and they crinkle when he returns it.
It doesn’t matter if you’re the most anything in the world.
To him, you seem to be the world. And that’s more than enough.
“I’d like to take you out.” He says. “On a real date. Then the gala, too. If you-“
“Yes.” You beam. “Yes, please. I’d like that a lot.”
✦End note: bucky on a dating app has haunted me since tfatws. glad to do something with that.✦
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