Summary: You're Bucky's neighbor, Bucky is your secret admirer. Valentine's day and a potential date forces him to act.
Pairing: Bucky X Reader
Word Count: ~3.9k
Warnings: neighbors to friends to lovers, cheesy, valentines day themes
A/N: This was entirely self indulgent so I hope y'all like it. Please let me know what you think!
It was early summer the first time Bucky caught sight of you in the lobby of his building. You had been standing in the entryway with a cardboard box hitched on your hip as you chatted with the mailman that serviced the building.
It had been hot.
The kind of hot that made him feel like he was drowning, like the heat was under his skin and inside his bones, like it was suctioned sharp and heavy to his lungs in a grip that would never loosen.
And yet none of that would come to compare to the way you would come to make him feel.
He hadn’t known it then, but everything about you would hang inside him like warm summer sun, deep inside his bones, pressed to the inside of his skin.
You would make him feel, when he so often felt nothing, running on autopilot most days.
You would make him feel like –
Like the cling film of shame didn’t always have to stick to him.
Like the ocean of you could drown him under your skin, and he would be happy.
You had reminded him of the jeweled green of trees in bloom, like spring and summer and heat and heart.
The smell of asphalt and diesel and clean rain had been shifting on the air that summer afternoon. It had been the first day of sunshine after days of rain, the city purged of itself, cleansed of itself.
Shedding its skin to begin again.
And, it had seemed to him, heralding your arrival in the building.
Your skin had been dewy, glowing, in the warm golden light of the afternoon.
You had been laughing, saying, hold on, I think I have a bottle of water. S’hot out there today.
Bucky never checked his mail, but he had needed a reason to linger in the foyer, to watch you.
Such a small kindness, and still it had been something that made him pause, made him want to fall into your orbit.
The mailman had swiped sweat from his brow, smiled, adjusted the satchel on his shoulder. You’d handed him the bottle of water.
He had thanked you, told you how he hated Amazon, that he’d look out for the letter you’d been expecting from your mother.
Don’t know many people that write anymore. It’s all junk mail and bills and packages.
Oh, not me. I love to get mail.
And so, you did. And so, you do.
And so, Bucky starts checking his damn mail every single day.
Quickly, he figures out your schedule. When you’re most likely to be at your mailbox.
Without fail, he manages to catch you. He finds out that you demand letters from friends and relatives. He finds out that you write and send letters almost daily.
You’re friendly with the mailman, sometimes leaving snacks out in the lobby. You give him a card with a tip at every holiday.
You love mail.
Not just packages but letters. Junk mail. Credit card statements. Water bills.
You delight in it all.
You’re the only person, the only modern person, he knows in the city that checks the mail every single day without fail.
It’s totally and completely bizarre but Bucky comes to love the mail too.
If only because he gets to see you, and maybe because he had thought people didn’t really do the letter thing anymore.
He gets to chat with you for a few minutes each day with a stack of useless paper in his hands. Your smile is like sunshine on a cold day. Your laugh like a balm against bruised skin. You always smell like vanilla and coffee, and he finds out that you work at a coffee shop to supplement your income from your office job.
Bucky treasures those talks, mourns the days that he’s away on assignment and doesn’t get to see you.
One day, he gets up the nerve to ask you down the street to a diner. He buys you dinner and tries to feel like he’s not the luckiest man in the universe for getting to sit across from you and listen to you complain about customers, for getting to watch you smile and laugh and sip on a terrible cup of coffee.
True friendship blooms between you that day. Like the seed of a relationship had only needed the smallest drop of water to sprout.
Bucky starts finding letters from you after that, on paper that smelled like vanilla. Just silly little anecdotes that made him smile, dropped among the ads and useless magazines.
You start hosting movie nights at your place where you burn incense and talk to your plants like they’re beloved children. In the darkness of your tiny studio, squished close to you on your beaten up, faded couch that you’d gotten at a curb sale, he falls in love with you maybe just a little bit.
He tells himself that he’s not falling in love with you, he’s definitely not. You’re friends and nothing more. And Bucky needs a friend, his therapist tells him so at every turn.
So what if he dreams about you almost every night? So what if he treasures the scent you leave behind on his clothes after a night in? So what if sitting close to you on that ancient sofa, his thigh pressed to yours, shoulder to shoulder, is one of the greatest joys of his life? So what if his heart almost beat out of his chest the day you laid your head against his arm while watching a favorite movie of yours?
So fucking what?
He’s happy to have you.
As a friend.
Does he sometimes sleep with the shirt he wore to your place over his pillow? Maybe. But it's only because the lingering scent of your lavender incense helps him sleep.
It has nothing to do with the smell of you. Like vanilla and coffee, lavender and bergamot.
It has absolutely nothing to do with staying close to you.
It has nothing to do with hoping he’ll wake up smelling like you just a little bit, just to keep you close.
Bucky convinces himself that it's normal to perfectly time his trip to the mailbox every day, just to talk to you, just to make sure that you’re okay.
Until, a few weeks before Valentine’s Day, in the deep chill of an arctic blast that had descended over the city at the end of January, you’d told him about your meddling coworker at your office job.
“She keeps trying to set me up with one of our other coworkers,” you had wrinkled your nose. “I’m not really interested but I’m thinking maybe I’ll go just to shut her up about it.”
And what if you went and felt something?
What if he lost you?
But what is there to lose, really?
You weren’t his.
You don’t belong to him, though he feels like he’s entirely yours.
Pressed close to you in the darkness of your apartment, TV screen flashing brightly over your features, he had wondered why he thought you’d ever want him in that way, see him that way.
Your features had been soft in the low light.
You’d lit the lavender incense again, which he was beginning to think might be for his benefit. You know he has trouble sleeping.
“Maybe I’ll get a Valentine out of it,” you’d said sleepily. “I’ve never had one before.”
And that had convinced him to try.
He could be your valentine.
You made him believe he could be, that maybe he was worthy of that.
~
You’re standing in front of your open mailbox, wearing an enormous pink knitted scarf, when Bucky ducks in from the winter storm swirling outside. The winter has been particularly brutal, one snowstorm after another making his anxiety flare like an emergency signal.
His heart almost stutters to a stop as he pauses in the entryway, glued to the spot. He hadn’t expected you to still be in the foyer, and immediately he recalculates his carefully thought through plan.
While he hadn’t expected you to be in the lobby, Bucky certainly hadn’t expected to find you wearing the scarf he had left anonymously in front of your door two days ago.
He’s glad you like it enough to wear it.
Just like he was glad that you liked the flowers he left a few days before that enough to post them on Instagram, enough to talk to them like the rest of your plants, thanking them for their contribution to the little garden of your window before they wilted and withered away.
It does make him worry just a tad that you’ve so easily accepted gifts from a stranger, anonymously dropped in front of your door or through your mail slot.
Now, you slowly shuffle through the letters in your hands, frowning gently at the junk mail.
He swallows, watching you flick past an electric bill, smile at a letter from your grandmother, before you get to the last envelope in the pile.
You frown and flip it over when someone ducks past him into the building, reminding him that he’s standing in the open doorway like an idiot, the bag of pastries from your favorite bakery in his hand probably freezing.
Bucky tries not to think about the way the corner of your mouth ticks up into a smile, your eyes widening just a bit, when you see the script on the back of the baby pink envelope.
He curses under his breath and heads in your direction. You look up at his approach, stuffing the pink letter between two pieces of junk mail. “Oh, hey, Bucky,” you say, smiling so big it looks like it hurts. “Happy Valentine’s Day!”
Bucky’s heart jumps into his throat and he almost chokes on it. “Happy Valentine’s Day, doll.”
You try and fail to suppress another smile, “Staying in this Valentine’s Day?” You nod at the bag in his hand.
“Guess you could say that.”
The door to the building opens again and you shiver as a gust of wind snakes through the lobby. “No world saving on the agenda then?”
“Well, the night is young,” he says drily. “The world has gone to shit in less time.”
You laugh and his heart flutters just a little bit. He feels like a kid around you, like the world is light and would never need saving again, not by him or from him.
“Here’s to hoping then. I’ll light a candle for you.” You eye him for a moment, one eyebrow lifted. “No date this Valentine’s Day?”
He snorts, even as his heart hammers, turning his ribs into a mosaic of black and blue with the force. If he’s lucky, you’ll be his date by the end of the night. “Don’t exactly have people lining up. What’re you up to tonight, sweetheart?” Bucky asks as you lock your mailbox.
You lift your pile of mail and shake it at him, “Gettin’ my mail.” The corner of your mouth twitches and Bucky tries not to let his eyes linger on your lips, or, more dangerously, on the pink letter peeking out of the stack.
The letter he had slipped into your mail slot yesterday.
“Other than getting your mail,” he says as you start towards the stairs and begin to climb. Bucky lags, deliberately walking slowly to prolong your time together, trying to work up the nerve to ask you over to his place. “No Valentine’s date for you either? Manage to avoid the date with the coworker?”
“Ugh. Yes. But now I’m totally avoiding this horrible speed dating thing my friend wants me to go to. She’s convinced it’ll be fun. It’s themed for Valentine’s Day.” You wrinkle your nose at him. “I think it sounds like the ninth circle of hell. So, I’m staying in with my book. I mean, I deserve it right? I’ve already put in so much effort into avoiding that date with my coworker.”
Bucky is grateful that you think the speed dating thing is hell.
His crush on you has rapidly turned into an obsession. And he knows himself well enough to know that he would absolutely sabotage that speed dating gig. Bucky isn’t about to let anything ruin his plan. He hasn’t spent the last two weeks meticulously playing the twelve days of Christmas Valentine’s Day style for something like speed dating to ruin it.
In addition to the flowers and scarf, he’d sent you a reservation to your favorite restaurant that you can’t really afford, your favorite brand of chocolate, a box of tiny candy hearts which he’d been present for when you found in them in your mailbox and laughed yourself sick over, delighted. He’s given you a sweater and a new perfume, a book, incense.
Maybe he’s not good with words, but he knows you well enough to know what you’ll love, even if it isn’t him.
Nerves are clawing at the inside of his skin by the time you stop outside your door, trying to work up the courage to ask you to come over.
Conveniently, he’d stopped at your favorite bakery. Conveniently, he’d ordered all your favorite goodies.
“-so glad someone sent me this scarf, I mean, the radiator has been broken for a week and its fucking cold. Landlord keeps promising to send someone but-,”
“I’ll take a look at it for you, honey.”
You peer at him, an odd emotion swimming in your eyes before it darts away, and you smile. “What would I do without you? Thanks, Buck.” You say, like it means nothing. Like every nerve inside him doesn’t light up at the thought you of you needing him for something as mundane as maintenance.
You pause and then continue, fidgeting just a bit, “I’d love to know who keeps sending me stuff.” Your tone is carefully light, but a little bit of sadness is hiding in the back of your throat. “Would like to thank them.” You don’t meet his eyes as you say it.
He hums, watching you fumble with your key, “What if you have a stalker or something, Y/N? Wish you’d be a little more careful.”
“Worried about me, Barnes?” You tease. Bucky just stares at you. Of course, he is. He’s always worried about you. You roll your eyes, “I get good vibes and intentions from these gifts. I think I would know if they carried bad energy.”
“You’re kidding right? This is how you end up on Dateline-,”
“Oh hush, let me enjoy my silly little gifts. I’ve never had a secret admirer. Or even a valentine. And besides, you’re in the building. I'm sure you’d know if I were in any danger. You probably already investigated and know who they are.” You send him a smile that makes his heart feel like cracked eggshell and turn to your door, “The worst thing about this apartment is that it's three floors up with no elevator,” you huff, finally jamming your key into the lock. “I guess I’ll-,”
Panic surges up his throat. It's now or never.
“You’ve never had a valentine?” He asks, stalling for time, though you had told him the night he decided to be your valentine this year.
“Some of us can’t pull ladies like you, Barnes,” you tease, bumping your shoulder against his. “I mean, I’ve had partners on Valentine’s Day in the past just not, like, a valentine, y’know? Like someone who sends you sappy little notes and just loves love.”
God were you about to be disappointed when you found out it was him.
He’s your fucking valentine. Your secret admirer.
While he’d planned to ask you over to dinner, Bucky would also like to delay you looking at that fucking envelope he stuffed in your mailbox like it was nothing.
It's not time for you to read it yet.
The letter is a security blanket for when everything inevitably goes to hell.
Really, it's a good thing he’d caught you in the foyer. If you’d already gotten your mail, likely you would have ripped open the letter and read it right away.
“You could come over,” he says. “Got enough here to feed an army,” he lifts the bag or pastries. “We can watch that new show you were telling me about yesterday.”
He doesn’t expect is for you to hesitate. Normally, you readily agree to an evening spent together.
You finally wrench your door open.
It swings in and you gaze down at the pile of mail in your hands. “Um,” you shift from foot to foot. “Y’know I-,”
You stop, seeming to consider how to continue, thumbing at the pink paper.
And Bucky finds himself jealous.
Of a letter.
That he sent.
He’s jealous of himself.
You want to read the anonymous letter from your valentine rather than spend time with him.
Maybe his heart sinks to the bottom of his belly, maybe his soul turns to ash in his mouth.
Better give up now.
“Don’t worry about it, hon-,” he starts, even though you not agreeing to come over would ruin everything, when you seem to snap out of it.
“No,” you smile and toss the mail on the counter by the door. “Of course. I’d love to.” From the door, he can see the whole of your apartment. The pink and white bedspread, your plants, the photos of family members and friends on your wall, the fairy lights, and that tiny couch in front of the TV that has come to feel like home, like love.
“Don’t have to, doll-,” he starts.
You shut your door and lock it again before looping your arm through his. “Of course I do. It’s Valentine’s Day.”
~
You sit on the floor in front of his coffee table, legs crossed, fingers sticky with powdered sugar and icing that you wipe on a napkin delicately.
You’ve been chattering at him for the last few minutes.
Something about work.
But Bucky can’t really focus on that at the moment.
He hasn’t touched his share of the goods and you’ve definitely noticed.
The room is thick with a tension that’s entirely his fault. He can see you trying to parse through it, why things feel so odd and strained.
You reach out and touch the back of his hand. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he says, shaking himself, trying to snap out of it. Bucky doesn’t want to frighten you, he knows how he looks, blank and foreign and far away, when he’s too deep inside himself.
Now or never, something screams at him.
“Actually, I have something for you.”
“Oh,” you smile. “Like a present?”
“Kinda, sweetheart,” he stands, and your hand falls away from his. His skin feels cold in the absence.
Bucky stands and moves to the kitchen where he earlier stashed your final gift.
If things go to shit in the next few minutes, hopefully you’ll read the card he dropped in your mail slot that’s currently waiting for you back on your kitchen counter.
Your eyes are fastened to him, flicking to the pink wrapped box in his hands.
He sits down across from you on the floor and presses the box into your hands across the coffee table.
You stare at it for a long moment, the look on your face unreadable to him.
“Bucky,” you say gently, decidedly not unwrapping it. “I-I don’t wanna sound – I don’t wanna ruin what we have between us but –,”
Oh. Fuck.
“But like, we’ve been friends for a while now and I – I dunno I was telling myself I should tell you –,”
Probably that you had a partner. That he’s gotten too comfortable with you and needed to back off.
“Well, that I’ve kinda been falling for you these last couple of months and –,”
Wait –
“And I don’t want to sound, like, presumptuous, but…are you the one who's been leaving all the presents?”
His brain goes staticky, white with blankness. How could you have known?
“I –,”
“Because I think maybe you would have – I mean is it you? I’m really hoping it’s been you.”
When he doesn’t say anything, you start to fidget, crinkling the corner of the pink paper in your hands, the edge of your thumb running under the tape nervously.
“It’s not, is it? I just made everything really weird between us. I thought it was you because you kinda seem like you would have hunted down someone randomly sending me stuff.” You don’t look at him as you say it. “Oh god, does that mean I do have a stalker?”
Bucky swallows and finds his voice, lodged tightly in the back of his throat. “You thought I would –,”
“Yeah, I mean,” Y/N tears the tape a little and sets the gift aside carefully. “You’re kind of protective. You seem to worry about me a lot and I thought it was odd this random stranger giving me things didn’t bother you but –,”
“Honey it's me,” Bucky says softly. “It is. It's me.”
You don’t seem to hear him, your eyes still locked on the tartes and eclairs in front of you. “Because you know how much I like getting mail and you know all my favorite things.” You shrug. “Sorry I’m making things weird –,”
Bucky says your name, forcefully enough that your head snaps up. “It’s me.”
“What?” Your brow creases.
“I – fuck, I like you. A lot. And I didn’t want you to go on that fucking date with your coworker and you’ve never had a valentine and – I dunno, I just really like you. I thought maybe –,”
“I did,” you say, meeting his eyes. “I said it didn’t I? I fell for you. You think I let other people in my apartment so much? Wait around by my fucking mailbox waiting for you to show up?”
A laugh startles out of him, “I thought I was just really good at timing it.”
You roll your eyes and stand.
He follows your movement, tilting his head back to keep you in his view. You crouch down next to him, and he reaches for you at the same time that you reach for him.
Then, you’re in his lap, knees digging into his hips as he kisses you.
You taste like candy.
Like Valentine's day chocolate and all your favorite baked goods.
Your fingers curl into his hair, curve behind his ears when you cup his face between your palms.
Bucky anchors his hands to your hips, afraid to do anything but kiss you. Just in case it's a dream, just in case you change your mind.
He’s dreamed of kissing you before, he’s dreamed of holding you, touching the curve of your waist.
It doesn’t compare to having you in his lap, your lips soft against his.
This pink scarf brushes against his wrist when he finally lifts his hand to cradle your cheek.
You pull back and press your forehead to his.
“Thank you for all my gifts, Bucky.”
He smiles, “Don’t read that pink letter, honey.”
“Why?”
“It’s…honestly I thought – doesn't matter. Just don’t read it. I’ll write you a thousand more letters.”
“Promise they’ll all be really sappy.”
He chuckles and hooks an arm around your waist, tugging you close before twisting to press you back into the rug. Bucky hovers over you, lets you twist your fingers into the chain of his dog tags and tug him down. “I promise,” he murmurs, kissing your temple, the curve of your cheek, your top lip.
“And that you’ll hand deliver them to my mailbox.”
“Promise,” he kisses your lips.
You arch up, kissing him back hard, digging your foot into the back of his knee so he collapses against you fully.
“Will you be my valentine?” It’s a breathless question.
romaincrisis
origamiaround
titsay
dededos
germansingergirl
theartofmadeline
kaledo-art
jacobvanloon
