Thunderbolts!Bucky x fem!Reader • Canon • A Christmas Trio!
Summary: You are Bucky’s sassy and reckless other half. While on a solo recon mission around Christmastime, your comms drop. Bucky goes rogue to get you back. Will he make it in time?
Trigger Warnings: Established relationship; boyfriend!Bucky x girlfriend!Reader; Christmas carol lyrics sprinkled throughout; MCU-level violence (especially from Bucky 😮💨); Reader gets shot/beat/hurt; descriptions of bleeding/blood.
Author's Note: I had a 12-day super cute thing planned, however I'm too busy with life, so that's going to be a "Christmas in July" thing. But I couldn't let the holiday pass uncelebrated, so you get a trio. It's still around 11k words in total, though. You're welcome.
Main Masterlist
Part 1: Recon
Part 2: Rescue
Part 3: Relief
Chapters will be released Tuesdays at 7pm EST.
I guess comment if you want me to start a tag list for the trio?
You, a sociology researcher, wish to investigate into crime syndicates in Yokohoma! Obviously, the Port Mafia is one of such—but you stand undaunted before such a task. For the sake of science and research, you undertake the task.
You don’t expect to cross paths with the notorious Demon Prodigy himself.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
{3.4k w.c} part 1 (?)
Reader is an overenthusiastic and reckless researcher. Beast-ish AU; Dazai’s still in the mafia.
{SFW—Warnings ⭑.ᐟ: cursing; brief strangulation; threats; slight degradation; slightly manipulative/deceptive reader. Tell me if I miss any.}
You’re not quite sure about what sort of inanity, insanity or ignorant naiveté brought you here.
With another huff, finally reaching the top of those ludicrous stairs, probably tall enough to reach the famed pearly gates of heaven—or at least, it seems so—you arise to a conclusion: scientific curiosity. A sociologist as resilient, as competent as you will not cower simply because they’re standing before a major organised crime syndicate’s base.
Just no. Fear is base, and fear you do not have—or so you convince yourself. What’s the worst that could possibly happen? Death? You doubt they’re trigger-happy enough to shoot a random researcher. But, glancing back down those stairs, the worst consequence if your gamble fails is getting a tumble down those stairs. Broken bone or two, but, in your humble opinion, it shall be worth the effort.
So, inhaling, fortifying yourself against the veritable lion’s den you are about to enter, you take a hesitant step. Surer of your conviction, you take another, till you’re standing before the glass doors. There are armed guards standing outside on each side, as a paranoid mafia is wont to do, but their weapons are hidden, and, probably assessing you as a negligible threat, leave their guns bolstered and allow you easy entry into the Mori Corporation.
A pharmaceutical of sorts, it is. With opulent, writhing chandeliers that drip down like brambled vines to cast stark, harsh lucid light unto the floor; the plush, padded cushions and sofas made of the smoothest velvet that scintillates a kaleidoscope of colours beneath the light; and the looming, sterile-white walls that stretch high as any sky. It screams of wealth, and, critically so, of a well-established pharmaceutical company, despite their status being somewhat of an open secret. Nonetheless, it is not exactly the drab and rackety underground place illicit dealings are done in, and this, despite being in greater danger within the literal lion’s maw rather than in some ramshackle gang’s hideout, brings you some sort of base comfort.
Beauty does tend to soften the most grotesque of things, after all.
But! No time for such silly musings. You shake your head, straighten your back, point your nose heavenward in a vain attempt to assume an air of authority, and walk straight to the receptionist.
She looks up, eyes shadowed by the glare of her sharp glasses. There are no pleasantries forthcoming of her mouth, so you are forced to assume the lead.
“Hello!” You say, with a cheer that is all too forced, to her stone-set face. You do not let it dampen your spirits, and you carry on, “I am here on a research project.”
“Denied.” Without even looking up! As if you’re some pesky fly!
You stand your ground. “I was wondering if I could have unstructured interviews and surveys as well as observations with some of the workers—“ mafiosos, “—it is apart of a greater project to ascertain the state of people and businesses within Yokohama!”
Ah, you think to yourself, barely two minutes in, and I’ve already violated an ethical rule—deception. Then, you mentally kick yourself. They’re mafiosos. They care little about something as banal as ethics. Additionally, it is safer for you to assume the role of the innocent researcher, unaware of their actual dealings.
That could pose a danger later down the line when your work is published and they identify you as the cause. But that is a future-you problem; current-you has yet to even gain access!
“Still denied.”
“I’ve already collected data from other pharmaceuticals,” for emphasis, you wave around the file. “They’ve neglected to make me sign an NDA.”
“Denied.”
With a mischievous smile, you lean onto the desk, rapping your fingers on the hardwood mahogany. “They’ve, your competitors, neglected to make me sign an NDA.”
Finally, the ennui-infested receptionist lifts her eyes, and bestows upon you her hard-earned grace. She types something, then finally responds with a full phrase, “The Chief Executive is busy,” cooking up schemes on how to better be a megalomaniac, you’re sure, “I will refer you to one of his executives.”
“Chief Financial Executive?” You ask, playing into your role. To sell it all the better, you keep your smile big and elated, fabricated down to each curl on each side.
The receptionist looks at you as if you sprouted another head, and perhaps also opened up your skull, pulled your brain out, and tossed it into the trash. If it was an honest question from your side, you too will be concerned if you’re a right idiot. “No.” And she draws it out, speaking slowly, as if in disbelief. “No. But he will take in your information, have it processed, and invite you over for interviews with set people.”
Now your grin turns genuine.
There are no NDAs to speak of. Because you haven’t researched other pharmaceuticals.
You take your victory, and reply gratefully, “Great! Thank you!” Then, before the receptionist returns to her much-beloved task, you inquire, “May I ask where the bathroom is?”
She points to a corridor down left. Elevators line the wall. “There, then take another left. There should be a sign.”
You gratefully bow, and scurry down the corridor. For a few moments, you pretend to be lost, clutching your papers tightly in hand. But, once certain that she’s no longer paying attention, you turn to the elevators.
It is fortunate you dressed in all black formal wear. Your suit easily blends in with the rest, and once in the elevator, nobody questions you.
Whilst waiting, you take out your pen, and flip to a blank page on your clipboard. You make observations, as surreptitiously as you could. You note how each and every one in the elevator, of which there are five excluding yourself, have a hand near their pockets, where the outline of a gun is faintly visible from your close proximity. It won’t be quite as visible from far away. You make a note of it all, and then again of their builds: they’re all muscled, and if not, at least toned. Like trained soldiers more than mere delinquents.
As the elevator rings, you hastily flip the doctored “pharmaceutical” research papers on top, with other papers below.
Everyone files out to the same floor. There are many doors, and, not wishing to seem odd nor cast upon yourself suspicion, you stow the papers away into a deep pocket in your blazer that you’d personally requested be made for this research, and follow them out. You try to mimic their posture, but their military stride is difficult for you to emulate—you naturally have a slight skip to your walk, a byproduct of your restless energy and outpouring enthusiasm. So far, it has been smooth sailing, and it is a trial to maintain a grim face and not allow your excitement to overtake it.
They stop near a door. A brave soul knocks on it, and a voice, bereft of cheer, calls out, “Enter.”
So they, and by extension you, enter. An office greets you, furnished solely by rising towers of papers and a singular, hardwood desk set in the middle, directly in front of the door. Before you could observe much of anything, the desk’s position casts its occupant centre-stage, and—well, he is something that wears the night like a cloak, and dons the Grim Reaper’s face. He evidently needs no scythe, for he instills fear simply by the harrowed stygian tenebrosity he excludes, forcing everyone onto their knee in greeting.
You are not quite sure of the proper posture, but fortunately, you are at the back. He cannot possibly descry you from so far off.
“Have preparations been made?” He says, and although you cannot see his face, for some reason, you get the feeling he hasn’t blinked, soulless, haunting eyes wide-open, surveying as well as any eagle or hawk. You quack a little, your palms sweat, but you still yourself. For the sake of your research, this must be done. And, despite it not going exactly according to plan—after all, you were planning on non-participant observation, scurrying about not unlike a rat, rather than participant observation—this is not too bad an advancement.
It will increase your research’s validity.
And put you in more danger, a nagging little voice, not unlike your teacher’s, repudiates. What’s proper research and findings without a little taste of danger?
Still, you shake.
“Yes, sir.” A mafioso in front replies, voice stringent and stripped of any emotion, doll-like and machine-like in equal measure. Your fingers itch for your notepad. Complete obsequiousness is expected, and, paralleling your prior observation, rather military in their procedures and addresses.
Ah, the discovery rocks you, even if only slightly as it is not wholly unexpected. They’re a paramilitary.
You maintain your repose.
“Then, what are you waiting for?” The man scoffs, and, in sync, everyone stands up. You were just a second behind. “Let’s go.”
Shit, shit, shit—triple the shit, fucking shit.
You decidedly do not have a weapon, and, even more so decidedly, are not a trained mafioso. Fuck!
Your feelings, a comorbid of fright and fear and something that sickeningly and sluggishly approaches petrification, broil within you, windswept within this man’s perforating storm. You keep a lid on your feelings, attempt to at the very least, and follow the orders mechanically: he has you file out of the room, down the elevator. The receptionist doesn’t glance up again, by some sort of sick divine grace, and, awaiting the squad you’ve joined in a ridiculously impromptu manner, is black van.
You all walk in, with someone splitting off to drive. Once you’re sat down, nearly thigh-to-thigh with the other person (a damn mafioso! your inner voice screeches), with sweaty hands you buckle yourself in.
That same man, the apparent commander of the squad, sits across you, expression empty. You swiftly swerve your gaze away, pretending to be enraptured by the desolate scenery—somewhere rural, likely a warehouse, you briefly note, and then briefly panic about it because rule one of any kidnapping is not to allow them to take you to a secondary location but does it really count if you’re technically doing this willingly and holy fuck you’re locked in a van with six other mafiosos fuck—
A ding cuts through the terse silence, clear as an arc of blighting lightning.
It comes from the man’s phone. He glances at it, and then, like an actor swapping one mask for another, his face shifts into a derisive, axing smile. “Ah,” he says, amused. Then, he looks around the squad. “Seems a little researcher wants to know all there is about us! Say, say, any of you wanna volunteer?”
Everyone shifts, uncomfortable. The man’s eyes scout, and, to your dwindling luck, land on you.
“You!” He exclaims. “I’m choosing you for the interview!”
“Why me?” You ask, jolted by the surprise question.
The man raises his eyebrow, and you belatedly realise that likely nobody ever asks their superior such a blithe question in an organisation as vile as this.
He takes no offence; instead, that smile splits into a soul-eating grin. He jumps off of his seat, standing, albeit crouched, on the moving vehicle, and pokes your cheek.
“You look like such a fresh-faced darling!” His eyes squint with the force of his smile. “You won’t sell out our secrets now, would you?” With derision, he scoffs. “You don’t even know them, lowly foot-soldier you are.”
There was a pause before the last insult, a pause that you felt in your heart. You say nothing in response, hoping he loses interest. And indeed he does, for you have reached the location—you were right. It is a warehouse out in the middle of nowhere.
Everyone files out of the car, and you follow.
“You know what to do.” The man says. You almost strangle him, because no you do not!
Silently seething, you shove a hand into your pocket, playing at clutching a gun. You’d follow the female soldier, that was the original plan, but for once, your brain kicks into gear. They have a set formation they’d already discussed. You’re unsure how they’re not suspicious of a random extra person, but you’re not one to kick a gift horse in the mouth, much less spur its suspicion by acting stupidly and following a plan you know jackshit about. Instead, as everyone disperses, you too pretend to be knowledgeable of where you’re meant to go, and walk off towards the parameter. There are handles lining the tall wall, there in case of emergencies. You take them one at a time, till you reach the top, wherein there’s a ledge and an open window. Peering inside, and seeing a massive crate just below, you push the window open wider, and jump down onto it.
There’s a noisy, keen clang upon impact. Murmurs break out, not those you recognise, and not a Yokohaman dialect, either.
You wonder, a bit faint, if you’d just blown the entire operation with your incompetence. It takes not a second for bullets to shoot, and voices to shriek in panic.
An amalgamation of noise, of metal against metal and of bullets piercing flesh and of that wet, horrid sound of death fill up your ears, waters of horror flooding in—overcrowding your brain, overcrowding your thoughts, cementing you in your place: on the crate. You fall to your knees, clutch them, but, somehow, you persist.
You pull out the notepad, then your phone in swift succession. You note down the coordinates of the operation, the people involved, that morbid commander. You note it all down, handwriting inked chaos spilling viciously across the page and tainting it all.
The gunshots die down. All that’s left is an overly sweet smell. You cannot breathe, not without inhaling lungfuls of it. It’s difficult to focus, with such little air entering you, but as you stand and attempt to tuck your observation notes away, a hand clamps down on your shoulder.
“Now, now,” The man from before, that wretched commander, clicks his tongue from behind you. You turn to frigid stone. Blithely, he snatches the notepad from your hands. “You’ve had your fun. But I’m afraid all this,”
And he waves it around, dangerously close to the edge of the crate, where it can fall down onto the blood-watered grounds. It’ll be unusable then.
There are also bodies down there.
“Will have to be the end of it.” He takes it between his hands. With excruciating slowness, sadism a joy that steals into his eyes and bequeathes it a light, he starts tearing it.
He barely gets half way before a body rams into him, sending him to the ground. It is that of a near-corpse. Not conscious enough to live.
But conscious enough to dream.
You snatch the dropped papers, shove them into your inner pocket, and turn back towards the open window. It is a height up, but, with a slight concentration on your hostage’s dream, they lift you up near the edge, and you draw yourself into that small opening.
You don’t get far before a hand clamps onto your ankle. With the viciousness of a viper it jerks you down, ramming you backwards and head-first onto the crate. Disoriented, you try to pick yourself up, but a hand, that same odious hand, wounds itself around your neck.
“Interesting ability you’ve got there,” the man says, and you question yourself, why hasn’t that soldier already reamed this man off of you? The answer comes with the crack of a whip. “Too bad it’s useless against me.”
Your breath hitches. Ah.
It’s the Demon Prodigy himself, Dazai.
His other hand, unoccupied by strangling you of breath and life, jams into your forehead. “Now tell me. Why should I let those papers,” he rummages through the inner pockets, and pulls them out, “be with you? Matter of fact,”
He draws closer, his nose a hair’s breadth away, his breath on your face—and those brown eyes, made of bitter coffee and the many sorrows that herald it, peer into yours with a cutting intensity. “Why should I let you live?”
You try to say something, but your words warble, throat constricted by his hands. The world spots, black butterflies flitting about and increasing. With a roll of his eyes, he loosens his grip. Not enough to release you, but enough for you to gasp a lungful of stale, crimson-hued air; enough for you to spout, “B-because, if you let me carry on this research, I could hand you information of your competitors.”
His hand tightens. You’re scared that soon enough, rather than merely hearing your own breath sputter, you’ll be hearing the crack of your neck.
“That trick won’t work twice. Those half-assed documents were clever, but they won’t work, especially so since you’re such a persistent pest, following me all the way here.” Then, his face mangles into a ghoulish grin. “Plus,” he singsongs, “Nobody gives a damn about the pharmaceutical facade.”
He draws ever closer, eagerly anticipating your torment, your tears and your cries. You are well aware the Demon Prodigy lacks in conscience, and savours death like one would honey. “What a pity,” his finger draws down, from your forehead, to between your brows. His thumb brushes the underside of your eye, where your tear duct lies, impatient for the awaiting tears. “That silly little gamble of yours was an utter loss! Death can really only be your repentance for even daring to think it works.”
“I—“ You stammer, and you clutch at the hand around your throat with both of your hands. Even that is not enough to pry his grip of steel off, but it does slacken, his curiosity a living beast within his doleful eyes. “Not on the pharmaceuticals I don’t! But I do have information on the most prominent gangs in Yokohama, classified information, with a brief overview of it below the pharmaceutical ones. Check it, for fuck’s sake!”
“Hm,” Dazai seemingly contemplates it for a moment. “But if I let you go for even a moment, that soldier over there will blow off my head!” He hums, his grin a little more hollow. “I don’t want to do extra work. Killing you is easier.”
“I’m a researcher,” you hiss, “Not a killer.”
“Great!” Dazai says, “Now remind me of the part where I said I care about this distinction?”
“Oh, fuck you!” Exasperated, you throw your head back, uncaring of the pang it sends through your skull. “Just be over with it.”
“I think not now,” There’s the acute ricochet of a bullet meeting flesh. That soldier you’d used is now well and truly dead. Dazai jumps to his feet, gleeful. “You’re interesting enough. I’ll look through those papers,” he tilts his head, smile screwed on, “and if even a single one proves false—well! I’ll allow my reputation to speak for itself.”
“They’re not false,” you huff, indignant, voice hoarse and raspy. As quickly as you could, on weak, fawn-like legs you draw yourself up. You’d rather not have to look at Dazai from underneath, like subdued prey. “I went undercover for all of them. They’re as valid as they get. Don’t insult my integrity as a researcher.”
“Lying in a pool of blood speaks of much integrity, does it?” He shoots back, eyes raptly roving over the words. After tense moments spent in a pendulum that swings betwixt life and eminent death, it settles on a side, and draws to a stop on life. Dazai folds the papers, and tucks them into his massive coat. “Alright. I’ll let you live. And, I’ll even let you investigate the Port Mafia to your heart’s content!”
You consider yourself a polite person. You also don’t consider Dazai worth said politeness. “The catch?”
His eyes glint. For a moment, you wonder if a soul truly lives there, and if, for just this second, you’d witnessed it.
“Well, of course you’ll hand us access to all the research you’ve done so far, complete and unredacted,” Then, with an easy confidence, he takes both your hands in his, and with an overwhelmingly joyful voice declares, “And you’ll have to follow me around, obey my orders, and be a good pet researcher!”
The words reek less of promise, and are rather poignant with threat.
Still, your research is imperative. You allow him to clasp your hands, your neck still throbbing with pain, and wonder what sort of hell you’ve thrown yourself headfirst into, as you utter an acceptance to his deal.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
ᯓ★ First time writing Dazai, pretty please don’t crucify me for getting it wrong. Matter of fact, first time writing “x reader.” It never really was a genre I thought I’d engage with, but here we are.
ᯓ★ This was born out of my sociology class. If it wasn’t obvious yet, we were doing research methods, specifically into gangs, and the usage of certain research methods. I thought, “hey how ridiculous would it be if I were to, as a researcher, just waltz into a mafia building and politely ask for an interview?”
Also known as, Reader is reckless and stupid, and it’s giving Moon a heart attack on a daily basis (but his voice box is busted so he can’t tell them THAT WAS DANGEROUS YOU IDIOT BE CAREFUL WTF WERE YOU THINKING!!!!)
Pairing: Thunderbolts!Bucky x Thunderbolt!Fem!Reader
Word Count: 3.9k
Summary: Now reunited, Bucky gets you out, gets you safe, and you both can finally breathe again.
Trigger Warnings: Descriptions of tasting blood in a kiss; Bucky needing comfort; healing wounds mentioned; Christmas Morning under a wonky tree.
Author’s Note: The final part. I love this couple so much.
Part 2: Rescue
Series Masterlist
Masterlist
He should’ve been focused on the exit. Or on the blood soaking through your shirt, thick and sluggish and far too dark for comfort. On the way your shoulder hung wrong: dislocated, maybe fractured. On the loose tremble in your hands and the pale, washed-out color of your skin. He should’ve been counting how many rounds he had left in his mag, or calculating fallback points, field dressing options, exfil paths, backup contingencies.
But he couldn’t.
All he could see was you: bleeding and wrecked and smiling like this was a joke you were telling together. It was that same crooked, cocky grin he’d fallen for hard and fast, the one you wore when you were hurting worse than you let on, like the pain was just another thing to flirt through.
Blood covered your mouth, bruises spread down your cheekbone, your lashes fluttered low over dazed, defiant eyes. You looked like hell. You looked like his.
Because you were still smiling at him like he was the lucky one.
That was the moment the dam he’d held back since his mission started, hell, since the second your signal went dark, splintered like glass under pressure and thought no longer existed.
His hands were on your face before he even realized he’d moved. One flesh, one metal, and both trembling. He cradled your jaw like you were something fragile and sacred, like if he wasn’t careful, you’d disappear right there in his grip.
Rough hands against soft skin, war against survival, and battle-hardened instinct clashing with something tender and wordless and true.
And then he kissed you, hard and desperate, like your mouth was the only thing that could hold him together.
His lips found yours with no grace, no patience. He tasted the blood on your teeth and the dust in the air and smelled the acrid bite of violence still clinging to his tongue, but he kissed you like salvation, like his lungs only remembered how to work when they shared air with yours.
He kissed you like if he let go for even one second, you’d vanish into smoke and ruin and memory.
His hand slid to the back of your neck, careful despite the force of his kiss. His body shook with panic, fury, and relief all tangled up in a knot that only you could undo. Your body leaned into him, soft and broken and alive, and the moment his lips were against yours, the noise in his head stopped.
It wasn’t gentle or sweet. It was survival, plain and simple.
When he finally pulled back, your eyes fluttered open, half-lidded and glassy, your head tipping forward until your forehead brushed his. You were dazed, covered in blood, barely upright, and somehow still smug as hell.
That stupid, beautiful grin curved your lips, faint and pained and so goddamn you.
His forehead pressed harder to yours. His breath came hard and fast, chest heaving like he’d run through fire to get to you. He supposed he had.
His voice came out rough and broken, but the words were clear, low and sharp with every ounce of love and fury he couldn’t hold back anymore.
“Sweetheart,” he rasped, “never fucking do that again.”
It cracked on the last word, split down the center like his heart was still bleeding.
You huffed a laugh, dry and wrecked. He felt it against his mouth.
“Didn’t plan on it,” you murmured, voice barely above a whisper. “Just wanted to keep you on your toes. You were getting slow in your old age.”
His eyes fluttered shut.
God, you were impossible.
Reckless, sarcastic, infuriating, and the most heartbreakingly alive thing he’d ever seen.
His impossible woman. His Spark.
You didn’t need to be whole or strong. You just needed to be breathing.
He kissed you again, slower this time, without the panic and fire.
His lips moved against yours like a vow, like a thank you, like a prayer to gods he didn’t believe in: Thank you for not letting her die. Thank you for letting me find her. Thank you for giving me something to live for.
He pulled you into him, gently but firmly, gathering you against his chest like he was trying to put you back together with the shape of his arms alone, one hand on the back of your neck, the other curled around your waist, careful not to press too hard against your side.
His thumb brushed over the curve of your cheekbone, tracing the bruises with a featherlight touch. You were warm under his hands.
You’re here. You’re here. You’re here.
It was the only thing that mattered, because as long as you were alive beneath his hands, he could survive anything.
*****
He carried you like you weighed nothing.
One arm beneath your knees, the other cradled around your back, his grip unwavering even as blood soaked both your bodies and turned the cold air sharp as a blade. His breath came hard and hot against your temple, uneven but steady, and you could feel the tremor in his arms; not from weakness, but from not letting go.
Your head rested against his chest, tucked under his chin, and you let yourself go limp, not because you were giving up, but because you knew he needed to hold you just as much as you needed to be held.
The pounding of his heart was wild beneath your ear, a furious, untamed rhythm, like it was trying to escape his ribcage and wrap itself around you to make sure you didn’t vanish again.
He wasn’t speaking. He didn’t show panic, or curse, or make any frantic demands like you half-expected. He just moved, quiet, focused, and relentless.
The air outside hit you like a knife to your lungs. It was colder than before, colder than you remembered. Bitter wind scraped against your cheeks, finding every exposed inch of skin, but you were already half-numb. The only warmth you had was his chest against yours, and even that was soaked with too much blood to last.
Snow had thickened while you were locked inside that hellhole. A fresh layer covered everything: the twisted bodies strewn in the yard, the splintered doorway he’d kicked through like a war god, the trail he’d carved in his rage to get to you.
His boots crunched with each step, slow but deliberate, as he carried you out of that place and into the bleeding edge of morning.
Somewhere distant, over the tree line, a helicopter’s blades began to beat a low, thunderous rhythm into the dawn. You hadn’t heard it until now, but of course he had. Of course Bucky had timed it like this. Of course he’d planned your exit even while bleeding, even while burning with fury and fear.
You opened your eyes, just barely, vision fuzzy at the edges, lashes heavy with frost and blood. Through the haze, you caught a flicker of absurdity: soft, blinking color through a frost-glazed window of the abandoned guard outpost.
Someone had duct-taped a string of Christmas lights to the broken glass. Green, red, blue, and yellow blinked in lazy patterns like the whole world hadn’t been on fire an hour ago and you hadn’t been about to die alone in a concrete basement.
It was festive and ridiculous and if you’d had the strength, you would’ve laughed. But all you could do was let out a low breath, your lips cracked and numb from cold and pain.
Bucky shifted you slightly, adjusting his grip. You felt the change in pressure, the slight pull of torn muscle in his arm, the strain in his shoulder where blood still soaked through his shirt, but he didn’t make a sound. He just held you tighter, like he felt you slipping again and couldn’t bear it.
You turned your face into his neck, mouth barely moving.
“You look like shit.”
His chest rumbled, not quite a laugh, but close, and broken at the edges.
“You scared ten years off my life,” he muttered, voice rough and wrecked.
You smiled against his collarbone, wincing as your lip split again.
“Gray hairs look good on you, baby.”
That did it. A real laugh rumbled deep in his chest this time, ragged and low and warm in the cold. It wrapped around you like a blanket, chasing back some of the numbness, and making you feel human again.
His head tilted until his lips brushed your hair.
“Don’t joke,” he whispered. “I’m still deciding whether to kill you or marry you.”
You closed your eyes. “Surprise me,” you rasped.
His grip tightened.
Snow began to swirl heavier now, wind kicking up across the clearing as the helicopter descended in a roar of blades and spray. It dropped like an angel of war, carving through the clouds and storm, light slicing across the dark trees. The air trembled with its arrival, but you didn’t move.
You stayed curled in his arms, cheek pressed to his chest, your fingers twitching weakly against the front of his shirt. Every breath still hurt. Every part of you was burning or broken or fading fast. But none of that mattered now.
You were in his arms, and the way he held you like you were something he could never lose again, that was home.
*****
You woke to warmth. Soft sheets cocooned your aching body, tucked with quiet care around your limbs. The sterile scent of antiseptic clung to the air, unmistakable and clinical, but not harsh. You were in the med bay, but instead of the usual stark brightness and cold efficiency you were used to, the room felt different.
The overhead lights had been dimmed to a low amber glow, casting a soft, golden hue across the walls and medical equipment. It reminded you of candlelight, warm, quiet, and almost tender. It wasn’t meant to wake you, just to be here when you did. Machines hummed softly around you, the rhythmic beep of a heart monitor echoing through the silence like a metronome for your survival.
You blinked slowly, trying to orient yourself.
Pain greeted you first, a dull, heavy throb pulsing through your body. Your arm was bound in a sling against your chest, stiff and immobilized. Layers of gauze wrapped around your torso, tight enough that every breath reminded you of your bruised ribs and the bullet hole hiding underneath. Your skin felt like it was stretched too thin over a body that had been battered from the inside out.
But you were alive. Your body was a battlefield, but it was quiet now. No footsteps overhead, no radio crackling with static, no cold cement beneath your cheek. Only silence, warmth, and the faint whir of machines.
And when you turned your head, slowly and stiffly, you saw him.
Your Bucky.
He was slumped in a chair beside your cot, half-fallen into sleep like he’d meant to sit down for five minutes and forgot to get back up. His body sagged at a crooked angle, long legs stretched out under your bed, one boot kicked halfway off. His head tilted against the wall at an unnatural slant that had to be killing his neck.
He looked like hell. His shirt was still stained, both your blood and his, and dried in dark patches along the shoulder, across his ribs, and high on the collar where your face had rested when he carried you out. His face was pale and unshaven, streaked with faint bruises that you hadn’t seen before, but were already half-healed. Even in sleep, his brow was drawn tight, like the nightmare hadn’t ended.
But what undid you wasn’t the bruises or the blood or the exhaustion carved into every line of him.
It was his hands.
Both flesh and metal were wrapped around yours, one cradling your palm, the other gripping your fingers. He held you like he was still afraid you might vanish if he let go, like you were the only thing tethering him to the present moment.
You stared at him for a long time and let yourself have the image of him here, bent but unbroken, holding on like you were something precious. Because to him, you were. You felt it in the way he curled protectively toward you even in sleep, the way his hand twitched every few seconds, as if testing reality.
A flicker of color drew your eye to the far corner of the room and the Christmas tree there.
It was tiny and plastic, maybe a foot tall at most, duct-taped to a rolling table like someone gave up halfway through the decorating process. The multicolored lights blinked in slow, uneven pulses across a few strands of cheap silver tinsel. It was lopsided, half the bulbs didn’t work, and it looked exactly like something someone had shoved in last-minute to try and make the med bay feel less like a place where people fought to stay alive.
You turned back to Bucky. You didn’t want to wake him, you knew he needed the rest more than he’d ever admit, but your hand shifted to press into his palm and your fingers tightened around his, weak and trembling, but solid.
He twitched, then, slowly, his lashes fluttered open. He blinked blearily, still half-caught in sleep, before his eyes dropped to your face.
You watched the exact moment his heart remembered how to beat.
He stared at you like a man resurfacing from the deep, chest expanding in a slow, shaky breath. The lines in his brow didn’t soften, not yet, but his mouth parted like he wanted to speak, but there were too many words fighting to come out at once and none of them were enough.
*****
He woke slowly, not the jolt of alertness that usually pulled him from sleep, not the sound of sirens or shouting or gunfire. It was the gentle weight of your hand in his and the sound of your soft and steady breathing.
A faint hum of music crackled somewhere in the background, distorted through an old wall-mounted speaker. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” drifted in, the melody truly beautiful now that he heard it while looking into your eyes. It sounded like it was playing in another room, or maybe another lifetime, just far enough away to feel like a memory.
Bucky blinked slowly, adjusting to the amber light. The med bay was dim, shadows stretching long across the sterile floor, broken only by the low glow from a string of mismatched holiday lights tangled around the base of the IV stand. The world outside the window was silver with snow.
The medics had tried to get him to move. They’d offered clean clothes, rest, food, but he’d refused. Not until you woke up. Not until you were safe.
And now you were watching him.
Your eyes were barely open, lashes heavy, but you were awake, conscious, and looking at him like he was your personal hero.
His heart stumbled once, like his body hadn’t caught up to the relief yet. He didn’t say anything at first. He just looked at you, like his mind was taking a slow inventory of every inch: cheek bruised, arm in a sling, bandages peeking out from beneath the collar of your hospital gown, and still, somehow, impossibly, perfectly you.
His hand moved without thinking, slow and reverent, fingers brushing over the edge of your blanket, the curve of your wrist, then drifting higher, just to feel the warmth of your skin. As if touch might help anchor him in the reality that you were still here.
“I’m not going anywhere, honey,” you whispered, your voice sandpaper-rough but steady. You turned your hand under his and brought it to your lips, pressing a kiss to the back of his knuckles, sealing your promise with a kiss.
The words lingered between you in the low-lit quiet. Bucky exhaled a slow breath that sounded like he might actually believe you this time.
He looked down, jaw clenched hard enough that the muscles twitched. He swallowed, chest tight, breath caught halfway to a sob he wouldn’t let out. When he finally spoke, his voice cracked under the weight of it.
“You’re my whole goddamn life, sweetheart.” He didn’t blink, and didn’t look away. He let the words hang in the space between you, raw and unfiltered.
“You know that, right?”
You gave a faint nod, voice a thread of sound but steady.
“Yeah. I know. Same.”
He let out a long, shaky breath, like something huge was being lifted from his shoulders and maybe, for the first time in a long time, he could actually believe the worst was behind him.
Then, without asking, without needing permission, he stood just long enough to kick off his boots and peel off the vest. He moved gently, like he was afraid the moment might fracture if he shifted too fast.
He climbed into the narrow bed beside you, careful not to jar your injuries, his body curling around yours. He placed one hand over your bandaged ribs, the other across your stomach, his metal fingers brushing over the thin cotton of your blanket. You made room for him instinctively, like your body had been waiting for his exact shape to fill the gap.
You exhaled slowly, your free hand lifting to thread through his hair in slow, soothing strokes, just like you always did after a mission that went sideways, or after a nightmare, or after a war.
He pressed his forehead lightly against your stomach and let his eyes close. He hadn’t meant to cry, but he could feel the sting at the corners, the heat behind his eyes. He buried it in the warmth of you.
The music played on, distant and scratchy, but still there.
“Through the years we all will be together… if the fates allow…”
Outside the window, snow drifted down in soft, lazy spirals, covering rooftops, clinging to windowpanes, and blanketing the world in a hush. The storm had passed. All that remained was quiet, and this.
You were warm beneath his hands, breathing, still here, and somehow still his.
*****
It was finally Christmas and you sat together in the soft, sleepy morning light.
The Watchtower sat wrapped in white, flurries drifting in slow spirals down past the windows, blanketing everything in a hush.
You were curled on the couch in the common room, wrapped in one of the thick fleece blankets that still smelled faintly like laundry detergent and aftershave; likely John’s, he always used too much. Your arm was tucked in a sling against your chest, your ribs still bandaged so tightly it made breathing an exercise in patience. Every shift of your body was met with a dull, stitched-up ache, but it was a healing kind of hurt now, not the kind that made you see white behind your eyelids.
The fire across the room crackled low, real flames this year for the first time. Someone had finally talked maintenance into rigging the fake fireplace with a safe flame-feed system. It flickered over the walls, casting gold shadows across the floors and making the air smell like cedar smoke and scorched cinnamon.
A song crackled softly through the Watchtower speaker system.
“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”
Nat King Cole. Fitting, in this newfound sense of peace.
In front of you stood the Christmas tree, a little crooked, clearly artificial, with sparse branches and a set of warm white lights wrapped a little too loosely around the middle. Half the ornaments were just repurposed tac gear. One of them was an empty .50 Browning Machine Gun casing with glitter glue spelling HO HO HOLY SHIT, courtesy of Yelena. At the top, a bent paper star leaned slightly to the left, like it had too much eggnog.
You liked it that way.
Behind you, the couch dipped as Bucky sank down slowly, his weight careful and measured, one hand bracing the cushions as he eased into place. He was still moving stiffly; even super soldiers took some time to recover from bullet wounds. His movements were stiff, and he was breathing more gingerly, which you knew meant he’d been overdoing it while you had slept.
You didn’t chastise him. You just leaned against his good side, careful not to jar anything too bruised. Your head came to rest on the cool curve of his vibranium shoulder, his arm wrapping around you automatically.
The music kept playing, low and soft.
“Tree’s still crooked,” Bucky murmured.
You smiled faintly, letting your eyes drift half-closed. “So are we,” you said.
He let out a quiet laugh, you felt it rumble low in his chest, warm and cracked and unguarded. That sound always settled in your heart.
You didn’t speak again for a while. The room was warm, your body was sore but whole, and he was here. That was enough for you.
Then you felt a subtle shift of his weight, the faint rustle of something in his coat pocket.
“Y’know,” he said, voice a little too casual, like he was talking himself into it. “When I carried you outta that basement, I told you I couldn’t decide whether to kill you or marry you.”
You huffed a quiet laugh against his shoulder. “You did.”
“And you said to surprise you.”
You blinked, lifting your head slightly, though it took more effort than you’d admit. Your heart had already started to pick up, pounding a little faster beneath your ribs, not from exertion, but something deeper you were too afraid of to name.
He shifted forward just enough to face you. The firelight hit him from the side, casting one half of his face in soft gold, the other in shadow. His eyes, those steel-blue, glass-sharp eyes, were open in a rare, fragile way you’d only seen a few times.
Then he held up a ring, simple and gold. No diamonds, no sparkle, no flourish, just a smooth, solid band, the kind made for a life lived in motion.
He held it between two fingers and his hand trembled, just a little.
“Hope you’re not too surprised,” he said.
Your throat tightened. You weren’t sure what hit you first, disbelief, or joy, or a relief that knocked the breath out of you. They all tangled together into one heartbeat.
You looked at him and smiled, and it broke you at the same time.
You didn’t cry, but your eyes stung, and your vision blurred. You tried to swallow around the ache in your chest.
“I mean,” you whispered, voice shaking just slightly, “you did say I was your whole damn life. Hard to top that.”
His breath hitched at that, and the smile he gave you then was the softest you’d ever seen, crooked and small and only for you.
“Well?” he asked, quieter now, holding the ring out like it wasn’t a question, but a vow.
You didn’t wait. Your fingers trembled, but you took it gently, and slid it onto your own finger before he could.
“Yes,” you said. “Obviously.”
And then you leaned in and kissed him, not rushed or desperate, but long and warm and sure. His hand cupped your jaw like it always did when he forgot to be afraid. He tasted of cinnamon and salt and memory, and maybe just a little bit of forever.
And in that moment you knew that this was what thriving looked like. Not medals, not headlines, but this moment, bruised and bleeding and breathing together under a crooked Christmas tree.
This was what you’d both survived for.
This was the only thing you’d wanted for Christmas.
Pairing: Thunderbolts!Bucky x Thunderbolt!Fem!Reader
Word Count: 4.0k
Summary: You are Bucky’s sassy and reckless other half. While on a solo recon mission around Christmastime you lost contact.
Trigger Warnings: Sad Bucky; Angry Bucky; Dangerous Bucky; Reader being shot; reader tasting blood and it sorta dripping down your chin.
Author’s Note: I hope you enjoy this Christmas Special! I'm doing a slightly different Reader than my usual. I don't often do a capable Teammate Reader. I liked it. Gonna have to do another one at some point.
Series Masterlist
Masterlist
The overhead lights in the weapons locker buzzed faintly, their tired flicker a rhythm no one had gotten around to fixing. You’d meant to submit a maintenance request weeks ago, but instead of filling out forms, you were strapping on gear: your sleek black knives with the handles worn smooth from use, your low-profile firearm, trusty, reliable, and familiar in your grip, and a backup set of thermal gloves you usually forgot to pack.
Somewhere down the corridor, the Watchtower’s comm system hissed to life, and Mariah Carey’s voice floated through the speakers, faint and full of artificial holiday cheer.
“All I want for Christmas is you—”
You rolled your eyes and shoved another magazine into your thigh holster.
He hated that song. You’d put it on the playlist just to piss him off.
Two days. That’s all this should be, a quick in and out. Get eyes on a former Hydra informant who’d resurfaced in Bratislava after vanishing six months ago. Val wanted a quick recon pass before committing to a full op team. You’d made your case for going in solo. Fewer bodies meant fewer complications, and a quieter cleaner job.
It made sense on paper.
Still, as you zipped up your tactical bag and adjusted the Kevlar vest over your hoodie, a tension curled low in your gut. Not fear or dread, but more like the prickle of being watched by Fate. And Fate was wearing Bucky Barnes’ scowl.
Voices carried in from the corridor, raised just enough to bounce off the gray walls. Val’s smooth, too-calm tone layered against a sharper edge: Bucky’s voice, low and tight, frustration bleeding through gritted teeth.
“She’s not cleared to go alone. The intel’s soft.”
“She requested it. She’s capable. It’s recon, not retrieval.”
“She’s reckless when she thinks she’s right.”
“She’s alive because of that.”
“She’s mine. I won’t let you risk her.”
That last one hit like a bullet in the air, sharp, unguarded, and final. It stopped everything, even the hum of the lights. Silence hung for half a beat before his boots started toward you.
You didn’t turn when the door slid open. Instead, you slid a knife into the sheath inside your boot and said, without looking, “Tell me you’re here to say goodbye like a normal boyfriend, not break into the jet and zip-tie yourself to a seat.”
He was behind you a heartbeat later, close enough for his body heat to ghost across your back, but not touching. You could feel the tension radiating off him like static, hot, bristling, and feral. When you finally turned, you met the look that had been clawing at your instincts all morning.
His jaw was clenched, shoulders squared, but his eyes weren’t angry. They were afraid. Of losing you.
“Seriously?” he asked, voice low, dry as frost. “You’re really gonna leave now? A week before Christmas?”
You grinned, tilting your head like it didn’t ache your heart to do it. “It’s two days, baby. Not like Santa’s coming early.”
He didn’t smile.
He never did when he was afraid.
His arms folded across his chest, muscles tense under the dark henley he’d been wearing when you slipped out of bed that morning. There was still a faint crease on his cheek from the pillow. You shouldn’t have looked. It made your throat sting.
“This isn’t a joke,” he muttered. “The intel came in too fast. It doesn’t smell right.”
“Nothing ever smells right to you,” you said, lighter than you felt. “Except gun oil and burnt toast.”
“Don’t deflect.”
You looked away first. Back to your bag, to the straps, the zippers, anything to focus on besides the aching in your chest. Because God, you didn’t want to leave while he was looking at you like he was trying to memorize you just in case.
But you’d trained your whole life to be the one they sent in first. You had to go. You had to believe in your own survival, because if you didn’t, the doubt would eat you alive.
“You’ll be here when I get back,” you said, forcing a grin. “Probably yelling at an inflatable snowman for blinking too loud.”
“I’m not gonna fight with you,” he said, softer now. “I just—”
You looked up at the crack in his voice when frustration turned to fear.
“I just don’t want this to be the last time I see you.”
You heard the truth, the fear, and the love under all the sarcasm. Neither of you said those three words easily, but he was saying it now, the only way he knew how.
You stepped closer, reaching out to smooth down the collar of his shirt. It was pointless, a stalling tactic, but you needed the contact.
“Promise me you’ll keep your comms hot,” he said, eyes locked on yours like he could will you to be careful.
You gave him the grin he hated most, crooked, flippant, and infuriating.
“I’ll be fine, sweetheart. I got this.”
He exhaled through his nose, and shook his head like he’d heard that lie too many times.
“You always say that,” he muttered. “Then I end up stitching you up while you flirt with me through the pain.”
“Exactly.” You winked. “That’s our thing.”
Before he could argue, beg, plead, or break, you leaned in and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. It lingered a heartbeat too long.
Then you grabbed your bag and walked out.
Behind you, Mariah Carey kept singing.
“...all I want for Christmas… is you…”
*****
You were gone.
The hangar felt hollow without you in it, like the building itself knew something was missing. The wind outside had gone still, held its breath the moment you disappeared into the sky. The only sound was the fading whine of the jet’s engines, growing thinner by the second as they vanished into the thick gray clouds.
Snow had started again. Sparse flurries, dry and sharp, drifted against the reinforced windows, but Bucky didn’t move.
He stood just beyond the edge of the tarmac, boots planted, arms crossed tight over his chest, fists balled so hard his knuckles ached. His shoulders were locked in place, because he knew in his bones if he let himself breathe too deep, he might break apart right here on the runway.
His eyes tracked the jet until it shrank to a speck, then until it was nothing.
You hadn’t looked back at him before takeoff. You never did.
And he understood. God help him, he understood. You were built for forward momentum: clean exits, no hesitation, no sentimental glances over your shoulder. The mission always came first.
But still, he wished you’d looked back. Just once. Just for him.
“You gonna pace a trench into the floor,” came a voice behind him, casual and too damn loud for the moment, “or go drink about it?”
Bucky didn’t turn.
The scent of cheap peppermint stirred into burnt coffee hit him first. Walker. Smug and uninvited, the human equivalent of static in Bucky’s already frayed nerves.
He grunted, low in his throat. It wasn’t a greeting or even an answer. It was a warning.
Walker, of course, ignored it.
“Suit yourself,” he said, sipping noisily from a red-and-white striped mug. “Just don’t bleed on the rug when you start tearing walls down.”
Bucky tuned him out. He didn’t have the energy to waste on people who hadn’t loved and lost to the extent he had.
The walk back inside felt colder than it should have. Not because of the temperature, it was always freezing in this part of the base, but because you weren’t there to add the heat with a look or a quip or that goddamn smirk that drove him crazy.
The corridors were half-decorated for Christmas. It was a tired effort, scattered at best: paper snowflakes hung lopsided from command room doors, someone had twisted tinsel around the fire suppression pipes, there was a discount-store wreath taped to the med bay entrance, its bow already curling at the corners.
It was supposed to feel festive. Instead, it felt like someone had dressed a morgue in holiday drag.
Carey’s voice trailed faintly from the cafeteria down the hall, warbling out that same cursed song. Your song.
“All I want for Christmas is you—”
Bucky’s jaw clenched hard enough to make the nerve behind his molars twinge. He knew you’d queued it up just to mess with him. It was the kind of petty sabotage you excelled at. Death-defying in the field, chaos in human form, and still committed to pushing his buttons every damn chance you got.
And the worst part? He loved that it worked. And he hated that it worked.
The comms room was empty when he entered. The glow from the monitors cast long shadows across the steel floor, bathing the space in an icy blue-white pallor.
He sat down at the central console without thinking. His movements were automatic, muscle memory. He’d done this enough times before: missions you were on, extractions he wasn’t a part of, surveillance that kept him tethered to you through screens and signals.
And there you were, your signal blinking to life on the leftmost monitor, a small green dot pulsing steady over the European grid. Your flight path was stable. Altitude and heart rate within safe parameters.
No spikes, no distress. Not yet at least.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, shoulders hunched over like a man trying to shield a wound. His eyes locked on that tiny light like it was the only thing keeping him breathing.
SPARK.
All caps, and all attitude, just like you.
The name glared back at him from the digital interface, a handful of letters that made up his world. He hated how small they looked on the screen.
You were always larger than life when you were near him, loud, bright, sharp-edged, and warm in your own firecracker way. Even when you were pissing him off. Even when you were reckless. Maybe especially then.
He could still smell your shampoo on his shirt. The warmth of you hadn’t fully faded from his skin. You’d stood too close, kissed him at the corner of his mouth instead of square-on, like you knew it would leave him off-balance and aching.
You always knew what you were doing. You always left him wanting more.
He exhaled slowly through his nose, willing his pulse to slow.
You’d joked like it was nothing: two days, quick recon, low-risk. You’d even promised to be home before Christmas, like you believed it, so he should believe it, too.
But Bucky had seen the op file and knew how weak the intel was. He knew the name on the target list: Lukas Dvorsky, former Hydra, expert in vanishing. A man who made people disappear, quietly and permanently. Hydra might have been dismantled in headlines, but Bucky knew what still slithered beneath the surface, and how ghosts like Dvorsky didn’t stay buried.
And still, somehow, you’d convinced Val to clear you for a solo run on the guy.
Bucky didn’t know what infuriated him more, your insistence, or her permission.
He should have stopped you. He should have grabbed your arm, dragged you back into that locker, and said what he wanted to say:
Please don’t go.
Please don’t leave me behind again.
Please don’t make me wonder if I’ll ever see you alive.
But he hadn’t, because you hated being told what to do. You didn’t like being needed, and needing you, loving you, had always been his most dangerous secret.
Now you were airborne, half a continent away, chasing a ghost who could be nothing… or everything.
He reached out without thinking, fingers brushing the screen like he could touch you through the glass. He didn’t even realize what he was doing until his hand pressed flat against the data feed.
“She always comes back,” he murmured, voice hoarse, low enough that even the room didn’t hear him.
The green dot blinked steadily, unbothered and oblivious.
“Always.”
But the knot in his stomach didn’t loosen and his jaw didn’t unclench.
Because beneath the soldier, beneath the scars, beneath the man who had learned to endure loss without flinching, there was a voice whispering that one day, you won’t.
And that would be the day he didn’t survive, either.
*****
They told you it would be light security, a quiet recon run. In and out, ghost work. You should have known better.
No one ghosts out of Hydra and resurfaces with clean hands. Lukas Dvorsky had been off-grid for half a year. He slipped off the radar like smoke, with no chatter, no sightings, and no fingerprints. Then, three days ago, he lit up a thermal scan in Bratislava, tucked deep inside a gutted textile mill on the edge of the industrial district.
It didn’t feel right, but the op file had been thin. You’d studied the blueprints: three floors, one access stairwell, partial power, half-collapsed roof. Two posted sentries, a clean line to the server room, encrypted drives tucked behind reinforced casing. It looked simple, but simple was often a lie.
You were crawling on the third floor now, low to the ground, shoulder jammed against cold concrete, tucked behind a rusted-out loom that reeked of grease and dust and something sharper underneath, stale water, mildew, maybe even old blood. The rot clung to your skin and every breath stung.
Your left shoulder screamed when you moved. A hot, electric throb bloomed under your vest and radiated down your ribs with every shift. Your shirt was soaked through. You didn’t know if it was sweat or blood or both, but the fabric clung like a second skin. It chilled fast in the air, making you shiver.
It had been ten minutes since you'd been shot, maybe less. Time got slippery when pain kicked in.
You hadn’t even registered it at first, just the way the impact jolted you off balance, the flash of heat, the sudden dead weight of your arm. You remembered stumbling into the stairwell, dragging your body up the cracked steps with one hand, and realizing your left arm wasn’t working properly, something inside had torn or dislocated.
Your gun had jammed. You didn’t even hear the click until after.
The whole op had unraveled too fast for you to adjust. You were always quick, adaptable, slippery, and chaotic by design, but even chaos had limits.
Outside, past the broken panes of a shattered office window, snow drifted down in slow, weightless spirals. Light caught in the flurries like ash swirling through cold firelight.
You reached for your comms. The light on the unit flickered green, faint and unstable.
You pressed it anyway, and murmured into the mic.
“Minor hiccup,” you whispered, jaw tight. “Not to worry. Maybe I’ll bring back a souvenir.”
It was a stupid lie.
You were bleeding out behind a rusted machine in a half-collapsed factory, surrounded by the worst kind of ghosts. Hydra never really died; it just changed faces and addresses. You were sure now that this hadn’t been a recon target; it had been a trap.
Your sidearm was a paperweight. Your knife was still good, but it wouldn’t hold out long in a firefight. You’d stashed the encrypted drive in your boot, intact, at least; your one small victory.
A foreign voice echoed down the hall, male, careless and amused. Laughter followed, sharp and close.
You pressed your back tighter to the loom, and sucked in a slow breath. Every inhale burned.
The room around you was all rust and decay: machinery long dead, cracked walls layered in peeling paint and graffiti in a mix of Czech and Slovak. There was a crude drawing of a skull next to a phrase you couldn’t translate. Somehow, it felt fitting.
Your good hand shook as you pulled your knife free.
You’d had worse days, but you weren’t sure you’d survive this one.
Somewhere deeper in the building, a radio crackled to life. You heard static first, then, faint and warbling through the bad wiring, a familiar voice began to sing.
“I’ll have a blue Christmas… without you…”
Elvis. Of course it was Elvis.
You nearly laughed, but bit it back. Blood coated your tongue.
You remembered playing that exact song last week just to annoy Bucky. You’d danced barefoot through the kitchen, singing off-key with dramatic flair. He’d leaned in the doorway with a scowl like he was planning to throw you off a roof, muttering something about “holiday propaganda.”
He’d caught you mid-chorus, grabbed your waist, hauled you in like you weighed nothing, and kissed you breathless. The kiss left you boneless and a little pissed off that he could melt your brain that easily.
He’d said, “You better be here for Christmas, my Spark.” You’d smiled against his mouth and promised you would.
Your vision swam for a moment. Your face was hot, and your fingers cold. You leaned your head back against the loom, trying to breathe through the ache in your ribs.
There was no clean way out. There might not be a dirty one either. You’d taken down at least two men, but there were more, maybe four, maybe ten, maybe more than you could handle with one working arm and a body on the verge of shutting down.
And the worst part wasn’t the blood or the pain or even the thought of dying here.
The worst part was Bucky.
If you didn’t call this in, if you didn’t say something, he’d wait. He’d wait and hope and look for you, maybe forever. And Bucky Barnes did not come apart cleanly when he lost something.
He would come. You knew it. He’d come, and he’d tear through every wall in this place to find you, and if you were already gone, it would kill him slowly.
You couldn’t let that happen.
You pressed your lips to your forearm, trying to muffle your voice. The comm sparked again, weak and crackling. There was no confirmation tone this time, just static. You had no way to know if it connected, but you had to try.
“Bucky…” you whispered. Your voice sounded distant to your own ears, slurred at the edges. “If you’re hearing this… don’t come.”
You dragged a breath into your lungs, sharp and blinding.
“It’s not worth it.”
Elvis sang on in the background, a crooning ghost to what you thought could be your last words.
You smiled faintly, lips cracked, blood dripping slowly from your chin now, warm and sticky.
“Don’t make Christmas sad, baby.”
Then the static swallowed your voice whole. The signal went dead.
*****
He heard your last words on a loop, like a record needle caught in a groove:
“Don’t make Christmas sad, baby.”
Then a low, hissing void of silence where your voice had been; static stretching into endless and empty infinity.
The comms room fell still. Even the hum of the servers seemed to fade.
Bucky didn’t blink. His breath stuck somewhere between his lungs and his ribs, like the air around him had shifted and the world had exhaled and forgotten how to breathe again.
A single heartbeat passed, then another. The monitors kept glowing. Your signal, the dot labeled SPARK, still hovered on the map mocking him. It didn’t blink. It didn’t move.
Behind him, a keyboard clicked, calm and methodical.
“Could be interference,” Yelena said. She sounded too casual, too steady for how the ground had just crumbled beneath him. “We can run a ping. Bounce it off the nearest relay—”
But Bucky was already on his feet without a word.
He walked out of the room and closed the door behind him. He didn’t slam it. He was controlled in a way that meant danger. His mind was full of the silence that came before hell.
The hall stretched ahead of him in a blur of too-bright lights and cheap Christmas cheer.
His boots hit the tile in hard, rhythmic strides, each step echoing like a ticking clock.
Twinkling fairy lights blinked from the ceiling, casting colored reflections on polished floors, and tinsel sparkled around the doorframes. Someone had hung glitter-covered ornaments from the fire alarms.
It all felt wrong, like a cosmic joke. The world didn’t understand that you were out there, alone and bleeding, maybe dying, while this place still smelled like gingerbread and artificial pine.
His name rang out behind him, clipped and sharp: “Barnes! Stand down. That’s a direct order—”
Val’s voice. He didn’t slow down or even turn.
She might as well have been shouting down a hallway in another country; none of it reached him. Not now when everything inside him had gone quiet.
It was the silence that came with war, the silence that had lived in his bones for decades: cold, focused, and absolutely lethal.
He entered the gear room like a shadow with a mission.
Bright fluorescents buzzed overhead, stark and sterile. Rows of lockers lined the walls. The scent of metal oil and cleaning solvent hung thick in the air.
Bucky grabbed gear with practiced efficiency: no hesitation, no wasted motion. Body armor. Tactical belt. Spare mags. Extra knives. More than he needed, but not enough to make him feel ready. He didn’t bother double-checking. His hands moved on their own, as if they’d been waiting for this moment.
The metal of his left hand caught the light, a quick gleam of gold and black across the shiny silver surface of the table.
Your voice still echoed in his head, softer now, frayed and worn through.
“Bucky… if you’re hearing this…”
“Don’t come.”
“It’s not worth it.”
“Don’t make Christmas sad, baby.”
He froze and closed his eyes for one breath.
His jaw clenched so tight it ached. His right hand pressed flat against the tabletop, slow and controlled, until the steel beneath it groaned under the pressure. He stayed there, knuckles white, chest heaving once.
She always jokes when she’s scared. She always tells me to stay when she knows I’m already gone.
His voice came out rough, barely above a whisper.
“I swear to God, if she got herself killed—”
He couldn’t finish the sentence; the words fractured in his mouth. They tasted like blood and copper and something worse: fear.
He holstered the last pistol, clipped it into place with a sharp snap, and stood tall.
His movements shifted, then. Calm turned to dangerous, purpose settled into his shoulders, with every muscle coiled and ready.
He stepped out of the room, gear slung over one shoulder, duffel tight in his fist.
You’d promised. “Two days,” you’d said. Just a simple recon, low risk.m You’d left your fuzzy socks under the bed and a wrapped bottle of whiskey on the counter with a note that said “Don’t open without me.”
He thought of that stupid little bow, red and shiny and off-center. He remembered laughing because you’d stuck a Santa sticker on it like a goddamn child.
You were coming back. You always did. He believed you.
You were the only reason he still bothered with the holidays. You were the only reason he’d let you convince him to hang lights last week, stringing them in lopsided rows across the window while you sang Elvis at full volume just to annoy him.
Now that bottle was still sitting there, the apartment was probably still warm with the scent of your shampoo, your lotion, or your stupid tea.
His grip on the duffel bag tightened until the strap dug into his palm.
His hand clenched around the duffel strap, tight enough that his knuckles ached.
“I told her we’d be together for Christmas,” he muttered. His eyes narrowed, sharp and cold as the wind outside. “I meant it.”
Then he disappeared into the hangar, into the dark, and into the storm.
Pairing: Thunderbolts!Bucky x Thunderbolt!Fem!Reader
Word Count: 4.0k
Summary: Bucky’s gone rogue, and he’ll fight his way through hell to find to you. You just have to hold on long enough.
Trigger Warnings: MCU-level violence (especially from Bucky 😮💨 ... Maybe nearing WS level violence); Reader gets shot/beat/hurt; descriptions of bleeding/blood/tasting blood; Bucky get shot, too.
Author’s Note: Really enjoying this little series. Might do more stories detailing violence. I like Bucky going violent-feral for his woman. Cause he went pretty damn close to WS-level violence cause he LOVES YOU.
Part 1: Recon
Series Masterlist
Masterlist
He found the farmhouse just after midnight, tucked off a forgotten service road, buried halfway up a hill knotted with ice-slick trees and skeletal brush. It sat hunched like it had been waiting for winter to kill it. There were no lights, no tire tracks, no visible security, just sagging beams, frostbitten walls, and the silence of the abandoned, or something pretending to be.
The roof had bowed in places under the weight of snow. Shutters hung loose or were missing altogether, and the whole place smelled like rot long before he reached the porch.
Spray-painted across the front door was a wolf’s head. Stark, jagged, and dripping red down faded wood. It was an old symbol, one Bucky recognized as one of Hydra’s splinters from the Soviet collapse. It was used by a group that was half-mercenary, half-myth; a pack of ghosts who believed bloodlines held power and history simply needed rewriting. Those men didn’t die, they just went underground and got colder.
Bucky didn’t knock.
He came in through the rear, pry bar to the lock and knife ready. The door gave with a soft crack, and then he was inside, one breath, one step, and the farmhouse swallowed him whole. There was no wasted movement, no sound but the whisper of boots over warped floorboards and the wind sighing through cracked windowpanes.
The hallway was narrow and dark.
A young man stood to the left, rifle loose in uncertain hands, barely more than a kid to him.
Bucky moved on instinct, blade drawn. One step, one breath, one heartbeat was all it took. Metal hand over the mouth, steel knife up under the ribs, angled to avoid the vest. The body shuddered once, then crumpled in silence, quick and clean.
The second guard was in the kitchen and quicker on the uptake. He turned with a warning on his lips, something sharp in Czech, but the sound never finished.
Bucky fired once, and the man dropped. The scent of gunpowder mixed with the stench of mildew and decaying wood, and stillness returned.
He stepped over the body without looking down.
The farmhouse interior was stripped to the bone. Furniture was gone, cabinets were empty, and exposed wiring ran across the floor in crude lines, trailing into a half-assembled comms station along the far wall. Static hummed on the monitors, cold and useless. Someone had wiped the drives, sloppy and fast, ten minutes ago at most.
A teapot still steamed faintly on the stove; they had been in a a rush to leave.
But in the corner by the stairs, something red caught his eye, half-buried under a fallen coat rack, and tangled in the splintered frame.
Bucky froze.
He knew that color.
Four long strides carried him across the room, boots silent on tile. He knelt without a word and reached forward slowly, like touching it too quickly might break him. The moment the fabric brushed his hand, everything inside him dropped.
It was your scarf.
He knew the feel of the knit. The bright red dye, too bold for tactical wear. The thread you’d used to stitch a patch near the end two winters ago, after some op in Kyiv had left it torn. You’d found it in a street market in Prague and insisted it was “festive as hell” and wore it like a banner for every cold op that followed.
Last week, you’d tossed it at his head with a shit-eating grin and that cocky stance you always used when you wanted to bait him into kissing you, arms crossed, hip cocked, and mouth smug.
“Wear something festive, Grandpa,” you’d teased. “It’s Christmas. You can survive a little red.”
He’d thrown it back and you’d laughed. He’d kissed you hard enough to shut you up.
Now it was here. Torn and dark on one end with blood, dried and recent.
He brought it to his face and inhaled. Your scent was still on it.
It hit him like a blade between the ribs. A scent so small, so human. Shampoo, cold air, the faintest trace of gunpowder and skin.
Still warm.
Still you.
You had been here. Not long ago, not quietly, and not willingly.
Bucky’s jaw tightened as he clutched the scarf in both hands, fingers trembling despite the icy cold discipline threading through his body. His breath came short. His chest ached like a bruise spreading inward.
You’d been here.
Alive, but hurt.
His heart thundered against his ribs in a steady, brutal rhythm. He could feel it in his teeth, in his throat, and in the back of his skull. His whole body was screaming, but not in rage.
It was hope, fragile and dangerous.
“You’re not dead,” he whispered. His voice cracked down the middle, “You’re not dead. I’d feel it.”
He believed that. He had to. If there was any truth in this cursed world, it was that your heartbeat lived somewhere inside his chest, and if it stopped he would know.
He sat still for a second longer, scarf pressed to his mouth, eyes closed against the shaking weight inside him.
Outside, wind howled through broken glass, snow rattled loose from the eaves, and branches creaked like bones snapping under weight.
Inside, it was the quiet that only ever follows violence.
“I’d fucking know,” he said, louder now, angry and certain.
He opened his eyes and stood.
He tucked the scarf inside his jacket, against his chest, right over his heart like a talisman.
Then he turned toward the stairs, jaw locked, eyes empty, and steps silent.
And he kept going.
*****
You woke up on your side.
Your cheek was pressed to cold, damp concrete that sucked the warmth from your skin and never gave it back. Every breath fogged faintly in the air, curling like smoke before vanishing.
You blinked once slowly. The world swayed, slid sideways, then righted itself in jagged pieces. Just enough gray light spilled through a shattered window high on the far wall to make out the outline of the room.
You tasted iron. Your mouth was full of it, metallic and sharp, the unmistakable flavor of blood and adrenaline.
Your side burned. Not a surface burn, this was deep and wet; it sang when your heartbeat spiked and throbbed like it was reminding you not to breathe too hard.
You tried to shift, instinctively testing for mobility, but your body didn’t cooperate. Your arms stayed behind you, and that’s when you felt the rope, coarse, tight, and digging into your wrists like it had been tied in anger.
Every movement lit up your shoulder like fireworks; it was still dislocated.
The pain was quieter now, not sharp, but constant and dulled everything else into background noise. It made your thoughts thick and slow, like trying to think through molasses.
That was probably the blood loss. It was hard to tell how long you’d been out. Long enough that the adrenaline had drained from your system and left nothing behind but cold awareness and a racing, uneven pulse.
You exhaled slowly, like that alone might reset something.
Outside the window, snow was falling. Soft flakes danced past the jagged edges of broken glass, catching what little light the sky offered. The world was painted in ash and frost; almost peaceful, if you didn’t know any better.
That edge between night and dawn was creeping in. The hour when everything felt both too early and too late. It was a beautiful and cruel silence that made your ribs ache just from existing.
You were underground, probably in a basement or bunker, judging by the chill and the water damage. The space around you was narrow and low-ceilinged, lit by a single flickering fluorescent bulb that buzzed like it might give out any second.
The walls were stained and crumbling at the edges, with dark streaks where rain or worse had once run down the concrete.
A single folding chair sat in the corner with your blood on one of its legs. Next to it was a boot print in dried crimson and a strip of torn duct tape, curled at the edges like it had been ripped free in a hurry.
The air smelled like old sweat, mold, and metal. People weren’t meant to linger in places that bore this scent.
And then, over it all, you heard music.
Somewhere off to the left, out of sight, a small radio speaker crackled with static, humming low and warped through the interference. The signal was faint, but the voice was unmistakable. You knew it from childhood. You knew it from Christmases both real and pretend.
“I’ll… be home… for Christmas…”
You snorted once, a breathy sound that turned into a cough.
Pain jolted through your ribs. Bruised, cracked, or broken, it didn’t matter. The result was the same: agony hot enough to white out your vision for a moment.
“That smug Bing Crosby motherfucker,” you rasped, voice ragged, like gravel dragged across steel.
You weren’t dead yet, which meant you still had time.
The door creaked open. Heavy deliberate bootsteps scraped over concrete in the rhythm of someone used to being obeyed.
You didn’t lift your head. You’d heard footsteps like that in warzones, in black sites, in back rooms lit with interrogation lamps. You knew the man that came with those steps: confident, armed, and far too comfortable with the sound of someone else’s pain.
Evil didn’t die. It just changed its uniform.
A heavy figure crouched in front of you.
You caught flashes of him: close-cropped hair, square shoulders, nose broken more than once, and a face so generically cruel it could blend into any crowd. You were already cataloguing him, memorizing his details. It was muscle memory for you. If you got out of this, you’d be able to describe him down to the way he smelled.
He leaned in, close enough that you felt the heat of his breath when he spoke.
“You’re awake,” he said in accented English. He was too calm, like he thought he’d already won.
You smiled. It hurt, but you did it anyway.
“Lucky you,” you croaked.
The backhand came fast. Pain exploded across your face, jaw to temple, ringing your skull. Your head hit the floor again with a dull crack, stars blooming behind your eyelids like fireworks.
You didn’t make a sound.
“I’m going to ask again,” he said, voice too casual to be kind. “Where did you send the data?”
You licked your bottom lip. It had split open and warmth spread over your tongue. You tasted more blood.
You met his gaze steady and defiant. “Secret Santa,” you whispered. “You ever heard of it?”
He didn’t like that. His hand gripped your collar, jerking you half-upright. Your body sagged instantly, knees giving out. You couldn’t resist it and wouldn’t have even if you could. Every second this asshole wasted trying to scare you was another second closer to him.
“You think this is funny?”
You smiled again, and then you spat in his face. You landed a direct hit, thin, red, and deliberate.
His expression cracked and his control slipped. His hands trembled with rage.
He stood so fast the motion rattled dust from the rafters. You braced for the kick; hoped for it, in some twisted way. Pain meant clarity. Pain meant survival.
Instead, he spat something in Czech, harsh and ugly, and stormed out. The door slammed behind him, metal on wood, the sound echoing in the almost empty room.
The rope bit deeper into your wrists as you shifted, barely able to move. You flexed your fingers, slow and careful. One. Two. Three. Just enough to keep circulation from disappearing.
The fluorescent bulb flickered above you again and the radio played on.
“…if only… in my dreams…”
You closed your eyes and saw him. Not in uniform, and not with that cold, sharp mask of worry he wore in the field.
You saw him in bed. Shirtless, warm, one arm flung across your stomach like you were something he could hold and keep safe just by being near.
You saw the way his lips shaped your name in the morning, low and sleepy, like a prayer he hadn’t realized he was saying aloud. You remembered the way his fingers brushed through your hair when he thought you were still asleep.
“You better be here for Christmas, my spark,” he’d said.
You’d promised. And now he was coming. You knew it. You’d told him not to, but that had never mattered.
You knew him.
He would fight God and gravity and every bullet in between to keep that promise intact.
He would never miss Christmas with you.
*****
He saw the smoke first, a thin, black thread twisting up above the trees, barely visible against the slate-colored sky. It was the only unnatural thing in a landscape swallowed by winter, too dark, too steady, and wrong in a way that made the hair rise on the back of his neck.
The storm had picked up nearly an hour ago. The wind came sharp, needling cold that sliced through layers like it was searching for skin. Snow whipped through the air in icy gusts, stinging his exposed cheekbones and numbing the tips of his ears despite the wool cap pulled low over his head.
He didn’t feel any of it, not with your scarf tucked against his chest, and not with your voice still ringing in his skull like a siren that wouldn’t stop screaming.
Don’t make Christmas sad, baby.
The compound sat low in the valley, nestled in the ruins of what used to be a Soviet military outpost. Half-buried bunkers and old stone outbuildings dotted the landscape like broken teeth. Rusted chain-link fencing circled the perimeter, sagging in places, patched with barbed wire in others. There were no lights, no vehicles, and no heat signatures that shouldn’t have been there.
It was too quiet; which usually meant someone was waiting.
He moved fast and low, boots crunching in the snow as he cleared the outer fence in one silent motion. The sound was too loud, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t going for stealth anymore. He wasn’t here for recon or protocol or orders.
He was here for you.
The first two guards were just silhouettes in the storm, posted too far from the main building, so they were too relaxed. They didn’t even see him coming. The knife slid in under one man’s ribs, up through the heart, silencing him instantly. The other barely had time to turn before Bucky's hand was clamped over his mouth, blade buried deep in his throat.
The two bodies hit the snow, soft as breath. Steam rose from their blood, bright red against the frost.
His own breath fogged the air in sharp bursts, lungs burning, but he barely noticed. The only thing that mattered was the direction he was moving. Every step was a promise, every inch closer was another second you might still be alive.
You were here. You had to be here.
The third man saw him and shouted something in Czech, raising his rifle. Bucky didn’t break stride. He fired once; a clean shot, center mass. The body hit the ground before the echo finished.
The fourth man triggered the alarm before Bucky’s bullet got him.
A sharp, electronic screech sounded that shattered the silence and set the whole compound stirring. Doors slammed, voices shouted, and footsteps pounded like thunder against hollow floors.
But Bucky was already moving.
He hit the side entrance in a full sprint, boot slamming into the rusted latch. The lock splintered on impact, and the door caught, half-open with a screech of metal. He didn’t wait for the frame to give out; he slammed his shoulder through and surged into the corridor beyond.
Inside was darkness, concrete, the sour stench of mold and unwashed bodies. Paint peeled from the walls, the air was stale, like it hadn’t been breathed by anything good in decades.
Gunfire barked from down the hall.
The first round caught him in the side, close range, just beneath the ribs, punching through his vest with a burst of heat and pain.
He didn’t slow.
The second hit his right arm, bullet tearing through muscle just below the shoulder. He staggered from the force of it, teeth gritted, body jolting.
Still, he didn’t stop. He didn’t even fucking blink.
The pain was present, but distant, held at arm’s length by the rage pumping through him.
They had touched you. They had tied you up. Hurt you. Tried to break you.
Don’t come, you’d said. It’s not worth it.
Liar. It would always be worth it for you.
He moved like a storm, rounded the next corner and caught the movement of two more armed men. They raised their weapons, but Bucky was faster. His knife sang through the air, end over end, and found the first man’s throat before he could pull the trigger. The second tried to pivot, eyes wide. He turned to run, but that was a mistake.
Bucky shot him in the leg. The man went down hard, weapon skidding across the concrete. Bucky didn’t hesitate. He walked over and delivered one shot to the head. No mercy.
The corridor was a smear of red and snow; mud now, footsteps trailing violence.
His breathing was sharp and ragged. Blood soaked through his shirt, hot against his ribs. His right arm throbbed with every movement, but it wasn’t enough to slow him.
His heart was a war drum now, steady and deafening.
Don’t make Christmas sad, baby. Your voice in his ear again, so soft, so close.
God, he was going to kill them all.
And if he found you cold… if he found you broken… if he was too late—No. No, no, not this time.
The thoughts spiraled, cracked, and collapsed under their own weight.
She could already be dead.
Don’t let me be too late. Please. Please, not again.
His body moved faster than his mind now, driven by instinct and fury. He kicked open another door. Inside were dim lights, shattered glass, and a stairwell stained in footprints and a trail of fresh blood, smeared along the wall. Drops spattered down the first few steps.
It had to be your blood.
Shouts rang out behind him, the thudding chaos of reinforcements, but they may as well have been across the world.
He didn’t stop.
You were close now. He could feel it in the way his ribs ached, and in the tight pull of adrenaline through his heart.
The grip on his pistol shifted. His steps were silent now, lethal and inevitable.
I’m coming, sweetheart. You hold on, now. I’m coming for you.
And if there were monsters waiting at the bottom of the stairs, they were about to learn the hard way that they shouldn’t have laid hands on you.
They should never have taken his spark.
*****
The world came back in stutters.
Gunfire cracked through the walls, distant at first, then closer. Screams echoed in the concrete like they were caught in a tunnel, ricocheting off steel and stone. Something slammed, someone shouted, and then there was silence, thick and heavy, not an ounce of peace in it.
You didn’t move.
You stayed curled in the corner, cheek pressed to the icy floor, knees tucked up against your chest like that might ease the fire in your side. It didn’t, of course, the pain was deep now, slow and rhythmic with your heart.
Your shirt clung to your skin, soaked through and stiff where blood had congealed at your waist, crusted dark at the edges of your vest. You couldn’t feel your left arm anymore. Your shoulder throbbed in pulses. Each breath scraped the inside of your ribs raw.
But you were conscious, albeit barely. The edges of your vision blurred, darkening at the corners, but you still caught a shift in the air. Something had changed, like the storm had moved inside.
You didn’t hear orders barked in Czech. There was no more running, no panic.
You’d swear there was only a single presence moving through the halls now. A single man who moved like a knife, like a ghost, and like judgment.
You closed your eyes and held your breath. You knew that silence.
Footsteps followed. Heavy, and deliberate, not hurried but inevitable. They creaked over floorboards.
Your lips twitched. Of course he was here. He always came for you.
The door didn’t creak. It exploded inward; slammed off its hinges like it had personally offended him. Splinters sprayed across the room. Concrete dust puffed into the air, clouding the space for a moment.
And then your soldier, your shadow, and your storm was in the room.
Bucky stood in the wreckage of the doorway like a man forged in war and rebuilt for vengeance. Blood streaked across his jaw, dried at the collar of his shirt, dark and wet down the side of his torso. His right arm was torn open and still bleeding. His left hand was slick and red covered the black and gold, but his grip on the knife was steady.
His chest rose and fell like he’d just sprinted through hell. His gaze cut through the room like a weapon.
And then his eyes landed on you.
You were a wreck, slumped in the corner, tied, broken, bruised, and bleeding. But you still smiled. Your lips were cracked, voice was raw, but your words, barely more than breath, found him.
“Told you I’d be home for Christmas.”
The sound of your voice nearly broke him.
You watched the air leave his lungs, watched the war leave his face for a single, unguarded second. His jaw clenched hard as he crossed the room and dropped to his knees beside you, fast and rough, knife already in hand.
You flinched; the reaction was automatic, a survival reflex you didn’t have time to bury, but he caught it and it wrecked him.
His entire expression fractured, fury giving way to guilt, then to something worse: a raw, shattering kind of relief that bled out of him in silence.
“Shit. It’s me,” he said, voice low and gutted. “It’s me, baby. I got you.”
He sliced through the ropes at your wrists in a single precise motion, the blade flashing once, then gone. The cords dropped uselessly to the floor. He flung them aside like they were filth, like the idea of them on your skin was enough to make him burn the place down.
Then his hands were on you, fast, but not careless. He checked your pulse, pushed damp hair out of your face, and traced your jawline with the backs of his fingers like he needed to feel that you were real and alive.
You felt the tremble in his hands and knew it wasn’t weakness, it was restraint.
He didn’t speak again right away. He knelt there, like a man on the edge of grief, rage, and relief, and caught between a scream and a prayer. His shoulders were heaving, but his eyes never left yours.
You were both covered in blood, both exhausted beyond repair, but somehow, in all of it, you found the energy to grin.
“Little scratched up,” you croaked. “Nothing duct tape and a strong eggnog won’t fix.”
It was a line you’d say just to make him roll his eyes. You didn’t have much else left to give, but you could still summon the energy to tease him.
He exhaled, sharp and low, and looked at you like he didn’t know whether to kiss you or strangle you for scaring him this bad.
His jaw ticked. His eyes shone, wet but not spilling. You saw everything written there, unspoken and loud: I thought you were dead. I thought I was too late. I thought I’d lost you.
But you weren’t gone. You were alive. Bruised, yes. Bleeding, yes. But breathing.
Outside, the snow was still falling, soft and slow, catching in the cracks of broken windows. The wind howled distantly now, muffled by stone and blood and walls that had finally stopped echoing with screams.
Inside, for the first time all night, you felt warm. Not from the heat, the blood, or the adrenaline, but from him. He was here and you’d made it.
Because Bucky Barnes had carved his way through hell and found you.
