You’ve Ruined Me! (Bucky Barnes)
A/N: lol so I've literally been gone for a year, oops. I did just fully get a bachelors degree tho and am in the process of getting a masters so I've been busy, spare me!! Here's a angsty, poorly written one shot cause I feel like it
Pairing: Knight!Bucky x Princess!FReader
Warnings: angst, Tony Stark mention, mentions of oral smex, mentions of masterbaiting, arranged marriage, yearning like none other, reader is horny for this man, innocent-ish reader, no established age-gap but one may be implied, reader is explicitly referred to as a woman cause,,, yk old times. No way this is proofread lmao. No way this is historically accurate, let a bitch yearn!
Words: 2.3k
Summary: You've fallen in love with your knight and it's made you despise your arranged suitor.
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You’d find yourself entirely grateful if the lace from your pearly white dress would choke you to death. Your calendar had taunted you until this very day, it was now that the dread finally set in, plagued you like a bad cold. You observed the rain fall haphazardly, flooding small pockets of the garden. The greenery would soon be lush, petunias soon ready to be picked and made into bouquets or lazily tucked behind the ear of a laundress or a maidservant. The thought grounded you momentarily before the low rumble of thunder places your mind back into your body.
Your chamber doors creaked open softly revealing a somber faced Wanda, her pieces of fiery red hair framed her frown as she straightened out her apron and maid gown. “My love, you look beautiful.” She chimed softly, attempting to compliment you into a smile. Her deep-set eyes were forced into wide crescent shapes as a melancholy smile took hold of her blushed lips.
Your shoulders hung lazily at your sides as you watched yourself in the vanity mirror. Your hair had been pulled back tenderly and decorated with an assortment of white flowers that your mother had configured. The white gown and flowers only seemed to wash you out. With your continuously-dampening mood, you’d blend in with the storm clouds in no time.
“I never imagined it like this.” your lips barely parted as the words left your mouth, you feared the word vomit of shame and sadness had they opened any further. For the umpteenth time, your eyes prickled with tears.
You never quite found yourself to be completely partial to marriage, let alone to a Stark son. Alas, Anthony Edward came from an abundantly wealthy family that would absolve your father’s debts. There was nothing absurdly wrong with Stark, if you could look past his emotional turbulence, incessantly long periods of isolation, cockiness, and his addiction to women. He was kind for the most part when the two of you were face-to-face. Though, he never returned letters nor did he compliment you the way he did to your Mistress of Robes, Natasha, none of which she ever returned.
A raven haired, crystal eyed sickness has taken over you, constricted your pounding heart and ravaged your insides. James was appointed to your livelihood on the eve of your twentieth birthday, a suit of armor shielding his body, it clanged as he bowed before you. “Your majesty, I have vowed to protect you. I will throw myself upon my own blade to bleed myself dry of sin, if it is what you ask of me.” He spoke, head bowed, wisps of darkened falling over his forehead and defining his high cheekbones. It was when he looked up at you, eyes rich with a feeling you had never experienced before, a devotion that glassed his eyes over, an order of protection laced with something you’d only ever seen in the eyes of animals. You didn’t know if you had seen a wolf or a mere dog in those begging eyes, if it was hunger or sheer desperation. “I am at your beck and call.”
It was hellish in the beginning, knowing he spent the nighttime protecting your quarters from the outside, the occasional clinking of armor could be heard as he was finally alleviated from his duties in the waking hours of the morning.
It was around a year in which you began to lose your head every time he kissed the top of your hand to greet you, always accompanied with a polite bow. You heard the shifting of armor just hours before the sun would begin to creep up into the sky. You yanked your bedroom door open. “Sir James! Wait!” you whisper yelled to him. Instantly, he turned on his heels, tired eyes softening upon you.
“It’s your duty to kneel and pledge your loyalty to me?”
“I am at your beck and call, your majesty.”
“Come in? Please?” your eyebrows furrowed as if you had been expecting a sour remark or denial. Alas, he followed, as pledged.
It was then, how you recalled you didn’t think you would get this far. Now as his enormous frame dwarfed yours and a teasing heat creeped up your neck, you blurted nonsense about how you “must” know more about him if he was to keep you safe. You learned that he liked to read, he had a sister, and that he took care of a small cat back in the knight’s chambers with two fellow knights, Samuel and Steven. Over the next few months, the more you learned about him, the softer he became.
It was by your twenty-second birthday where he could find himself armor-less, perched atop the soft linen sheets on your bed reading to you. Father always mentioned that women weren’t meant to be proficient readers, James disagreed. Some nights you found yourself mimicking the sounds from his mouth as his large index finger dragged across the words in the novel he shared with you. Other nights you would run your hairbrush through his helmet-hair or nurse his wounds and bruises while he continued reading.
He was a marvelous storyteller, whether it was read from a book or pulled from his memory, he spoke gently under starry nights while your handful of oil-lamps kept the two of you lit well enough. He put on voices that made you giggle, so unmitigatedly different from how he was within the armor. You loved when he was able to shed his armor, forgo Sir James, and allow himself to be Bucky for the rest of the night.
“Bucky, have you ever been in love before?” you asked, perched upon your windowsill. Your silk nightgown blew gently with the wind, your scalp taking on the cool autumn air as it rushed through your hair. He closed the finished novel and set it next to himself on the bed.
“I can’t recall. Can’t say I have the time to commit to falling in love.” He nodded nearly sheepishly, watching how you glow in front of the dark night sky.
“Have you ever kissed someone before?” you asked, wide-eyed and innocent.
“Of course I’ve kissed before. Have you, princess?”
“That’s quite personal.” your eyebrows furrowed as he laughed gently at your half-appalled reaction. He had his answer. “No, I haven’t.” you murmured, shaking your head softly.
He stood up from his spot on the bed, repositioning himself onto the floor, sat on his knees, similar to how he must when he greets you. His white cotton tunic moved in tandem with your nightgown in the wind. He remained at level with your knees, his eyes meeting yours with that same dog-ish, or perhaps wolfish look of his.
“You’re worried.” He stated, eyes boring into yours. Your body flooded with disdain when he looked like this; ruffled by work, vulnerable as he had been freed from his armor, and oh-so handsomely moonlit. It made you feel like a carnal woman, the way you craved the heat his body emitted when he was close to you.
“Perhaps. I worry about the wedding. Have they no regard for me? Marrying me off to… a man who has definitely kissed before.” You rambled, eliciting a small smirk from your knight. Damn the creator that put him before you and allowed him to soak up the moonlight this devilish way.
If Bucky had been a more honest man, he’d drop his niceties and drag the Stark through a metaphorical mud. He hated when you danced with most foreign royals, but he despised when he was forced to accompany you with ‘Tony.’ He spoke with a bitter tongue and never appreciated your time, far too busy waiting around for a woman beneath royalty. Bucky could admit, the thoughts he had about you weren’t the most pleasant or respectful. He relieved himself to the memory image of your soft breasts and pointed nipples underneath your nightgown more than he cared to admit, and it was already barbarous enough that he dared to share late nights with you so intimately. The nights where you fell asleep beside him as he read to you was more of a challenge than any battle he had fought or any rival that had crossed him. To watch you, lips parted and snoring softly, was enough to justify any blood to fall upon his sword.
“I should even the score. I cannot be with a man who has kissed so… incessantly.” Your diatribe knocked the knight back into his body, eyes surrendering to your figure in your little, thin nightgown. He loved the neutral shade upon you, if he squinted, he could convince himself that it was just you, bare beside him. “Can you kiss me? Sir James, you’re at my beck and call?” Bucky could have sworn a storm and a thousand winds ripped through his body as your face remained matter-of-fact.
Wordlessly, he carefully rose from his sitting position, now kneeling in front of you. His calloused hand reached slowly for your jaw, cupping it with a gentleness he didn’t know he possessed. It was the softness that permeated your conversations, the laughs you shared as he followed you around the palace’s gardens. The warmth from his large hand cut straight through the nipping cold of the night.
“Your majesty, I take my duties quite seriously. I fear you will make me a madman.”
“Has the madness not yet consumed you, the way it has I?”
There was an urgency that corrupted the two of you. Your knight led, softly pressing his lips against yours, guiding you softly, kneading the skin he possessed between his fingers. Sheer bliss was enough to keep your eyes closed while small unannounced moans escaped from your lips. He allowed for you to toy gently with his tongue and bite ever-so gently on his bottom lip; all for learning purposes, of course. It felt like a forcible removal when you noticed the sun begin to peek its rays into your bedroom, signaling for Bucky to regress to his knight’s chamber before one of his peers began to search for him.
Madness was an understatement. For the next few weeks, you could not restrain yourself from the knight. Through the day, he would pull you behind corners, away from the crowds, just so you could lift his face shield and bless him with a kiss. Through the late nights, he would stay posted within your room, your parent’s request as the wedding grew nearer. He’d made you a better kisser, and could have made you an unworthy woman with how his tongue worked your womanhood. The secrecy was thrilling, all which Bucky loved more because he could not bear the thought of sharing you with another.
It was the secrecy that made today horrid.
“Wanda, please tell Sir James that I’m in need of his services. And leave us, please.” Your second request was much more soft spoken, syrupy and viscous. The redhead has already attempted to calm your nerves multiple times this morning. She woke you with a tea that was to aid with your anxieties, she squeezed your hand as you spoke to your parents this morning, but none of which helped. She told you how she planned on leaving the kingdom for a Knight from Stark’s kingdom. Sir Vision, you’d never met him, but when Wanda told you about him, you couldn’t help but spill your guts about your secret lover.
When a shaggy head of raven hair peeked through the door, it was hard to tell whether the dread within your stomach was growing or shrinking. He had been clad entirely in his armor, with the exception of a helmet to which he held beside him. His eyes shared the melancholy that was housed within yours, lips instinctually frowning.
“Your Majesty.” He bowed politely, attempting to not let his apprehension become visible to you. It was as if taking his eyes off of you was against royal orders. It was ironic, how ruined you felt in contrast to the pure white of your gown.
Softly, Bucky stepped forward, running a gloved and armored hand over the small laced accents of the bodice of your dress. Though, his pretty blue eyes never once left yours. How normal the light touching felt could have made you sick. Yet, here your knight was, healing all of your terribly worldly ailments while simultaneously contributing to the whole lot of them.
“I’m a ruined woman. You’ve ruined me!” You choked out. Despite the accusatory remarks, his hands still remained, seemingly becoming gentler.
“There is nothing I crave the way I do you. You are anything but ruined.” He whispered, stepping closer, both hands now orbiting your waist as he spoke softly into your hair.
“If you crave the way I do, you’ll take me away from this.” You were now sniffling, partially ruining the makeup your maidservant had done. You looked up at him, glassy eyed.
“Princess, the kingdom would hunt me till the day that I die.” He whispered softly, peppering small kisses to your forehead. His words were not fully convincing, as if he was trying to persuade himself that it was the truth. Not because he didn’t believe it, but because he simply did not care.
“For you, I would run for the rest of my life. This crown holds no power to me, you do. I will not let it prohibit the one thing I want. Please, Bucky. Leave with me. Take me away from here.” You pleaded in a whisper, now fully clinging to his chest.
You felt the rise and fall of his chest become more shallow before he backed away from you. Without removing his eyes from you, he began shedding pieces of armor slowly, setting them on the floor gently so as to not make any loud noises. It was almost pure silence until he was only dressed in his underclothes.
“Undress. Don’t worry about packing your things, I’ll ask for Sam and Wanda’s help. But you have to mean this.” Bucky stated breathlessly.
“You have my word, Sir James.”
