One touch
Part 1 // Part 2
Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Enhanced!Reader
Summary: You’ve lived your whole life carrying pieces of others—memories, emotions, pain. A single touch is all it takes. You never meant to fall for Bucky Barnes. Not when one touch showed you the full weight of his past—every wound, every scream, every drop of blood spilled. But the problem with avoiding someone is that it only makes you want them more. And Bucky is just as drawn to you as you are to him.
Word count: 2k
Warnings: Bucky's memories, kinda slow burn.
Note: Might be inspired by that one POV I saw ages ago. Finally, wrote smth on it.
You’re careful, always. Gloves in the winter, long sleeves in the summer, avoiding unnecessary contact. But you weren’t expecting to meet him that day. You weren’t expecting his steel-blue eyes, the hesitant way he reached for you, the calloused warmth of his palm.
James Buchanan Barnes. You thought maybe it would be something vague, like the usual flickering memories you caught from strangers—forgotten birthdays, the feeling of laughter in their ribs, the taste of their last sip of coffee.
But the moment your hand slipped into his, you knew you had made a mistake.
Pain.
It surged through you in an instant, stealing the air from your lungs, making your knees nearly buckle under the weight of it. The sharp bite of a knife slicing through flesh. The suffocating grip of restraints against metal wrists. The echo of voices shouting commands in Russian, the chilling sensation of being stripped down to nothing but a weapon. The screams. The red star. Blood, so much blood—on his hands, on his soul, dripping onto snow-covered ground. The sensation of metal replacing flesh. Terror. Rage. Regret. The unbearable weight of loss.
You ripped your hand away, eyes wide, heart hammering. Bucky was staring at you, brow furrowed in confusion.
"You okay?" His voice was rough, but his concern was genuine.
You force a smile. A lie. “Yeah. Just—just got a little dizzy.”
It’s the first of many lies.
You avoided touching him after that. It was difficult. Bucky's a tactile person, more than he realized. A hand on your back when guiding you through a crowded space. Sitting beside him on mission briefings, careful not to let your knees brush. You handed him files with your sleeves pulled over your fingers. You trained in the same room but always kept your distance. It was exhausting, this careful, deliberate avoidance, but you had no choice.
He was kind, in a quiet, unassuming way. He made you coffee in the mornings when you were both in the compound kitchen too early for anyone else to be awake. He told you about the books he had been reading when sleep didn't come. He listened when you talked, really listened, like what you were saying was the most important thing in the world.
He made you want things you shouldn’t.
But you knew what was inside him. You felt it. You felt him break, over and over again, and you didn't know how to hold that without breaking too.
Bucky wasn't just the things Hydra made him do. He wasn't just the broken memories and the pain. The way he always waited for you to enter a room first. The way he softened when he talked to Sam’s nephews. The way he looked at you sometimes, like he wanted to say something but didn't know how.
He remembered things about you, little things you barely noticed about yourself. And it terrified you because you were falling for him.
And worse? He was falling for you, too.
“You don’t like touching me.”
You froze, coffee cup halfway to your lips. You were both sitting in the compound’s common area, the glow of the city outside casting long shadows across the floor.
“I don’t like touching anyone,” you corrected.
Bucky didn’t look convinced.
"Steve told me you have some kind of.. gift or whatever he called it." He huffed.
"A gift," you shook your head. It was all but a gift. "i can see.. and feel... memories of a person, whenever I touch them."
“What did you see, when you shook my hand that first time?” Bucky questioned, not knowing if he really wanted to hear the answer.
You hesitated. He deserved an explanation, an answer, but how could you explain something like this? How could you tell him that touching him had nearly broken you? That you’d spent weeks trying to separate your own thoughts from the pain you’d absorbed? That even now, sometimes, you woke up gasping, ice spreading through your veins, memories that weren’t yours pressing against your skull? He didn't deserve that. After all he'd been through.
"You were quite a skirt-chaser back in the day." You shrugged, hoping he'd let go of the topic.
Bucky let out a short laugh, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “That’s what you saw?”
You forced a smile, lifting your cup to your lips. “That’s what I’m telling you I saw.”
You weren’t sure if he was buying it, but either way, he didn’t push. Instead, he leaned back against the couch, stretching his metal arm along the back of it, close but not touching.
“You know,” he said after a beat, “I might’ve been a flirt, but I was always a gentleman.”
You raised a brow. “That so?”
“Absolutely.” He smirked. “Always asked for a dance first.”
You huffed, shaking your head. “How chivalrous.”
Bucky chuckled, but you could feel the shift in the air. He hadn’t forgotten your deflection. The momentary ease between you wasn’t enough to erase the unspoken weight of his question.
What did you see?
What did you feel?
You didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth.
The ice-cold metal of an operating table. The burn of a shock collar. The sting of a fresh wound being ignored, a voice barking orders in Russian. The absolute, gut-wrenching terror of realizing—over and over—that you weren’t in control of your own body.
And beneath it all, buried so deep it nearly went unnoticed—loneliness. A yearning for something, someone, anyone to remind him he wasn’t just a weapon.
You couldn’t tell him that.
So instead, you clung to the lighter pieces, the moments before the pain, before the war. The golden haze of 1940s Brooklyn, the warmth of laughter, the way the air used to hum with the promise of something better.
“Steve always said I was a pain in the ass back then,” Bucky mused, snapping you back to the present.
You glanced at him, offering a small smile. “Some things never change.”
That made him laugh, real and genuine this time, and for a moment, the weight in your chest lightened.
The next few days were a blur of subtle moments, quiet exchanges, and the uncomfortable tension that lingered between you and Bucky. You tried to keep your distance, pretending that everything was fine, but the truth was far harder to swallow.
Every time Bucky walked into the room, the pull was undeniable. You’d find your gaze drawn to him, and when he caught your eye, you’d quickly look away, as if your body was betraying you, desperate for something you couldn’t have.
And then there were the little things—the way his presence seemed to fill the space around him, the way his voice softened when he spoke to you, like he was trying to break through some invisible barrier that you’d put up.
You didn’t want to feel that pull. You couldn’t afford to. Because no matter how much your heart ached to close the distance between you and him, you knew the consequences.
That afternoon, when you were leaving the training room, you almost collided with Bucky in the hallway. He stepped back just in time, his eyes flashing with surprise as you tried to regain your balance.
“Easy there,” he said, his voice low but steady, his hand brushing your arm to steady you.
You froze. The moment his fingers made contact with your skin, everything came rushing back. The sharp pain of a bullet slicing through muscle, the flash of a bomb exploding too close, the heartache of losing everything that had ever mattered. The memories of the wars he’d fought, of the things he’d been forced to do, filled your mind so quickly you barely had time to breathe.
You pulled away instinctively, your body trembling, your chest tightening as you fought to keep it together.
“I—I’m sorry,” you gasped, avoiding his eyes, your heart hammering in your chest. You didn’t want to look at him. You couldn’t. Because if you did, you might just break, and you couldn’t do that. Not with him. Not when you already knew the kind of pain he carried inside him.
Bucky took a step forward, his expression softening as he reached out, his hand hovering just shy of yours. “You’re not okay,” he said quietly, his voice full of concern. “What’s going on?”
You shook your head, willing the storm inside you to settle. “I’m fine,” you lied, forcing a smile. “Just… tired. Long day.”
Before either of you could say anything more Steve appeared at the end of the hallway, calling out to Bucky.
“You coming, Barnes?”
Bucky hesitated, his gaze lingering on you for just a moment longer, as if he was torn between walking away and staying.
Finally, he exhaled, running a hand through his hair. “I’ll catch up with you later,” he said to Steve, before turning back to you. “We’ll talk soon, yeah?”
You noded and you couldn’t breathe until he was gone.
The next day, Bucky found you in the courtyard, sitting by yourself, your eyes distant as you stared at the horizon. He walked up slowly, as though unsure of how to approach you.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked quietly.
You didn’t look up. “It’s a free country.”
Bucky settled next to you anyway, the quiet between you comfortable for a moment, but not for long. He was too aware of everything. Too aware of you.
“Did I do something wrong?” he asked, his voice low.
You shifted uncomfortably. “No, it’s not that.”
“Then what?” His tone softened, and you finally turned to meet his eyes.
“I told you, I don’t like touch. And it’s not something I can just turn off. And it's hard to be around you... when all I want to do is touch you, for you to touch me, kiss me..”
You got up on your feet but before you could turn, you felt the weight of his hand on your arm, gentle, but firm. Your breath caught, heart pounding in your chest. His touch was warm, steady, nothing like the icy remnants of war that had scarred him, but you still felt the sharpness of his past pressing against you like a shadow.
You looked down at his hand, at the way his fingers barely brushed your sleeve. It was a simple gesture, but to you, it was more than that. It was the invitation. The risk. The question you both had been dancing around.
You swallowed hard, fighting the sudden wave of emotion threatening to overwhelm you. But when you met his eyes, the vulnerability there, the honest want for connection, it nearly broke you.
You wanted to pull away. You wanted to stop, to keep him at arm’s length, but something inside you shifted, and you found yourself taking a step closer, just enough for your fingers to brush against his.
The world tilted.
The memories flooded you—faster, sharper this time. The face of a man who wasn’t quite Bucky anymore, wasn’t quite the soldier he’d been. The ache of betrayal, the desperate longing for redemption. The faces of people he’d loved and lost, the quiet rage of a man who had been turned into a weapon and was still trying to find his humanity.
Your chest tightened as the memories crashed over you, and you gasped, pulling your hand away, stumbling back like you’d been burned.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered, your voice ragged. “I—I can’t…”
Bucky’s face twisted, a flash of pain crossing his features “I’m sorry if I—”
“No,” you interrupted, shaking your head. “It’s not you. It’s me. I just… I can’t keep doing this.”
