Hi, I love everything you write!
Could I please request a secretive yearning Bucky with a reader who is his whole world? Except he never shows it because he’s insecure and she thinks he’s indifferent to her? He’ll collect little pieces of her which he considers treasures like a hair tie she’s left forgotten on a shelf or a discarded handwritten note that she didn’t need anymore. I’m talking deep pining like not eating or leaving his room for days because she went on one date and nobody knows that’s the reason and whatever else your amazing mind can come up with but please please please let it have a happy ending and let our baby get the love he needs and deserves xx
He tells himself it’s just easier this way—quiet, contained, folded neatly into the same locked box where he keeps the worst of his memories.
It’s safer to be the version of himself that doesn’t need anything.
So Bucky Barnes wears indifference like a fitted jacket. He leans in doorframes with that practiced blankness, answers in clipped syllables, lets his eyes skim past you like you’re just another teammate moving through the compound. He makes his mouth go flat when you laugh. He makes his shoulders stay loose when you brush by him in the kitchen and your perfume drifts through the air like a threat.
He makes it look like you don’t undo him.
You think he doesn’t care.
Maybe it’s because you’ve tried—little offerings, tossed out casually so it won’t sting as much if they land wrong.
“Hey, Buck—movie night? If you’re not busy.” “No.” His voice had been too quick, too final, like the word was a door slammed in your face.
You’d blinked, nodded, turned away, and he’d watched you go with something feral and terrified twisting in his chest.
Not because he didn’t want to.
Because he wanted it so much he could feel it in his teeth.
He doesn’t follow you into the common room. He doesn’t sit beside you on the couch. He doesn’t let himself be the man who reaches for your hand in a crowd, who tucks hair behind your ear, who says I missed you out loud.
Instead, he becomes a collector.
A thief, but only of the things you don’t notice you’ve left behind.
The first is small and ridiculous: a black hair tie, looped around the base of a lamp in the rec room where you’d been absentmindedly fidgeting during a briefing. You’d slid it off your wrist and forgotten it existed.
Bucky sees it after everyone clears out. His eyes catch on that little circle like it’s a flare in the dark.
He waits until the hallway is empty. Then his fingers pull it free.
It sits in his palm like proof you were real.
He takes it back to his room and sets it in the shallow wooden box in the top drawer of his nightstand. The box used to hold spare screws for his arm. Now it holds you.
A folded sticky note you’d tossed in the recycling bin because you didn’t need it anymore—your handwriting looping and soft: Don’t forget to call Sarah back. A torn corner of a training schedule with your name highlighted. The broken clip from a cheap pen you’d muttered about and dropped on the floor.
Once, it’s a single glove. Not tactical—one of those knit ones you wear when you run outside in winter. It had fallen behind the bench in the gym. You must’ve thought you lost it.
Bucky finds it. Holds it. Presses it to his face like a starving man and inhales until his lungs hurt.
Then he tucks it away like it’s sacred.
He hates himself for it, sometimes.
Not because he thinks you’re an object—God, never that.
Because it feels like stealing when he hasn’t earned anything from you. Because he’s convinced if you knew how much space you take up inside him, you’d look at him with something between pity and disgust and step away.
So he makes sure you never know.
He’s careful in public. Controlled. Distant. He makes his eyes cold when you talk to him, even when your smile is warm.
And you—sweet, stubborn you—start to wilt in the space he creates.
You stop leaning into him when you pass.
You stop lingering near him in the kitchen.
You start talking more to Sam, to Wanda, to anyone whose attention feels less like walking into a wall.
And Bucky watches it happen like he’s watching a building collapse in slow motion, powerless to stop it.
Then one day you come back to the compound late, cheeks pink from cold, scarf wrapped too tight around your neck. You’re smiling at your phone, thumb flying over the screen, and you don’t notice Bucky standing at the end of the hall until you’re almost on top of him.
“Hey,” you say, breathless. Bright.
“Hey,” he echoes, and makes his face empty.
You tuck your phone away, still smiling. “I—um. I went out.”
“Yeah.” He hears how flat he sounds and can’t fix it in time.
“It was… nice,” you add, and there’s a pause there like you’re waiting to see if he’ll bite. If he’ll ask anything at all. If he’ll care.
Bucky’s tongue feels too big in his mouth. His chest is a tight, bruised ache.
He makes himself shrug.
“Good.”
The smile falls off your face so fast it’s like watching a light die.
“Oh,” you say quietly. “Okay.”
You slip past him, shoulder brushing his arm, and you don’t even flinch at the contact anymore. Like you’ve trained yourself not to want it.
It hits him hours later, alone in his room.
Not jealousy, exactly—though that’s there, sharp and ugly. Not anger.
It’s grief.
Because you’d looked so hopeful for one half-second, like you’d wanted him to be someone else for you.
And he’d failed.
Bucky doesn’t leave his room the next day.
Or the day after.
He stares at the ceiling until it blurs. He thinks about you sitting across from someone who isn’t broken in the way he is, someone who laughs easily and reaches for you without fear. He imagines you being touched the way you deserve—soft, open, with nothing held back.
Every time his stomach twists with hunger, he tells himself he doesn’t deserve to eat when he can’t even be brave.
He doesn’t answer when Steve knocks.
“Buck?” Steve’s voice is careful. “You okay?”
Silence.
Bucky lays on his bed fully dressed, fingers curled around that knit glove like it’s the only thing anchoring him to the world. He presses his face into it until his eyes burn.
On the third day, there’s another knock—lighter, hesitant.
“Bucky?” you call, voice smaller than usual. “Can I come in?”
His heart lurches so hard it feels like it might crack his ribs.
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. If he answers, he’ll ruin it. If he answers, you’ll hear how desperate he is.
“Please,” you add, quieter. “I… I’m worried.”
There's no pity in your voice, only care.
That breaks him.
He drags himself off the bed like his limbs are full of sand. Opens the door.
You stand there with a paper bag in your hands, cheeks flushed from the walk down the hall. Your eyes flick over him and your expression pinches.
“Jesus,” you whisper. “You look awful.”
“Yeah,” he rasps, and doesn’t try to pretend.
You step inside before he can stop you. The room is dim, curtains half-drawn. It smells like him—soap and metal and something lonely. Your gaze catches on the nightstand drawer that isn’t fully closed, the edge of a wooden box barely visible.
You don’t touch it.
But your eyes soften like you understand there are parts of him you’re not allowed to see yet.
You set the paper bag on his desk. “I brought food. You don’t have to eat it right now, but… it’s here.”
Bucky’s throat works. “Why?”
You blink like the question hurts. “Because you vanished. Because you’ve barely spoken to anyone. Because I—”
You cut yourself off, jaw tightening. “Never mind.”
“No.” The word cracks out of him. His metal hand lifts, then drops, uncertain. “Don’t—don’t stop.”
You swallow. “I thought you didn’t care.”
Bucky laughs once, ugly and broken. “I care,” he says, and it comes out like a confession ripped raw. “I care too much. I just… I don’t know how to—”
You fold your arms across your chest like you’re holding yourself together. “Then why do you act like I’m nothing?”
His eyes sting. He stares at you like you’re the sun and he’s spent too long underground.
“Because if I let myself show it,” he whispers, “you’ll see how bad it is. How—how much I want you. And I keep thinking you’ll realize you could do better and you’ll leave.”
Your breath catches.
Bucky’s hands clench. “I saw you come back from that date and you were smiling and I couldn’t—” He shakes his head hard, like he can shake the feeling loose. “I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t—couldn’t breathe right.”
You stare at him, stunned. Then, slowly, your expression shifts into something aching.
“You… you were upset,” you say, like you’re tasting the idea.
Bucky looks away, shame flooding hot under his skin. “I’m pathetic.”
“No.” You step closer, voice firmer now. “Don’t you dare say that.”
He flinches anyway, like he expects anger.
But you reach out and touch his arm—warm fingers on the metal plate, then his skin. Gentle. Real.
“You’re not indifferent,” you murmur, and your eyes search his face like you’re trying to memorize it. “You’re scared.”
Bucky closes his eyes, because if he keeps looking at you he’s going to come apart.
“I didn’t know,” you whisper. “I thought… I thought you didn’t want me.”
“I want you,” he says instantly, too fast, too honest. “God, I want you so bad it makes me sick.”
Your lips part.
Then you laugh, breathless and wet-eyed, like disbelief and relief collided in your chest.
“You idiot,” you whisper, stepping right into him. “You absolute idiot.”
Bucky freezes as your arms wrap around his waist. For a second he can’t move—like his body doesn’t remember how to be held without danger.
Then his hands come up, slow and trembling, and he gathers you like you’re something he’s been trying not to touch for years.
You press your forehead into his chest. “I went on one date because I thought I had to move on,” you say, voice muffled. “Because I thought you’d never… look at me like that.”
Bucky’s breath shudders. “I look at you like that all the time.”
You tilt your head back to meet his gaze, eyes shining. “Then show me.”
His lips hover near yours, hesitant. “You sure?”
You nod, fierce. “I’m sure.”
So he kisses you like it’s an apology and a promise at once—soft at first, like he’s afraid you’ll vanish, then deeper when you hold his jaw and kiss him back like you’ve been waiting.
When you break apart, your hands stay on his face.
“Bucky,” you say, voice tender now, “I don’t want the version of you that never needs anything.”
He swallows hard.
“I want you,” you continue. “All of it. Even the messy parts. Especially the messy parts.”
Bucky’s eyes burn. “I don’t know how to do this right.”
You smile, small and steady. “Then we learn. Together.”
He exhales, shaky. “I—” His gaze flicks to the drawer, to the half-hidden box, then back to you, terrified.
You follow his glance but don’t move toward it. You just squeeze his hands, anchoring him.
“You don’t have to show me everything at once,” you say quietly. “But you do have to stop disappearing on me.”
Bucky nods. “Okay.”
“And you have to eat,” you add, pointed.
A laugh breaks out of him—real this time, startled and warm. “Okay.”
You press a kiss to his cheek. “Good.”
And when you guide him toward the desk, sit him down, and pull the food from the bag like it’s the simplest thing in the world, Bucky watches you with something fragile and luminous in his chest.
Because for the first time, he isn’t collecting scraps of you in secret.
He has you here.
Whole.
And when you glance up and catch him staring, you don’t look away.
You just smile and say, softly, like you’ve always known where home is—
“Hi, baby.”
Bucky’s throat works around emotion. He reaches for your hand across the desk, fingers threading through yours like he’s learning how to hold on without hiding.
“Hi,” he whispers back. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
