Kenny darlin I neeeeed you. I’m lonely and making stupid decisions over a younger man — I NEED a meet-cute with Bucky to cure my insanity. Give me the fluffy give me the cute give me Bucky pleeeeeeeease
It happens on a Monday.
Not a good Monday. Not even a neutral Monday. The kind of Monday where your coffee tastes burnt no matter how much sugar you dump into it, your phone keeps lighting up with messages you absolutely should not answer, and your judgment, already questionable lately, feels like it’s hanging on by a thread.
Case in point: the younger man.
You stare down at your phone where his name is still sitting at the top of your messages, thumb hovering over the screen. There’s a draft reply typed out—something witty, something a little flirty, something you’ll regret approximately five minutes after sending.
“Don’t,” you mutter to yourself, locking your phone with a decisive click and shoving it into your bag. “We are not doing that today.”
Growth. Maturity. Healing.
You repeat the words like a mantra as you push open the door to the little corner bakery you’ve started frequenting lately, the one with the crooked chalkboard sign out front and the soft golden lighting that always makes everything feel calmer than it actually is.
The smell hits you first. Warm bread, sugar, something cinnamon-y. It wraps around you like a hug, easing the tight knot in your chest just a little.
“Okay,” you whisper under your breath, stepping into line. “New plan. Carbs instead of bad decisions.”
Progress.
You’re so busy trying to decide between a croissant and a muffin (or both, let’s be honest) that you don’t notice the man stepping back from the counter at the same time you step forward.
You collide.
Hard.
“Shit—!”
“Oh—sorry, I—”
It’s chaos. Your bag slips off your shoulder, your phone tumbles out, and the iced coffee you’d been holding tips dangerously, sloshing over the lid and straight onto him.
You freeze.
There’s a moment—a long, horrible moment—where you just stare at the spreading stain across his dark henley, your brain short-circuiting as panic floods your system.
“Oh my god,” you breathe. “Oh my god, I am so sorry. I didn’t— I wasn’t looking and—”
“I stepped back,” he interrupts gently, already reaching for napkins. “That’s on me.”
His voice is low. Warm. Calm in a way that immediately slows the frantic spiral in your chest.
You blink up at him and then promptly forget how to breathe.
He’s unfair.
That’s the only word for it. Tall, broad-shouldered, with dark hair that looks like it never quite behaves and eyes so blue they almost don’t seem real. There’s a softness to his expression, though, something careful tucked beneath all that intimidating size, like he’s worried about startling you.
You, meanwhile, are actively dying.
“No, that is absolutely not on you,” you insist, grabbing napkins and dabbing uselessly at his shirt. “I assaulted you with coffee. This is—this is a crime, actually.”
That gets a small huff of laughter out of him.
“It’s not that bad.”
“It is,” you say firmly. “It’s cold brew. That stuff stains souls.”
He smiles at that and something in your chest does an unfortunate little flip.
“It’ll wash out,” he assures you. “Promise.”
You finally manage to look away, crouching to scoop up your phone before you can embarrass yourself further. “Still. I owe you. Dry cleaning, at least. Or… a new shirt. Or… emotional damages.”
“Emotional damages?” he echoes, amused.
“I’ve ruined your morning,” you say, straightening. “That counts.”
His gaze lingers on you for a second, something soft flickering there before he shakes his head. “You didn’t ruin anything.”
You huff a quiet laugh, tucking a loose piece of hair behind your ear. “You’re being very nice about this for someone who just got baptized in caffeine.”
“I’ve had worse mornings,” he admits.
You don’t ask.
Instead, you gesture toward the counter, where the barista is watching the entire exchange with open curiosity. “At least let me buy your coffee. Replacement coffee. Non-weaponized this time.”
He hesitates just for a second.
Then, “Only if I can buy yours.”
You blink. “That feels like a scam.”
“Compromise,” he counters, one corner of his mouth lifting.
You study him for a moment, suspicion warring with something much softer, much more dangerous.
“Fine,” you say finally. “But if you try to Venmo me later, I’m blocking you.”
He laughs again—quieter this time, but just as warm. “Deal.”
You step up to the counter together, placing your orders side by side. It feels easy. Weirdly easy, considering you just committed accidental coffee-based assault.
While you wait, you shift your weight, glancing at him from the corner of your eye. He’s watching the barista, hands tucked into his pockets, shoulders relaxed now that the initial chaos has passed.
“You come here a lot?” you ask, immediately wincing internally. Wow. Original.
He doesn’t seem to mind.
“Yeah,” he says. “It’s close to my place. Good bread.”
“Strong argument,” you nod. “I come here when I need to make better life choices.”
He glances at you then, brow faintly furrowed. “Better than what?”
You hesitate.
Your phone feels heavy in your bag, like it’s listening.
“…questionable texting habits,” you admit vaguely.
Understanding flickers across his face—surprisingly quick, surprisingly gentle.
“Ah,” he says. “Yeah. Been there.”
You raise a brow. “Really?”
He shrugs, a little sheepish. “Once or twice.”
Something about that—about the way he says it like he’s not proud of it, like he’s learned from it—makes your chest tighten in a way that has nothing to do with anxiety.
Your name is called.
You step forward, grabbing the drinks before turning back to him and holding one out. “Here. Peace offering.”
He takes it, fingers brushing yours briefly.
It’s nothing.
It’s everything.
“Thanks,” he says. “I’m Bucky.”
You repeat your name, and it feels strange, like it matters more than it should.
You linger by the counter for a second too long, both of you sipping your drinks, neither quite moving to leave.
“Well,” you say finally, gesturing toward the door. “I should probably go make more responsible choices.”
“Yeah,” he nods. “Me too.”
Neither of you move.
Then he clears his throat, shifting slightly. “Hey, uh—”
You look up.
“If you ever need a distraction from those questionable decisions,” he says, a little tentative now, “I come here most mornings.”
Your heart does something very inconvenient.
You glance down at your coffee, then back up at him.
“…carbs instead of bad decisions,” you murmur.
He smiles. “Sounds like a solid plan.”
You hesitate for half a second longer, just long enough to feel the weight of your phone in your bag, the ghost of that unfinished message still waiting.
Then you make your choice.
“Tomorrow morning?” you ask.
His smile softens, something warm and almost relieved settling into his expression.
“Tomorrow morning.”
And just like that, the Monday doesn’t feel so bad anymore.
hi ken! hope you're doing fine. i'm in such a bad mood becuz of things going on in my life. can you do a bucky x reader thing where no one sees how reader is there for everyone but at the slightest reason the others call the reader selfish and wrong but bucky sees all of it and wants to make sure that at least one person out there is appreciating reader and comforts her through a break down?
-🐰
The accusations hit so quietly that, at first, you almost convince yourself they don't hurt.
You've spent months being the person everyone depends on without ever really thinking twice about it. You're the one answering late-night phone calls when someone's relationship falls apart. The one who remembers birthdays, orders everyone's favorite takeout, offers rides to the airport before sunrise, and somehow always has tissues, Advil, or a phone charger when someone needs one. If a friend is overwhelmed, you rearrange your own schedule without hesitation. If someone needs help moving, you're already on your way. You never keep score because that's what people who love each other do, right?
You don't realize that no one notices until the first time you ask for something yourself.
The evening starts like every other gathering at Sam's apartment. You arrive twenty minutes late because you'd spent the afternoon helping another friend carry furniture into a third-floor apartment before stopping to grab coffee for someone who'd texted you on the way over. By the time you walk through the door, your arms are full of drinks and grocery bags, your feet ache, and all you can think about is curling up in bed once this is over.
No one thanks you.
Instead, someone glances at the clock.
"Finally."
Another rolls their eyes. "We thought you weren't coming."
You laugh awkwardly, apologizing out of habit as you hand everyone the things they'd asked you to bring. The conversation moves on almost immediately, and so do you. You help set the table, refill empty drinks before anyone asks, and clean dishes as people continue talking around the kitchen island. It feels familiar enough that you don't question it.
Not until, a couple of hours later, you quietly mention that you're going to head home.
"I think I'm gonna call it a night," you say with an apologetic smile. "It's been a long week."
The room goes strangely quiet.
"Already?" someone asks.
"You literally just got here."
"I've just been really tired."
Another friend snorts. "You always leave early lately."
You blink. "I... don't think I do."
"Honestly," someone else chimes in, "you've been kind of selfish recently."
The word lands with enough force to steal the air from your lungs.
Selfish.
You stare at them, waiting for someone to laugh or tell you they're kidding, but no one does. Instead, more voices begin piling on, each one somehow making the knot in your chest tighter.
"You've been saying no to things."
"You've seemed distant."
"We never ask you for much."
"You've been making everything about yourself lately."
Your mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
Because all you can think about is every single thing you've done for them over the past few months. The weekends you gave up. The errands you ran. The countless times you dropped everything because someone else needed you.
All of it disappears the moment you admit you're exhausted.
Across the room, Bucky has been watching the entire conversation unfold in silence. At first, he'd assumed someone would catch themselves. That one of your friends would realize how unfair they sounded and backtrack before any real damage was done.
Instead, he watches you shrink a little more with every sentence.
Your shoulders curl inward. Your smile disappears. Then, somehow, despite everything they're saying, you whisper the words that finally push him over the edge.
"I'm sorry."
The apartment falls silent when Bucky speaks.
"No."
His voice isn't loud, but it cuts through every other sound in the room.
"No, we're not doing this."
Every head turns toward him as he pushes away from the kitchen counter, his blue eyes sweeping across the room before settling briefly on you. The hurt written across your face makes something twist painfully in his chest.
"You're calling her selfish?"
No one answers.
Sam shifts uncomfortably. "Buck..."
"No." He shakes his head. "I want somebody to explain it to me."
His gaze moves deliberately from one person to the next.
"Who picked me up after missions because I couldn't drive?"
Silence.
"Who spent fourteen hours sitting in the hospital with Clint when everyone else went home?"
Still nothing.
"Who remembers every birthday, organizes every dinner, checks on all of you when you're struggling, and somehow always knows exactly what everyone needs before they ask?"
His voice never rises, but it doesn't have to.
"It's always been her."
No one argues.
"She gives every single one of you her time, her energy, and every piece of herself she has to spare. Then the first time she says she's tired..." He lets out a humorless laugh. "Suddenly she's selfish?"
The weight of his words settles over the apartment like concrete.
For the first time all night, everyone actually looks at you.
Really looks.
They notice how tightly you're gripping your sleeves. How your eyes have filled with tears. How exhausted you actually look.
Bucky doesn't wait for anyone to respond.
Instead, he crosses the room until he's standing directly in front of you, every trace of frustration melting into something heartbreakingly gentle.
"C'mere, sweetheart."
The endearment is all it takes.
The moment his arms open, every wall you've spent months holding together collapses. You step into his embrace without thinking, and the first sob tears itself from your chest before you've even buried your face against him.
His arms wrap around you immediately, one hand cradling the back of your head while the other rubs slow, steady circles across your back.
"I'm sorry," you cry, the words muffled against his shirt.
He pulls back just enough to look at you, his brow knitting together in confusion.
"What are you apologizing for?"
"I don't know," you admit through broken breaths. "I just... I tried so hard."
"I know you did."
"I wanted everyone to be happy."
His heart breaks right there.
"I know."
"I don't understand what I did wrong."
His thumb brushes beneath your eye, catching another tear before it can fall.
"You didn't do anything wrong." His voice is impossibly soft. "You just reminded people that you're a person instead of someone they can keep taking from."
You stare at him.
"They got so used to you always giving," he continues, "that the first time you needed something back, they mistook it for selfishness."
A shaky laugh escapes you, though it sounds more like another sob.
"I feel so stupid."
"No." He shakes his head immediately. "I think you love people with everything you've got. I think you're the kind of person who would happily carry everyone else's burdens if it meant they smiled a little easier. But somewhere along the way, they stopped appreciating what you were giving because they started expecting it."
Fresh tears spill down your cheeks.
"I just wanted someone to notice."
"I do."
He doesn't hesitate.
"I notice every single thing you do."
You look up at him, eyes wide.
"I notice the way you text everyone to make sure they got home safely. I notice you remembering how Sam takes his coffee, how you always pack extra snacks because Nat forgets to eat, how you ask Steve about therapy when everyone else assumes he's fine. I notice how you quietly clean up after everyone leaves without asking for help."
His hand cups your cheek.
"But I also notice the things nobody else seems to."
His forehead rests gently against yours.
"I notice when you're forcing a smile because you don't want anyone worrying about you. I notice when you're running on empty. I notice the way you keep saying you're okay even when you're barely holding yourself together."
Your breathing stutters.
"I wanted one person to see me," you whisper.
A sad smile tugs at his lips.
"You've had one all along."
He presses a lingering kiss against your forehead before wrapping you back into his arms.
"You don't have to earn love by exhausting yourself. You don't have to prove your worth by giving away every piece of who you are."
His embrace tightens just a little more.
"And as long as I'm here, you'll never have to wonder whether someone appreciates you."
Around the room, no one says a word.
Because while they had spent months taking you for granted, Bucky had spent those same months seeing every quiet sacrifice, every hidden exhaustion, and every small act of love you never expected anyone to notice.
And he silently promised himself that, from this day forward, you would never again have to question whether you were enough.
Bucky Barnes is using that metal arm to lock your shit down. Beard rubbing on the sensitive skin of your inner thighs, fingers pistoning in and out of your squelching cunt while he’s got the heavy metal sitting on your hips, not even pushing down, just letting it sit heavy on your tummy while you’re helplessly thrashing against his tongue. Can’t even kick up off the bed, your hips aren’t lifting an inch with that heavy metal resting on your hip bone, bruising as he’s curling his fingers up into you, pressing long tongue stroking kisses on your aching clit.
warning: post tfatws!bucky, fluff, first date nerves, use of pet names (doll, honey), no use of y/n, not beta read, all mistakes and mine
author’s note: I saw this clip on YouTube showing a man making his wife feel good about herself rather than a backhanded compliment, and immediately I knew that Bucky would totally do that. This is just a fun little short based on that.
It had taken over two hours, and that was in just prep time. It didn’t include how you’d spent days agonising looking at dresses, how you’d picked one, then returned it, and finally settled on this one. How last night you’d got it out of your wardrobe, trying to pair it with jewellery and make up that matched.
Then you were up at 6am, already anxious and tense, doing anything to calm yourself before you headed to work.
The hours had dragged, but when returned home time sped up. There wasn’t enough time, the shower didn’t feel long enough, the make up had to wiped off several times before it looked right and the dress kept hanging wrong.
Even now, looking at the mirror, you could still feel the jitters in your belly. No matter how many times you told yourself it would be fine, it just didn’t feel fine.
The light tapping on the door jolted you out of your stupor.
“I’m coming!” You shout then cringe internally at your wording, cursing at saying such a thing to a man before you even started your first date.
“Get your head out of the gutter,” you murmur to yourself, and you walk down the stairs.
It was hard. You knew who well was behind that door. James Buchanan Barnes, the former Winter Soldier, who had been on plastered all over news after he and the newly anointed Captain America had quelled a “terrorist” group, a group of people who had been unfairly been moved from their homes.
You hadn’t known who he was when the notification popped on your phone, you’d forgotten you’d even signed up for a dating app at all.
Curiosity got the better of you, you’d replied to his DMs, making general conversation that never went further. He respected boundaries and asked questions. So many questions.
He made you feel wanted, and it made you want to impress him.
Your fingers wrap around the handle, and pull on the door to reveal the man on the other side.
“Hey,” his photos did him no justice. Startlingly blue eyes, broad shoulders covered in a white shirt and a brown leather bikers jacket, with simple trousers.
One hand was gloved and holding a bouquet of hydrangeas, your favourite.
Your lips part at the sight of him.
“Bucky,” your voice is quiet, almost choked at the sight of him.
He seems to pause in places, eyes flickering up and down.
“Damn,” he murmurs, his tongue briefly coming out to lick his bottom lip. “Could you… mind doing a twirl for me, doll?”
Your mind races at his words, but your find yourself stepping around.
“Slowly,” his voice sounds deeper. “I wanna see all the effort you put in.”
Your heart tightens slightly, but you listen. You move slowly in a circle, right on your doorstep, a mix of embarrassment and excitement rushing through your veins.
“Any good?” You ask.
“Good doesn’t even describe you,” a tinge of his Brooklyn accent slips though. “The photos were nothing on this.”
You exhale in relief as a smile crossed your face. “I was thinking the same about you. You’re gorgeous, Bucky.”
His eyes widen at the compliment.
“Honey, I’m meant to be flattering you,” he chuckles and hands you the flowers. “Now, how about we go on that date, huh?”
You nod enthusiastically in agreement, your hand taking his with no plan to let it go.
⌗ SUMMARY For a long time, loneliness was easier to live with than wanting. Now every morning asks him to let you go, and every night convinces him to forget why he should.
⌗ WARNINGS sex worker reader, explicit sexual content, sweet but awkward and emotionally constipated bucky, yearning, hyperspermia — lots of cum and lots of sex, detailed warnings in each chapter, happy ending. no use of y/n.
— ⟡ DISCRETION REQUIRED
For James Buchanan Barnes, control had always been the closest thing to safety after years spent without either. Funny how a stranger with a warm smile and even warmer hands could bring down every wall he'd built so carefully.
— ⟡ GUEST ROOMS AND OTHER EMPTY THINGS
There’s something especially cruel about a guest room that never gets used. Made it far too easy to pretend you belonged in his bed. But morning does come, peeling away the comfort of his carefully constructed illusion.
— ⟡ WHEN NOBODY IS COUNTING
They say distance makes the heart grow fonder. Unanswered habits, empty mornings, and reaching for someone who was never supposed to become part of your every day — no one ever mentions how much it hurts.
⌗ NOTES giving myself something to look forward to lol. coming soon… soon as in september. stay mad, stay mystified (tell me you get it), and stay tuned.
moodboard inspired by @mariasont ; images sourced from pinterest
pairing: bucky barnes x reader | 10.2k words | modern soulmate au
warnings: explicit sexual content (18+), soulmate bond/past life memories, multiple lifetimes, memory flashes, discussions of war, brief references to trauma/recovery, love at first sight across lifetimes, wedding night smut, destiny vs choice, happy ending
summary: when you and bucky reach for the same bag of lemons at the farmer’s market, the touch triggers flashes of the many lifetimes you’ve spent loving each other. as those memories keep surfacing, the two of you have to figure out what it means to fall in love again in the life you’re living now.
authors note: this is very loosely inspired by everything is romantic by charli xcx, and by “loosely” i mean i took several lyrics, made them devastating, and then built an entire soulmate reincarnation love story around them. many many thank you's for this fic! thank you to @/iamthatonefangirl and @/barnesonly for organizing our bwat summer collab; go check out everyone else's work! thank you to my baby, @/pinksplace for giving this idea and listening to me continuously crash out about it🫶 and a very special thank you to @/buckybsdoll for not only beta reading it, but for also encouraging this fic is indeed NOT buns, and i can do hard things. love you all🩷
----------
Saturday mornings belong to James Buchanan Barnes.
That is what Bucky tells himself, anyway—what he has been telling himself for the better part of three years, ever since recovery stopped feeling like a cliff edge and started, slowly, cautiously, feeling like a road. Not an easy road, not a straight one, but a road all the same. Something he can wake up and keep walking.
Saturday means the same coffee stand on the corner where the barista with the chipped purple nail polish starts making his drink the second she sees him coming. It means the farmer’s market under the green-striped awnings in the square, where he buys a loaf of crusty sourdough from the old Polish couple in stall fourteen and fresh eggs from the woman who always insists the yolks are brighter in spring. It means peaches if they’re in season, because one summer in Wakanda he had bitten into one so ripe it had run down his wrist and made him laugh out loud in the middle of a field, and ever since then peaches have felt like proof of life. It means flowers some3times, too, if the apartment feels especially bare. Something cheap and cheerful in a mason jar on the kitchen counter. Something that says a man can make a home even if he was taught for years he did not deserve one.
It is a good routine. A hard-won one. Bucky likes the honesty of it, the way these small rituals ask nothing of him except that he show up.
This morning, June sun already warming the pavement, his paper cup of coffee hot in his hand, he feels almost light. The market is crowded enough to buzz but not so packed he gets hemmed in. A violinist near the fountain is playing something bright and quick. Someone’s kid is trying to pet every dog within reach. The air smells like basil and strawberries and the faint yeasty sweetness of fresh bread.
Bucky buys his loaf first. Then tomatoes. Then a bunch of green onions. He pauses at the peach stand, testing one for give with his thumb, and decides they need another week.
By the time he reaches the citrus table, the vendor is rearranging pyramids of lemons in rough wooden crates, their skins bright and dimpled in the morning light. Bucky reaches automatically, already picturing chicken piccata for dinner, and another hand reaches at the same exact moment.
Your fingers brush his.
The world splits open.
One second he is standing in the farmer’s market with coffee on his breath and sunlight on the back of his neck, and the next—
Neon. Laughter. Chapel bells tinny through cheap speakers. Your mouth, painted the color of a ripe cherry, open on a breathless laugh. White satin clinging to your hips. A fake Elvis in a rhinestone jumpsuit grinning around too-big teeth beneath a plastic crucifix bolted crooked over the altar.
Bucky gasps.
The bag of lemons slips from both your hands and tumbles to the pavement, yellow fruit rolling in wild directions as if they’ve been startled too.
The vision doesn’t stop there. Visions of different lifetimes flash through his eyes like he’s watching the life of ten different couples all at once.
A steering wheel under his palms, worn smooth with use. Summer wind through open windows. You in cutoff shorts, feet on the dashboard, singing badly and loudly while the road curls ahead of you like a dare.
White sheets. Lace curtains breathing in a warm midnight breeze. Gold band on your finger catching moonlight where your hand presses against his chest. Your mouth moving against his throat with a broken little sound that is half laughter, half prayer.
A rough cabin wall. Splintered pine under his palm. You in a wool shift with your hair braided down your back, cheeks wind-burned, smiling over your shoulder as foxes cry somewhere out in the dark and a baby sleeps in a cradle by the fire.
Smoke and jazz and blackout curtains. East London. Silk black as sin against your skin. Your hand catching his by the wrist before he can disappear back into the war.
A beach. Bright afternoon. Children shrieking at the tide. Orange drinks sweating in glass pitchers while he kneels in the sand with his sleeves rolled up, helping a little girl press shell fragments into the turret of a sandcastle, and you walk toward him laughing, sunlight at your back so fierce it turns you to gold.
Then all of it is gone.
The market snaps back into focus so suddenly it hurts. Sound crashes in—vendors shouting prices, stroller wheels rattling, the violinist sawing away by the fountain. Bucky stumbles backward a step. Across from him, you catch yourself on the edge of the citrus crate, looking exactly as wrecked as he feels.
Your eyes lock on his.
“Oh my God,” you whisper.
Bucky’s heart is pounding hard enough to bruise. “You saw that too.”
It isn’t a question.
In this world, everybody knows about soulmarks and first-flashes. Knows that when you meet the person your soul is tied to, memory can strike like lightning. Some people get a single image. A porch swing. A train platform. A hand in a hospital room. Some get a rush of several lives at once, enough to leave them reeling for days. Most people dream of it when they’re young. Spend adolescence looking at every stranger a little too long. Wondering when it will happen, if it will happen, whether the person on the other end of them is alive or halfway across the planet or just around the corner.
Bucky stopped wondering a long time ago.
HYDRA did not leave much room for destiny.
You swallow. “That was not normal.”
“No,” he says, voice rough. “No, that was… not.”
The lemon vendor is gathering the fallen fruit with admirable indifference, the kind that says he has seen stranger things at this market and will see stranger still. “You two need a minute?” he asks.
You make a sound that could be a laugh or a near-sob. “Maybe five.”
Bucky buys the entire bag of lemons because it feels like the least insane thing he can do, then follows you blindly toward the edge of the square where there’s a row of benches under a sycamore tree. The shade dapples your face when you sit, and for one unmoored second he knows the pattern of it. Not from now. From somewhere else.
He stays standing until you glance up at him and pat the spot beside you with a shaky hand.
“You’re real?” you ask once he sits.
He almost laughs. “I was about to ask you that.”
You rub your palms over your knees as if trying to ground yourself. You’re wearing denim shorts and a white tank top and sunglasses pushed up into your hair, and you look like someone who belongs to summer. Not delicate exactly, but bright. Alive in a way that makes Bucky’s ribs ache. “I know this is a weird question,” you say, “but are you going to tell me your name, or am I just supposed to keep calling you fake-Elvis-groom in my head?”
“Bucky,” he says automatically. Then, because he has spent years relearning how to offer the softer pieces of himself without flinching, he adds, “James. But people call me Bucky.”
Your mouth curves, the first real smile since the vision hit. “I’m glad to know at least one of us looked better in Vegas.”
He huffs out a breath that is almost a laugh. “I looked good.”
“You looked reckless.”
“That too.”
You tell him your name, and the moment it lands between you something in his chest settles with a frightening kind of certainty. Not because fate says so. Not because the universe stamped your names together in some cosmic ledger. Because the sound of it moves through him like recognition. Like stepping into a room he did not realize he had been trying to get back to his whole life.
For a while neither of you says anything. The market hums on around you. Somewhere nearby, a dog sneezes. Someone drops a crate. Bucky stares at the paper sleeve around his cooling coffee and tries to swallow around the strange thickness in his throat.
“I’ve heard of people getting strong first-flashes,” you say at last, quieter now. “But not like that. That was… a lot.”
“A lot,” he agrees.
You tilt your head toward him. “How many do you remember already?”
He thinks of the chapel. The truck. The bed with the lace curtains. The cabin. The club in London. The beach. “Six,” he says. “You?”
“Same.”
A breeze stirs the leaves overhead. It smells like sun-warmed bark and citrus oil.
“I don’t know what to do now,” you admit.
That, strangely, is what steadies him.
Because Bucky knows that feeling. Knows what it is to be handed something overwhelming and not know where to put it. Knows that survival sometimes looks like doing the next smallest thing instead of solving the whole impossible shape at once.
He glances toward the coffee stand, then back at you. “You want to start with coffee?”
You look at him for one long beat, then laugh softly, incredulously, like maybe you can’t believe that is the question that just saved you from bolting. “Yeah,” you say. “I think I do.”
So that is how it begins.
Not with thunder. Not with immediate declarations. Not with some cinematic collision that resolves every loneliness in a heartbeat.
With coffee. With your hand wrapped around a paper cup. With the two of you sitting at the edge of the market, dizzy on each other’s borrowed memories, learning the outlines of the present slowly enough to survive it.
He learns that you come to the farmer’s market most Saturdays too, though usually later. That you always buy flowers you don’t strictly need. That you live twenty minutes away in an apartment with bad plumbing and excellent light. That you work in graphic design and keep odd hours and have a weakness for peaches even when they’re underripe. You learn that he is in therapy. That he likes routine because sometimes routine is the difference between drifting and staying. That his apartment in Brooklyn is small but his windows face west and the light there in the evening is good. That he cooks. That he bakes bread when the weather turns cold because kneading something until it rises feels like a miracle he can participate in.
He does not tell you everything that morning. Not about HYDRA, not about the winter that lasted decades, not about the names he no longer answers to. But you do not push. Maybe because you can feel, in the strange echoing chambers of whatever ties the two of you together, that he has already been dragged open too many times to count.
When you part, it is almost noon.
You both hover awkwardly by the fountain, neither one wanting to be the first to say goodbye.
“So,” you say, shifting the bouquet of daisies and feverfew you bought somewhere along the way into one hand. “Do soulmate rules say we’re supposed to immediately move in together now, or is there like a grace period?”
Bucky smiles before he can stop himself. “I think there’s paperwork.”
“Tragic.”
He glances at the lemons peeking out of your canvas bag. “You still owe me half of these.”
You grin then, bright and quick and devastating. “That sounds fake.”
“Maybe,” he says. “But it’s a reason to see you again.”
Something softens in your expression. “Okay,” you say. “Then I’ll take the fake reason.”
He gives you his number. You type your own into his phone and hand it back, your fingers brushing his again. No flash this time. Just warmth. Just the sharp, impossible awareness of skin.
“All right, Bucky Barnes,” you say. “Text me when you want to split custody of the lemons.”
He watches you walk away.
At the corner, you turn and look back.
The city seems to hold its breath.
Then you smile at him one more time and disappear into the crowd.
Jesus Christ on a plastic sign
The Vegas lifetime comes back first.
Not all at once. In drips. In flashes that catch Bucky at strange moments over the next few days, as if the memory has been jarred loose and is still deciding how much of itself to reveal.
He is washing dishes on Tuesday night when he looks down at a ring of soap suds circling the drain and suddenly he is twenty-six—or thirty, or some other age in some other body—and the air smells like desert heat trapped in asphalt. He can hear slot machines from the lobby below the motel balcony and your laugh from inside the room, where the air conditioner is fighting a losing battle and you are standing in front of the cracked mirror pinning your hair up with bobby pins you bought from the gift shop downstairs.
“Tell me again,” you say, smiling at him through the mirror, “why exactly we’re doing this.”
Because you had met forty-eight hours earlier in line for dollar margaritas and spent the night talking until sunrise on the motel roof. Because you had missed your flight on purpose. Because he had looked at you over watery eggs in a diner the next morning and known, with the same bone-deep certainty he feels now on a Brooklyn Tuesday in a kitchen lit by one warm overhead bulb, that life was sometimes simplest when it was ridiculous.
Because you had asked if he wanted to get married as a joke and then kept grinning at him after he said yes.
“Tax benefits,” he answers solemnly, sitting on the end of the bed in his borrowed suit jacket.
You laugh. “Romantic.”
“Practical.”
“Liar.”
You cross the room barefoot, white dress swishing around your thighs. It is not really a wedding dress. It is a satin slip from a resale shop with a tiny champagne stain at the hem and thin straps that make him forget his own name every time he looks at you. You stop between his knees and hook your fingers in the lapels of his jacket.
“Tell me not to do it,” you whisper. There is laughter in your voice but something trembling under it too, a softness that asks to be taken seriously. “Tell me we’re being insane and I’ll call it off.”
He looks up at you and feels his whole impossible life narrow into one clean, brilliant line. “I think,” he says, resting his hands on your hips, “that if we don’t do this, I’m gonna spend the rest of my life wondering why I let the best idea I ever had walk out of a motel in Vegas.”
Your expression cracks open into something so nakedly happy it almost undoes him.
The chapel is tiny and tacky and perfect. The plastic crucifix is screwed above a velvet curtain backdrop. The fake Elvis officiant keeps winking like he personally invented love. You say your vows through laughter because your bouquet is made of silk roses that smell faintly like dust and the minister’s sideburn is half detached. Bucky can barely get the ring onto your finger because his hands won’t stop shaking.
Afterward, you run into the sun with your shoes in one hand, your new husband’s name in your mouth as if you were born to say it.
On the sidewalk outside the chapel, there’s a sign for a twenty-four-hour wedding package with JESUS CHRIST LOVES YOU printed above a blinking arrow in red bulbs, and the whole thing is so absurd that you double over laughing. Bucky catches you around the waist before you can fall.
“Mrs. Barnes,” he says into your hair, tasting the words.
You lift your face to his, eyes wet from laughing. “That sounds made up.”
“Probably is.”
You kiss him anyway.
In the present, water runs cold over Bucky’s hands in the sink. He blinks hard and finds himself staring at a plate gone slippery in his grip.
He dries his hands, sits on the edge of the counter, and texts you before he can think better of it.
Got another one. Vegas.
The reply comes so fast it is almost a breath.
me too
Then, after a beat:
did we really get married because the line for margaritas was too long and we needed something else to do?
Bucky smiles helplessly at his phone.
we were committed to the bit
You start texting every day after that.
At first it is practical. Did you remember this detail? Did the chapel carpet have stars on it or was that just me? Do you think the fake Elvis was secretly judging us?
But the practical gives way to easy almost before either of you notices. He sends you a picture of a dog in a raincoat outside the bodega. You send him a photo of the flowers you bought even though your rational brain said you didn’t need them. He tells you when therapy goes badly. You tell him when work is making your eyes cross. By Friday, your name on his screen feels less like a surprise and more like the continuation of something that was already in motion long before lemons hit pavement.
The next Saturday, he finds you at the market before he reaches the citrus stand.
You are standing at the peach table, frowning at a fruit in your hand with the seriousness of someone evaluating a gemstone.
“You know those need another week,” he says.
You glance up and smile in a way that makes his whole body wake up. “I know. I’m being optimistic.”
“Reckless.”
“Wow. You meet one man in Vegas and suddenly he thinks he knows you.”
He laughs, and there is no fear in it this time.
You spend the morning together again. Coffee, bread, flowers. At the tomato stall your shoulder brushes his and warmth skates down his spine, but no memory comes. At the herb table he tucks a stray basil stem behind your ear and your breath catches, but still nothing.
It hits later, when the two of you are leaving the market and pass an old pickup truck parked crooked by the curb, windows down, classic rock spilling tinny from the speakers. You stop dead. So does he.
Your head turns toward him.
His chest caves in around a heartbeat that is no longer entirely his own.
Winding roads, doing manual drive
In that life, you are eighteen and everything feels enormous.
Summer stretches in front of you like a dare. The town is small enough to suffocate if you stay still too long, so you never do. Bucky has a beat-up blue truck with a sticky clutch and a radio that only works when you slap the dashboard in exactly the right place. He teaches you how to drive manual in the abandoned church parking lot at the edge of town, laughing every time the engine stalls because you keep popping the clutch too fast.
“You’re mean,” you tell him, gripping the steering wheel.
“I’m helpful.”
“You’re laughing at me.”
“Because you cuss like my grandpa.”
You cut him a glare so ineffective it makes him grin wider. He reaches across the bench seat to guide your hand to the gearshift, his palm warm over your knuckles.
“Slow,” he says. “Feel it catch. Don’t force it.”
Outside, cicadas scream in the heat. The sun is dropping behind the trees, turning the windshield gold.
You try again. This time the truck lurches, shudders, then rolls forward smooth as breath.
“Oh my God,” you say, startled into laughter. “I did it.”
Bucky looks at you the way boys in movies are always supposed to look but almost never do in real life—like the sight of you happy is enough to rearrange his whole future. “Yeah,” he says softly. “You did.”
Once you know how, you drive everywhere with no destination at all. Back roads. County lines. Winding stretches of blacktop between soybean fields and creeks and gas stations with flickering signs. You drive because gas is cheap and the cab of the truck is a world no one else can enter. You drive because Bucky’s knee pressed against yours feels better than anything either of you have a name for yet. You drive because being young and in love can make movement feel holy.
Sometimes you pull over on the shoulder just to watch the sky bruise purple over the fields. Sometimes you kiss at red lights until the truck behind you honks. Sometimes you park at the overlook above the quarry and share a bag of gas station peanuts while Bucky tells you all the places he wants to see one day, voice gone soft with wanting.
“Anywhere specific?” you ask.
He shrugs one shoulder. “As long as you’re there.”
You laugh because you think he is teasing. Then you look at him and realize he is not.
The air changes.
He reaches up, pushes a strand of hair behind your ear with trembling fingers. “I know we’re eighteen,” he says, trying for casual and failing spectacularly. “I know people say that means we don’t know anything. But I know this.”
Your breath catches.
Behind you, the truck ticks and cools in the dusk.
“I know,” he says again, “that I could drive with you forever and never get tired of the road.”
Then he kisses you, and the whole wide summer tilts.
The memory drops away while a bus sighs to the curb and someone nearby curses over a jammed stroller wheel.
You are breathing hard. So is Bucky.
“That one hurt,” you say quietly.
He knows what you mean. Not because it was bad. Because it was good in the simple devastating way only youth can be. Because watching some other version of yourself love with that much unguarded certainty feels like pressing a bruise you didn’t know you had.
“You drove stick,” he says.
“I was bad at it.”
“You were terrible.”
You laugh then, startled and watery, and he thinks he would do almost anything to keep hearing that sound.
There is a diner half a block away with cracked vinyl booths and a waitress who calls everyone honey. He nods toward it. “Come on.”
“Is this where we process our cosmic psychic episodes now?”
“Pancakes seem medically necessary.”
So you sit across from each other in a booth smelling faintly of syrup and coffee grounds while the waitress tops off your mugs and pretends not to notice that the two of you keep staring. The market bag rests by Bucky’s boots. Your flowers lie across the seat beside you like a witness.
“You ever think about what it means?” you ask after a while.
He traces a thumb over the seam of his coffee cup. “The past lives?”
“The soulmate thing. Any of it.” Your gaze is steady on his. “Like… are we supposed to just trust that because we loved each other before, we automatically will now?”
Bucky is quiet for so long, the waitress comes by to ask if he wants more bacon.
When she leaves, he exhales. “I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I think maybe it’d scare me if it worked like that.”
You nod once. “Me too.”
Because obligation is not love. Because destiny without choice starts to look too much like a cage.
Bucky leans forward, forearms on the table. “I don’t want this to be automatic,” he says, surprising himself with the urgency in his own voice. “I don’t want you because of… cosmic paperwork.” Your mouth twitches at that. He presses on. “I want to know you. Now. Here. I want whatever this is to be because we choose it.”
Something in your face softens so completely it leaves him winded.
“Okay,” you say.
“Okay?”
“Okay,” you repeat. “Then we do it the hard way.”
His mouth curves. “Dating?”
“Scandalous, I know.”
He looks at you across the table, sunlight striping the booth through the blinds, and feels a piece of his life click gently into place.
“Yeah,” he says. “Dating.”
The smile you give him then follows him home and waits with him through the week and sits with him at the edge of sleep. It is still there when he picks you up for your first actual date on Thursday, when you buzz him into your apartment building wearing jeans and a green top that makes your eyes look unfair, when he spends ten whole seconds forgetting why he came.
You cook together in his kitchen because restaurants feel like too much too soon. Lemon chicken. Roasted potatoes. Salad with too much parmesan because you insist there is no such thing.
It is simple. It is easy in the kind of way Bucky once would have distrusted on principle. You move around his kitchen as if you’ve already learned its shape. You lean against the counter and steal bites from the pan. You laugh when he pretends to guard the sauce from you and do not look startled when he laughs back.
After dinner, you help him wash dishes. After dishes, you stand by the open window drinking wine while the city breathes warm and loud below.
“I had a nice time,” you say, glancing at him over the rim of your glass.
His pulse kicks. “Good.”
“I’m serious. For a man who hoards lemons as a manipulation tactic, you clean up pretty well.”
He snorts. “I’ll put that on my dating profile.”
“You should. Honest branding.”
He smiles, and you smile back, and the air between you changes.
It is not sudden. Not violent. Just the slow, unmistakable tightening of a thread.
He sets his glass down first.
You do the same.
When he steps closer, you do not move away.
“Can I kiss you?” he asks, because in every life he has ever loved you there has been want in it, but in this one he wants the shape of your yes more than he wants air.
Your eyes go soft. “Please.”
He kisses you carefully at first, because he is not eighteen in a truck anymore and he is not some reckless fool in Vegas with rings in his pocket and a grin too wide for his face. He is a man who has taken years to learn how to touch gently. Who knows what damage carelessness can do.
But then your hand lifts to his cheek and your mouth opens beneath his and the careful part of him turns molten.
The flash hits so hard he breaks the kiss with a gasp.
You are hit by it too. He sees it in the way your pupils blow wide, the way your hand clutches the front of his shirt.
“Oh,” you breathe.
The apartment falls away.
Early nights in white sheets with lace curtains
The room is small and gold with lamplight.
In that life, you have been married for six hours.
Your shoes are by the door. Your veil lies in a pearly heap over the chair back. Somewhere downstairs the last of the wedding guests are still laughing over cake and champagne, but up here the inn is quiet except for the tick of rain against the lace-curtained window and your own uneven breathing.
You stand with your back to Bucky near the bed, fingers trembling where they rest at your throat. The silk of your nightdress skims the backs of your knees. Your wedding band glints like a promise.
He has never seen anything more beautiful.
You are not delicate. Nor candlelight that makes you look like something painted. You are real in all the ways that matter most—nervous and wanting and trying to be brave.
You glance at him over your shoulder, and the vulnerability in your face brings him to his knees faster than reverence ever could.
“We don’t have to,” he says softly.
Your brows draw together. “I want to.”
“I know.” He steps closer, slow enough to stop if you need it. “But I want you to know we don’t have to do anything tonight except be married.”
Something in you loosens. Relief. Love. A tenderness so intense it almost aches to look at.
“I want to be married,” you whisper.
He smiles, cupping your jaw. “You already are.”
“No,” you say, eyes luminous. “I mean like this. Here. With you.” Your breath shakes. “I want tonight.”
He kisses you then, gentle enough to ask, deep enough to answer.
The nightdress slips from your shoulders a little at a time. He learns your skin by lamplight and fingertips, by the soft sounds you make when he touches somewhere that matters, by the way you cling to him when pleasure finally starts to outrun nerves. The white sheets twist around your legs. The lace curtains stir in the open window. Rain cools the room, but your bodies are all heat.
You are not shy for long.
He kisses his way down the column of your throat, your collarbones, the slope of your breast. Your fingers knot in his hair when his mouth finds your nipple and he sucks gently, then harder at the sound that tears from you. By the time he lowers you onto the bed your hair is loose around your shoulders and your face is flushed and he is so hard it hurts.
“Bucky,” you whisper, reaching for him.
“Tell me what you need.”
You laugh softly, dazed with wanting. “You. Obviously.”
He smiles against your mouth, then works two fingers between your thighs and nearly loses his mind at how wet you are for him already. Your hips jerk. Your eyes flutter shut.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “There you go.”
He takes his time because he can. Because there is no war waiting outside this room, no clock to race. Because after the vows and the music and the endless hands grabbing at you all day, he wants this moment to belong only to the two of you. He strokes you until your body learns the shape of pleasure under his hands. He brings you apart once with his fingers, your back arching off the bed, then again with his mouth until you are clutching the sheets and crying his name into the rain-soft dark.
When he finally settles between your thighs, braced on one forearm, your gaze on his is wrecked and certain all at once.
“You still sure?” he asks, voice gone rough as gravel.
You wrap a hand around the back of his neck and pull him down until your foreheads touch. “I have never been more sure of anything.”
He pushes into you slowly, giving you every inch with a care that feels like worship. The stretch of you around him steals the breath from his lungs. Your mouth opens on a gasp. He stills.
“Okay?” he whispers.
You nod, biting your lip. “Move.”
So he does.
Slow at first. Then deeper when your nails dig into his shoulders and you lift to meet him. The bed creaks softly. Rain taps the window. He kisses you whenever your face crumples with feeling, every thrust turning more desperate as your body opens for him. You cling to him, legs wrapped around his hips, whispering his name like a secret you intend to keep forever.
When you come, it is with your mouth against his throat and tears bright at the corners of your eyes.
He follows with his forehead pressed to yours, his whole body shaking with it.
Afterward, you lie tangled in white sheets gone warm and wrinkled around you, the lace curtains stirring like breath. He draws lazy circles over your stomach while you trace the line of his mouth with one sleepy fingertip.
“This counts as a successful wedding night,” you murmur.
He laughs softly. “Good. I was hoping.”
You turn into him, already half asleep. “Anywhere is home,” you whisper, the words blurred at the edges with exhaustion, “if you’re in the bed.”
He never forgets them.
When the memory releases you both, Bucky is still standing in his apartment with his chest heaving and your hands fisted in his shirt.
The kitchen light is too bright. The city outside the window too loud. He can taste you without ever having had you in this life.
Your face is flushed all the way down your neck.
“Well,” you say after a stunned second, voice frayed. “That was wildly inconvenient timing.”
He laughs once, brokenly, because if he does not laugh he might combust.
“You okay?” he asks.
Your gaze lifts to his, honest and heated. “Ask me in five minutes.”
He brushes his knuckles over your cheek, a touch so careful it is almost absurd after what you both just saw. “I mean it.”
“I know.” Your hand slides down to cover his where it rests against your face. “Yeah. I’m okay. A little overwhelmed. A lot turned on. But okay.”
Heat hits him hard and immediate. He closes his eyes for a second.
You laugh softly. “Right. Sorry. That was—”
“Don’t apologize.”
When he opens his eyes again, your expression has gentled. “Bucky.”
He knows what you are asking. Not just whether he wants you. That is almost insultingly obvious. You are asking whether he can separate memory from present. Whether he can stand in this kitchen and want what is in front of him without letting the weight of every before crush what could be now.
He answers by leaning down and resting his forehead against yours.
“I want this,” he says quietly. “But I want our first time in this life to be ours.”
Your breath leaves you in a rush. So does some tightness in his chest he hadn’t fully realized he was carrying.
“Okay,” you whisper.
He kisses you once more, soft and lingering. Then he walks you home because if you stay the night he is not sure either of you will survive your own restraint, and because there is something holy in wanting badly and still choosing patience.
At your door, you touch his wrist before he can step back.
“For the record,” you murmur, eyes warm, “that other us had very good taste.”
He grins helplessly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I get it now.”
Then you kiss him quick and disappear inside with a smile that haunts him for days.
The weeks that follow feel like being built from the inside out.
The flashbacks do not stop, but they become less like ambushes and more like weather—still sudden, still powerful, but no longer catastrophic. A scent, a sound, a patch of light can call one up. Sometimes you text each other in the middle of the workday with fragments: did you remember the red truck in the mountain life had one broken taillight? or I think Bucharest-you stole that robe from the hotel. Sometimes a memory arrives whole when you are together and leaves both of you laughing or aching or red-faced in its wake.
In between, you date.
Real dates. Present-tense ones.
You go to a bookstore in Cobble Hill and accidentally spend two hours arguing about whether people who dog-ear paperbacks can be trusted. You sit in the park eating takeout and watch a wedding party take photos under the arch. You make pasta in your kitchen and burn the garlic because you are too busy kissing against the fridge. You let him meet your friends, who like him immediately and try not to look too smug about it. He tells Sam about you over beers and gets stared at for a full ten seconds before Sam breaks into the kind of grin that means Bucky will never hear the end of this.
And slowly, because slowness is another name for mercy, you get used to the fact of each other.
One night in late July, you fall asleep on Bucky’s couch halfway through a movie. Your head ends up in his lap, your bare feet tucked under his thigh, the credits rolling blue light over the room. He does not move for an hour because the weight of you there feels too precious to disturb.
When you wake, drowsy and disoriented, you blink up at him and smile.
“There you are,” he says before he can stop himself.
The words do something strange to the air.
You sit up slowly, blanket slipping down your shoulders. “What?”
He swallows. “Nothing. I just—”
But then the memory comes, not violent this time. Gentle as smoke.
You see it in each other’s faces as it arrives.
Sleepyhead ’cause all the fucking foxes kept me awake last night
The cabin is barely more than one room and a stubborn prayer.
In that life, winter has a vendetta against you. The land is raw and half-finished around you—trees felled and stacked, fields only partly cleared, the nearest neighbors hours away by horse. Everything aches. Your hands, your backs, your hope.
And still, you build.
By day Bucky swings an axe until his shoulders burn and your tiny patch of earth starts, slowly, to look like something that might feed you come spring. By day you mend, cook, scrub, carry water, keep accounts in a little ledger with cramped neat writing, and somehow still find the energy to laugh when the hen gets loose again and wreaks havoc under the table.
By night you sit by the fire mending his shirts while he carves handles for tools and the baby—your daughter, round-cheeked and solemn—sleeps in a cradle made from wood Bucky planed himself.
It is not easy. God, it is not easy. There are weeks when the roof leaks and the wind gets through the chinks in the walls and your flour goes sour and the loneliness of so much open land makes your chest feel flayed raw. There are days Bucky comes in from the field looking so worn you have to bite the inside of your cheek not to cry.
But there is you. There is him. There is the little sleeping weight of your child and the fire and the bed you built with your own hands.
Sometimes that is enough to make hardship look almost like devotion.
One night in early autumn, the foxes scream outside the cabin so long and loud that neither of you gets any real sleep. By dawn you are cross and bleary-eyed, hair half falling from its braid as you stand over the hearth trying to stir cornmeal mush that refuses to thicken.
“Sleepyhead,” Bucky says softly when he comes up behind you.
You elbow him weakly. “I’ll kill you.”
He laughs into your hair and wraps his arms around your waist anyway, his chin settling on your shoulder. Outside, the new fence leans and the world is still cold and demanding. Inside, his body is warm all along your back.
“We’re doing it,” he murmurs after a while.
You blink at the pot. “Doing what?”
“Building it.” He turns his face into your temple. “A life.”
The words are simple. They hit with the force of revelation.
You tip your head back against his shoulder and close your eyes. In the other room your daughter stirs. The foxes have gone quiet. Morning light pushes pale and stubborn through the little window above the table.
“We are,” you whisper.
He kisses your cheek. “Told you I’d build you something.”
You smile, tired and full to aching. “You built me everything.”
The memory fades with the warm dim glow of Bucky’s living room around you.
You are still on his couch, the television a muted wash of menu screens no one bothered to turn off. For a while neither of you says anything.
Then you reach out and lace your fingers through his.
“That one felt different,” you say.
He nods. “Yeah.”
Not youthful. Not fevered. Not all heat and spark and want. That life had been built plank by plank. Through work. Through weather. Through choosing each other when the choosing was made of practical things—fences, soup, babies, roofs, morning fires.
It lands in him heavier than some of the others. Maybe because recovery has taught him what it means to build anything worth having by hand.
“I liked them,” you say quietly. “That version of us.”
He rubs his thumb over your knuckles. “Me too.”
You glance around his apartment then, at the bookshelf he assembled crooked and fixed himself, at the herb pot on the windowsill, at the loaf of bread cooling under a dish towel on the counter.
“You’re doing it too, you know,” you murmur.
He looks at you. “Doing what?”
“Building a life.”
The thing in his chest, scarred and careful and too often braced for loss, goes very still.
You squeeze his hand. “It’s a good one.”
He kisses you then because there is no other answer big enough.
By August, you keep a toothbrush at his place.
By September, there is a sweater of yours folded over the back of one of his dining chairs, two hair ties on his bathroom sink, a half-used bottle of your fancy conditioner in his shower that he is under strict orders not to touch. None of it is dramatic. None of it is announced. The shape of your presence simply grows until it feels absurd to remember the apartment before it.
The flash that takes you next comes in early October, on a rainy Thursday when you duck with him into a jazz bar in the West Village to escape a downpour.
The room is all amber light and low ceilings and cigarette-scarred booths preserved from another era. A singer in a black dress stands by the piano, crooning into a microphone. Bucky goes still before you even make it to the bar.
You know before the memory hits what it will be.
The note hangs in the air.
Then London rushes in.
late nights in black silk in east london
The war has made everything look dimmer around the edges.
Bucky is young in the way only war can make a man young—old enough to be exhausted by it, young enough to still be surprised by beauty. He is stationed overseas for too long in a city stitched with blackout curtains and ration books and the bruise-colored exhaustion of people trying very hard to act as if life is still ordinary.
Then one wet December night, a fellow soldier drags him down a narrow stairwell off an alley in East London and the whole world changes shape.
The club is hidden beneath a tailor’s shop with no sign out front. Music seeps through the floorboards before the door even opens. Inside, the room glows low and gold around the edges, tables crowded close, voices pitched just above the band. Women in silk and men in uniform and civilians with danger in their smiles. Someone is laughing at the bar like the war has never existed. Someone else is dancing with one shoe off.
And there you are.
You should not stick out. You’re not center stage or demanding attention. You’re leaning one hip against the bar in black silk gloves and a slip dress that gleams when you move, listening to the pianist with your head tilted slightly as if you know a secret about the song.
Bucky sees you and forgets how war works.
Maybe he forgets how breathing works too.
“Careful,” his friend mutters, following his line of sight. “That one looks expensive.”
Bucky barely hears him.
When you look over and catch him staring, you smile. Not coy. Curious, amused, entirely too direct. Then you lift your glass in a tiny salute.
He is doomed.
Later, after he has found enough courage or foolishness to cross the room, you tell him your brother runs supplies out of the docks and your mother thinks this place is scandalous and your favorite thing in the world is men who look like they’d fall apart if a woman in black silk talked to them too long.
“I am not falling apart,” he says, already half gone.
You laugh, low and delighted. “No? That’s a shame. You’d be awfully handsome doing it.”
You dance with him before midnight. Then again after. The band slows, the room blurs, and you fit against him so easily it feels less like meeting and more like remembering a step he somehow learned before birth.
Outside, the rain has stopped. The alley smells like wet brick and smoke.
“Are you always this easy?” you ask when he walks you to the corner.
“Only in London.”
“Convenient.”
You stop beneath a streetlamp draped in wartime dimming paint. Your lipstick has worn soft at the edges. His gloves are damp. Somewhere far off, a siren starts and then dies.
“I don’t know how long I’m here,” he says, because war steals the illusion of endless time from a man pretty quick.
You look at him with that same level, fearless steadiness you will carry in every life. “Then don’t waste the nights you’ve got.”
So he doesn’t.
He spends every free hour he can find with you in that black silk East London life. Dancing in hidden clubs. Eating chips from newspaper parcels by the river. Kissing in doorways while the city holds its breath between bombings. Falling in love so fast it would look irresponsible to anyone not living under the same shadow.
On his last night before shipping out again, this time to Bucharest, he finds you in the club after closing, curled barefoot on the stage in your black dress with your knees drawn up, humming to yourself while the pianist smokes by the door.
He sits beside you. The stage creaks.
You do not ask him if he is leaving. You already know.
For a long moment you just lean into him shoulder to shoulder, breathing in the dark.
Then you take his hand and lace your fingers with his as if you have always had the right.
“I hate war,” you say flatly.
“Yeah.”
“I hate that it teaches people to love in a hurry.”
He turns to look at you, but your face is tipped toward the empty room. “Maybe,” he says after a while, “it just teaches people not to waste time pretending they don’t.”
That makes you smile a little, though your eyes shine.
When you finally kiss him, it feels like grief and promise all tangled together.
“I’d have found you anyway,” you whisper against his mouth.
He believes you.
Presently, the jazz bar swims back around you in amber and brass.
Your hand is flat over your heart. Bucky is gripping the edge of the bar hard enough his knuckles ache.
“You were terrifying in that one,” he murmurs.
You blink at him. “Terrifying?”
“You had me done in about twelve seconds.”
Your laugh spills out warm and bright enough to make nearby heads turn. “Good.”
He stares at you, at the woman in front of him and the woman in black silk and the impossible thread between them, and something old in him loosens. That London memory is the first one that brushes directly up against the era he remembers in his bones. The first one that lets him feel, without the cold hand of history around its throat, that he once had youth. Flirtation. A version of himself that existed before damage became the loudest fact in the room.
Later, walking you home under a shared umbrella, he tells you more.
Not everything. Not all at once. But more.
About Brooklyn in the forties. About enlisted men and too much bravado and the way the world sharpened at the edges when war started circling. About the years after, in pieces, with pauses long enough to breathe in between. You listen without interrupting except to ask where it hurts. Not where it happened. Where it hurts. The difference matters so much he nearly stops in the middle of the sidewalk.
At your building, rain dripping from the umbrella’s edges, you cup his face and kiss him like he is something to return to, not something to be rescued.
That night he sleeps six straight hours for the first time in weeks.
The last of the big memories comes in November.
By then, the market has become yours together. Saturday mornings are no longer Bucky’s alone. They are yours in the plural, so natural now he sometimes forgets to be startled by it. Coffee for two. Bread for two. Peaches finally back in season for a heartbeat before the weather turns. Your fingers hooked through one of the canvas bag straps while he carries the heavier side.
At the stall with the glass-bottled lemonades and orange sodas, you reach for a bright neon-orange drink at the same time he does.
The glass knocks against his ring finger.
Sunlight slams through him.
Neon orange drinks on the beach
Salt lives in the walls of that house.
Here, you and Bucky live in a little coastal town where everyone knows everybody’s business and no one minds much as long as you bring enough food to the potluck. The house is white clapboard with a porch swing and chipped blue shutters. Sand collects in the doorway no matter how often you sweep. Wind rattles the windows in winter and smells like sunscreen in summer.
You have children in that life. Three of them.
A girl with your laugh and Bucky’s serious eyes. A boy who climbs everything he’s told not to. A baby still soft at the wrists who rides your hip with one fist full of your shirt.
The beach is five minutes from your front door. On hot afternoons you walk there loaded like pack animals—blankets, towels, snacks, toys, a cooler that bumps against Bucky’s leg every other step, the toddler already whining for the ocean before you’ve even crossed the dune grass.
It is a beautiful chaos. Your favorite kind.
The day memory gives you is bright enough to ache.
The sky is clear blue from edge to edge. Your youngest is asleep under the shade tent with one plump foot sticking free of the blanket. Your son is digging a moat around a sandcastle with all the focus of a man handling explosives. Your daughter, solemn with purpose, is handing Bucky shell fragments one by one so he can decorate the towers properly.
“No, Daddy,” she says with immense patience. “That one goes there.”
Bucky, thirty-something and sun-browned and already half buried in sand because the children have no respect for rank, nods gravely. “My mistake.”
You come down from the boardwalk carrying a tray of neon-orange lemonades in plastic cups, ice clinking. Condensation slicks your fingers. The sun catches on the rims of the cups until they glow like tiny lanterns.
Bucky looks up when your shadow falls across the sand.
Even after years, even with sunscreen on your nose and beach hair whipping your cheeks, he looks at you like there has never been anyone else worth the trouble of sight.
“You’re my favorite person,” he says as you hand him a drink.
You arch a brow. “Even over the tiny tyrants?”
“Depends. Are they giving me lemonade?”
Your daughter takes her cup in both hands and squints up at you. “Mama, Daddy made the castle wrong.”
You laugh. “I’m shocked.”
“It was sabotage,” Bucky says.
The children shout over each other. The baby wakes and starts fussing. A gull swoops dangerously low near the pretzel bag. The tide inches closer. Everything is loud and sandy and sticky and imperfect.
It is paradise.
Later, when the children are collapsing in a sugar crash on towels striped green and white, Bucky stretches out beside you and tugs you down until your head rests on his chest. The ocean hisses and folds itself a few yards away.
“You think,” he says after a while, fingers combing absently through your damp hair, “we’ll ever get tired of this?”
You tip your face up. “The beach?”
“This.”
The life. The family. The ordinary miracle of it.
You can feel the answer in him before he says it. In the steady beat under your ear. In the salt-warmed skin of him. In the children making sleepy, disgruntled sounds nearby because even paradise requires snacks and naps and somebody always getting sunscreen in their eye.
“No,” you say softly. “I don’t think so.”
His mouth brushes your forehead. “Good.”
Because in every lifetime, it turns out, what the two of you build is not grandeur.
It is a table. A bed. A road. A cabin. A dance floor. A beach towel in the sun. A thousand tiny places where love gets to put its shoes by the door and stay awhile.
When the memory loosens its grip, you are back at the market with cold glass sweating in your hand.
You are crying.
So is Bucky, though he only realizes it when you reach up and wipe at his cheek with your thumb.
“That one was rude,” you say thickly.
He laughs through the ache in his throat. “Yeah.”
It isn’t the children, not really. Though that got him. It’s the ordinariness of it. The ease. The way love in that life had settled into the bones of things so thoroughly that joy looked almost plain. A beach day. Lemonade. Sand. A family.
A future.
You look at him with tears still bright in your eyes. “Do you ever think maybe that’s why it keeps happening?”
“What?”
“Us.” You glance down at the bottle in your hand, the impossible orange brightness of it. “Not because we’re destined in some giant dramatic way. Maybe just because every time the universe throws us somewhere new, we keep making the same choice.”
The market blurs around the edges.
Bucky takes the bottle from your hand and sets both your drinks down on the stall so he can hold your face in both palms.
“I think,” he says, voice low and unsteady, “that no matter where I find you, you keep teaching me that a life doesn’t have to be extraordinary to matter.”
You inhale sharply.
He goes on because he has spent too much of his existence losing time, losing names, losing chances to say what needed saying. Because he will not waste this one.
“I loved you in a chapel with a plastic sign. In a truck on back roads. In a bed with lace curtains. In a cabin when we had almost nothing. In London when the whole world was on fire. On a beach with kids climbing all over me and sand in places there should never be sand.” Your mouth trembles around a laugh. His thumbs catch the tears on your cheeks. “And every time, it wasn’t because things were perfect. It was because it was you.”
Your hand covers one of his. “Bucky—”
“In this life,” he says, holding your gaze, “I don’t care what fate says. I don’t care what we were before unless it helps me be better to you now. I just…” He exhales, helpless in it. “I just know I am more myself when you’re in the room. And I want to keep choosing that. For however long I get.”
Something breaks open in your face.
Then you are kissing him in the middle of the farmer’s market, November wind cold around your ears and strangers surely staring and lemons probably within a three-yard radius somehow, and Bucky does not care about any of it.
When you finally pull back, you rest your forehead to his and laugh wetly.
“You took forever to say that,” you whisper.
He blinks. “I did?”
“Yes.” You kiss him once, quick and smiling. “It’s okay. I was going to let you.”
That night you come home with him.
Home, because that is what it is now no matter how recently he learned to say it.
The apartment smells like the rosemary chicken you cooked together and the bread he baked that morning and the cold air that followed you in when he opened the door. Your overnight bag sits by the couch. Your laughter is still in the walls from where you nearly dropped the oranges while making cocktails because he kissed your neck and ruined your concentration on purpose.
There are no visions this time.
No past lives pouring through the cracks.
Just the two of you in the warm gold hush of his bedroom, lamplight soft on the sheets, your sweater slipping from one shoulder as you sit on the edge of the mattress and look up at him.
“This is ours,” you say quietly.
He nods. “Yeah.”
You reach for him.
The first time you make love in this life is not a reenactment of any before. There are echoes, maybe. The same reverence. The same hunger braided with tenderness. But this is its own living thing, shaped by who you are now—older in different ways, scarred in different places, more careful and more certain all at once.
He undresses you slowly, like unwrapping something he intends to keep. You do the same for him, kissing each mark on his body as if introducing yourself to every chapter. When your fingers brush the long scars at his shoulder and side, you do not hesitate. You just look at him for permission and then kiss them too.
His throat goes tight.
On the bed, he takes his time. He is afraid this time, rather he wants to feel every second of being chosen with full knowledge. Your skin under his mouth. Your breath hitching when he drags his thumb over your clit. The way you smile against his lips when he says your name like a marvel. He works you open with his hands first, then his mouth, until you are clutching the sheets and half laughing, half sobbing because pleasure in this body, in this life, feels new and familiar all at once.
“Bucky,” you whisper when he comes back up over you, eyes dark and wrecked.
“I’ve got you.”
You nod, hands framing his face. “I know.”
When he pushes into you, slow and careful, your mouths are open against each other. He feels your body welcome him in inch by inch, feels your legs tighten around his hips, feels the tremor that runs through you when he finally settles deep. It is overwhelming in the simplest way. Not because of memory. Because of presence. Because you are here. Because he is too.
He moves. You move with him.
Outside, the city keeps being itself. A siren in the distance. Somebody laughing on the street. Heat clanking faintly through old pipes. Inside, his bedroom narrows to breath and skin and the soft wreck of your voice. You scratch lightly through his hair and murmur yes against his mouth and he nearly comes from the sound alone. He holds himself back long enough to watch the exact moment pleasure overtakes you, the way your eyes go bright and your body arches up into his with a cry he feels all the way to his ribs.
He follows soon after, buried deep, forehead pressed to yours, your names tangled together in the dark.
Afterward you lie under the sheets while the room cools around you. Your head rests on his chest. His hand drifts up and down your bare spine. The curtains are plain cotton, not lace. The sheets are soft gray, not white. The city outside is Brooklyn and not some inn in another century. It does not matter.
You draw lazy circles over his sternum.
“You know,” you murmur sleepily, “I think I liked every version of you.”
His fingers still for a second. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” You tilt your chin to look at him. “But this one might be my favorite.”
Emotion catches him so hard it almost hurts.
He bends and kisses your forehead because if he tries to speak right then, he will probably embarrass himself beyond repair.
Months later, when winter gives way to spring and then, at last, to summer again, Saturday morning finds the two of you at the farmer’s market under the same green-striped awnings where everything began.
Bucky has two coffees in a cardboard carrier. You have a bouquet of sunflowers tucked under one arm. The bread guy waves. The peach stand is finally, gloriously in season. The lemon vendor clocks you both and grins like he has been expecting to see how this turns out.
“Need a bag today?” he asks.
You glance at Bucky. Bucky glances at you.
Then, smiling, you both reach for the same lemon on purpose.
No flash comes.
There is no need.
Your fingers lace together instead, easy as breath.
The square is bright with morning. The violinist by the fountain is playing something warm and sweet. Coffee steams between you. Peaches perfume the air. Beside you, your soulmate—your chosen person, your present-tense miracle—squeezes your hand.
And because love, in the end, is often this simple, you walk the market together like you have done it all your life.
Maybe you have.
Maybe you will again.
Either way, the peaches are ripe, the bread is warm, and Bucky Barnes is laughing at something you said with his whole face open to the sun.
It is not a dramatic ending.
It is better.
It is a life.
And every ordinary second of it feels, impossibly, like falling in love again and again.
Summary: Bucky has the biggest crush on you but he can never bring himself to ask you out and he's so done with the teasing everyone else does about it
Warnings: it's very fluffy but also angsty because Bucky thinks very lowly of himself. mutual pining. bucky who yearns. bit of jealously, but does it count if it's because his cat? Everyone say thank you Sam. Bucky who is scared of rejection and who thinks you deserve better than him. patient reader, like omg she's so patient.
Word Count: 2.8k
Present for @buckysdecaflove! Hope you enjoy lovely!
Bucky doesn’t mean for it to happen. It’s just something that sprung up on him the first time he met you. When Steve brought you to Wakanda and introduced you two with this stupid smug grin on his face like he knew exactly what was about to happen.
You put your hand out and looked at him like he was just Bucky. You smiled at him and told him your name. And Bucky’s brain short circuited for a solid ten seconds.
He hates that that was your first impression of him. How he immediately felt hot and struggled to say his own name back. And then he did and he knew that was stupid because Steve had told you about him. You already knew his name.
But it isn’t until years later. Years that hadn’t been years to him because they passed in a blink of an eye for him. When quiet had settled within the Avengers Compound and slow days rolled in.
It wasn’t until the afternoons where you’d had a second cup of coffee at the kitchen island with him while he had his first because he didn’t wake until 11 unless he had to be up. Words barely spoken. The days where you’d casually mention a book you’d read and Bucky would find himself writing it down so he could see what you like. The nights where you’d both be in the gym together and he’d keep an eye on you while you lifted something heavy.
It wasn’t until then did he realize just how fucked he was.
You were the best part of his day without even trying to be and that made it so much worse.
It’s stupid--not you. Him and the way he acts. He’s a grown ass man, not a school boy, his brain shouldn’t just stop working because you smiled or hell even looked at him.
You also deserve better. You don’t deserve rough and bloodied hands. You don’t deserve someone who can barely sleep peacefully through the night. You don’t deserve someone as haunted as him.
What you deserve is the world and he wishes he could give it to you.
~
The smell of coffee brewed earlier this morning lingered in the kitchen and mixed with the faint scent of burnt toast from the bottom of the toaster that no one had gotten around to cleaning out.
Sunlight comes in through just the right - or wrong - angle through the wide windows that make it bounce off the polished floor and shine far too brightly then it has any right to.
There’s stillness in the space, the kind that comes from the quiet, the kind that settles a pounding heart--a kind that makes Nat’s and Yelena’s chatter from the other end of the room nothing more than a buzz that Bucky tunes out easily.
It’s far too early--earlier than Bucky likes to be up, but Sam had other ideas. He walked into his room like he belonged there and dragged Bucky out of bed. Literally. Sam ignored Bucky’s threats and just yanked his blanket, taking Bucky with it with a harsh thud onto the floor and then into the hall.
THANK GOD you didn’t see. He had been in just his boxers after all.
But now Bucky was up and his mind had no intention of falling back asleep after training anytime soon so he settled on breakfast and coffee. Strong coffee that kept Bucky from sneering at Sam.
Who wakes up at seven for sparring!?
Bucky should, at least, be able to push Sam down the stairs.
“Oh, mornin’ Bucky! You’re up early!”
He nearly choked on his cereal at the sound of your angelic voice and nearly got whiplash as his head cranked in your direction, still struggling to get his food down correctly. With his face turning red—it’s just the food, no one can make him admit otherwise.
There’s a smile on your face, it’s sweet and soft, and makes every wall he built crumble immediately. It makes his stomach twist and his heart pound wildly in his ears like a hammer.
Maybe mornings aren’t so bad after all. Not if he gets to see you.
Bucky swallows, thickly, attempting to force down the logs that suddenly formed in his throat, but the action is in vain. His mouth moves but words struggle to roll off his tongue as his gaze follows you while you move towards the fridge.
“Hey.. Mornin’...” He finally manages to say and instantly curses at himself internally.
You pull out the cake Torres made yesterday that somehow survived to today. “You and Sam heading out?” You ask, helping yourself to the last slice.
Bucky looked down at himself, then remembered why you were asking; because of the time. “No. He dragged me outta bed to spar.”
You hummed in response and licked a piece of frosting that got on your finger and Bucky’s brain malfunctioned entirely.
“That sounds like him. Y’know he tried to get me to join too, but I already promised Wanda we’d head to the farmer’s market this morning. We brought back a lot, but I got some plum jar for you, it’s in the pantry. I tasted some myself. Had to make sure it was good before I bought it,” you rambled, rambling that Bucky could listen to for hours.
Instead, he blinked. “You got me jam?” he asked slowly.
You nodded like it was no big deal. “You like plums,” you said so simply, voice muffled from the bite you took, and finally turned, leaning against the counter.
Fuck, you were beautiful. Eyes that marveled the heavens. A smile that made his knees weak. And a touch that was ungodly gentle compared to how you treat your enemies.
He realized you had said something else and were looking at him with a furrowed brow. “Buck? You good?”
He nodded quickly. “Yeah, yeah, fine. Just--. Just tired.”
Your face crinkled in the sweetest way, not pity, but still care. You pushed off the counter, plate in one hand, and moved towards him. “I’ll tell Sam he’s gotta let you get enough sleep.” Your hand fell on his shoulder and even through the fabric of his henley it felt like his skin was on fire. You can’t keep looking at him like that. It’s not fair. Not when he could never be more than just this to you. “And then he can mess with you. After the eight hours.”
He couldn’t take his eyes off yours. “I’m afraid that’s easier said than done,” he murmured.
You snorted. A noise so close to your laugh that he adored. “True,” you mused. “We are Avengers. See you later.” and squeezed his shoulder.
He nodded. “See you later,” he mumbled as he watched you walk away, longing shimmering in his steel blue gaze.
The space is quiet for a solid five seconds after you leave, your footsteps growing dimmer down the hall, and Bucky realized who was still in the room as he turned and saw them.
Nat and Yelena were grinning, eyes swimming with mischief, and it made Bucky’s stomach sink because he knew what was coming.
“Coward,” Natasha muttered in Russian.
And so it had begun.
Bucky sighed, heavily and slumped forward in his seat.
They did this every time.
“Are you going to wipe off your drool from the floor?” Yelena asked.
“Y’know normal people ask out their crushes, not whatever the hell you’re doing,” Nat mused and sipped from her coffee while searching for Bucky’s gaze--something he refused to give either of them.
Bucky wanted to sink into the floor. “Do you have to do this?” he grumbled.
“Talking to a woman isn’t as hard as she makes you.”
Death would be too good of a punishment for Yelena.
The stool squeaked from under Bucky as he prominently stood up, taking his bowl with him.
But Yelena kept going. “It’s literally so easy. It’s ten words. ‘Would you like to go on a date with me?’ Then you eat her out. Every woman wants that. Hey! You always have to let a woman finish before you leave!”
~
It’s game night when someone finds the chance to tease him about you again and it’s Sam this time.
It’s stupid. He shouldn’t even be staring--there shouldn’t be jealous churning in his gut, but there is.
You're sitting on the floor, back brushing against Wanda’s leg, and in your lap is Alpine. You’ve got her face in your hands and you’re giving her soft little pecks as you consistently mutter how Alpine is such a good girl. How Alpine is such a princess.
And Alpine is eating it up. She’s no doubt purring as she just lets it happen. As she just leans into your touch. It’s like Alpine knows Bucky is watching.
He wants that to be his face you’re holding. His face that you’re kissing. But it’s his damn cat.
You’re completely ignoring the chaos around the coffee table. So is he. He isn’t even aware of whose turn it is. He’s just watching you pet Alpine.
It’s strange that Alpine is letting you do this. She hates everyone. She hates Steve for fucks sake. The first time Bucky introduced them after he brought the feline home she tore up Steve’s arm and they had to get the blood stains outta the couch. But for some reason she liked you, basically as much as she liked Bucky.
Bucky never questioned why she liked you. Of course, Alpine has great taste in people. But that still didn’t mean it wasn’t odd to see at first.
“Are you glaring at your own cat?” Sam whispered into his ear as he leaned over.
Bucky’s jaw ticked and he looked away from you. That lasted about five seconds.
“You can’t seriously be jealous.”
He was and it was so stupid.
Alpine was getting to do something Bucky has wanted to do for months. How was that fair?
“You could just go over and talk to her.”
No. Bucky already knows what happens when he tries to do that. He’d much rather become one with the ground than make a foul of himself. Again.
Sam sighed. “Happiness is not this hard. Dude, you walked into a wall because you were too busy staring at her last week and she noticed. You genuinely can not be anymore obvious.”
No. You had seen the aftermath. If you had noticed the fact that he had been staring at you then he would’ve probably jumped out the window.
“Maybe I should give Joaquin 50 bucks to ask her out,” Sam mused.
Bucky’s chin snapped in Sam’s direction.
Sam snorted. “You’re hopeless,” he said bluntly.
Sam wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t. First off, giving someone money to ask someone out. That was an insult to the recipient. Sam wouldn’t do that to you. Not even to get Bucky to finally man up. Right?
~
Bucky didn’t get a wink of sleep last night.
He stared at the ceiling, unable to get the things that played in his mind to go away.
Joaquin showing up to your room with flowers. Joaquin flashing that flirty grin your way. Joaquin taking you out like Bucky wanted to do.
You saying yes.
You wouldn’t say yes, would you? You didn’t like Joaquin like that. But you were single. Bucky knew that. And Joaquin was right there. Joaquin was sweet and… not broken. He wasn’t someone who got woken up in the middle of the night by nightmares that left his skin damp with sweat. He wasn’t someone who looked down and saw blood dripping from his hands.
You deserved the world, not someone who was haunted by his past.
“She wouldn’t, right?” He murmured to the furball curled up against his leg.
Alpine’s eyes opened at the sound of his voice.
“It wouldn’t happen,” he insisted.
But…
“She deserves to be happy.”
His jaw ticked.
“I could make her happy,” he blurted.
He made her smile. He made her laugh. Sometimes so hard she would snort and clutch her stomach. When has Joaquín done that?
But there was so much blood on his hands. So much pain he caused.
“You think I could make her happy?”
Alpine merely only blinked at him before her chin returned to her paws and her tail flicked on top of her pink nose.
Bucky let out a frustrated breath. “I’m not overthinking this. I’m thinking about this the correct amount.”
Alpine didn’t even grace him with a sigh.
“You rub it in just because you can and I know you do.”
This wouldn’t be the first time he’s talked to Alpine about you and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.
“If she says no then we’re moving to a different country, you know that right? I don’t think I could show my face ever again.”
There was a soft thump as he lay back down. “I just need to get over this crush. That’s all.”
~
By eight he’s outside your bedroom, pacing like a madman.
He shouldn’t be out here and he knows he shouldn’t but he is anyway, and every time he turns around to walk away he stops in his tracks and returns to the line he’s been walking back and forth for the past 40 minutes.
Coward.
The word rings in his ears.
He used to be able to do this with ease. He used to crack that smile that always had dames swooning. He used to know what the right thing to say was.
But that was so long ago and you weren’t just anyone. You were his friend. You were someone he trusted. You were someone too good to lose.
He needed to leave. He needed to return to his room before you showed your face and saw him out here.
But the way you looked at him. The way you always relaxed when he was in the room. The way you always fell asleep on missions so quickly when he was there.
He raised his knuckles but drew it back immediately.
Would you like to go on a date with me? Please?
No. No. That sounded desperate.
He was desperate.
Could I take you out on a date?
I think I’m in love with you.
No. Absolutely not.
He can’t do this.
You’re going to reject him. You’re going to rip out his heart and throw it onto the floor.
He’s going to have to move. Maybe running from those bounty hunters in Madripoor would be a better fate than hearing your rejection.
The door opened and Bucky froze like a deer in headlights. Heat instantly flooded across his skin and his clothes felt way too tight.
You startled, not expecting anyone to be standing there, and he cursed internally at himself for making you react like that.
Your hair is a mess and your sleep wear wrinkled.
And the softness that comes with the traces of sleep that lingers erases at the sight of him.
Shit.
You put a hand over your chest. “Oh—Jeez. Don’t—. Hey, Bucky.”
Fuckin’ idiot.
A sheepish look passes over his heated face. “Hey. Hi.”
Hi???
Her brows furrow and she glances over his shoulder for a moment. “Whatcha doing outside my door?” You asked, lightly.
“Nothing. Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
Fuuuuucccckk
“… it’s not nothing,” he admitted quietly.
And you waited. You always waited. You never rushed him, not with anything that wasn’t life or death.
“I had a question.”
Still that patience you always held for him stuck to your face.
He swallowed thickly
“… would you… wouldyougoonadatewithme?” He finally blurted and immediately wanted to become one with the floor.
He didn’t wait for your response, he just looked down.
Something soft swam across your face, it came with the way your heart clenched and stomach twisted in knots.
Your lips ticked up, not amused, just fond. “Could you repeat that?” You asked even though you had heard him.
He took a deep breath as he squeezed his eyes shut and leaned against the doorframe. “Would you go on a date with me?” He asked, forcing the words to roll out slower.
He peered up and realized how flushed you were. How you were looking at him like that. So fondly.
You smiled. “I was waiting for you to ask.”
He blinked. “You knew?”
You nodded. “I suspected and you aren’t exactly the most subtle man about it,” you admitted.
Then that softness melted into something shy and your eyes flickered down. “But I just wanted to make sure you wanted this.” You gestured between them. “That you took the time you needed. I didn’t want to rush you,” you said gently.
He searched for your gaze. “I want this,” he blurted firmly. “I want you.”
You gazed up and tried to fight the smile that threatened to come to your lips. “Tonight?”
He nodded eagerly. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“See you then, Bucky.”
His skin buzzed. His heart hammered. And his stomach twisted in a million different ways. “See you then,” he murmured and quickly turned on his heels, hoping you wouldn’t see the smug smile on his lips and hoping you didn’t see the way he punched the air when he thought he was far enough away.
Omg omg omg, this was so cute and so sweet and just am kicking my feet and squealing. Adorable! 💜
Sidenote: “You always have to let a woman finish before you leave!” Had me nearly cackling in the middle of the night, but also is Yelena wrong? Not at all, that’s my my favourite widow right there. (Sorry I like yelena a lot)
𝑳𝑶𝑽𝑬 𝑨𝑻 𝑭𝑰𝑹𝑺𝑻 𝑩𝑰𝑻𝑬 James “Bucky” Barnes has haunted the world for seven hundred years, cold, heartless and buried since the plague stole his last love. Until you, all warm sunlight and trouble, slammed into his night and woke the monster. Now he’s obsessed. Starving for your scent, your sleep, your soul.
vampire!bucky barnes x fem!reader
word count : 28,5k
warnings 18+ : no use of y/n, somnophilia, oral sex (f recieving), unprotected sex, forced turning, imprisonment against the reader’s will, dddne, graphic violence & gore, brutal murders, dismemberment, skull-crushing, throat-ripping, blood-draining, extreme rough sex (dw there’s soft scenes too), bone-breaking, bruising, bleeding, pain mixed with pleasure during sex, breaking and entering, theft of intimate items, constant surveillance, stalking & obsession, graphic biting, forced blood-drinking, blood-sharing memories, heavy blood kink, murder of the reader’s ex and other men, trauma flashbacks (plague death, war violence), suicidal ideation from bucky, heavy angst and toxic obsessive “love”
author’s note : my BIGGEST thank you goes to the loveliest anon who dropped a vampire!bucky request in my inbox 🫶💞 I’m literally a huge vampire nerd so this + my fave fictional man?? you KNOW I couldn’t keep it a tiny drabble… little heads up before you read… IT’S DARK..... so pls pls read the warnings first and then enjoyyy <33 (and I might be open to writing a pt.2 sooo lmk if you’d want that 👀)
Before the world burned with plague and death, James Buchanan Barnes was the most dangerously handsome bastard in all of plague-shadowed London. At twenty-four, he stood tall and broad-shouldered, with striking steel-blue eyes that could disarm a woman with a single glance, a sharp jawline and an easy, crooked smirk that promised both sin and salvation in the same breath.
His dark hair was tousled from brawls and eager fingers, his body toned hard from years as a mercenary, lean muscle, old battle scars and a swagger so confident it turned heads in every tavern, alehouse and alley from Southwark to Cheapside.
He knew exactly what he was. And he used it without a shred of shame or mercy.
Cocky to the marrow of his bones, sharp-tongued and arrogant as Lucifer himself, Bucky lived as though the world owed him pleasure, coin and willing flesh. By day he sold his sword to the highest bidder. By night he sold his body to any woman bold enough to meet his gaze. Tavern wenches with loud laughs and rough hands, blushing noble daughters sneaking out after curfew, widowed merchants’ wives starved for a man’s touch and painted whores in the stews, he fucked them all. Often two or three in the same night, sometimes all at once.
He never stayed till morning. Never asked their surnames. Never cared.
One humid summer night in a crowded Southwark tavern, he had a fiery red-haired barmaid bent over a stack of ale barrels out back. Her skirts were rucked up around her waist and he was pounding into her so hard the barrels creaked and shifted beneath them. He gripped her hips with calloused hands, lips brushing her ear as he growled low and filthy,
“That’s it, ye greedy little slut… take every thick inch of my cock. Moan louder, lass- let the whole fucking street hear how well I’m ruining this tight, dripping cunt of yers.”
She came with a shaking cry, knees buckling. Bucky laughed darkly, low and wicked and pulled out only to spin her around and shove her to her knees in the dirt.
“Open that pretty mouth,” he ordered, fisting his thick cock. “I’m going to spend down yer throat like the good little cocksucker ye are.”
She obeyed eagerly and he fucked her mouth until he spilled with a satisfied groan.
Two nights later, he found himself in a lavish merchant’s townhouse with twin noble daughters whose father was away on business. The sisters knelt before him in their fine shifts, taking turns sucking his cock while he sat like a king upon their father’s velvet chair. He tangled his fingers in their soft hair, voice low and dripping with filth:
“Look at you two proper little ladies… choking on a lowly mercenary’s cock like common whores in the stews. Share it nicely now- lick my balls while yer sister swallows me down. Good girls. I’m going to fuck both yer tight cunts senseless until ye can’t walk straight on the morrow.”
He took them one after the other on their father’s fine bed, then together, whispering the most depraved things between deep thrusts:
“Does it feel good, feeling yer sister’s slick all over my cock while I’m buried inside ye? Ye like being fucked like cheap sluts, don’t ye?”
The girls moaned and begged for more, and Bucky gave it to them until they were trembling and spent.
Later that same month, he fucked a widowed countess in her own marriage bed, her late husband’s portrait glaring down at them from the wall while he railed her hard from behind. He slapped her ass sharply, leaving a red handprint, and snarled against her ear,
“Bet that cold old bastard never fucked ye like this, did he? Say it, my lady- tell me how much better my thick cock feels stretching this neglected, dripping noble cunt of yers.”
“Better,” she gasped, pushing back against him shamelessly. “So much better- please, harder!”
He laughed, dark and triumphant, and gave her exactly what she begged for.
He never asked. He simply took, with that devastating smirk, those piercing steel-blue eyes and that rough, velvet voice dripping pure sin. Women dropped to their knees the second he crooked a finger and flashed that wicked grin. Word of him spread through the taverns and great houses alike: if you wanted a night you’d never forget, you sought out James Barnes.
To him, life was cheap and fleeting, especially with the dark rumors of a terrible sickness creeping ever closer from the continent. So why not wring every last drop of pleasure from it while he still could? Death was for the weak, the unlucky, the overly cautious. James Buchanan Barnes was none of those things. He felt invincible, already half-immortal in his own mind, a king of fleeting nights and stolen pleasures.
Until the night the plague finally found him in that filthy alley behind the tavern.
James had just finished with a laughing barmaid behind the tavern, still tucking his cock back into his breeches with that signature cocky smirk when the nightmare lunged out of the shadows.
The man was a nobleman once, fine clothes now stained and torn but the plague had rotted him from the inside. Black buboes swelled grotesquely on his neck and groin, his skin slick with fever-sweat and pus. His eyes, however, burned with something far worse than the pestilence. They were mad. Hungry. And his mouth was open, revealing long, sharp fangs glistening with saliva and fresh blood.
Bucky tried to fight.
Even half-drunk and sated, the young mercenary was no easy prey. He swung a heavy fist and caught the creature square in the jaw with a solid crack.
“Get the fuck off me, ye sick bastard!” he snarled, terror spiking through the haze of ale.
The nobleman’s strength was unnatural. He slammed Bucky against the slimy brick wall of the alley with bone-jarring force. The stench of death, decay and rotting flesh filled Bucky’s lungs, making him gag. He kicked wildly, cursed, and clawed at the creature’s rotting face, drawing blood and pus beneath his nails.
“Unhand me, you foul whoreson!”
But the dying vampire was too far gone. With a guttural, inhuman hiss, he struck.
Fangs sank deep into Bucky’s throat.
The pain was immediate and blinding.
James screamed, a raw broken sound that echoed off the narrow alley walls. It felt as though liquid fire had been poured straight into his veins. Every nerve in his body ignited at once. His back arched violently as the venom spread like acid through muscle and bone. He dropped to his knees in the filth and shit of the alley, clawing desperately at his own neck. Hot blood poured between his fingers, soaking his tunic.
“What… what the fuck have ye done to me?!” he gasped, voice cracking with raw terror. “Get off- get off me, ye devil!”
The nobleman collapsed beside him with a grotesque, satisfied smile still twisting his rotting face, finally dead.
Bucky’s vision blurred and doubled. His gums burned as though someone had shoved hot coals into his mouth. New fangs pushed through with agonizing slowness, splitting the flesh, flooding his mouth with the metallic taste of his own blood. His eyes felt like they were boiling in his skull, bloodshot crimson, pupils blown wide with unbearable pain. Every heartbeat slammed against his ribs like a war drum, each one slower, heavier, more labored than the last.
He vomited bile and blood onto the filthy cobblestones, curling into a tight ball as wave after wave of excruciating pain ripped him apart from the inside out. Nothing in his life, no sword wound, no tavern brawl, no brutal fuck had ever come close to this torment.
“I’m dying,” he gasped between screams. “Christ save me… I’m dying…”
Then his heart stopped.
For one terrifying, endless moment there was only silence.
And then a new, monstrous strength flooded his limbs.
The pain crested like a breaking wave and shattered. The fire in his veins cooled into something cold, sharp, and impossibly clear. His senses exploded. He could hear rats skittering through the gutters three streets away. He could smell the fear-sweat and ale on every patron still inside the tavern. He could taste the copper of his own blood like the finest wine he’d ever stolen.
James Buchanan Barnes rose slowly from the filth of the alley a different man.
No longer the cocky mortal who believed himself invincible.
Now he was invincible.
The arrogance did not vanish overnight. It simply twisted into something far colder, darker and infinitely more dangerous. A ravenous hunger gnawed at his insides like a living beast. He staggered out of the alley on unsteady legs, eyes glowing faintly red in the darkness, new fangs aching in his gums. The whole world smelled of blood and opportunity.
For the next three centuries he drifted across Europe like a handsome plague all his own, still devastatingly beautiful, now paired with an immortal predator’s lethal grace. He took lovers by the dozen and left ruin in his wake.
He fucked them hard and mercilessly.
In silk-draped beds of French chateaus, he would take haughty countesses from behind while their husbands slept in the next room. He’d grip their hips hard enough to bruise, pounding into them until they sobbed with pleasure, then sink his fangs into their offered throats as they came. Many begged for it, baring their necks willingly, whispering “Take me, my lord… drink” as he drained them just enough to leave them dizzy and addicted.
In moonlit forests of Germany, he seduced witches who offered their wrists and throats in dark rituals. He’d fuck them against ancient trees or on moss-covered altars, their bare breasts bouncing with every brutal thrust while they chanted his name like a god. He drank from them mid-climax, their blood mixing with their screams of ecstasy as he filled their cunts with his spend.
In the secret royal chambers of Spain and Italy, queens and duchesses summoned him under cover of night. They offered their royal throats like sacred gifts, spreading their legs and begging the beautiful monster to ruin them. He would fuck them on their own thrones or royal beds, merciless and unrelenting, leaving bite marks that they would hide beneath high collars and jewels for weeks.
Even peasant girls in haylofts and smoky inns were not spared. They offered themselves eagerly, wrists, throats, thighs, drawn to his dangerous beauty like moths to flame. He took them roughly against barn walls or on piles of straw, growling filthy promises in their ears as he drove into them:
“That’s it, lass… bare that pretty throat for me. Let me drink while I fuck this tight cunt raw.”
He was never gentle. He fucked like the predator he had become, deep, brutal and possessive. Many women left his bed limping, marked and forever changed, craving the bite of the beautiful devil who had ruined them for mortal men.
And when the hunger demanded more than just sex, he fed.
He drank from wrists held out like offerings, from elegant throats bared in candlelight, from soft inner thighs spread wide beneath him. He never killed them, not unless they deserved it. He left them alive, dazed and addicted, whispering his name in their dreams for years afterward.
Then he vanished before dawn.
No attachments. No feelings. No mercy.
Just blood and pleasure.
He moved from city to city, country to country, leaving a trail of broken hearts, bitten throats and ruined reputations in his wake.
Until the second wave of plague swept through London in 1665… and brought him Dolores.
It was a rain-soaked evening when James first met Dolores.
He was walking the narrow, muddy streets of Cheapside, hood pulled low against the downpour, when a young woman hurried around the corner with a heavy basket of herbs clutched to her chest. She collided directly with him.
She stumbled, nearly dropping her basket. He caught her elbow with gentle, steady hands.
“Forgive me, mistress,” he murmured, voice low and rough. “I was not watching where I-”
Their eyes met.
And she knew.
She saw the faint red glow in his eyes, the unnatural stillness of his body, the way the rain seemed to slide off him differently. She smelled the old death that clung to him like a shadow. Most mortals would have screamed or run.
Dolores only smiled, soft, unafraid, almost tender.
“You’re him,” she whispered, so quietly only he could hear. “The one the shadows speak of. The immortal with the devil’s hunger.”
James froze. For the first time in centuries, he was the one caught off guard.
“And yet ye do not run,” he said, voice low and dangerous, eyes narrowing. “Most women throw themselves at me for the thrill of the monster. They bare their throats and beg to be ruined. Why do you not scream?”
She looked up at him with calm, intelligent eyes, rain dripping from her lashes.
“Because I see more than the monster,” she replied softly. “I see a man who is tired. Lonely. Carrying centuries of sorrow in those beautiful eyes. Tell me, stranger… does the hunger ever let you rest?”
James stared at her, stunned into silence. No one had ever spoken to him like this.
That night, after she invited him into the back room of her father’s apothecary shop under the pretense of selling him a tonic, she offered him something far more precious.
“I know what you are,” she said softly, standing close enough that he could hear her steady heartbeat. “And I am not afraid. If you wish to drink… you may. But only if it brings me pleasure, not pain. I want to know what it feels like to be wanted by something eternal.”
James stared at her, stunned. No one had ever offered themselves to him like this, without fear or mindless lust.
“Dolores,” he breathed, tasting the name like a prayer. “Are you certain? I am no gentle lover. I have ruined women far braver than you.”
She cupped his face with gentle hands, thumbs brushing his cheekbones. “Then be gentle with me, my James. Show me the man behind the hunger. Kiss me first.”
He kissed her slowly, reverently, as if she were the most fragile thing in existence. When she moaned softly into his mouth, he deepened the kiss, tongue sliding against hers while his hands explored her body with aching care.
That same night, in the small room above the shop with rain pattering against the window, he took her virginity.
He laid her down on the narrow bed like she was made of Venetian glass. He kissed every inch of her, slow worshipful kisses down her throat, across her collarbones, over the soft swell of her breasts. When he reached the apex of her thighs, he worshipped her with his mouth until she was trembling and whimpering.
“Easy, my sweet Dot,” he murmured against her slick folds, voice low and tender. “Breathe for me. Let me make it good for you. I want to hear every sound you make.”
He licked her slowly, reverently, sucking gently on her clit until she came with a soft cry, fingers tangled in his hair.
When he finally pushed inside her, he did it so slowly, so carefully, whispering sweet, filthy praises the entire time.
“That’s it, love… breathe. You feel so perfect. So warm and tight around my cock. Such a brave, beautiful girl, taking me so well. Does it hurt?”
“A little,” she gasped, legs wrapping around him. “But don’t stop. I want all of you, James. Please.”
He moved with aching gentleness, rocking into her in slow, deep strokes, one hand cradling her face while the other stroked between her legs.
“You’re doing so well,” he whispered against her lips. “My perfect Dot. Look at you, opening up for a monster like me. I’ve never felt anything like this. Never wanted anyone the way I want you.”
As she neared her peak, he kissed her throat and asked softly, “May I taste you, love? It will feel like pleasure… I swear it on whatever soul I have left.”
“Yes,” she breathed, tilting her head. “Take what you need. I want to feel you.”
He sank his fangs gently into her throat at the exact moment she came. She cried out in ecstasy, not pain, as his venom flooded her veins with liquid pleasure. He drank only a little, just enough to bind her to him while she clenched around his cock, sobbing his name.
“My James… oh God, James… it feels… so good…”
For the first time in three hundred years, the cold, womanizing predator fell in love. Real, terrifying, all-consuming love. Dot became his anchor, his light in an endless night. She made the hunger feel like home. They moved into a small cottage on the edge of the city, hidden behind overgrown gardens. He watched her work by lamplight, head bent over dried herbs and for stolen months he felt almost human again.
He was gentle with her in ways he had never been with anyone. He would fuck her slow and deep on their modest bed, whispering filthy devotion between tender kisses:
“My sweet Dot… so tight, so perfect for me. Look how beautifully you take my cock. I’d burn kingdoms for this cunt, for you.”
She would moan his name like a prayer, fingers buried in his hair, gasping “My James… my James…” as she came apart beneath him, safe in the arms of the monster who had chosen to be gentle for her.
But the plague found her anyway.
It started with a mild fever and a small swelling under her arm. Bucky begged her to stay inside. She insisted on helping the sick in the city “I cannot sit idle while people die, James.” Within days she was burning with fever, black buboes blooming across her neck and groin, coughing up blood.
He took her to the only hospital-like place that would accept plague victims, a filthy overcrowded pesthouse run by overworked physicians and nuns. The air reeked of vinegar, smoke, and rotting flesh. They bled her, applied useless poultices, and prayed over her while she grew weaker. Bucky waited outside in the shadows like an animal, listening to her faint cries through the walls.
When the doctors finally told him there was nothing more they could do “She is in God’s hands now” he snapped. He stole her from the pesthouse that same night, carrying her home in his arms while she shivered and whimpered.
“I’ve got you, Dot. I’m not letting them touch you again.”
Back in their cottage, he took matters into his own hands. Desperate and terrified, he forced his ancient vampire blood down her throat by the cupful. He reopened the bites on his wrists again and again, mixing his blood with herbal tonics she once made, performing every forbidden rite he had learned across three centuries. He even tried to turn her prematurely, sinking his fangs into her throat while she was still semi-conscious, pumping venom and blood into her failing body in a frantic attempt to save her.
It only made everything worse.
His powerful blood clashed violently with the plague already devouring her. The buboes swelled larger and burst. Her fever spiked into delirium. She screamed in agony as her body tore itself apart from the inside, convulsing so hard she bit through her own lip. The vampire venom accelerated the plague’s destruction, turning her gentle decline into a nightmare of pain.
In her final hours she was barely lucid. Bucky climbed into bed with her, cradling her burning body against his chest, rocking her as she gasped for air.
“Stay with me, Dot… please, my love. I can’t do this without you.”
Her eyes fluttered open one last time, bloodshot, fading but full of love. She reached up with a trembling, fever-hot hand and cupped his tear-streaked face.
“My James…” she breathed, voice cracking like glass. “I love you… even the monster. Don’t… don’t blame yourself.”
Then she screamed.
A horrible, soul-shattering scream as another wave of pain ripped through her. She clawed at her own chest and neck, eyes wide with terror and agony, whispering his name like a broken litany until her voice failed. Bucky held her through every convulsion, sobbing blood tears into her sweat-soaked hair, begging, praying, cursing God and himself.
She died just before dawn, limp and cold in the arms of the immortal who had tried everything and only hastened her suffering.
The silence afterward was worse than any scream.
Completely shattered, Bucky remained on the bed where they had been lying together.
Dot was still in his arms, limp and cold against his chest, exactly where she had drawn her last painful breath. He held her tighter, rocking her gently as if that could somehow bring her back. The silence in the small cottage was deafening, broken only by the distant rumble of plague carts outside and the crackling of the dying fire in the hearth.
Tears of blood streamed down his face as he pressed his lips to her forehead one final time.
“I’m sorry, my love,” he whispered, voice hoarse and broken. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you. Forgive me, Dot… forgive your monster.”
With trembling hands, he gently laid her back against the pillows, arranging her hair and pulling the quilt up to her chin like she was only sleeping.
Then he rose.
He moved through the cottage like a man in a nightmare, pouring oil from every lamp and bottle he could find. He soaked the floorboards, the rugs, the curtains, the herbs and dried flowers she had so lovingly collected. He drenched the wooden beams and the table where she used to mix tonics.
When the entire home was saturated in oil, he returned to the bed.
He stood over her for a long moment, memorizing her peaceful face one last time. Then he struck the match.
The flames roared to life with terrifying speed, greedy and hungry, racing across the floor and climbing the walls. Bucky stayed right there beside the bed as the fire reached them, the heat blistering his immortal skin. He watched the flames lick at the quilt, at her hair, at the body of the only woman who had ever truly loved him.
He didn’t move.
He stood in the flames’ glow, the inferno painting the small cottage in violent orange and red, until the roof began to collapse and the entire structure became nothing but a roaring pyre.
The last remnants of the man he used to be, the cocky mercenary, the arrogant lover, the creature who still believed he could be redeemed, died with her in that fire.
When the cottage finally collapsed in on itself with a thunderous crash, Bucky walked out of the burning ruins and into the night.
He never looked back.
After Dolores burned, Bucky wandered the world like a ghost for nearly two hundred and fifty years, feeding in the slums of Paris, hunting through the fog of Victorian London, drifting across continents with no purpose except to dull the ache in his chest.
Then the wars found him.
In 1914, when the world descended into madness, he enlisted under a false name and threw himself into the trenches of World War I. He fought like a shadow, slipping through No Man’s Land at night, ripping out German throats with his bare fangs while artillery shells screamed overhead. The mud, the blood, the endless screams… they felt like penance. He told himself the carnage was justice for every innocent life he’d taken, for failing Dot. He rarely fed on soldiers, only the cruelest officers and rapists among the ranks. The rest of the time he simply endured, letting bullets tear through him, healing slowly, welcoming the pain.
When the war ended in 1918, the emptiness followed him back across the Atlantic.
He moved to Brooklyn in the early 1920s.
New York felt different, loud, restless, alive in a way Europe no longer was. Brooklyn, with its brick row houses, bustling docks and working-class grit, reminded him faintly of the London he once knew. He bought an old warehouse near the waterfront under yet another alias and made it his lair. For a few quiet decades he tried to disappear into the rhythm of the city: working nights on the docks, boxing in smoky gyms, fucking nameless women in speakeasies just to feel something close to warmth.
But peace never lasted.
World War II dragged him back in.
By 1942 he was operating as a covert Allied operative, a ghost soldier who could walk through enemy lines and leave nothing but corpses. In the brutal winter of 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest, everything shattered. A German artillery shell landed too close. The explosion tore his left arm clean off at the shoulder in a spray of blood and bone. Vampire healing tried desperately to close the wound but the shrapnel was too deep, the damage too severe. He lay bleeding in the snow for hours before a secret HYDRA-linked unit found him.
They dragged him to a makeshift lab hidden in the frozen woods. There, while he was half-conscious and roaring in agony, they fused a prototype metal prosthetic to the raw stump, cold steel wired directly into his immortal nervous system. The pain was worse than the turning in that London alley. He screamed until his voice gave out as they bolted the arm into place.
When he finally woke, the arm was part of him, unbreakable, unnaturally strong and freezing to the touch. A permanent scar on the body that had once made women drop to their knees.
After the war ended in 1945, Bucky vanished again.
He returned to Brooklyn, the only place that still felt halfway like home. He kept the same warehouse, later converting it into a hidden penthouse high above the city as the decades passed. The metal arm stayed hidden beneath long sleeves and gloves. He fed only on the worst of humanity, mobsters, rapists, corrupt politicians and fucked to forget, never staying longer than one night.
As the years went on, the world changed… and so did the way people fucked.
In the roaring 1920s, flappers threw themselves at him in smoky speakeasies, lipstick-stained mouths whispering filthy promises while they rode him in dark corners. In the 1950s and 60s, women grew bolder, secretaries, housewives, beatnik girls who wanted danger. They offered their throats and wrists in motel rooms, begging him to bite while they came on his cock. By the 1970s and 80s, the sexual revolution turned everything dirtier. Women took him home and asked him to choke them, slap them, fuck them until they cried, sometimes filthier than he had ever been in his mortal days.
He gave them what they wanted. He fucked them hard and merciless in alleyways, penthouse suites and the backs of cars. He drank from them while they screamed in pleasure, leaving bite marks they would hide under turtlenecks and makeup. But it was never love. Never connection. Just bodies and blood to numb the emptiness.
He was the shift.
Many, many years ago, people fucked mostly for love, for marriage, for heirs. Now they fucked for fun, for thrill, for the sheer dirty pleasure of it and Bucky became their favorite sin. They threw themselves at the tall, silent man with the metal arm and the dangerous eyes, never knowing they were offering themselves to something ancient and monstrous.
Yet no matter how many women he took, how many throats he drank from, how many nights he spent buried in warm, willing bodies… the loneliness never left.
Four hundred more years of numbness stretched ahead of him.
A ghost with fangs, a metal arm that never truly felt like his own, and a heart that hadn’t truly beaten since Dolores died screaming his name.
Until one rainy night in 2026, outside a quiet Brooklyn library, a warm-blooded girl with a sunlight smile literally crashed into him… and everything changed.
You’re running on fumes, a broke stubborn waitress working chaotic double shifts at a loud hipster café by day and a quiet night-shift librarian at an old branch library by night. Your Gothic literature thesis is the only thing that still excites you: tragic monsters, obsessive love and beautiful creatures of the night that always end up destroying what they crave most. You laugh at how dramatic it all sounds.
It’s a brutal, pouring rainy night when fate decides to be cruel.
You’re leaving the library well past midnight, arms overloaded with books and thesis notes, your cheap umbrella doing almost nothing against the downpour. Head down, coffee in hand, you hurry down the slick stone steps and slam directly into a solid wall of muscle.
Your coffee cup flies out of your hand, splashing across his dark coat. Your umbrella spins wildly into the street. You stumble backward, nearly slipping on the wet pavement.
“Shit- I’m so sorry!” you blurt, face burning with embarrassment. “I wasn’t watching where I was going, I-”
Before you can finish, a large, surprisingly gentle hand catches your elbow, steadying you with effortless strength.
“Easy there, doll,” a low, rough voice murmurs, laced with an old-fashioned accent that doesn’t belong in modern Brooklyn. “You alright? That was my fault. Should’ve been paying better attention.”
You finally look up.
Holy fuck.
He’s stunning. Tall, broad-shouldered, with steel-blue eyes that seem to cut straight through you, sharp jawline and dark hair dripping from the rain. Danger rolls off him in waves, but his touch is careful, almost reverent.
He releases your elbow only to bend down and retrieve your soaked umbrella from the gutter, shaking the water off before handing it back to you.
You’re still flustered. “No, really, it was me. I’m such a klutz when I’m tired. Here- let me get you some napkins or something-”
He’s already shrugging off his long, clearly expensive black coat. Before you can protest, he drapes it over your shoulders. It’s warm from his body and smells like aged leather, rain and something darkly rich, like old wine and copper.
Your eyes go wide in panic.
“Wait- no, no, no! I can’t take this!” You immediately start shrugging it off. “This looks really expensive. How am I supposed to give it back to you? I don’t even know your name. I can’t just walk off with your coat like some weirdo-”
He places a gentle but firm hand on your shoulder, stopping you from removing it. His eyes soften, the corner of his mouth twitching into the faintest crooked smirk.
“Keep it,” he says, voice low and smooth. “You’re soaked to the bone, doll. You’ll catch your death walking home like that. I insist.”
“But it’s yours,” you insist, cheeks burning hotter. “What if I ruin it? Or lose it? Seriously, I feel terrible. At least let me get your number or something so I can return it properly-”
He shakes his head, that ghost of a smirk deepening. “It’s just a coat. I have others. You, on the other hand, look like you’ve had a long night. Keep it. Wear it home. I’ll survive.”
You clutch the coat tighter despite yourself, the fabric heavy and comforting against the chill. No one in this city is ever this… chivalrous. Guys your age would’ve already grumbled and walked away. This man is looking at you like your comfort actually matters to him.
“You’re really sure?” you ask softly, still hesitant.
“Positive,” he replies, eyes never leaving yours. “Besides… it looks better on you anyway.”
Your stomach flips. The way he says it, quiet, sincere, a little rough, makes heat creep up your neck.
You manage a flustered, stubborn little smile. “Thank you… really. Most people in this city would’ve just cursed me out and kept walking. You’re… surprisingly nice.”
Something flickers across his face, pain, surprise, hunger but it’s gone in a heartbeat. He hasn’t been called nice in over four hundred years. He hasn’t been looked at like a person since Dolores whispered “my James” with her last breath.
“You stay safe getting home,” he says quietly, almost like a command wrapped in velvet. “And maybe… watch your step next time, doll.”
You nod, cheeks still warm. “Yeah… I will. Goodnight.”
You give him one last awkward little wave and start walking, his coat wrapped around you like a shield against the rain. You can feel his eyes on your back the entire way down the block.
Bucky stands motionless in the downpour, fists clenched at his sides, metal arm whirring quietly under his Henley. Your scent, warm vanilla, rain and that sweet, pulsing blood underneath has already burrowed into his lungs like a drug. His fangs throb painfully behind his lips. He has to fight every instinct not to follow you right now and drag you into the nearest alley.
He waits until you’ve turned the corner.
Then he moves.
Silent as death, he follows you home.
Every step. Every turn. Close enough to protect you from anyone who might look at you too long. Far enough that you never notice the shadow trailing behind you.
By the time you reach your apartment building, he’s already memorized which window is yours.
He stands across the street in the rain, eyes glowing faintly red in the dark, heart dead for centuries cracking wide open with dangerous, all-consuming obsession.
He already knows one simple truth:
He’s never letting you go.
Bucky waited in the shadows across the street like a predator who had already decided his prey belonged to him.
He stood motionless in the pouring rain for nearly two hours, eyes fixed on your apartment window on the third floor. When the last light finally clicked off at 2:47 am, something dark and hungry uncoiled inside his chest.
But he didn’t move right away.
Instead, he stayed where he was, hidden in the darkness between two buildings and watched.
You had left the curtains open.
Through the rain-streaked glass, he saw you clearly. You were still wearing his long black coat. You shrugged it off your shoulders and held it up to your face, pressing your nose into the collar. Your eyes closed as you breathed in deeply, then again, slower, savoring his scent. A soft, almost dreamy expression crossed your face.
Bucky’s fangs throbbed. His cock hardened instantly.
You muttered to yourself, voice quiet but perfectly clear to his enhanced hearing:
“God… why does this smell so good?”
Bucky’s lips curled into a dark, predatory smile. He murmured under his breath, voice low and rough with dark amusement,
“People really don’t close their curtains anymore, do they? They have no idea who could be watching them…”
You laughed softly at yourself, shaking your head, then started changing. You peeled off your damp clothes, letting them drop to the floor without a care. For a moment you stood there in just your panties, stretching, completely unaware of the ancient predator standing in the rain across the street, staring at every inch of your body with black, starving eyes.
Bucky’s metal hand clenched at his side, plates whirring. Drool slipped from the corner of his mouth. He watched the way your breasts moved when you raised your arms, the curve of your hips, the soft sway of your ass as you turned. His breathing grew ragged.
“Beautiful,” he whispered to the night. “So fucking beautiful… and so unaware.”
Only when you finally pulled on an oversized t-shirt and climbed into bed, turning off the last light, did he move.
Silent as death, Bucky crossed the street, climbed the stairs to your building’s front entrance, and picked the cheap lock on your apartment door in less than eight seconds. He slipped inside like smoke, closed the door behind him, and locked it again with the same unnatural precision, so perfectly that no one would ever know he’d been there.
The apartment was small, cluttered and alive with you.
Your scent was everywhere, warm vanilla lotion, faint coffee from your shift, the sweet copper undertone of your blood pulsing just beneath your skin. It filled the cramped space like perfume made specifically to torment him.
Bucky’s boots were silent on the worn hardwood as he walked through your living room. Books and thesis notes were scattered across the coffee table. A half-empty mug of tea sat cold beside them. A worn blanket was crumpled on the couch. The mess should have annoyed the centuries-old soldier in him… but it only made the obsession sink deeper. This was your chaos. Your life. Your little mortal world he was about to invade.
His gaze fell on the open notebook lying on top of the pile. Your neat handwriting filled the page, underlined and circled in places:
Vampires in Gothic Literature
Eternal life vs. eternal loneliness?
Do they feel love or only hunger?
Real or metaphor for forbidden desire? Witches – power, seduction, danger… real?
Bucky read the notes slowly, a low, dark chuckle rumbling in his chest. The sound was soft, almost affectionate, but laced with something ancient and dangerous.
“Only if you knew, doll,” he whispered to the empty room, the corners of his mouth twitching into a predatory smirk. “Only if you knew.”
He lingered there for a moment longer, tracing one finger over your handwriting, before continuing toward the bedroom.
Your bedroom door was ajar.
He pushed it open slowly, the hinges giving a tiny protesting creak that made him freeze. You didn’t stir.
There you were.
Curled up in bed under a messy pile of blankets, wearing nothing but an oversized t-shirt and a pair of soft cotton panties. Your breathing was deep and even, lips slightly parted, one leg kicked out from under the covers. So vulnerable. So warm.
Bucky’s fangs throbbed. His metal hand flexed at his side, plates whirring quietly.
He stepped closer.
Your scent was strongest here, concentrated, intimate, intoxicating. He could hear every heartbeat, every soft inhale and exhale. His cock hardened instantly, thick and aching against the front of his jeans. He hadn’t felt this kind of raw, physical need in decades.
On the floor near the foot of your bed lay a pair of discarded black lace panties, the ones you’d clearly worn earlier that day. Slightly damp from the rain and your long shift. The scent rolling off them made his mouth flood with venom.
He crouched down, metal fingers hovering just above the delicate fabric. The urge to snatch them was almost painful. He wanted to press them to his face, inhale you until he drowned in it. He wanted to wrap them around his cock the second he got home and fuck his fist while imagining burying himself inside you.
But he stopped.
His hand trembled. The metal plates clicked softly.
“Not yet,” he whispered to himself, voice barely a breath. “Don’t scare her. Not yet.”
With a low, tortured growl, he forced himself to stand. He backed away from the panties like they were burning him.
He allowed himself one last indulgence.
He leaned over your sleeping form, careful not to touch you and breathed you in deeply, dragging your scent into his lungs like a dying man taking his final breath. His lips hovered an inch above your neck, right where your pulse fluttered so invitingly. He could hear the blood rushing beneath your skin. His cock throbbed harder, leaking against his thigh.
He stayed there for a long minute, eyes closed, fangs fully extended, fighting every instinct screaming at him to bite, to claim, to take.
Finally, with a ragged exhale, he pulled back.
On his way out, he noticed his coat draped over the back of your couch where you must have taken it off before bed. The fabric still carried traces of both your scent and his. For a moment he considered taking it back… but he left it exactly where it was.
He didn’t want to take anything from you tonight.
Not yet.
By the time he reached his penthouse, he was shaking with raw, barely contained need.
The second the door shut, Bucky shoved his jeans down, freed his painfully hard cock and stroked himself with brutal, desperate strokes. He buried his face in the collar of his shirt, the one that still carried the faintest trace of your scent from when he’d stood so close to you and fucked his fist like a man possessed.
He came hard within minutes, spilling over his hand with a broken, guttural groan.
Even after the release, the hunger didn’t fade.
It only grew sharper.
He didn’t even know your name yet.
And he already knew he’d be back tomorrow night.
And the night after that.
Until simply watching you sleep was no longer enough.
The next morning, Bucky was already waiting in the shadows outside your building when you left just after 6:30 am, yawning, hair messy, clutching a travel mug of cheap instant coffee.
He followed you at a distance, ten blocks through the waking city, never close enough for you to notice. He memorized every little habit: the way you adjusted your bag strap, how you checked your phone at stoplights, the slight slump in your shoulders from exhaustion. When you finally stopped in front of a small, cozy café called “The Midnight Brew,” he lingered across the street for nearly forty minutes, watching through the large windows as you tied on your black apron and started your shift.
Only when the morning rush began to build did he cross the street and step inside.
The bell above the door jingled. You looked up from behind the counter and your breath hitched.
It was him.
Bucky chose the small table by the window, the one with the perfect view of you. A few minutes later you approached, notepad in hand, trying (and failing) to look professional.
“Hi… you again,” you said, a shy, surprised smile tugging at your lips. “Didn’t expect to see you so soon. What can I get started for you today?”
Bucky looked up slowly, his steel-blue eyes dragging over your face like he wanted to commit every detail to memory. His gaze flicked briefly to your name tag.
“That’s a beautiful name,” he murmured, voice low and rough with that old-fashioned accent. “Suits you perfectly.”
Your cheeks instantly burned hot. You weren’t used to compliments delivered like that, slow, sincere and a little dangerous.
“Th-thank you,” you stammered, tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear. “That’s… really sweet of you to say. Um, what would you like?”
“Black coffee. No sugar,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “And whatever your favorite pastry is this morning. Surprise me, doll. I trust your taste.”
You nodded quickly, scribbling on your pad to hide how flustered you felt. “One black coffee and a chocolate croissant coming right up.”
When you returned with his order, your fingers brushed against his right hand as you set the mug down. His skin was cool, almost unnaturally so, and the brief contact sent a shiver racing up your arm. You couldn’t help but notice that his left hand remained gloved in black leather, resting quietly on the table, the same glove he’d worn outside. You wondered about it for a split second but said nothing, simply offering him a small smile instead.
“Here you go,” you said softly, still pink-cheeked. “The croissant is still warm. Let me know if you need a refill or anything else.”
You hesitated for a second, then added, “Oh- I actually brought your coat with me. It’s hanging on the rack in the back. I was going to take it to the dry cleaners on my break because it got soaked last night. I can drop it off at the library tonight if you want, or… I don’t know, maybe you could pick it up later?”
Bucky’s eyes darkened, something possessive flickering behind them. He shook his head slowly.
“Keep it,” he said, voice low and firm but gentle. “It looks better on you than it ever did on me. I have more coats than I know what to do with. I insist.”
“But it’s such a nice coat,” you protested, cheeks burning hotter. “I’d feel terrible if something happened to it. At least let me get it cleaned for you-”
“No arguments, doll,” he interrupted, the faintest crooked smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Wear it when you need it. Stay warm. That’s all I want from you right now.”
You blinked, completely thrown by how gently but stubbornly he was refusing. No guy had ever spoken to you like this.
“…Okay,” you said softly, biting your lip. “If you’re really sure. Thank you again. Seriously. Most people wouldn’t have even offered their coat in that rain.”
Bucky’s gaze softened for just a moment. “Most people aren’t me.”
You gave him a shy little smile and hurried back to the counter, heart racing. For the rest of your shift you could feel his eyes on you, steady, dark and unwavering. He barely touched the coffee or the croissant. He just watched you move behind the counter like you were the only thing worth looking at in the entire world.
When the rush finally slowed, he stood up, left a very generous tip folded neatly under the mug, and paused at the counter on his way out.
“See you soon,” he murmured, saying your name like it was something sacred and secret. “Have a good rest of your shift, doll. Don’t work too hard.”
You could only manage a flustered nod, cheeks still warm long after he’d walked out the door.
That night, when he picked the lock on your front door and slipped silently into your apartment while you slept, he stood over your bed for a long time, breathing you in.
He leaned down, lips hovering just above the soft skin of your neck and whispered your name into the darkness like a vow.
It sounded like both a prayer… and a promise.
Over the next several nights, Bucky’s restraint completely shattered.
He came back every few nights, slipping through your front door like a ghost, locking it behind him with that soft, familiar click. At first he only watched you sleep. But the hunger quickly grew teeth.
The third night he touched you.
He leaned over your bed, cool lips pressing slow, open-mouthed kisses down the side of your throat. He nipped at your skin, fangs grazing but never breaking it, sucking lightly until you whimpered in your sleep.
“Fuck… such a pretty neck,” he growled quietly against your pulse. “Bet you’d look so good with my marks all over it.”
He pushed your nightshirt up, exposing your breasts and buried his face between them with a low, filthy groan. His tongue dragged over your nipples in slow, wet circles before he sucked one into his mouth, moaning like he was tasting something divine.
“So fucking sweet… these tits are perfect, doll. Made for my mouth.”
His metal hand ghosted over your hips, fingertips barely brushing your skin as he fought not to grip hard enough to bruise. You arched unconsciously toward him, thighs pressing together.
The fourth night he went lower.
He eased your panties down your legs and spread your thighs wide, kneeling between them like he was worshipping at an altar. He dragged his tongue through your soaked folds in one long, obscene lick and groaned deeply.
“Jesus Christ… your pussy is dripping for me even when you’re asleep,” he rasped, voice thick with lust. “Such a needy little cunt. You taste so fucking good, baby. I could eat this pretty pussy for hours.”
He licked you like a man starved, slow, filthy strokes of his tongue circling your clit before pushing inside you, fucking you with it. He sucked on your swollen clit with wet, obscene sounds, metal fingers gently holding your thighs open.
“That’s it… grind against my tongue even in your sleep like a good little slut,” he murmured against your slick flesh. “This pussy belongs to me now. You hear me? Mine.”
You came hard on his tongue, thighs shaking, a broken moan slipping from your lips. He licked you through every pulse, drinking down every drop like it was sacred.
The visits only got dirtier.
Night after night he returned. He’d bury his face between your thighs for what felt like hours, tongue-fucking you, sucking your clit, growling filthy praise against your soaked cunt.
“Fuck, you’re so wet… creaming all over my tongue like you were made for this. That’s my girl. Let me taste how much you need me.”
Sometimes he’d slide two cool fingers inside you while sucking on your clit, curling them just right, whispering, “Tight little pussy sucking my fingers in even when you’re dreaming. Gonna ruin this cunt one day. Gonna fill you up and make you scream my name for real.”
You always woke drenched in sweat, thighs slick and trembling, panties pushed to the side or completely off. Fragments of sensation haunted you, cold tongue licking deep, a rough voice groaning filthy things, the faint scent of old leather and blood on your skin. You told yourself they were just extremely vivid, filthy dreams caused by stress and loneliness.
Your body knew the truth.
Every morning you woke up aching and empty, clit throbbing, sheets ruined. And every few nights the dreams returned, darker, wetter, more intense.
Bucky, meanwhile, was unraveling.
He left your apartment every time with your taste coating his tongue and his cock so hard it hurt. Back in his penthouse he would stroke himself raw, snarling your name as he came but it was never enough.
He needed to hear you moan his name for real.
He needed to sink his fangs into your thigh while buried balls-deep inside you.
And he was getting dangerously close to losing the last shred of control he had left.
A few days later, the universe seemed determined to keep pushing you together.
You were halfway through your post-shift grocery run, still wearing Bucky’s oversized black coat because the autumn air had turned crisp. It swallowed your frame, the hem brushing your thighs and you secretly loved how warm and safe it made you feel. Your basket was overloaded with pasta, fresh vegetables, a cheap bottle of red wine, and a pint of ice cream you were definitely stress-eating later.
You turned the corner into the pasta aisle and walked straight into a solid wall of muscle.
“Oh- I’m so sorry!” you gasped, nearly dropping your basket.
Gentle but strong hands immediately steadied you, catching your elbows with careful precision so you wouldn’t fall.
“Easy there, doll,” a low, familiar voice murmured. “You alright? That was my fault. Should’ve been paying better attention.”
You looked up and your heart skipped hard.
It was him, the mysterious, devastatingly handsome man from the rainy night and the café. He was wearing a red Henley under a leather jacket, his metal hand tucked discreetly into his pocket like always. His steel-blue eyes softened the second they met yours.
You blushed instantly. “I swear I’m not this clumsy all the time. I was trying to decide between spaghetti and linguine like my life depended on it.”
Bucky’s mouth curved into that faint, crooked smile that made your stomach flutter. His gaze drifted down, noticing you were still wearing his coat.
“Looks far better on you than it ever did on me,” he said softly, almost reverent. “I’m glad you kept it.”
Before you could respond, he smoothly took the heavy basket from your hands as if it weighed nothing.
“Please, allow me,” he said, already heading toward the checkout. “A lady shouldn’t have to carry all this herself.”
You tried to protest. “You really don’t have to-”
“I insist,” he replied gently but firmly, that old-world chivalry radiating off him. He held the basket in one arm and used the other to open the door for an elderly woman leaving the store, nodding politely to her. “After you, ma’am.”
You watched him, completely charmed and a little dazed. No guy your age ever acted like this.
At checkout, he politely waited while you paid, then immediately took all the bags before you could reach for them. Outside, he positioned himself on the street side of the sidewalk, shielding you from traffic like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The walk back to your apartment was short but felt electric. He carried every bag effortlessly, making easy conversation the whole way.
“Long shift today?” he asked, glancing at you with genuine concern.
“Yeah… double again. I’m exhausted but the thesis won’t write itself.”
“You work too hard,” he said quietly. “A girl like you deserves to be taken care of sometimes.”
When you reached your building, he didn’t hesitate.
“Mind if I help you up with these?” he asked, voice warm and sincere. “I’d feel better knowing they made it safely upstairs.”
You nodded, cheeks warm. “Yeah… sure. That would be really nice, actually. Thank you.”
You let him follow you up the narrow stairs to your third-floor apartment. Bucky carried all the bags effortlessly in one arm, walking just behind you like a perfect gentleman.
Inside your small, cluttered apartment, he set the bags on the counter and looked around with quiet appreciation, taking in the fairy lights, the overflowing bookshelves, and the half-dead plants on the windowsill.
“It’s lovely in here,” he said sincerely, a soft smile tugging at his lips. “Warm. Lived-in. Feels like a real home.”
He rolled up the sleeve on his right arm and started helping you unpack without being asked, putting milk and eggs in the fridge, pasta in the cupboard, vegetables in the crisper, moving with surprising familiarity and care.
You noticed immediately that he only rolled up one sleeve. The left arm stayed fully covered, the black leather glove still firmly in place.
You tilted your head, curious. “Why do you keep that glove on? And you only rolled up one sleeve.”
Bucky paused for half a second, then gave a small, easy smile.
“Poor circulation,” he said smoothly. “Old injury from years ago. The left arm gets cold easily, especially in weather like this, so I keep it covered. Doctor’s orders.”
You nodded, accepting the answer. “That makes sense. Must be annoying, especially in winter.”
“Sometimes,” he replied, voice gentle. “But I’m used to it now. Doesn’t slow me down much.”
When everything was put away, you leaned against the counter, suddenly feeling chatty and comfortable in his presence.
“I still don’t even know your name…” you said with a shy smile.
He gave you a small, almost shy smile of his own and rubbed the back of his neck.
“James Buchanan Barnes,” he said. “But everyone just calls me Bucky.”
“Bucky,” you repeated, liking the way it sounded. “Nice to finally meet you properly, Bucky.”
“The pleasure’s all mine, doll.”
You kept talking, gesturing with your hands. “So… what do you do, Bucky? You seem like you have your life pretty together. Do you work around here?”
He chuckled softly, leaning on the opposite counter. “I do some consulting work. Private security, mostly. Nothing too exciting.”
“Private security at your age?” You raised an eyebrow, smiling. “How old are you, anyway?”
Bucky’s eyes sparkled with quiet amusement. “Twenty-four.”
You blinked. “Wait, really? You seem… older. Not in a bad way! Just… more mature. Like you’ve seen some stuff.”
He gave a low, self-deprecating laugh. “I’ve been told that before. Guess I grew up fast.”
You kept talking, comfortable now. “I’m twenty-three. Still feel like a kid half the time. Working two jobs, trying to finish my thesis on Gothic literature. Vampires, monsters, tragic love stories… the usual dramatic stuff.” You laughed lightly. “Do you believe any of that is real? Like, vampires and witches and all that? Or is it just fun fiction?”
Bucky’s gaze sharpened for a fraction of a second before he smiled. “I think there’s more to the world than most people realize,” he said carefully. “Some legends have roots in truth. What do you think?”
“I go back and forth,” you admitted, leaning closer. “Sometimes I think vampires are just metaphors for forbidden desire or immortality anxiety. Other times… I don’t know. The idea of someone living for centuries, watching everyone they love die… that feels too real. Too sad.”
Bucky’s expression softened, something pained flickering behind his eyes. “It is sad,” he murmured. “Very sad.”
You kept going, excited to talk about your thesis. “Exactly! And witches- the way they’re portrayed as powerful but dangerous. Do you have any favorite books or movies about that stuff?”
He listened with genuine interest, answering carefully and making up plausible details while keeping his ancient truth hidden. He asked you questions in return, drawing you out, letting you talk about your terrible boss at the café, your fear of never finishing your degree and how overwhelmed you felt sometimes.
“Do you have Instagram or anything?” you asked, then quickly added with an awkward little laugh, “I’m not trying to stalk you, don’t worry. Just… if you maybe wanted to hang out sometime, or so I could reach out?”
Bucky let out a low, self-deprecating chuckle. “I’m afraid I’m terribly old-fashioned. No social media at all. But I do have a phone number.”
You raised an eyebrow, a playful but suspicious smile tugging at your lips. “No social media? At twenty-four? That’s… suspicious. Are you secretly a spy or something?”
He laughed, the sound warm and genuine. “Nothing that exciting, I promise. Just prefer real life over screens.”
You saved his number and sent him a quick text. When his phone buzzed, his smile deepened.
“There,” you said, grinning. “Now you can’t vanish on me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he murmured, eyes dark and intense for just a moment before he softened again. “You get some rest now. You’ve earned it.”
He walked to the door, then paused and turned back.
“Goodnight, doll,” he said softly. “Lock the door behind me.”
You nodded, cheeks warm. “Goodnight, Bucky.”
He waited outside until he heard the lock click, then disappeared down the hallway with a small, satisfied smile.
But the second he was out of sight, his expression darkened with raw hunger.
Hearing you say his name in that sweet voice had nearly made him snap.
The gentleman act was becoming harder to maintain… and the monster beneath it was growing impatient.
Bucky’s obsession had grown teeth.
After the night he helped you with your groceries something inside him finally snapped. Knowing your name wasn’t enough. Hearing you laugh wasn’t enough. Standing so close to you and still not being able to claim you wasn’t enough.
He needed pieces of you. Tangible. Permanent. His.
So the stealing began.
The first time was the night after the grocery store. While you slept, he moved through your apartment like a shadow. He took your favorite perfume from the dresser, the one that smelled like warm vanilla and something sweet and uniquely you. He sprayed a little on his wrist before slipping the bottle into his coat.
Two nights later, he took the soft cream-colored scarf you’d been wearing the rainy night you first met him. It still carried the faint scent of rain, coffee and you. He buried his face in it the second he got home and didn’t let go for nearly an hour.
The nights had become his sanctuary and his torment.
For the first time, Bucky began invading your dreams like an incubus, silent, hungry, and unstoppable. He would wait until you fell into deep sleep in your own apartment, then slip into your mind with the ease of centuries of practice. You never remembered the full details in the morning, only waking with damp thighs, aching nipples, and a strange, lingering bite of exhaustion.
In the dream he appeared behind you, naked, massive, his metal arm cold against your fevered skin as he pinned you down in a bed that wasn’t quite yours. His fangs grazed your throat while his thick cock rubbed between your slick folds, teasing, never quite entering.
“Shhh, doll,” he whispered into your sleeping mind, voice low and velvet-dark. “Just a taste. I need you so fucking badly.”
He started with your wrist. In the dream he lifted your arm, licked a slow, reverent stripe over your pulse, then sank his fangs in deep. The pull was slow and obscene, wet sucking sounds filling the dream as he drank in long, greedy swallows. Your dream-self moaned and writhed, hips grinding against nothing while he fed.
When he was done, he sealed the punctures with long, filthy licks of his tongue, savoring the last drops. Then he moved lower.
He spread your thighs wide in the dreamscape, burying his face between them like a starving man. His tongue dragged up your inner thigh before his fangs pierced the soft flesh there too. Hot blood flooded his mouth, richer, headier, while his nose pressed against your dripping cunt, inhaling the scent of your arousal. He drank deeply, groaning against your skin, cock leaking steadily onto the dream sheets.
“Fuck… your blood tastes like sin,” he growled into your thigh. “Sweeter when you’re wet for me.”
He sealed that bite too, licking lazily over the twin holes, his cool saliva tingling as it closed the wounds. Only then did he allow himself to grind his massive cock against your soaked pussy, never pushing inside, just rutting until your dream-body came with a broken cry. He spilled across your thighs in thick ropes, marking you even in sleep, then vanished before you could wake.
You always woke up with faint, fading marks on your wrist and inner thigh that you blamed on restless sleep.
But the real collection had only just begun.
Then came the panties.
He started small. The black lace pair he’d seen on your floor the very first night, the sexy ones you wore when you wanted to feel powerful and desired. He took them while you showered, pressing the crotch to his face the second he was back in his penthouse. The scent of your pussy was still faintly there, musky and sweet. He inhaled so deeply his fangs throbbed.
A few nights later he stole the soft silk ones from your laundry basket, still slightly damp. He sucked the fabric into his mouth, tasting the faint traces of your arousal and detergent, groaning like a beast as he fisted his aching cock.
But what truly broke something inside him were the cute ones.
He found them one night while you slept, an entire drawer of soft cotton panties with little embroidered days of the week. Innocent. Everyday. Mortal. The kind of thing that made his ancient, dead heart twist with dark fondness and cruel hunger.
He picked up the pair marked “Thursday” and ran his thumb over the tiny lettering, a low, predatory chuckle rumbling in his chest.
“Mortals,” he whispered into the dark of your bedroom, voice rough with twisted amusement. “Still pretending time matters. Still marking your little days like you won’t eventually be mine forever. How fucking endearing.”
He stole the Wednesday pair that night, along with the Thursday ones for good measure.
His obsession only grew darker.
He discovered the small trash can in your bathroom. Inside were a few used tampons wrapped in toilet paper. The metallic, coppery scent of your period blood hit him like pure heroin. Centuries of memories flooded him, women on their cycles spreading their thighs for him, begging him to drink while their cunts were heaviest, bloodiest, most potent.
He stood there in your bathroom for a long minute, breathing deeply, cock straining painfully against his pants.
“Even your waste calls to me,” he murmured reverently, almost lovingly. “Your blood… every drop of it belongs to me.”
He took one of the wrapped tampons, brought it back to his penthouse, and spent hours with it pressed to his nose and mouth while he stroked himself raw.
Every few nights he added something new to his growing collection: a hair tie with strands of your hair still caught in it, the half-used lip balm from your bag that still carried the faint taste of your mouth, a well-worn hoodie that smelled like your shampoo, your sweat, and the warmth of your skin. More panties, both the slutty lace ones that made his cock leak and the innocent cotton ones with their childish little days.
He kept them all in a locked drawer in his penthouse like a sacred, filthy shrine.
When the emptiness clawed at him too viciously, when Dolores’s screams echoed too loudly in his skull, he would sit alone in the dark, open the drawer, and surround himself with you. He’d press your stolen panties to his face, inhaling the scent of your cunt like oxygen. Sometimes he wrapped the Thursday pair around his thick, leaking cock and fucked his fist with slow, filthy strokes, groaning your name like a broken prayer.
“Fuck… smell so good,” he rasped into the cotton, voice wrecked and desperate. “This little mortal pussy is going to be mine. I’m going to drink from it while you’re bleeding. I’m going to fuck it until you scream. Until you beg.”
Other nights he pressed the blood-stained cotton directly to his mouth and nose, sucking on the fabric while he jerked himself brutally, imagining it was your bloody cunt riding his face. Thick ropes of cum would splatter across his abs and chest as he came with a guttural snarl, over and over, until the drawer was sticky with his spend and the scent of you was mixed with his own.
“You’re already mine,” he whispered hoarsely into the silk and cotton, fangs fully extended, eyes glowing crimson in the dark. “Every pair. Every drop of blood. Every dream. Every breath you take. All fucking mine. Even if you don’t know it yet… you will. Soon.”
He was patient.
He was starving.
And the monster inside him was done waiting.
You, meanwhile, were spiraling.
At first you thought you were simply losing your mind from exhaustion and stress. The perfume? Maybe you’d moved it and forgotten. The scarf? You probably left it at the library. But when your favorite pair of silk panties vanished from the laundry basket and then the soft cotton ones with the little embroidered days of the week started disappearing too, real unease settled deep in your stomach.
Then more things disappeared.
A hoodie you loved. Your favorite lip balm. A hair clip you’d worn the day Bucky helped with your groceries. Even one of your thesis notebooks went missing for two days before mysteriously reappearing on your nightstand.
You tore your apartment apart looking for them. You started keeping a paranoid little list on your phone. You even wondered if you had a stalker… or if the stress was finally making you crack.
Then one evening you came home from a brutally long double shift at the café, feet aching, hair smelling like coffee and grease. You flipped on the light in your bedroom and froze.
His coat was still hanging on the back of your bedroom door where you’d left it days ago.
But something was different.
A single, perfect red rose was tucked neatly into the breast pocket.
No note. No card. No explanation.
Just one flawless, blood-red bloom with a long, elegant stem and sharp thorns that caught the lamplight like tiny blades. The rose was impossibly perfect, not a single petal out of place, fresh dew still clinging to the edges like droplets of blood.
Your heart slammed against your ribs so hard it hurt.
You stood frozen in the doorway, grocery bag slipping from your fingers onto the floor. The faint scent of the rose mixed with the lingering smell of old leather from the coat, creating something intoxicating and terrifying all at once.
You knew.
You knew it was him.
Bucky.
The gentleman who had carried all your groceries without being asked. The man who opened doors, insisted you keep his coat, and looked at you like you were the only person in the world who mattered. The one with the old-fashioned manners, the low velvet voice and those intense steel-blue eyes that seemed to see straight through you, into places you hadn’t let anyone see in years.
He had been in your apartment again.
He had taken things.
And now… he was leaving gifts in his own coat, the one still hanging in your room like a claim.
You walked over on shaky legs and carefully pulled the rose from the pocket. A thorn pricked your thumb. A tiny bead of blood welled up instantly. You stared at it, then brought the rose to your nose and inhaled. The scent was rich, sweet, and heavy.
Your mind raced.
How long has he been coming in here? How many nights has he stood beside my bed while I slept? What else has he taken? What has he seen while I was unconscious?
Part of you was terrified. The logical, rational part screamed that this was insane. Dangerous. That you should change the locks right now, call the police, run as far as you could.
But another part, darker, quieter and growing louder every day, felt a rush of shameful heat low in your belly. The thought of him moving silently through your space, touching your things, watching you sleep… it made your thighs press together.
You sat down heavily on the edge of your bed, still holding the rose, and whispered into the quiet apartment:
“…Bucky?”
The silence that answered felt alive.
Like he was still there.
Watching.
Waiting.
The game had truly begun.
And neither of you were ready for how deep, how dark and how consuming it would become.
You couldn’t take it anymore.
It was 2:13 am and you were sitting on the edge of your bed in the dark, phone clutched so tightly in your shaking hands that your knuckles had gone white. Another thing had vanished today, your favorite silver necklace. But that wasn’t what broke you. It was the rose tucked into the pocket of his coat. The pattern. The way everything pointed straight to him.
Your thumb hovered over his contact for a long, trembling minute. Part of you wanted to throw the phone across the room and change the locks. Another part, the terrified, exhausted, furious part, needed answers. You pressed call.
It rang only once before he picked up.
“Hey” His voice was low, smooth, perfectly calm. “Is everything okay? It’s late.”
You didn’t even try to sound normal. Your voice came out raw, trembling with a volatile mix of terror, fury, and betrayal.
“It’s you,” you said, barely above a whisper at first, then louder. “Don’t you dare lie to me, Bucky. The perfume, the scarf, my panties, the necklace, it’s all you. You’ve been in my apartment. You’ve been watching me sleep. You left that fucking rose in your own coat. I know it’s you.”
Silence stretched on the other end.
On the fire escape right outside your bedroom window, Bucky stood completely still in the pouring rain, glowing red eyes fixed on you through the gap in the curtains. His metal hand tightened on the railing, slowly denting the metal.
He tried anyway.
“Baby, slow down,” he said, voice dripping with concern. “You sound really scared. Maybe you’re just stressed from work and your thesis. You’ve been so tired lately. I would never-”
“Stop.” Your voice cracked, but it was sharp with raw fury. Tears burned in your eyes as you stood up from the bed, pacing. “Don’t you dare lie to me right now. I’m terrified, Bucky. I’ve been checking my locks ten times a night. I wake up feeling like someone’s been touching me. And it’s you. You’ve been breaking into my home. Stealing my fucking underwear. What the hell is wrong with you?!”
Bucky’s jaw clenched hard. Drool slipped from the corner of his mouth as he watched you curl tighter into yourself on the bed, tears streaming down your face. His free hand flexed at his side, metal plates whirring.
“I was trying to protect you,” he said, voice low and careful, almost pleading. “I just wanted to be close to you. I’ve been alone for so long and you-”
“Close to me?” you snapped, voice rising in a hysterical, broken laugh that sounded more like a sob. “You’ve been sneaking into my room while I sleep! That’s not protecting me, that’s stalking me! I trusted you. You carried my groceries. You were sweet and gentle and now I find out you’ve been stealing my panties and watching me change? What kind of sick fuck does that?!”
Bucky’s red eyes flashed brighter. His metal fingers dug into the windowsill, cracking the frame with a quiet groan.
“I know it looks bad,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady but you could hear the strain. “But I’m not going to hurt you. I could never hurt you. I just… I need you. I’ve been alone for so long and you’re the only thing that makes me feel alive again. Please, doll. Let me explain-”
“Explain what?” you shouted, no longer caring if your neighbors heard. Fresh tears spilled down your cheeks. “How you’ve been breaking in? How you left a rose like some twisted gift? I’m scared to even close my eyes now because I don’t know if you’re standing there watching me!”
You were crying hard now, terrified and furious and completely overwhelmed. Your voice cracked as you whispered the last part.
“I thought you were different… I thought you were safe.”
Bucky pressed his forehead against the cold glass, breathing heavily, fangs fully extended. For a long moment he was silent. When he spoke again, his voice was raw, almost broken, with very little hope left in it.
“I’m sorry,” he said, the words cracking. “I’m so fucking sorry. I know I’m messed up. I know I went too far. But I can’t stop. I won’t lose you. I won’t. Please… just come to my penthouse tomorrow night. Let me explain everything in person. No more lies. No more hiding. I’ll tell you everything. Just… please don’t shut me out. I need to see you. I need to make this right.”
His voice dropped, almost desperate.
“I know I don’t deserve it… but please. Tomorrow at 8. My penthouse. I’ll send a car. If you still want nothing to do with me after that, I’ll leave you alone. I swear it.”
You were silent for a long, heavy moment, shaking with fear and anger.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” you hissed, voice rising again. “You want me to come to your place? After everything you just admitted? After you’ve been breaking into my home and stealing from me? You have the nerve to ask me to walk into your penthouse like it’s some normal date? Are you out of your fucking mind?!”
Bucky’s breath hitched on the other end. His voice was quieter now, almost pleading, with almost no hope left.
“I know how it sounds,” he said, the words heavy. “I know I don’t deserve your trust. But I can’t explain this over the phone. I need you to see me. To see that I’m not going to hurt you. Please, doll… just one chance. I’m begging you. Tomorrow at 8. I’ll send a car. If you walk out after I explain, I won’t stop you. I swear on whatever’s left of me.”
You were silent for a long, heavy moment, shaking with fear and anger.
“…Fine,” you finally whispered, voice trembling. “Tomorrow at 8. But if you lie to me again, Bucky, I’m done. I mean it.”
“Thank you,” he breathed, relief and dark hunger mixing in his tone. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Get some sleep, doll. I’ll be thinking about you.”
You hung up without another word.
Bucky stayed on the fire escape for a long moment, staring at your shaking form through the window. Rain mixed with the blood tears sliding down his face.
He whispered into the night, voice dark and possessive:
“You don’t have to be scared of me, doll. I’ll make sure of that… one way or another.”
He vanished into the shadows, already planning exactly what he would say and what he would do when you came to him tomorrow.
The next day, Bucky moved through the city like a man on a mission.
He hadn’t slept. He doesn’t anymore.
Vampires don’t need sleep the way humans do. The closest he ever came was a kind of cold, motionless trance but even that had abandoned him since you entered his life. Instead, he had spent the entire night on the rooftop of his penthouse, standing motionless in the wind and rain, staring out at the glittering lights of Brooklyn below. Your terrified, furious voice played on repeat in his head like a broken record.
The way you had cried.
The way you had called him a sick fuck.
The way you had still agreed to come tonight even if it was only because you were angry and scared.
Every word cut deeper than the last.
He was going to tell you everything.
No more lies. No more half-truths. Tonight, in his penthouse, he would confess what he really was. And he was going to make it as… human as possible. As normal as a seven-hundred-year-old vampire could manage.
So he went grocery shopping.
He walked into the upscale organic market near the waterfront in the late afternoon, black coat on, sunglasses hiding his eyes, metal arm tucked into his sleeve. The fluorescent lights felt too bright, the chatter of normal people too loud. But he pushed a cart through the aisles with focused determination.
He started with breakfast ingredients for tomorrow, just in case you stayed. Eggs, fresh herbs, thick-cut bacon, ripe avocados, sourdough bread. Then he moved to dinner. He wanted something comforting, something that said “I care.” He picked out ingredients for homemade lasagna, fresh pasta sheets, rich tomato sauce, ground beef, ricotta, mozzarella and basil. He added things for a salad and garlic bread.
His mind kept drifting to you as he shopped.
She’s coming tonight. She’s terrified of me. She has every right to be.
He stopped in the baking aisle and stared at the rows of flour, sugar, chocolate and vanilla. He remembered you mentioning once that you loved chocolate cake when you were stressed. So he grabbed everything he needed, dark cocoa powder, heavy cream, eggs, butter and added a bottle of expensive vanilla extract.
An older woman beside him smiled kindly as she reached for a bag of sugar.
“Baking for someone special?” she asked.
Bucky gave her a small, tired smile. “Yeah… something like that.”
He hoped you would still want anything from him after tonight.
By the time he got back to the penthouse, his arms were full of bags. He spent the next several hours in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up. He prepped the lasagna, made the chocolate cake from scratch, even baked fresh bread. The entire penthouse filled with warm, comforting smells, tomato sauce simmering, cake baking, garlic and herbs.
As he worked, he practiced what he would say.
“I’m a vampire.” “I’ve been watching you sleep.” “I stole your things because I’m obsessed with you.” “I would kill for you.” “I want to turn you so I never lose you.”
Every version sounded insane. Every version made him feel sick with fear that you would finally run.
He set the dining table beautifully, candles, wine, flowers. He even picked out soft music. When everything was ready, he stood in the middle of the kitchen, staring at the feast he had made, and whispered to the empty room:
“Please don’t leave me, doll. Please… just listen.”
He checked the clock.
8:00 pm was approaching.
And for the first time in centuries, the ancient predator felt genuinely nervous.
He was about to confess everything.
And he had no idea if you would still be his when the night was over.
You arrived at his penthouse at exactly 8:00 pm, fury burning hotter than fear. The car he sent had been silent and luxurious but you spent the entire ride clenching your fists, rehearsing every accusation. When the private elevator doors opened directly into his home, you stepped out with your chin high, jaw tight, eyes blazing.
Bucky stood near the floor-to-ceiling windows, the glittering city sprawled behind him like a dark jewel. The lights were low, candles flickering on the dining table. He looked almost… human. Nervous. Shoulders tense, hands shoved into his pockets.
You stopped a few feet away, arms crossed tightly.
“Start talking,” you snapped, voice trembling with rage. “No more ‘protecting me’ bullshit. I want the truth. All of it. Right now.”
Bucky swallowed hard. “I… I don’t know where to begin.”
“Begin with why you’ve been lying to me.”
He took a slow step closer, then stopped when you flinched. “I’m not who you think I am. Not… not completely.”
Your heart hammered. Something in his voice, the raw edge, the hesitation made the air feel heavier. “Bucky. What are you?”
For a long moment, he just stared at you. Then his shoulders slumped.
“I’m not human,” he said, voice low and rough, almost a growl. “Not anymore. Not for a very long time.”
The lights in the penthouse seemed to dim further. A chill crawled up your spine.
“What the hell does that mean?” you whispered.
His eyes, those beautiful blue eyes you’d trusted, began to change. The color bled away from the edges inward, flooding with a violent, glowing red. Not just red. Blood-red. Like twin embers pulled straight from hell, pulsing with unnatural hunger.
You stumbled back a step. “Bucky-”
His lips parted. There was a soft, wet click as his canines elongated into fangs, long, razor-sharp, gleaming under the candlelight. They looked strong enough to tear through flesh without effort. A low, involuntary growl rumbled in his chest, deep and animalistic.
You pressed a hand to your mouth, breath shallow. “Oh my God…”
He slowly raised his left hand. The plates of the metal arm shifted with a mechanical whirr-click-grind, like a machine waking up. The steel caught the red glow from his eyes, reflecting it back in cold, deadly shards.
“Bucky, what are you?” You asked again, fear finally overtaking the anger.
He took one more step forward, voice dropping into something ancient and broken. “This is what I am.”
The full transformation hit like a nightmare unfolding in real time. His skin seemed to pale further, veins standing out dark beneath it. The red in his eyes brightened, casting eerie shadows across his face. Those fangs, fully extended now, made his mouth look wrong, predatory. When he spoke again, his voice was layered with something inhuman, a resonance that vibrated in your bones.
“A vampire,” he said. “Turned in 1349 during the Black Death. I died in an alley with a nobleman’s teeth in my throat… and I woke up like this.”
You backed up until your legs hit the edge of the couch. “No. No, that’s not- this isn’t real.”
He rolled up his sleeve with deliberate slowness, revealing the brutal fusion where metal met scarred flesh. The seam looked raw, like it had been cauterized with fire and rage. The arm flexed, plates shifting with a menacing hum.
You stared, heart slamming against your ribs. “The glove… the circulation story…”
“All lies,” he admitted, voice raw. “I didn’t want you to see the monster. I thought if I could be James for a little while longer, you might not run screaming.”
He reached out slowly but you jerked away.
“Does it hurt?” you whispered, despite everything.
“Every day.” His red eyes never left yours. “It’s not mine. They tore the real one off and bolted this thing onto me while I was screaming. HYDRA made sure I felt every second of it.”
Silence stretched, thick and suffocating. Only the distant city hum and the frantic beat of your own heart filled the room.
Bucky’s shoulders shook as he continued, the words pouring out like he’d held them back for centuries. “I was arrogant. Handsome. Thought the world was mine. Then the plague came and a dying man made me eternal. I’ve spent nearly seven hundred years alone. Fucking. Feeding. Leaving bodies behind before dawn because nothing ever filled the emptiness.”
His voice cracked completely. Blood-red tears slid down his cheeks, actual blood, dark and glistening.
“Until Dolores. Dot. She called me ‘my James.’ She knew what I was and still loved me. When the plague took her in 1665, I tried to turn her. Forced my blood down her throat while she was still breathing. She screamed my name as she died in my arms. I burned the cottage with her body inside because I couldn’t bear to look at what I’d done.”
He dropped to his knees right there on the marble floor, arms wrapping around your waist like you were his last anchor.
“I’ve carried her screams for four hundred years,” he choked out against your stomach, blood tears soaking your shirt. “The wars. The mud. The explosion that took my arm. Waking up with this thing fused to me, roaring while they wiped my mind over and over. I came back to Brooklyn. Fed only on the worst people so I wouldn’t have to feel. Until that rainy night outside the library… when you smiled at me like I wasn’t damned.”
You stood frozen, sobbing, one hand hovering over his dark hair.
He looked up at you, eyes glowing like fresh blood, fangs fully bared, metal arm clenched so hard the plates screamed in protest. “I’ve been breaking into your apartment. Stealing your things. Tasting you while you slept. Listening to your heartbeat and praying I wouldn’t ruin you too.”
You shook your head, tears streaming. “You… you drank from me? While I was sleeping? You touched me, took my things like some kind of sick collector-”
“I know,” he whispered brokenly. “I’m a monster. A killer. I understand if you run. I won’t stop you. But please… I’m so fucking tired of being alone. You’re the only light I’ve had in centuries. Don’t take it away.”
The penthouse was silent except for your ragged breathing and his quiet, desperate sobs against you.
You were terrified.
You were furious.
You stood there, trembling, with Bucky’s arms locked around your waist and his face pressed against your stomach. The glow of his red eyes lit the floor beneath you like dying embers. His fangs were still fully extended, brushing against the fabric every time he breathed.
Your hand finally lowered. Fingers sank into his dark hair.
“I should run,” you whispered, voice cracking. “Any sane person would.”
Bucky’s shoulders tensed, waiting for the blow.
“But I’m still here,” you continued, the words spilling out before you could stop them. “I’m terrified… but I’m not leaving. Not tonight. Not yet. You’re a monster, Bucky. A real one. But you’re my monster. And I hate how much that matters to me right now.”
A broken sound escaped him, half sob, half relief. He tightened his hold for one heartbeat, then slowly loosened it, as if afraid you’d vanish.
“Thank you,” he breathed against you. “God, thank you.”
He stayed on his knees a moment longer, forehead pressed to your hip like a penitent at confession. When he finally rose, the red in his eyes had dimmed slightly but the fangs still peeked past his lips and the metal arm still hummed with tension. He looked raw. Exposed. Almost boyish in his uncertainty.
Bucky rubbed the back of his neck, a shy human gesture that felt strangely out of place on a centuries-old vampire.
“I… prepared dinner for you,” he said softly, a faint flush coloring his pale cheeks. “I’ve been cooking since the afternoon. I wanted tonight to feel… normal. Before everything else.”
You blinked, surprised, still wiping tears from your face. “You cooked? For me?”
He gave a small, almost shy nod. “I haven’t cooked for anyone in… a very long time. I wanted it to be perfect.”
He led you further into the penthouse with gentle care, one hand hovering near the small of your back without quite touching. The long dining table was set beautifully for one, fine china, crystal glasses, silverware polished to a mirror shine. Tall candles flickered in elegant holders, casting warm golden light across the room. A bottle of deep red wine breathed in a decanter. Soft, old jazz played from hidden speakers, something slow and smoky from the 1940s.
You could see into the open kitchen: chopping boards with fresh herb scraps, a pot that had clearly been simmering for hours, an empty wine bottle he must have used in the sauce.
Bucky pulled out your chair like a gentleman from another century, then sat across from you. He didn’t touch his own plate.
The feast was incredible.
Bucky had clearly poured hours into it. A rich homemade minestrone soup steamed gently in a beautiful ceramic bowl, loaded with fresh vegetables and herbs. Next to it sat a generous serving of creamy garlic pasta with fresh basil and shaved parmesan. There was a perfectly roasted vegetable medley glistening with olive oil and sea salt, a beautifully seared steak with rosemary and garlic butter and a large tray of homemade lasagna, layers of tender pasta, rich meat sauce, creamy ricotta, and melted mozzarella that still bubbled from the oven. A basket of warm, golden garlic bread sat beside it, the aroma of butter and roasted garlic filling the air.
On a side table waited three different desserts: tiramisu dusted with cocoa, dark chocolate cake layered with silky ganache and fresh berries with whipped cream and mint.
You took your first bite of the pasta and actually moaned. “Bucky… this is amazing. When did you even have time to do all this?”
He watched you eat with quiet intensity, a small smile playing at his lips despite the fangs. “I’ve had a lot of time to learn things over the centuries. Cooking was one way I tried to feel… human. I started preparing everything this morning. I needed to do something with my hands or I was going to lose my mind waiting for you to say yes.”
You ate slowly, studying him the entire time, the way candlelight danced across his pale skin, the subtle shift of metal plates under his sleeve, the faint red glow still lingering at the edges of his eyes. The silence finally became too much.
“Bucky… why aren’t you eating anything?” you asked gently.
He gave a low, tired chuckle and leaned back in his chair, eyes soft but shadowed.
“I can eat human food, doll. Some of us do it at galas or restaurants to blend in. But it tastes like ash in my mouth. No real flavor. No nourishment. Most of us vomit it up later, or it just sits heavy and makes us sick. If we rely on it too long, we get weak… malnourished.” His voice dropped, dark and intimate. “Nothing, nothing, compares to blood. Especially yours.”
You swallowed hard, heart racing, but took another slow bite of the pasta anyway. The rich garlic and herbs still tasted divine to you, even if they were nothing to him. Curiosity was slowly winning the war against your nerves. “So the garlic in this pasta… it’s really fine?”
He smiled faintly, fangs glinting in the candlelight. “Old folklore. Garlic doesn’t hurt us. It just smells strong. Some of us find it unpleasant, like it stings our nose but it won’t kill me. I actually like cooking with it. Reminds me of simpler times.”
You nodded, chewing thoughtfully. “Can you see yourself in mirrors?”
He let out a soft laugh. “Yes. Always have. The whole ‘no reflection’ thing was invented by Bram Stoker as a narrative device to show vampires lacked a soul. I still shave the old-fashioned way every evening.”
“What about sunlight?” you pressed, leaning forward. “Do you sparkle or burst into flames like in the movies?”
Bucky let out a genuine laugh, the sound low and warm, cutting through the heavy tension in the room. “No sparkling. That one always makes me laugh. I can go out in daylight- it just weakens me. The older I get, the more it burns if I stay out too long. Like a bad sunburn that never quite heals. That’s why I prefer evening dates. Sunsets are my limit on a good day.”
You kept going, emboldened by his patience. “Holy water? Crosses? What about stakes?”
“Holy water feels like a mild burn on the skin, like touching a hot pan for half a second. Crosses do nothing- never have.” He shrugged. “As for stakes… that whole ‘wooden stake through the heart kills us’ idea is mostly modern invention. In the old folklore they were just used to pin us down or immobilize us so we couldn’t rise from the grave. To actually finish one of us off, you’d need to behead or burn the body.”
He tapped his chest with a wry smile. “A stake would hurt like hell and slow me down, but I heal too fast. You’d have to be quicker than me and almost nothing is.”
You set your fork down, studying his face, the way the red glow in his eyes pulsed softly with every answer. “When do your fangs come out? Just when you’re hungry?”
Bucky’s eyes darkened, the crimson flaring brighter for a heartbeat. “They come out when I’m hungry. When I’m angry.” His voice dropped into a rough growl that sent heat and fear twisting low in your belly. “And when I’m aroused. They’ve been out since you walked into the penthouse. Looking at you does that to me. Every damn time.”
Your breath caught. Heat flooded your cheeks. “So right now… they’re because of me?”
“Partly,” he admitted, voice rough with honesty. “Mostly. You walk in a room and my body reacts before my brain catches up.”
You bit your lip, fighting the strange flutter in your chest. “Do you… shape-shift? Like into bats or wolves or anything?”
He tilted his head, a small, dangerously charming smirk playing on his lips. “Some of the very old ones can. Bats, rats, owls, foxes, even wolves. I never learned how. Never needed to. I prefer this form. This body.” His metal fingers flexed slowly on the tablecloth. “It’s served me well for seven hundred years. Strong. Fast. Familiar.”
You nodded slowly, processing everything. “What about needing an invitation to enter a home? Is that why you waited for me to open the door sometimes?”
Bucky’s smirk faded into something darker, almost predatory. His red eyes gleamed with dark amusement.
“That one used to be real,” he said, voice low. “A long time ago. But we figured it out centuries back. Vampires invented welcome mats. Cute little loophole. Put one outside your door and boom you’ve technically invited every vampire in the world inside. Most people have them now without even realizing what they’re doing.”
He leaned forward slightly, watching your face.
“I never actually needed an invitation. I only picked your lock those first few times out of habit… and because I wanted to hear you invite me in yourself. I wanted to watch that sweet, trusting smile when you opened the door for me. I wanted you to choose to let me in.”
A deep chill ran down your spine. The candle flames suddenly felt tiny and useless against the growing shadows in the room.
“So you could just… walk in whenever?” you asked quietly, voice barely above a whisper.
“Anytime,” he said, eyes locked on yours, unblinking. “Day or night. Rain or shine. Whether you’re awake, asleep, or in the shower. I never have to wait outside again unless you explicitly tell me to leave. And even then…”
He let the sentence hang, the implication heavy in the air.
You swallowed hard, heart hammering.
Bucky’s voice dropped even lower, almost intimate.
“I’d probably still watch from the street… just to make sure you’re safe.”
You tried to push past the shiver of fear. “What about resting in a coffin with soil from your grave? Is any of that real?”
Bucky’s expression turned almost nostalgic, though there was a hint of darkness in his eyes.
“Mostly myth,” he said. “I don’t need a coffin. I don’t actually need to sleep at all- vampires don’t. The body doesn’t require rest the way a human one does. But some of us do sleep in soil from their homeland. It… grounds us. Keeps the centuries from driving them completely insane. I haven’t done that in a long time. The last time was right after the war, when everything hurt too much.”
The questions kept coming, almost like you couldn’t stop them. “Are all vampires pale and beautiful like you? Or is that just in books?”
Bucky gave a dark, low chuckle that vibrated through his chest.
“In the oldest stories, we were bloated, ruddy, purple corpses. Disgusting, swollen things that crawled out of graves smelling of rot, mindless demons driven by pure bestial instinct. No charm, no seduction, just mindless hunger.”
He smiled, his red eyes gleaming with something hungry and possessive. “But after the change… it’s different. The venom rewrites you. Makes you younger. More beautiful. More magnetic.”
“You get this pull, an almost supernatural allure that draws people in. Makes them want to get closer. Makes them easy to seduce… easy to drain dry without them even realizing what’s happening until it’s too late.”
He leaned forward slightly, voice velvet and smoke. “When I turn you, you won’t just be immortal. You’ll be… irresistible. Skin flawless. Body perfected. A face and presence that makes mortals ache to be near you. To offer themselves. To bare their throats without understanding why. That’s how we survive. Not just by strength- but by beauty. By hunger wrapped in seduction.”
You swallowed hard, a shiver racing down your spine at how casually he spoke about turning you. Like it was something he had already decided in his mind. “You keep saying ‘when,’” you whispered. “Not ‘if.’”
Bucky noticed your unease immediately. He reached across the table and gently took your hand, metal fingers cool but careful against your skin.
“You don’t have to worry your pretty head about it right now, doll,” he murmured, voice softening into that velvet tone that always made your stomach flutter. “I’m not going to rush you. I’m not going to force anything. When- if- it happens, it’ll be when you’re ready. I just… I can’t stand the thought of watching you grow old and die while I stay like this. I’ve buried too many people I cared about. I don’t want you to be one of them.”
He lifted your hand to his lips and pressed a slow, reverent kiss to your knuckles, fangs lightly grazing your skin in a promise that made your pulse jump wildly.
“You’re already perfect to me,” he whispered against your fingers. “Human or not.”
You stared at him across the flickering candles, heart racing with a dizzying mixture of fear, fascination, lingering anger, and something far deeper. The jazz still played softly. The feast was slowly cooling on your plate. And the vampire who had just answered every terrifying question with surprising patience was still holding your hand like it was the most precious thing in his long, dark life.
“This is… a lot to take in,” you said finally, voice barely above a whisper.
Bucky’s red eyes softened. “I know. Take all the time you need. Ask me anything. I’ll answer every question, no matter how dark. And I understand if it’s too much. If you want to run, I won’t stop you.”
You didn’t run.
Instead, you reached across the table and gently touched his metal hand.
“I’m still here,” you whispered, fingers tracing the cool plates. “I won’t run.”
Bucky turned his hand over instantly, metal fingers carefully closing around yours like he was afraid you’d disappear. His glowing red eyes searched your face, raw and uncertain.
“There’s one more thing,” he said, voice dropping even lower, almost ashamed. “Sometimes… I can slip into dreams. Like an incubus. I’ve done it to you. Many times. I’ve made you dream filthy things while you slept. Made you feel my hands spreading you open, my mouth on your cunt, my cock buried so deep you were sobbing my name. You’d wake up soaked, thighs slick, aching so badly you had to touch yourself… and you thought it was just your imagination.”
Your breath hitched sharply. Heat flooded your face and lower, a sudden throb between your legs. “You… did that?”
Bucky’s eyes burned brighter, pupils blown wide. “Every night I couldn’t stay away. Even when I tried to stop myself. I’d stand in the corner of your room, hard as steel and push into your mind just to hear you moan for me in your sleep. I’m sorry. I know how fucked up that is.”
The silence between you crackled, thick, electric, heavy with fear, shame, and dark, undeniable desire. Your pulse thundered in your ears. You didn’t pull your hand away.
The tension finally snapped.
You stood up slowly, chair scraping against the floor. Bucky rose to meet you, chest heaving. The first kiss was slow and reverent, his hands cradling your face like you were made of glass. But hunger took over fast. The kiss turned deep, desperate, tongues sliding, teeth clashing. You moaned into his mouth and he answered with a broken growl that vibrated straight to your core.
He pulled back suddenly, breathing hard, fangs fully extended and gleaming. A thin string of saliva still connected his lower lip to your skin. He looked feral. Starving. Devastatingly beautiful.
You stared, heart pounding with something far beyond fear now. Curiosity and lust burned hotter. You reached up, cupped his jaw, thumb brushing the sharp line of his cheekbone. “Open for me, Bucky.”
His glowing red eyes flickered with surprise, but he obeyed instantly. Lips parting, he showed you the full, lethal length of his fangs. A low, needy growl rumbled in his chest, submissive and desperate, like he was offering himself up for your inspection.
You traced one fang slowly with your thumb, feeling the razor edge without cutting yourself. “Does it hurt when they come out?”
“Just a dull ache,” he murmured, voice gravel-rough and trembling. “Like an old wound. But right now… fuck, doll, it feels good. Because it’s you touching them.” His tongue flicked out helplessly. Thick drool slipped from the corner of his mouth, sliding down his chin as he fought the urge to bite.
You leaned in, eyes locked on his and dragged your tongue slowly up the length of one fang. The metallic tang mixed with his dark, cold taste, addictive and intoxicating. Bucky groaned deep in his throat, the sound broken and filthy. His metal hand tightened on your waist, hard enough to bruise, hips jerking forward involuntarily against you.
“Fuck… you’re gonna kill me,” he rasped, drooling openly now. Saliva dripped onto your chest as he watched you explore him with wide, submissive eyes. “No one’s ever… touched them like that. No one’s ever been brave enough.”
“Does drinking hurt?” you asked, still licking and teasing the sharp point, sucking gently at the tip.
“Only if I want it to.” His voice cracked into something dangerous and wrecked. “I can make it burn like fire… or feel like the best orgasm you’ve ever had. I’ve learned control over centuries. But with you-” He shuddered hard when you sucked harder. “-I don’t know how long it’ll last. Please… doll…”
You smiled, wicked and curious and took the entire tip of his fang into your mouth, sucking softly. Bucky snarled, the sound purely submissive and lifted you off the ground like you weighed nothing. Clothes were torn away in a frantic blur, your shirt ripped down the middle, his pants shoved down just enough. He carried you to the bedroom, metal arm cool and unyielding against your bare back and laid you on the bed with surprising gentleness.
But the second your back hit the mattress, the hunger consumed him.
He worshipped you for what felt like hours. Mouth everywhere. He sucked dark, claiming bruises into your breasts, fangs grazing your nipples until you arched and whimpered. He licked long, messy stripes down your stomach, drooling shamelessly over your skin, leaving shiny, cooling trails. When he finally shoved your thighs apart and settled between them, his red eyes burned up at you with raw need.
“I’ve tasted you before,” he confessed, voice thick with shame and lust, pressing open-mouthed kisses to your inner thigh. “While you slept. Just little sips from your wrist or your thigh. Never enough to hurt you. Never while you were awake, watching me like this.” He groaned, hips grinding helplessly against the sheets. “I’m sorry… but I couldn’t stop. You taste like fucking heaven.”
His tongue dragged slowly through your folds, and the broken, desperate sound he made was almost worshipful. “Let me make it up to you, doll. Please. Let me show you how good I can make it feel when you’re awake.”
Before you could answer, he buried his face in your cunt. No teasing. He devoured you, filthy, wet, obscene sounds filling the room as his tongue fucked deep inside you, curling, thrusting. His drool mixed with your slick, dripping down his chin, soaking the sheets. Two thick fingers joined his tongue while his thumb rubbed tight circles on your clit. You came the first time with a broken cry, thighs clamping around his head. He didn’t stop. He sucked your clit between his lips and growled, the vibration sending you over again almost immediately, sobbing his name.
Only then did he crawl up your body, cock heavy and leaking against your thigh. He was massive, thick, flushed dark, the head already glistening with precum and your own slick. You reached down with a shaky hand and stroked him, spreading the mess along his length.
“Bucky… you’re so fucking big,” you whimpered, eyes wide with a mix of awe and nerves.
“I know, baby,” he groaned, pressing his forehead to yours, breathing ragged and hot against your lips. “Gonna go slow at first. Breathe for me. I’ve got you. Tell me if it hurts, okay? I need to hear you.”
He pushed in inch by inch, stretching you open until you felt impossibly full. The burn was intense but perfect, bordering on too much. When he bottomed out, he stayed there, hips twitching, drooling onto your neck as he fought for control.
“Fuck… you’re so tight,” he rasped, voice wrecked. “So warm and wet for me. Taking every inch like you were made for this cock. How does it feel, doll? Does it hurt?”
“A little,” you gasped, nails digging into his shoulders. “It’s so much… but it feels good. Don’t stop.”
He stayed buried deep, rolling his hips in slow, careful circles, letting you adjust. “Good girl. Breathe. I’ve got you. If it gets too much, you tell me. Promise me.”
“I promise,” you whispered, legs wrapping tighter around him.
Then he started moving, deep, slow rolls of his hips at first, letting you feel every ridge and vein dragging inside you. The headboard creaked under his metal grip. Soon the pace turned punishing, hips snapping hard, the wet slap of skin on skin echoing obscenely through the room. He fucked you like he’d been starving for you for decades.
“Mine,” he snarled against your throat, fangs scraping your skin. “Say it.”
“I’m yours- fuck, Bucky, I’m yours!”
Your orgasm was building fast, walls fluttering around his cock. Bucky suddenly slowed, pulling almost all the way out before sliding back in deep. His glowing red eyes locked onto yours, intense and pleading.
“Drink from me,” he rasped, slicing his wrist open with a fang. Dark, ancient blood welled up instantly. “Just a little. It’ll make everything feel better. So much better. Trust me, doll. You’ll feel like you’re flying.”
You hesitated, breath shaky. “Bucky… I don’t know if-”
“Please,” he whispered, pressing his bleeding wrist closer to your lips, voice desperate and feral. “It won’t hurt you. It’ll heighten everything. Every thrust. Every touch. Every single nerve in your body. You’ll come harder than you ever have. Let me give this to you, baby. Let me make you feel good.”
The raw need in his voice, combined with the way he was still buried so deep inside you, made you cave. You parted your lips and let him press his wrist to your mouth.
The first taste was overwhelming, rich, metallic, and strangely sweet, like dark spiced wine laced with raw power. His blood flooded your tongue and burned down your throat. Almost immediately, fire spread through your veins. Pleasure exploded tenfold. Every nerve lit up like live wires. The stretch of his cock inside you suddenly felt impossibly better, every ridge dragging against sensitive spots you didn’t even know existed.
“Oh my God-” you gasped, eyes rolling back, a broken moan tearing from your throat.
Bucky groaned loudly, hips snapping forward harder. “That’s it… good girl. Feel me now. Feel how deep I am. How full you are. Does it still hurt, doll? Tell me.”
“No- fuck, it feels… incredible,” you sobbed, legs shaking around him. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”
He fucked you through it without mercy, eyes glowing brighter, drooling onto your chest as he watched you fall apart.
“Fuck, look at you,” he growled, voice wrecked with feral hunger. “Drinking my blood and creaming all over my cock like a perfect little slut. So fucking perfect. So mine. You okay, baby? Not lightheaded?”
“I’m… I’m good,” you gasped, tears of overwhelming pleasure streaming down your face. “It’s so much- I feel like I’m burning up in the best way.”
He kept feeding you small sips as he pounded into you, each swallow making the pleasure spiral higher and higher until you were sobbing, shaking, coming again and again. The room spun. Your body felt like it was on fire in the best possible way, every thrust, every drag of his cock, every brush of his skin against yours amplified into pure bliss.
“Does it still feel good?” he panted, voice rough and concerned even as he fucked you like a beast. “Talk to me, doll. Tell me you’re okay.”
“Yes- yes, Bucky, I’m okay- don’t stop, please-”
He shifted higher, mouth trailing wet, open kisses up your leg until he reached your calf. Without warning, his fangs sank deep into the soft, sensitive flesh there, right below the knee, where the muscle was firm but yielding. The sharp, burning pain exploded through you, mixing violently with the overwhelming pleasure still pulsing from his blood in your veins.
The combined sensation sent you over the edge one final time, his fangs buried deep in your calf while his thick cock slammed into you with brutal, relentless strokes. You screamed, raw and broken, vision whiting out as your walls clenched violently around him. His hot, endless pulses of cum flooded you at the exact same moment, thick ropes painting your insides until it squirted out around his pistoning shaft with every thrust, slick and obscene. The wet, filthy sound of it echoed through the room, wet squelching, skin slapping, your mixed fluids soaking the sheets beneath you.
“Fuck- take it all, doll,” Bucky growled against your neck, voice ragged and possessive, his metal fingers digging bruises into your hip while his flesh hand fisted your hair. “Gonna fill this greedy little cunt until it’s dripping for days. You’re mine now. Every drop of blood, every fucking inch of this perfect body- mine.”
He kept rutting through his orgasm, hips snapping harder, chasing the last spasms of your climax until your thighs shook uncontrollably. The bedframe groaned in protest under the force, wood creaking dangerously with every punishing thrust. You were a mess, sweat-slick, cum-stuffed, blood trickling from the fresh bite marks on your neck and calf where he’d feasted earlier. The metallic tang of your blood still coated his tongue as he licked greedily at the wound.
Then it happened.
One particularly savage thrust, his cock slamming so deep you swore you felt him in your guts, made the entire bed collapse. The wooden slats snapped with a loud crack, the mattress dropping hard onto the box spring. You both jolted, still locked together.
“Oh fuck!” you gasped, eyes wide, a breathless laugh already bubbling up.
Bucky froze mid-thrust, cock still buried to the hilt inside your fluttering pussy, his glowing eyes blinking in confusion. “What the- did we just…?”
The absurdity hit you both at once. You burst into giggles, the sound bright and giddy even as his cum continued to leak out around where you were joined. Bucky’s serious, post-orgasm face cracked, and he let out a low, rumbling laugh that vibrated through his chest into yours.
“Shit, doll,” he chuckled, forehead dropping to yours, still half-hard and twitching inside you. “Broke the damn bed. Guess I don’t know my own strength when I’m buried in this tight, sloppy heaven.”
You grinned up at him, running your fingers through his messy hair, feeling the coolness of his skin, vampire cool, never quite warm like a human’s. “Mmm, worth it. You fucked me so hard I’m gonna feel you for a week. My vampire super-soldier broke the bed railing me like a damn animal. Kinda hot.”
He smirked, fangs still partially extended, glistening with your blood. “Animal, huh? Careful what you ask for.” He gave one lazy, deep roll of his hips, pushing his cum deeper, making you whimper. “Still hard for you. Could go again right here on the broken wreckage.”
You laughed softer this time, cupping his face. “Later, Buck. I’m wrecked. But… you’re not gonna sleep, are you?”
Bucky’s expression softened. He carefully pulled out with a wet sound, a gush of his spend following, dripping down your ass onto the ruined sheets. He sealed the bite on your neck first, slow, reverent licks of his tongue, warm and soothing, the healing properties in his saliva already knitting the skin. Then he moved lower, spreading your thighs wide to lap gently at the bite on your inner thigh, tasting the mix of your blood and his cum with a low, appreciative groan.
“Fuck, look at this pretty, used cunt,” he murmured filthily between licks. “All swollen and leaking my load. So damn perfect.” He pressed a tender kiss right over your clit before crawling back up.
He didn’t lie down beside you like a human would. Instead, he sat up against the tilted headboard of the collapsed bed, metal arm pulling you effortlessly into his lap so you were draped over his chest. His fingers, both flesh and metal, traced lazy, soothing patterns along your spine, your ass, the backs of your thighs.
“I don’t need sleep, baby,” he said quietly, voice low and intimate in the dark. “Haven’t in decades. I’ll stay right here, watching over you. Listening to that beautiful heartbeat. After everything… I can’t risk losing you too.”
You nuzzled into his neck, kissing the old scars there. “You’re not gonna lose me, Bucky. I’m yours. I chose this, chose you. The biting, the blood, the way you fuck me stupid… all of it. I’m not going anywhere.” Your hand slid down his abs, giving his still-hard cock a lazy stroke. “Even if you do break every bed we own.”
He let out a soft, relieved laugh, pressing kisses to your temple, your eyelids, your swollen lips. “Good girl. My perfect doll. I’ll buy a reinforced steel frame tomorrow. Maybe bolt it to the damn floor.” His voice dropped, more serious, thumb brushing your jaw. “You’re safe with me. I swear it. I’ll burn the world before I let anything touch you. You’re my light now. My reason.”
You smiled sleepily, body heavy and sated, the buzz of his blood in your veins making everything warm and floaty. “Mmm. Love you, my vampire. Even if you’re a creepy non-sleeper who stares at me all night.”
“Creepy, huh?” He nipped your ear playfully, then soothed it with his tongue. “Keep talking like that and I’ll spread these thighs again and make you scream my name until sunrise.”
“Promises, promises…” you mumbled, already drifting.
Bucky held you tighter, one hand possessively cupping your cum-filled pussy, the other stroking your hair. He stayed awake all night like that, cock half-hard against your thigh, silent blood-tinged tears slipping down his cheeks onto the pillow, heart aching with a love so fierce it terrified him. Your heartbeat was steady and strong against his chest, the last pure thing left in his long, violent existence.
And he’d protect it with every undead fiber of his being.
You woke slowly, blinking against the soft morning light filtering through the curtains, your body deliciously sore and heavy with the afterglow of being thoroughly claimed. The first thing you noticed was the chaos surrounding you.
The bed was completely destroyed, slats snapped clean in half, the mattress tilted at a ridiculous angle on the broken box spring and white down feathers absolutely everywhere. They drifted lazily through the air like snow, clung to your sticky skin, tangled in your messy hair and dusted the dried streaks of cum and blood that painted your thighs and stomach. Feathers stuck to the dark bite marks on your neck and breasts, nestled in the crease of your ass and even floated gently off the ruined sheets every time you shifted.
The bed was empty. Or so you thought.
“Bucky?” you murmured, voice raspy from screaming his name half the night. A faint flutter of panic mixed with the warm throb between your legs.
Before you could sit up, the most sinful, decadent sensation hit you, a warm wet tongue dragging with deliberate, unhurried laziness up the soft, sensitive skin of your inner thigh. Each long, slow stroke pressed firmly against a fresh, throbbing bite mark, the one Bucky had left deep in the throes of last night’s passion. The feeling was possessive, almost worshipful, like he was savoring every drop of you.
A shiver raced through your body and a soft, breathy moan escaped your lips. You looked down to find Bucky right there between your spread thighs, his massive metal arm draped heavily over your hip to keep you pinned open for him. His mouth was latched onto that tender wound, tongue working in slow, reverent circles as he licked it closed, sealing it with his cool venom while tasting the last faint traces of your blood. The sting mixed with pleasure in a way that made your core clench emptily, still aching and leaking from how brutally he’d fucked you hours earlier.
He must have been waiting for you to stir.
When he felt you tense, he lifted his head just enough to look up at you through hooded crimson eyes that glowed with hunger and raw devotion. His lips were shiny, slick and stained vivid crimson with your blood. Feathers clung to his dark hair and broad shoulders like some filthy, fallen angel.
“Good morning, my sweet girl,” he rumbled, voice gravelly and thick. “Found you leaking all over the wreckage. Couldn’t resist cleaning up my mess. You taste even better in the morning- soft, warm and dripping with me.”
You let out a shaky laugh, glancing around at the feather explosion and broken wood. “We really destroyed everything, didn’t we? Feathers in my ass, feathers in my hair… I look like I got attacked by a pillow factory after the world’s hardest fuck.”
Bucky chuckled darkly, dragging his tongue slowly up your slit, collecting the creamy mix of his dried cum and your fresh arousal. “Mmm. Worth every splinter and every damn feather. I woke up hard as fuck just from smelling how soaked you still are. Been down here licking you for ten minutes, waiting for those pretty eyes to open.”
Heat flooded your cheeks. “Bucky… thank you. For last night. For letting me drink from you. It felt… God, it felt incredible. Like every nerve in my body was on fire and singing at the same time. I don’t know how to repay you for something so intimate.”
He crawled up your body with predatory grace, feathers shifting around you both, until he hovered over you. Then he kissed you deeply, hungrily, tongue sliding into your mouth so you could taste the copper of your own blood mixed with his cool sweetness and the filthy evidence of your combined releases.
“You never have to repay me, sweetheart,” he whispered against your lips, brushing feathers from your flushed face with gentle metal fingers. “I’d drain every drop I have into you if it made you feel even half that good. Your pleasure is everything to me. You’re everything to me. Don’t ever thank me like you owe me. You’re my girl. My heart. I’d burn the world down just to keep you warm and safe in my arms.”
You smiled shyly up at him, that bashful look that always made his ancient chest tighten. “I still feel lucky. Every single time you choose me.”
Bucky groaned and pressed lingering kisses to your forehead, eyelids and the tip of your nose. “Stay right here in this ruined bed, baby. Don’t move. I’m gonna make you breakfast- you need fuel after I took so much blood and fucked you raw.”
You watched him leave the room completely naked, that perfect sculpted ass and broad back on full display, long angry red scratches running down his shoulders and spine, some deep enough to have drawn thin trails of dried blood. Guilt twisted in your stomach.
When he returned balancing a tray loaded with food, you sat up quickly, clutching the sheet.
“Bucky… your back,” you whispered, voice thick with remorse as he set the tray down on the tilted mattress. “I did that? Oh God, I’m so sorry, Buck. I got so lost in it, scratching and begging like a wild animal-”
He climbed onto the broken bed without hesitation and pulled you straight into his lap, sheet and all, so your back rested against his solid chest. His thick cock, already half-hard again, nestled hot and heavy against your ass. The scratches looked even more vicious up close.
“Shh, none of that,” he murmured, kissing your temple, then your ear. “I fucking love these marks. Every single one. Means my perfect girl lost control while I was balls-deep, pounding that tight cunt and flooding you with cum. Means I made you feel so good you turned feral. You wear my bites and bruises like jewelry… I’ll wear your scratches like badges of honor. That’s how it should be between us, doll.”
You still looked guilty, so he gently tilted your chin up, forcing you to meet those glowing red eyes. “Eat, baby. Before it gets cold. I made all your favorites.”
The tray held fluffy scrambled eggs with fresh herbs, crispy bacon, sliced strawberries and melon, buttered toast and cold orange juice. You relaxed back against his chest as he picked up the fork and began feeding you slow, careful bites, one hand continuously stroking through your feather-dusted hair while the other rested possessively on your stomach, thumb tracing lazy circles over your skin.
Every few bites he’d lean down and kiss your shoulder, your neck, the dark claiming bite marks he’d left. His fingers traced the vivid bruises on your hips and inner thighs with open, filthy pride.
“Look at you,” he murmured hotly against your ear, voice dropping into that low, dirty register. “All covered in my marks like a goddamn masterpiece. These pretty thighs bruised purple from my hands spreading you open while I railed you. This sweet little pussy still puffy, sore, and leaking my cum from how many times I filled you. And these gorgeous tits…” He cupped one gently, thumb brushing the bite right above your nipple. “Marked up so anyone who sees you knows exactly who owns this body. My perfect, filthy girl. So soft and sweet when you thank me for my blood… but you turn into a desperate little cockslut when I’m stretching this cunt open, scratching my back bloody and begging me to breed you deeper.”
You whimpered around a bite of toast, cheeks burning but you pressed back against his hardening cock. “Bucky… you’re making me wet again just talking like that. I can feel you getting hard against my ass.”
He chuckled darkly, the sound vibrating through his chest into yours. “Good. That’s what I want. I love how sincere you are, doll- blushing and thanking me even after I’ve had you screaming and creaming all over my cock half the night. It makes the monster in me want to wrap you up and protect you forever… and it also makes me want to bend you over these broken slats and fuck you raw again until you’re crying and begging for another load.”
You turned your head, kissing his jaw tenderly. “I love you. All of you- the monster, the man, the way you take care of me even after you ruin me and break the bed.”
His arms tightened around you, metal and flesh, and he buried his face in your neck with a low, possessive growl. “I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything in centuries, sweetheart. You’re mine. Every moan, every drop of blood, every scratch on my back… it’s all mine. Now finish your breakfast so I can lay you down in all these feathers and lick that pretty pussy until you’re shaking and soaking my face. Then I’ll feed you more. And if you keep thanking me so sweetly, I’ll let you drink from me again while I’m buried so deep inside you that you feel me for days.”
The monster was wide awake, completely, dangerously obsessed and he had never been happier.
The honeymoon phase didn’t last long.
What started as stolen kisses in the library stacks after closing quickly spiraled into something darker, more addictive and far more dangerous. You and Bucky fell into a secret rhythm that consumed both of you. You’d sneak out of your apartment at all hours, heart hammering and meet him in shadowed alleys, on empty rooftops, or in the back of his blacked-out SUV where he’d fuck you until you couldn’t walk straight. Some nights he’d show up at your door unannounced, eyes already black and take you right there against the wall before you could even say hello.
You started wearing high collars, scarves, and heavy concealer everywhere. Fresh bite marks bloomed on your neck, your breasts, the soft insides of your thighs. Some nights he bit you in three different places just because he couldn’t stop tasting you.
“You’re mine now,” he’d growl against your skin, licking the wounds closed with slow, possessive drags of his tongue while drool slipped from his fangs. “No one else gets to see these marks. No one else gets to touch what belongs to me.”
You lied to your friends. You lied to your coworkers. You told yourself you could handle the monster you were falling for.
But Bucky was losing control.
His obsession turned feral.
Your creepy ex Lance, the one who still drunk-texted you at 2 am calling you a worthless bitch for leaving him, was found dead in his apartment four days later. The news called it a “brutal animal attack.” Throat torn out. Body almost completely drained of blood. No forced entry. No fingerprints.
You stared at the graphic photos on your phone until your vision blurred.
Then there was that jerk from the café from two weeks ago, the one who wouldn’t stop cat-calling you, who grabbed your ass when you walked past and whispered what he’d do to you if he got you alone. He was found in the alley behind the cafe the next night. Same story. Throat ripped open. Drained dry.
You knew.
You knew it was Bucky.
When he showed up at your apartment that night, soaked from the rain, you were waiting for him. The printed news articles were spread across your kitchen table like evidence at a crime scene.
The second he stepped through the door, you shoved the papers into his chest.
“What the fuck did you do?!” Your voice cracked with fury and terror. “Lance is dead, Bucky. That asshole from the café is dead. Their throats were torn out. Was that you? Look me in the eyes and tell me it wasn’t you.”
Bucky didn’t even glance at the articles. His eyes were already pitch black, fangs partially extended, a thin string of clear drool slipping from the corner of his mouth as he stared at you like a starving wolf.
“I took care of them,” he said, voice low and rough. “They touched what’s mine. They scared you. They don’t get to keep breathing after that.”
You backed up until you hit the kitchen counter, chest heaving.
“You’re killing people, Bucky. Innocent people-”
“They weren’t innocent,” he snarled, stepping closer. More drool slid down his chin. “Lance sent you death threats. Pictures of you sleeping. The other one had videos on his phone, following you home, jerking off to you. I smelled what they wanted to do to you. I saw it.”
Tears burned in your eyes. Your hands were shaking.
“You can’t just murder people because they looked at me the wrong way! This isn’t protection, this is insanity!”
Bucky’s metal hand slammed into the cabinet beside your head, splintering the wood. He was breathing hard, drooling openly now, fangs fully extended and glistening.
“I would burn this entire fucking city to the ground for you,” he growled, voice breaking. “I already lost the only woman I ever loved. I watched her die screaming my name while I tried to save her. I won’t lose you too. I won’t. I can’t.”
The silence that followed was deafening.
You should have screamed. You should have run.
Instead, you grabbed the front of his wet shirt with both hands and yanked him into a brutal, angry kiss.
He tasted like rain and blood and desperation. He groaned into your mouth, lifting you onto the counter in one motion and shoving your legs apart. His hands were shaking as he ripped your panties aside.
You were horrified.
You were dripping wet.
That night you rode him on your couch like you were trying to punish both of you, nails raking bloody lines down his chest while he drooled against your neck, fangs scraping your skin without breaking it. Every thrust was punishing and worshipful at the same time.
Afterward, when you were both panting and spent, you curled into his lap on the couch, still shaking from the intensity of it all. Your body ached. Your mind was a storm of fear and twisted desire.
Bucky buried his face in your hair, arms wrapped around you like iron bands, so tight it almost hurt to breathe. His chest heaved against your back. You could feel his drool, warm and slick, sliding down the side of your neck from his slightly parted lips. His fangs were still partially extended, brushing your skin with every ragged breath.
His voice was barely a whisper, raw with shame and something much darker.
“I’ve thought about it, you know,” he confessed against your throat, lips moving wetly over your pulse. “Turning you. Against your will.”
You froze in his lap, every muscle locking up.
He kept going, voice cracking painfully, like the words were being ripped out of him.
“I fantasize about it almost every night,” he whispered, the confession trembling. “Holding you down while you fight me. Pinning you with my metal arm so you can’t move no matter how hard you scream. Draining you until you’re weak and crying and begging me to stop… then forcing my blood down your throat while I’m still buried balls-deep inside you. Fucking you through the change until your heart stops and you wake up screaming with new fangs in your mouth.”
A broken, wet sob tore out of him. Drool and blood tears mixed on your shoulder as he pressed closer, almost rocking you.
“I imagine the way you’d hate me at first. The way you’d scream my name in terror while your body burns and breaks and reforms. But I’d keep going. I’d hold you through it. Because then you’d be mine. Forever. Safe. Eternal. You’d never grow old and die like Dot did. You’d never leave me. Even if you hated me for eternity… at least you’d be here. With me.”
His voice dropped into something truly terrifying, low, trembling, unhinged.
“Some nights when you’re sleeping in my arms, bleeding from my bites… I hold my wrist right against your mouth. I pry your lips open with my fingers and imagine forcing it down your throat while you’re still unconscious. I want it so fucking bad it physically hurts me to stop myself. My hands shake. I drool just thinking about it. I have to leave the room sometimes because I’m scared I’ll actually do it.”
You sat there in his lap, silent tears running down your face, heart hammering so hard it hurt. His drool was sliding down your collarbone. His blood tears soaked into you. You could feel his cock twitching against your thigh, still half-hard, like even confessing this horror turned him on.
You didn’t know if you were holding a man anymore…
…or the monster who was slowly going to destroy you.
Bucky’s arms tightened even more, almost crushing you against his chest. His voice cracked into a broken, childlike whimper.
“I’m so fucking scared I’m going to do it one day. I’m scared I won’t be able to stop myself. I’m scared I’ll wake up one morning and you’ll be like me… and you’ll never forgive me.”
He pressed his face harder into your neck, fangs scraping your skin, drooling openly now as fresh blood tears fell.
“But God… I want it. I want it so much.”
You sat there in the dark, trembling in the arms of the vampire who had just admitted he fantasized about violating you in the worst possible way and you still wrapped your arms around him.
You still held on tighter.
And that terrified you more than anything else.
Because deep down, some sick, addicted part of you wasn’t sure you would stop him if he tried.
The sickness came on fast. Too fast.
It started with a scratchy throat and a mild fever you brushed off, just stress from your thesis and late shifts at the café. By the second night in Bucky’s penthouse, you were shaking apart. Violent chills slammed through your body even as sweat soaked the sheets. Your lungs felt heavy, like they were filling with wet concrete. Every cough ripped through you like shards of glass scraping your throat raw. You couldn’t keep anything down.
Bucky watched it all with growing horror, red eyes wide and unblinking.
He turned his sleek, modern bedroom into a nightmare sickroom overnight. Humidifier hissing like a dying animal. Stolen IV bags hanging from a makeshift stand. Bottles of antibiotics he didn’t trust. Ancient herbal poultices that smelled like rot and grave dirt. Cold cloths. Thermometers. Nothing helped. Your fever climbed past 104. Your breathing turned wet and rattling, like drowning on dry land.
On the third night, you were barely conscious, convulsing in his arms as another coughing fit tore through you.
“James…” you rasped, voice barely more than a broken whisper, tears streaming down your fever-flushed face. “Please… take me to a hospital. I need real doctors. Tests. Medicine. I’m scared- I’m so fucking scared. I feel like I’m dying.”
His eyes flashed blood-red, fangs fully extended, drool slipping from the corner of his mouth in thick strings.
“No.” The word came out like a growl from the pit of hell. “No hospitals. They’re butcher shops. They’ll pump you full of poison, poke you with needles and watch you rot under those lights while they pray to a god that doesn’t give a shit. I watched it happen for centuries. I held Dot while she screamed in one of those places. I won’t lose you the same way.”
You tried to push him away, but your arms were limp and useless. “Bucky, please- I’m begging you. I’m terrified. I don’t want to die here like this. Let me go. Let me call someone.”
He didn’t budge. The metal arm wrapped around you like iron bands, cool and merciless, as he carried you back to the bedroom despite your weak struggles. You slapped at his chest, sobbing, screaming hoarsely.
“I’m scared! Bucky, don’t do this- you’re scaring me! Please, I can’t breathe!”
The heavy click of the bedroom door locking from the outside echoed like a coffin lid slamming shut.
You were trapped.
Hours blurred into days. The fever spiked so high the room started to warp. Shadows crawled across the ceiling like living things, reaching for you with clawed hands. You heard Dot’s screams, a woman you’d never met, mixed with your own wet, gurgling coughs. Sometimes you saw her face rotting in the corner, black buboes bursting, whispering that Bucky’s blood had killed her too.
Bucky never left your side for long. He sat like a gargoyle on the edge of the bed, eyes permanently black, blood tears carving constant red tracks down his face. Drool dripped from his fangs onto the sheets as hunger and terror twisted him into something truly monstrous.
He murmured hoarsely, pressing icy cloths to your burning skin. His voice cracked with raw desperation. “Stay with me, doll. Please. I can’t watch you burn like she did. I can’t bury another woman I love.”
When your breathing grew too shallow and your pulse fluttered like a dying bird, he made the choice.
He sliced his wrist open with a fang, dark, ancient blood welling up and forced it against your cracked lips.
“Drink,” he begged, voice shattered and desperate. “Drink for me, baby. Please. I won’t let you die.”
The blood burned like liquid fire down your throat, healing and poisoning at once. It dragged you back from the edge for a few hours but the fever only raged hotter. Your body rejected it in violent chills and vomiting.
So Bucky started hunting.
He locked you in with cameras watching your every shallow, rattling breath, then disappeared into the night like the predator he was. You woke once to the sound of the door and saw him covered in blood that wasn’t his, splattered across his shirt, matted in his hair. He carried thermoses of warm stolen blood, mixing it with his own before forcing it down your throat.
The penthouse began to reek of copper, decay, and terror.
When you finally clawed back enough strength to be lucid, you were still weak, still burning but fury gave you fire.
The second he walked back in with another thermos, blood still dripping from his chin, you slapped him hard across the face with everything you had left.
“You locked me in here!” you screamed, voice raw and cracking. “You imprisoned me like a fucking animal! I begged you, Bucky- I begged on my knees and you said no! I’m terrified of you right now. What the hell are you becoming?!”
Bucky dropped to his knees instantly, metal arm wrapping around your waist like a vice as he pressed his forehead to your stomach. Blood tears soaked through your thin shirt.
“I know,” he choked out, voice wrecked. “I’m a monster. I watched Dot die screaming because my blood poisoned her during the plague. She begged me to let her go and I held her down instead. I can’t- I won’t- do the same with you. Not you. Please don’t make me bury you too.”
You sobbed, fists pounding weakly against his shoulders. “This isn’t love, it’s control! You’re killing me slowly. I’m so scared of what you’ll do next. What if your blood makes me worse? What if I never leave this room alive?”
“I’m scared too,” he whispered, looking up at you with those terrifying black-red eyes, drool and blood mixing on his chin. “I’m so fucking terrified of losing you that I’d rather you hate me forever than watch you slip away.”
You yanked him up by his bloody shirt, tears streaming down your face.
He didn’t give you time to think.
“I need to be inside you,” he rasped, voice desperate and feral. “Right now. My blood, my cock- it will make you feel better. It will heal you. Let me fuck you. Let me fill you. I can make this okay. I can make you okay.”
You shoved at his chest hard, fury and terror giving you strength you didn’t know you had.
“No!” you cried, voice cracking. “Are you insane?! I’m sick, I’m scared and you want to fuck me?! I’m not some toy you can use to feel better about yourself! Get off me!”
Bucky’s hands tightened on your hips, eyes wild.
“Please,” he begged, voice breaking even as his cock pressed insistently against you. “Just let me in. Let me make you feel good. My blood is already in you. Let me finish it. Let me heal you the only way I know how.”
You slapped him hard across the face, the sound echoing in the locked room.
“I said no!” you screamed, tears pouring down your cheeks. “I’m terrified of you right now! You locked me in here like a prisoner, you fed me blood, you’re acting like a fucking animal- and you think sex is going to fix this?! Get the hell off me!”
Bucky froze.
For a long, terrible moment he just stared at you, red eyes wide, fangs out, drool and blood tears streaking his face. Then something in him shattered.
He dropped to his knees again, metal arm wrapping around your waist as he pressed his forehead to your stomach, sobbing openly.
“I’m sorry,” he choked out, voice completely broken. “I’m so fucking sorry. I know I’m a monster. I know I’m scaring you. I just… I can’t watch you die. I can’t do it again. Please don’t hate me. Please.”
You stood there shaking, still furious, still terrified, but the raw pain in his voice cracked something inside you. You sank down slowly, wrapping your arms around his shoulders as he trembled against you.
The fight dissolved into quiet, broken sobs from both of you.
He held you like you were the only thing keeping him sane, blood tears soaking your shirt, drool and fear mixing on your skin.
The city lights flickered outside the soundproof windows.
Inside, the air was thick with blood, sickness, terror, and the heavy weight of a love that might destroy you both.
And you still curled into his chest, listening to the dead heart that beat only for you… wondering how much longer you had before the monster inside him finally won.
The next night, after the fever finally broke and the blood-stained sheets had been burned, Bucky carried you to the roof of his penthouse.
The city sprawled beneath you like a glittering sea of lights, cold wind whipping across the concrete rooftop. He sat on the wide ledge with you curled in his lap, your back against his chest, his metal arm wrapped securely around your waist. For a long time, neither of you spoke. The silence was heavy, weighted down by everything that had happened in that locked room.
“I’m still pissed at you,” you said quietly, staring out at the city. Your voice was hoarse but steady. “You apologized, but it doesn’t just erase it. You tried to force yourself on me when I was weak and scared. That shit stays with me, Bucky.”
“I know,” he murmured, lips brushing the top of your head. His voice was rough with guilt. “And I’ll keep being sorry for the rest of your life if that’s what it takes. I hate what I did. I hate that I became that version of myself with you. I was terrified… but that’s no excuse. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I scared you. I’m sorry I made you feel like a thing instead of the only person I have left.”
You stayed tense in his arms, anger still simmering under your skin even as you leaned back against him. “Good. You should feel like shit about it.”
He exhaled shakily. “I do. Every second.” After a long pause, he continued, softer. “I want you to understand why I lose control like that. Not just hear the stories. I want you to feel them. All the years. All the deaths. All the reasons I’m so fucking broken that I’d rather force you to live than watch you die.”
You turned in his arms to look at him. His red eyes were haunted, vulnerable in a way that made your chest ache despite your lingering fury.
“How?” you asked.
Bucky pressed his wrist to his own mouth and bit down hard. Dark, potent blood welled up immediately, thick and gleaming under the city lights. He offered it to you, eyes glowing faintly red.
“Drink,” he whispered. “And I’ll show you everything. Please.”
You hesitated but finally brought his bleeding wrist to your lips. The taste exploded across your tongue: copper, power, and centuries of him. The world tilted violently.
Suddenly you were there.
Mud. Endless, sucking mud.
1917 - The Western Front
The stench hit you like a physical blow, rotting flesh, human shit, wet wool, gunpowder, and death. Freezing rain poured down in sheets. Artillery shells screamed overhead and detonated so close your teeth rattled. You felt Bucky’s constant, gnawing hunger like it was tearing through your own gut. He hadn’t fed properly in weeks. You moved like a shadow with him between the trenches, ripping out throats of German scouts under cover of night, drinking just enough to stay sane while the screams of dying men tore at what remained of his soul.
“I hated it,” his real voice murmured against your ear on the rooftop as the memory swallowed you. “But the screams reminded me I could still feel something.”
The loneliness was suffocating. Thousands of men all around, laughing, cursing, praying and he was completely, utterly alone. No one could ever know the monster wearing a soldier’s uniform.
The vision shifted with brutal force.
December 1944 - The Ardennes Forest
Bitter, freezing snow. Gunfire cracking through the trees like whips.
Then the shell.
White-hot agony ripped through your body as shrapnel tore his left arm clean off at the shoulder. You screamed with him, feeling the bone shatter, muscle rip, hot blood spray across white snow. He dropped to his knees in the freezing slush, roaring in pain while his vampire healing failed to close the massive wound.
HYDRA came next.
Straps biting into skin. Cold metal table. Blinding lights. You felt every bolt and wire as they fused the prototype metal arm directly into the raw, bleeding stump. The pain was apocalyptic. You thrashed in Bucky’s lap on the rooftop, whimpering.
“I begged them to let me die,” he whispered, arms tightening around you. “They wouldn’t let me.”
Decades of numbness followed. The metal arm never felt like part of him, just a constant, heavy reminder that even eternity could be mutilated. That even a monster could be broken beyond repair.
The blood-sharing deepened, flooding you with centuries of crushing loneliness in relentless flashes:
Nameless women fucked in candlelit rooms across Europe, then left before dawn because none of them were her.
Standing alone on a cliff in 1803, staring at the crashing ocean, wondering if he should just walk into the sunrise and end it.
Returning year after year to the ashes of that cottage in 1665, sitting among the ruins on the anniversary of Dolores’s screaming death, whispering apologies to the wind.
Feeding on killers in dark 1970s Brooklyn alleys, then returning to an empty penthouse to stare at the wall for days, sometimes weeks, with nothing but silence and ghosts for company.
Wave after wave of isolation crashed over you. Seven hundred years of it. You felt every agonizing second.
When the blood-sharing finally ended, you were sobbing violently in his arms on the rooftop, clutching his shirt like he might vanish. Bucky was crying too, silent blood tears tracking down his face.
“I’m not her,” you whispered fiercely through your tears, cupping his wet cheeks. “I’m not Dolores. I’m not going to die screaming in your arms. I’m choosing you, Bucky. Scars. Metal arm. Fangs. Murders. All the darkness. I see the monster and I’m still here. I’m still choosing you.”
He made a broken, wrecked sound and crushed you against his chest, burying his face in your neck.
“I don’t deserve you,” he choked out. “Especially not after what I did in that room. I keep waiting for you to realize that and run. Every single night I wait for it.”
You pulled back just enough to kiss him, slow, deep, tasting salt and blood and centuries of pain.
“I’m still pissed at you,” you whispered against his lips. “That doesn’t go away overnight. But I’m not running. Even when I’m terrified. Even when you scare the shit out of me. I’m staying.”
Bucky kissed you harder, almost desperately, metal arm holding you so tight it almost hurt. When he finally pulled back, his red eyes were softer than you’d ever seen them.
“You have no idea what you just did,” he murmured, voice wrecked. “You just gave a dead man a reason to keep existing.”
You stayed on the rooftop until dawn threatened the sky, wrapped in each other, the weight of seven hundred years of loneliness finally shared between two hearts, one living, one long dead.
But the darkness wasn’t done with either of you.
Not yet.
The hunters had been watching for weeks.
A group of ex-military contractors turned self-proclaimed “paranormal investigators,” they chased high-paying bounties and conspiracy forums. They’d heard the fragmented stories for months: an ancient vampire with a metal arm operating in Brooklyn, leaving bodies drained and throats torn out in back alleys. Most of them laughed at the vampire part, they figured it was some enhanced super-soldier gone rogue, maybe a Winter Soldier copycat. But the bounty was massive and the rumors were consistent enough to make them curious.
They’d been tailing both of you. Taking photos. Noting patterns.
And when they saw their opportunity: you, still pale and weak from the illness, walking alone to the corner store in broad daylight, they took it.
A black van screeched up beside you. Two men in tactical gear grabbed you before you could scream. A chemical-soaked rag clamped brutally over your mouth and nose. The world spun violently, then went black.
You woke up zip-tied to a cold metal chair in the middle of an abandoned warehouse on the edge of Brooklyn. The air smelled of rust, mildew, and old oil. Your head throbbed. Your wrists burned where the plastic ties cut into your skin. Six armed men stood around you in a loose circle, rifles held loosely, smirking like this was just another job.
The leader, a bearded man with a scarred face and cold eyes crouched in front of you, tilting his head.
“Well, well. Look who’s awake.” He grinned. “If your boyfriend really is some immortal bloodsucker, he’ll come running. If not…” He shrugged. “We’ll still get paid for the freak with the metal arm. Either way, jackpot.”
One of the others laughed, chewing gum loudly. “You really believe that vampire shit? Probably just some juiced-up psycho with a fancy prosthetic. We’ll put him down like any other target.”
Another poked your shoulder with the barrel of his rifle. “Bet she’s just some poor girl he’s been mind-controlling. Pathetic.”
You spat at the leader’s boots, voice hoarse but defiant. “You have no idea what you’re fucking with. Let me go. Now.”
The leader only chuckled darkly. “We’ll find out soon enough, sweetheart. Sit tight.”
Bucky felt it the instant they grabbed you.
The blood bond, the one he had strengthened every time he drank from you, every time he fed you his own blood, snapped taut like a live wire in his chest. Your fear. Your pain. Your confusion. It hit him so hard he dropped the glass of blood he’d been holding. It shattered across the penthouse floor.
His vision went red.
A roar tore out of him, raw, ancient, inhuman, shaking the windows and rattling the walls.
Then the monster took over completely.
He stormed the warehouse alone like judgment day.
The moment the steel doors exploded inward off their hinges, the hunters opened fire. Bullets ripped into his chest, his shoulders, his stomach, his thighs. Blood sprayed from the wounds but he kept walking forward through the hail of gunfire, eyes glowing bright blood-red, fangs fully extended, metal arm whirring violently as the plates shifted and spun.
In front of you, he became something from hell.
The first hunter raised his rifle. Bucky grabbed his arm, ripped it clean off at the shoulder with a wet, tearing sound, and beat the screaming man to death with his own severed limb. Bone crunched. Blood fountained. The man’s screams turned into wet gurgles until his skull caved in with a sickening crack.
The second tried to run. Bucky caught him by the waist, metal fingers sinking deep into flesh, and tore him in half at the torso with raw strength. The spine snapped like dry wood. Intestines spilled across the concrete in a steaming pile. The man’s dying screams echoed horribly as his upper body twitched on the ground.
The third got close enough to fire point-blank into Bucky’s face. Bucky crushed his skull in his metal fist while the man was still screaming, bone fragments and brain matter exploding between the vibrating plates with a wet, disgusting crunch. Blood and gore splattered across your lap and chest.
The fourth and fifth tried to flank him. Bucky moved like death itself, tearing one’s throat out with his teeth, ripping the other’s spine out through his back in a fountain of blood.
The last hunter dropped his gun, stumbling backward, piss staining the front of his pants.
“It wasn’t real- we didn’t think- please God, we didn’t know he was actually a fucking vampire-!”
Bucky grabbed him by the throat, lifted him a foot off the ground, and tore his throat out with his fangs in one savage bite. Arterial blood sprayed across the room like a broken hose as the man convulsed and died.
Then silence.
Only the sound of dripping blood, your ragged breathing, and the wet squelch of Bucky’s boots in the carnage remained.
Bucky stood in the middle of the slaughter, covered head to toe in blood and gore, chest heaving, fangs still fully extended, eyes glowing like twin hellfires. For a moment he looked every inch the ancient monster he was.
Then he saw you.
The monster shattered.
Bucky dropped to his knees in the pool of blood and viscera, crawling to you with shaking hands, fangs still fully extended, red eyes wild. The metal arm moved with terrifying gentleness as he reached for you first, slicing through the zip-ties with one careful claw so they fell away from your raw, bruised wrists.
“Doll- fuck, let me see you,” he rasped, voice cracking. His hands immediately started checking you, sliding over your body with desperate care. He turned your wrists gently, thumbs brushing the deep purple bruises left by the plastic ties. He ran his palms down your arms, your ribs, your thighs, searching for wounds, broken bones, blood that wasn’t from the slaughter around you.
“They hurt you?” His voice was hoarse, almost whimpering. “Tell me where. Did they touch you? Did they- fuck, I’ll kill them again if they-”
Only the angry red imprints from the zip-ties marred your skin. No cuts. No bites. No worse damage. Relief and guilt crashed over him at once.
“I’m sorry,” he choked out, pressing his forehead to your stomach, trembling violently. “I’m so fucking sorry you had to see that. But they touched you. They took you from me. I couldn’t- I can’t lose you. I can’t do it again.”
He was covered head to toe in someone else’s blood and brains, gore streaking his face, fangs out, blood tears mixing with the carnage dripping down his cheeks. His massive frame shook as he knelt in the slaughter, clinging to you like you were the only thing keeping him from falling apart completely.
You were shaking too, sobbing quietly, your clothes and skin soaked in warm, sticky blood that wasn’t yours. The metallic stench was overwhelming. The screams still rang in your ears.
You should have been terrified. You should have been screaming.
Instead, that dark, addicted part of you reached for him anyway.
You grabbed his bloody face with both hands, fingers sliding through the gore, and yanked him up into a desperate, blood-slick kiss.
Bucky groaned into your mouth like a wounded animal, raw, broken, relieved. The coppery taste of death coated both your tongues as he kissed you back with centuries of fear and feral love. His metal arm wrapped around your waist, pulling you tighter against his blood-soaked chest while his flesh hand cradled the back of your head.
When you finally broke the kiss, foreheads pressed together, breaths mingling in the carnage, you whispered shakily against his gore-stained lips:
“…Take me home, Bucky. Please. Just take me home. I don’t want to be here anymore. I just want you to take me home.”
He nodded frantically, blood tears still falling. “Yeah. Yeah, doll. Home. I’ve got you.”
He lifted you into his arms with ease, cradling you like something precious and fragile among the slaughter. Your head tucked against his neck as he carried you out of the warehouse, boots squelching through puddles of blood, leaving nothing but corpses and the heavy, metallic stench of death behind.
You clung to him the entire way, still trembling, still terrified, but refusing to let go.
The monster had won tonight.
And you were still his.
You woke up every day for three weeks telling yourself this was love.
Bucky had moved you into his penthouse the night after the warehouse massacre. No discussion. He simply carried your exhausted body through the elevator, locked it down with a code only his fingerprints could activate and whispered against your ear in that low, dangerous growl, “You’re never leaving me again, doll. Never.”
Your old life was gone. Your apartment, your friends, your thesis notes, they all gathered dust while your clothes now hung neatly beside his in the massive walk-in closet. Every night you slept naked in his silk sheets, the fabric permanently scented with blood, sex and the faint metallic tang of his ancient hunger. He fed you from his wrist, fucked you until you screamed, then held you like you were the only fragile thing left in his centuries-long existence.
You told yourself you were safe. Cherished. Loved.
Tonight, that comforting lie finally burned to ash.
The hunger had been eating him alive for hours.
You were on your back in the middle of his massive bed, legs locked tight around his waist as he fucked you with those deep, claiming strokes you’d grown addicted to. At first it felt fucking perfect, his thick cock stretching your dripping cunt wide open, dragging against that sweet spot with every brutal thrust, metal fingers bruising your hips while his mouth sucked dark, possessive marks across your tits.
“Fuck, baby… this tight little cunt is creaming all over me,” he growled against your neck, voice thick and raw. “Hear how fucking sloppy and wet you sound? Sucking my cock in like you were made for it. My perfect filthy girl.”
You moaned, nails raking down his back. “Harder, Bucky- please, I need you to ruin me-”
He gave it to you.
Then the flashback hit like a goddamn freight train.
You sitting on that filthy warehouse floor. Limp. Pale as death. Almost gone forever. Your head lolled weakly to the side, skin ghostly white, lips colorless, eyes half-lidded and unfocused. You looked so fragile, so close to slipping away that the sight nearly brought Bucky to his knees.
His control fucking snapped.
His hips slammed forward with terrifying force. The wet slap of skin turned savage, punishing. Pleasure twisted into sharp, stabbing pain that tore through your core like broken glass.
“Bucky- wait! Fuck- too hard!” you cried, voice already cracking. “Slow down, baby, please- shit, it hurts!”
He didn’t hear you. His eyes were wild, glowing crimson, fangs fully extended as thick ropes of drool poured from his mouth onto your bouncing tits. He pounded into you like a rabid, starving beast, driven by centuries of hunger and the primal fear of losing you again.
“Mine,” he snarled, the word vicious and broken, vibrating with pure desperation. “This fucking pussy is mine. You’re never leaving this bed. Never leaving this goddamn penthouse. I’ll fuck you raw every single night until you can’t even crawl away from me, you hear me? I won’t let death take you. I won’t let anything take you.”
Each savage thrust jolted your whole body. His metal arm crushed your hip with a sickening crack. Bone splintered. White-hot agony exploded through your pelvis like fire. You screamed, back arching violently.
“Bucky- stop! Fuck, my hip! It’s breaking- please, baby, please stop! I’m begging you! It hurts so fucking bad!”
He only fucked you harder, lost in the nightmare, hips snapping forward with inhuman power. Another vicious snap and your left wrist, pinned above your head, shattered with an audible pop. The pain was blinding, nauseating, shooting up your arm like lightning. You screamed until your voice broke, tears pouring down your face as you thrashed helplessly beneath him.
“Jesus Christ- Bucky, my wrist! Stop, please! It hurts so fucking bad- I can’t take it! Slow down, I’m scared! Please see me, baby, I’m right here- don’t break me!”
“Look at you,” he panted, drool dripping onto your lips and chin, his breath hot and ragged against your skin. “Taking my cock like such a good little slut. So fucking greedy for me even when you’re ruined. Gonna fill this sloppy cunt up until you’re dripping. Gonna keep you leaking my cum for days, baby. You’re never getting away from me. Never.”
Your ribs cracked on the next brutal thrust, one, two, three, sharp nauseating crunches that stole your breath completely. Blood bubbled up your throat and trickled from the corner of your mouth in dark rivulets. Your body went terrifyingly limp, only weak, wet gasps leaving you as he kept rutting into your destroyed hole like a desperate, starving animal.
“I almost watched you die once,” he growled, voice cracking between raw hunger and bone-deep horror. “Felt your heart slowing in my arms while you burned up with that fucking sickness. You were slipping away from me, right here in this bed. Never. Never again.”
His hips snapped harder, driving deep into you with every word.
“I will keep you here. Fill you. Bind you. You will never leave this penthouse. You will be my eternal companion… my blood, my breath, my only reason to keep walking through this damned night. I’ll drink from you every night until the hunger in me is quiet. I’ll hold you while you tremble and beg, and I will never let you go. You’re mine, my wife, my meal, my everything.”
You could barely speak now, only weak, broken cries leaving you between gasps. “James… please… it hurts… everything’s breaking inside me… I’m so scared… don’t let me die like this… please see me… I love you, just stop-”
He froze only when he felt how deathly still you had become, your body no longer fighting, just a fragile, ruined thing in his grasp, blood leaking from you in steady streams.
Reality crashed over him like ice water.
“No… no, no, NO! FUCK NO!” The roar that tore from his throat was inhuman, shaking the windows and rattling the walls until the glass trembled. He ripped himself out of you with a horrified shout, a flood of blood and slick gushing from your ruined cunt onto the silk sheets. He gathered your shattered body against his chest, rocking you violently as thick, black blood-tears poured down his face in rivers.
“I did it again- I fucking killed you!” he screamed, voice cracking into something ancient and monstrous. His metal fist smashed the headboard repeatedly, wood exploding into splinters, plaster raining down around you both. “I broke my baby- my perfect sweet girl- I crushed you like a goddamn animal! How the fuck could I do this to you?! After everything, after I swore I’d protect you, I still fucking destroy you! I’m a monster!”
In his panic he tried desperately to fix it.
He lowered his head and dragged his cool tongue frantically over the mangled ruin of your hip. Long, desperate licks, reverent, almost worshipful just like he did every dawn to the bite marks on your thighs. His cool venom should have sealed the wounds, should have soothed and healed. But the damage was catastrophic. Shattered bone jutted through torn flesh like jagged ivory knives. Blood poured freely. His tongue only lapped desperately at the crimson flow, mixing his saliva with your lifeblood, yet the wounds refused to close.
“Fuck- why isn’t it working?!” he sobbed, voice raw and cracking. “Heal, damn you- heal! Come on, baby, please heal.” He moved to your shattered wrist, licking over the crushed bones and swollen purple skin with frantic tenderness, fangs carefully retracted. “Heal, my love. My venom has always healed you before. Come back to me. Don’t leave me in this emptiness again. I can’t- I can’t survive without you. Please, don’t die on me!”
It didn’t work. Your ribs stayed caved in. Your insides were ruptured. Blood kept leaking from your mouth and between your legs. He traced every injury with guilty, starving strokes of his tongue, pressing wet, bloody kisses to your mangled hip, your ruined wrist, your trembling lips.
“I’m so fucking sorry- shit, I’m so fucking sorry, doll,” he choked out, rocking you harder against his chest, his entire body trembling with guilt and fear. “I tried- god, I tried everything. My tongue, my venom, my soul- nothing works when the monster in me takes over. I’m a horror. A starving, desperate horror who destroys the only thing he loves. Forgive me… please forgive me.”
Guilt, hunger and obsessive fear twisted violently inside him until his madness crystallized in an instant.
He slashed his own wrist open with a razor-sharp fang. Dark, ancient blood, thick and burning, gushed from the wound. He cradled your head with both hands, pressing your slack mouth desperately against the gash.
“Drink,” he begged, voice broken and trembling with terror. “Fucking drink, baby. Become mine forever. I cannot watch you die. I will not bury you. Take it. Let me damn you if it means keeping you by my side through all the endless nights. Don’t leave me alone again- I’m so scared without you. So goddamn hungry for you. Please… please don’t go. I need you more than I’ve ever needed anything.”
He held your head tighter, forcing the potent blood past your lips. Your body latched on instinctively, sucking with weak, greedy pulls even at the edge of death. The change ignited like liquid hellfire in your veins.
Your broken bones snapped and realigned with excruciating force, each crack wrenching agonized whimpers and jerks from your throat against his wrist. Your organs burned and rewrote themselves in waves of molten pain. Your heart stuttered violently… then stopped completely. The agony was worse than death, pure, liquid fire searing through every vein, every nerve, every inch of your soul as the vampire venom rewrote you from the inside out.
All the while Bucky kept himself buried deep inside your twitching, blood-slick heat. He rocked slowly through your torment, whispering hoarse, broken promises between every shallow, desperate thrust.
“I’m sorry, my everything… but you belong to me now. Eternally. I will hold you through every dark night. I will drink from you while you cry out my name. You will never grow old. Never slip away from me again. I love you too much- too desperately- to let death have you. Forgive me for what I’ve done… even if you hate me forever. This pussy, this body, this soul- it’s all mine now. Forever.”
Your eyes flew open.
Crimson. Glowing. Filled with an ancient, bottomless hunger.
New fangs pushed through your bleeding gums in sharp, painful bursts. You tore your mouth from his wrist, dark blood streaking down your chin and onto your chest, and stared up at him with pure, ravenous starvation.
“Bucky…” Your voice was hoarse, ruined, but dripping with dark, insatiable need. “I’m so fucking thirsty.”
requested by anon : Hi, I love your stories. If you're getting requests, I'd really like to read about vampire!Bucky. The reader would be a normal girl and he a very old vampire who becomes obsessed with her. It has a very dark vibe, but he feels VERY strongly.😭😭
18+ bucky's metal arm just makes it sooo much better
he moves slowly and deliberately, the coldness of the arm travelling its way up your thigh and underneath your dress, the soft mechanical shifts coming from his arm following suit. his head is between your legs, pressing kisses on the inner part.
you let out a startled moan when he reaches between to press against your aching clit, the difference in temperature jarring as starts to rub against it. he soon retracts his hand, leaving you to squirm before strongly lifting you up to put you on all fours.
"promise you'll be good for me?" he asks, humming in delight, enjoying the view of your naked body from behind.
"y-yes!" you whine, biting your lip in desperation.
he places his palms on both sides of your hips, one cold while the other warm, and lines up his tip against your greedy pussy that's begging for him to fuck you silly.
he thrusts like there's no tomorrow. harsh drags of his cock as he goes in and out of you repeatedly, hitting all the right spots at such a fast pace. you let out obscene noises that echo through the room uncontrollably, feeling the tight grip he has on your sides, enough to leave a mark.
"fuck, i love you so much," he goes down to whisper beside your ear, enjoying the warmth from your walls. "you're such a good girl— my good girl."
the snapping of his hips grow louder and hungrier, climax becoming more evident in his sounds as well. he stops, throwing his head back while giving you a loud, hard spank with his artificial arm.
thick loads of cum spurt inside you, steadily flowing out and dripping onto the bed, but he doesn't stop there.
can he really call himself a man if he doesn't make his girl cum?
he continues fucking you, sending hard thrusts that make your mind go hazy with pleasure. your cries are mixed in with your babbles of "please" and "more".
your legs are trembling by the time the final wave of pleasure crashes over you, your essence coating his cock.
I’m here to share my stupid little thoughts again.
Holding onto Bucky while he leans you against the wall and fingers the life outta you. He’s so smug that he gets you this fucked out by just his fingers.
That’s it. That’s all of my little thought. Enjoy! 💜
somehow I have only just seen this ask, and it’s given me brainrot…
not beta read btw
Bucky Barnes had thought of himself as a weapon, a tool for destruction, for pain, for suffering. It had taken years of therapy, nightmares and hard discussions to reach where he was now.
With you.
Your shoulders braced against the wall, thick tactical gear around your ankles and your back slightly arched as you attempted to lean into him.
Even as you attempted to push forward, the metal of his hand held you in place, intent on his work. His other hand remained between your legs, his thumb gently massaging your clit as two of his fingers slowly rubbed against your walls.
“Bucky,” you whine slightly.
“Bit busy here, doll,” the blue of his eyes flicker up to meet yours. His thumb shifts away, his fingers begin to move faster, pushing forward to seek any sensitive spots.
You hear yourself curse as your eyes sting at the overwhelming tension building in your stomach.
“How are you—” your voice cuts off as you feel his fingers press deep, forcing a moan from your mouth.
“You’re doing that thing again,” he murmurs, eyes narrowing slightly. “I like to listen to what my girl needs.”
His fingers move again, pulling out slightly before pushing forward again.
“So stop overthinking, and let me work,” his voice is low, a hint of something underlying there. He curled his fingers, rubbing the sensitive skin as you cried out.
“They’re going to hear—” you weakly protest, your mind torn between the man kneels before and the faint awareness that his own team were only one floor above, bickering over bad television and snacks.
He does not respond, instead his fingers moved faster, relentlessly, having now found the soft spot that made your eyes roll.
All you could hear was your heavy breathing, mixed with choked moans, over his ministrations. Your head remained pressed against wall whilst the metal of his hand cupped your neck, gently, his thumb running over your jawline with surprising tenderness.
Then his fingers pushed in one more time, stretching you wide, jabbing just enough that you feel the tension in your stomach disintegrating
“Bucky,” a cry escaped your lips as you feel yourself shudder.
The world feels numb for a second, nothing seeming to matter before you blink out of your haze.
Below you, you can see his dark hair, and feel his hands carefully pulling up your clothes back into place.
“Thank you,” your voice is a whisper
He gets to his feet, eyes amused, a smirk on his face, then leans close to give you a peck on the mouth.
“Anytime, doll,” he leans away then, crossing his arms across his chest, drawing attention to how the thin black shirt stretched over his form.
“That’s not fair,” you protest. “You can’t just flex after getting me off.”
He chuckles. “I’ve earnt it, don’t you think? Made you cum just with two of my fingers.”
“Smug bastard,” you mutter, a hint of fondness in your tone.
“You love it,” he responds playfully. “You love that I get you off so easily.”
You glare at him a moment before shaking your head, allowing your hand to reach up, lingering on the peppered stubble on his chin.
“Yeah, I do,” you admit.
The smirk fall from his face, turning into a gentle smile that crinkles the edges of his eyes.
“I will keep doing it,” he promises. “Every day if you want, just so I can see your face each time.”
I’m here to share my stupid little thoughts again.
Holding onto Bucky while he leans you against the wall and fingers the life outta you. He’s so smug that he gets you this fucked out by just his fingers.
That’s it. That’s all of my little thought. Enjoy! 💜
somehow I have only just seen this ask, and it’s given me brainrot…
not beta read btw
Bucky Barnes had thought of himself as a weapon, a tool for destruction, for pain, for suffering. It had taken years of therapy, nightmares and hard discussions to reach where he was now.
With you.
Your shoulders braced against the wall, thick tactical gear around your ankles and your back slightly arched as you attempted to lean into him.
Even as you attempted to push forward, the metal of his hand held you in place, intent on his work. His other hand remained between your legs, his thumb gently massaging your clit as two of his fingers slowly rubbed against your walls.
“Bucky,” you whine slightly.
“Bit busy here, doll,” the blue of his eyes flicker up to meet yours. His thumb shifts away, his fingers begin to move faster, pushing forward to seek any sensitive spots.
You hear yourself curse as your eyes sting at the overwhelming tension building in your stomach.
“How are you—” your voice cuts off as you feel his fingers press deep, forcing a moan from your mouth.
“You’re doing that thing again,” he murmurs, eyes narrowing slightly. “I like to listen to what my girl needs.”
His fingers move again, pulling out slightly before pushing forward again.
“So stop overthinking, and let me work,” his voice is low, a hint of something underlying there. He curled his fingers, rubbing the sensitive skin as you cried out.
“They’re going to hear—” you weakly protest, your mind torn between the man kneels before and the faint awareness that his own team were only one floor above, bickering over bad television and snacks.
He does not respond, instead his fingers moved faster, relentlessly, having now found the soft spot that made your eyes roll.
All you could hear was your heavy breathing, mixed with choked moans, over his ministrations. Your head remained pressed against wall whilst the metal of his hand cupped your neck, gently, his thumb running over your jawline with surprising tenderness.
Then his fingers pushed in one more time, stretching you wide, jabbing just enough that you feel the tension in your stomach disintegrating
“Bucky,” a cry escaped your lips as you feel yourself shudder.
The world feels numb for a second, nothing seeming to matter before you blink out of your haze.
Below you, you can see his dark hair, and feel his hands carefully pulling up your clothes back into place.
“Thank you,” your voice is a whisper
He gets to his feet, eyes amused, a smirk on his face, then leans close to give you a peck on the mouth.
“Anytime, doll,” he leans away then, crossing his arms across his chest, drawing attention to how the thin black shirt stretched over his form.
“That’s not fair,” you protest. “You can’t just flex after getting me off.”
He chuckles. “I’ve earnt it, don’t you think? Made you cum just with two of my fingers.”
“Smug bastard,” you mutter, a hint of fondness in your tone.
“You love it,” he responds playfully. “You love that I get you off so easily.”
You glare at him a moment before shaking your head, allowing your hand to reach up, lingering on the peppered stubble on his chin.
“Yeah, I do,” you admit.
The smirk fall from his face, turning into a gentle smile that crinkles the edges of his eyes.
“I will keep doing it,” he promises. “Every day if you want, just so I can see your face each time.”
I’m here to share my stupid little thoughts again.
Holding onto Bucky while he leans you against the wall and fingers the life outta you. He’s so smug that he gets you this fucked out by just his fingers.
That’s it. That’s all of my little thought. Enjoy! 💜
somehow I have only just seen this ask, and it’s given me brainrot…
not beta read btw
Bucky Barnes had thought of himself as a weapon, a tool for destruction, for pain, for suffering. It had taken years of therapy, nightmares and hard discussions to reach where he was now.
With you.
Your shoulders braced against the wall, thick tactical gear around your ankles and your back slightly arched as you attempted to lean into him.
Even as you attempted to push forward, the metal of his hand held you in place, intent on his work. His other hand remained between your legs, his thumb gently massaging your clit as two of his fingers slowly rubbed against your walls.
“Bucky,” you whine slightly.
“Bit busy here, doll,” the blue of his eyes flicker up to meet yours. His thumb shifts away, his fingers begin to move faster, pushing forward to seek any sensitive spots.
You hear yourself curse as your eyes sting at the overwhelming tension building in your stomach.
“How are you—” your voice cuts off as you feel his fingers press deep, forcing a moan from your mouth.
“You’re doing that thing again,” he murmurs, eyes narrowing slightly. “I like to listen to what my girl needs.”
His fingers move again, pulling out slightly before pushing forward again.
“So stop overthinking, and let me work,” his voice is low, a hint of something underlying there. He curled his fingers, rubbing the sensitive skin as you cried out.
“They’re going to hear—” you weakly protest, your mind torn between the man kneels before and the faint awareness that his own team were only one floor above, bickering over bad television and snacks.
He does not respond, instead his fingers moved faster, relentlessly, having now found the soft spot that made your eyes roll.
All you could hear was your heavy breathing, mixed with choked moans, over his ministrations. Your head remained pressed against wall whilst the metal of his hand cupped your neck, gently, his thumb running over your jawline with surprising tenderness.
Then his fingers pushed in one more time, stretching you wide, jabbing just enough that you feel the tension in your stomach disintegrating
“Bucky,” a cry escaped your lips as you feel yourself shudder.
The world feels numb for a second, nothing seeming to matter before you blink out of your haze.
Below you, you can see his dark hair, and feel his hands carefully pulling up your clothes back into place.
“Thank you,” your voice is a whisper
He gets to his feet, eyes amused, a smirk on his face, then leans close to give you a peck on the mouth.
“Anytime, doll,” he leans away then, crossing his arms across his chest, drawing attention to how the thin black shirt stretched over his form.
“That’s not fair,” you protest. “You can’t just flex after getting me off.”
He chuckles. “I’ve earnt it, don’t you think? Made you cum just with two of my fingers.”
“Smug bastard,” you mutter, a hint of fondness in your tone.
“You love it,” he responds playfully. “You love that I get you off so easily.”
You glare at him a moment before shaking your head, allowing your hand to reach up, lingering on the peppered stubble on his chin.
“Yeah, I do,” you admit.
The smirk fall from his face, turning into a gentle smile that crinkles the edges of his eyes.
“I will keep doing it,” he promises. “Every day if you want, just so I can see your face each time.”
Getting a lot of comments and tags on this that are like "they bullied me for just existing:/" SO EXIST!!!! GET OUT THERE AND LIVE AND KEEP LIVING!!!!!!! KEEP ON BEING YOU!!!!!!!!!
summary: a little girl rushes over to you when lost, you are quickly introduced to her father, an ex-army sergeant with worry in his eyes and yet is flustered at the sight of you.
warnings: single father!bucky (slightly grumpy), archivist!reader, soft and fluffy, smut, p in v, missionary, use of nicknames (doll, sweetheart), no use of y/n, not beta read, all mistakes are mine
author's note: I started on this one back in January (?) then it was announced Sebastian was going to be a father. I put it on the back burner because I was not happy the media were being so intrusive into people’s personal lives, and didn’t want to condone it with my actions. With nearly hitting 500 followers, I thought it was high time I finished this, it does jump around a lot but I hope you all enjoy it! And thank you all for continuing to read things I write for fun! 💜
word count: < 12k words
credits: divider by thekagemusha
It was short, the tug on your leg.
You peer down to see a little girl. Soft brown hair with little clips to keep it out of her face, round face and blue eyes that were full of fear.
“Hey there,” you say, and crouch down. “You okay?”
She blinks, tears falling down her cheeks. “I can’t find my daddy.”
“Hey, hey,” you reach to rub her shoulder. “It’ll be okay.”
She lets out a sob, unable to control the hysteria shaking her small frame.
“Oh sweetheart,” you breathe, and offer her your hand. “Hold my hand, we’ll find your daddy. Don’t worry.”
She continued to sob, unrestrained sounds that twisted your heart.
You walked slowly down the aisle, allowing her to keep pace with you, heading for the large central aisle where it would be easiest to be found.
“El!” You hear someone shout.
“Daddy?” The little girl turns her head, her eyes alert and wide.
You peek over your shoulder to see a man rushing over.
“Oh my babygirl,”
The girl lets go of your hand, her little feet pushing her forward into the arms of the man.
You smile to yourself, relieved, yet feeling a little out of place at witnessing the reunion.
The man presses his forehead to the little girl’s, his daughter you assumed.
“Are you okay?” He spoke quickly. “You aren’t hurt?”
She shakes her head. “I saw glitter pens, sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he spoke as if to himself. “You’re safe.”
It was then his eyes flicker up to you. They are the exact same shade as his daughter’s, a light blue that gave away more emotion than any expression. His hair was the same colour also, pulled back into a messy bun. His face differed from hers entirely, a strong jawline marked with stubble peppered with grey, and faint lines across his forehead and eyes.
He scoops his daughter up with ease, her body looking tiny next to his large build.
“Hi, uh,” he shifts awkwardly.
“Hi,” you press your lips together nervously.
“I, uh, thanks for taking care of my Eileen,” he says.
You shake your head. “It was nothing, only for a few minutes.”
“Still,” his lips twitched. “Thanks.”
“Anytime,” you shrug and turn to walk away.
“Come back!” the little girl, Eileen, called.
“El,” you hear her father hiss. “Leave the lady be.”
You feel a tug on your hand, and peek down to see the girl, who must have forced her way down and rushed to catch you.
“What’s your name?” She asked.
You tilt your head, giving it quietly.
“Pretty,” she smiles. “You’re pretty.”
“Eileen Barnes,” you hear her father call out disapprovingly.
“What?” Her eyes moved to her father. “She’s pretty.”
Her father sighs. “She’s busy, babygirl. Let her go.”
“It’s okay,” you say quietly, and crouch to Eileen’s level.
“I think your dad is wants to get going,” you tell her softly.
She frowns, her eyes appearing watery once again. “I don’t want to.”
Her father stepped closer.
“Eileen,” he put a hand on her back. “That is enough.”
His voice was gentle yet firm.
“But Daddy,” she began to protest. “She’s pretty and kind. Can we be friends?”
“El, it’s not that easy,” he breathes.
“It’s okay,” your voice came out stronger. “Eileen?”
She peeks up, her eyes meet yours.
“I can be your friend,” you say to her.
“Daddy’s friend too,” she insists. “Daddy is always alone. Daddy needs a friend.”
“Eileen,” her father’s face was starting to go red.
You laugh quietly. “That’s up to your daddy.”
She looks up expectantly at her father.
“El, I—” he looks at you, eyes moving up and down you.
“You are pretty,” he murmurs. “Really pretty.”
You feel blood rush to your cheeks.
Eileen beams, her eyes moving between you and her father.
“I’m Bucky,” he holds out a hand to you. “Bucky Barnes, this is my daughter, Eileen.”
You reach out, allowing him to shake your hand, his hand rough to touch, yet gentle.
“Hi,” you breathe, still a little flustered from his compliment.
Bucky smiles, an expression that makes your heart stutter a moment. The pull of those pink lips, the way it crinkled at the edges of his eyes. It felt like you could stare at him for days and never tire of him.
“I—” he cleared his throat. “Look I know this is, uh, weird. But, Eileen likes you, and she won’t stop until I ask. Would you… do you want to get coffee sometime?”
“Oh,” you stammer. “Yeah, sure.”
You reach into your bag, ripping off the bottom of your shopping list and pulling out a pen, then scribbling down your phone number.
You fold it in half and hold it out between your fingers.
He takes it carefully.
“Text me?” You ask with a small smile.
“Uh,” his eyes move to your lips for a moment. “Yeah, yeah. I will.”
Your smile widens and you pat Eileen on the head.
“See you around then,” you say. “Eileen… Bucky.”
Eileen looks up at her father grinning.
“She’s nice,” she says as if it were the most important thing in the world.
Bucky holds the piece of paper tightly between his fingers, eyes on you walking away.
“Yeah, she is.”
That evening you’d checked your phone constantly, waiting for the text that never came. You checked again the next morning to nothing, and began to wonder if you’d written the wrong number.
A few more days pass, when you hear your phone buzz once.
You reach over from your place on the sofa, eyes still on the comforting program you are watching.
A quick glance shows a text from an unfamiliar number.
Hey, it’s Bucky. We met at the grocery store the other day. Do you still want to meet for coffee sometime?
A small smile graces your face, warmth filling your veins. He hadn’t forgotten.
I’d love to. Any recommendations? x
You send the text without thinking, jerking slightly as you realise that you’d put a kiss on there out of habit.
A few minutes pass before the next buzz.
There’s a coffee shop in the park?
Immediately another text followed.
Eileen will be coming, she can play on the swings whilst we chat x
Your lips part, seeing him also put a kiss made you smile wider.
That’ll be nice. I’d love to see Eileen again! x
She’s dying to see you again, been pestering me every day to skip work to take her x
You laugh at that.
I’d skip work for her x
There is a brief pause.
I would too, if I could. Would Saturday work for you? Say around 9am? x
You check your calendar briefly, confirming what you already knew - you weren’t busy.
That will be fine. Pretty early don’t you think? x
El will be asking when we are going all day if not. She likes to get me up at 6, and there is no stopping her once she is up x
You laugh again to yourself, there was something endearing about how this man complained about his daughter, yet you could hear his adoration for her.
I’ll be sure to get there in time for Eileen x
Appreciate that, doll. See you Saturday x
You duck your head slightly at the nickname, slightly embarrassed at how your heart squeezed despite being alone.
The park is quiet, filled with only a few people running or cycling and the distant sounds of birds.
It takes a few minutes to walk to the coffee shop, the temperature is warm, not too hot to be uncomfortable but cool enough you could wear a light jacket.
The air fills with the smell of freshly baked goods and coffee, the shop itself is small, most of the seating outside on paving slabs overlooking a playground.
You linger a moment, only seeing people enter to take out and then depart. You turn, scanning the area before reaching for your phone checking for a message. There was none.
You silently remind yourself it is only ten to nine, he wasn’t late.
The sound of your name startles you. Your head whips around until you notice little Eileen running at you.
You crouch down allowing her to fling her little arms around you.
“You came!” She declared as you broke apart.
“Of course,” you reach and boop her nose with your index finger. She grins, reaching to do the same to your nose.
You hear someone chuckle above you, and look up to see Bucky. He’s in dark blue jeans, a wool jacket with a hint of red peeking underneath.
“Hi,” you smile at him.
“Hey,” he greets you.
“Daddy!” Eileen rushes back to her father, grabbing his hand and pulling him forward.
“She came! She came!” The little girl bounced in place with enthusiasm.
“Easy El,” he speaks softly. “I’ve already lost one arm, I don’t need to lose another.”
You get to your feet, noticing the girl pulling on his metal fingers.
You feel yourself smiling at the sight. “Shall we go in?”
Bucky nods politely, wrapping his hand around El’s.
“Ohhhh,” Eileen pulls away from her father, the moment you enter. “Look daddy! Pain a-“ she frowns as she thinks. “Pain Aux Chocolat!”
Bucky chuckles with a shake of his head.
“She has a lot of energy,” you note.
“Yeah,” he puts his hands on his pockets, glancing at you a moment before returning his gaze back to the little girl. “She’s always like this.”
“She wanders off a lot?”
“Mhm,” he sighs. “She saw some glitter gel pens when you found her. One minute he was next to me, I turned to reach for some tins and then she was gone.”
“All that for gel pens?” You ask, amused.
“Yep,” he gives a slight smile. “They kept her busy whilst I made dinner.”
You let out a snicker.
“What?” His eyes now return to you.
“I’m sorry,” you press your lips together to suppress your smile. “That’s cute.”
“Hm,” he huffs. “Cute, eh?”
You give him a timid shrug and step forward to join Eileen.
“Hi,” you greet the barista. “Can I have a Latte, one croissant, a pain aux chocolate…” you look down to Eileen. “Would you like a drink, El?”
“Hot chocolate!” She declares. “Please.”
“A hot chocolate,” you turn to Bucky. “Bucky, what would you like?”
He recoils in surprise and approaches, your back tingles as you feel him behind your back. “A black coffee please.”
The barista puts it all in and you pull out your card, tapping it against the reader.
“They’ll just be a few minutes,” the barista tells you.
“Thanks,” you smile and walk around.
“You should have let me pay,” Bucky shakes his head, his hand holding El’s again.
“It’s fine, I wanted to get Eileen something,” you give her a grin.
Bucky sighs.
“Is he always grumpy?” You ask El, teasing him.
“Yes,” she nods.
“El,” his lips twitch and eyebrows scrunch together. “Please.”
The barista then placed down the drinks with two paper bags.
“Thank you!” El chimed in a sing-song voice, eagerly reaching for the drinks.
You get there first, picking up the ones in her reach.
Bucky reaches to take his coffee. “Let’s find a seat.”
He leads you outside, it remains quiet, peaceful. Bucky strolls to the table closest to the playground, whilst your eyes remain on his back, his wide shoulders.
He pulls out a chair, then another, places his cup down and picks up his daughter to help her up into the chair.
“Take a seat, doll,” he gestures, letting you sit first before taking the last seat.
You carefully reach over placing the hot chocolate in front of Eileen and taking the Croissant.
Eileen seems too distracted by her own food to pay any mind to anything else.
Bucky chuckles fondly before taking a long sip of his drink.
“Want any?” You ask him as you pull part of the croissant apart to eat.
“Hmm,” he considers for a moment. “Sure.”
You smile, ripping off the other end. He leans over parting his lips slightly, you carefully put the piece in his mouth. His mouth closed and he chewed carefully.
You have to sift your eyes away, a warmth filling you at how he’d trusted you.
“Daddy never eats here,” Eileen cuts through your reverie, her blue eyes on her father as she concentrated. “Says it's bad for his muscles.”
You raise an eyebrow and smirk at Bucky.
He leans back, sipping his coffee and doesn’t say a word.
“You enjoy the gym?” You ask.
“Not as much as I’d like,” he places his cup down again. “I’m ex-Army.”
“What do you do now?” You ask, taking a sip of your own drink.
“Boring office job,” he admits. “But I can work from home, and take care of this one.”
He pats his daughter on the head.
“What about—“ you pause, hesitating.
“Eileen’s mother?” He finishes.
Eileen looks at her father, as though sensing the tension of the moment, then at you.
“Mummy works away,” she speaks as if she has said it a thousand times, her eyes suddenly appearing tired.
“Busy lady,” you reply.
“Mmm,” you hear the disapproval in Bucky’s tone. “Eileen, do you want to go try the swings whilst we chat?”
“Huh?” She perks up, then drops from her seat. “Yay!!”
She runs off eagerly into the playground.
“Stay in my sight!” He calls after her.
You watch Bucky once more, his face smooth yet his eyes soften, betraying the love he has for his daughter.
“El’s mother,” he begins, eyes still on his little girl. “She doesn’t come to see Eileen much. El barely remembers her.”
“I’m sorry,” you mutter, unsure what to say.
He shrugs. “We have each other. It’s enough.”
You gently place a hand on his arm. “You’re a single parent, you shouldn’t have to face it alone.”
“Despite what El told you, I do have friends,” his eyes return to you. “They are few, but I couldn’t have gotten this far without them.”
You nod, relieved. Bucky’s eyes then flicker over you, taking you in.
“You look lovely,” he comments.
“Thank you,” you lean back, hoping the distance will hide the blush on your cheeks.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t have a real first date,” you allow your eyes to drift back to him, his eyes on his daughter - now climbing steps on a slide. “You deserve to be taken out for dinner.”
“You don’t need to explain,” your voice is soft. “Your little girl has to come first.”
His head turns slightly, giving you a faint smile. “Thank you.”
“Besides, I wanted to see El again,” you continue. “She’s adorable.”
He chuckles. “Yeah, she is.”
There is a moment of silence. You keep your eyes on Bucky, taking in how his eyes never strayed from his daughter, occasionally drinking his coffee whilst his other hand lay on his lap.
“What do you do for work?” Bucky’s voice is quiet.
You twitch a second. “It’s pretty boring. I'm an archivist. Spend all day typing up what is written in old dusty books, or help people find old dusty books.”
He chuckles. “Sounds like it makes you happy.”
Your voice gets caught in your mouth for a moment. “It does,” you admit.
Bucky shifts then, turning his seat towards you.
“Would you like another drink?” He asks, the creases in his expression giving away his nerves.
“No, thank you,” you shift to face him. “I would like to just talk.”
He smiles then. Not the faint twitches of his lips before, a real smile. It seemed to light up his whole face, brightening his eyes, crinkling at the edges and his forehead.
“Your eyes,” you lean forward, heart thrumming a little harder from his gaze. “They’re incredible.”
His face drops, lips parting slightly as he drinks in your words.
“Uh, thank you,” he stammers.
You smile at him, and reach over to place your hand on his.
He swallows, suddenly nervous. “Do you like Italian food?”
“Yeah,” you respond. “Why do you ask?”
“There’s a little Italian restaurant not far from my place,” he says. “We could go, if you’d like.”
“With Eileen?”
He shakes his head. “Eileen is staying with my friend on Tuesday night. It would be just the two of us.”
“I think I’d enjoy that,” your lips twitch.
“More than this?” He playfully responds.
“It’s nice,” you smirk. “And I adore Eileen. But I’d also like to get you alone.”
“Alone, huh?” He chuckles. “That might be difficult.”
You grin at his face, he seemed so happy, a far cry from the grumpy man from earlier.
“I can share,” you tease.
“Yeah?” He turned his hand over, fingers interweaving with yours.
“Yeah.”
Bucky squeezed your hand. “You know in a fight she’d win, every time.”
“I know,” you nod. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Daddy!” Eileen was running over. “Did you see? Did you see? I was so fast.”
You suppress a laugh.
“Oh, I’m sorry, babygirl. I missed it,” he responded. “Go again, I’m watching.”
The little girl’s eyes narrow, eyes flickering between the two of you before running back, climbing the steps and flinging herself down the slide at speed.
“Oh my—” you begin to get to your feet in fear for her.
“Relax,” Bucky mutters. “She’ll be alright.”
“Did you see, Daddy?” Eileen shouts.
“I saw,” he calls back. “You were faster than my bike.”
Eileen beamed, running back over the bark chips to the table.
“That was fun!” She declared.
Bucky grins, pleased to see his little girl so happy. “Need a rest?”
She nods, climbing onto the chair. “I need a drink.”
Bucky raises an eyebrow at his daughter.
“Please,” she adds.
“Good girl,” he shakes his head fondly, reaching down into a bag Eileen had been carrying, passing over a drink bottle from the side to her.
She happily slurped through the straw.
“You’re a good dad,” you nudge him gently.
“I try,” he murmurs.
“Daddy’s happy,” she notices and then looks at you. “You’re happy.”
She takes another sip. “You make Daddy happy.”
“Don’t sound so surprised, El,” he chuckles.
“You laugh when I’m silly. Or Uncle Sam is silly,” she says.
“Uncle Sam?”
“My best friend,” Bucky explains. “He’s a pain, but he takes care of El when I can’t.”
“It’s nice of him to take care of Eileen,”
“I love Uncle Sam!” El declares in agreement.
“Because Uncle Sam lets you stay up till 8pm, and brings you chocolate,” Bucky shakes his head in disapproval.
She shrugs, taking one more sip from her drink before taking off again.
“What time do you want to meet on Tuesday?” You ask.
“I’ll book the table for seven,” his eyes were on his daughter.
You nod. “Seven then.”
He nods, his eyes flickering back to you.
“I’ll be waiting.”
You shift from one foot to the other, tugging at the material of your dress praying it’s not too short. You chose a simple red dress that hung just above your knees, in the hopes of being alluring yet modest.
You hear someone call your name, your eyes flicker around, seeing no one until you turn and spot Bucky.
He’s dressed semi formally, jeans, black boots, a light blue shirt that matched his eyes and a leather jacket slung over his shoulder.
“Hello,” his voice is quiet yet warm, his left hand holds out a small bunch of flowers with a nervous smile. “These are for you.”
You cannot contain the smile that crosses your face. “Thank you.”
His face remains still, but his eyes betray his relief. “I wasn’t sure what you would like,” he confessed.
You shake your head, stepping closer. “They are beautiful.”
“Shall we—” he hesitated. “Shall we go in?”
You nod, holding the flowers in one of your hands and reaching out with the other to offer your hand.
Instinctively, the fingers of his right hand weave between yours. They are gentle yet slightly rough to touch, yet somehow the feel of them sends a slight tingle up your arm.
Bucky guides you forward to the door, holding his jacket with his thumb and the rest of his fingers grasping the handle, holding it open for you.
“Thank you,” you give him a smile.
His lips twitch slightly upward, and follow you into the restaurant.
It’s small, yet quiet, simplistic in its decor.
You blink as you take it in, eyes flickering as he tugs your hand carefully to speak to the server.
“Table for two, under the name Barnes,” his voice is low.
The server nods. “Ah yes, I have it. Good to see you Mr Barnes.”
They pick up two menus and lead you to a small table to the side, a little out of earshot of the nearest table.
“Here,” Bucky pulls out a chair for you as the server places down the menus.
“Thanks,” you sit, place the flowers carefully under your chair and shrug off your jacket.
Bucky gives you a nod of satisfaction before taking his seat, slinging his jacket casually over the back.
“Any allergies we need to be aware of?” The server asks.
You shake your head.
Bucky doesn’t speak, his eyes remain on you.
The server nods and departs.
“You’re quiet,” you notice.
“I normally am,” he leans back, his gaze still intense.
Now it felt like a first date, the momentarily silence, the awkward feeling sinking into your stomach. Was this a mistake? Did he really like you?
“I come here with Sam,” he breaks the silence.
“Like— on a date?” Your tone is casual yet teasing. His nose crinkles together for a moment before he lets out a soft chuckle that shoots through you, the sound of it makes you want to join in.
“No,” a slight smile remains on his face. “We’d end up killing each other at the mere suggestion of sharing anything.”
You smile easily. “I share.”
“I remember,” he exhales. “Not sure I can say the same.”
Your lips part slightly at the implication.
“You look nice,” he adds, before allowing his eyes to move slowly over you.
There was something there, in the tenor of his voice, the way he was so obvious, yet taking it slow. It drew you in dangerously fast.
You feel blood rush to your face.
“So do you,” you admit quietly, eyes on the stubble of his jawline. Even with his long hair slicked back and the stubble, he looks smart, and the shade of his shirt brings out his features. “You’re— you’re pretty.”
His eyes widened a moment before a real smile graced his face. “Not sure I’ve been called pretty before.”
You pursue your lips. “Well, I think you are.”
He leans over the table as if to speak for no one to hear. Instead a voice interrupts you, the server.
“Can I get you any drinks?”
You see a flash of frustration on Bucky's face, and observe him inhale as if to calm himself.
“I’ll have a glass of white wine please,” you say, giving the server a polite glance.
“I’ll have a beer,” Bucky’s voice was low, tight with emotion that was barely contained.
“I’ll be right over with them,” they walk away again.
Once out of earshot you hear Bucky make a noise of dissatisfaction, one that makes you cover your mouth to hide laughter.
“Eileen is right, you are grumpy,” you allow yourself a small giggle once the server is out of earshot.
“Aren’t you?” His eyes never strayed away from yours. “They had to interrupt when things were just getting interesting.”
“There is no rush,” you say softly.
“I only get tonight with you sweetheart,” he shakes his head. “I don’t know when we will get time like this again.”
“I don’t mind Eileen coming,” you remind him.
“I’d rather not have the questions,” he admits. “El was so young when her mother and I separated. I never expected to meet someone else. I never prepared her for it.”
Your head tilts, sensing guilt.
“Bucky,” you lean forward. “We don’t have to rush, or do anything you don’t want to. You don’t have to feel any guilt.”
His eyebrows come together. “It’s not—” he pauses. “It’s been me and El for so long. She has always been my priority.”
You nod. “As it should be.”
The server then approached again, placing drinks on the table, then asked for the order. The pair of you are quick to order, wishing to return to the conversation.
As soon as they left, Bucky reached to take his glass, having a sip.
“I can’t give you what I’d want to give you,” his voice is quiet, almost tired. “I can’t put you first. If my babygirl needs care when we have a date, I have to pick her.”
He sounded as if he were convincing himself.
“Well, we aren’t there yet,” you speak lightly. “Why don’t we see how today goes before worrying about the future?”
He closes his eyes momentarily, taking a deep breath.
“You’re right,” he nods, and his right hand reaches over. “We have to make the most of this.”
You copy him, stretching to take it — his large hand eclipsing yours.
“I’ve never seen you around town before,” his voice was quiet. “Not before the other week, have you just moved here?”
“Mm,” you hum the affirmative. “About six months ago, I was offered a higher paid position at the museum. Thought it might be more of a challenge.”
“And is it?”
You sip your wine at the thought of your job. “It feels like I’m doing three people’s jobs,” you admit. “There is more to record, more things to go wrong, more people to cover for.”
You finish your drink and sigh.
“I love it, but I’m not sure the pay is worth the workload,” your voice is quiet.
“Mm,” he hums. “You’re overworked.”
You shrug. “For now,” you give him a half smile. “It’s been stressful the past few months. The move, new job… but meeting you gave me a little bit of normalcy.”
You pause before admitting the next part.
“I was looking at my phone to see if you’d text me, rather than panicking over bills,” you keep your eyes to the table. “It was nice.”
He chuckles softly.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to text you,” he breathed. “I— I was afraid. It’s been so long since I did this.”
“You’re good at it,” you reassure him. “You make me feel seen. You’re listening to me, paying attention to me even when I’m not asking you anything.”
“You’re more interesting,” he says, his fingers now making patterns on the back of your hand.
You shake your head slowly. “You’re an ex-army vet, with a metal arm and an adorable little girl. You are far more interesting.”
It was then your food was brought over and placed before you continue.
“I might have many stories to tell, but many of them aren’t pleasant, sweetheart,” his tone is dark and warning. “I haven’t lived a pleasant life.”
You let go of his hand, picking up a doughball from his plate and holding it between your fingers in front of him to eat.
Bucky eyes you for a moment before biting into it. Something about feeding the man felt strangely intimate.
“If you give me a chance,” your voice came out quiet yet determined. “I’d like to help you create some nice stories. Happy stories. Some about Eileen that you can embarrass her with when she’s older. Some about you and Sam… and maybe some about you and me.”
His brow furrows, contemplating.
“I'd enjoy that,” he admits.
You squeeze his hand a moment before starting to eat. The two of you eat, not quite in silence but in a comfortable quiet where you’d occasionally speak to comment on the food.
You peek up to look at Bucky, the blue of his eyes seem endless as he ponders.
“What is it?” You ask.
“What do you do outside work?” His eyes flicker up to you.
“Currently, not much, I’m still decorating,” you admit. “I like going on walks.”
“Hmmm,” he leans back.
“What about you?”
“Most of my time is taken up by Eileen,” he admits, his eyes still distant. “Or I tinker with my bike.”
“You ride motorbikes?” You tilt your head in interest.
Bucky nods. “Even when I was a kid. My friends and I used to piece together scrap to ride around.”
He pauses a moment, measuring your interest before continuing. “Working on bikes led me to the Army. I thought I could get a degree through them. Didn’t turn out as I planned.”
He looks down to his hands. “I ended up a Sniper. Turns out my hands were good for things other than fixing bikes.”
You could hear the stiffness in his voice, but he continued as if he could no longer contain himself.
“I got promoted to Sergeant,” he then twitched, his metal arm flexing slightly. “Then I lost my arm, and was allowed to resign my commission.”
“I met El’s mother a few months later,” his eyes then locked on yours. “I was still recovering, and she didn't look at me with pity. Things went fast, El came along and…”
His eyes appeared to look behind you, distant as though reliving a memory.
“When I proposed she said no,” his jaw came together, eyes watering slightly. “She screamed about how she’d put up with me for the past two years, and how Eileen and I were holding her back, keeping her life on hold, stopping her career.”
His eyes flicker back to yours.
“El thinks her mother walked away,” his voice was quiet. “But in truth, the next morning I packed up and took El with me. She was seven months old. Her mother never even contested when I requested custody of her.”
“You never got in trouble for taking El?” You wonder.
“No,” he shakes his head. “As I said, my custody was never contested. In truth, I believe she wanted me to walk out and take El with me.”
You lean over, taking both his hands in yours.
“You did the right thing,” you speak softly.
“So I’m told,” his eyes are sad, guilt etched into the lines of his face.
“What would you like for dessert?” You ask, keeping your eyes fixed on him, trying to distract him from his train of thought.
“Hmm?” He blinks. “I don’t know…”
“I was thinking of a tiramisu,” you say. “But the sorbet also looks good.”
“I usually skip and have a coffee,” he admits.
“We could share,” you suggest. “If you’d like.”
His eyes refocus.
“I can’t remember last time I had a tiramisu,” a semblance of enthusiasm began to seep into his voice.
You smile, heart fluttering slightly at your success.
You remove the silk gown slowly before hanging it up, and slipping into your bed.
You allow yourself a soft sigh, eyes closing your eyes as your fingers interlock, remembering the feel of his hands on yours.
Just as your hands begin to trail up your arms, there is a faint buzz. You ignore it, shifting under the covers in an attempt to keep warm.
You hear another buzz, and groan slightly as your eyes flicker open.
Your hand aimlessly reaches for your phone on your bedside table. With a tug, the cable disconnects and you pull the phone in front of your face to see Bucky’s name on the screen.
Your thumb lingers for a moment before pressing the green button and raising the phone to your ear.
“Hello?” You keep your voice quiet, to avoid disturbing others.
“Hey,” you hear the soft rumble. “Sorry, did I wake you?”
“No,” you admit. “Just got to bed.”
“Mm, sounds nice,” you hear him rummaging around. “El insisted on a bedtime story, and that I stay with her until she fell asleep.”
He inhales slowly, and you hear his heavy footsteps. “Haven’t got a shower yet.”
“Go and get one,” you encourage him sleepily.
He chuckles on the other end. “Are you falling asleep, sweetheart?”
“Your voice is nice,” you admit in a haze.
His laugh is brighter. “Good. I’m sorry I called, I— I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
“Bucky,” you blink in an attempt to keep awake.
“It’s been a long time since I met someone who seemed intent on my happiness,” he goes quiet for a moment. “My life is dedicated to Eileen, there is no room for myself.”
You shift to sit up.
“You deserve to be happy,” you say softly. “Eileen wants you to be happy too.”
“Mm,” he murmurs. “I’d like you to come with us.”
“Bucky?”
“Eileen and I were planning to go to a Science Museum in a few weeks,” he says. “I would like you to come with us.”
“I thought you didn’t want to confuse El?”
“Well,” he exhales. “Fuck it. She likes you. I like you. I want you there and I know El would too. It’ll be hard, and we may have to struggle. But, how I feel — it is worth it, you are worth it.”
You blink away at your tired eyes.
“Bucky, I don’t know what to say,” you whisper.
“You don’t have to, sweetheart,” his voice is smooth, like butter, soothing. “Just be there. That's all I ask.”
“Okay,” you whisper. “I’ll be there.”
It took three weeks before a date was set.
So here you stood, in the shadow of the museum, a large backpack on your back and eyes flickering across the car park.
You hear a screech of excitement before you feel something collide with your legs.
“You’re here!” You peek down and smile at the girl clinging to your legs
“Hey El,” you greet her, and attempt to crouch down. She backs off for a moment before seeing your open arms, and jumping into them, almost launching you backwards.
You hear a chuckle from above and you give her a squeeze. Your eyes flicker up to Bucky, his shadow casting over the pair of you, protecting you.
“Hey,” he says softly. He is wearing a plain shirt and jeans, a backpack over his shoulders.
Your eyes are unable to resist flickering over the broadness of his shoulders to the way the shirt clung to his arms, down to the veins along his forearms. Seeing him in person like this suddenly made all those video calls and texts worthwhile.
Eileen backs away, stepping back towards her father and giving you a grin.
Without even thought you straighten up, still overshadowed by the man slightly.
“Hey,” you greet him. “What’s with the bag?”
“It’s for a picnic,” he shrugs. “Didn’t want to pay for the cafe.”
You tilt your head and look at Eileen. She looked unfazed, as if it were normal.
“I made ham and cheese!” El declared proudly. “And boring salad for Daddy.”
Bucky visibly rolled his eyes. “It's chicken, and my salads are to die for.”
You raise your eyebrows. “Is there enough to share?”
“I made two,” El bounced in excitement.
He pats her on the head gently.
“She insisted we make enough for you,” he shrugs casually. “El, hand please.”
The little girl reaches up automatically, taking his hand whilst Bucky holds out his metal hand to you.
“Shall we?” He suggests.
The inside of the museum is wide and open, a glass roof overhead of the central rocket filling the auditorium.
“Oooo,” El begins to rush forward, dragging her father with her. “A rocket!”
Bucky smirks in amusement at his daughter and gives you a wink.
“It’s a replica of the Rocket from Apollo 13,” Bucky keeps his eyes fixed forward.
Eileen bounds forward to the glass fence. “Three, two, one… Blast off!”
You smile and look over to Bucky who you also see smiling.
“She likes space?”
“I showed her the Artemis launch, and she’s been obsessed ever since,” he squeezes your hand. “She gets it from her father.”
“You like space?”
“Anything Physics,” he nods. “Engineering especially.”
“Nerd,” you tease him.
“Remind me what your job is again?” He sasses back, eyes returning to his daughter. You gently nudge him playfully with your arm, fingers still interlocked with his.
A slight tremor runs through him as he chuckles.
“You’re cute,” he keeps his eyes on Eileen, who is now standing entranced by a small screen showing the launch of a rocket. “People usually aren’t brave enough to tease me.”
“Because you are ex-Army, and built like a house?” You ask, your eyes remain on him, taking in how his hair was down — kept behind his ears.
“Mm,” he agrees. “I have what Sam calls a resting bitch face.”
You snicker, and feel Bucky’s eyes flicker to you.
“You aren’t denying it?”
“You do have this tendency to look a little…” you pause. “It doesn’t bother me.”
“No?” His lips twitch for a moment.
“No,” you repeat. “You’re gorgeous even with the resting bitch face.”
“Mm,” he lifts your joined hands, brushing his lips across your knuckles. “Thanks.”
The next few hours were filled with the excited squeals of Eileen at the different exhibits. Space suits, moon rocks, and a long documentary on the International Space Station. The three of you ended up in the large auditorium, sat on a bench with the picnic spread out in front of you.
Eileen sat talking animatedly about space, about all the planets she had looked up in books, what astronauts did in space and how much she wanted to see the stars.
Through it all Bucky never once interrupted her, to try to deter her from her dream. He nodded and spoke to her casually, almost like an adult.
“You okay there, honey?” Bucky’s voice broke you out of your thoughts.
“You’re such a good Dad,” you say without thinking about it.
He gives you a gentle smile, reaching over to squeeze your hand. “Thank you.”
You look over to Eileen who seems content eating her sandwich, whilst carefully colouring in a page she’d been given. Her eyebrows were scrunched together slightly, and the grip on her small pencil was tight.
“Is it like this all the time?” You wonder. “With you and Eileen?”
“What do you mean?”
“Peaceful, just out having fun,” you say.
“No, this is a treat,” he admits. “Normally we spend our weekends at home, we might go to the park or take a walk.”
“Just father-daughter time,”
“I guess,” he shrugs.
“Daddy colours with me,” Eileen interrupts, taking a sip of her juice. “In our NASA colouring book.”
You smirk and from the corner of your eye spot Bucky, placing his metal hand over his face.
“Daddy bakes with me. We made cookies!” She declares proudly.
Bucky chuckles, allowing hand to fall back to the table. “The icing was everywhere.”
“It was yummy!” She waves her arms in excitement. “Can you make cookies?”
You give her a gentle smile. “Yeah.”
Eileen gasps in excitement. “Come to my house! Let’s bake cookies.”
You laugh quietly.
“Maybe another time,” Bucky reaches over to calm her. “We have more of the museum to see.”
Another hour passed, walking through the long exhibit on the Solar System. The corridors were dark, covered with small lights to represent stars, every so often opening up into a room for each planet, projections of the planet flowing onto the walls, with paintings of the surface of the planet.
Upon reaching Saturn, you hear the sound of rocks for Saturn’s Rings.
“This is incredible,” you murmur.
Ahead, Eileen was bounding forward, keeping a close but far enough she could watch first.
“It is,” he agrees, squeezing your hand. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course,”
“Would you like to visit an observatory?” He sounded nervous.
“With El?”
He shook his head. “She’d get bored of the talk. I— I have always wished to go.”
“Bucky,” you smile at him, flattered that he was willing to openly be himself with you. “Of course, I will.”
“You will?”
“Sure, sounds kind of romantic,” you shrug shyly. “Sat looking up at the stars.”
“Maybe,” he sounds unsure.
You squeeze his hand as you speak. “Bucky, you don’t need to give excuses. If you want to go to an observatory, we can go. All I want is to be with you.”
He stiffened a moment before keeping pace with you again, his eyes moving from your face to his daughter.
“You really want that?”
“Yeah,” your voice is quiet against the vast expanse of projected space. “I like spending time with you both.”
You feel a kiss against your hair. “Thank you.”
Your eyes flicker to glance at the lights crossing his features, then forward again. Your mind slowly began to list other date ideas, not just an observatory. Walks under the night sky, visits to climbing walls for El, maybe a motorcycle show or two.
A small smile remained on your face as you leaned into Bucky, feeling a sense of contentment amongst the stars.
One, two, three.
You count the knocks as you tap against the door.
Immediately you hear the sound of rushed footsteps, before the door flings open.
And there he is.
It takes a moment to process the sight in front of you. Bucky stood inside in a white tank top, with simple grey sweatpants and slips on his feet.
“Hey,” his voice is soft. “I’m glad you’re here.”
You feel heat creep up your cheeks, recalling the dazed rush you’d been in. Receiving his text asking you to come round, changing frantically from your loose shirt and leggings into a summer dress, checking yourself in the mirror, once, twice and then a third time before leaving.
“Did you need something?”
He gives you a simple nod and steps aside. “Come in.”
You step inside, taking care to remove your shoes as you hear the click of the door shutting.
“Here,” Bucky passes you, heading straight to the sofa. You glance around the room, it isn’t as messy as you anticipated. There were no signs of El or her toys. Just a glass of water on the coffee table, and a beer bottle on the side table.
He slumps onto the leather, one arm up perched on the back as he nods down next to him.
You pursue your lips as you sit down, curious.
“Breathe,” his voice is soft. “I wanted to spend time with you.”
You take a shaky breath. “I thought you might’ve—“
You blink to try and hide the tears in your eyes. “I thought you were breaking up with me.”
His lips parted for a moment before he allowed his head to fall back slightly, chuckling.
“It’s not funny,” you protest weakly.
He stills a moment, tongue moving visibly inside his mouth, leaving you slightly entranced. The things he could do with that tongue…
“I’m sorry I worried you,” his tone was gentle, the fingers of his metal hand tracing your collarbone over your shirt. “Eileen is having a sleepover with a friend.”
You raise your eyebrows. “Really?”
He gave a soft smile as he nodded. “She’s been begging me for months. I thought it might be time.”
“And you invited me?” You twitch, beginning to understand.
“I’ve missed you,” he admits. “The phone calls don’t feel like enough.”
A surge of warmth filled your heart softly running through your veins.
“I missed you,” you reach over to lay your hand on his thigh. “I’m sorry I couldn’t see you.”
His fingers begin to play with the hair at the nape of your neck. “You’ve been busy, I understand.”
You lean into his hand, the cool metal cupping your cheek.
“So have you,” your voice cracks.
“Hm,” his face relaxes into its usual expression, slightly grumpy with the lines on his face plain. “Too busy.”
Almost of its own accord your hand most up, brushing against the cotton stretched across his chest before allowing the tops of your fingers to linger on the stubble on his jaw.
“I was going to cook you dinner,” he confesses. “Got too eager and invited you before I could decide what to cook.”
You begin to smile, thumb brushing his chin. “That’s okay, I’m just glad to be here.”
Bucky shakes his head. “You’ve dressed up, and I didn’t even cook you dinner.”
The leather of the sofa squeaked as you shuffled closer to him, legs brushing.
“We can order take out?” You suggest. “Order pizza, lounge around with bad TV on.”
He chuckled. “Now that is a good idea.”
He reached into his pocket for his phone, flicking his fingers across it.
The next few minutes were filled with the quiet chatter of debating which pizza to order. Unconsciously, you find yourself pulled closer to him, practically leaning on him as you look at the screen.
“Hm,” he grunted. “It’s going to be a while, sweetheart.”
You allow your head to fall into his shoulder, allowing your eyes to close. His metal arm tightens slightly around your waist.
“What a shame,” you murmur sarcastically.
“Did you have plans?” he teases back.
You tilt your head up as your eyes open. “I wasn’t sure how late you’d want me to stay.”
“Oh,” he breathed and shook his head. “Doll, I want you to stay all night.”
“All night?”
“You think I’d let my baby girl out of my sight for the night if I didn’t?” He points out.
Heat rushed to your cheeks. “You wanted to—“
“I hoped,” his flesh hand was in your hair now, holding you in pace whilst his left kept you against him. “I can’t keep up this façade, pretending I don’t want more with you. Like you don’t brighten both our lives with your presence.”
“Bucky,” your breaths are shallow, fast, eyes fixed on his.
His face contorted, several emotions passing across his face whilst his eyes softened.
“Tell me if I’m going too fast,” he pleads. “I couldn’t bear to go through it again.”
Your eyes water slightly, heart tightening in empathy. The past month he’d held back, only holding your hand, or pressing a kiss to your forehead. You’d feared the lack of intimacy indicated no interest, but now you knew otherwise.
He had avoided moving too fast out of fear of repeating the past.
“It’s not too fast,” you promise. “I did wonder why you held yourself back.”
“I’m sorry,” he frowns. “I— I didn’t want to lead you on. I like you, in fact, I adore you. You’ve worked past the steel I’ve forged around my heart to make your home there, and you’ll never leave.”
You swallow audibly.
“When I met you,” your voice is quiet. “All I wanted to do was try and put a smile on that face. You looked so shaken from El wandering off, and concerned about disturbing me. My heart went out to you. The more time we spent together, the more you showed me every facet of who you are. The more I found myself wanting to be around you. Ironically, you make me happy when all I wanted was to do that for you.”
“You make me happy,” he gives you a nod before licking his bottom lip. “Let me show you.”
His breath fans across your face, and you faintly smell beer on it. A slight movement and his lips are on yours, keeping you secure against him as you reciprocate feeling the softness of his lips but not pushing any further.
“What’s wrong?” His voice is thick as his forehead leans against yours.
“Have you been drinking?” You say quietly, your heart sinking at the thought of him being drunk.
“Oh,” he hand drops from your face, reaching behind him to pick something up and show you the brown bottle — mostly full. “I took a sip when I heard you knock, I needed some courage.”
You glance at the bottle, feeling your muscles loosen up and give a relieved laugh.
“Sorry,” you apologise.
“Don’t apologise,” he shakes his head. “Want one?”
“No, thanks,” you reach up to allow your fingers to tangle in the hair, flowing from above his ear to the base of his neck.
“Fair enough,” he takes a long sip before placing it back on the side table behind him. You quietly laugh again. “What’s so funny?”
“You,” you grin. “Needing a beer like you’ve never spoken to a woman. It’s cute.”
“I don’t need a beer to speak to a woman,” he pretends to be offended. “I need a beer to speak with you.”
You snort. “Corny.”
Unable to hold the serious expression, he laughs lightly.
“I am,” he agrees, then leans forward to press a quick peck to your mouth.
“Hey!” You complain with a laugh of your own. “Bucky!”
His left arm tightens around your waist a moment, and he continues to tease you. “Sweetheart.”
“You’re so—” you wave your arm in mock frustration.
“Devastating handsome?” He winks.
Your voice gets caught in your throat, making a choking noise. His eyes widen slightly his horror, hand moving up to rub your back.
“You okay?” His tone dips in concern.
“You made me choke on my own spit!” You accuse him.
A relieved look passes his face.
“Thank fuck,” he breathes, his hand still gently moving up and down your spine.
The sight of him suddenly felt too much. The fear in his eyes, the pink of his lips pressed together, the way his jawline twitched slightly as he strained.
“You are handsome,” you admit, leaning closer and pressing a soft kiss to the edge of his mouth.
“Yeah?” His lips twitch up slightly.
“Yeah,” you breathe. “And kind, and funny.”
“Mm,” he hummed. “And you’re the most generous woman I have ever met. Beautiful, gentle and caring. You ask nothing of me, you accept my poor excuses for not being with you—”
“Taking care of your daughter isn’t a poor excuse,” you interrupt.
“Let me finish,” he presses a finger to your lips. “You don’t mind Eileen being on our dates. You ask after her, treat her as your own.”
His blue eyes soften. “She loves you, you know?”
Your lip trembles slightly. “I love her.”
Bucky’s lips pull up into a proper smile, a rare sight. “As do I.”
The doorbell then rang.
“Shit,” he mutters. “Coming!”
In a flurry of shuffling and cursing, Bucky got off the sofa and headed to the door. The sight of such him stumble around, almost tripping brought a giggle to your lips.
You hear him grumble at you down the corridor before enthusiastically greeting the delivery driver, exchanging pleasantries before re-emerging into the room, carrying several boxes under his arm.
“You remain wordless, amused as he lays out the boxes onto the coffee table.
“Ah,” he slumps back next to you, remote in hand to turn on the TV. The chatter and music seemed faint compared to the sound of Bucky shifting to grab his beer again and reach for a slice with the other.
“Happy now?” You tease.
He shrugs nonchalantly. “Been a long time since I had an evening like this.”
“Should I leave you alone with—?” You nod to the food.
“No,” he answers quickly, placing his beer down, then swapping the pizza from one hand to the other before holding out his free arm. “Get over here.”
You shuffle over, half your body covering his, as he finishes off his slice.
“Here,” his left arm holds you as his right reaches over for another slice. “Open.”
You blink a second before opening your mouth to allow him to feed you. You chew slowly, taking in his relaxed expression.
“This is nice,” you admit. “Domestic, comfortable. Like… home.”
He freezes for a moment. “Like home?”
You nod softly. “Better, because you’re here.”
“Yeah?” He asks rhetorically. “We could make this more permanent, honey.”
“What do you mean?”
“You could stay over,” he suggests. “Spend the weekends with El and me.”
“I thought you didn’t want to cause Eileen any confusion?” You say quietly.
He snorts. “I’d cause her more by keeping you away.”
“And what if we sleep together?”
“We will cross that bridge when we get to it,” he snags another piece, taking a big bite to avoid speaking further.
“Bucky,” you voice is almost a whine.
“Hush and eat your food,” his voice is gentle, no semblance of harshness in his tone.
“Yes sir,” you mutter, reaching over to join him in having pizza.
Slowly, as the take out boxes emptied, you ended up laid down, Bucky underneath, his back against the armrest, whilst your head was on his chest as your fingers brushed against his shirt.
Every so often, you’d move up and kiss him, softly. Taking your time to make the most of being alone with him. Then he’d occasionally move, tilting his head down to push his lips against the crown of your head, then tilting your head back to kiss you lazily, no force behind it, only a tempered heat that sparked the desire for more.
“Hey,” you hear him murmur. “You awake, sweetheart?”
“Barely,” your voice is a whisper, his body rumbles as he chuckles.
“Need me to carry you to bed?” His tone is teasing again.
“I— I don’t have any clothes,” you don’t move despite the comment.
“You can have some of mine,” he promises. “Come on, doll. Let’s get you in bed.”
As he moved, keeping you on his lap before turning and picking you up with surprising ease, it occurred to you that this is what he probably did with Eileen every night. Let her tire herself out before scooping her up and gently putting her under the covers.
It was a basic act of love. Something Bucky was used to, rather than the awkwardness of trying to force something on a date.
You barely notice where you are until he pops you onto what you assume is his bed. He goes to his drawers pulling out several pieces of clothing
“Here,” he gently tosses you a grey shirt. “I’m gonna change. Feel free to use the bathroom.”
He leaves through the open door, and you hear his footsteps as he heads down the corridor.
The room is dimly lit by the light filtering from the neighbouring bathroom, the bed sheets a simple navy blue, and upon the drawers were framed photos. Several were of Eileen, one was of Bucky, his arm around a man you didn’t recognise — Sam, you assumed. Then there was another, a new one, that you recognised. It was you, sat next to Bucky on the bench in the Space Museum. The photo was blurry, having been taken by Eileen herself, but even so you could see the happiness in Bucky’s eyes, the slight tilt in his lips.
You hadn’t realised you were standing until you reached to touch it, eyes watering slightly at his sentimentality.
“Hey,” his voice pulled you out of your thoughts. “You okay, doll?”
“You framed this?” Your voice is shaky.
“Of course,” he speaks casually. “It’s the only picture I have of you.”
“It’s only been two months,” you peek over at him from the corner of your eyes.
“It doesn’t matter,” you feel him step behind you, arms wrapping around your waist. “Whether you know it or not, you’ve brightened my life. You’re important to me.”
“Bucky,” tears begin to fall down your cheeks.
“Don’t cry,” he murmurs into your ear. “I’m not worth your tears, baby.”
“Yes, you are,” you sniffle, placing your hands on his. “You’re worth it all.”
You feel his breath against your ear, lips brushing faintly against your hairline.
“Still sleepy?” He asks.
Your head twists to look behind you then up at him. “A little, but I want you more.”
His eyes widen slightly at your words. “You’re sure?”
You nod, turning in his arms, and wrap your own arms around his neck.
“Yes,” you agree. “Nice and slow. Like you said.”
“I can do that,” he pulls you forward, stepping back until he falls back onto the bed, bringing you with him.
“Buck!” You laugh as you land on his chest, the thin cotton of his pyjamas gave little protection when your hands brushed his hardness of his chest.
He chuckles. “Buck, eh?”
You feel heat rush to your cheeks. “It kind of slipped out.”
“It’s okay,” he pulls you up carefully until you are face to face. “It’s more than okay.”
“You don’t mind?”
He shakes his head with a gentle smile. “I only allow those closest to me to call me Buck.”
“Yeah?”
The smile turns into a smirk as he hums in approval, leaning up to kiss you.
The kiss is different again, slow like before but with clear intent. A hand reaches to cup your face, thumb tracing your cheekbone. His lips move with precision, taking care not to push too far.
“Slow,” he murmurs against your lips as if reminding himself. You lean down this time, pressing gentle kisses across his face, working down to his neck before giving it a nip with your teeth.
“Easy,” his fingers brush through your hair. “Gonna get me off before our clothes are off.”
You giggle quietly. “Sorry.”
“No apologies,” his hand moves from your head to tilt your chin up. “Don’t be sorry for any of this. This is perfect.”
You pull back, and catch the hurt in his eyes. Your chest tightens with guilt, and you manage a deep breath before reaching under your skirt — pulling the dress off in a single movement.
“Oh,” his hands fall to your hips, eyes locked on your bare chest only covered by a simple bra. “That’s not slow, sweetheart.”
“I want to feel you,” you admit as you reach down, hands roaming up his arms as you lower yourself back down onto him.
He doesn’t say a word, instead his right hand moves up your skin, leaving a soft tingle in its wake, before stopping just at the hem of your bra.
“May I?” His voice is low with desire, eyes on your chest.
You nod, feeling enraptured by the sensation of his hands on you. His hand slid under your bra cupping your breast, then brushing his thumb over your skin.
“They’re real soft,” he murmurs, concentrating on how his fingers seemed to disappear into them.
“Been a while?” You guess.
His eyes flicker to yours. “I never got to experience this — to just touch. To get to know someone so intimately.”
“Here,” you reach up and pull down the straps on your bra, then unhook from behind you and throw it on the floor. “I trust you.”
He pulls himself further up, keeping you seated on his lap whilst his hands hovered over you.
“Still okay?” He asks, and you nod.
The sensation of one hand cold and the other warm, sent your mind into overdrive with sensation. Your nipples perking up slightly in interest as his fingers squeezed.
You reach forward, humming quietly at the feel of him on you, and reach for the bottom of his top.
“May I?” You whisper.
“Please,” he removes his hands and allows you to pull it over his head. Your breath catches in your throat for a moment at the sight of him.
You had known he was well built, and big, but seeing him without a shirt felt altogether different. Large shoulders framing his chest. Curiosity breaks through, your hands drift onto his chest, brushing softly against his chest, downwards as you notice there is no six pack, only the feel of muscle with a healthy layer of fat. It felt soft, like somewhere you wished to lay your head on every night.
“You okay there, sweetheart?” He asks, eyes fixed on your every expression.
“It feels nice,” you admit.
“Don’t exactly look like I’d fit the cover on Men’s Health, do I?” His tone is joking, but you scowl at him regardless.
“Yet you probably could lift a small car with those muscles,” you say, fingers now pressing into the muscles of his arm, one hand exploring soft muscle the other tracing the plates of his arm.
“That’s what the metal arm is for,” he jokes and leans forward to press a kiss to your mouth again.
You laugh as you pull away from the peck. “Could you lift me?”
“Easily,” he admits casually.
“Very humble,” you tease him, as his fingers begin to trace your sides.
“You asked,” he smirks.
“I did,” you agree, brushing your nose against his. “I’m curious what else,” your hand roams over his metal arm. “This arm can do.”
Bucky’s eyebrows shoot up. “Dirty.”
Heat rushes to your cheeks. He laughs then, all tension removed from the moment.
”Bucky,” your voice is almost a whine.
“Breathe,” his voice turns soft. “It’s just us. You don’t have to hide anything.”
You give him a playful scowl, then shake your head.
“Are you asking me to talk dirty?” Your voice is slightly hesitant.
”Only if you want to,” his fingers made patterns on your bare sides. “Or I can…”
You feel his lips brush your cheek before speaking low in your ear. “You have no idea how hard it has been to keep our dates safe for El’s eyes. Trying to keep my eyes off you. When we first met—”
He pauses, shifting back to stare at you, suddenly serious. “I’m sorry about that. I checked you out and spoke without thinking. I was as embarrassed as you were, it’s why I wished to escape, and why it took me so long to text you.”
Your arms tighten around his neck. “You’re only human.”
He lets out an awkward chuckle, licking his bottom lip anxiously. “Thanks”
You lean forward to press a kiss to his mouth, moving slowly as you press yourself against him. One hand presses against the small of your back as the other slides up to cradle the back of your neck.
You gasp as he turns, causing you to land on your back head against the pillows looking up at him.
“Had enough talking?” His voice breaks slightly.
You nod, still slightly wide eyed.
“Good,” he buries his head into your neck, inhaling through his nose as his hands moved down to your underwear.
Your own hands mirrored his, reaching to pull him free. The moment dragged, suddenly the urgency of made it feel like no matter how hard either of you tried the clothes were just not coming off.
“That was more difficult than when it was my first fucking time,” he grumbles, kicking his leg to ensure he was completely bare.
You laugh quietly and shake your head. “Come here.”
He leans down again to kiss you. Even as your lips moved with his your could feel him against you, the warmth of his skin against your chest, your hands feeling the muscles of his back.
With a groan, his hips roll over yours to allow you to feel how hard he was. Your legs lift instinctively to allow him easier access.
There were no words passed between you. Bucky only lifted himself slightly to look into your eyes as you give a tiny nod to confirm you were consenting to all of it.
A hand abruptly landed on your thigh, curling inwards before moving between your bodies reaching to grasp himself and line himself up.
“It’s been a while,” he admits. “If I do anything it hurts, or anything you don’t like. Tell me, and I’ll stop.”
“Okay,” your voice is breathy, almost silent from the tension of the moment.
His blue eyes stay fixed on you, reading your expression before you feel the tip of him press against you.
He moved slowly, as if he feared that moving too fast would break you in half. Yet somehow it made everything better. You gasped as you stretched around him, friction building despite your arousal and the an ache that had previously gone unnoticed seemed to soothe as he bottomed out.
You exhale slowly as he pressed his forehead against yours, the room silent other than the sound of heavy breathing.
“You okay?” His voice broke slightly at the intensity.
“Yeah,” you respond, reaching so your arms wrap around him, hands grasping his shoulders. From the corner of your eyes you see the showdown of his own arms bracing himself above you.
Bucky keeps his eyes on yours. “Keep yours eyes on me, please.”
His hips move and withdraw slightly before pushing forward gently. A moan gets caught in your throat as you feel the stretch again.
The look in his eyes is intense, focused and his jaw ticks slightly as he concentrates.
“You’re making it real hard to hold it together honey,” he voice come from between clenched teeth.
“Slower?” You suggest and he shakes his head sharply.
“That’ll kill me,” his lips twitch in amusement at the thought. “I need to move.”
You brace your feet against the softness of the bedsheet, allowing your thighs to wrap around his hips lightly.
“Then move, Bucky,” you whisper your encouragement. “I’ll tell you if it’s too much.”
He remains still, his eyes still focusing on you.
“Trust me?”
The words seem to stir something in him, his face softens, jaw loosening and he lets out a sharp exhale as though he had been holding his breath.
In a single movement he pulls out, then in an instant he pushes back in, watching as you gasp, your fingers digging into his shoulders.
His body begins to move in rhythm, faster than the first few thrusts but enough you find yourself keeping up, attempting to sync up with him.
The room felt oddly quiet only than the soft slapping of skin and your breathy sighs of pleasure.
“Feels good,” he murmurs, and leans down brush his nose against yours. He begins to move faster, just enough that you see him groan, his mouth passing yours a moment before leaving a trail of saliva from the edge of your lips to jawline.
“Bucky,” you moan as you feel him give a hard thrust and hold it there.
“More?” He suggests, his lips at your ear.
“Please,” your eyes sting slightly as your chest tightens slightly, desperate.
He pulls himself up to hover over you. One hand grasping your thigh, pulling it up, swinging your calf over his shoulder and pressing down.
“Oh f—” you cry out as you feel him push deeper, brushing against a spot that sends a flood of warmth through you.
“There,” he inhales, taking a moment whilst his left hand brushed your side, the cool of the metal leaving tingles in its wake before slipping down between your legs. “I’ve got you.”
The headboard banged against the wall with his next thrust, your voice gets caught in your throat, lips still parted as he hits with such precision you begin to fear being overheard at the noises you suppress.
“Let it out,” he commands, tone gentle. “I wanna hear it.”
Your voice cracks slightly as a long moan escapes you. “Bucky, please—”
“Close?” He asks and you nod frantically.
It was then he leaned down to kiss you, your bodies still rocking in an attempt to sync up, your legs begin to tremble around him. The metal of his fingers brushed the swollen nub between you, forcing your apart just a moment as your back arches into him with a soft cry, before he presses himself down on you. His weight holding you in place, mouth suppressing your sounds. His fingers continue, rubbing hard against you as he snaps forward hard.
Your body clamps around him, your cries muffled by his mouth. Wave after wave of pleasure crashes over you, as you feel him continue, the friction against your walls making your eyes roll.
Bucky kisses your deeper then, almost as through to push you further into the mattress as he presses hard against your walls before his large frame shudders, and you feel a rush of liquid alongside your own.
His forehead lays softly on top of yours, and you watch his entire face soften. His eyes are shut, lips slightly parted as he breathes deeply before letting out a quiet laugh.
“Bucky?” You whisper, his eyes flicker open. The blue piercing through you.
“That was reckless,” he chuckles, shifting his weight to prop himself on both arms. “No condom.”
“Oh,” heat rushes to your cheeks as you realise the slight faux pas. You lips part to apologise.
“Don’t apologise,” he cuts you off. “I haven’t felt like this in nearly a decade. Just doing something because it’s fun, consequences be damned.”
You swallow, fingers reaching up to brush against his cheek. “I like that.”
“Yeah, enough to do it again?” His voice is quiet, nervous.
“Now?” You suppress a smile.
“Maybe in an hour,” he shrugs. “Was thinking of a bath? Then we can sleep, get El and maybe brunch?”
“That sounds…” your eyes gaze over for a moment, consumed by domestic thoughts. Sitting in the living room, colouring with Eileen. Having Bucky laid on your lap, running your fingers through his hair. Maybe a day would pass when you’d surprise Eileen with a sibling.
“Sounds nice,” you agree.
His shifts instantly, scooping you into his arms to carry you into the bathroom. His arms tighten around you instinctively and you hear him murmur above you.
“As long you’ll have me, I’ll be here.”
author's note: thank you for reading. and thank you all again for nearly hitting 500! i am still a bit unsure on this fic, it felt like it jumps around a lot, but it was meant to be a snapshot of something more realistic.