time alone with you
pairing: bucky barnes x reader
word count: 1.4k
warnings: swearing, some incoherent writing, no smut but a smut-adjacent direction??
summary: “wear me, he almost says, as if sam isn’t right there, as if he isn’t suddenly frozen in the middle of the fucking entryway.”
a/n: i’m currently working on a much longer bucky fic, but here’s a small thing i whipped up while (procrastinating) studying for finals! it’s a mess but who cares! i have yet to write a fic without a bed scene... this is a subtle nod to the fact that i like to sleep... and i will FOREVER romanticize oranges. anyways enjoy! likes and reblogs are always appreciated!
masterlist! ao3!
“Are you ever going to make a move?”
There’s eggshells, but Sam doesn’t mind walking on them. He sounds exasperated in that eager kind of way- yeah, this situation sucks, but something about the tension is just so rough and gritty and good, right?
A flutter of panic rises in his chest, but Bucky shoves it back down, hard. He stops clenching his fists and stops looking at you, trying to shift the right parts of his face to play dumb.
“Make a move on what?”
Curiosity, supposedly genuine.
In the kitchen, with your back halfway turned, you’re obliviously peeling an orange and wearing earbuds, blasting music so loud that he can hear it all the way from the entryway. Less words and more static, vaguely melodic.
Sam rolls his eyes.
“Her,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the entire world.
After all, you’re right there, and the only person that could even work in this context, and Sam is annoyingly perceptive; he’s bound to have picked up on something. No touches, but maybe the staring. Conversations and the lack thereof.
Maybe Bucky should cut his shit out and just say it. And maybe you should stop being so lovely, and maybe you should stop being so deft with your fingers- he might do something bad. Your hands must be smelling of citrus.
Bucky doesn’t respond. Sam sighs and moves on, slipping further in and clearing his throat louder than a damn vacuum, to make a subtle entrance, of course, and you finally look up and notice them. One earbud is slipped out, one hand is raised in a lazy wave.
You’re wearing a necklace. Thin gold chain, plain and probably fake, glinting like it knows how lucky it is to be sitting there, lucky on your skin, lucky to be dipping into the hollow of your neck- Bucky would switch places in a heartbeat. Wear me, he almost says, as if Sam isn’t right there, as if he isn’t suddenly frozen in the middle of the fucking entryway.
Color him desperate.
You smile. Still cradling your orange, peel discarded.
“Hey, Bucky,” you say, and you’re looking at him and he thinks he’s sweating. “Long time no see.”
Sam snorts.
Again, Bucky can’t respond. He’s too dumbstruck- it’s hard to look at you right with other people around, when you’re prying your orange apart, when you’re slipping a slice into your mouth fuck.
He’d trade places with the orange, too. He’d trade places with the peel.
He is definitely sweating.
You lean across the counter, resting your elbows on granite. His mouth is gummy. You’re wearing shorts and he can’t see your legs from where he stands, but he can imagine them perfectly- he curve of your ankle and the backs of your knees and the sides of your thighs, outer traced all the way to inner-
“He’s not saying anything because he’s nervous,” Sam says. He finally finds his snack and shuts the fridge, smiling wider than kids when they put strips of orange peel in front of their teeth. Fucking ridiculous.
“Shut up,” Bucky snaps.
His voice is dry, grating. You wince.
Sam does nothing. Again, eggshells.
“Sorry,” he says, in a way that isn’t sorry at all, “I’m heading out.”
“Bye,” you call, almost too fast.
So Sam fucks off to god knows where, skipping the whole way, and Bucky just stands there, awkward gawking and gaping and lovestruck, immobile and feeling like cold water. Like a dumb statue.
You wave for him to come closer.
He comes closer.
You reach out and he thinks you’re going to touch him, and he thinks that he’s lucky today, too, but you just hand him half of your orange. He might be in shock.
“Anyways,” you say, with the same cadence that someone might say good riddance, “Are you actually nervous?”
Always.
“Never,” he says.
You pause, slice halfway to your mouth. “Really?”
“Really.”
You lean closer. The dropped earbud skims against the countertop, music still going loud. He’s all alone with you- he could come to the other side and slip it in his own ear and press hard against you, elicit a started laugh, cradle your face and kiss off the taste of-
Footsteps.
Steve ambles into the kitchen, taking Sam’s near-exact course, stopping at the fridge.
He sees you and smiles, sees Bucky and smiles. You nod at Steve and slip the earbud back in and eat your last slice in silence- and then it’s like it wasn’t shared in the first place. Like you’re just standing there and he’s just standing there and the standing just happened to coincide, and is eventually set to hand, with your hands fruitless and his hands itching.
You wink on your way out.
***
The day turns into a waiting game. Time ticks by at a pace criminally slow, but he grits his teeth and gets through it. Through the drag of each individual second, through the unbearable thoughts. And, of course, because this is just how anticipation works, as soon as the wait is over, the seconds are blurring, and he ends up there all too soon.
Outside your room.
He knocks and you open the door immediately, like you were waiting, too. It shouldn’t be that surprising, but he’s surprised anyway. He always is.
You stand in the middle of the doorway, already dressed for bed. In pajama pants and a black shirt- his, he realizes, and his heart stutters. The neckline is loose and the fabric is creased and he doesn’t care.
He steps in fast, nearly slamming the door behind him. You scramble back and laugh. “Nice to see you, too.”
Your room is cluttered and familiar and smells like perfume and you and fresh air- in the summertime, you like to sleep with the windows open. The sky leaks yellow-red-purple and you’re yellow-red-purple, especially pretty when you’re under him.
He doesn’t know how he gets there. But he’s at the foot of the bed and you’re laying down, atop unwrinkled sheets and a really nice mattress stuffed with whatever they stuff really nice mattresses with, and he waits for you to arrange yourself, and then climbs on top of you.
It’s a practiced balance- pressing, but not pressure. You sigh and he’s so close that he can’t tell where he and you start and end, and his heart is actually rattling in his ribcage, elated and excited and indecisive with his hands- he doesn’t know what he wants to touch first.
They flicker about. Face, chest, neck, thigh, everywhere.
“Somebody’s eager tonight.” You laugh again, breathy and indecent.
“I’ve been thinking about you all day,” he says, almost like a confession. He leans down to kiss you and misses.
He’s so fucking giddy that he misses- ex-assassin, military sniper background be damned- he misses bad.
The kiss lands somewhere on your cheek. He isn’t suave enough to play something like that off, but you haven’t even noticed- your eyes are closed. He might as well kiss your eyelids, kiss in a circle. Kiss like dancing.
He does. Eyelids, and then skin, and then closer and closer and mouth.
He kisses your mouth and you bring a hand up to the back of his neck, tangling a delightfully harsh hand in his hair, wrapping a leg around his, biting his lip. His hands still; he thinks he might actually die.
The kisses devolve into something sloppy. You taste better than fruit, like mint. He’s cupping your face and you hum low, from the back of your throat all the way down to his bones. There’s some other white noise, traffic from below or the air conditioning or just the blood rushing in his own ears- he can’t make sense of any of it.
“What,” you rasp, and your voice is a shock, delirious and jarring and crystal-clear, “what kind of thoughts?”
Eagerness verges into impatience.
He rucks up your shirt- his shirt, not all the way but high enough. “This kind, sweetheart.”
You gasp when he touches skin, a live wire. “I- fuck, okay. I see.”
You’re trying to keep up, but he’s not done. He trails down to kiss your jaw, your neck. “This kind, baby.”
“Bucky,” you whine.
He wedges a knee in between your legs. “This kind, sugar.”
All the niceties he knows- just dripping, dripping, honeysweet. You’re nearly a shadow as the sun sinks, hazy and dark and indefinite.
You arch further into him, even closer. He presses further into you, running his hands up along your bare sides, stomach and abdomen and above. It’s not quite unleashing, but something akin to it.
A secret in nature, but not in intention. You’re perfect and mellow and never feel the need to throw your arms around him when he walks into a room. And sometimes he does, but he doesn’t think he’s there yet, and that’s okay. It works out, because instead he can come to your room at near-night and kiss you and take his shirt off of you and be as unhinged as he wants.
“Fucking hell, Bucky,” you say, syllables half-slurred. It’s too dark to be certain, but he thinks you shiver.
He’s dizzy when he pauses. You’re blinking like you’ve just woken up, slow and bleary-eyed. He’s been gripping you, he realizes, hard- slowly, he relaxes his fingers. He leans away from you and rubs your skin and readjusts himself. He’s aching.
“You want me to slow down?” His voice is thick.
He has trouble recognizing himself when he’s with you. In a good way, though.
Your teeth glitter with your smile. He doesn’t even know where your hands are- not until one curls over his shoulder and the other fists his shirt, yanking him all the way back down. Eyes dark, lights out.
“Don’t even think about it.”
