✦Bucky Masterlist - Main Masterlist - Read on aO3!✦
✦summary: you fell for bucky a long, long while ago. and you think about him, every day and every night. and you find out he thinks about you too.✦
✦warnings/tags: bucky barnes x female!reader, friends to lovers, light emotional angst, everyone's bad at feelings, fluff, smut, plot and porn mix (fingering, dirty talk, truth serum/sex pollen?, blowjobs, use of sex toys, fantasization, praise kink, perfectly "appropriate" use of bucky's metal arm, finger sucking, dumbification, dry humping, sensitive reader, pussy spanking, finger sucking, masturbation, bucky gets nasty, body worship, overstimulation, mean!bucky, nipple play, manhandling, monster dick bucky, he fucks like a machine, squriting), no use of y/n, no descrption of reader✦
✦wc: 6.9k✦
✦Author's Note: ive been peer pressured. i'm not mad about it. pt two of what if he's mine, but can be read alone! enjoy!✦
There’s a rule, to measure the success of an Avengers mission.
Did anyone die?
If the answer is any form of no, you’re not going to do much better than that.
Steve explained this to Bucky, when he joined the team. Bucky had the same opinion on it then that he does now. It’s a stupid damn rule. Doesn’t make any sense. There are countless ways to fail without death, and he can count every single one of them with the scars on his body.
And it’s easy for Steve to pretend that this mission—this stupid, stupid mission that’s going to be the end of Bucky’s sanity—ended well. Steve didn’t chase the crazy magic doctors into the catacombs. Steve didn’t fight the flying monkeys and get whacked in the face with something that was either monkey shit, or the most horrible smelling dirt anyone’s ever seen.
Steve wasn’t trapped in that thin hallway with you, your ass pressed to his crotch, his hands hovering right over your hips, his fingers twitching with the exhaustive effort to not just touch. Bucky had thought he might die right there. You’d been so warm, so perfectly molded against him, he could swear you’d always just been two pieces of the same stone, split in half and always able to fit back together.
Steve would tell Bucky that wasn’t how people worked. That everyone was their own person, and the idea of being incomplete wasn’t going to help his recovery from Hydra. Bucky would tell Steve that he didn’t get it. That he knew he didn’t deserve to drag you down with his titanium coated baggage, but that didn’t mean he could stop the twisted, selfish desire to. Bucky was a man on his own. An island or a continent or a mountain, or whatever the hell else his therapist told him to visualize as a stupid self-actualization exercise.
But the continents had been connected, all those millions of years ago. They’d been one piece, cut in half by time and nature. Asia wasn’t any less of a continent because it wasn’t connected to America’s ass anymore.
But if Bucky was Asia, he really wanted to be connected to your ass.
He’d closed his eyes, in that tight hallway. His breath had fanned over your neck and his hands had curled into fists, resting themselves right at the top of your waist. You’d shivered. He’d been able to hear your heart stumble, you breath hitch, a tiny, sweet little sound whine in the back of your throat.
He’d dropped his face against your neck, and you’d leaned back, exposing your neck to his thin-pressed lips. Bucky had kissed over your soft skin, the curve of your neck, the sweaty column of your throat, then line of your jaw, open-mouthed and hungry. His tongue had flicked against a pulse point, and you’d whimpered. His arms had wrapped fully around your body, one hand splaying on your upper stomach so his thumb could graze your breast, the other rubbing along your abdomen.
He’d teased your waistband. Sucked a dark, possessive mark on your throat and slipped his fingers into your pants. You’d spasmed against him, and he’d hummed, pressing his thumb against a thick, wet spot on your panties. Bucky had groaned and pulled them to the side, dipping his fingers into your heat, and he’d known it would feel this good. Soft and tight, a better smell than the beach, rich and earthy and perfect. Just like you.
You’d reached back, running your fingers through his hair and gasping his name. Bucky had groaned against your skin and pushed his finger into your tight entrance. You’d squeezed around him, and his thumb had found your clit, rubbing tight circles to ease you open.
“Shhh, babydoll,” he’d rasped. “Just relax. Lemme in and relax.”
You’d cooed, but given in. Bucky had covered your open mouth with a hand and kissed your neck, scissoring and pumping his fingers, and-
“Hey. Bucky.”
Sam snapped his fingers in Bucky’s face, and Bucky blinked. The fantasy drained from his head with all the blood in his face. He clenched his jaw, glowering at Wilson’s smug, amused expression, and raised his brows. Sam grinned, something gleaming in his eyes that Bucky didn’t like. It never spelled anything good, when Sam looked at him. Especially not now. When the mission had gone so horrible wrong.
“You looked a little lost in thought there, Buck,” Sam drawled, and—across the Quinjet—Steve glanced up with a curious expression.
“He’s probably just thinking about getting the detox,” Steve offered, and Bucky half-appreciated it, but the punk should know better than to even engage with Sam.
They all knew that wasn’t what he was thinking about. Sam and Steve both knew about his… sins. They’d gotten him drunk once—a feat within itself, but Steve had a supply of Thor’s super-mead stuff, and they’d both noticed that Bucky was acting weird—and he’d told them the awful, shameful truth.
So everyone in the jet knew exactly what Bucky was thinking about, almost every second of every day. So often he had to be finding new, split seconds between time, just to think about you a little more.
Everyone knew.
Everyone but you.
You sat on the far side of the jet, watching Bucky with that quiet concern that made every single inch of his body ache. His heart pounded because it wasn’t close enough to yours, his hands got sore because they weren’t pressed to yours, and his feet felt like they were made of bricks, unable to walk across the carrier to your side. But his stomach churned and twisted, reminding him why he couldn’t have you. You weren’t his. You might think you wanted to be, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could offer you that some other, safer, healthier guy couldn’t.
And he hated that guy. That faceless phantom that haunted him, that stole you away, that Bucky was going to have to pretend to like. He dreamt about wiping that invisible smirk off the man’s face, then socked himself in the gut for having the gall to be so possessive over the very thing he was trying to let go.
Bucky’s life was a cage, and he’d never be able to escape it. He owed an eternal debt to the Avengers, the government, the Starks. He was never gonna get the normal life, and he just had to wait for you to see that, and stop looking at him like he might be worth it anyway.
He caught your eyes, and you looked away, flushing furiously. Bucky could goddamn smell the pulse of your cunt, getting wet just from being under his gaze. Steve coughed loudly, and Bucky would laugh if he could find the humor, but there wasn’t much of it.
Not here.
Because the mission had gone horribly.
“What’re you thinkin’ about, Buck?” Sam asked, because he was the most annoying person Bucky had ever met.
His eyes were sparkling. Bucky glowered at the little shit, trying to pretend he couldn’t feel your gentle, curious gaze across the carrier. He clenched his jaw, locking it shut, not even daring to tell Sam to stuff it. An uneasy prickle settled over his skin, reminding him that opening his mouth could be the end of the damn world.
What was he thinking about.
You. Always just you. How you’d feel in his arms. How you’d call his name and look at him like he was worth something, when everyone else seemed to understand that he really damn wasn’t. Normally, Bucky would be able to whack Sam and hiss a warning. But he couldn’t.
He literally, simply, couldn’t.
“Could’ve been worse, Buck,” Steve had said when they got on the jet, and Bucky had given him a look so flat Steve winced.
Real damn easy for Steve to say.
Because Steve hadn’t been sprayed in the face with a truth serum. Steve wasn’t locked in a plane with the love of his life, unable to speak out of fear he’d bark out his devotion for the whole sky to hear. Steve wasn’t trapped in his head with visions of just crossing the damn carrier, caging you between his arms, and kissing your pretty, slack face until you begged him to fuck you, right there on the floor.
That was a curse for Bucky, and Bucky alone.
Bucky towers over you, his massive chest consuming the light in the room. It gives him the impression of an angel, fallen from Heaven just to stand the edge of your mattress.
And if he’s something holy, it’s only right to sink to your knees.
“You want it, baby?” He murmurs, tracing the curve of your face, and you nod. You’re almost drooling. He pulls out his belt slowly, and you press your thighs together, shifting restlessly on the bed.
Bucky’s free hand fists in your hair, and you smile up at him, easy and hopeful. His tongue flicks over his lips. He pulls out his cock—thick and uncut and angry, proud in his fist and swollen red—and strokes it slowly, watching you with a quiet, hungry affection.
“Take it,” he orders, low and smooth. “’S all yours, baby. Just gotta take it.”
You nod nervously, rolling down to your stomach. Your feet kick behind you like a schoolgirl and Bucky’s smirks, petting your head and pressing his hips forward. You take his thick cock in your hand and stroke slowly, watching him twitch and flex under your light touch.
Bucky groans your name, and it rolls through the room. You get confident, and press a kiss to his throbbing head. He grunts, hips jerking forward, and you pump the base of his cock with a firm but gentle grip.
The sounds he makes are sinful. You take him fully in your mouth, and he’s thick and heady, all salt and a thick, perfect weight in your mouth. He tugs on your hair when you start to suck, bobbing your head up and down. You take his balls with your free hand and massage them, getting drunk on the way he hits the back of your throat, the way he calls your name, the pressure building between your legs as you choke on his massive cock.
You’re humping the sheets, bunched and sticky between your thighs. You’d start writhing, if you weren’t so focused on Bucky’s dick. He moans at the sight of you, desperate for any possible friction, and starts to fuck your mouth like you’re just a toy. You’re so wet you can feel it dripping down your thighs, so wet you think you’re going to leave a stain on the mattress, and he fits in your mouth so well-
Your orgasm crashes through you, your cry muffled on the dildo you’d been fucking into your mouth. Your pussy flutters and gushes on your fingers, your hips twitching and eyes rolling back in your head. The thought of Bucky in your mouth rises like hot air, and carries you a little back over the edge. You moan, letting your eyes flutter shut, and drift down with slow, uneven breaths.
The guilt is immediate. Hot and shameful in your stomach, mixed a little too close to your arousal to be normal. Bucky isn’t feeling well—he barely even spoke on the way back from the mission—and you’re in your room, jerking off to the thought of him like some pervert. He might be in pain. He might need something. Sam told you to go check that he was actually sleeping off the drug he got hit with, and you agreed to.
An hour ago.
You were supposed to check on him an hour ago, but instead, you fell into the sheets and touched yourself, because that’s all you really seem to be good at.
You’d had a similar fantasy on the mission itself, when Bucky had been stuck behind you. A vivid dream where you’d gotten brave and spun around. You’d kissed Bucky and he’d kissed you back. He’d pushed you to your knees and pressed his cock between your lips, coaxing them opening with promises that you’d be his good girl, if you just sucked his cock. You had, you’d taken him until you were so aroused you couldn’t think straight, and Bucky had to let you hump his boot to stop you from crying around his warm, heavy dick-
You’re doing it again. You’re fucking doing it again.
You splash cold water on your face and clean yourself up. This can’t be how you spend your whole night, when you’re supposed to be checking on Bucky. It takes a little too long, though, to get yourself out into the hall and walking to his room. You just keep getting caught in fantasies about him in the bathroom, coming up behind you while you put on your shoes, grabbing your face between his hands and pinning you to the door-
A sharp, mental slap over your cheek gets you out of it. You shake yourself and glare down the dark hall, trying to steel the pound of your hopeless, burning heart. This isn’t about you. It’s about Bucky, and the truth spray, and making sure he’s okay. You march down the hall like a soldier, too lost in your determination to remember to knock. You push on the door and slip forward, trying to be quiet in case he actually is sleeping, and almost fall to your knees.
Bucky is not sleeping. You can’t remember how to move.
It’s such a lewd, beautiful thing before you, you almost think you’re fantasizing again. Bucky lying flat on his bed, one hand flat on his bare chest, the other beating into his cock. It’s just like you imagined, right down to the veins and thick, perfect girth. You’re salivating like a dog, thinking about it being shoved between your lips, guided into your hand, driven so slowly into your pussy your eyes roll back and you can’t breathe around the stretch. Bucky would press down on your stomach and make you feel it a little more, it would twitch inside of you just like it’s jerking in his hand-
Bucky moans, and you bite back a whimper. You should go. He wouldn’t want you to see this, it’s invasive and wrong and inappropriate and so fucking hot-
He moans again, thicker and deeper. A strangled sound that almost sounds like your name. Your heart stutters, and Bucky’s hips slam up to meet his fist.
This time, the cry is definitely your name, and you can’t hold it back.
You whimper, and Bucky’s eyes shoot open.
For a second, you just stare at each other. Your face burns, and you cling to the door, an unbearable ache pooling in your core. Bucky gapes, his hand still moving, faster and faster. A low, rumbling groan escapes his mouth. You glance at his cock, and your knees almost buckle. Bucky rasps your name, still pumping his cock, and you look back with panicked, desperate eyes.
Bucky chokes out your name, and his cock jumps, releasing seeming to slam through his body. Thick, unending ropes of cum spurt over his fist and thighs. He strokes himself through it, the room filling with that sticky, perfect smell, and you’re not sure you’re breathing.
He won’t stop looking at you. He won’t stop moaning your name and cumming all over the bed, and you’d think this was a dream if you didn’t feel like you had a fever.
It stops after what feels like an hour, and Bucky tosses his head back with a grunt. He rubs a hand over his face, the column of his throat working, and you slowly close the door behind you, barely keeping yourself upright. Your tongue darts over your lips. You breathe through your nose, head spinning as you take him in. Powerful, tanned body, painting white and slick with cum and sweat, right in front of you, close enough you can almost taste it.
Bucky groans, and you flush under his gaze, boring into your lust blown features. When you meet his gaze, it’s dark. His face is red, and his chest muscles flex with ragged breaths, neither of you daring to move an inch.
His cock starts to harden again. You take in a sharp breath, and his hand flexes on his thigh.
“Stop lookin’ at me like that,” he croaks, and you swallow.
You can’t. He’s not telling you to go, he’s not even trying to hide himself, and he was moaning your name-
“Doll, please-“
“Do you want me?”
Bucky’s whole body seizes up. He’s propped up on an elbow now, but he closes his eyes tight, his nostrils flaring and his jaw working tight enough to look painful.
He can’t lie. You can almost see the truth pushing itself up from his chest, a geyser that’s going to explode and take you both with it, because Bucky can’t lie.
“Don’t ask me that,” he rasps, and it’s almost a plea. “Don’t make me tell you no, honey-“
“So don’t tell me no,” you breathe. “Just- Tell me yes, Bucky, please.”
He shakes his head, watching you under lidded eyes. “It- It’s not that simple, okay-“
“Do you want me,” you say it firmer this time, even as you cling to the door. “Because I want you, Bucky, I- I want you so bad-“
“No- No.” Bucky gives you a stern look, and it makes your heart falter. “You don’t know what you want-“
“Yes, I do-“
“You think you do-“
“And you get to tell me I’m wrong?”
Your tone is harsh. Bucky flinches, avoiding your gaze, and your face burns. He can tell you no and you’ll leave, but he won’t. The heat makes you see, so painfully clear. Bucky isn’t going to tell you he doesn’t want you. But you’re not moving, until he tells you exactly where he wants you to go.
“It isn’t about me,” Bucky says your name, exhaustion lining his tone. “You deserve better. Better than this,” he waves a hand at his body, and you’d laugh if he didn’t sound like he was in pain. “Better than me- Just, fuckin’ better.”
You shake your head, your voice small. “You’re wrong. You- You’re so fucking wrong, Bucky.”
He laughs, dry and curt. “Oh, sweetheart, I can’t lie-“
“But you can be wrong,” you counter sharply, and he falls silent. “And I can be right. Do you-“ You take a slow breath, forcing yourself to hold his hooded gaze, the shine in his eyes sending a fresh pool of heat between your thighs. “Do you think I’m right?”
Bucky’s throat bobs. His lips twitch, his tongue darting out and the corner of his mouth pressing into a pained frown. You can see him fighting it. Fighting everything you’re trying to give him, like it’s a gift he can just return, instead of a pure given. You’re not offering him something you had to work to find. Your need for him can’t be flushed away or forgotten like an ugly ornament on the self. It’s either just going to overgrow you like an untended garden, or be Bucky’s to nourish.
And you pray he nourishes it. That if he lets himself have one good thing, it’s this. Shame is nothing, if you get to pour it at Bucky’s feet for him to drink.
So you pray. And someone out there must owe you a favor, because Bucky nods.
“Yeah,” he whispers, and you think the world falls from under your feet. “Yeah, I- I think you’re right.”
You stumble standing. Bucky reaches out his warmer hand, his voice dropping to something low. Something sacred.
“C’mere.”
It’s like floating. You move across the room without your feet feeling the ground, your fingers trembling as you reach out. Your fingers lace together, and you knees hit the mattress. Bucky tugs you over his naked body, forcing you to straddle his torso, your hands planting on either side of his head as he falls back. His cock drags on the inner edge of your thigh. He brushes hair out of your face with the most tender touch, before cupping the back of your neck. Your breath hitches. His mouth curves into a small, teasing smile.
“Too long,” he breathes, his metal hand dragging up your hips, massaging the curve of your ass. “Been waitin’ too fucking long.”
He drags his hand forward, letting his thumb trace the shape of your upper lip. You take in a sharp, nervous breath between your teeth, and his throat bobs.
“You want it?” He mutters, and you nod. “I’m not gonna be gentle, doll, you gotta be sure-“
“I’m sure,” you say without thought, and his fingers dig into the skin of your ass. “I- I’m so sure, Bucky, you have no idea-“
You cut yourself off with a squeak, as Bucky pushes his thumb into your mouth and shoves you fully down against his abs. You’d been hovering on your hands and knees, scared to add too much weight, scared that this was just another dream. Bucky forces you down to reality. To his hand gripping your jaw and the pad of his thumb, warm in your mouth. The heat and strength of him below, his cock bumping against your ass and his slick, hard stomach pressed against your core.
It’s embarrassing, how fast you let him take control. His thumb presses near the back of your throat, and you start to suck mindlessly, watching the awe and desire wash over his handsome features. You swirl your tongue the same way you’ve thought about sucking his cock, fisting the sheets under your hands and pressing over him until your breasts are almost presses against his collarbone. His throat bobs. His hand on your hip starts to guide you back and forth against his core, the pressure and friction making your eyes roll back in your head.
“You like that?” Bucky grunts, and you nod, rolling your hips faster and faster against his abs. “Can smell how wet you are, babydoll. I’ve barely fuckin’ touched you and you’re already soakin’ through your panties.”
You flush, but doesn’t stop moving. The condescending tone just rushes through you like a high and fuels the arousal coursing through your veins. You arch your back, trying to push your hips further down, to get just a little bit more.
“Look at you, sweet girl. Giving me a fucking show.” Bucky slaps your ass, and your eyes flutter. “Makin’ it so fucking easy for me. Humping me like a good little slut.”
You keen, collapsing over his chest as the heat takes over your body. Bucky’s thumb slips out from your lips, and he smears the spit over your cheek in a small, possessive gesture that makes your head spin.
“Think you can cum just like this?” He drawls in your ear, petting the top of your head. “Just fucking yourself on my body?”
“Ye- Yes-“ You breathe, turning your cheek so it’s pressed between his pecs. “Fuck, Buckyyyy- Fuuuck-“
Bucky grabs your chin mid moan, forcing your face up. His lips smash over yours in a hungry, bruising kiss, all spit and teeth and need. You cry out against his lips, kissing him back with every pent up, depraved little need you’ve ever had for him, every bit of adoration you’ve kept stuff in your chest for far, far too long. Your hips bounce against his abdomen, your shorts bunching up under his metal hand. Cold fingers graze near your pussy. You gasp against Bucky’s mouth, and he presses his tongue down your throat with a deep, hearty moan.
There’s a loud rip, and your shorts are torn off your body in one, clean movement. You mewl, pushing further back against Bucky’s hand, and his dick starts to slide between your ass cheeks, still wet from the drip of your last orgasm. Bucky’s hand slides back around to your neck, holding it hard enough to leave a print, and you moan into his mouth.
Two metal fingers dip into the heat of your pussy, and the temperature contrast makes your whole body shudder. You shove on Bucky’s shoulders, unsure what to do with your own body, and he grunts, tightening his hold around you.
You squeal, as he rolls you over.
“Bucky-“
“Shh,” he grunts, nipping at your lower lip, and you hum. It might not be good, how much control he already has over your body. Right now, you don’t really care.
It feels too good, the way his metal fingers rub the outside of your pussy lips, pressing them together while his palm grinds against your clit. You’re trapped between him and the mattress, your thin shirt the only barrier between your bodies, and Bucky seems determined to remove it. His lips wander down your neck and over your collar, sucking tiny lovebites and bruises over your skin. You wrap around his head, tugging at his hair, and he lets out a low, desperate groan against your skin.
His mouth moves lower. He rips off your shirt with the same, fluid motion, and your back arches up to meet his lips. Bucky mouths and kisses every inch of your breasts, swirling his tongue around a nipple while his palm rolls around your clit. Your breathing comes short and desperate, a tension building in your lower stomach, hot and humid like a summer storm. Bucky slips one finger between your swollen pussy lips and groans around your nipple, sending a little jolt of electricity straight to your cunt.
“All ready3 for me,” he groans, spreading your arousal around your sensitive inner thighs. “I’m gonna slide right in there, baby, shit-“
He drops his brow against your chest, watching his hand work against your cunt. You shudder, combing your fingers through his hair, trying not to lose yourself so fast.
“Always,” you manage to say. “Always for you, Bucky.”
He glances up, the lust in his eyes giving way to something darker. It’s like watching the moon shift. Something that’s always been there, shrouded and hidden from view, finally letting itself turn to the light.
“Yeah,” he murmurs, reverence lining his every word. “I know.”
You blink at him, eyes watering with desire. You’ve never been this close from so little, but it’s Bucky. And you can’t be expected to be anything more than putty in his arms.
“You need to cum?” He asks, mockingly sweet, and you babble out an agreement. “Oh, I know it’s hard, baby, but you gotta use your words-“
“Please,” you gasp, pulling on the collar of his shirt. “Please, Bucky, need- Need to cum so bad.”
Bucky smiles, and presses the lightest kiss to the space between your eyes. “Then cum.”
It’s quick. A snap at the base of your spine and a broken scream that falls from your lips. Your toes curl and your vision goes white, your pussy clenching around nothing and your body bucking off the bed. Bucky pushes down hard on your clit, forcing your hips back down to the bed. He silences your cries with kisses, squeezing your jaw with is free hand and dragging his lips over your drooling mouth, your flushed cheeks, your fluttering eyes.
His rests his lips against your ear and gives your raw cunt one, tight slap. You squeal in surprise, the feeling almost overwhelming in your sensitive body, and Bucky chuckles.
“Oh, now it’s too much?” He spanks your pussy again, and you let out a loud, pathetic whine. “You were all pretty and beggin’ for me a second ago, doll. Where’d that needy little slut go?”
Tears burn at your eyes, that shame mixing with arousal and making you all the more sensitive. Bucky spanks your pussy again, then rubs over the hurt. You grind up into the touch and he smirks, spanking you once more. You mewl, rolling around in his arms, unsure if you’re trying to chase him or get away.
“So fuckin’ reactive,” he rasps, almost in awe. “Look at you, better than a damn dream.”
You coo, twisting your face to press against his bicep. He noses at your cheek, lips brushing over your tears and parted lips.
“Been waitin’ so long, haven’t you,” he murmurs. “Waiting for me to stuff up this sweet little cunt, waitin’ to be fucked stupid like the sweet little whore you are.”
You’re not trying to squirm anymore. You’re pressing your hips down, trying to hump his hand again, and Bucky laughs. He pushes your thighs apart with ease, exposing your oversensitive pussy to the cold air. Your eyes shoot open, and immediately trap on Bucky’s. An involuntary moan pulls itself from your chest, as his thumb circles around your clit.
“Think you deserve some dick, baby?” Bucky teases, flicking his thumb over the sensitive button. “After being so patient and good?”
You swallow, and shake your head. This is the kind of question that’s a trick. You’re going to be told to earn it, and you’re going to suck his cock until he’s had his fill, then maybe you’ll get another orgasm. In your fantasies, you’re usually limited to one overall, before you get too sensitive and the shame hits.
But Bucky smiles at you like you’re the sweetest thing in the world, and bumps your noses together, gliding his metal thumb over your fluttering entrance.
“Wrong answer, babydoll,” he murmurs, kissing you between soft words. “You deserve the damn world.”
Bucky’s mouth slots over yours, and you lose yourself in the slow, easy kiss. He’s so gentle you forget about the pleasurable sting in your cunt, letting him overtake your senses, your thoughts, the very beat of your heart. He kisses you like you’re priceless, and you try to give him every moan and touch back. You dig your nails into his back and nip on his upper lip, and he grunts, pressing you further into the mattress. His thumb keeps circling around your cunt until it’s pounding and needy, but you only whimper into the kisses, worried to ask for more than he’s willing to give.
You should’ve known better.
Bucky’s nothing, if not generous.
His hand leaves your cunt, but you don’t get a second to protest before his cock is sliding between your folds, slicking him up to push inside of you. Your head falls back with a sharp gasp, and Bucky kisses over every inch of your skin he can seem to reach. The head of him presses against your clit before dragging away, leaving you throbbing and staring at the ceiling with unfocused eyes.
Bucky notches himself at your entrance, and lets out a slow, sharp breath between his teeth. You’re clenching around him, unable to help it. He’s massive, and you’re open from the two orgasms, but you’ve also never been this wound up. You think Bucky could just blow on your pussy and make you cum again. Being impaled on that massive cock might make you pass out.
“Take it easy,” he warns, and you whimper.
“C- Can’t-“
“Yeah, you can.” Bucky pushes in, barely the tip, and your breath is knocked from your chest.
“Bucky-“
“I know,” he kisses away your cries, splaying his hand on your tummy, letting his thumb drag back around your overworked clit. “I know it’s big, baby. Feels like too much, doesn’t it. Pretty little cunt, not used to takin’ it like this.”
You nod, still trying to chase his lips. “So- So big,” you babble, and Bucky grunts, pushing a little further in.
“Biggest you’ve ever had?” He growls out the question, his cock bumping against every sensitive, wired spot inside of you.
“Ye- Yes,” you gasp out, and Bucky’s hips jerk further forward. “Oh my god, Bucky- Yes-“
Bucky moans, bottoming out deeper than you knew you could take. He presses his lips against your brow, his chest heaving and his hand on your stomach pushing down. The movement forces you to feel every ridge and bump of his cock, every twitch and drag with the rise and fall of his chest. It’s almost impossible to handle. You’re dripping and soaking his cock, getting more and more sensitive with every passing moment. The pain has long ebbed into mindless, easy pleasure. Bucky’s hand shifts, and pins your g-spot against his massive dick, and the tears return to your eyes.
You know Bucky’s trying to collect himself, but he’s taking so long. You scratch his back with trembling fingers, pinned on his cock with nowhere to go, trapped beneath his massive body with nothing to do but take it.
“Bucky,” you manage to breathe. “Please- Please move.”
Bucky grunts, his lips attaching to a pulse point on his neck. He starts to suckle, grinding shallow thrusts into your cunt, and you moan loud enough to echo through the room. You didn’t know something so small could work you up so fast. The short movements work you more and more open, all while bullying into your g-spot, over and over again. Bucky’s tongue flicks against your skin and you cry out, turning your face to try and hide it in the pillows.
That pushes something in Bucky. He grabs your jaw again and turns your face, dragging you into a deep, rough kiss. You keen, your scratches becoming longer, like you’re trying to claw your way into his body. Close isn’t close enough. It can’t be. Bucky starts to drag further out, pushing back in with a harsh snap of his hips, and you throw your head back with a loud, confident moan.
“That’s it,” Bucky grunts, setting an unforgiving, bed-creaking pace. “That’s a good fuckin’ girl, taking my cock so damn well.”
You roll your hips, trying to meet his thrusts. Bucky pushes his hand down further, forcing you to stay still, and your eyes roll back in your head with the force of each thrust. Bucky speaks against your lips, unable to help himself, but also unable to look away.
“You feel that, baby?” He angles up, letting his cock drag so slowly against your g-spot before delivering another, brutal thrust that makes you scream. “Feels so good, doesn’t it? Getting fucked like the perfect little doll I know wanna be, lettin’ me give this greedy little pussy exactly what it needs.”
You make a sound that’s supposed to be Bucky’s name, and he grunts, picking up the speed until your eyes begin to cross.
“Try again,” he snaps. “Use that pretty mouth, sweetheart, tell me what I wanna hear.”
You just moan, unable to get your mouth to agree with your head. Bucky buries himself deep and presses his whole weight down, not even giving you space to move. You sob, pressing your face into his shoulder, and he clicks his tongue.
“C’mon, baby,” he coos, teasing and cruel in the best possible way. “You can’t already be that dumb.”
You swallow, the pressure of Bucky’s cock inside of you driving every thought from your head. You don’t know how you cobble the words together, let alone find your voice. Not when he starts to grind again, angling his thighs so his balls press against your ass, his thumb teasing back over your clit.
“Please, Bucky,” you choke out, grabbing his hand near your head, giving him your most desperate, doe-eyed gaze. “Please.”
Bucky’s throat bobs. Every time you’ve hit the bottom of the shame well, you find more. But Bucky only looks at you like you’re beautiful. His cock twitches inside of you, and his controlled thrusts become jagged and sharp.
“Shit,” he grunts. “Shit- You’re fuckin’- Christ-“
You’re not sure what’s happening until he moves. Bucky grabs your knees and pushes them up to your chest, folding you neatly in half. The angle pushes his cock deeper, and he drags it out for a second, smearing it on your juices and tapping it against your clit. Your pussy clenches around nothing, cold and empty without him. He smirks and eases himself back in, slow and careful. You watch with an open mouth, as your pussy swallows up his cock. It’s the most obscene, beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. Wet and messy, a ring of arousal at the base of his shaft, his muscles flexing with control that you can’t even think not to submit to.
“Eyes,” Bucky orders and you immediately obey.
That’s a mistake.
His gaze is intense. Unrelenting and adoring and mocking all at once. He grabs your jaw with a lighter hand than before, tapping your cheek gently. You open up quickly, and take his thumb back in your mouth like before. It helps, with the overwhelming pressure of his cock inside you. Bucky smirks, rolling his hips once, and you moan around his finger, sucking harder than before.
“There she is,” he coos, starting to slowly, torturously fuck into your cunt. “All cock drunk and stupid, you’d let me keep you like this forever, wouldn’t you. Just a sweet little fuck toy?”
You hum, your toes curling, the pleasure washing through you white and hot. Bucky groans, mesmerized by the sight of you taking his cock and finger at the same time, his thrusts becoming deeper, rougher, more desperate.
“So fuckin’ perfect,” he grunts, the sound of your skin slapping over taking the room. “My perfect girl, most beautiful thing I’ve ever fuckin’ see, y’know that? God, you’re- Fuuuck-“
Bucky moans your name, his condescending praise falling off into broken grunts and groans. You smile at him, dazed and lost in the stretch of his cock, lighting up your every nerve, making your head spin until you’re just a drooling, giggly mess. Bucky stares at you with a hanging mouth, fucking into you like an animal, and a strange, wet pressure begins to pool in your tummy. You grab his wrist, your lips moving but no sound able to come out, and Bucky understands.
He spits on your clit, spanks it once, and doubles over with a final, brutal thrust. You cum with a silent scream of his name, flying off the bed and writhing in the sheets. It’s a pleasure so blinding you can’t see anything but stars, can’t feel anything but that odd heat gushing out of your pussy, over Bucky’s cock and down your thighs and onto the bed.
Bucky roars your name and starts to fuck you in brutal, rough strokes, like he didn’t expect himself to fall over the edge with you. You’re still squirting and trembling, when he starts to full up your cunt with thick, white ropes of cum. There’s so much of it that your eyes cross. You’ve never been this full and sensitive at the same time, you don’t even know what to do with yourself. A small aftershock of an orgasm pushes through your trembling body.
You think you pass out, the heat too much, your body overstimulated and worn out from being wrung with every bit of pleasure. You come to with Bucky between your thighs, kissing around your pussy, licking the mix of your releases with his warm, thick tongue. You moan softly, threading your fingers through his hair, and he smiles at you with shining eyes, pressing a gentle kiss to your swollen clit.
Your hips jump, a whine escaping your throat, and Bucky chuckles.
“Sorry,” he murmurs, kissing the spot right over your pussy. “Couldn’t help it, baby.”
Baby.
The moment is over, and he’s still calling you baby.
Bucky cleans you up with gentle, careful hands. You watch him, propped up on your elbows and still a little dazed. He smiles and kisses your hip, then your navel. He’s massaging your thigh like this matters.
You can’t begin to say, how much you want this to matter.
Bucky brings you to the bathroom. He changes the sheets while you pee, then offers you a clean, warm shirt to replace the one he destroyed. It smells like him. Everything smells like him, and you never want it to fade.
He sits on the edge of his mattress, while you get changed. You slip out of the bathroom, hugging yourself tight and watching him stare at his hands. He drags his gaze up slowly, that adoration from before still shining in his eyes. You swallow. He licks his lips, flexing his hands on his thighs.
“I- Uh- I’m not good at talking about things,” he mutters, watching you carefully. “I’m workin’ on it, I promise. I’m even getting better. But- Doll, you- Me- That.” He nods back to the bed, his voice getting strained. You’re starting to worry about him. “Can’t lie, right?” He laughs weakly. “And that- It wasn’t- I mean- It was everything, so-“
You put him out of his misery.
You cross the room in two strides and take his face between your hands, kissing him long and slow. He grabs your hips and kisses you back immediately, craning his neck to try and deepen the angle. It’s loving, everything you never got to offer him in the heat of the moment. Every last drop of love you hadn’t gotten to show him, offered up like morning dew to the rising sun.
Bucky lets out a slow, ragged exhale, his eyes still shut when you pull away.
“You wanna take me out on a date?” You prompt softly, and Bucky immediately nods.
“Yes- Yes, please.”
You smile, and Bucky smiles back. He leans up for another kiss, and you let yourself melt over him. His fingers dig into your hips, and you know you’ll be covered in bruises come morning. Good. It’s proof that this really happened. That it wasn’t just all in your head.
Bucky’s really yours, and you’re never going to have a dream you can’t reach again.
✦End note: i hope you enjoyed the sequal !! ✦
✦If you like this story, please reblog, share, or leave a comment! <3✦
. ୨୧ ݁ ꒰ 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐌𝐓𝐇 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑 ⊹ . bucky x fem!reader. minors are prohibited from interacting.
𝔀arnings 18+ : cockwarming, no use of y/n, edging, size kink, dom!bucky, intimate sex, praise kink, established relationship, dirty talk
𝓪uthor’s 𝓷ote : ohhhh cockwarming with buckyyy 🤤🤤🤤🤤 we all need that big d....
The safehouse was quiet except for the low hum of the old radiator and the occasional creak of the floorboards under their weight. Rain pattered against the window, casting shifting shadows across the dim room. Bucky Barnes had been watching you for the past hour, ever since you’d curled up against him on the threadbare couch under the pretense of watching some old black-and-white movie neither of you cared about.
You’d started it innocently enough: shifting closer, letting your thigh press against his. Then your hand had wandered, tracing idle patterns over his chest through his worn Henley. Bucky’s jaw had tightened, his metal fingers flexing where they rested on your hip, but he hadn’t stopped you. Not yet.
“You’re playin’ with fire, doll,” he finally murmured, voice low and rough, that Brooklyn accent thicker when he was trying to stay in control. His blue eyes flicked down to where your fingers were now brushing dangerously close to the growing bulge in his jeans. “Been a long mission. You keep teasing like that and I won’t be gentle.”
You smiled up at him, biting your lip. “Who said I want gentle, Buck?”
That was all it took. In one smooth motion, he pulled you into his lap so you were straddling him, your knees sinking into the cushions on either side of his hips. His hands, warm flesh on one side, cool vibranium on the other, settled on your waist, holding you firmly in place. He didn’t kiss you right away. Instead, he let the tension build, staring at you with that intense, almost predatory focus he got when the soldier side of him stirred.
His thumbs slipped under the hem of your shirt, slowly pushing the fabric up. Inch by inch, he exposed your skin to the cool air, tracing the line of your ribs, the curve of your waist. When he finally tugged the shirt over your head and tossed it aside, he leaned in, lips brushing just below your ear.
“Been thinking about this,” he confessed quietly. “About how warm and tight you get for me. How you squeeze around my cock like you never want me to leave.”
You shivered at his words, grinding down against the hard ridge of him through his jeans. Bucky hissed, his grip tightening. He let you rock against him for a few long moments, building that delicious friction, but every time you tried to speed up he held you still.
“Easy,” he murmured, voice dropping into a low rumble. “You’ve been teasing me for an hour, doll. Now it’s my turn. We’re doing this my way… slow.”
He finally kissed you, slow at first, almost lazy, his mouth claiming yours with patient thoroughness. His tongue teased yours, tasting, exploring, while one hand slid up your back to unhook your bra. The cool metal of his left hand made your nipples harden instantly as he cupped your breasts, rolling them gently, then pinching just hard enough to draw a whimper from you.
Bucky smiled against your lips. “So sensitive tonight.” He dipped his head, trailing open-mouthed kisses down your neck, across your collarbone, until his mouth closed over one nipple. He sucked slowly, tongue swirling, while his other hand worked your other breast. The contrast between hot mouth and cool metal fingers had you arching into him, grinding harder against his lap.
Your hands fumbled with his shirt, desperate to feel skin. He let you pull it off, revealing the scarred, muscled torso you loved, metal plates glinting in the low light. You ran your palms over his chest, feeling the steady thump of his heart, then lower, tracing the sharp V of his hips until you reached the button of his jeans.
He caught your wrist. “Slow,” he reminded you, voice husky. “We’ve got time.”
But he did let you open his jeans. You pushed them down just enough to free him. Bucky’s cock sprang out, thick, heavy, flushed dark at the tip and already glistening with pre-cum. It was big, intimidatingly so, the veined length curving slightly upward. You wrapped your hand around as much of it as you could, stroking slowly from base to head, feeling him throb in your palm.
“Fuck, that’s good,” he groaned, head falling back against the couch. His hips twitched once, but he stayed in control, letting you explore him. You pumped him leisurely, thumb swiping over the sensitive head, spreading the slickness. Bucky’s breathing grew ragged, his metal hand sliding into your hair to guide your mouth to his for another deep kiss.
Minutes stretched like that, kissing, touching, teasing. He worked your shorts and panties down your thighs, fingers dipping between your legs to find you soaked. Two thick fingers circled your clit with maddening slowness, then dipped inside, curling just right while his thumb kept up the pressure. He brought you right to the edge, then eased off, again and again, until you were trembling and begging against his mouth.
“Please, Bucky… need you.”
He pulled his fingers free and brought them to his lips, tasting you with a low hum. Then he lifted you slightly, positioning the thick head of his cock at your entrance. He rubbed it up and down your slit, coating himself in your wetness, teasing your clit with every pass.
“Look at me,” he ordered softly.
Your eyes locked with his as he finally started to push in.
The stretch was exquisite, slow, deliberate, every inch forcing you open wider around his girth. Bucky’s jaw clenched, a muscle ticking as he fought the urge to thrust up hard. “So fucking tight… that’s it, take it all.”
You sank down onto him gradually, whimpering at the fullness. When he was finally buried to the hilt, your ass flush against his thighs, he wrapped both arms around you and pulled you tight to his chest. No thrusting. Just deep, complete connection.
“There we go,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to your temple. “Just keep me warm, doll. Feel how deep I am? How full you are?”
His cock twitched inside you, heavy and hot, the veins pulsing against your walls. You clenched around him involuntarily and he groaned, the sound vibrating through his chest. His hands stroked your back, your sides, your thighs, gentle soothing touches that contrasted with the filthy fullness between your legs.
Time slowed. The rain continued outside. Bucky stayed perfectly still except for the occasional lazy roll of his hips that pressed him impossibly deeper, nudging against that spot that made stars burst behind your eyes. He whispered praises and filthy promises against your skin:
“Such a good girl, keeping my big dick warm like this.”
“Could stay buried in this perfect pussy for hours.”
“Feel me throbbing? That’s all for you.”
Your body relaxed into his, every nerve alight with the constant, overwhelming sensation of being stretched and filled. Every small shift made you both gasp. His metal hand traced patterns on your lower back while his flesh hand tangled in your hair.
When you eventually started to squirm, desperate for more friction, Bucky held you firmly in place. “Uh-uh, doll. Don’t move.” He pressed a slow, open-mouthed kiss to your neck, then another, savoring the way you fluttered and clenched around his cock. “You wanted this slow… so that’s what you’re getting. I’m not moving until I decide you’re ready.”
Summary: A hug and kiss from Bucky can do wonders.
Word Count: Over 1k
Warnings: Established relationship, term of endearment (sweetheart), rough day, being tired, fluff, tenderness, protective vibes, Bucky's trauma referenced, Bucky Barnes (he's a warning, okay?).
A/N: I still don't have a lot of time to write, but I managed a little something. ❤️ Not beta read and written on my phone, so any and all mistakes are my own. Please follow @navybrat817-sideblog for new fics and notifications. Comments, reblogs, feedback are loved and appreciated!
Your life had been busy lately, but manageable. You wouldn’t say you were thriving, but you were surviving and that was enough for now. But today? It was a rough one. Nothing seemed to go your way. Not to mention, the weariness in your bones reminded you that you had to stop running on fumes.
You barely made it to the couch before you collapsed, groaning as you buried your face in the cushion. You only lifted your head to breathe and check your phone when it went off. A smile touched your lips when you sat that Bucky texted you.
No matter how rough the days were, your boyfriend was a bright spot.
“Barely heard from you today, sweetheart. You okay?”
Your heart sank when you scrolled through the chat. You usually sent him memes or gifs that you knew would make him laugh, along with sweet messages to let him know you were thinking of him. Today you hardly sent a thing with everything going on.
It was touching that he noticed something was off.
“Rough day. Sorry I worried you.”
You curled up with a yawn, the phone resting beside you.
“Just resting my eyes,” you mumbled.
You weren’t sure how much time had passed when the familiar rumble of a motorcycle engine cut through the quiet of your apartment, making you sit up slowly. Your heart fluttered, not needing to look out the window because you knew exactly who was there. One of your favorite people.
Bucky.
Your Bucky.
The sudden knock at the door sounded impatient as you stood up and stretched. You almost laughed when the knock continued, louder and more persistent. Maybe it was time to give him a key.
You barely got the door open before Bucky pushed his way inside, forcing you to step back as he kicked the door shut without taking his eyes off you. Your breath rushed out of your lungs when you looked him over. The sight of him in a leather jacket always did something to you.
But the crease between his brows pushed the excitement away.
“Bucky?” you asked.
A small sound left your mouth when he wrapped an arm around your waist and pulled you against him. His other hand came up to cradle the back of your head, his hold protective and tender. It felt like your feet weren’t on the ground.
“I’m here,” he answered, his voice rough and low. “I’ve got you.”
You felt his heart beat against you steadily, grounding you as your fingers curled in his jacket. The scent of leather and cologne filled your nostrils as you took a deep breath. Your eyes burned suddenly when he held you tighter, almost like he was giving you permission to fall apart if you wanted to. It wasn’t just a hug.
It was exactly what you needed without realizing it.
“I’ve got you,” he said again, his lips touching your temple.
You didn’t break down, but you did sniffle.
“Today sucked,” you said, proud of yourself for not pouting.
It sounded ridiculous. Bucky had lived through years of torture, brainwashing and more. You hadn’t experienced even a tenth of the pain he endured and you were whining about-
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said sincerely, rubbing your back soothingly. He never invalidated your feelings. “I’ll listen if you wanna talk about it, or I can punch something or someone if it makes you feel better.”
You let out a watery laugh. “No punching,” you said, pulling back far enough to look at him. “Did you really speed all the way here because I said I had a rough day? I know you sped.”
“I may have.” The small smile on his face made you smile. “You tell me something like that and you think I won’t drop everything to get to you?”
Your heart skipped a beat. No other boyfriend dropped whatever they were doing to get to you in the past. But Bucky always managed to find ways to put you first. The male species could learn a thing or two from him.
“You were probably busy,” you guessed.
“Doesn’t matter. Nothing’s more important than you.”
Your eyes burned again, but you blinked the tears away. “Thank you.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled. “You don’t have to thank me for showing up,” he said, grasping your chin carefully. “Can I do one more thing?”
His mouth found yours before you finished nodding.
It wasn’t a rushed or hungry kiss. It was something warm and impossibly gentle, like the grip on your chin, a kind of kiss that resonated in your core. He deepened it, like he needed a reminder that you were real and safe as he comforted you.
It felt like love.
His forehead rested against yours when he broke the kiss. “Did that help at all?” he asked, his breath ghosting your lips and thumb stroking your chin.
“More than you know,” you murmured, leaning into him.
“Good.” He pressed another soft kiss to the corner of your mouth. “Did you eat?”
Your silence answered that question.
He sighed, not waiting for permission as he walked you backward toward your couch. “I’m ordering your favorite,” he said, pulling you onto his lap once he took a seat. His jacket was still on. “And I’m gonna hold you until it gets here, feed you if you let me, and do whatever you want for the rest of the night.”
You settled into him, your body truly relaxing this time. “Even watch a bad romcom?” you asked, still in awe of how much he wanted to take care of you.
He rested his chin on your shoulder. “If that’s what helps.”
“Getting a hug and kiss from you did wonders,” you said honestly.
Knowing that someone saw you made a world of difference.
“Wonders, huh? Didn’t know I was that powerful,” he teased, taking out his phone to order.
You giggled and titled your head a bit. “You didn’t tell me about your day.”
“I got to see you,” he said, smiling gently. “So it’s a good day.”
And being in Bucky’s arms made your day much better.
I know a hug and kiss from Bucky would help me, okay? Love and thanks for reading! ❤️
Multi-character x gn!reader | Wade Wilson, Peter Parker, Bob Reynolds, Bucky Barnes
| aka: how they tell you they *need* you
| CW: 18+ mdni, nsfw
-Wade Wilson/ Deadpool
Subtlety has never been Wade’s strong suit, especially not when his cock is involved. When it comes to wanting you- needing you- he’ll be damned if he can’t get that message across.
“Seduction is my middle name, toots,” Wade tells you, and he’s always been one to put his money where his mouth is.
Saying it, showing it, texting it, mailing you a letter. He wonders if it’s romantic to attach heart balloons to a carrier pigeon… or if it would just float away…
You come home one day to find a trail of rose petals leading to the bedroom, the sound of jazz music playing just beyond the door. You find yourself blushing as you follow the teasing tune, the I Love You and Be Mine balloons stuck to the walls making it worse. It wasn’t even a special occasion, Wade was just crazy about you.
You walk through the bedroom door and try not to choke as your eyes gaze over a very naked and very hard Deadpool, lying seductively across the mattress on an even bigger pile of rose petals. Wade’s not even the craziest thing laying on your sheets- you make eye contact with a paddle, some vibrators, and who knows what else before you find him looking at you with a shit eating grin. He has the audacity to wink and throw some petals in the air.
“Wade…” you start, but he lets out a tsk tsk sound and beckons you forward with his finger.
“You know how I get when I miss you, pookiebear,” he growls… or at least, you think that’s what he says. It’s hard to make out the exact words behind the rose dangling from his mouth.
-Peter Parker/ Spiderman
Peter is an amazing boyfriend. He is kind, sensitive, thoughtful… romantic, even when he’s not trying to be. He loves you, craves you, just as much as he loves finding new ways to tell you so.
…At his core, Peter Parker is also a huge nerd.
Is there something wrong with my eyes? I can’t seem to get them off of you. // You must be gravity, because my body can’t seem to stay away from yours.
Pick up line, after pick up line. Almost always he’ll use one when he’s in the mood, like it’s physically impossible for him to initiate anything without cracking a joke. He means them too.
“What are you doing?” You ask him, and all he can do is blink down at you.
“Uhh.. trying to pick you up? … Is it working?”
You can’t even be too mad; they’re always sweeter than they are raunchy.
The dorkiness gets through to you in the end, it always does. The shy smile he offers you as he kisses your cheek, the way his eyes light up when you can no longer hold back a grin. He’ll pick you up and toss you over his shoulder, and you can’t help but laugh and squeal as he takes you to the bedroom.
He’ll continue saying the most ridiculous pick up lines all through the night, even as his hands and lips roam over your body. Only way to shut him up for good is to preoccupy his tongue with doing something else, and he’d never complain about that.
-Bob Reynolds/ The Sentry
He googles it, the first time.
‘How to set the mood, sexually’ he types, and begins his deep dive. The results only make him anxious, and more confused than before he started. What the hell was so sexy about jazz? Was this a cartoon? What kind of person would genuinely think jazz sets the mood?
The search eventually turns into questions like ‘How to be sexy’ and ‘what do people find sexy nowadays’; both of which only make him red in the face and slam the laptop shut in defeat. If anyone ever found out about this, he’d never hear the end of it.
It scares him shitless- the possibility of rejection and outright humiliation at being turned down by the one he loves- but he knows that being paralyzed by what ifs was a thing that cowards do, and Bob was no longer a coward. Never again, especially not with you. He wanted your company tonight. Your hands on his body, his tongue licking every crevice of your skin. He wanted to make love to you for hours, and Go dammit he was going to be the one to initiate this time.
“I want you.” He’ll say when he gets you alone, and he’s surprised by how steady his voice is. How strong he feels when your half-lidded eyes meet his, and your body subconsciously moves closer.
He feels goosebumps rise over your arms as he pulls you in for a deep and longing kiss, and makes a mental note of all the different ways your body responds to him. How cute you look when you wait for him to make the next move, how good it feels to take the lead for once.
-Bucky Barnes/ The Winter Soldier
Being with you as long as he has, Bucky learns one thing: there is a time for affection, and there is a time for sex.
You’ve both reached a flow state now, in which Bucky doesn’t need to tell you how he feels, especially in situations where actions speak so much louder than words. When he sees your bedroom eyes piercing into his, when he sees your breathing hitch and deepen in a way that mirrors his own. When he sees your eyes roam over his body hungrily, pausing for a moment to appreciate the growing bulge in his pants…
Why verbalize his attraction, when instead he can cross the room in 3 strides, pull you against his chest, and kiss you so hard your legs give out? When he can lift you up in his arms and press you against the wall as he fucks you senseless?
Make no mistake though, Bucky is a gentleman. Just because you have your steamy moments doesn’t mean he’s completely lost the skill of telling his lover how much he wants them.
“Come here.” He’ll murmur, his hand reaching out to you. He’ll kiss each knuckle before his lips slowly make their way to your wrist, up your arm, your shoulder, your neck. He’ll take his time, telling you in-between soft kisses that he wants you, and nothing else.
pairing: bucky barnes x avenger!fem!reader
genre: coworkers to lovers | angst | emotional cheating | violence | sad | unwanted control | blood mentioned | death
word count: 16k
summary: Y/N and Bucky are in love and Bucky is a totally different person. He's no longer the Winter Soldier, and for reader maybe he was never truly the WS. She loves him deeply and he loves her too... but heaven has problem too.
a/n: as i was writing, i realized that maybe this story needs an epilogue so once all the events in the story are done, there will be an epilogue like a year after.
2nd a/n: i want to specify that this part is intentionally focused on bucky's pov with "less" reader like the part five will be focused on reader's pov with "less" bucky. in this part everything your read in italic is a flashback, while in the next part you will find the part "explananing" in between the event so trust the process my dears.
Hope you all like this <3
part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6 | epilogue
Two years had dragged by, but inside the Avengers Compound, time felt permanently frozen in the cold gray light of that rainy night in Prague. To the world, and to the team, you were a name etched onto a quiet memorial plaque like a shadow haunting the empty halls, a ghost they could never bring back. The official file remained closed.
Killed in Action.Remains Unrecoverable.
No one was carrying the weight of that lie heavier than Bucky.
Two years was supposed to be enough time for the sharp edges of grief to dull into a manageable ache. For Bucky, it did the exact opposite. Without you, the ghost of the Winter Soldier hadn’t just returned, it had set up permanent residence in his eyes.
He didn’t move on. He didn’t even try. He was back with his life before meeting you, before loving you, before having someone caring for him.
His room on the top floor of the compound was virtually untouched, preserved like a shrine. The bed was rarely slept in. Most nights, Bucky sat in the dark by the floor-to-ceiling glass window, staring out over the rain-slicked grounds of New York. Usually a half-empty glass of untouched whiskey resting on the sill beside him. He kept your old tactical gloves on his bedside table, right next to a dog eared book you left on his night stand two years ago.
Sometimes, Steve would catch him tracing the worn leather of those gloves with his flesh hand, his jaw set in a hard, agonising line.
He completely pulled back from the world. He took on missions, just the brutal ones. The solo assignments that took him to the coldest and darkest corners of the globe. It happened many times, that your voice echoed loudest in his head.
He fought with a terrifying, reckless apathy, as if secretly begging for a bullet to bridge the gap between his world and wherever you were.
Steve tried.
Sam tried.
Tony tried.
Natasha spent hours sitting silently on his balcony, just keeping him company in the dark when the nightmares got too violent despise the hate she sometimes felt. But you had been his anchor, the one person who had pulled him out of the haze when the triggers took his mind. Losing you meant losing the tether that kept him human.
Wanda respected his grief standing far from him.
Down in the city, in a quiet obscure apartment in Brooklyn, Director Nick Fury stood by a rain-streaked window staring at a secure, unlisted satellite terminal.
For two years, satellite anomalies had been popping up across the globe. Some inexplicable atmospheric disruptions, localised solar radiation spikes, and kinetic sonic signatures that shattered seismographs from Cairo to Tokyo. A phantom force was moving across the world, completely off the grid. It was invisible to S.H.I.E.L.D., HYDRA and Apex.
Fury took a slow sip of his black coffee, his single eye reflecting the pulsing golden energy signature currently pinging on his encrypted screen.
“Still no positive ID, Director,” Hill said quietly from behind him, placing a tablet on his desk. “Whatever or whoever it is, they’re moving at sub-light speeds. They don’t leave a trail. They don’t use tech and they vanished off our radar over the North Atlantic ten minutes ago.”
Fury didn’t answer right away. He just stared at the golden thermal signature, that matched no known superhuman or cosmic entity on earth. He knew, deep in his gut. He had known since the day the bedrock caved in but until he had absolute proof, until he knew what you had become, he kept the secret locked in the dark right where it belonged.
His mind drifted back, just two weeks after the empty casket had been lowered into the mud at the cemetery.
Natasha and Wanda had cornered Fury in his secure basement office beneath the compound, shutting down the electronic locks from the inside. They were done waiting. They were done playing S.H.I.E.L.D. politics while Clara walked around wearing your tactical layout, sitting at your desk and trying to slip back again into Bucky’s life.
Natasha slammed both hands onto Fury’s desk, her face pale and her eyes blazing with a lethal, terrifying promise. “We know what she did, Nick,” Natasha had hissed, her voice vibrating with pure, venomous rage. “She poisoned Bucky. She left Y/N to die under five hundred tons of rock. I don’t care about your long game with Apex anymore. I am going to tear Clara apart with my bare hands today, and if you try to stop me, I’ll put a bullet through your shoulder.”
Beside her, Wanda hadn’t even bothered speaking. Crimson magic had surged violently around her hands, warping the metal doorframe and shattering the glass light fixtures above them, her breath hitching in ragged, furious sobs as her grief demanded blood.
Fury hadn’t flinched. He had just sat there, cold and unreadable, letting the red energy crackle an inch from his face before slowly reaching beneath his desk and pulling up a dark, classified terminal. “Stand down, Romanoff,” Fury had ordered, his voice dangerously quiet.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t execute her right now!” Natasha had snarled, leaning over the desk.
Fury turned the terminal screen toward them. On it was a crude, early scan from a deep-space seismic monitor stationed in Eastern Europe taken less than seventy-two hours after the vault in Prague collapsed.
“Because of this,” Fury said.
Natasha and Wanda had paused, their eyes flicking to the monitor. The screen showed a localised, impossible energy spike at the bottom of the collapsed vault. A sudden, blinding surge of solar radiation and kinetic force that had vaporised three hundred tons of solid bedrock from the inside out before rocketing straight up into the stratosphere at sub-light speed.
“What is that?” Natasha demanded, her jaw tightening. “Apex weapon testing? Again?”
“No,” Fury had replied softly, his voice carrying a rare, solemn weight. “Apex doesn’t have tech that can warp light or manipulate thermal mass like this,” he paused, looking at the floor. “S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t have it. HYDRA didn’t have it. It’s an unclassified, god-tier cosmic signature.”
Wanda’s breath caught in her throat. She took a trembling step closer to the screen, her glowing red eyes searching the pulsing golden wave frequency on the monitor. “You… you think…”
“I’m not saying it’s her,” Fury had cut in firmly, holding up a warning hand before hope could blind them. “I am saying that something survived Vault 04 and didn’t die under those rocks. It may be evolved… and if there is even a one percent chance that Y/N is up there… monitoring us waiting for her moment or becoming something entirely outside our control… we do not burn Clara yet. We let Clara play her part. We let Apex think they won. Because if we blow Clara’s cover now, Apex goes underground and whoever is up in that sky loses their target.”
The realisation had hit the two women like a physical blow.
Wanda’s magic had sputtered and dissolved instantly. She had dropped her face into her hands, her shoulders shaking violently as two weeks of choked-up, suffocating grief finally burst open. She sank into a chair, crying desperately not just out of rage, but out of the sheer, agonizing, cruel torture of hope. The thought that you might be alive, floating alone somewhere in the cold dark, unable to come home, was almost more heartbreaking than burying you.
Natasha had stood frozen by the desk, her hand resting over her mouth, her eyes welling with rare, heavy tears that she refused to let fall. She had looked at the golden energy signature, her chest heaving with silent sobs.
“She’s suffering, Nick,” Natasha had rasped, her voice breaking down the middle. “If it’s her… she’s watching Bucky break. She’s watching us weep. Why wouldn’t she come down?”
“Because she knows what she’s carrying now,” Fury had answered quietly. “And she’s protecting him.”
Back at the compound, the thunderstorm rolled in heavy over the city.
Bucky stood on his private balcony in the pouring rain, the cold water drenching his shirt, flattening his hair against his forehead just like it had in the pine forest outside Prague. The vibranium of his left arm gleamed under the flashes of lightning. He closed his eyes drawing in a long ragged breath, letting the freezing rain wash over him.
“Two years, doll,” Bucky whispered into the dark, his voice breaking under the weight of a heart that refused to heal. “Two damn years… and I’m still waiting for you to walk through that door.”
Miles away, high above the dark and heavy cloud cover where the atmosphere met the stars, a figure floated in absolute silence bathed in the brilliant golden glow of the sun, entirely hidden from the world below.
FLASHBACK
The downpour over the cemetery was relentless, flattening the black umbrellas of the gathered crowd and turning the pristine grass into slick, dark mud. It was an empty casket service. A cold, symbolic ritual for an agent whose bodies were officially deemed as unrecoverable. The entire team stood encircled around the black granite headstone bearing your name.
Steve stood at the head of the grave, his chest tight and his hands clasped tightly in front of him as he stared down at the polished wood of the ceremonial casket. Beside him, Natasha wore a sharp black coat, her face a rigid like an unreadable mask, though the tight clenching of her jaw betrayed the quiet rage eating her alive.
Wanda leaned heavily against Clint, her eyes red and swollen, her crimson magic dull and inactive beneath her wet gloves.
Bruce and Sam both kept their head down, looking at the ground.
Tony hid his pain behind a pair of sunglasses.
And then there was Clara.
She stood right at the front of the procession, dressed in a sharp S.H.I.E.L.D. dress uniform, her arm still secured in a tight black sling. She held a single white rose in her gloved hand. Her face was a masterclass in tragic dignified grief, dabbing delicately at the corner of her eyes with a handkerchief, leaning into Tony’s side as if she could barely hold her own weight under the tragedy.
“She died protecting the mission,” Clara murmured, her voice trembling just enough for the surrounding Avengers to hear, dripping with false sickening reverence. “She died protecting all of us. I… I only wish I could have pulled her out of that vault in time.”
“You did everything you could, Clara,” Steve said quietly, his voice hollow as he placed a heavy, comforting hand on her uninjured shoulder. “None of us got there in time.”
Clara lowered her head, hiding the subtle, triumphant twitch of her lips against her collar. With your file closed and your body presumed crushed beneath five hundred tons of concrete, Fury had officially reassigned Clara to your old tactical slot on the primary team. He had to. She stepped seamlessly into your shoes. She started using your desk, taking your place on the jet, walking the very corridors you used to walk. A venomous parasite wearing the skin of your legacy.
At the edge of the crowd, completely isolated from the rest of the team, Bucky.
He wore a dark suit, but he didn’t hold an umbrella. The freezing rain soaked through his coat, plastering his dark hair to his pale, bruised skin. He hadn’t spoken a single word since waking up in the medical bay days ago. His flesh hand was buried deep in his pocket, his knuckles white, while his vibranium arm hung lifelessly at his side.
His eyes weren’t on the empty casket. They were locked onto Clara.
Deep within his quite still fractured mind, beneath the layers of grief and the still lingering but unknown chemical haze of the Apex inhibitor, something stirred. He didn’t have the memory yet, the crimson aerosol had scorched the final minutes in Vault 04 from his brain, but his instincts honed by decades of survival, recoiling every time Clara stepped near him. The synthetic scent of her perfume made the skin on the back of his neck prickle with an instinctual and violent revulsion, but with no response from the super soldier.
“Barnes,” Clara said softly, stepping away from Steve and walking over to where Bucky stood in the mud. She stretched out her hand, her touch feigning deep shared sorrow as she went to place it on his arm. “We’re going to get through this. Together.”
The moment her fingers brushed his coat, Bucky flinched back so hard it was almost a strike. “Don’t touch me,” Bucky rasped. His voice was deathly quiet, cold enough to freeze the rain falling between them.
Clara froze, her fake tear stained eyes widening for a fraction of a second before she forced a hurt, understanding nod. “I know you’re hurting, James. We all are.”
Bucky didn’t answer. He turned his gaze back to the cold granite stone bearing your name, his chest heaving as a single, burning tear mixed with the cold rain streaming down his face.
I’m sorry doll, he thought.
His heart shattering into a thousand unfixable pieces.
I’m so sorry I wasn’t strong enough to save you, he said in his mind.
He had no idea that as he stood drowning in his grief, above the dark cemetery, a brilliant and invisible golden figure was watching over him from the edge of the sky. Above in the sky, the temperature was a freezing fifty below but inside the celestial aura surrounding you, it felt like a midsummer afternoon. Your eyes traced the black dots of umbrellas scattered across the cemetery below. Even through the torrential rain, the thick fog and miles of empty air, your enhanced vision pulled every detail into agonisingly sharp focus.
You could see the tears tracking down Wanda’s face.
You could see Steve’s jaw tight with helpless grief.
You could see the hollow and broken shell of the man you love, standing drenched and alone in the mud.
Tony did now nothing to hide the tears.
Bruce and Clint, and right after even Sam, never took off their eyes from Clara.
And then, your gaze locked onto her.
The heat in your blood spiked violently. The air around you rippled with microscopic shockwaves as raw kinetic force hummed in your chest, threatening to ignite the atmosphere into a blazing explosion of solar radiation right then and there. Watching her wear her official dress uniform, holding that pristine white rose pretending to weep for the woman she had paralysed and buried beneath five hundred tons of rock made your vocal cords vibrate with a dangerous, acoustic rumble.
You wanted to drop from the sky like a falling star and tear her apart where she stood.
Not yet, you reminded yourself.
Instead, you bent light and energy around your body, warping the air until you were completely invisible to the naked eye. Gravity loosed its grip on you entirely as you drifted down through the storm clouds, completely silently floating past the falling raindrops without disturbing a single drop. You touched down softly on the wet grass just fifty feet from the funeral gathering, hovering a hair’s breadth above the mud. From here, the sensory overload was overwhelming. You could hear every ragged breath, every quiet sob, every frantic beat of Bucky’s shattered heart.
Because the inhibitor had fully worn off, Bucky wasn’t trapped in a foggy haze anymore.
You watched as Clara took her step forward, putting on her tragic practised performance, offering her hand to Bucky in a sickening display of feigned comfort.
Your fists clenched, golden sparks dancing invisibly over your knuckles.
Bucky didn’t just flinch away, but he recoiled as if her touch was liquid fire. His flesh hand shot up, shoving her arm away with a violent trembling force, his voice cracking down the middle. “Don’t touch me!”
The grief in his eyes was so profound, so utterly destroyed, that even Clara’s fragile mask slipped into genuine shock. He knew something was wrong.
You drifted closer, stepping through the crowd of mourners until you were standing right beside him. No one felt the shift in the air. No one saw the subtle warp of light beside his shoulder.
As the solemn mourning notes of the hymn echoed through the cemetery, Bucky’s knees suddenly buckled.
He didn’t care about the mud soaking through his dark suit. He didn’t care that the rest of the team was watching. He fell hard onto his knees right in front of the empty granite headstone, his flesh hand digging violently into the cold, saturated earth as if he could dig through five hundred tons of rock with his bare fingers just to reach you.
A ragged, agonising sob tore from his throat. A sound so hollow and full of pure, unadulterated agony that Steve had to look away, wiping his own eyes in vain. Bucky pressed his forehead directly against the freezing mud, his broad shoulders shaking uncontrollably, his vibranium arm uselessly crushing the grass beneath him.
“I’m so sorry…” he sobbed.
The words screaming through his mind in a relentless brutal loop, tearing his heart into a thousand unfixable pieces.
“I’m so sorry I was too weak to save you. I should be under that stone, not you…”
Hearing Bucky’s sobbing, tore through your heart far worse than any concrete slab ever could.
Slowly and carefully, you dropped to your knees beside him in the mud hovering your invisible hand, just a millimetre away from his wet mud-streaked cheek. You were desperate to wipe his tears away, desperate to pull his shaking frame into your chest and whisper that you were alive, that you were there, that you were powerful enough now to protect him from the world.
That you were with him.
Always with him.
A subtle, radiant warmth radiated off your palm, causing the rain lightly falling directly over Bucky’s head to vaporise into a fine, warm mist.
Bucky froze in the mud. His ragged sobs hitched in his throat as he felt a sudden, unmistakable heat brush against his skin. The exact, tender warmth of your touch. He lifted his head slowly, his bloodshot and waterlogged blue eyes searching the empty air right where you were kneeling.
“Y/N…?” He choked out, his voice barely a whisper, so fragile it broke your heart.
He reached his flesh hand out into the empty air, his fingers closing around nothingness right where your face was. “Please… don’t leave me here…”
Fresh tears spilled over his eyes when his hand found only cold rain and empty space. He pulled his hand back to his chest, clutching at his heart as if trying to hold the shattered pieces together, slumping back against the headstone in absolute despair, believing his own guilt was driving him mad.
Yet as you hovered close, Bucky’s desperate unfocused gaze locked directly onto the space you occupied. Technically, he was staring straight into your eyes, feeling the faint phantom pull of your presence lingering in the storm. But because you were completely invisible, his line of sight pierced right through you, landing directly on Steve, who was standing a few feet behind where you floated.
Steve stood frozen in the pouring rain, his jaw tight, tears streaming down his cheeks and mixing with the deluge. Like everyone else gathered in the cemetery, Steve was completely broken. His shoulders trembling under the weight of the same devastating loss. Seeing Bucky look straight at him with those hollow pleading eyes, as if silently begging his oldest friend for a miracle Steve couldn’t provide, made a choked sob escape Steve’s throat. He lowered his head, wiping his face with a soaked sleeve, utterly helpless in the face of Bucky’s agony.
You perched toward Bucky, leaning in to press a warm invisible kiss to his wet and trembling temple, feeling the sudden shudder that ran through his entire body at the contact. You cast one last look at Steve and the grieving team before slowly rising, drifting backward and floating effortlessly up through the roaring storm and into the safety of the sky.
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
The rain continued to hammer relentlessly against the glass of the common room, washing the compound in a bleak gray shadow. The funeral ended hours ago, but the air inside remained heavy with the suffocating scent of wet wool, fading flowers and silent unresolved grief.
Steve and Sam sat near the kitchen island, quietly speaking in hushed tones, while Tony stood near the glass wall staring down at his glass without drinking a drop.
In the far corner of the room, isolated from everyone, Bucky sat on the edge of the leather sofa. He was still wearing his wet black suit jacket, his dark hair still damp and plastered against his skin. He stared blankly at the floor, his flesh hand trembling slightly as it rested on his knee, while his vibranium arm hung entirely useless and dead at his side. He looked hollow, a shell of a man drowning in a silent agonising void.
Steve let out a quiet sigh, placing his mug down, and walked slowly toward Bucky. He pulled up a wooden chair, sitting across from his friend with a look of cautious, worried empathy. “Buck,” Steve said softly, keeping his voice low. “You need to take the coat off. Go get changed, man. You’ve been sitting in the wet clothes for hours.”
Bucky didn’t answer. He didn’t even blink. “I couldn’t get to her,” he rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves scraping across concrete. “I couldn’t get to her.”
“What do you mean?” He asked.
“The only thing I remember was me on the ground… and Y/N laying there. I couldn’t move…”
Steve squeezed Bucky’s shoulder, his eyes swimming with grief. “It wasn’t your fault, Buck. You were unconscious. You couldn’t have stopped the collapse even if you were awake.”
A few feet away standing near the doorway, Natasha and Wanda stood side by side, watching the exchange.
To Steve, Bucky was a victim who had been paralysed by an attack but to Natasha and Wanda, who knew the absolute truth and knew that Bucky’s hands had been locked around your throat before Clara dropped him with the syringe, watching him sit there was a psychological nightmare. Before the building collapsed on you, Wanda saw a dark bruise on your neck.
They knew Bucky was innocent.
They knew he had been violently brainwashed, controlled and manipulated.
They knew he loved you.
And yet.
Every time Wanda closed her eyes, she didn’t just see the collapsed vault. She saw your bruised throat. She saw the horror in your eyes when you told them how you and Bucky fought in the guest room time ago. The raw, irrational anger burned like liquid fire in Wanda’s chest, demanding an outlet.
Wanda’s hands slammed into the pockets of her jacket, her knuckles turning white as she squeezed her fists tight enough to bleed. Her red magic pulsed violently beneath her skin, threatening to break through. She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to yell at him for letting Clara get into his head, for being the weapon that broke you, for sitting there alive while you were buried under five hundred tons of stone.
Natasha stood right next to her, her jaw set so tight the tendons in her neck were strained. Natasha’s eyes were cold, dangerous and burning with a toxic mixture of sympathy and searing resentment.
Natasha knew better than anyone what it was like to be a controlled weapon. She knew Bucky didn’t choose it. But grief wasn’t logical. Looking at Bucky’s slumping shoulders didn’t bring comfort. It just served as a constant, agonising reminder that you were the one who paid the price for his triggers.
Steve looked up from Bucky, noticing the two women standing rigidly in the shadows. “Nat? Wanda? Come over here. Talk to him. He needs to hear from you guys.”
Wanda’s breath hitched in a sharp, dangerous gasp. She took half a step forward, her eyes flashing a faint, volatile scarlet.
Natasha’s hand immediately shot out, grabbing Wanda’s forearm in an iron grip, physically holding her back before she could step into the light. Natasha squeezed so hard it was a warning.
“Not now, Steve.” Natasha said, her voice dropping an octave, sounding impossibly tight like a wire strung so taut it was about to snap.
Steve frowned, looking between them, entirely blind to the dark current pulling at the room. “Nat, we’re a team. We need to support each other right now-”
“I said not now, Steve,” Natasha cut in, her eyes locking onto Steve with a sharp, lethal warning that made even the Captain pause.
Wanda bit her lower lip so hard she tasted the metallic tang of blood, forcing herself to look away from Bucky’s trembling hands. If she spoke to him right now, if she opened her mouth, she wouldn’t offer comfort. She would scream. She would shatter the glass windows with her voice and throw the truth in his face, consequences be damned.
Bucky slowly lifted his head, his haunted, bloodshot blue eyes meeting Natasha’s for a fleeting second. He saw the cold, jagged edge in her gaze. He didn’t know why it was there. He didn’t remember the neck-grab. He didn’t remember the lilac mist. He didn’t remember the violent fight, but instinctively, deep in his gut, he felt the crushing weight of their unspoken resentment.
He felt like a monster who had survived when the pure, innocent soul had perished.
Bucky swallowed hard, looking back down at his lifeless vibranium hand, dragging his flesh hand over his face as a quiet, broken sob escaped his throat.
Without another word, Natasha turned on her heel and walked out toward the training grounds, her boots striking the floor in a rapid, angry rhythm. Wanda followed half a second behind her, slipping into the dark corridor before the scarlet energy dancing on her fingertips could burn the room to the ground.
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
The air in the Avengers Compound’s primary briefing room was thick enough to choke on.
Outside the heavy storm rattled, but inside, the tension was a ticking time bomb. Clara sat at the head of the briefing table casually swiping through mission schematics on a tablet, your old tablet. She had tried to put on your tactical harness, adjusting the straps to match your exact configuration and made a move to sit in your designated chair. She was playing the part of the brave, indispensable field agent ready to step up and fill the void.
But Bucky and the rest of the team shut it down immediately. Before she could even settle into the seat, Bucky’s hand slammed down on the edge of the console. His metal arm locked in place, blocking her path. His jaw was set so tight it looked ready to snap, his blue eyes cold and unyielding as he glared at her.
“Don’t,” Bucky said, his voice dropping into a quiet dangerous rumble that left zero room for argument. “Take it off. You don’t wear that and you don’t sit there.”
Behind him, the rest of the room went dead silent. Steve stepped forward, his expression drawn but firm, shaking his head with a look that made it clear Bucky wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
Nobody was replacing you.
Nobody was wearing your gear.
As long as they were breathing, that chair stayed empty.
Across the table sat Natasha and Wanda.
They knew.
They were the only two on the entire strike team, alongside Nick Fury and Maria Hill, who knew the absolute, sickening truth. They knew Clara wasn’t a traumatised survivor. They knew she was the Apex operative who had poisoned Bucky, and probably left you paralysed in the dark actively tried to murder you before the bedrock caved in.
Every second spent sitting in the same room as her was a masterclass in pure, agony inducing self-control.
Natasha sat with her elbows resting on the steel table, her fingers intertwined loosely in front of her mouth. Her face was a sculpture of absolute, unreadable ice. Every time Clara opened her mouth to offer a tactical opinion, Natasha’s jaw clenched until the muscles in her cheek trembled.
She wanted to kill her.
Right here.
Right now.
She wanted to vault across the briefing table, snap Clara’s neck before Steve or Sam could even blink, and drag her body down to the basement.
Beside her, Wanda was faring even worse.
Wanda’s head was bowed, her dark red hair falling forward to hide her face. Her hands were buried deep in the pockets of her coat, clamped into tight, shaking fists. She could feel Clara’s mind. Smooth, arrogant and sickeningly triumphant behind the artificial hum of her neural dampener. Every breath Clara took felt like a personal insult to your memory.
A tiny, involuntary spark of volatile crimson magic flickered beneath the hem of Wanda’s sleeve, subtly warping the metal frame of her chair.
Natasha’s hand shot out under the table, gripping Wanda’s knee in a tight, warning hold. Not yet, Natasha’s tight grip communicated without a single word.
Wanda bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood, forcing the scarlet energy back down into her chest, her chest heaving with silent, rage filled breaths.
“I really think we should shift the sector four patrols to the eastern ridge,” Clara said, her voice smooth, sweet and utterly insufferable as she looked around the room. She turned her fake, sympathetic gaze toward Bucky, who was sitting in the corner, staring blankly out the window, completely ignoring her. “It’s what Y/N would have recommended. She always favoured the high ground on winter ops.”
CRACK.
The pen in Natasha’s hand snapped clean in half.
The sharp noise echoed through the quiet room. Steve looked over from the main display, frowning slightly. “Nat? You okay?”
Natasha didn’t break eye contact with Clara. Her eyes were two daggers, locking onto Clara’s face with a lethal, terrifying promises that made the blood run cold in Clara’s veins for a fraction of a second.
“I’m fine, Steve,” Natasha said, her voice dripping with a dangerously quiet velvet venom. She slowly tossed the broken halves of the pen onto the glass table, where they clattered right in front of Clara. “Just listening to Clara talk about what Y/N would have done.”
Clara forced a small, fragile smile, though her eyes narrowed slightly as she sensed the sudden, razor-sharp shift in the air. “I just want to honour her memory, Natasha. We all miss her.”
Wanda let out a sharp, bitter exhale through her nose, her head snapping up. Her eyes weren’t glowing red as Fury had explicitly forbidden any telepathic or kinetic display that might spook Clara before finishing tracking Apex’s master network, but the sheer unadulterated hatred burning in her gaze made Clara unconsciously lean back an inch in her seat.
“Do not speak her name,” Wanda whispered. Her sokovian accent was thick, sharp and laced with a terrifying, promise of violence that sent a visible shudder down Clara’s spine.
“Wanda…” Steve began, stepping forward, entirely blind to the true war happening beneath the surface. “Hey, easy. We’re all on the same team here-”
“I need air,” Wanda cut in abruptly. She stood up so fast her chair screeched loudly against the floorboards.
She turned on her heel and stormed out of the briefing room, the heavy glass doors sliding shut behind her with a soft hiss. Natasha stood up right behind her, offering no explanation to Steve or Sam, her cold gaze lingering on Clara for one last, brutal second before she followed Wanda into the hallway.
Out in the corridor, out of sight from the briefing room, Wanda slammed her hand hard against the cold metal wall, leaving a dent in the steel as her scarlet magic flared violently around her knuckles.
“I can’t do this, Nat!” Wanda hissed, turning to Natasha with tears of pure, burning rage swimming in her eyes. “I see her sitting there using her things… speaking about her like she was a martyr! I want to tear her apart!”
Natasha stepped close grabbing Wanda’s wrists, holding her steady despite the deadly magic humming between them. Natasha’s own face was pale with restrained fury, her teeth gritted tight.
“I know,” Natasha rasped, her voice shaking with a rare, terrifying emotion. “Believe me, I know. I want to bleed her dry for what she did to Y/N. For what she’s doing to Bucky every single day.”
She looked down the dark hallway, toward the glass doors where Clara was still sitting in your chair.
“But Fury is closing the net,” Natasha whispered, her voice dropping into an icy, lethal promise. “Apex falls first. And the exact second Fury gives the green light… I will personally hand you the knife.”
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
The storm had cleared hours ago, leaving the sky over the Compound a vast, empty sheet of bruised twilight. Inside, the primary living quarters felt less like a home and more like an abandoned vault.
It had been a month since the empty casket was lowered into the mud at the cemetery. Thirty days of absolute, suffocating silence and rain.
Bucky sat on the edge of the leather sofa, his hoodie damp from his walk through the perimeter woods. He was staring blankly at the floor between his boots. He hadn’t shaved in weeks. The dark circles under his hollow, bloodshot eyes were bruised deep into his pale skin. His flesh hand rested motionless on his knee; his vibranium arm hung entirely limp, dead weight attached to a man who had long since stopped caring if he lived or died.
Across the room, the glass doors clicked open.
Wanda stepped into the common room. She looked ragged, her eyes red-rimmed and fierce, a terrifying aura of volatile scarlet energy humming just beneath the surface of her skin. For a month, she had choked down the truth. She had swallowed her rage on Fury’s orders, watching Clara walk through these halls, watching Clara sit at your desk, watching Clara pretend to mourn.
And for a month, she had watched Bucky drown in his own grief, sitting like a statue, completely wrapped up in his own misery while the woman who actually murdered you walked around completely untouched.
Wanda’s chest heaved with a sharp, ragged breath. She couldn’t take it anymore. The grief, the secrecy, the sheer, agonizing injustice of it all snapped the thin wire holding her composure together.
She walked straight up to Bucky, her boots striking the hardwood in a rapid, deadly cadence.
“Look at you,” Wanda spat, her Sokovian accent thick, sharp and dripping with raw, venomous sarcasm.
Bucky didn’t move. He didn’t even lift his head. He just sat there, a hollow shell staring at the floorboards.
“Look at you!” Wanda shouted louder, her voice echoing off the high glass walls, vibrating through the vast, empty room. “Sitting in the dark! Pitiful! Tragic! The broken soldier who couldn’t save his girl!”
Still, Bucky said nothing. He didn’t blink. He didn’t defend himself.
“You just sit here and weep, Bucky!” Wanda’s voice cracked, a crimson spark jumping violently from her knuckles and singeing the edge of the glass coffee table, shattering a crystal tumbler into dust. “You act like you are the only one who lost her! You act like your pain is the only thing that matters in this place!”
She took two steps closer, leaning down until she was hovering directly over him, her eyes glowing with a faint, dangerous scarlet hue.
“Where was that pain when we were in Vault 04, Bucky?” Wanda hissed, her voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper that sliced right through the quiet. “Where was this big, tragic love when you let Clara slip into your mind? Where were you when she needed you to stand up?”
Bucky’s jaw clenched hard. A muscle twitched in his cheek, but his lips stayed sealed tight. He didn’t offer an excuse. Deep down, in the blackest and most painful corner of his soul, he agreed with every single word coming out of her mouth.
He was weak.
He had failed.
He had allowed himself to be used as the weapon that broke you, and he had been too slow, too blind and too useless to tear through the concrete and pull you out before the darkness took you.
It was just that, for the moment, he did not know it yet.
“You let her die!” Wanda screamed, her hands slamming down onto the armrest of the sofa next to his head, a blast of scarlet telekinetic force jarring the heavy leather frame. “You let them take her! You sat on that floor in the ICU screaming her name, but when it counted, when she was breathing her last breath under tons of concrete, you were sleeping!”
“Wanda, stop!” Steve’s voice barked from the hallway.
Steve came striding quickly into the common room, his hands raised, his face pale as he looked between Wanda’s raging magic and Bucky’s lifeless posture. “Wanda, back off! He’s hurting, we’re all hurting, but you don’t do this-”
“No, Steve!” Wanda turned on Steve, her eyes blazing red, her chest heaving with furious, sobbing breaths. “Don’t defend him! He sits here like a martyr! He wants everyone to feel sorry for him! But she is the one in the ground! She is the one who bled out in the dark while he sat here feeling sorry for himself!”
She turned back to Bucky, her voice dropping into a desperate, furious tremble.
“Say something!” Wanda demanded, her fingers twitching as scarlet energy coiled around her wrists like striking snakes. “Fight back! Yell at me! Tell me I’m wrong! Tell me you tried! Say something, Bucky!”
Bucky slowly lifted his head.
His eyes were completely dead. There was no anger in them. No defense. No spark of the Winter Soldier. No stubbornness of James Buchanan Barnes. There was only a vast, bottomless ocean of absolute, unadulterated shame.
He stared right into Wanda’s glowing red eyes, his throat working as he swallowed down the bitter, metallic taste of his own self-hatred.
He didn’t say a word. He remained completely, utterly silent.
Because she was right.
In his mind, every insult she threw at him was a mercy compared to what he deserved. He deserved her rage. He deserved her hatred. He deserved to be dragged out into the rain and torn apart by her magic, because nothing she could ever say or do to him could possibly hurt more than the brutal, unforgiving truth living inside his own head: He was alive, and you were dead, and it was entirely his fault.
Wanda stared at his lifeless, unblinking face, waiting for a reaction, waiting for a fight, waiting for anything. But as the seconds ticked by and Bucky just sat there, silently accepting every ounce of her venom like a man standing before a execution squad, the fire in her chest suddenly sputtered and died.
She realized he wasn’t fighting back because he didn’t think he had the right to defend himself. He was already executing himself in his mind every single second of the day.
Wanda let out a long, shuddering breath, the scarlet magic fading from her hands, leaving her looking just as tired, broken, and small as the man sitting on the couch.
“You’re a coward, James,” Wanda whispered, her voice breaking down the middle with pure, unadulterated grief as tears finally spilled over her lashes. “You’re just a coward.”
She turned on her heel and walked out of the room, her footsteps fading down the long, empty corridor.
Steve stood in the quiet room for a long moment, looking at Bucky with a look of profound, aching sorrow. “Buck…” Steve began softly, taking a step toward him. “She didn’t mean that. She’s just…”
“She meant it,” Bucky rasped.
It was the first time he had spoken in days. His voice was raw, gravelly, and completely devoid of life. He didn’t look up at Steve. He just lowered his head back down, staring at his boots on the dark floor, burying his flesh hand into his face as a quiet, breathless gasp escaped his chest.
“She’s right, Steve,” Bucky whispered into his own palm, his shoulders shaking in silent, agonizing sobs. “She’s right.”
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
The late night quiet of the compound was suffocating.
Most of the team remained scattered across the common room in low, heavy silence. Steve sat by the counter, head resting in his hands, while Sam leaned against the far wall, staring aimlessly out the glass at the dark city.
The atmosphere was a bruised, lingering aftermath of Wanda’s explosive breakdown hours earlier.
Bucky stood up slowly from the leather sofa. His movements were stiff, heavy, as if moving took every ounce of strength he had left. He didn’t look at Steve. He didn’t look at Sam. His hollow, bloodshot eyes locked onto Wanda, who was sitting at the kitchen island, staring down into a cold cup of tea. “Maximoff,” Bucky rasped, his voice rough as sandpaper.
Wanda’s shoulders tensed, but she didn’t look up immediately.
“Follow me,” he said quietly.
Without waiting for an answer, Bucky turned and walked toward the dimly lit hallway leading to the quiet back terrace. Wanda sat frozen for a beat. The anger in her chest had dulled into a heavy, aching stone, leaving her drained. She let out a long, quiet breath, pushed her chair back, and followed him into the dark corridor.
They stopped on the secluded outer terrace, high above the grounds. The night air was biting, blowing cold mist across the dark concrete tiles.
Bucky turned around to face her. His broad frame was hunched, his hands shoved deep into his coat pockets. The moonlight caught the sharp lines of his face, accentuating the deep, dark bruises under his eyes.
“Show me,” Bucky said, his voice flat, absolute, and utterly broken.
Wanda frowned, her brows drawing together. “What?”
“Show me,” he repeated, taking a step closer, his eyes pleading with a desperate, terrifying intensity. “I want you to use your magic. I want you to go into my head and show me what I did to her in that vault.”
Wanda’s heart sank. “Bucky, no-”
“Do it, Wanda!” Bucky choked out, his voice cracking down the middle. He pulled his flesh hand out of his pocket, his knuckles white as he gestured wildly to his own head. “You said I let her die. You said I failed her. And you’re right. But my head… my mind is a damn black hole! I know I hurt her. I know I stood by Clara. I remember feeling… feeling like I was pulled toward Clara, like some bastard who couldn’t even keep his eyes on the woman he loved while she was bleeding!”
Wanda stared at him, her lips parting in silent shock.
He didn’t know about Apex.
He didn’t know about the synthetic lilac perfume, or the neural-inhibitors, or the psychological conditioning Clara had systematically pumped into his room for months.
In his mind, stripped of the science, he believed he was just a monster. He believed he was a weak, faithless coward who had developed a sick, unfaithful infatuation for Clara, allowing it to distract him while you died under five hundred tons of rock.
“Bucky… it wasn’t like that-” Wanda began, her voice trembling. She wanted so desperately to scream the truth. She wanted to tell him about Fury. About Clara’s true identity. About Apex. About the fact that you were alive watching over him.
“Don’t lie to make me feel better!” Bucky yelled into the night, fresh tears spilling over his lashes. “I remember looking at Clara in Vault 04! I remember wanting to protect Clara! Why would I do that, Wanda? Why would I care about her when Y/N was standing right there? I was an asshole. I know I betrayed her in my own damn head before the rocks even fell!”
He stepped right up to her, dropping to his knees on the cold tiles of the terrace. He grabbed the hem of her jacket with his flesh hand, looking up at her like a condemned man begging for his sentence. “Please,” Bucky sobbed, his chest heaving. “Show me what my hands did. Show me how I broke her. I need to see it. I need to feel it.”
Wanda’s chest seized. The anger she had held against him earlier completely dissolved, replaced by a wave of pure, crushing sorrow. She hated seeing him like this, begging to be destroyed by memories that weren’t even entirely his own fault.
“I cannot show you everything, Bucky,” Wanda whispered, her voice breaking as tears welling in her own eyes finally slipped down her cheeks. “It will break you.”
“I’m already broken!” he roared softly, his head dropping against her knees as he wept violently into the cold air. “Just give me what I deserve…”
Wanda raised her hands slowly. Her fingers trembled as a soft, dim crimson mist flared around her knuckles.
She couldn’t show him Clara’s chemical vials.
She couldn’t show him Apex .
So, she gave him only what she was allowed to show. A curated fragment.
Her fingers touched his temples.
Instantly, Bucky was thrust into the darkness of Vault 04.
The dust was thick, choking.
The ceiling was groaning above them.
Bucky saw himself.
His own face, cold, blank and terrifying.
He saw his vibranium arm raising, locking around your throat pinning you against the steel door. He felt the terrifying truth of your hands clawing at his wrist, begging him to stop looking at him with tears streaming down your dusty cheeks completely horrified that the man who swore to protect her was choking the life out of her.
He saw Clara standing in the background, a shadow pulling the strings, but before his mind could process why Clara was there, Wanda cut the vision. Wanda snapped her hands back, breaking the telepathic connection.
Bucky gasped violently, collapsing forward onto his hands and knees on the wet deck vomiting a bitter string of bile out of the terrace, unadulterated horror of the memory tore through his brain.
A hand, his own hand, around your neck.
You looked at him with terror.
“God…” Bucky screamed, a high broken inhuman sound that tore from the deepest, blackest part of his soul. He slammed his vibranium fist hard into the tiles, cracking the deck, slamming it again and again until his flesh hand was bleeding. “God, no! No! What did I do?! What did I do to her?!”
It began raining. Just as the normalcy after your death.
Wanda stood over him, tears raining down her face. Her hands clutching her own mouth to smother her sobs. She wanted to drop to her knees and pull him into a hug. She wanted to tell him that his mind had been forced, that he had fought the gas, that he loved you more than life itself. But she couldn’t. She had to let him believe the monster in the mirror was real. “I’m sorry, Bucky,” Wanda sobbed quietly, stepping back. “I’m so sorry.”
“No… God, no…” the present Bucky screamed inside the memory, drowning in the sight of his own betrayal.
Before he could pull away, the scene dissolved shifting rapidly into the suffocating atmosphere of the small guest room.
He felt Wanda’s fingers on his temple again.
He was standing near the center of the space, his broad frame rigid and his arms locked tight across his chest. His clothes were heavy with that sweet, sickening lilac fragrance. He watched you step into the room, your eyes tired searching and filled with a desperate heartbreaking love. He watched you walk over to the dresser, picking up your own bottle of perfume, spraying it gently onto your neck before turning back to face him.
He felt the icy, clipped word scrape out of his own throat.
“What do you want?” The fake Bucky told you.
The coldness in his own tone was a razor blade slicing through his soul. He stood there like a statue while you took a step toward him, your eyes begging him to awaken.
“Bucky, look at me,” you begged quietly in the memory, your voice breaking his heart all over again. “Please. Look at what we’re doing. You won’t talk to me… you won’t even stand in the same room as me but you kissed my forehead in the dark like you’re drowning. Why are you pushing me away? What is happening to you?”
He felt your hands rest on both sides of his face. He felt the delicate warmth of your palm against his cheeks, felt his own eyes flutter shut for a split second as you pulled him down to peck his lips.
And then he remembered the kiss.
Through his own memory, Bucky felt the sudden, explosive dark anger flare across his features making him push you away whenever you got too close to breaking the trance.
“Nothing is happening to me!” his past self snapped, his voice sharp and laced with toxic hostility. “I’m finally clearing the red out of my ledger! I’m finally working with someone who doesn’t look at me like I’m a time bomb!”
“I have never looked at you like that!” you yelled out, an angry tear breaking free and spilling down your cheek. “I love you, Bucky! I have loved you through every single nightmare, through every scar!”
The memory moved mercilessly fast. Bucky watched as you stepped forward, desperate to break through the fog, reaching out to wrap your arms around his waist and bury your face against his chest.
He felt his own body go stark, furious rigid.
“Don’t!” he growled.
He didn’t use his vibranium arm on you. Deep down, his instinct refused to strike you with metal as he used his flesh hand. His fingers gripped your wrists tightly and, with brutal unyielding force, he shoved you away.
Bucky watched through his own eyes as you stumbled backward. He heard the sickening thud as your body crashed against the edge of the small wooden desk. He saw the flash of pure pain hit your eyes, saw your hand clutch your bruised side, saw the small, dark bruise forming on the skin of your wrist where his fingers had clamped down.
For a fraction of a second, his past self felt a flash of horror as he looked at your shaking form, but the artificial haze instantly swept back over his features, hardening them into stone.
“Don’t touch me,” he rasped coldly, his voice dripping with an anger that felt so real, so unforgivable. “Stop doing this. Stop acting like I owe you something just because we used to be something.”
He watched himself step back toward the door. He heard his own poisonous final words. “Get your head straight. Because I’m done trying to fix whatever this is.”
He watched his own hand slam the door shut, leaving you collapsed on the floor, pulling your knees to your chest in the dark, sobbing silently while your heart shattered into a million pieces.
Wanda ripped her hands back, severing the connection.
Bucky collapsed more onto the tiles of the terrace with a wet, choked scream, his forehead slamming directly onto the cold deck. He vomited violently again, clutching his own head with both hands as if he could tear the memories out of his brain with his bare nails.
He shoved you.
He bruised you.
He stood over you while you cried on the floor, calling your love a burden.
“I hurt her…” Bucky wept, a broken sound that echoed out into the empty night sky. His flesh hand beat frantically against the concrete, leaving smear of red blood on the stone. “I shoved her… she was crying… and I shoved her…”
Wanda stood over him, tears running down her face in silence. She had to stand there and watch him break under the weight of a sin he had been forced to commit.
“I’m a monster,” Bucky whispered into the rain, his body shaking so violently he couldn’t stand up. “God help me… I’m a monster…”
Wanda didn’t offer a final word of comfort. She couldn’t. The weight of her own grief, combined with the heavy burden of the secret she was forced to carry, was suffocating. She turned on her heel and slipped through the glass doors, letting them slide shut with a soft final click, leaving Bucky completely alone in the dark.
Bucky remained kneeling on the cold, wet tiles of the terrace.
He didn’t move. He didn’t wipe the blood from his bruised knuckles, nor did he clean the bitter taste from his mouth. His forehead remained pressed against the concrete floor, his broad shoulders heaving in quiet, breathless gasps as the agonizing memory of your bruised wrist and shattered tears replayed in a relentless, brutal loop behind his eyes.
The thought dragged him under like a lead weight in deep water. He had promised to protect you. He had sworn to be your shield. And instead, he had been the weapon that bruised your skin, the cold wall that broke your heart, and the fool who let you die in the dark.
As he lay there, the sky above the compound seemed to darken further, bruised and swollen with dense, heavy storm clouds.
Slowly, Bucky lifted his head, his bloodshot eyes staring up into the endless, bleak expanse. The rain picked up, pouring down in heavy, relentless sheets that drummed violently against the terrace deck and washed the blood from his flesh hand into the drain. Suddenly, a strange, piercing realization settled deep in his chest. A quiet detail that had been hovering at the edge of his grief for months. It was raining again. It was always raining now.
It had poured during the service at the cemetery.
It hammered against the glass during every briefing.
It washed over him the night he leaped from the roof, and it was soaking through his clothes right now.
It felt as though the world itself had lost its warmth the moment you left it, as if the sky had been weeping continuously for two solid years, refusing to let the sun break through the clouds ever again.
Bucky let out a hollow, ragged breath, letting his head fall back against his chest as the freezing water streamed down his face, mixing with his tears.
“Even the sky misses you, doll,” Bucky whispered into the storm, his voice cracking with a sorrow so deep it felt entirely unhealable.
The cold sweat soaked straight through the sheets before Bucky even woke up.
In the dark sterile room of his quarters, his chest heaved in shallow, frantic hitches. The nightmare hadn’t been a jumbled, surreal dream. Wanda’s magic burned those memories into his cerebral cortex with terrifying, razor-sharp clarity, leaving his mind to replay the horror on an endless loop the moment his eyes closed.
In the dream, he was back in that small guest room, but everything was magnified yet twisted into an agonizing nightmare.
He watched through his own eyes as you stood before him, your face pale and streaked with dust from Prague. You held out your hands, your voice echoing with a hollow, desperate resonance. “Bucky, please… look at what we’re doing…”
He tried to stop himself. In his mind, the present Bucky was screaming at his past self to move, to throw his arms around you. He wanted so desperately to pull you close, to tell you he loved you, to save you.
Instead, his body moved like an autonomous executioner.
He felt the cold, unnatural anger flare in his chest. He saw his flesh hand reach out not with hesitation, but with brutal unyielding speed. He heard the sickening, heavy thud as he shoved you back against the wooden desk.
Only in the nightmare, the desk didn’t just bruise you.
The moment your back struck the edge, the wood shattered into jagged, bleeding shards. You collapsed to the floor, gasping for air, clutching your side as a dark, blossoming stain of crimson spread rapidly across your shirt.
“Bucky…” you choked out, looking up at him from the carpet, your eyes wide with a horrifying, heartbreaking betrayal. “Why…?”
He tried to drop to his knees. He tried to reach for you. But his legs were locked into stone. He watched his own hand lift, pointing a cold, lifeless finger at your bleeding form on the floor.
“Don’t touch me,” his own voice roared, sounding monstrous, layered with a sickening, metallic echo. “Stop acting like I owe you something!”
The room around him began to cave in. The ceiling of the guest room cracked open, and instead of plaster, hundreds of tons of crushed concrete rained down on top of you. You reached your shaking hand up through the falling dust, your fingers brushing his boot, begging him to pull you out.
And through his own eyes, Bucky watched himself turn his back, stepping out the door, and slamming it shut, locking you in the dark while the rocks crushed you alive.
“NO!”
Bucky bolted upright in bed, a strangled, blood-curdling scream tearing from his throat.
He gasped violently for air, his lungs burning as if he had just surfaced from deep water. His heart hammered against his ribs like a panicked animal, setting off a erratic, frantic rhythm in his chest. His flesh hand was clamped so tightly around the edge of his mattress that the fabric ripped, his vibranium arm locking up in a rigid, lethal defensive stance.
The room was pitch black, saved only by the faint, blue ambient light of the compound’s corridor filtering beneath the door.
He was shaking uncontrollably. Sweat dripped down his nose, mixing with the hot, bitter tears that immediately spilled over his lashes.
He buried his face into his trembling flesh hand, dragging his nails down his own cheeks until the skin stung. The nightmare was gone, but the absolute, suffocating reality remained.
He hurt you.
“I’m sorry…” Bucky wept into the silence of his dark room, his broad shoulders collapsing forward as he curled into a tight, defensive ball on the edge of the mattress. “I’m so sorry, doll… I’m so sorry…”
Outside his window high above the glass tower, the rain began to fall again. Heavy, cold and relentless as if the sky awakened right along with him.
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
Six months had passed since the rain soaked service. Inside the compound, the grief turned into a cold, permanent frost.
For Clara, those six months had been a relentless, agonizing exercise in frustration. She had executed her plan flawlessly. She had eliminated you, successfully framed a phantom strike team and secured her position as your replacement on the primary team walking away entirely clean. She had everything she wanted, except the ultimate prize.
She wanted Bucky.
Clara had assumed that once the initial shock wore off, Bucky’s grief would make him vulnerable, desperate for comfort and easy to mold. She had envisioned stepping into your shoes entirely, replacing the memory of you with her presence, slowly re-anchoring his shattered mind to her.
Instead, Bucky had turned into an impenetrable wall of ice and stone.
Over the last six months, Clara had tried every subtle manipulation in her playbook.
She brought him coffee to his training sessions. She offered to sit with him during mission debriefs. She deliberately wore soft, lingering hints of her floral perfume trying to trigger a faint familiar familiarity in his subconscious. She even tried speaking in quiet, gentle tones mimicking the soft, grounded way you used to pull him out of his nightmares.
It failed disastrously.
Bucky didn’t just reject her attempts, his body practically revolted whenever she stepped into his personal space. His instincts, recognized the danger in her. Whenever she walked into a room, Bucky’s jaw would set into a iron line. His vibranium arm tensed and his icy blue eyes tracking her with a cold, hollow revulsion that made Clara’s skin crawl.
On a quiet rainy and dark Tuesday evening, six months to the day after your death, Clara saw her chance.
Bucky was sitting alone in the dark corner of the gym, wrapping his flesh hand with athletic tape. He looked exhausted, the dark circles under his eyes etched deep into his skin. He hadn’t slept more than two hours a night in weeks.
Clara stepped quietly into the dim room, holding two warm paper cups. She smoothed down her tactical uniform and forced a soft, tender expression onto her face. “You’re working yourself to the bone, James,” Clara said softly, her voice dripping with careful, practiced empathy as she approached him.
Bucky didn’t look up. The second her voice cut through the quiet, his hands froze over the white tape. His entire posture went dangerously rigid.
“I brought you some tea,” Clara continued, taking a step closer, intentionally dropping her voice into that intimate comforting register. “You don’t have to carry all this weight by yourself. I know how much you miss her… but sitting alone in the dark isn’t going to bring her back. She would want you to live your life. She would want you to let someone in.”
She reached out, extending her uninjured hand to gently place it over his bare shoulder.
Before her fingers could even graze his skin, Bucky moved.
With blinding, terrifying speed, his flesh hand shot out and gripped her wrist in an iron lock. He didn’t break her arm, but the pressure was enough to make the paper cup slip from her fingers, crashing onto the floor and spilling hot tea across the mats.
Bucky stood up slowly, looming over her. His eyes were bloodshot, sunken, and burning with a dark, suffocating agony that made Clara’s breath catch in her throat.
“Don’t,” Bucky rasped, his voice low, gravelly, and lethal. “Don’t you ever talk about what she would want.”
Clara swallowed hard, trying desperately to maintain her fragile, hurt facade, though her heart was hammering against her ribs. “James, I’m just trying to help you-”
“I don’t want your help,” Bucky snarled, tightening his grip on her wrist just enough to make her wince before shoving her hand away like she was venomous. “I don’t want your tea. I don’t want you standing near me.”
“It’s been six months!” Clara snapped, her composure slipping for a fraction of a second, raw frustration bleeding through her sweet mask. “She is gone, Bucky! She’s buried under tons of rock! You are destroying yourself over a ghost!”
Bucky turned his back on her, grabbing his jacket off the bench. He didn’t yell. He didn’t raise his fist. The cold, absolute silence that fell over him was infinitely worse.
“I’d rather rot with her ghost,” Bucky whispered, his voice cracking down the middle with raw, unhealable grief, “than take one step forward with you.”
He walked out of the gym without looking back, leaving Clara standing alone in the dark, staring at the spilled tea on the floor, her teeth gritted so tight her jaw ached.
She had killed you, she had taken your job, and she had rewritten the narrative and yet, even from beyond the grave, you were holding Bucky’s heart in an unbreakable yet invisible grip that Clara could never hope to shatter.
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
It was eight months now.
Eight months since the vault collapsed.
Eight months since the earth took you.
Clara walked into his quarters without knocking, taking advantage of the heavy silence hanging over the top floor of the compound. She was wearing a simple soft sweater. Her hair falling over her shoulders in a way that felt calculated, deliberate, and entirely uninvited.
She had applied the specific, custom blended floral fragrance heavily to her wrists and neck, trying once more to induce Bucky to wanting her. She took the rest inside a little bottle. She wanted to use the excuse of some aromatherapy, as the scent could relax him.
In her mind, the science was foolproof. The sensory input should have softened his defenses, tapping into his subconscious and forcing his brain to associate her presence with peace.
She was wrong.
She took a slow, deliberate step toward him where he sat on the edge of his bed, holding out a glass of water.
“James,” Clara murmured, dropping her voice into a soft, velvety whisper as she leaned down slightly, letting the scent flood the quiet air between them. “You’re shaking. Please… just take a breath. Let me stay with you tonight. You don’t have to be alone in the dark anymore.”
She reached out, her fingers aiming to trace the hard line of his jawline, expecting the synthetic trigger to break down his resistance.
She underestimated the sheer, terrifying scale of his grief.
The moment the lilac scent filled Bucky’s lungs, his brain didn’t find peace.
It didn’t find familiarity.
Instead his grief, entirely devoted to your memory, turned the chemical trigger into a spark thrown directly into a powder keg.
Bucky’s eyes, dull and hollow a second ago, snapped open, blazing with an unhinged, dangerous intensity. “Get out,” he growled.
The sound wasn’t human.
It was a low, gut wrenching rumble that vibrated right through the floorboards.
Clara blinked, taken aback. Her confidence flickering. “James, listen to me, the scent... it’s meant to help you relax-”
CRASH.
With a single, blinding sweep of his vibranium arm, Bucky struck the heavy oak nightstand beside his bed. The wood shattered instantly under the force, splintering into pieces, sending your old book, his lamp, and the glass of water crashing into the wall, shattering into a million sharp fragments across the floor.
Clara gasped, stumbling backward, her heels catching on the rug as she nearly fell.
Bucky stood up, his massive frame towering over her in the shadows. He wasn’t just rejecting her, his body was actively warring against the chemical intrusion.
The grief, the absolute unyielding love he held for you, acted as an impenetrable shield against her manipulation.
His mind refused to let anyone else in.
His heart refused to replace you.
“You smell like a corpse,” Bucky rasped, his flesh hand clenched so tight his knuckles turned bone white, his chest heaving with ragged, furious breaths. “You walk into my room, you wear her clothes, you use her things… and you think a bottle of damn perfume is going to make me look at you?”
“I am trying to save you!” Clara yelled, her delicate facade finally breaking, her voice shrill with a mixture of terror and pure, wounded pride. “She’s dead, Bucky! She’s dust under five hundred tons of rock! She isn’t coming back!”
“Then let me rot!” Bucky roared, his voice echoing down the empty corridor like a thunderclap.
He took two heavy steps toward her. The raw, suffocating aura of the Winter Soldier radiating off him so powerfully that Clara’s instinct for survival finally overrode her arrogance. She took three frantic steps backward, stumbling out into the hallway as Bucky grabbed the edge of his heavy door.
He looked at her through the narrow gap, his bloodshot blue eyes holding an absolute, lethal coldness that sent a shiver straight down her spine.
“If you ever come near my room again,” Bucky whispered, his voice dangerously quiet, “I won’t care what Steve or Fury says.”
He slammed the door shut. The heavy electronic lock clicked into place with a definitive mechanical thud, sealing him back inside his sanctuary of shadows and grief.
Outside in the dark hallway, Clara stood trembling. Her chest heaving, the faint scent of synthetic lilac clinging uselessly to her skin. She had used every weapon in Apex’s arsenal.
Neuro-inhibitors, psychological conditioning, tactical replacement and sensory triggers... and she lost.
Because no chemical compound on Earth could override a man who had already buried his soul with the woman he loved.
END OF THE FLASHBACK
Two years of silence had turned Bucky into a phantom, floating through a world he no longer felt part of but over the last few weeks, the quiet hadn’t been empty anymore.
It was a loud thrilling, terrifying and utterly maddening.
He was losing his mind. He was sure of it.
It started in small, impossible flashes.
A glimpse of soft hair disappearing around the corner of a crowded street.
A sudden, unexplained shift in atmospheric pressure on the compound like a faint, lingering warmth on his skin that felt like solar heat on a freezing night.
A quiet, melodic hum cutting through the static of his radio on a solo mission in Berlin, sounding so much like your laugh that he had dropped his weapon, scanning the empty rooftops with wide, bloodshot eyes.
Now, two years after your death, Bucky didn’t just feel your absence. He saw you everywhere.
He would be standing in the briefing room, staring blankly at Clara while she spoke and for a terrifying split second, the air warped. Clara’s insufferable face would smudge into yours. Your eyes bright looking at him with that fierce unwavering devotion that used to pull him back from the edge of his nightmares. He’d blink, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird, only to find Clara staring at him with that fake, pitying concern.
“James? Are you even listening to me?”
He wouldn’t answer. He’d just turn on his heel and walk out, his flesh hand trembling so violently he had to shove it deep into his leather jacket pocket.
The grief was no longer static. It was alive, hunting him through every hallway of the compound, haunting every corner of his mind.
Late at night, when the rest of the Tower slept, Bucky stood out on the high balcony overlooking the city. The rain was falling soft and cold, smearing his dark hair to his forehead. He leaned his heavy weight against the steel railing, staring down into the dark. His breathing ragged and hollow.
“I’m going crazy, doll,” Bucky whispered into the empty wind, his voice breaking, stripped of every ounce of strength he possessed. “I swear to God… I can feel you. I can feel you right with me.”
He closed his eyes, squeezing them shut until white hot sparks danced behind his eyelids, trying to fight off the hallucinations.
He expected the dark.
He expected the crushing weight of his own isolation.
He didn’t expect the sudden, violent surge of heat that blossomed against the back of his neck.
It wasn’t a hallucination.
The warm and weird rain falling over the balcony didn’t touch him anymore. It was vaporizing before it could hit his skin, turning into a soft, glowing mist in the night air. The air pressure around the compound dropped drastically, the clouds above the skyline swirling in a quiet, golden vortex.
Behind him, hovering half an inch above the wet steel tiles of the balcony, a figure stood bathed in a soft, ethereal glow.
Bucky held his breath, terrified that if he opened his eyes, if he turned around, the vision would shatter like thin glass and leave him drowning in the cold rain again.
“Bucky,” a voice whispered.
It wasn’t a memory. It didn’t sound like a phantom echoing through an empty room. The sound carried a deep, resonant kinetic frequency that made the glass panels of the Tower hum softly, rich with a terrifying, warmth and filled with an unmistakable, overwhelming love.
Bucky froze, his entire body locking up as a single, hot tear cut through the rain on his cheek. He kept his eyes closed.
“Please…” he sobbed, his voice raw, refusing to turn around. “Please stop… don’t do this to me anymore…”
The voice faded into the sound of the falling rain. The unnatural warmth that had lingered against the back of his neck vanished as quickly as it had come, replaced by the bitter biting chill of the New York wind.
Bucky forced now his eyes open and turned around, his heart pounding a frantic, painful rhythm against his ribs.
The balcony was completely empty.
There was no ethereal glow, no floating figure and no warm hand waiting to reach for him. There were only the wet reflective tiles, the dark glass railing, and the endless indifferent skyline of Manhattan stretching into the dark. The rain slammed back down onto his shoulders, soaking through his shirt and wetting his hair and his face.
“No…” Bucky choked out, his hands slamming onto the cold railing as he searched the empty balcony. “No, no, no… Y/N!” He yelled in the night.
He yelled your name into the storm, but the wind just whipped the sound away, swallowing it whole.
His knees buckled under the weight of his own collapsing mind.
Bucky hit the wet deck hard, his vibranium arm clattering against the steel plates. He buried his face into his flesh hand, his broad shoulders shaking violently as dry, ragged sobs tore from his throat.
It was all in his head.
The heat, the voice, the golden light and the soft hum in his radio. It was all his broken brain playing cruel, merciless tricks on him. Two years of suffocating guilt and unwashed grief had finally snapped his sanity.
He was hallucinating.
He was drowning in ghosts of his own making, desperately projecting you onto the empty night air because the reality of your death was too unbearable to survive.
From inside the living quarters, through the heavy glass window, Steve stood in the dim lighting, watching his best friend weeping alone in the storm. Steve lowered his head, his own eyes burning with helpless, crushing sorrow, unable to cross that glass threshold and tell Bucky what they both already knew.
You weren’t coming back.
Out on the balcony, Bucky curled into himself against the freezing deck, pressing his forehead to the wet tiles.
“I’m losing it, doll,” Bucky wept into the dark, his fingers digging into the steel until the metal groaned beneath his grip. “I’m losing my mind… and I can’t stop seeing you.”
Far above the overcast layer, entirely concealed from view, a solitary burst of heat flashed amber for a fleeting moment before dissolving into the darkness. Unseen, unreachable and vast distances from the shattered figure crouching in the downpour.
Bucky caught the fleeting flash. Slipping back inside his quarter, he moved with silent practiced speed, cutting through the darkened corridors to reach the access stairwell that led straight to the compound’s roof. He grabbed a bottle of whiskey on his way to the roof.
Steve watched Bucky from the living room's window, barely registering the movement as the man stepped out of sight. Assuming his friend was just heading in for the night, Steve didn't give it a second thought.
Bucky stood on the slick, perilous edge of the compound’s roof, thirty floors above the concrete below. The rain had settled into a fine, bitter mist, turning the sky into a vast sheet of slate gray.
In his vibranium hand, he gripped an amber bottle of expensive whiskey by the neck. It was useless, his super soldier metabolism burned through alcohol before it could ever hit his bloodstream, rendering the burning liquid nothing more than bitter water on his tongue. Yet he kept drinking, seeking the sting in his throat just to feel something real. His metal fingers tightened around the glass.
Hard.
Then harder.
The thick brown bottle began to groan under the sheer pressure, micro-fractures spiderwebbing through the glass before he consciously forced his grip to loosen, his breathing coming in shallow, ragged hitches.
His mind was playing cruel, relentless tricks on him, dragging him backward through time until the present blurred into a fever dream of agonizing memories.
He swore he saw you right there, floating beside him.
Suddenly, he wasn’t on the roof anymore.
In his head, he was back in that quiet, forgotten corner of Central Park, two springs ago. The sun was dipping low over the skyline, painting the autumn leaves in rich shades of copper and gold. He remembered how cold his hands had been, how his heart had hammered against his ribs like a panicked animal as they sat together on that green wooden bench.
He remembered raising his flesh arm in the air, feigning a slow, awkward yawn just to drape it over your shoulders.
He remembered the exact way your body had fit so perfectly under his arm, like a missing piece falling into place after eighty years in the cold dark. When you turned your head up to look at him, he smiled. A real, genuine, unguarded smile that had reached his eyes for the first time since the war.
“Trying to find the perfect moment…” he whispered back then, leaving the phrase hanging in the quiet afternoon air, terrified he would ruin it if he said another word.
You didn’t wait.
You raised your warm hand to his chin, your fingers soft against his stubble and pulled him gently toward you. His arm had slid smoothly from your shoulder down your side, settling around your waist, pulling you tightly into his chest as if defying the rest of the world to separate you. Both of your arms wrapped straight up around his neck, drawing him down until his lips met yours.
A kiss that was soft, shy, and entirely life-altering.
A sudden, sharp blast of freezing wind ripped through the memories, shattering the park bench and dissolving your warmth into the bleak air.
Bucky blinked, his vision swimming.
He was back on the edge of the roof.
Alone.
Silent, heavy tears welled in his bloodshot eyes and spilled over, tracking down his pale, rain soaked cheeks. He took a heavy step forward, walking right up to the outermost lip of the steel beam. He tilted his body slightly to the side, peering down into the abyss. There was nothing under him. Just empty air and thousands of flickering, indifferent lights spilling from the city below, looking like drowning stars.
A faint, metallic noise echoed behind him. A familiar, steady footstep against the wet gravel of the roof.
Steve.
His best friend.
His anchor now that you weren’t there anymore.
The last man alive who knew the boy from Brooklyn, the only person actively keeping him tethered to this world when every fiber of Bucky’s soul wanted to let go.
Bucky didn’t turn around. He just stared down at the abyss, lifting the bottle to take another deep, burning gulp of whiskey.
Steve moved closer but slower, informed by FRIDAY that his best friend was on the edge of the roof.
“I swore, Steve,” Bucky choked out, his voice cracking down the middle drowning in a wave of raw, unadulterated anguish. “I swore… I saw her…” He buried his face into the arm holding the bottle, violent sobs shaking his broad shoulders.
“Buck,” Steve said softly, his voice measured and cautious and heavy with a deep aching sorrow. He took one slow, deliberate step forward across the wet tiles, keeping his hands low and visible.
“No,” Bucky whispered, his voice dropping into a desperate, razor thin plea. He shook his head frantically. “Don’t ‘Buck’ me... I know what I saw... she was right there... I felt her, Steve... I felt her warm…”
“She’s gone, pal.” Steve tried to explain, his tone dripping with a quiet, heartbreaking empathy that only made Bucky’s chest hurt worse. “The building crumbled on her. She didn’t survive. You… you think about her, and I get it. God knows we all do…” Steve moved another inch closer, his blue eyes pleading. “But you need to let her go, Buck. You’re killing yourself out here.”
Bucky went deathly still.
For a long, suffocating second, he seemed to ponder Steve’s words, staring blankly into the amber glass of the bottle as the rain washed over them both. The silence between them grew so heavy it felt like a physical weight.
“You think I’m crazy?” Bucky asked quietly, his eyes fixed on the distant lights below.
“No,” Steve replied calmly and honestly, though his chest tightened as he recognized the terrifying hollow exhaustion in his friend’s voice. “No, I don’t think you’re crazy. But I need… we all need the old Bucky back.”
Bucky let out a soft and bitter laugh. A sound completely devoid of humor, hollowed out by two years of relentless torment.
“The old Bucky died with her,” he whispered.
Before Steve could react, before his super soldier reflexes could bridge the distance between them, Bucky let go of the bottle. It shattered on the beam and in the very same second, Bucky leaned backward off the edge of the roof, letting gravity pull his heavy frame straight into the dark, empty drop.
“NO! BUCK!” Steve yelled, his voice echoing in a desperate, panicked tear through the rain as he sprinted for the ledge.
Steve’s fingers grazed the wet leather of Bucky’s boot, but gravity was faster.
The wind howled in Bucky’s ears as the city roared up to meet him. The air rushed past his face, cold and biting, blowing away the tears, and the lingering scent of bourbon.
As Bucky hit the grass of the compound’s courtyard, he felt something horrifyingly close to peace.
CRASH.
The impact echoed through the valley like a bomb going off.
The reinforced concrete floor of the upper plaza imploded beneath his weight, shattering into a crater of spiderwebbed cracks and flying gravel. The sheer kinetic force tore through his body with sickening violence, snapping his ribs and shattering his kneecaps.
His super soldier serum absorbed the lethal blow, violently stitching his organs together before the fatal shock could take hold.
He couldn’t die.
His body was a biological vault, engineered to survive the impossible, condemning him to feel every ounce of the agony like when he threw himself of the helicopter with Sam and no parachute.
Bucky lay in the center of the crater. His body was a screaming inferno of the pain he was of course feeling but it paled in comparison to the agonizing, hollow realization in his chest.
He was still here.
He was still alive.
Heavy, frantic footsteps sprinted across the courtyard.
“Bucky! God, Bucky!” Steve slid on his knees into the broken concrete, his hands shaking violently as he hovered over Bucky’s broken frame. “Don’t move! Don’t move, I’ve got you!”
“Why…” Bucky rasped, his voice a broken wet whisper as he stared up at the stormy New York sky, his chest heaving against fractured ribs. “Why won’t it just… stop…”
“Hold on, Buck,” Steve choked out, his eyes red rimmed and panicked as he called for medical. “Just hold on…”
Bucky closed his eyes, drifting into the merciful blackness of shock.
Far above the dense cloud cover, the soft flare of incandescent golden heat pulsed silently against the dark expanse of atmosphere. You could see every tear tracking down his cheek. You could feel his racing pulse.
A choked, silent sob caught in your own throat.
It was your fault.
You decided to see him closer and he thought he was mad.
The sterile white lights of the compound’s medical bay were blinding when Bucky opened his eyes. The rhythmic and mechanical beep of the heart monitor echoed off the pristine glass walls.
Even with the super soldier serum rapidly knitting his torn muscles and setting his fractured bones back into place, the sheer impact left Bucky battered, bruised and completely exhausted.
The severe internal trauma had slowed his body down just enough for Bruce to hook him up to diagnostic monitors, running continuous scans to make sure his organs healed without permanent complications.
Bruce stood near the main screen, adjusting a set of IV fluids designed to help flush the micro tears in Bucky’s muscle tissue. His face was etched with deep worry and gentle concern.
“The serum is doing its job, Steve,” Bruce said quietly, turning to look at Steve, who was sitting in a metal chair beside the bed. His face buried in his hands. “His ribs are already fused back together. His shoulder is set. Structurally… he’s going to be fine in a few hours. But physically surviving a fall like that doesn’t mean his mind is okay.”
Bucky lay motionless on the examination table, staring blankly at the acoustic ceiling tiles. The physical pain in his chest was fading into a dull throbbing ache, but the emptiness inside him was consuming.
“He thinks he’s seeing her, Bruce,” Steve rasped, raising his head, his eyes hollow with fatigue and heartbreak. “He tried to end it because he thought he was losing his mind. He’s a super soldier... he knows he can survive from a fall like that...”
Bruce let out a slow heavy sigh, placing a hand on Steve’s shoulder before looking over at Bucky. “Grief like this… it alters brain chemistry, especially for someone who’s already carried so much trauma. The mind starts trying to construct what it desperately needs to survive.”
Through the clear observation glass of the medical bay, Clara stood in the hallway, watching Bucky lie broken on the table. She kept her posture soft, her eyes wide with fake, tragic concern for the benefit of any passing S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. But inside, her jaw was tight with bitter, mounting resentment.
Two years.
Two years of watching him throw himself into suicide missions, reject every advance and now literally jump off a building.
All for the ghost of a woman she thought she had buried in Prague.
Bucky slowly turned his head away from the glass, refusing to look at Clara, but refusing to look at Steve either. He closed his eyes, drawing in a shallow, painful breath through his bruised chest praying for a sleep where the phantoms wouldn’t follow him.
The heavy beat of the heart monitor was the only sound left in the quiet medical room.
Bruce’s sedative, a dense compound strength sedative engineered specifically to bypass a super soldier’s relentless metabolism, finally dragged Bucky down into a deep, dreamless oblivion. His heavy chest rose and fell in slow, even cycles. For the first time in two years, the sharp lines etched into his face had softened in sleep, leaving him looking vulnerable and deeply human.
Steve had been forced to leave an hour ago after Bruce insisted he rest, and the sterile bay was now bathed in the dim, blue glow of the nighttime monitors.
Outside, the storm had finally broken.
A quiet, warm breeze swept through the night air, gently pushing open the curtains. Between the fabric, a shadow fell across on the floor.
Silently, floating half an inch above the polished linoleum, a figure slipped into the room.
You didn’t make a sound. Gravity bowed around you, the cosmic humming beneath your skin kept you so tightly controlled that it didn’t even set off the room’s delicate thermal sensors.
For two long years, you stayed in the shadows watching from the atmosphere, trying to track Apex and waiting for the exact right moment to dismantle the network that had tried to destroy you both. You had forced yourself to stay away to keep him safe from what you were becoming.
But watching him fall tonight, watching him try to break himself against the earth just to reach you shattered whatever cold resolve you had left.
You hovered beside his bed, looking down at his pale, sleeping face.
The sight of the bruised skin over his jaw and the fresh IV tape on his flesh hand sent a sharp, agonizing pull through your chest. The ancient, fiery force inside you quieted, settling down into a soft, tender warmth.
Slowly, you drifted closer, letting your boots softly touch the floor.
You reached out with your flesh hand. You hesitated for a split second, terrified that the sheer power humming through your veins might wake him, before gently laying your fingers against his temple.
A faint, crimson spark touched his skin. The residual from Bruce’s sedative, the lingering pain in his broken ribs and the ragged chaotic storm in his mind smoothed out instantly under your touch. Bucky let out a long, peaceful exhale in his sleep, leaning his head slightly into the familiar warm pressure of your hand.
“I’m sorry, Bucky,” you whispered.
Your voice didn’t ring out with the dangerous, acoustic power that could shatter mountains. It was soft, rich and filled with the exact same tender devotion he had held onto in his memories for two years.
You leaned down, pressing a lingering kiss to his forehead. The soft warmth of your skin left a subtle, lingering heat on his temples. A physical proof, far beyond any memory or hallucination, that you were alive.
Through the clear glass wall of the corridor, a faint movement caught your eye.
You turned your head slightly. Clara was walking down the far hallway, holding a clipboard, her insufferable and smug posture on full display in the quiet night.
Your eyes flared. A sudden, terrifying flash of incandescent gold and crimson that illuminated the dim room in a flash of divine wrath. The air pressure in the corridor dropped instantly, the glass wall vibrating with a microscopic, lethal frequency that almost cracked the reinforced pane right in front of her.
Clara froze in the hallway, looking around in sudden, icy terror as the hair on her arms stood on end, though she couldn’t see you hidden in the shadows of the bay.
You looked back down at Bucky one last time, gently brushing a strand of dark, damp hair away from his eyes.
“Soon, my love...” you murmured against his skin. “I’m coming back for you.”
With a silent, effortless movement, you stepped backward out of the window and rose into the dark sky, disappearing into the stars like a bolt of golden lightning, leaving Bucky sleeping peacefully in the quiet room no longer haunted by a phantom.
You had it all. The man you were going to marry, the beautiful home you planned to move into, the bookstore days away from grand opening. Life with Steve Rogers was perfect. Until it all came crashing down. So what happens when your soon-to-be husband passes away unexpectedly and you’re left to pick up the pieces alongside his best friends, one of whom you can’t stand… right? Oh and one more thing, he was hiding a devastating secret that changes everything in an instant.
Loosely based on the movie Catch and Release. Somewhat slow burn, enemies to friends to eventual lovers, angst, smut, female reader.
Buckle up for this one!!
TW: mentions of depression, anxiety, panic attacks, death, and grief
Previous Chapter
James and I hadn’t spoken to each other in person for a few weeks. By the time I’m up, he’s already gone for the day and comes back late at night. Sam and Tony can feel that we’re avoiding each other like the plague but decide it’s best to not ask. He would text me brief updates on the status of things like with Sarah and the money, but nothing else. It’s easier this way.
Business has been booming, and Wanda and I have had our hands full with order requests and event collaborations. We knew that a bookstore was what the town had wanted but didn’t realize the commodity it would become. Keeping busy gave me an escape from reality and a distraction from several feelings.
As I got ready for the day, I noticed the house was quieter than normal. I walk into the kitchen and see a note from the boys letting me know they had to go out of town for the day to pick up supplies from their manufacturer. Barnes had been long gone and I had the house to myself. It felt eerie how empty it was without their presence. I wish Sam and Tony would have told me. I could have gone along. It was my first day off in a while and I wanted to spend some time with them. Instead, I choose to spend the day doing a little shopping to occupy my mind. I make a list of the items I want to purchase and head out.
Making my way outside, I see a gorgeous woman with red hair holding a young boy’s hand. I stop dead in my tracks. It can’t be. Why is she here?
I make a beeline for my car and here her call after me. “Um excuse me! Hi excuse me!” Nows your chance Y/N make a run for it! I sigh as I watch her speed walk toward me in her heels, kid in tow. “Hi so sorry to bother you. I’m looking for Bucky Barnes, do you know where he is?”
Damnit Barnes, always the thorn in my side. “Sorry, I’m not sure where he is.”
“Well, is anyone home that can help me? I’m Natasha Romanoff. Bucky left me a message about Steve a while back and I scrounged up what I could to get over here,” she sighs. Her son begins to pull her arm to keep walking. She struggles to calm him and looks flustered, apologizing for his behavior. Anger begins to bubble inside of me. Does she not know who I am? Did Steve not mention me at all? If they were simply co-parenting, would he not have mentioned his fiancée who he came back home to after every trip?
I look at her in this state and realize the woman who I crafted in my head isn’t her at all. At least not this version. She has visible bags under her eyes and stress lines along her face. Her outfit, hair, and makeup are all put together but the cracks are farther below the surface, most likely from the hardships of motherhood. A pang of guilt hits me as I realize what it must have taken to travel all this way.
Swallowing my pride I decide against revealing who I am. “Sorry no one’s home at the moment. I could leave a message?”
“Who are you anyways?” She asks hesitantly.
“Oh I’m the housekeeper,” I lie through my teeth.
“Um yeah a message would be great. Could you just tell Bucky that I’m here and need to talk to him as soon as possible? Let him know we’re staying at the Crystal Waters Inn just down the road.”
“Yeah I’ll let him know.” I promise.
“Thank you so much you’re a gem.” She begins to walk away when an intrusive thought leaves my head and rushes out.
“Your son. He’s not six is he?” I question, scared that I know the answer already.
“He’s about to be four! He’s getting so big,” she smiles. “Thank you again for being so kind. Hope to see you around!”
I wait for them to leave my line of sight and bolt back into the house. This can’t be happening. What the fuck? I could accept that Steve had lied about something before me, but this changes everything. We had already been dating when they got together. The room begins to spin, and I lean against the wall, sliding down onto the kitchen floor. I can’t stop the sobs that are leaving my body. I feel a heavy weight crushing my chest, and my vision goes blurry. Somehow I manage to pull out my phone to call for help. Choosing the first person I can think to call. The phone rings a few times before the other line answers.
“Hello?” a confused voice answers.
“Bucky,” I sob out.
“Y/N, what happened? What’s going on?” He asks in a worried tone.
“I- I can’t breathe. Everything is so fucked. Why did you lie? Why did Steve lie?!”
“I’m on my way, sit tight. Talk to me doll. What’s going on?” He asks again.
“I saw her James. She’s here with her son. They’re here.” I whisper. It dawns on me that I’m crying to Barnes of all people and he’s dropped whatever he was doing to come help me. He’s never dealt with me in this state before.
Bucky bursts through the door with a panicked look on his face. He sees me, a sobbing mess, on the floor and crouches down. “Fuck, Y/N I’m so sorry. This wasn’t supposed to happen this way.”
The reality of the situation and how agonizing this all is sets in, and my breathing speeds up. I’m having a full-blown panic attack.
Barnes’ eyes widen and he isn’t sure what to do. “How do I help you? Please, Y/N you have to take deeper breaths.”
“Cold shower,” I say between staggered breaths. Whenever I’ve had an anxiety attack, a cold shower was the only way to shock my body out of it. Bucky rushes to scoop me up off the floor and into my bedroom. He turns the shower on and makes sure it’s as cold as possible. Hesitating for a brief moment, he removes our shoes and places both of us in the water.
The water shocks my system and instantly throws me out of my panicked state. I manage to calm my breathing a bit and take in the scene before me. Bucky is holding my face between his hands and telling me to breathe. His clothes are soaking wet and his hair clings to his face. I’m sure I look no better. We stare at each other for a brief moment, the only sound coming from the running shower.
“You owe me the truth, Barnes. Not some bullshit lie to protect Steve.” I demand, water still running down my back.
“I know, and I’m sorry. Can we maybe get out of this bathroom first?” He asks. I turn the water off and we ring out our clothes as much as we can. Throwing Bucky a towel, I briefly watch as he tries to dry himself off. His black shirt clings to his chest and accentuates the muscle carved out on his body. He catches me staring and I look away embarrassed.
We part ways for a moment to change into dry outfits. James knocks on my door before entering again. He sits on the chair at my desk facing me. The room in the air turns awkward.
“I’ll take care of this. I can fix this.” He attempts to promise.
“You can’t just fix all of his mistakes James! He made them and he’s not here to explain himself. I just want the truth. I know the kid’s younger than you had said. He cheated, didn’t he?”
“He is younger, yes. And Steve did meet her when you were already in his life. But he didn’t cheat, not technically.” Bucky answered.
I look at him confused. We had been together at that point for at least a year.
“Do you remember that first big fight you guys had? It was about his mom and the way she was treating you. Steve didn’t know how to please both of you and was afraid of speaking up to her.” He questions.
“Yeah we got into it pretty bad. I had mentioned his mother quite a few times. At that point we both didn’t know how to fix things. We broke things off for a bit and realized that we loved each other more than we hated the problems.”
“That break was really hard for him. He came to visit me and I took him out. The rest of what I shared was the truth. When he won you back, he freaked when Nat told him about the baby. He was so afraid that you’d call it quits for good that time.” James explains.
I stand up angry at the thought of the mess this all caused. I walk over to James and stand in front of him. “So you’re telling me, when I was a mess crying over that man he was with someone else? And when we got back together and he told me I was all he could think about he had been with her?! What kind of sick shit is that?” I yell, poking Bucky’s chest. He stands up and towers over me.
“I know you’re angry Y/N. I don’t blame you. He made his choices and they weren’t always perfect. All I know is that he thought he was doing it out of love.”
“And you went along with it. With all of the lies and secrets. You didn’t see anything wrong with it?!” I shove his chest but he doesn’t budge. This makes me angrier and I try to shove him again.
Bucky grabs my wrists and pleads for me to stop. He gently pushes me against a wall, wrists pinned above my head. He tries to calm me down, worried I may have another panic attack. My chest is heaving, but not from anxiety. His deep blue eyes stare into mine and we both find ourselves frozen. The tension thick enough to cut through. Before the moment can be ruined, I push my body closer to his. He takes this as an invitation to make the move we both had been waiting for and crashes his lips onto mine. We pour all of the anger and need into the kiss, unsure if we will ever get a chance to spill our feelings again. I throw my hands into his hair, pulling at the brown strands. He groans and bites my lip. Pleasure bursts through my body at the sound. His hands are gripping my waist, steadying me from falling over from our rash movements. We melt into each other with ease, as if this is natural for us.
I walk us over to my bed, and he pushes me down. He works quickly to remove my shirt and takes in my physique, studying the map of my body. Our lips find each other again, moving in sync. He begins to remove my pants, slowly unbuttoning them. I whimper at his slow pace, and he groans again. “Fuck, doll.”
His words snap me out of the daze I am in and I realize how far we have taken this. I grow stiff and look at him with wide eyes. Bucky emerges from his trance as well and quickly sits up.
“Sorry, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have- we shouldn’t,” he stammers.
“It was a mistake, you’re right. We can just forget about this,” I assure him. I quickly find my shirt and put it back on. We stare at each other in bewilderment, cautious to not scare the other off.
“I’m going to talk to Natasha. I’ll take care of things,” he promises. Bucky rushes out of the room, leaving me to ponder the events that just transpired. I try to shake the images of him staring at me with lust-filled eyes. Throwing myself back down on the bed, I huff in frustration. It was just the heat of the moment, nothing more. My body aches at the thought of what would have happened if we had continued. I can’t think about that.
Trying to find something to distract myself, I find my journal and begin to write out my thoughts.
Steve,
Guess the cat’s out of the bag, huh? I’m so beyond devastated that you kept this from me. I wish you could explain why you did. Was the foundation of our relationship built on a lie? Did you truly think it was better to deceive me than come clean? I’m sure this ate you up inside. But it’s tearing everything I believed about us apart. I try to think about moments that you might have wanted to tell me the truth and only one comes to mind.
It was when we took a drive up the coast. The trip was so beautiful. The green on the mountains never made me feel so alive. I always felt me best when I was with you and this day was no different. I had just decided to leave my job and fully invest my time in Book It. You were so proud of me you decided a trip was the best way to celebrate. We packed up the truck, stopped by for some sandwiches from Willy’s and left the real world behind for a moment. It was a perfect day. On the drive back, you said you needed to tell me something. I asked if what you needed to tell me was going to ruin this untouchable feeling and you said yes. So I said Don’t tell me. And we smiled at each other. I never thought about what you had to tell me again, and you never brought it up. That was over two years ago.
I think a part of you wanted to come clean Steve. So I understand. But I don’t think I can forgive you. Not yet, anyway. I hope you can understand that. You chose yourself in deciding to keep this hidden. Now I have to choose me in not letting you hold this power over me. I wish I could let this all go, but I’m in the thick of it because of you.
My phone goes off and I see a text from Bucky. I close my journal and read his message.
James: Talked with Natasha and we’re going to get it all sorted. I’m sorry if I pushed things too far. I’m going to find a hotel to stay at and get out of your hair. As soon as this is sorted you won’t have to deal with me again.
A pain hits my chest at the last sentence. Shouldn’t I be happy to not have to deal with him?
hi everyone, just a little announcement ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و ♡
good morning lovebugs! i would just like to make something very clear about my page - i will be writing smut, but it will NOT be non-con/dub-con/lack of consent. i see too many smut fics where non-con is normalized as a kink, and that is NOT okay under any circumstances.
do not request me to write it or you will be immediately blocked & reported. i commented on a Peter Parker x reader noncon and told them how disrespectful and disgusting it was. then, i was told i was “kink shaming.” you are not being “kink shamed,” you are being called out RIGHTFULLY for glamorizing an extremely sensitive and traumatizing situation for millions of people around the world.
report and block every single noncon/dubcon you see, because it could even trigger an SA survivor who’s simply scrolling on tumblr. stop normalizing sexualizing gross shit like that!!! it’s horrid. (#’ing a lot of things so everyone can see this post.)
anyway, hope everyone has a good day. if you write that kinda stuff, you’re fucked up. <3
Summary: When ruthless mafia don Bucky Barnes hears the enchanting voice of a beautiful lounge singer and rescues her from brutal abuse, his dangerous obsession turns into fierce protection and all-consuming love, pulling her from the shadows into his opulent, violent world until she willingly becomes his forever.
Paring: (Mafia) Bucky x Reader
word count: 8000+
warnings: NSFW, SMUT, fluff
A/N : Hello friends! Here is chapter 18! 5 more chapters to go! Thank you for reading!
Masterlist
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Chapter 18 - Table For Two
Bucky lay awake in the quiet dark, the only light a thin silver ribbon slipping between the heavy drapes from the moon outside. The mansion was silent except for the soft, even rhythm of your breathing against his chest. You were curled into him—naked, warm, utterly spent—your head tucked under his chin, one leg draped over his thigh, your hand resting open on his ribs like you’d fallen asleep reaching for him even in dreams.
He hadn’t moved since he’d pulled you into his arms after the last shuddering wave of your release. His body still hummed with the aftershocks—muscles loose but electric, skin slick where you’d pressed against him, the faint scent of sex and your perfume clinging to the sheets. His cock, soft now, rested heavy against his thigh, still sensitive from how many times he’d spilled inside you. Cum leaked slowly from between your legs, warm and sticky against his skin, a quiet, intimate reminder that he’d marked you in the most primal way possible.
He stared down at your sleeping face—lashes dark against flushed cheeks, lips parted and kiss-bruised, hair a wild tangle across his pillow. This was what obsession looked like when it finally won.
Months of watching you from shadowed booths.
Months of sending flowers and paying debts and orchestrating break-ins just to pull you closer.
Months of jerking off alone in this very bed to the memory of your voice, your smile, the way your hips moved when you sang.
Months of restraint—of almost-kisses, of brushing your hair back, of holding you too long after a hug—because he knew if he moved too fast you’d run.
And now here you were.
In his bed.
Naked.
Fucked raw and full of his cum.
Asleep in the cradle of his arms like you belonged there.
His ruthless side—cold, calculating, the part of him that had buried bodies in the Pine Barrens and burned rival families to ash—stirred beneath his skin. It whispered the same vow it always did when something precious was threatened:
No one touches her. No one comes near her. No one even looks at her the wrong way. I’ll burn this city to the ground before I let anyone take her from me.
He pressed his lips to your forehead—soft, reverent—and tightened his hold just enough to feel your heartbeat against his chest.
You were his now.
Completely.
Irrevocably.
And he would kill to keep it that way.
You woke slowly—warm, heavy-limbed, wrapped in muscle and cotton sheets that smelled like him. Sunlight had crept past the drapes, painting thin gold lines across the bed. Bucky was still there—awake, propped on one elbow, watching you with that quiet, intense gaze that made your stomach flutter even now.
His hair was a mess—long strands falling across his forehead, one lock caught in his lashes. His chest was bare, tattoos stark against tanned skin, faint red marks from your nails still visible across his pecs. He looked softer in daylight, but no less dangerous.
You smiled sleepily, stretching against him.
“Morning,” you murmured.
He leaned down and kissed you—slow, lazy, morning-soft. Then another kiss on your cheek. Your nose. Your eyelid. Your temple. A constellation of gentle presses that made you laugh under your breath.
“How are you feeling?” he asked against your skin, voice still rough from sleep and last night.
You shifted, feeling the pleasant ache between your thighs, the faint soreness in your muscles. “Good. A little sore… but good sore.”
He hummed—pleased, possessive—and nuzzled into the crook of your neck, lips brushing the spot he’d marked last night. “Good sore means I did my job right.”
You giggled, squirming as his stubble tickled. “Stop—you’re tickling me.”
He didn’t stop. He nosed deeper, growling playfully against your throat. “I want to spend all day in this bed with you. Just like this. Fucking you over and over until you can’t walk straight.”
“Bucky!” You laughed harder, shoving at his shoulder—half-hearted, delighted. “You’re terrible.”
“I’m serious,” he murmured, nipping your earlobe. “I’ve got nothing planned. No meetings. No calls. Just you. Naked. Under me. On top of me. Against the wall. Wherever you want.”
Your cheeks burned, but you couldn’t stop smiling. “You’re going to kill me.”
“Only with orgasms,” he promised, kissing the corner of your mouth. “Lots of them.”
You laughed again—bright, unguarded—and he drank the sound like wine.
Time passed in a soft, golden blur.
Mornings became lazy—coffee in bed, his head in your lap while you read, your fingers combing through his hair. Afternoons were quiet—walks on the mansions grounds (his coat around your shoulders, his arm around your waist), or you playing piano while he worked in the next room with the door open so he could hear every note. Evenings were dinners by candlelight—sometimes in the formal dining room, sometimes on trays in his bed—and nights were his.
He took you again and again—slow and reverent one night, rough and possessive the next. He learned your body like a map he’d memorized in dreams—every gasp, every shiver, every place that made you arch and beg. You learned his too—the way his breath hitched when you kissed the scar on his ribs, the way his control frayed when you whispered “please” against his throat, the way he held you after like you were something fragile and priceless.
He bought you things constantly.
Every time you tried to protest—“Bucky, you don’t have to—” he’d silence you with a kiss and a quiet, “I want to. Let me spoil you.”
You were always grateful—always kissed him thank-you, always hugged him tight when he came home. When his car pulled into the drive you’d run to the foyer barefoot, throw your arms around his neck, and kiss him like he’d been gone years instead of hours.
He lived for those moments.
This was what he’d wanted from the second he saw you on that stage—your voice, your smile, your softness. You in his home. In his bed. In his arms. Safe. Loved. His.
One Tuesday evening he came home late.
You heard the front doors open—heard the low murmur of his men, the heavy tread of his boots. You were in the kitchen, barefoot in a pretty floral dress, hair loose, sleeves rolled up as you plated the steak you’d made yourself. The cooks had the night off at your request. You wanted to do this for him.
The scent of garlic and rosemary clung to the air, a warm, domestic blanket over the mansion’s cold, polished edges. You were plating the steak, the seared crust gleaming under the low kitchen lights, when the hallway doors swung open.
Bucky stepped into the open-plan living space, his presence a physical shift in the atmosphere. He didn’t just enter; he occupied. The tailored black suit he wore was a second skin of authority, but it was frayed tonight—tie loosened, top button undone, faint creases at the elbows from a long day. A faint, almost metallic scent clung to him—not blood, but the cold, resolved energy of the city’s underbelly. His blue eyes, usually so sharp, were softened by fatigue, yet they pinned you as soon as they found you.
He stopped in the doorway, taking in the sight of you—barefoot, dress swaying around your knees, hair loose and catching the warm light, standing at his kitchen island like you belonged there.
“What’s all this?” he asked, voice low and warm with surprise.
You turned with a smile that felt deliberately light. “Dinner. I told the cooks to take the night off. I wanted to cook for you.”
He crossed the room in three strides—came up behind you, arms sliding around your waist, pulling your back to his chest. His lips found the side of your neck.
“You’re too sweet to me,” he murmured, nipping gently at your earlobe. “Always so thoughtful.”
You laughed—soft, delighted—as his hands roamed. One slid up to cup your breast through the dress; the other drifted lower, cupping you between your legs. You squirmed, half-laughing, half-moaning.
“Bucky—dinner’s almost ready.”
He pouted against your skin—playful, exaggerated. “But you’re already ready for me.”
You pushed his hand away gently, giggling. “Stop. Food first.”
He groaned dramatically but stepped back, hands raised in mock surrender. “Fine. But after dinner, you’re mine.”
Dinner was candlelit—candles flickering on the long oak table, wine poured into crystal glasses, steak and roasted vegetables you’d made yourself. You sat side by side instead of across from each other. He held your hand the entire time—thumb stroking your knuckles, lifting your fingers to his lips between bites, kissing them softly.
A ghost of a smirk touched his lips. He shed his suit jacket, hanging it with a care that belied the violence the fabric might have witnessed. His shirt, a crisp white, was unbuttoned at the collar, revealing the strong column of his throat. He moved to you, not to embrace you immediately, but to stand close enough that his heat radiated against your back. His hands, those famously lethal hands, settled on your hips, his thumbs pressing into the dip just above your pelvis.
“This dinner is so good,” he said, his voice a low rasp that bypassed your ears and went straight to your spine.
“It’s just steak,” you replied, turning with a smile that felt deliberately light. “You look like you’ve been wrestling heaven’s darker angels.”
“Only the ones who deserved it,” he murmured, his mouth near your ear. His breath was warm. “Now I’m home. With you.”
You felt the claim in his tone. It wasn’t a statement of fact; it was a reassertion of territory. You were his territory. You let him steer you gently to the dining table, a massive slab of dark oak, and you sat beside him, not across from him. The proximity was a game you both played—a game of simmering control.
The dinner began in a quiet hum. You ate, you talked about nothing consequential, your knees brushing under the table. His gaze, however, was a constant, slow-burning pressure. It tracked the movement of your hand bringing a fork to your lips, lingered on the pulse point at your neck, dropped to the swell of your breasts under your simple, knee-length dress.
His own eating was methodical, powerful. He cut his steak with precise motions, but his attention was splintered. After a sip of wine, he set his glass down and let his hand fall to your thigh. Not a grab, but a possession. His palm lay flat on the silk of your dress, his fingers a loose cage over your flesh.
“Thank you for cooking dinner for me, my love,” he said, his voice dropping into a private register. “You are so thoughtful."
“You're welcome. I’m always thinking about you,” you answered, keeping your tone even. You took a bite, chewed slowly, letting him watch.
His fingers began a slow, upward migration. They traced the seam of your dress along your thigh, climbing toward the hem. “What did you think about?”
You swallowed. “That you’d be hungry.”
“I’m always hungry,” he countered, his fingertips now brushing the edge of the fabric, a millimeter from touching the bare skin of your inner thigh. “For this. For you.”
A flush, deep and warm, started in your core and spread outward. You shifted slightly, not away from his touch, but into it, a subtle arch of your spine that offered him more. “The food’s getting cold, Bucky.”
“As much as I love the food,” he said, his voice thickening. His other hand left his fork and came to your face. He turned your chin toward him, his thumb stroking your lower lip. “I care a lot more about this mouth. About what it says to me. About what it does to me.”
You met his gaze, letting a challenge spark in your own. “It’s saying you should eat your dinner.”
He smiled, a real one this time, sharp and predatory. “It’s lying.” He leaned in, his lips a whisper from yours. “It wants to be fucked. It wants my cock in it. It’s thinking about that right now, while you’re trying to play this cool little game.”
Your breathing faltered. He was right. The game was a veneer over a lake of need. You didn’t pull away. Instead, you let your own hand drift from your lap to his. You found the hard, defined ridge of his abdomen under his shirt, and you pressed your palm against it. “Maybe I’m thinking about what’s under this shirt. Maybe I’m thinking about tracing every fucking muscle with my tongue.”
His eyes darkened, the blue becoming a stormy sea. His thumb on your lip pushed inward, gently parting your lips. “Then do it. Stop teasing me.”
“You’re teasing me,” you whispered, your own fingers now working at the buttons of his shirt. You popped the first one, then the second. The stark white fabric parted, revealing a glimpse of his chest—tanned, scarred in places, sculpted with a brutal, beautiful precision. “You come home smelling like power and violence, and you sit here touching me like I’m a fucking artifact. Take what you want, Bucky. Or don’t. I can wait.”
That was the trigger. A low, rough sound escaped his throat, not a moan, but a growl of surrender. The game broke because you refused to lose it; you made him break it.
“Fuck waiting,” he snarled.
In one fluid, violent motion, he stood, his chair scraping back. His hands gripped your waist and hauled you up, not onto the floor, but onto the table itself. Plates clattered, the wine glass tipped, spilling a ruby stain across the oak. He didn’t notice. He pushed you back until you were sitting on the edge, your dress rumpled around you. His hands went to the hem, and he pushed it up, gathering the silk in his fists until it was bunched around your hips, exposing your legs, your thighs, and finally, the simple black lace of your panties.
“These,” he said, his voice guttural. “These are for me. Only for me.”
He didn’t remove them with care. He hooked his fingers into the sides and pulled, the lace stretching then giving way, tearing a little at the seam. He flung the scrap of fabric aside. And then he was looking, his gaze a physical weight on your exposed cunt.
It was the first time he’d seen you like this in this light, in this context. Your pussy was laid bare under the dining room’s ambient glow. The lips were a full, dusky pink, parted slightly in the cool air. They were smooth, hairless, a deliberate choice you made for him. The inner folds glistened with a faint, natural moisture, a sheen of your own anticipation. The scent of you—clean, musky, intimately female—rose between you. He stared, his jaw tightening, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled it.
“Mine,” he breathed, the word a vow.
He didn’t ask. He moved. He bent, his hands spreading your thighs wider, his head dipping between them. His mouth, those famously cynical lips, found you. Not a kiss, but a claiming.
His tongue was hot, broad, and relentless. It didn’t explore; it conquered. It slid along the entire length of your slit, from the top of your clit to the entrance of your cunt, coating itself in your taste. You cried out, a sharp, unfiltered sound, your hands flying to his hair. You gripped the dark strands, not to push him away, but to anchor yourself.
“Bucky…” you gasped.
He answered by deepening his assault. His tongue focused on your clit, circling the swollen bud, then flattening against it, applying a pressure that made your vision blur. He alternated—flicking, sucking, then driving his tongue lower, into the very opening of your cunt. He tasted you there, deep, his nose nudging against your sensitive flesh. The sounds were obscene: the wet, slick noises of his mouth working on you, your own ragged breaths, the soft thud of your heel against the table leg as your body jerked.
His hands held your thighs open, his grip firm, almost painful, but the pain was a bright thread in the tapestry of pleasure. You could feel his own need radiating from him; the hard ridge of his cock pressed against his trousers, a relentless bulge against your calf.
He pulled back for a moment, his lips glistening with your wetness. His eyes, hazy with lust, locked with yours. “You taste like you’ve been thinking about this all day. Like you’ve been fucking dreaming about my mouth on you.”
“I was,” you confessed, your voice shaking. “I dreamed about your cock, too. About it filling me up right here, on this table.”
A fierce, possessive grin split his face. “Then get it for me.”
You pushed at his shoulders, urging him up. He rose, his body towering over you. Your hands went back to his shirt, yanking the remaining buttons free. The fabric fell open, revealing his entire torso—a landscape of hard-earned muscle, of old scars and new strength. Your palms swept over his skin, feeling the heat, the texture, the powerful flex of his abdomen as he breathed. You pushed the shirt off his shoulders, letting it drop to the floor.
His belt was next. You unbuckled it with frantic fingers, the leather giving way. His trousers, you unzipped, and then you shoved them down along with his boxer briefs. His cock sprang free, and you drank in the sight.
It was thick, veined, and fully erect, the head a dark, flushed crimson. It curved slightly upward, a proud, demanding arch. Pre-cum beaded at the tip, a clear promise of what was to come. You reached for it, your fingers wrapping around the base. It was hot, almost feverish, and solid as steel. You stroked him, once, twice, feeling him pulse in your hand.
“You’re so fucking hard for me,” you whispered, awed.
“Only for you,” he gritted out. His hands framed your face, pulling you into a kiss. This wasn’t the gentle brushing from before. This was a sloppy, desperate merger. His tongue plunged into your mouth, tasting himself on your lips, mixing with your own flavor. It was a feedback loop of desire. You kissed him back with equal hunger, your teeth nipping at his lip, your tongue battling his.
He broke the kiss, breathing harshly. “On the table. On your back. Now.”
He helped you, his hands guiding you to lie flat on the oak surface. The wood was cool against your bare shoulders, your back. Your dress was still bunched at your waist, your legs spread for him. He stood between them, his cock poised at your entrance. One hand gripped your hip, the other went to your cunt, his fingers parting your lips, spreading your wetness, ensuring you were open for him.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice a rough stone.
You obeyed. Your eyes found his, and you saw the storm there—the love, the violence, the absolute need. It was all for you.
He didn’t ease into you. He owned you. With a single, powerful thrust, he drove his cock into your cunt.
The penetration was a stunning, full-bodied event. He was big, and he filled you with a sudden, breathtaking pressure. Your inner walls stretched to accommodate him, a delicious, burning ache that instantly blossomed into a wave of pure pleasure. You cried out, a sound that was half pain, half ecstasy, your nails scratching at the table’s surface.
“Fuck… Bucky, you’re so deep…” you moaned.
He held himself there, buried to the root, letting you feel every inch of him. His eyes never left yours. “This cunt is mine. This body is mine. You are mine. Say it.”
“I’m yours,” you gasped, the words a truth you’d never deny.
He began to move.
His fucking was a declaration. He pulled back almost entirely, then slammed back in, each thrust a measured, powerful stroke. The rhythm was relentless, each impact sending a jolt through your body, rocking you against the hard table. The sounds were a crude symphony: the slap of his thighs against yours, the wet, rhythmic squelch of his cock plunging into your soaked channel, your own escalating moans.
One of his hands remained on your hip, anchoring you. The other traveled upward, over your stomach, to your breast. He pushed your dress down further, exposing your bra. He didn’t bother with the clasp; he pulled the cup down, freeing your breast. Your nipple, hard and sensitive, met his palm. He squeezed, not gently, a possessive pressure that made you arch off the table.
“You love this,” he grunted, his thrusts never faltering. “You love being fucked by me like this, like a fucking possession.”
“I love it,” you sobbed, the pleasure coiling tighter inside you, a spring being wound. “I love your cock in my cunt. I love how you fuck me. Fuck me harder.”
He obliged. His pace intensified, his hips driving into you with a faster, more brutal cadence. The table creaked under the force. Your head tossed back, your vision filled with the ceiling’s blurred lines. You were lost in the sensation—the thick, hot invasion of his cock, the rough grasp of his hands, the raw words pouring from his mouth.
After a few minutes of this, his rhythm changed. He slowed, withdrawing almost completely, leaving you empty and gasping. “Turn over,” he ordered, his voice thick with urgency. “Hands and knees on the table. I want to see that ass. I want to fuck that cunt from behind.”
You scrambled, your body slick with sweat and desire. You turned, getting onto your knees, your hands planted on the table for support. Your back was to him now, your ass presented to him. You felt the cool air on your exposed skin, felt the vulnerable, open position you were in.
His gaze was a hot brand on your back. You knew what he was seeing: the curve of your spine, the swell of your ass cheeks, and between them, your cunt, now glistening and gaping slightly from his previous fucking. Your pussy lips were flushed darker, swollen from use, the entrance slick and inviting. Above it, the small, shadowed pucker of your asshole was visible, a forbidden temptation.
He didn’t speak. His hands landed on your ass, spreading you wider. His thumbs pressed into the soft flesh, parting you fully for his view. He leaned in, and you felt his mouth again, not on your cunt this time, but higher. His lips pressed a hot, open-mouthed kiss against the curve of your ass cheek, then his tongue traced a wet line down the crease between your cheeks, towards your cunt.
“So fucking beautiful,” he muttered, his voice muffled against your skin. “This ass. This cunt. All mine.”
Then his cock found you again. From behind, the angle was different, deeper. He guided himself into your wetness, and the entry was a smooth, profound slide. He filled you up, his pelvis meeting your ass with a solid impact. One hand stayed on your hip, the other moved lower, between your legs.
His fingers found your clit.
As he fucked you, his thumb circled the swollen bud, applying a perfect, matching pressure to his thrusts. The dual stimulation was overwhelming. Each drive of his cock into your cunt was paired with a pulse of pleasure from his touch on your clit. Your moans became continuous, a stream of sound that you couldn’t control.
“You’re gonna take my cum,” he growled, his thrusts becoming faster, more urgent. “You’re gonna take it deep in this cunt. I’m gonna fill you up until you’re dripping with me.”
“Yes,” you begged, your body trembling on the edge. “Give it to me, Bucky. Fill me up. I want it.”
His hand on your hip moved to your hair. He gathered the strands at the back of your head, gripping them, not pulling painfully, but holding you firmly, controlling your posture. It was a possessive gesture that sent a fresh spike of submission through you, tightening the coil of your climax even further.
His fucking became erratic, a desperate, final sprint. His breath sawed in and out, his body slamming into yours with a force that shook the table. His fingers on your clit pressed harder, faster.
“Come for me,” he commanded, his voice ragged. “Come on my cock. Now.”
The command, the sensation, the sheer ownership broke you. The climax detonated, not a wave but a chain reaction of white-hot pulses radiating from your cunt and clit outward, searing through your belly, your legs, your fingers. You screamed, your body locking rigid for a moment before convulsing in release. Your cunt clamped around his driving cock, milking him, demanding his own finish.
He felt it, and he lost his last shred of control. With a final, deep roar, he drove into you, burying himself as deep as he could go. You felt him swell inside you, felt the hot, sudden flood of his cum erupting into your depths. It was a series of pulses, a hot, liquid jetting that filled you, marking you internally. He held himself there, grinding into you as he emptied himself, his grip on your hair tightening, his other hand still working your clit through your own climax.
He turned you gently, pulling you against him, your back to his chest. His arms wrapped around you, holding you on the table. His lips found your shoulder, and he nipped at the skin, a gentle, possessive bite.
“You’re mine,” he whispered again, the vow now a satisfied truth.
The room fell quiet except for the soft crackle of the fire in the hearth and the slow, shared rhythm of your breathing. Bucky eased out of you with careful gentleness, a warm trickle following, but he never let you go. He gathered you against his chest—strong arms wrapping around you like armor—pulling the thick duvet over both of your bodies. His lips found your forehead, your temple, the corner of your eye, pressing soft, lingering kisses there as if sealing every inch of you with his devotion.
You nestled closer, cheek against the steady thud of his heart, fingers tracing idle patterns over the ink on his chest. The world outside the mansion—the threats, the blood, the endless power plays—felt impossibly far away. Here, in this bed, in his arms, there was only warmth, safety, and the quiet certainty that you belonged to each other. He had you now—completely, irrevocably—and the ruthless king of New York finally had everything he’d ever truly wanted: you, safe, loved, and his forever.
