pairing: bucky x reader (Y/N)
genre: fluff
A/N: hi! some of you may have read this before on my old blog, squishybucky, which I deactivated some time ago. This is an attempt to get my old masterlist up and running again, hopefully with some new additions soon! Thank you for reading!
Bucky doesn’t really know who he is.
He knows who he’s supposed to be- everyone’s got different versions of the story- his story. To the Avengers, he’s The Winter Soldier, the HYDRA-brainwashed ex-assassin. To Steve, he’s a painful reminder of the best friend he couldn’t save. To himself...he’s a broken man who doesn’t deserve a second chance.
They all expect so much from him. And it gets so overwhelming, so fast, because how can he meet everyone’s expectations of him when he doesn’t even know who he is?
But to Y/N...to Y/N, he’s just Bucky. (And to him, she’s just Y/N). When he’s with her, he doesn’t feel the sort of pressure he feels with Steve or the rest of the avengers to be Bucky the weapon, or Bucky the best friend, or Bucky the victim. With Y/N, he can be whoever he wants to be- and he just wants to be Bucky.
Maybe that’s why he shuts himself off from everyone except her.
And it’s probably unhealthy, the way he clings to her like a lifeline, but he can’t articulate just how much he needs her; she’s the only thing keeping him tethered to his own mind, and she doesn’t even know it.
She deserves so much better than him.
They’re lying together in the dark, sprawled out in Bucky’s room, enveloped by an easy silence. It must be almost 4am, judging by the illumination of the moon through the windows. Bucky knows she’s awake. He’s breathing heavily, eyes focusing on the stark white of the ceiling paint as he blinks away the remainder of the nightmare.
The nightmares are frequent. He doesn’t trust himself to sleep much, because he knows that when he does, his subconscious journeys through his defenceless, sleeping mind and rips up memories that he’d hoped he’d long buried.
Like how he’d shot that 12 year old girl in the forehead as she cried over the parents he’d already dealt with.
The nightmares rip up the memories, slicing through old wounds and making them fresh again, and Bucky always wakes up feeling so helpless and terrified.
(Sometimes he wishes that he doesn’t wake up at all.)
“Mission?” her soft voice brings him back to Earth, and he turns his head to look at her. She’s looking at him without a trace of fear or pity or judgement in her eyes (that’s how she always looks at him, and he loves her for it). She’s not touching him- she always scoots away when she can tell he’s had a nightmare, because she knows that bodily contact only scares him further- but she looks so at ease next to him, and Bucky can’t comprehend how she can look like that, because doesn’t she understand that he’s dangerous?
He answers her question with a silent nod, and she reaches her hand out- a request. He stares at her hand for a short while before grabbing it with his right hand (he still doesn’t trust his left), and holding her hand over his chest. He knows she can feel his heart racing at ten million miles an hour, but she doesn’t say anything. And it’s times like these where he’s just so grateful for her, because she doesn’t ask him to talk about it; she doesn’t ask him how he’s feeling because she already knows.
“You’re more than your nightmares, you know,” she whispers, looping her fingers through the one he’s holding, causing him to shift on his back. He looks back up at the ceiling, silent, waiting for her to elaborate. “They’re a reminder of how much you’ve been through. Of how strong you are.”
“They make me feel so weak,” he mutters back. To his horror, tears of frustration are forming in his eyes. He prays they don’t fall.
“I think you’re the strongest person I know,” Y/N says simply and casually, like she’s telling him the weather forecast for tomorrow. “You’re not a bad person, Buck. I know you don’t believe it yet, but you’ll get there someday.”
She’s right. He doesn’t believe it. It’s hard to even try, when every day, he’s remembering new horrors that he’s done, and learning the names of the people he’s killed.
“You know what?” Y/N says, a smile forming on her face. Bucky looks at her again, and his heart can’t help but doing a flip-flop when he sees her smile.
“What?” he asks. He knows she’s trying to distract him from his own thoughts, but he plays along. (There had been a time- long before he’d fallen in love with her- where he used to reject her attempts of trying to help, and he’d found himself alone and miserable. He had learnt his lesson slowly, and soon, finding Y/N after a nightmare and actually letting her fix him up had become second nature.)
“I think we should go on an adventure,” she muses.
“Like...a holiday?”
“Nope. Come on,” she just smiles, sitting up on the bed and pulling Bucky with her. They slide off the bed- hands still tangled with each other- and sneak out of his room. All the lights are off, and the corridors are pitch black, but both their eyes are adjusted to the darkness, so they tip-toe easily through the tower. (He tries to ignore how the metal of his left arm almost glows in the darkness).
“Where are we going?” he asks finally, as he lets her lead him by his hand, but she just shushes him.
They end up in the kitchen.
“Okay. We’ve arrived at our adventure destination,” she whisper-announces, a silly smile on her face. “Now for the actual adventure. Bucky, can you grab two mugs?” He does what she asks, mindlessly, but only realises what he’s doing when he’s holding the mugs (one with blue and white stripes, and the other with a cartoon Thor painted on the side) in his hands.
Mugs?
“...Are you trying to make hot chocolate?” he realises, an incredulous expression spreading across his face. She shoots him a mischievous smile over her shoulder as she reaches into a cupboard to retrieve the chocolate powder. “You dragged me out of bed to make hot chocolate?”
“Hot chocolate is food of the Gods,” she says defensively. “Who doesn’t like hot, comforting drinks?”
He grins a wide, genuine grin. Then he sets the mugs down on the kitchen counter, careful not to make any noise, and wraps his arms around her waist from behind. She lets out a dramatic sigh of fake annoyance- but he can see the smile she’s trying to hide. He keeps his arms wrapped around her middle and waddles behind her when she moves to the fridge to get the milk.
He closes his eyes and buries his face in her neck when she makes the hot chocolates, stirring each mug with a small silver spoon. Tears are springing to his eyes again- and it seems ridiculous that he would want to cry over someone making him a hot chocolate to comfort him after a nightmare at 4 in the morning, but it’s even more ridiculous, in his opinion, that someone as kind and whole and pure as Y/N loves him so unconditionally and stays with him despite all his difficulties. He doesn’t quite believe his luck, and he’s not sure he ever will.
He still stands by his opinion; he doesn’t fully believe that he’s not a bad person, and he’s got a long way to go before he does. But with Y/N by his side, reminding him with comforting touches and gentle words and 4am hot chocolates, he feels like maybe, just maybe, he’s on his way.
