this is me 𓂃۶ৎ ⋆˚꩜.ᐟ sophia, sophi, phie, fia, fi, fifi
twenty one, she/her, pisces, latina.
there she is, gap-tooth smile! god, how lucky can a simple man be?
soph’s place! what’s here to see! ౨ৎ all my fics can be found in the hashtag (soph’s place) below! all my random chats can be found in the hashtag (soph’s chats) below! things i like can be found in the hashtag (soph’s likes) below! things of my “aesthetic” can be found in the hashtag (soph’s girlblogging) below! love u !!!
who i write for! ౨ৎ bucky barnes, frank castle, steve harrington, eddie munson, jj maybank, john b routledge, pope heyward, rafe cameron, sarah cameron, rick grimes, daryl dixon, art donaldson, patrick zweig !
you can send me an ask, i’ll get to it when my mind can let me :p
summary: you’re a runaway and his truck has broken down. the only thing you two have in common is that you’re both staying in a shitty motel. you have three days to try to convince him to take you all the way to california, and three days to decide whether or not you can trust a stranger more than the place you ran from.
pairing: trucker!bucky barnes x fem!runaway!reader
word count: 30.5k................. im so sorry guys it drags a bit
content contains: 18+ content— smut. porn with way too much plot, slowburn(?) not really, age gap (bucky is early fourties, reader is early twenties minimum), strangers to lovers, mentions of an abusive boyfriend, sambucky mention 😛, creepy man, mentions of gun use, pet names (princess, sweetheart, etc), fem!masturbation, dry humping, boobies, fem!oral, unprotected PinV, basic sex stuff
authors note: hi guys ;P i am back. take this monster as a reward for your patience with me. this idea and the plot came to me at 10pm on a friday night. i was staring at the last picture on the moodboards and i was possessed by something evil and a little freaky. i was genuinely in a flow state… imagine jeffree star organising that eyeshadow and then shane dawson saying oh oh oh in the background that was my vibes.
you've never really liked highways.
they were far too big and still so small at the same time. they were barren and isolating, almost metaphorical in a way you can't quite name; but even though you find they take more than they give, you find escape in route 66.
it stretches and stretches, a torn grey ribbon pulled tight against the ground, disappearing against the horizon. every mile looks exactly the same as the last. its the same yellow lines and the same broken guardrails, the same low hills and the same signs that promise towns that you never seem to ever reach.
it all feels like a big circle that you can't escape, and from the passenger seat of a stranger's car, it certainly feels endless.
the window is half-open, just enough for the wind to tangle in your hair and carry in the smell of gasoline and dry asphalt. the car hums beneath you, the steady rhythm you've been enduring for the past seven hours constant enough that it almost lulls you into forgetting where you are or WHY you're really doing this at all.
but you remember. you always remember.
the car you sit in is a rented SUV. it smells faintly of sunscreen, beef jerky, and the sour tang of someone who hasn't showered in a couple of days. the glovebox is full of old batteries, a few maps of america, and fast food wrappers. in the front, a cassette tape rattles quietly in the stereo, the sound of bruce springsteen's voice filling the cab, loud enough to be heard, but still quiet enough that nobody has to yell.
there's one person in the drivers seat and two in the back, their voices overlapping like they've been traveling together long enough to finish each other's sentences. you dont know their names yet, and you don't think you'll ever learn them, but you can tell by the way they talk that they met on the road— friends made at rest stops, gas station restrooms, motels with peeling wallpaper, and— like you— on the side of the road.
they'd seen you on the side of the road in missouri with your thumb stuck out and a bag that fit your entire life slung over your shoulder. they'd picked you up with no hesitation with the simple explanation of 'that was us once', and you fit in the passenger seat like it was made for you.
"dude, seriously, stop singin'." the woman in the back groans, her plea directed to the man driving the car. "you're gonna blow our ears out if you keep tryin' to duet springsteen."
the driver scoffs, "come on. you know you love it. admit it."
"you sound like a dying dog. nothing to love about that." the man in the back seat chimes in, his arms crossed against his chest. "put my mixtape in and we'll see what real music is."
the woman in the backseat narrows her eyes. "sorry, but nobody wants to listen to ten hours of duran duran's best hits either."
"oooh, burn!" the driver snorts from the front seat, glancing into the rear-view mirror to catch a glimpse of his friend's defeated face. "i think that officially made you the least popular person in the car."
you watch them out of the corner of your eye, sometimes finding yourself glancing in the rear-view mirror just to see what they're doing. they're loud and messy and a little corny, but a part of it is comforting. you say nothing and find peace in their noise.
"hey." the man in the back says suddenly, attention diverted towards you now. "is this your first time riding like this? spending hours in the car with people you don't know driving across america?"
you blink a few times before glancing over your shoulder. the attention is a little sudden, and it takes you a moment to gather your thoughts. your thumb brushes against the fabric of your pants, a small and unconscious anchor.
"i only started doing it when i first decided to leave chicago." you tell them, your voice only slightly louder than the hum of the music. "it was more impulsive than anything."
"huh..." the driver tilts his head as he sneaks a glance at you. "you dont look like someone who just throws themselves out there without a plan."
you shrug, keeping your eyes on the dark streaking asphalt outside. "i didn't think i was that type of person either." you mutter.
the man in the backseat hums in acknowledgment, but then leans forwards again like one question wasn't enough. "why are you on the road? whats the story?"
you hear a slap of flesh against leather, and you can only assume that the woman had hit the man on the arm. "what is this, twenty one questions? let the lady breathe!"
"it's fine." you say quickly, almost hesitantly. "i just... needed to get away from home for a while. packed up what i could and i don't plan on going back there anytime soon."
the man in the back leans back with a thoughtful hum. "yeah, i get that. sometimes moving's better than being stuck."
the driver perks up in his seat, eyes wide like he's forgotten his keys at home. "i forgot to ask, but where were you headed?"
you hesitate. for a moment, you consider lying, and then you consider not saying anything at all. you dont know these people and your answer would do nothing but satiate their thirst for stories of the road; but something about the way the car hums beneath you and the way that the wind tunnels down your sleeve makes it easier than usual to let a small piece of yourself slip.
"i'm going west." you finally say. "california."
the woman smiles like you've given her the perfect answer. "that's the spirit. the road likes it when you don't stop movin'."
you manage a small humourless smile as you turn back to the window. california sits in your mind like a red pin on a map of america. its more of a fantasy than anything solid. you dont have an address or a plan that makes much sense when spoken out loud, and with nothing more than the clothes on your back, your duffel bag, and the certainty that if you keep moving west, something has to change eventually.
and almost like a light in the pitch black darkness, a neon glow flickers up ahead. slicing through the amber orange haze of the sunset, a sign that reads 'HOTEL CALIFORNIA' comes into view, and you find yourself following it even as the car passes, your head turning to watch it disappear into the darkness behind you. the letters shine like a signal, a promise, a miracle like an oasis in the desert, and you would be stupid to ignore it.
your hand braces against the car door as you push yourself up in your seat, your other hand tightening around the strap of your duffel almost instinctively. you turn back to the front of the car, brows knitting together as you lean down and zip open your duffel.
"do you think you could drop me off at that hotel california? the sign said it should be about five miles down the road." you ask.
you reach down and riffle through the unorganised mess in your bag and pull out your wallet. its scuffed from years of use and it pops open the moment you press in the buckle. the cards inside rustle around as you count what cash you have, thumb running over the notes just to make sure it's all there.
the driver glances down at you, his eyes scanning over your alarming amount of money you have. "sick of the car life already, drifter?"
you nod as you shove your wallet back into your duffel, a small smile on your face. "i think i need to stand on solid ground for longer than an hour. my body's forgotten what it feels like to be stationary."
the woman smirks. "that's fair. even the best road warriors need a pit stop sometimes. can't be movin' forever. we can spare five miles for our new friend, can't we?"
the driver nods like it's the easiest question he's ever had to answer. "yes ma'am. hotel california, here we come."
and just like that, the road stops stretching endlessly forwards and instead starts narrowing in on a single glowing sign that promised the hope of a new beginning and a moment to rest your feet on solid ground after what felt like a lifetime of running. at least for tonight, the road can wait.
you clutch your duffel bag straps, letting your eyes linger on the motel as it grows larger by the second. the neon light that stands in the front shines against the darkened sky, spitting orange and teal light across the windshield. and after a few minutes, the indicator starts blinking and the SUV swerves to the left, the vehicle shifting as it pulls into the carpark of the motel.
gravel crunches under the tires, and the hum of the engine drops into a softer sigh, like the car itself is exhaling. a few lonely streetlights cover the area in a soft glow and the motel looms just in front of the car— low, wide, and tired-looking, its paint peeling off of the walls and the roof shingles threatening to fall off of the roof.
you hesitate for a moment before opening the door, like you're waiting for permission you don't need. the night air slips in as soon as it clicks open and you hope out, duffel bag following close behind you and your feet finally touching solid ground. it feels strange after hours of motion, but you find comfort in the smell of dust and warm pavement, like the road has finally let you go.
you turn back, glancing at the people in the car— at their messy hair, at their lopsided smiles, at their clothes that haven't been washed in god knows how long— and you can't help but feel grateful. they didn't have to stop for you or give you a seat in their journey across america, but they did it anyways, and that feels bigger than anything you could possibly say.
your hand grips the side of the door like you're unsure of what to say. finally, you settle on "i really appreciate you guys stopping for me. i'm sorry for just... ditching you for a motel—"
"hey, it's all good. don't let us keep you." the man in the backseat tells you with a sincere smile. "if you need a real bed, then i say go for it. after all, seven hours in a car seat isn't the best for your back or for your mind."
the woman smiles, "just take care of yourself, alright?"
"yeah, and if it's anything like the song, just try not to get stuck in the there forever, alright?" the driver jokes, and you meet him with a weak laugh.
you nod, a smile on your face as you manage a small "thanks for everything" before finally closing the door, and the click of it sounds louder than it should. they drive off with a waving hand out of the window, and now you're all alone in the outskirts of glen rio, texas with nothing but the weight of your life on your shoulders.
the night air is warm and dry, carrying the smell of dirt and the sound of vehicles passing by on route 66. the front office glows dimly through the glass windows, the single LED light flickering like it's considering giving up too. a vending machine on the other end of the motel and the ventilations on the rooftop fight for title of loudest noise in the quiet. a rusted water tower stands neglected on the far side of the property, there are no other cars in the parking lot apart from a beat-up pickup truck parked along two spaces, it's paint sun-bleached and chipped, and you can only assume it belongs to the person at the front desk.
somewhere in the distant, there's a bang. a dog barks and the noise echoes in the desert. the world feels thin out here— stretched wide and empty— and you feel so very small inside of it.
you hesitate for a second, eyes lingering on the motel, before you shift your duffel higher up on your shoulder and head towards the office. the concrete is warm beneath your shoes, still holding the heat from the day, and the closer you get, the louder the hum of the lights becomes— a thin, tired buzz that seeps into your bones.
the door squeals as you tug it open, the rubbing lining along the frame sticking before giving way. cool recycled air washes over you as you step into the office, and the sound of the door shutting cuts through the silence of the room.
the office is small. cramped. a long counter runs along one wall, scratched and worn down by years of borrowed keys and elbows. behind it, a lanky middle aged man wearing glasses sits slouched in a swivel chair, his face half-lit by the glow of his ancient monitor. there's a small radio that sits beside him that plays music from the local radio station, a voice and a guitar that blur into the hum of the lights, and you find it incredibly hard to ignore the smell of lemon air freshener and moist carpet.
the man takes a long moment to really register you and your presence— the bag slung over your shoulder, the dust on your shoes and your clothes, the way you're standing just inside of the doorway like you're not sure whether or not you're meant to be there— and he smiles, dental issues on display for you to see.
"evening." he says eventually, head tilting upwards just slightly like he's trying to take you in, "what can i do for ya?"
"hi—" you step towards the desk, your weight shifting as you lean against the counter. you look at the name on his faded name tag, "trevor. i was wondering if you had any rooms available?"
trevor doesn't answer right away. he just looks at you like you're a pretty thing in the wrong place, and his tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip. his eyes trace over you slowly— your face, your bag, the way your fingers wrap around the straps like you might run— and then he leans back in his chair, hands reaching up to rest on the back of his head.
"yeah." he finally says. "got a few."
you dont like the way he says it.
"okay." you blink. "how much would it be for a week?"
"depends what kinda room you want." trevor makes an odd noise with his mouth as he leans forwards, something like sucking in his teeth and popping his tongue on the roof of his mouth. "you by yourself?"
you hesitate, trying to push down the odd feeling that starts to well in the pit of your stomach, but you nod. "yeah. just me."
his eyes flick over you again, slower this time, and the corner of his mouth lifts into something you'd barely call a smile.
"just you, huh." trevor repeats like he's letting the fact settle. then he sighs and twists in his chair, "alright, give me a sec to pull up the prices."
he turns back to the monitor, fingers moving over the equally as ancient keyboard, and you try to ignore the porn pop-up that he quickly clicks out of and the solitaire match that he's losing. each key he presses fills the silence, loud in the silent office.
click. click. click. then—
blinding headlights sweep through the office, the small room flooding with harsh white light. for a moment, it's so bright that you can't even see a foot in front of you, and you instinctively shield your eyes. when your vision adjusts, you can make out the outline of a massive semi-truck rolling to a stop in the lot, tires crunching into the gravel and engine growling loud enough for you to wonder whether it's meant to be that loud.
it idles near the far end of the motel, headlights still blazing, long shadows cast against the walls. the cab door opens, and you can barely make out the figure of a tall, broad shouldered silhouette stepping out. he pauses for a moment, one hand resting against the cab before he disappears into the darkness of the parking lot.
there's a small, metallic clank, then another, the sound almost hesitant, like he's trying to figure something out or fix something.
but a grating voice brings you out of your head.
"y'know, we don't usually get much foot traffic out here." trevor's lips smack, eyes flicking over to yours in a way that makes your skin crawl. "couple'a hippies and cross country truckers, but nothin' like you."
"who wouldn't want to spend a night in a place like this?" you murmur with a hit of playful sarcasm lacing your voice.
"you don't gotta sugarcoat it, darlin. this place is— and always will be— a shithole." trevor sighs as he rests an elbow on the desk, a cheeky smile growing on his face. "the only thing that makes up for it is the company. if you get lonely and need someone to talk to, i—"
"yeah, i don't think i'll be talking to anyone much tonight." you quickly and bluntly cut him off. you dont really have time to deal with creeps right now.
he chuckles, the noise low and almost wet, like he's amused and disappointed all at once. "we'll see about that, sugar."
trevor goes back to clicking away at his keyboard. you're picking at your nails when you feel the heat on the side of your face cool, and you turn your head to find that the semi truck's headlights are off now. your attention drifts back to the clanking of metal and the tall silhouette that moves around in the dark.
you wonder if you'll see the face that's swallowed by shadow. you wonder if he'll come into the office and save you from the creepy receptionist. you wonder if he'll be equally as creepy and if you'll need to sleep with a weapon in hand.
the squeak of trevor's chair brings you back to reality.
"right. single room's cheapest. one bed, small. got a pull-out sofa if you decide you don't wanna spend the week all alone." trevor drags the word, tongue running along his teeth. "but if you want a bigger bed for your beauty sleep and a bathroom for all of your girly things, then we do have a double."
your brow quirks. "the single room doesn't have a bathroom?"
"nope, so i'm assumin' you're gonna pick the double. it's two-fifty for the week." trevor says, "cash or card, sugar?"
"cash." you reply. "and don't call me sugar."
you ignore the huff trevor lets out. you zip open your bag, riffling through it before pulling out your wallet. you pop it open and pull out exactly two hundred and fifty dollars. you set the cash down on the counter and slide it towards trevor.
trevor's eyes widen just slightly as he does a faint double take. his hand slaps against the counter as he takes the money, counting it. "right on the dot. where'd a lil' thing like you get all this cash?"
"work." you simply reply. a stranger doesn't need to know anything about you or your money, and you're not about to give away more information than needed.
trevor hums. he pops open the register and places the cash into the tray with a small metallic clink. then he turns around in his chair, head cranes towards you like an idea had just popped into his head.
"y'know—" he pauses, brows raising just slightly as he leans closer to you. the closer he gets, the more he smells of tonsil stones and tooth decay, and you swear you can see a thought forming in those bloodshot eyes of his. "if you wanted the room a lil' cheaper, you could come around the desk and show me what that pretty little mouth can do—"
"i'll pay the two-fifty." you cut in, voice firm, eyes meeting his and trying to keep him from crossing the line any further. "and i'll take my key now."
the annoyed groan that leaves the man sends a chill down your spine. trevor reaches under the counter and pulls out a tarnished room key with a small plastic tag. he holds it out for you to grab, but just as you do, he snaps it back like a predator played with cornered prey.
"don't think you can just walk around here with that attitude, lil miss." he mutters, low and rough, head tilted down enough that his eyes bore into yours. "just because you've got a pretty face doesn't mean things always go your way. you pay, but sometimes... you owe."
the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end and the pit in your stomach almost comes up as vomit. you narrow your eyes at the sick grin he has on his face, about to tell the asshole to go to hell, but the squeal of rubber lining and metal screeching stops you.
the office door swings open and slams shut, harsh and sudden, and it catches both your and trevor's attention. the two of you turn your heads towards the figure who had just walked in— a tall, broad shouldered man, no doubt the one you'd seen outside working on his truck in the shadows.
with a shaved head, a thick scruffy beard, and a torn denim jacket, the man moves through the room with quiet confidence. there's grit in his posture, his face tired and rugged, with soft lines on his forehead and a shadowed jawline thats strong but worn. he's the type of man you'd see in a movie and be intimidated by, but this man felt different.
the man doesn't smile, nor does he speak. he simply looks between the two of you like he's figuring out what he's just walked in on. before anyone can react, you lean forwards and snatch the room key from trevor's hand. he awkwardly rubs his hands on his oily shirt like he's suddenly uncomfortable.
the receptionist gives you a fake smile as he ushers you away, voice dropping with false charm. "room one, sugar. best room in the house."
you scoff as you walk off, your shoulder just barely clipping the man's arm as you stomp past. the contact is almost nothing— a brush of denim against your sleeve— but it sends a strange shiver up your spine anyways. you push the door open and the night air hits you instantly, a soothing feeling after being trapped in that stuffy office.
as you cross the lot towards the room, you glance back, and through the office window, you see him.
the man stands exactly where you had left him, broad frame filling out the office, half shadowed by the dim yellow lights, his head slightly tilted as he cranes his neck down to watch you. not in the way trevor had watched you. not hungry or leering, but with curiosity, like he's trying to decide something, and you can feel his eyes boring into your back until you reach your door.
the key sticks in the lock for a moment before you twist the doorknob. you shoulder the door open and step inside.
a single double bed sits pressed against the wall, its blankets thick and vaguely floral in pattern, the colours dulled from years of washing. a small nightstand holds an even smaller table lamp on top, a worn bible sitting on the lower shelf. the bathroom light flickers on the far end of the room, and you wonder how long it's been on for. the carpet feels flat and stiff beneath your shoes, and the air smells of moth balls and fruity room spray that feels like it's trying to cover up the scent of something old and damp.
the room is fine. its nothing special, but it's dry, it's quiet, and it has a door that locks. that's about the nicest thing you can say about it.
you drop your duffel bag at the end of the bed and kick off your shoes. you peel your jacket from your arms and throw it over the backrest of the small dinning set chair before sinking down into the mattress. it creaks under your weight, but it holds. exhaustion settles over you all at once, your eyes feeling heavy now that you've stopped moving.
you dont even bother changing. you just lie back, stare at the stained popcorn ceiling, and then let your eyes fall shut.
sleep comes fast— or at least you think it does.
some time later— you're not sure how long— a sound pulls you back to the edge of consciousness. you think it's a door. it softly opens and closes. your eyes stay shut, but your mind sharpens in on the noise. you hear footsteps, slow and heavy, and then the low murmur of movement through the thin wall next to you in room two.
you frown slightly into the pillow as the noise comes to a slow stop. the trucker, you assume. the man with the shaved head and the quiet eyes. the one who had indirectly saved you from the advances of the creepy receptionist.
you roll onto your side, tuck your legs in a little closer, and tell yourself not to think about it. you're safe, you're inside, and you're not on the road anymore. nobody is going to find you.
eventually, the sounds fade and the motel settles into silence, and when sleep takes you, you welcome the old friend gladly.
the next day, you wake up slowly. not with an alarm or a bad dream, but with a sound— a dull, metallic bang.
your eyes crack open, unfocused and strained in the low light. light bleeds in around the edges of the frilly curtains, brighter than you expect. you place a hand against your eyes, and for a moment, you're disorientated and heavy limbed, your body still weighing on the mattress like it's trying to hold onto sleep.
you blink and the sound comes again— metal against metal, constant and loud as it echoes through the empty parking lot— and your brain catches up to your body.
you groan quietly and roll onto your back, staring at the ceiling before pushing yourself upright. your joints ache in a way that comes with too much rest and your head hurts in a way that comes with not enough. you rub a hand over your face and glance at the blinking alarm clock in the bedside table.
it's late. not morning late; afternoon late. you'd slept through most of the day and woken up with a grogginess that makes it feel like you never really slept at all, but you give yourself a little leeway— you'd been awake for a day and a half beforehand and this was your first proper bed in a while.
your stomach gurgles, void of any proper food. you get up, tug on your shoes, shove your room key into your pocket, and step out into the heat.
the day has already settled over the motel, the texas sun bleaching the colour out of everything. it still smells like dust and hot concrete, but now there's a faint smell of gasoline and soldered metal. you impatiently make your way to the vending machine you'd spotted last night, the humming getting louder as you near it.
the semi truck is still there, the hood up now, the massive front tilted forwards like a jaw. the man from last night is crouched besides it, his hands and shirt darkened with grease and dirt as he works. tools are scattered at his feet— wrenches, screwdrivers, things with long handles and odd contraptions— and a dirty rag is thrown over his knee.
he looks different in the daylight— still intimidating, still broad and still quiet, but you can see the tiredness in him. the set of his shoulders as he tightens a bolt, the slow and careful way he moves like he's trying to conserve energy, the way he huffs out a breath whenever he meets a particularly stubborn piece of metal. he pauses, wipes his hands on the rag, then leans back to look at whatever he's working on with a slight frown like it's not cooperating and hasn't been for a while.
the vending machine beeps obnoxiously loud at you.
its only when he turns his head just slightly to spot the source of the noise and he catches your eye that you realise you're staring. you turn back quickly and begin feeding your coins into the vending machine, awkwardly pressing on the first button you can see, and wait for the dull thud of something half edible to drop.
you're almost disappointed in yourself when a bottle of old fanta makes its way through the machine instead of food, but you pull it out anyways. the cap hisses when you pop it open. you take a sip more out of obligation than enjoyment. its warm, flat, and too sweet. you take another sad sip and let your eyes wander around.
there isn't much to look at.
the motel stretches out in a long line, sun bleached doors, curtains drawn in most windows, and outdated signs as far as the eye can see. you skip over trevor's badly parked car and focus more on the heat waves that hover just above the ground, and just beyond that, there's a hum of cars passing by every so often. you're about to turn around and go back to your room, but your eye catches on a pink sign that says 'pool'.
it hangs haphazardly on a light post on the far end of the property, the arrow beneath it pointing to a pathway between two buildings with cracked pavement. the sign is barely illegible, the paint faded and cracked, but curiosity gets the better of you and you follow it.
the path eventually opens up into a small, fenced in area behind the motel, and you find that there actually is a pool— or at least a poor excuse of one. the water inside is cloudy, a dull bluish green with leaves and a few empty plastic water bottles floating on the surface. the tiles that surround the pool are either cracked or gone completely, and just beyond that, a few plastic lounge chairs are stacked awkwardly on top of one another, sun bleached and warped from age.
you step closer to the edge and peer down into the water. its so murky that you can't even see your own reflection. alas, you try to squint through at the glare of the sun, but then you feel someone behind you, your shoulders tensing before you even turn around.
"thing hasn't been used in years."
you turn. trevor stands there, hands on his hips and squinting at the pool like he owns it. you hadn't even heard him sneaking up on you, and the thought of it happening again makes you queasy.
"i figured." you mutter.
you take a small step backwards just as trevor steps forwards, his head craned down towards the pool like this is the first time he's seen it in years. he kicks a pebble and it lands into the water with a thick splashing noise before he turns to you.
"used to be nice though. families'd come during the summer. kids'd scream and they'd barbecue. used to get a lot of action." his eyes flick to yours, "not like that anymore."
you nod even though you don't really care.
trevor smacks his lips. "what are you doin' round back?" he asks, the question a little pointed and slightly accusatory.
you straighten a bit, gesturing vaguely. "just looking."
"at the pool?"
"at whatever was back here." you say, already turning away from him. "i was bored."
you start walking back towards the front of the motel before he can respond, but the scuff of shoes against pavement behind you tells you that he's close behind and that the conversation is far from over.
"i get that. not much to do round here." he says easily like this is completely casual and like he isn't matching your pace too well. "but we got a little kitchen just beside the front office if you wanna heat up or cook your food. microwave, coffee pot, workin' sink, that kinda stuff."
"okay."
"and you can probably tell, but housekeepin' doesn't run regularly anymore," he continues, "so if you need fresh towels or soap or anything, you just gotta swing by the front desk and ring that little bell. i'll sort it out for ya."
"i'll manage."
"independent type, huh?" he chuckles softly, and then— almost like he has a death wish— he reaches out and places his clammy hand on your shoulder like you're just an old pal. "i like that about you, sugar."
your body reacts before your brain does. your shoulder jerks back, pulling away from his touch, and you turn to him with a glare sharp enough to kill.
"don't touch me and don't call me sugar."
trevor blinks, caught off guard. his hand hangs limply in the air for a moment before it dramatically drops back to his side. he scoffs, hand returning to his hips.
"alright, alright—" he says, lips pursing like you've personally offended him. "no need to get snappy with me."
you don't reply. you just turn and walk away.
trevor stalls for a second, hands on his hips like he's deciding whether he should follow you or just let you go. the clanking from earlier has stopped, but you barely notice it through the ringing in your ears and the crunch of gravel underneath your shoes.
"we also got laundry service if you wanna change outta those rags." trevor calls from behind you, hand cupped around his mouth to make himself louder. "maybe get a new shirt on— it doesn't do much for your figure!"
you ignore the jab, keeping your eyes straight ahead as you reach your room. you reach into your pocket for your keys and pull them out, but your hands shake just enough for you to miss the lock on the first try, the key scraping uselessly against the painted wood. you manage to slip the key in, but then—
"everything alright over there?" a low, calm voice calls out from the far end of the lot.
you pause halfway through turning the key. your shoulders tense before you can fully control it, your breath catching just slightly as the words sink in. you've never heard his voice, but there's only three people here and it's not hard to guess who it belongs to. you glance over your shoulder, half expecting him to be speaking to you, only to realise that his eyes aren't on you at all; they're on trevor.
the trucker has gone still beside the hood of his truck. the rag that once rested on his knee is now thrown over his shoulder and his hands rest on his hips as he takes in the scene in front of him. his posture is calm, almost casual as he glares at trevor like he knows exactly what he's looking at.
"all is good, sir." trevor says quickly, with a thin smile and a weak thumbs up, "jus' helpin' a guest get settled."
the trucker doesn't look away. "doesn't sound like it."
the words aren't loud or aggressive. they're calm in the same way that his posture is calm, and somehow that makes them carry more weight than if he'd raised his voice at all.
trevor shifts in his spot. its subtle and barely noticeable, but you see it anyway— in the way his shoulders drops, in the way his cheeks dimple into an awkward smile, in the way his hands flap around like he's searching for the words.
"everything's fine." he insists with a forced smile. he turns to you and gestures to you like you're supposed to back him up. "isn't that right, lil miss?"
but you don't reply. you twist the key and shoulder the door open, stepping into the room and shutting it behind you. you lean against the door for a second just enough to catch your breath before throwing the fanta bottle onto the bed.
through the thin curtains, the motel parking lot stretches out like a stage. the trucker and trevor are standing in what looks like a stand-off, their bodies still and eyes locked. there's a few words exchanged, but you can barely hear what's being said before trevor flaps his hand once and turns to walk away.
you watch as the trucker shakes his head, and then— just slightly— he tilts his head, and you swear he's looking right at you. your chest tightens and you press yourself a little closer to the wall beside you.
until long, the stranger goes back to working, bending back over the hood of his semi, the metallic clanking noise breaking the tension, and for the first time since you arrived here, you dont feel like you're the first person to realise something is off about this place.
you spend the next three days doing all that you can to bunker down in your motel room and avoid any and all interaction with trevor.
you keep the curtains drawn. you reuse the same towel over and over again just so you don't have to face him. you time your trips to the vending machine with the noises outside of your door. you listen for footsteps, for whistling, for anything that signals his presence before you even think of placing your hand on the door handle.
although it helps, you find that the isolation keeps your mind running rampant with no distraction from it. everything you'd once pushed down floods to the forefront of your mind until they feel like they're echoing— the reason why you'd run from home, the reason why you'd chosen to ditch the travellers, the reason why you're even here at all. its an endless cycle of staring at the roof and spiralling into thoughts that you can't escape from.
and by the third day, your hunger overpowers your caution. the vending machine had stopped offering anything desirable and your stomach has been gnawing at itself for hours by now. later that day just as the sun had set, you find yourself sneaking off to the motel kitchen with the hunger of a man starved, and just like the rest of the motel, you find that it's anything but special.
the fluorescent lights above poorly illuminated the room. the linoleum floor is cracked and sticky with every hesitant step you take. the contact paper on the cupboards is peeling, and they smell of dust and mildew. there's an odd mould stain on the roof in the corner of the kitchen that watches you as you step inside. the refrigerator hums in the corner and the counters are clean apart from a thin layer of dust and— trevor was right— there was a microwave and a coffee pot and a working sink, but theyre so outdated that you aren't even sure whether they function properly.
the first thing you do is inspect the kettle. it's dusty and it's text a little faded, but otherwise useful. you brush the thick layer of dust from the metal and bring it over to the sink, humming softly to yourself as it fills with water. the stove flicks on— surprisingly— with little hesitation, and you waste no time in placing the appliance onto the flames.
you wander towards the kitchen cabinets in hopes of finding something edible. the last proper meal you had was a week ago, and even then, it wasn't much more than something to keep you upright.
most of the shelves are empty or packed with things that have long outlived their usefulness— dusty imploded bean cans, jars of preserves that weren't preserved well, and cardboard boxes full of cereal that were certainly stale by now. your stomach growls anyways as you rifle through the mess, your hand landing on a cup of instant ramen, the kettle whistling as you do so.
the ramen container is slightly dusty and the use-by date had passed a handful of years ago, but it sat like treasure in the palm of your hand. desperate times count for desperate measures, sure, but you really did not want to eat red beans smothered in crystallised strawberry jam anytime soon.
you peel open the foil of the ramen container, empty the sachets, pull the kettle from the stove, and begin filling the container with the boiling water. the faint smell of sauce and dried vegetables mixes with steam, and for a moment, the kitchen feels like its yours; a small refuge in a motel that otherwise reeks of tired paint and decay.
but then the door squeaks open behind you and you freeze, hand hovering over your food as you pray in your mind that it isn't trevor. you tilt your head just enough to glance over your shoulder, and the small breath of relief that leaves you is almost instant.
it's the trucker.
he steps inside the room with the same quiet confidence he's been holding onto ever since he pulled into the lot. he holds a plastic container in one hand and a set of plastic utensils in the other, and for a moment, he takes the time to glance at you. he doesn't say hello or really acknowledge you in any way; he simply moves towards the microwave on the other side of the kitchen like this is his own home and opens the door, sliding in his food, pressing a few buttons, and then leaning back against the counter as he waits, his arms crossing loosely over his chest.
neither of you speak, but you're sure you're both aware of each other. it's a constant battle against your brain to try not to stare at him and watch his every move, not because he's threatening, but because he's unfamiliar— unlike trevor, he's a presence you haven't learnt how to place just yet.
and as you continue trying to make your old ramen soak up the broth, you hear his boots press against the old linoleum as he heads towards the table— the only table in the room— and place his keys and his utensils onto the surface with a soft clink like he hasn't even considered whether or not you might have wanted it. its a small table with only two chairs, but he takes up the space in a way that makes it feel like there's only room for one.
so you stay where you are, hip pressing into the kitchen counter as you stab at your noodles with a fork, watching as the steam lazily curls from the cup, and pretending you're not waiting for him to move.
but he doesn't.
the microwave beeps three times, and the trucker steps forwards and pulls at the handle. the smell of plastic and artificial food spills into the kitchen, and he wastes no time in tearing the plastic seal off and tossing it haphazardly into the trash before setting it down onto the table, pulling a chair out, and sitting down to indulge.
he eats in silence like it's all he knows. his eyes are on his food and his plastic fork scratches at the plastic container, his shoulders loose and his jaw working as he makes quick work of the microwaved slop.
eventually, you turn— just a little, just enough to check whether he's still there. you try not to watch him, but you fail, and thats when your eyes meet his.
he's already looking at you. not in a sharp way, or in a way that feels judgemental, but more like he's observing you. his gaze almost feels the same way as your first night when his semi truck pulled into the motel parking lot and the high beams blinded you, and in a funny way, you almost feel like a deer in headlights.
his gaze flicks from you to the empty chair across from him, then back at you. there's a small shift in his composure— the pause of his jaw as he scavenges for food in his teeth, the scoot of his jean-clad butt in the squeaky metal chair, the cock of his head as he lets out the softest sigh you've ever heard— and then he moves.
he reaches out with his foot and nudges the other chair out by its leg. it scratches against the floor as he pushes it towards you, creating a space where there hadn't been one before. he lifts his chin in a gentle gesture towards it, lip jutting out just slightly.
"i don't bite." he simply says.
you hesitate. your fingers tighten just slightly against the warmth of the cup, your brain running through all the reasons why you shouldn't— all of the ways this could end horribly for you— before you suck in a soft breath, push off of the counter, and move towards the table anyways.
you take the seat across from him. the chair legs shift slightly as you sit, and the sound feels louder than it actually is in the silence of the kitchen. you dont bother tucking in your chair, afraid of invading his space, and the trucker goes back to eating like nothing has changed, his fork stabbing at various vegetables and chunks of artificial meats, eyes on the container in front of him; but not entirely.
every so often, his gaze finds you. he doesn't stare long enough to make it obvious, but his eyes find you frequently enough for you to wonder what he's looking for, and you have to pretend you don't feel it. you believe it's because he's checking on you, like maybe he's trying to figure out what someone like you is doing out in the middle of nowhere.
you shift under the weight of it, not uncomfortable, just hyperaware of it all— of yourself, of him, of the little space there is between you, and of the silence that surrounds you. it's something you didn't necessarily prepare for when you left your room a little while ago.
you continue swirling the noodle around the cup, putting off actually eating them. you dont know whether you should just get it over with and possibly be sick for the rest of the week or if you should just pour it down the sink and live off of stale vending machine chips.
eventually, the table creaks under his arms as the trucker sits back up and sets his fork against the side of his container. you pause at the sudden shift, eyes drifting slowly up to find that he's already looking at you— not in a way that feels invasive or creepy, but thoughtful, like he's trying to piece together the puzzle that is you instead of asking for answers out loud.
"you been on the road long?" he asks like its not even a question he really needs the answer to, but something to fill the silence.
there's a small raise of your brow as you huff out a small breath, the corner of your mouth twitching like you almost find his question funny. you stop stirring your noodles and let the fork sink into the cup.
"not long," you say, head tilting just slightly. "but it feels like it's been forever."
he hums quietly at that like he knows exactly what you're talking about, and you're sure he does. you can see it up close in the lines of his face, in the soft greying of his hair and his stubble, in the freckles surely painted on by the sun through his truck windows, and in the tiredness that sits heavy in his eyes as he nods.
"yeah," he says after a long moment. "roads'll do that to you."
he doesnt say anything after that. he simply shovels food into his mouth, quick but still neat like he hasn't lost interest in eating. a part of you thinks he's only invited you to sit for the company, and you appreciate the gesture for what it is, because you believe you needed it too.
your eyes flick to the dirty curtain-covered window without really meaning to— to where his truck sits out in the parking lot, the hood up more often than not. it sits in the dark, toolbox still on the ground beside it and a half-empty beer bottle laying on the ground next to that.
you decide to ask a question next; something to fill the silence that sits in between the two of you just like he did.
"is there something wrong with your truck?" you ask, trying to seem casual and actually landing somewhere close to it. "i heard you working on it all day."
there's a second where you think you might've crossed an invisible line— asked something too personal or maybe been a little too demanding in your question. his fork pauses over his food, jaw working as he swallows what remains in his mouth. there's a small pause as he follows your eyes out to his truck before he gives you a half shrug.
"somethin' like that." he sighs like the topic is something that stresses him out. "she runs, but not as good as she used to. somethin' in the hood exploded back in shamrock and i've been tryin' to keep her alive long enough to get where i'm goin'."
you blink. "where are you headed?"
he glances at you, just briefly, like he's deciding whether or not the question is worth answering. the corner of his mouth tugs like he's in on some inside joke you aren't aware of.
"california. america's very own golden state."
his words land heavy as they leave his mouth, and your brain moves before any other part of you does.
california. warm. bright. somewhere that isn't here or home. somewhere thats still so, so far.
three days. that's all you have. three days before the cash you have tucked in your duffel bag grows thin, before trevor gets bolder and meaner and before you inevitably have to leave. you can't stay here and you know that. you dont have a car or a plan. you dont even have a general direction, just a need to keep moving; and suddenly, sitting across from you, is a man who is already doing exactly that.
you hesitate.
you shouldn't ask. you know you shouldn't. this is how people get into trouble— they trust sketchy strangers from dingy motels, follow their impulses, mistake a well-time coincidence as opportunity, and end up on the evening news as a missing person. it's something you know all too well and you're not going to leap into it headfirst.
you're smart and you know it. you'll come up with a plan and you'll stick to it. all you have to do is ration, stick to yourself, and try not to think about how three days is so much closer than you think.
so you keep your mouth shut and simply nod. your eyes fall back down to the neglected cup of ramen in your hands. it's gone lukewarm and a thin film has formed over the broth. the noodles finally suck up the liquid, but they swell into something soft and mushy and vaguely unappetising. you wouldnt even feed this to starving a stray animal.
the man's eyes briefly drop to the cup of ramen that sits in your hands. you stare at it like you dread even thinking about it, and he furrows his brows.
"you gonna eat that, or are you just gonna stare at it until it goes cold?"
"oh, it, uh... i was going to, but..." you grimace like watching the corn pieces swimming around in the soup has suddenly made you loose your appetite. "i'm not even sure if it's still edible."
"here," he motions gently for you to come closer, and you're confused for a moment before he points a finger vaguely at your mug of mediocre noodles. you slide it over and he wastes no time shovelling some of his food into yours. vegetables and meat sink into the soup. the gesture is sweet and you feel your stomach growl at the thought of having actual food for once.
he slides your cup back towards you, and you dare yourself to dip your fork back into the soup, stab at a floating piece of meat, and bring it to your mouth. you chew on it and swallow the bite, the warmth of it settling in your stomach like a small comfort.
"young girl like you has to eat food that hasn't been rottin' in a cabinet for god knows how long." he says, and then continues before you can respond, "trust me. i've been on the road long enough to know what malnutrition looks like."
you shovel another forkful of noodles into your mouth, ignoring the way the soup sloshes around in the cup and certainly sending droplets of the liquid into the air. you shake your head, half-amused and half-unnerved by how closely he seems to be watching you.
"thanks, but i'm not young." you manage between bites.
the low laugh that leaves his mouth catches you off guard.
"well, you definitely aren't old. skin's all plump and clean and you've still got all your teeth." he says, his voice low and almost teasing, eyes still glazing over you in a way that makes your stomach twist. "i've probably got tools in my truck older than you."
the way he says it makes all the noise you hear go silent. suddenly the soup that drips from your chin and the noodle hanging out of your mouth doesn't feel all that casual nor does it feel presentable. he's watching you like you're something he's never seen before, eyes steady and intent, and you're unsure what to do with all of the attention.
you hastily wipe at your mouth with the back of your hand, clear your throat, and sit up a little in your chair. maybe a small part of you wants to prove him wrong— show him that you might be young but you're wise beyond your years— and you try to do so by fixing your posture and looking at least somewhat put together even with a cup of reasonable ramen in your hands.
it doesn't go unnoticed. if anything, it seems to catch his attention more.
his gaze lingers, but not in the way that trevor's did— not with hunger or entitlement— but with intrigue, like he's catching the shift in you and filing it away in his head. there's something softer in his expression now, a faint crease in his brows that you've only noticed just now as if you've just become a little more intriguing than he had first assumed.
he gently nods, curiosity trickling into his face. he leans forwards just slightly, elbows digging into the table. "what's your name?"
and the question hits you off guard even though you know it was inevitable.
for a moment, you consider dodging his question— lying, deflecting, keeping yourself small and unremarkable like you've been doing for days. it's not that you don't want to tell him, it's just that answering feels like you're giving this stranger a piece of yourself— a story, something to hold onto, something from your past that you'd been running from this entire time, and the reason you're here.
you turn your head, eyes flicking to the large crack in the middle of the kitchen's linoleum floor that sits split in two. it feels safer to look at something broken that isn't you. he takes your silence as an answer.
"that's alright. you don't owe me anythin'." he says as he leans back in his chair like he's trying to ease the pressure off of you without making a show of it. "my name's james, but you can call me bucky."
hm. he doesnt look like a james, but he sure as hell looks like a bucky.
you turn back to him with a turned lip. "what's bucky short for?"
"full name's james buchanan barnes. it was just a nickname my pa gave me that stuck." he says easily. then, like he's joking, he adds, "now you've got my full name just incase i try to pull somethin' on ya."
you huff softly, "how do i know you aren't lying about your name? i could come up with about fifty fake names right now, and you wouldnt know any better. criminals lie all the time."
he quirks a brow as he pops open the top of his coke bottle, the bubbles popping at the surface as he lifts it to his lips with a sneaky smile. "guess you just gotta trust me then, sweetheart."
you hum softly in acknowledgment, the faintest smile on your lips, fork scrapping at the bottom of the ramen cup for scraps. the food settles warmly in your stomach, and it reminds you that you're tired— really tired.
you stand, the empty ramen cup in your hand, and awkwardly brush your other hand on your pants before vaguely gesturing to the cracked kitchen door.
"i think i'm gonna head back." you tell him like you're unsure of what you should do. you don't know if he even cares, but it feels like the respectful thing to do.
bucky inhales a breath, the sound low and sharp, and it feels like you might've just pulled him from his thoughts. he reaches up and runs a hand over his head before nodding once. "s'pose that's fair. princess needs her beauty sleep."
you hesitate for a second, but a small smile tugs at the corners of your mouth despite yourself. "night, bucky."
he offers you a smile of his own, head tilting just slightly with a soft nod. "sleep tight, sweetheart."
you turn and push the kitchen door open, slipping into the night. the door creaks shut behind you as you tread through the parking lot, unaware of how long bucky sits there after you're gone, or how long he stares at the empty seat across from him like you might come back.
you've never been a great judge of character— you have the scars and the pain to prove it— but this man didn't seem bad, or at least didn't seem like an axe murderer, and unless you want to walk along the edge of route 66 with your thumb stuck out hoping that another car full of non-murderous travellers picks you up to take you to california, your only other bet is trying to hitch a ride with bucky.
and plus, there are worse ways to get to california than riding shotgun with a trucker who calls you princess and sweetheart.
the next morning doesn't come with any great revelation, and you wake with the same boring nothing. there's no obvious sign, no sudden clarity, no omnipresent voice from the universe telling you what to do. theres only the texas heat seeping through your room windows, pressing in in you like it wants you to stay and rot in your room.
the heat is so prevalent that at midday, you've already had about three showers in the dingy bathroom.
it doesnt help much. the water never gets quite cold, the shower head sprays water in every direction but yours, and the humidity clings to your skin before you even step out of the shower. the towel you'd received when you'd checked in had served you well, but now it smelt of dirty laundry and damp cloth, and no amount of air drying or shaking it out seems to fix that.
you stare at it for a second before deciding you're not desperate enough to use it again.
you get dressed into something that could battle the heat yet leave you covered enough when you inevitably have to face trevor and leave your room with your dirty towel tucked underneath your arm.
the lot shimmers in waves under the sun, radiating the kind of heat that you might think will melt the soles of your shoes.
unsurprisingly, bucky's already out there. his truck's hood is up as per usual, his tools scattered all around the front, and he's leaning over the engine with the focus of someone who's been at this for hours, and you could already tell by the metal-against-metal noises that he'd had been up before you'd even opened your eyes.
and the second you shut your door, the noise pulls him from his work.
his head turns to see the cause, and when he noticed it's you, he straightens like he's trying to get a better look at you. for a moment, the truck seems forgotten, his attention caught on the sight of you leaving your room with your little shorts and your towel tucked under your arm. he doesn't rush to get back to what he's doing, and his gaze lingers instead, taking you in like this is a rare pause he doesn't mind stretching out.
sweat darkens the front of his tank top, clinging to his body in a way that makes it clear that the heat is winning. the thin fabric is stretched across his chest, damp and heavy, tracing every muscle earned through years of labour rather than vanity. his jeans are stained with grease and grime from his work, and what little hair he has on his head sticks to his temple in small soft curls.
his tongue darts out and swipes across his bottom lip almost like he's forgotten you can see him, a reflex born from the heat— or maybe something else entirely.
god, he looks good.
after a long moment, he straightens with a soft exhale, grips the hem, and pulls the tank over his head in an attempt to free himself of the wet fabric. the muscles in his arms flex with every move he makes, glistening under the texan sun, and the light catches the sheen of sweat that forms over every inch of his body. the fabric finally slips free and gets tossed over the hood of the truck, leaving him bare to the heat.
you nearly walk straight into the curb. the toe cap of your shoe bumps against the concrete, jolting you from your wandering thoughts. you only barely manage to catch yourself, the towel sliding slightly from your arm, and bucky knows exactly what's happened.
he tilts his head just slightly, a small grin tugging at the corner of his mouth like he knows exactly what's he's doing. his eyes flick briefly to the curb you'd almost stumbled over, then back to you, a mix of amusement and some genuine concern flooding his face.
"you alright, princess?" he calls out, his voice low but carrying easily over the heat-laced lot, and you realise you've been staring like a madman.
"i'm fine." you awkwardly reply, and he hums.
you break eye contact and pick up the pace towards the front office. sweat prickles along your skin, and the warmth of the sun suddenly feels more invasive than it does comforting. you dont even know if youre sweating because of the heat or because of him.
you hadn't expected this when he'd sat in front of you in a baggy denim jacket last night in the kitchen. where had he been hiding all of... that? the broad shoulders? that lean muscle? the six pack? it had all been covered by fabric and shadow, and you almost want to drop to your knees and thank mother nature for deciding to work in perfect harmony to reveal bucky like this.
you skid to a stop in front of the front office door. the handle squeals as you push down on it and shoulder the door open, and a cold blast of air hits you— blessed, if a little stale. it smells faintly of mold, the result of a leaky unit, and of vinegar potato chips.
trevor is there slouched in his chair like he hasn't moved since the first time you met him. his eyes flick up as you step inside, and with a lazy smile and lopsided glasses, he turns to face you like he's excited to see you.
"hey, you." he drawls with a hint of surprise in his voice. "thought you'd never come back 'round to see me."
"you said you handle the laundry and all that stuff?" you recount, your voice stiff and to the point. you place your folded towel onto the counter and slide it towards him, the action swift. "i'd like a new towel, please. maybe two."
trevor smiles, a yellow tooth poking out from his lips. "i do do the laundry. i can fix up a towel or two for you, gorgeous. can't have the little princess walking around here with a dirty towel now, can we?"
you don't reply, nor do you give him the pleasure of seeing you smile. the rhetorical question hangs in the air between you, practically gathering dust as it remained unanswered. the nickname doesnt roll off of his tongue nearly as good as it does when it comes from buckys—
oh my god. stop thinking about that man.
trevor leans back in his chair with his shoulders raised. "c'mon, that was funny. you gotta admit that i'm the best thing about this dump."
"the best thing about this dump is the air conditioning." you quickly retort before crossing your arms against your chest. "how long is this gonna take?"
his grin falters just slightly before twisting into something sharper. "it'll take no time, but it'll cost ya a pretty penny."
something cold settles in your chest. "you said it was FREE."
"boss raised it to ten bucks per piece." trevor stays like it's perfectly reasonable. "but if you wanted to discuss another form of payment, you can always come back after dark and we can see how it goes from there."
your jaw clenches. its one thing to demand ten dollars to wash a singular piece of clothing, but it's another to continuously press down on you with the threat of a good time to see if you'll break.
"i'll figure something out." you grab your towel from the counter and turn towards the door. "thanks anyways."
the word thanks tastes bitter on your tongue, but you don't give him the satisfaction of seeing it. you push open the door, and just before it shuts, you can hear trevor shout out—
"oh come on, sugar! you know you want it!"
the door slams behind you harder than you meant it to.
heat hits you all at once, thick and suffocating as it wraps around you like a punishment. you clutch the towel tighter in your hand as you stomp back out into the parking lot, your pulse ringing in your ears.
metal clanks somewhere to your left, and then stops. you dont look, but you can feel the way the air shifts; the weight of someone's attention.
you risk a glance, and quickly find that bucky's no longer bent over the hood of his truck. he's standing upright now, a hand on his hip and a rag in the other. his expression is unreadable, his lips parted just slightly, his eyes slow and assessing, and whatever he sees on your face makes his grip on his rag tighten.
"you okay?" he asks, breaking the silence like he's testing the ice. his voice is calm like it usually is, but there's something sharper that rests underneath it.
you hesitate. every instinct you've honed over the years tells you to just shrug it off, that this is just another case of a man expecting something, to say its nothing and to keep moving. but you're done holding it in.
you huff, gesturing angrily at the front office where trevor is still sitting like a king. "asshole wanted ten bucks for a new towel. and he keeps—" you pause, the words echoing in your mind, "he keeps making these horrible passes at me and i just—"
you stop yourself and bucky's expression changes almost immediately. its not dramatic, nor is it explosive; it's colder, like something you'd said had rubbed him the wrong way.
you look at him then. "it's fine. i'll figure it out."
he studies you for a moment longer as you stand there soaking up the heat. its silent as his eyes flick from your face to the towel and then back to your face. then he exhaled and reaches into his jean pocket.
"i've got a spare towel in my room that you can take. it's clean." he says as he digs for something before he pulls out a pair of keys with a cheap plastic keychain that you recognise as his room key.
you quickly shake your head, "you don't have to—"
"i wasn't askin'." he tosses his room key to you and you catch it, the metal rattling in your palm. "you can take it."
your jaw tightens as you fidget with the keys. they feel heavy in your hand and still warm from his pocket. "i don't want to owe you anything."
the corner of bucky's mouth lifts just a fraction— not quite a smile, but something softer. "good. wouldnt want you to." then quieter, like he can sense your hesitation and like he doesn't want anyone else to hear it, he adds, "it's just a towel."
you really do want to turn him down, but the heat presses in on all sides and you're sure that if you use your towel one more time, it'd leave you stickier than you'd entered the shower feeling. to top it off, bucky is looking at you like he expects nothing in return.
"...thanks, bucky." you finally say.
he nods once, easy and almost proud of you for accepting his help. "it's folded up on the tv console. you cant miss it."
your fingers curl around the key and you give bucky one last glance before you turn and head towards his room. the walk across feels longer than it should, every step you take heavy with the awareness of bucky's eyes on your back. sweat sticks to your skin and the sun is relentless overhead, but the heat isn't what's bothering you— it's the fact that you're about to walk into the room of a stranger and cross a line you didnt even know you were standing on.
you stop in front of the door, slide the key into the lock, and twist— but it doesn't open. you try again, a little harder this time, but there's still nothing. you glance over your shoulder towards bucky.
"oh, the door sticks." he yells from across the lot. he makes a stranger gesture with his shoulder, "gotta give it a shove."
you hesitate, then brace yourself before shouldering your way into the room. the door pops open with an awkward crack, swinging inward enough for you to slip inside.
the first thing you notice is how lived in it feels. its similar to yours, but it's warmer somehow. the curtains are half drawn, letting in a thin strip of sunlight that cuts across the bed and the worn carpet. the air smells faintly of engine oil and generic dollar store soap— the grit hidden underneath the clean— and something distinctly him, like heat and metal and long hours on the road.
there's very little decoration, but what is there counts. a denim jacket is slung over the small desk chair in the corner and a pair of black jeans sit messily folded on the table, scuffed with red dirt like they've seen more miles than most people. a half empty water bottle sits on the rickety bedside table beside a folded up receipt and an open pocketknife, the blade well-used.
the bed isn't neat, the blankets thrown to the side without much care. an open duffel bag sits on the end of the bag, and you hate how nosy you feel when something in it catches your attention.
you take a few steps forwards until you're able to peek inside, hand brushing against the zipper of the duffel. there's not much; a wallet and folded clothes, a blend of worn and clean fabrics— a flannel, torn blue jeans, crisp white socks— but then something out of place catches your eye.
paper.
it's not loose. it's tucked carefully into a pocket on the inside of the bag. you tell yourself that you're only looking because it's there, and you reach in before you can even think, pulling it out with care. just a glance— that's all.
the edges are worn and it's creased down the middle like it's been folded and unfolded more times than it should've survived, evident by the thin piece of tape that's holding a corner of it together. the colour has faded into something dull, but the frozen memory printed onto the front is anything but.
two men stand in the centre of it, close in a way that feels more personal than anything you'd ever known. you recognise one of the men as bucky— younger, happier, and clean shaven— a bright smile on his face as he stares at the other man. the other man is broad shouldered, his features sharp underneath his stubble, and wearing a smile similar to bucky's, one so wide that it almost looks like world hasn't had the chance to take anything from them yet.
your thumb absentmindedly brushes against the photo where bucky's face is, the finger curling right down the curve of his jaw.
there's no writing on the back, nor is there an explanation. who is this mystery man, a friend? a boyfriend? either way, they look awfully close.
your chest tightens, red hot guilt flaring in your stomach with the awful realisation that this is something extremely personal to bucky and you've probably just crossed hundreds of lines. the open bag seems to stare at you, and for the first time since you stepped foot in the motel room, you've become acutely aware of how much of an invasion of privacy this is.
you look away from the photo like it might burn you, heart thudding as you fold it back up and shove it back into the pocket you found it in. you find the towel folded up on the tv console just as bucky had said— white, clean, and untouched— and you grab it quickly, beelining straight towards the door.
you shut the door behind you and lock it. you cross the lot, quicker this time and with your eyes fixed on bucky like he might see through you if you blink. he's still by the truck, arms deep in the engine system, but he stops what he's doing as soon as he hears your rushed feet heading towards him.
"you find it?" he asks as he steps off of the bumper.
you nod and hand him the key. "yeah. thanks again."
your fingers brush when he takes it— just the briefest touch of his calloused fingers against your soft ones— and he curls it into the palm of his hand, gaze flickering at the clean towel in your hand.
you turn to leave, a half smile on your lip. you're halfway through a step when—
"hey." bucky calls.
you pause and turn back around.
"you busy tonight?" he asks,
"unless you count watching old reruns all night and listening to the rats in the walls, not really." you try to joke, but the humour dies halfway in your throat when you realise it's your reality. "why?"
he shrugs like his suggestion is nothing big. "there's a decent diner about ten miles down the road. thought maybe we could get something in you that isn't shit from a vending machine."
for a split second, you almost say yes immediately. the idea of real food, of leaving this place even if its just for a little while, of just having someone normal to talk to, feels like a god-given grace. but instinct cuts in fast. the logical part of your mind tells you to not get comfortable.
comfortable is how you get stuck. comfortable is how you get hurt.
"yeah, i don't know about that." you gesture vaguely to your room, and then to your empty pocket. "running low on cash."
"don't worry bout it." bucky says almost immediately. "my treat. least i can do after you've kept me company these past few days."
you blink. "we met last night."
then, almost like you'd just told him a joke, a small laugh falls from his mouth, and god, something about it makes you weak in the knees. "maybe, but you sittin' in your room all day staring at me fixin my truck is still better company than listenin' to trevor watchin' cheap cable porn in his office all day."
oh. he noticed that?
you open your mouth but shut it again. there's no point in denying it, and the cheeky grin that sits plastered on bucky's face shows that you can't gaslight your way out of this one.
the texas heat presses in and the motel hums around you, and for once, the idea of staying in your room all night feels worse than the risk of saying yes. you lift your eyes back to him and sigh, the fight leaving your shoulders.
"okay." you say, more to yourself than anyone else, then you nod. "yeah, okay. dinner sounds... dinner sounds nice."
bucky's smile spreads across his face, slow and satisfied like he knew you would accept. "good. i'll knock around seven."
and he does.
the knock comes at 6:58pm, solid knuckles banging against the wood. the sound echoes through your room louder than it needs to, and it sets every nerve in you alight.
you sit up straighter in the edge of your bed, your heart giving a traitorous jump. for a second, you stare at the door like the sound might go away, but it doesn't. there's a soft scuff of boots against concrete on the other side, and then there's a quiet huff of breath, patient and unhurried.
"hey." bucky's voice comes through the door, low and careful, almost like he's giving you an out. "it's me."
you swallow. your hands are clammy and there's a strange heaviness that sits in the pit of your stomach. you can't remember the last time someone knocked on your door for you.
"yeah—" you rub a hand over your face, clearing your throat as you push yourself to your feet. you're too aware of how your clothes fit and how you look. "uh, just... give me a second."
"i'm not goin' anywhere."
you smooth your hands over your shirt, eyes glazing over your reflection in the small hanging mirror, and then you look down at yourself. you're presentable enough. with one final breath, you cross the room and open the door.
the creak of the door catches bucky's attention. he's standing there with his hands shoved into his jean pockets, his boots scuffed and his hair a little wet like he's washed up since the last time you saw him. there's something pleasant about the way he smells— like sandalwood and leather and him, a welcome change from the stale mix of dusty carpet and mouldy insulation.
he looks good. he looks handsome.
"ready?" he asks, and you cant ignore the way his eyes travel down the length of your body like he's taking you in for the first time instead of the girl he's seen coming and going all week. "let's get some food in you."
it isn't scrutinising, but it's thorough enough for warmth to creep up your neck, to make you suddenly aware of where your hands are, how you're standing, how close he feels in the narrow doorway. you haven't felt this way since— never mind.
your brows knit as you glance past him and towards the lot. "wait, are we taking your truck? i thought it was fucked up."
bucky's face relaxes as he turns over to glance over his shoulder, then back at you. "she's fucked, but she can still drive."
"i hope so." you murmur as you lock your door and slide the keys into your pocket. you hear bucky chuckle.
as you walk beside bucky, you manage to sneak a glance at him. he's relaxed, his shoulders loose and his steps casual. he carries himself with the confidence of a man who does this all the time— talking to strangers and helping them out, letting himself form connections that inevitably lead nowhere— meanwhile your pulse is throbbing throughout your body, struggling to differentiate the difference between the first date jitters you feel and your fight or flight response kicking in.
you force yourself to suck in a deep breath. bucky is nice. he's done nothing but help you., and even if he weren't, you aren't helpless. you know how to run and you know how to fight. you've done it before and you'd do it again. the thought settles the restless anxiety in your chest, and that gives you enough clarity as you near the truck.
the first thing you realise is how big the truck is. from afar, it looks just like every other semi you've seen in your life. up close, it's rusted metal and worn paint, scratches and dents adorning the length of it, and it towers over you like a skyscraper.
bucky reaches up and over and pulls open the door. "might be a bit of a climb. you think you can get up there yourself?"
"i think i'll be fine." you quickly reply, already stepping forwards.
you reach up and grab a hold of the support handle and plant your foot on the step, and you immediately realise you have no idea what you're doing. something about the layout of the truck is strange in a way that makes your brain short circuit for a long moment. the step is higher than expect, the handle a little too far back, your arms criss crossed and your leg is suspended for a moment as you try to figure out where to go next.
its not graceful at all.
you drop to the ground in defeat. before you can try and embarrass yourself again, bucky's hands are there, firm and warm on your waist, steadying you without being rough.
"'s alright, princess," he murmurs. "i've gotcha."
he lifts you like you weigh nothing. your hands instinctively brace against his shoulders, solid beneath your palms, and you can feel the heat of his skin through the fabric of his shirt. for a second, all you can feel is his hands. you're painfully aware of how close his face is to your stomach— to that area— and you feel a little breathless as he hoists you up and sets you down into the passenger seat like you belong there.
you look down at him with a tight lipped smile, "sorry."
"don't be." he says gently as he gives you a small pat on the side of your thigh, already stepping back with a small smile and his hand on the door. "truck's old. not exactly built for somethin' little like you."
you blink as he shuts the door for you and circles the truck before clicking open his own door and climbing in with ease. the cab feels smaller when he settles into his seat, filled with the low rumble of the starting engine and bucky's scent.
he glances over as you as he pulls his door shut. he glances over at you, eyes flicking downwards. "seatbelt." he reminds you, and you quickly buckle in. he nods once when it clicks, satisfied.
bucky clicks some switches and tugs at some levers, and the truck lurches forwards with a load groan. gravel crunches under the tires as bucky reverses the truck with ease, manoeuvring the huge vehicle out of the small lot. the headlights sweep across the cracked paint of the motel, illuminating the stretch of route 66 that it sits on.
it feels strange— being here on the road again, moving again after a stagnant period— like your body remembers the rhythm of the road even if your body hasn't quite caught up.
for a few miles, neither of you speaks. the radio hums softly between stations, bucky skipping until it lands on something that vaguely resembles dire straits before he finally leans back, one hand on the wheel and the other resting along the sill of the window, the glass cracked open just enough for wind to funnel into the cab.
you watch the world go by through the windshield. there's desert scrub, flickering neon motel lights, the occasional passing set of headlights that fly past before you even really notice them. it's peaceful in a way you hadn't really expected.
"so," bucky breaks the silence without turning to look at you, his voice just slightly louder than the hum of the radio and the growl of the truck. "california."
your head turns towards him before you can really control it. "california." you echo, the word sitting strange and heavy on your tongue despite it being the goal you'd been trying to reach for so long.
theres another small pause before bucky hums.
"what's so special about california? job? family?" he turns and glances at you for half a second, throat bobbing once before he turns back to the road. "or did you just throw a dart at a map and decide it was good enough?"
a small laugh slips from your mouth before you can stop it— soft, surprised, one that almost catches you off guard— but it fades into something you'd barely call a smile. you glance down at your shorts, fingers picking at the fabric, and although bucky doesn't look over, you get the feeling that he's listening in a lot closer now.
"i don't know." you admit. "i just needed to get the fuck out of chicago."
bucky nods once, slow and understanding. "that's fair. not always good to stay in one place forever."
he doesnt ask you to explain, nor does he pry. he simply adjusts his grip on the wheel and shifts in his seat before he adds, almost absentmindedly, "a lotta people end up on the road for that reason."
"hmm." you softly nod. then your head lulls to the side just slightly, enough that you can gesture to the back of the truck that rumbles behind you. "what about you? what've you got back there in the trailer?"
bucky glances over at you for just a second, his brows furrowed like you'd just recounted a complex math equation. "who taught you that?"
"taught me what?" you ask, "trailer?"
"yeah." bucky's lips curl into a soft smile, and you can see the small crinkle of his eyes in the rear view mirror. "usually pretty girls like you just refer to the back— or they just call it the truck. you knew what you were talking about, and that's not usually something you just know unless you've picked it up from someone."
you ignore the pretty part of the sentence, and instead try to put on a teasing grin. "do you talk to a lot of pretty girls?"
and then, almost like he can sense the playfulness in your tone bucky turns his head just enough for you to catch the smirk that sits on his lips. "only the ones who can tell the different between a cab and a trailer."
your chest flutters in a way that unconsciously makes a smile grow on your face, warmth creeping up your neck until bucky finally turns away from you and back to the road. there's something in the curve of his jaw, in the blue of his eyes, in the quiet confidence he drives, in the faint rush of his scent carried by the wind— it's confusing, but also exciting. you can't help the pull of curiosity or the way your mind lingers on the idea of him for longer than you should.
but something horrible tugs at your heart. it's something familiar, something you've know for so many years, something that's made its home in your body; guilt.
"my, uh..." you scratch the side of your neck, pausing just momentarily to pull your eyes away from the side of bucky's face. "my boyfriend built semis. he taught me all about the parts and the frames and stuff to try and get me into the business to help out but—" a small, self conscious shrug follows. "not a lot of it stuck."
"boyfriend?" bucky asks. "and where's he?"
"far away, i hope." you say. there's a tightness in your chest, and you reach up to fidget with the necklace that hangs around your neck. "he's actually the reason why i left chicago."
you're looking out of your window now, but you can feel the burn of bucky's eyes on the back of your head as he turns to look at you for a moment.
"he an asshole?" he asks, half joking, but his tone is soft and patient like he already knows the answer.
"you could say that." you reply with a soft laugh, a little tight lipped and a little sad, but relieved that he isn't prying for more, and for the first time in days, it feels okay to leave it out in the open and mostly unspoken.
the road ahead stretches into flat darkness. the radio hums quietly. the truck rumbles as it rolls over rocks and asphalt. ahead, a bright pair of headlights glow bright. it's peaceful.
"garden gnomes."
your brows furrow. you turn your head towards bucky, who's eyes are set on the road. you're sure you'd misheard him. "what?"
he glances at you, then back at the road, his voice low like he's confessing a classified secret. "in the back. it's garden gnomes."
you blink, a bubble of a laugh slipping free before you can stop it. "you're hauling gnomes across the country? is that a joke?"
"sounds funny, but apparently those little bastards are worth more than both you and i and this truck." he says, dead serious, but there's a small twitch of a smile on his face. "rich people have nothin' better to spend their money on."
you snort again, laughter bubbling from your chest and breaking the heaviness that had settled there. bucky smiles at the sound— small, satisfied, toothy— like that was exactly the reaction he had hoped for. you press a hand against your mouth to try and suppress your laughter, but it barely works.
"hey— they're gettin' a nicer trip than most people do." he half-heartedly adds with a grin. "they're drivin' with the best trucker in america. not everybody can say that."
"the best trucker in america and the most humble."
"don't start, missy." bucky warns you, but the amusement on his face gives him away. "you're apart of the lucky few who can call themselves a passenger of mine."
you scoff, "whatever you say, buck."
the nickname slips out before you can stop it, and for half a second, you wonder if you've crossed a line. but you watch how bucky's eyes linger on you and the way his knuckles flex against the wheel, turning white just ever so slightly as his grip tightens. there's a slight tick in his jaw before his tongue darts out and swipes across his bottom lip.
a neon light catches your eye. it's bright against the dark of the sky, the singular word DINER illuminated in bright pink and faint blues. it's a simple sign, but it gets the work done. a small building comes into view, small and unassuming yet warm and homey, like it's just waiting for people to stumble in for a feed.
"that must be it." bucky mutters as he squints through the windscreen. he pulls at a few things, and the truck rolls to a slow as you near the building.
"good." you murmur. "i'm starving."
bucky slows the truck, turning off of the highway steering wide and pulling the truck to the far end of the lot where the truck won't block anyone in (even though there's only three or four cars in the lot).
"she's too big to squeeze in there." he adds as he pulls the brakes and shuts the engine off. the rumbling stops, and suddenly it's quiet again. "hope you don't mind the walk."
"it's fine." you tell him as you unbuckle your seatbelt. you click open the door and push it open, almost falling out at the weight of it. you glance down to the step, and then towards the trucker. "uh, bucky... would you be able to—"
before you can finish, bucky's door swings open, the cab groaning at the shift of weight. "i've got it." he says, voice calm but amused before he hopes out and shuts the door behind him.
you watch the top of his head as he circles the front of the truck, and he appears at your door. he reaches a hand out before you can even think about trying to hop down yourself.
"here." he says as you take his hand, the other arm extended just in case you slip.
you let him guide you down, one hand in his and the other on his shoulder. you hop down knowing that bucky would catch you if you fell without hesitation. the gravel crunches beneath your boots when you touch the ground and your hands slip from bucky's.
he takes the time to give you a small smile like it was nothing, and the two of you head towards the diner. the evening air carries the scent of grease and coffee and something faintly like him, and you're not sure if you're smelling him because he's so close or if its because
bucky steps ahead of you to push the door open for you, and the bell overhead dings and echos through the diner. the first thing you notice as you step inside is the clatter of dishes in the kitchen and the soft buzz of the coffee machine on the counter.
although clean and well-kept, the diner looks like it hasn't been updated in decades. the checkered vinyl floor is worn in some places from years of customers, the metal trim around the counter and the stools shine in the bright led light, and the red leather of the booths fray and tear at the corners. there are dozens— if not hundreds— of framed black and white photos on the wall of passing customers, food, and the employees, and next to those are various old school records hung haphazardly.
a few customers are scattered around the diner, all invested in their own world, and don't dream it's over by crowded house plays faintly from the jukebox in the corner, filling the space with music where otherwise would be ambient diner noise. a bell dings and your eyes dart to the kitchen where a chef passes the waitress a plate full of fries and a cheeseburger. the sight makes your stomach growl despite the vending machine snacks you'd had earlier that day.
bucky seems to catch onto your hunger and is quick to place a hand on your lower back and usher you towards an empty booth in the emptier half of the diner. the leather creaks as you both slide in, your hands instantly grabbing for the menu and flipping it open.
the first thing you look at— almost instinctively— are the prices.
"it's a bit expensive for a highway diner." you think out loud as you scan the menu, your thumbnail in between your teeth.
"get whatever you want." bucky says as he watches you. you catch him looking, and through your lashes, you watch his expression soften. "i don't like keeping a bunch of cash on me anyways."
you feel bad, but he's offering. you look down at the menu again, thumb playing with the frayed corner. after a minute, you ask, "so... what are you getting? the BLT looks good."
he shrugs lightly as he leans back against the booth. he gives you a small smile as he shakes his head. "i had somethin' back at the motel."
before you can reply, a waitress appears at the side of your booth. she's older, grey streaks in her brown hair and her eyes kimd but tired. her hair is pulled into a loose bun, and a red apron is tied around her waist. she reaches for her notepad and her pen, and then she smiles.
"evenin'." she greets. "what can i get for you folks?"
you sit up straight and smile, menu in hand. "hi. could i get one classic cheeseburger with fries? and two cokes, please."
the waitress nods and jots down your order on the notepad. you put the menu down thinking you're done, but then you look at bucky, and find that he's already looking at you. you blink at each other before an idea pops into your head.
"actually, sorry, could you make that two cheeseburgers?"
the look at bucky gives you makes you grin.
"of course, sweetheart. so two cheeseburgers with fries?" the waitress recounts, and you nod feeling a little victorious. "alright, it'll be out in no time."
"thank you." you smile.
the waitress leaves, and you lean back in the booth like you hadn't done anything. there's a moment of silence where you're smiling at bucky and he's staring back at you with a perplexed look.
"what was that?" bucky asks after a moment. his brows are raised, and the look on his face turns into amusement.
"what was what?" you reply, feigning innocence.
"that." he gestures vaguely to you. "the— you know... the cheeseburger thing."
you lean forwards. "i'm not gonna sit here and eat a burger while you stare at me, bucky. if we're doing this, we're gonna eat fries and drink out cokes together."
bucky scoffs and shakes his head. "anyone ever told you you don't play fair?"
"once or twice." you grin.
and just like the waitress had said, your cheeseburgers were out in now time. she slides the plates in front of you with practised ease, and you dive in without hesitation.
the bun is soft, the cheese is melted just enough that is droops off of the patty, and the fries are the perfect amount of crispy. you take a bite, one that makes you sigh in relief, and you dont even bother to eat politely. you scarf down half of your burger before bucky's even touched his.
he shoves a fry into his mouth as he watches you chew. "should i be worried you're gonna steal mine too?"
you swallow. "if you dont eat it fast enough, then maybe."
he huffs a laugh through his nose and shakes his head before he finally leans forwards and takes a proper bite of his burger.
the two of you keep eating, but your eyes drift back to bucky every so often. there's something about him that you just can't look away from— the way he holds his burger, the way he chews, the way his eyes watch the other customers behind you, the way his shoulders relax now that he's finally eating— but then, uninvited, your mind slips back to the photo in his duffel bag.
the worn edges. the fading colour. the way bucky looked. the man beside him. everything about it pulls at something in you.
you finish your burger and slow down. you wipe at your mouth with a tissue, your stomach full as you lean back to digest. you watch him for a moment longer before you tilt your head just slightly, reaching for a fry as if to imitate cluelessness.
"what did you do before all of... this?" you start, aiming for casual but landing somewhere more questioning. "the hauling, i mean. the travelling and all that stuff. did you always do this, or was there... someone who got you into it?"
its subtle— something in the way your words trail off, in the way your eyes search his for an answer— and bucky clocks it immediately.
his jaw pauses mid-chew. his eyes flick between yours like he's replaying what you asked word-for-word. he swallows his food, and he squints just slightly.
"you snooped in my bag, didn't you?"
your shoulders tense. for a moment, you think about denying it or telling him that he's crazy, but you respect him too much to lie.
"i swear i didn't mean to. it was just... open, and i just—" you blink, huffing out a small breath. "i'm sorry."
bucky doesn't say anything for a moment. he takes another bite of his burger and continues chewing on his food while you stress the fuck out. you sort of just stare at him as he places his burger back down and takes a breath.
"'s fine. not much in there for you to take anyways." he says as he leans back. he crosses his arms against his chest, eyes flicking towards you. "i'm guessing you wanna know who he is."
"only if you want to tell me." you tell him.
a beat passes. then bucky exhales through his nose, the corner of his mouth twitching like he's decided on something.
"alright. i'll tell you about sam—" his gaze sharpens just a bit, more intent now. "but you have to tell me more about your boyfriend."
the proposition sits in front of you heavier than you'd expected. your stomach twists, not with fear, but with the awareness that agreeing means opening a door you've been keeping shut.
but your curiosity— or maybe your resilience, that stubborn part of you that refuses to let your past dictate every choice you make— overcomes your fear.
"okay." you nod. "fine."
bucky leans back in the booth, hands reaching out to rest on the table. his fingers drum slightly on the table, his eyes unfocused for a second like he's replaying a memory in his mind.
"the man in the photo... his name is sam." he begins. "we were... friends. real good friends. we had a truck together once— an old thing, nothin' fancy, but we'd spent hours tinkerin' with it, fixin' whatever broke. sometimes we'd race the damn thing down the road just for somethin' to do. felt like we could do anything' back then."
his lips twitch, not quite into a smile, but into something fleeting. you watch as it passes on his face, brief but visible.
"where's sam now?" you ask softly.
bucky exhales. "i don't know. one day, we got into an argument about... everything and nothing, really. it was stupid. and then we just... went in different directions." he speaks slow like he's trying to remember, or maybe he's trying not to feel. there's something underneath, like he's choosing to trust you even if it costs him a second of discomfort.
"do you ever think of going back? of ever talking to him again?"
"all the time. not a day passes where i wish i could just... call him up and tell him i'm sorry." bucky admits. "i've done a lot of things wrong in my life, but not fixin' that... not tryin' to make it right... it sticks with me."
he pauses, fingers stilling on the table. "no matter what i do or where i go, a part of me stays back there— with him."
its said plainly, but there's something in the way that his jaw works that shows he's already said a lot more than he usually allows himself to. the memory isn't old or something fleeting he thinks about every so often. the memory of sam is still very much alive in bucky, and he carries it with him mile after mile.
bucky reaches over and grabs his coke. he brings the straw to his lips, takes a long sip, and sets it down with a sigh. he crosses his arms again, and his eyes flick back to you, steady now.
"that's all i've got. your turn."
you nod once, then again, like the motion might knock you out of the daze you'd pulled yourself into. there's a small inhale through your nose,
"right. okay, um— where do i start..." you think out loud, eyes focused on the condensation of your glass like it might give you an answer.
"i guess it started back in high school. i didnt have many friends or talked to anyone, so the moment a guy started paying attention to me, i guess i didn't know any better." you swallow, eyes unfocused now. "he was older. he knew how to talk, and he was confident, and i fell head over heels. it felt like it was the first time anyone had ever actually seen me."
"but then we moved in together, and it got bad. he hurt me— a lot." the laugh that leaves your mouth is more uncomfortable than anything humorous. your finger traces the edge of your plate just to try to ground yourself. "he knew how to do it in a way that made sure i'd always somehow come running back to him."
your voice wobbles on the last word, and thats when bucky moves.
its not abrupt or enough to startle you, and you barely even look up. he just leans forwards, forearms resting on the table now, like he's making sure you know he's there and that you don't have to do this alone. his jaw tightens, not angry at you, but in anger at the man who left scars you dont name.
"i didnt realise that the attention started turning into control." "you admit softly. "or how easy it is to mistake the control for love when you don't know any better. i don't know. sometimes i wish i could just... shove it all into a box and throw it from a moving car... and then go to bed and sleep for once."
"but would you be able to rest?" bucky asks.
"no." you shake your head. "no, i don't think i would."
you can hear a small sigh slip from his mouth, and you almost feel pathetic. you hated being pitied, and this was prime pity territory.
but then bucky reaches forwards to hold your shaking hand, his grip warm and steady. his thumb presses against your knuckles, grounding, like he knows exactly how close you're coming to slipping.
a part of you still shivers at the vulnerability you display— at being seen like this— but the tired part, the honest part, of you doesn't mind the contact if bucky is the one pitying you.
"sweetheart, people like that... they're good at makin' it feel like you're the problem. like you're the one who keeps messin' up. but that doesn't mean you were weak or stupid. it means you were young and you were lonely, and someone cruel decided to take advantage of that." his thumb presses into your skin just slightly. "you got out."
you look up for the first time since you started talking. your waterline burns with unshed tears, and there's a quiver in your lip despite your best attempts to keep it steady.
"i did something bad, bucky. i did something really bad."
he doesn't interrupt. he doesnt tense nor does he pull away. his hands stay exactly where they are in yours, his thumb stilling. his eyes search yours, waiting, giving you the space to speak.
"i shot him."
the words hang heavy in the air between you, whispered but still deafening, and for a second you think the world might come crashing down on you. you prepare for bucky to rip his hands away from you, to spit in your face, and leave you here to rot— but it never comes.
if anything, his grip on your hands tightens. bucky exhales through his nose. he's not shocked. he's not angry with you either— he could never be angry at you. his jaw tightens, and you watch as his thoughts pass in his eyes. his thumb resumes the small circular motion on your knuckles like he's trying to calm you down.
"okay." he says quietly, like he's afraid he might shatter something more fragile than you, like anything louder that leaves him might break you. "okay. thats okay."
his hands never leave yours, but you watch his face change like he's distanced himself from you.
"did you mean to?" he asks gently, not prying nor accusing, just trying to understand what happened. and before you can spiral into whatever answer you're forming, he adds, still soft, "you don't gotta justify yourself to me. i just wanna know what you're feelin' right now."
you pull away from his touch. it almost feels like too much. you retreat into yourself, hands holding yourself just for another sense of safety, but even then, you dont feel safe in your own skin. your fingers press into your sides just to remember that you're there and that you exist outside of the memory and the guilt and the fear.
"i don't know. i was just scared, and he was— he was yelling, and it was so loud. and i shot him, and i was— god, i don't even know if he's alive." you spit out all at once. you turn to bucky, "please don't be scared of me—"
"i'm not scared of you, princess."
bucky says it immediately— no pause, no hesitation— like there was never another option. his voice doesn't rise in anger or soften in pity, and he never once looks away from you.
"you were scared and you did what you needed to survive." he adds quietly. "nobody can blame you for that."
and for the first time since you've said it out loud, the word shot doesn't echo as violently in your mind as it once did. its still there, but it isn't screaming at you anymore.
you nod because its all you feel you can do. you wipe at your eyes with the back of your hand, embarrassed by the wetness, the vulnerability, the rawness you feel after admitting it for the first time.
"how about we get this packed up, and we'll head back." bucky suggests like he's offering you an out.
"yeah." you blink and nod, "okay."
and that's exactly what you do. you leave the diner in silence, and you drive back to the motel in the same silence. bucky helps you down from the truck, and he hands you the entire bag of food with the soft assurance that he 'isn't hungry', bidding you a good night at your room door.
in the shower, you stand under the running water until your skin prickles and your fingers prune, letting the water run over your body for what seems like hours, and when you get out of the shower, you lay in bed half under the covers staring at the ceiling and tracing the cracks and bumps for what feels like even longer.
your body is exhausted, but your mind won't follow. every time you blink, it's there again; the yelling, the smell of sweat and metal, how loud is was. god, it was so loud.
you see it in fragments. the way his face had changed, the split second wgere you realised this was going to happen whether you wanted it to or not, the recoil, the ringing in your ears, the sound of him collapsing, and the blood.
you suck in a breath and sharply turn your head to the side.
the alarm clock glows an ugly red. 3:04am. you reach over and click on the table lamp, and before you can overthink it, you swing your legs over the bed and pad over to the dresser where your duffel sits, half open and slumped against the wood.
you kneel in front of it and unzip it the rest of the way. you begin sifting through your belongings, your fingers clumsy but determined as you dig through scraps of your life that you've shoved together without much care.
and then your hand brushes against something heavy and metallic. you reach in and grab the gun by the barrel, pulling it out and watching as the metal glows under the lamp light before you pull it into your lap. a shotgun. it looks smaller there, stripped of context and fear, but your hands still remember the weight of it. your body itches like it's bracing for something you know has already happened.
you stare at it for a long time— the stupid, ugly thing that changed everything.
it'd been the thing you shoved into your boyfriends face when he'd threatened to keep you locked up in that cramped apartment of his. it'd been the reason he'd let you go, and the thing that saved your life; but simultaneously, it'd also been the thing that'd ruined you.
you decide to be rid of it.
one second you're sitting on the carpet with the shotgun on your lap, and the next, you're pulling on a spare hoodie and stepping out of your room, completely barefoot and all sense of rationality thrown out of the window. you dont even lock your room door.
you cross the small space between your room and bucky's. you knock once, twice, and then once more for good measure, knuckles stinging as soon as they make contact with the wood.
there's a pause. there's a shift. then the door opens.
the door creaks open, and from the dark, bucky emerges. the first thing that you notice is that he's shirtless, and the first thing he notices is that you're carrying a shotgun.
"what's wrong?" is the first thing he says. his voice is still gravely with sleep or something close to sleep, and you almost feel bad for dragging him into your drama again. he doesnt sound scared or in fear for his own life, but you can hear the concern laced in the question. "is that—"
"i want to get rid of it." your hands tighten around the barrel of the gun.
bucky doesn't ask why. he just nods once and steps back inside of his room to tug on a shirt and grab his keys.
the truck eats the miles quickly, the headlights carving a thin path through the dust and the scrub of the texas desert. the land opens up the further out you go, and the two of you drive until you can't see anything but the darkness. bucky pulls off of the road where the tires fade into the sand and kills the engine.
the land bucky helps you down onto is bare in a way that only places with nothing to witness can be. you cant see much further than a couple of feet ahead of you, and the silence is almost deafening. nobody is driving past on route 66 at this time, and nobody is there to watch you hide the weapon.
you hold the gun while bucky holds the shovel and a flashlight.
you dont know how far out you walk. the ground shifts under your bare feet, toes digging into the cooling sand and small stones, but you keep going until the heavy metal in your hands starts feeling heavier than your body can hold. when you glance over your shoulder, you can barely see the moonlight silhouette of the truck in the distance.
in front of you, bucky slows, his flashlight scanning the area out of habit, then he nods.
"here should be good." he says quietly, turning back to you just to check on you. "doubt anyone every comes out this far."
you don't reply. you simply nod, the action small, fingers curling tighter around the barrel and the handle. your throat feels thick, your words lodged there with nowhere to go, and maybe it's better that way. you dont know what you'd say even if you tried.
bucky holds the flashlight out for you to grab, and you take it and shine it at the ground. the light cuts a pale circle onto the sand, and your brows furrow when bucky presses the tip of the shovel into the ground, tasting the density.
"maybe i should do it." you interrupt, the words coming out thin, like you're testing out the question more than asking it.
he doesnt even look at you. "i've got it."
but you still feel so guilty. he doesnt even know your name and he here is on the border between new mexico and texas buring evidence for you.
"it's my gun, bucky." your grip tightens around the flashlight, the muzzle of the gun scratching against the ground. there's a quiet guilt and responsibility in it, a quiet belief that this is something you have to carry alone. "you don't have to do this for me—"
bucky sighs as he finally pauses to look at you. he pulls his hands from the handle of the shovel and folds them on top of each other on the handle, his eyes soft and unyielding like he's already made up his mind and he's just waiting for you to catch up.
"you already asked me to bring you out here, sweetheart. i'm not lettin' you do this on your own anymore." bucky says, quieter but no less sure, and his eyes never leave your face. "you've done enough survivin' by yourself. let me do this for you."
you hesitate for half a second longer like you might still argue, but the fight drains out of you instead. the way he's looking at you feels like he's willingly shouldering the weight with you— or maybe for you.
you nod once. "okay."
bucky gives you a short nod back like your compliance is all he needs before he turns to the shovel again. he drives the shovel down, the metal biting into the ground with a dull clang. he pulls the shovel from the ground before slamming it back down again, harder and stiffer this time like he knows exactly how much force to use and when.
you keep the flashlight trained on the growing divot, the beam wobbling just slightly whenever the shovel meets the ground. after a while of staring at bucky, you swallow, your voice low.
"do you think i could go to jail for this?" you ask him. the question had been running rampant in your mind ever since you'd left y the apartment in chicago.
bucky pauses mid-scoop for a second, head tilting upwards towards you. the raise of his brows and the small huffed out laugh he gives you makes the question you just ask feel stupid— and in retrospect, it probably was.
"people go to jail for less serious shit than shooting your ex-boyfriend, princess." he says, not unkind, just honest. he turns back to the ground and stabs into the sand. "if that asshole's still alive and he gives the cops a story about how you left guns a-blazin', you could be set up for attempted murder."
"oh." you mutter as you fight the urge to roll your eyes. "thanks bucky. that really helps. super comforting."
he huffs quietly. "you asked."
you kick at a mound of sand like it had personally wronged you, and it's only then that you realise you're completely barefoot. you're not sure when that happened.
"well—" you pause, flashlight dipping just slightly, "yeah, i asked, but hearing it that way instead of a simple yes or no or maybe just freaks me out."
"sorry." bucky exhales through his nose. "not much point in worryin' about it now. thinkin' that far ahead'll eat at you, and it sounds like it already has been."
"whatever." you grumble. "i at least wanna get to california before i get thrown in a cell to rot."
bucky glances at you. "and you will."
bucky finished digging the hole with a finally jab of his shovel, sand piling up around it in a large mound. he steps back and nods towards it, giving the the go-ahead without saying it out loud. you lean down and place the gun inside, pushing it down as far as it can go, the metal scratching against the sand as it sinks inside. when you stand back up, you cross your arms over your chest.
the weapon you'd used to maim someone now looked so small. stripped of its power and its noise. just a cold, ugly thing sitting in a hole in the ground.
for a long while, the two of you just stare at the gun. there's not much to look at, but there's something about it that just feels different now. it doesn't look like fear or adrenaline anymore. it just looks out of place, almost wrong, like it never belonged in your hands in the first place.
bucky breaks the silence first, his question a little too casual for the context behind it. "was it a good shot at least?"
you turn your head just slightly to look at him, and he does the same. he watches you as you search for the answer, a soft sigh falling from your mouth.
"i got him right in the shoulder." you bluntly reply, your voice quiet even in the silence of the desert. "he was bleeding a lot, though. almost thought his arm was going to fall off."
bucky hums once, his face unreadable, then he steps forwards and starts pushing the gathered sand back into the hole. you watch as the ground swallows the gun, and inadvertently swallows up everything else you'd brought with you— the dread, the panic, the buzzing tension you'd felt for so long.
but you feel a lot better now. of course you still have the topic of being homeless and being arrested on your mind, but at least you aren't carrying around the immediate weight of that cold metal in your hands. the gun is gone, and you can rest a little easier now.
you stand there for a moment longer as bucky finishes up, kicking the sand around so it looks a little less messed with. then, almost wordlessly, the two of you walk back to the truck.
he opens the truck door for you, helps you in, and then he circles around the front and gets in his seat. the engine growls as it comes to life and the headlights blink on like the sun on a bleak morning, and with a few pressed buttons and pulled levers, bucky is pulling the truck back onto the road and back towards the motel.
the road is steady underneath the wheels, and for the first time in a while, you feel a little lighter. neither of you really speak at first. the desert stretches onwards, and your eyes glance to the small analogue clock on the dashboard— 4:17am.
and it's almost like bucky can sense the exhaustion that laces your bones. he glances at you, his own eyes tired although his mind is anything but. "you think you're gonna sleep much tonight?"
you shrug, staring out of the windscreen. "i'll try. there's still a lot on my mind."
your thoughts drift, unbidden and unruly— memories of your boyfriend, the way things had been once and how they are now, and the tension you felt in your body when you left home— but the thought of your him somehow brings you back to trucks, and the thought of trucks and sleep brings you back to the thought of the sleeper cab of a semi truck.
a little impulsively, you twist in your seat and pull at the curtain that sits behind you and you peek inside. the little bed sits neatly against the wall, the blankets neatly made and the singular pillow slightly askew at the head of the bed. it's nothing inherently interesting, but it's something that's always confused you.
bucky glances at you in the rear view mirror, "what are you lookin' for back there?"
"just looking at the bed. i've never seen one in real life." you casually reply, "is it comfy back there? mattress looks thin."
bucky half shrugs, his eyes ahead on the road. "it gets the job done, but its not as good as the real thing."
you pull the curtain back just a little further. it's hard to see in the dark, the shadows making it hard to see any object in real detail, but you can make out the pillows and the blankets, a small shelf with a basket full of miscellaneous items— a couple of batteries, a bottle of painkillers, an empty water bottle, and a couple of magazines. you cant read the words, but even in the dark, you can make out the shape of a... is that a lady wearing a playboy bunny costume?
you turn back to bucky and find that he's already watching you through the rear view mirror like a hawk. his brows are slightly furrowed, his eyes dark and steady, but theres a small, sly tilt of his lips.
"are those... playboy magazines?" you almost laugh, glancing at bucky with your brows raised and a cheeky grin. you tease, "those get the job done too?"
theres a moment where bucky sucks on his teeth and glances at you over his shoulder, and you think you should've probably kept your mouth shut— but then he smirks.
"like i said—" bucky lets the corners of his mouth curl, his voice low as he replies. "not as good as the real thing."
oh.
you blink. you blink again. you blink so much that you think you might actually start crying, or throw up, or do something equally humiliating. heat crawls up the length of your neck, settling in your cheeks. what the hell do you reply to that?
"right." you manage, pushing it out a little too quickly. you slide the curtain shut and turn back in your seat, tugging at your seatbelt to get it adjusted right. "yeah. that— that makes sense."
you clear your throat, forcing yourself to stare forwards at the dark stretch of highway instead of paying any attention to bucky. you can feel him glancing at the side of your face, lingering whenever you feel particularly flustered, and you can hear the soft chuckle he makes at your reaction that he doesn't even try to hide.
it settles somewhere low in your stomach, warm and aggravating and far too effective for how little he's actually doing.
god, that image is gonna be burnt in your mind forever.
the motel sign flickers back into view not long after, and the breath of relief that leaves you is almost instant. the neon lights buzz as bucky pulls into the parking lot, headlights beaming over the building before he kills the engine and opens the doors. you follow, and he circles the front and he helps you down from the truck just like he usually does, your hands on his shoulders while his wrap around your waist. it lasts for only a second, but it lingers on your skin all the same.
you walk side by side towards your rooms, the ground luke-warm under your feet and the air cooler now that the night has deepened. it's quiet now in the way most empty places are— no noises or other people for miles, just the two of you sliding your keys into the locks and pushing open your doors.
and when you're about to step foot into your dark room, that's when bucky clears his throat. you pause, poking your head out of the doorframe.
"hey. i'm, uh..." he pauses, voice slower than usual. "i'm sorry about earlier. in the truck. i didnt mean to make things weird."
you blink before the conversation floods your mind. you take a step back out of the door and put on your best attempt of trying to act nonchalant before swallowing down the butterflies that come with the memory.
"there's nothing to be sorry about. its a normal human function and we're both adults." you reply with a casual smile, but you're not sure if you're actually convincing anyone. "right?"
bucky doesn't answer right away. he just sort of looks at you like he's thinking about something that he hasn't decided how to say yet, his jaw clenching once as if he decides against saying anything at all.
"right." he watches you for a second longer, unreadable eyes falling to the dip of your neck, his gaze tracing your collarbone before he looks up again. he gives you a small nod, "get some sleep, okay?"
"i'll try. thanks again for tonight. i really do appreciate it." you pause with a small, faint smile, then quieter, you add, "goodnight, bucky."
"goodnight, princess." bucky replies, his voice soft and steady, carrying enough warmth to make your chest tighten.
and then you're both retreating into your own rooms, doors closing and keys clicking, the thin motel walls swallowing whatever else might've been said.
you don't bother turning on the lights. you pad towards the bed, feet brushing against the carpet to get rid of the sand that sticks to your toes, drop keys onto the tiny table and crawl into bed like sleep might take pity on you if you lie down fast enough.
minutes pass. you glance at the clock. 4:56am. its only been thirty minutes, but it feels like you've been in bed for hours. you lie there on your back half under the covers, your eyes tracing the cracks and divots in the ceiling like they might lead somewhere else, trying to will your brain to shut up, but it doesn't.
the magazines. the sleeper. the idea of bucky
you had meant what you said earlier about how it is a normal human function and that you're both adults and can joke about this sort of stuff all the time and it shouldn't matter, but the mere thought of bucky getting himself off makes you feel like a pervert.
you roll onto your side with a frustrated huff, pulling the blankets tighter over your body as if it might smother the thoughts that plague you, but you have no such luck.
not as good as the real thing.
your brain is cruel enough to supply you images you definitely don't want— bucky alone in the sleeper cab in low light and the magazine crinkling awkwardly in his hands. his pants pool just above his knees, his hand gliding down his stomach, brushing past his happy trail and the waistband of his underwear, the rough palm of his hand wrapping around the base of his cock, the slow looseness of his jaw as it falls open with every tentative stroke—
oh god. you squeeze your eyes shut, heat blooming under your skin, mortified by how fast your own brain betrayed you. you try to push the thought away before it can fully form, like distance is something you can try to manufacture in your head, but it's difficult.
"jesus," you mutter into the empty room.
this is ridiculous. you're exhausted. you're emotionally wrecked. you're traumatised. you should be asleep, and thats all you want to do; so why do you feel so wet? it's pathetic, really, getting wet over the thought of a handsome stranger after he made one joke, but now you're never going to be able to sleep when the heat between your legs feels inescapable.
your hand— almost like it senses your desperation— trails down the length of your stomach and slides past the band of your underwear, fingers dipping through your folds, and the ragged breath that leaves you is almost shameful.
you slide a finger into your weepy entrance, the rhythm you set is slow, the pads of your fingers brushing against your insides at the same pace you imagine bucky would touch you. you can't stop imagining it's his fingers instead of your own.
"bucky." you whine breathlessly into the air as you glide in another finger, the stretch almost delicious.
you pump in and out of your cunt until youre panting into the side of your pillow, until your hips move on their own, until you feel that familiar heat growing deep in your stomach.
then you catch it. cedarwood. musk. his scent. your shirt still smells like him from all those miles you spent sitting in his truck, and the small whimper that leaves your mouth at the smell brings you closer to the edge.
"faster— god, please." you beg, brows furrowing and mouth falling slack as you speed up the assault on your pussy.
you continue until you feel that tight ball of heat finally in your stomach snap. you barely have time to shove your face into your pillow before a borderline pornographic moan rips from your throat, breath hot into the cotton as you grind into your hand.
you pull your shirt over your nose, inhaling bucky's scent with every breath you take, and you find that sleep washes over you easier that night.
the morning light seeps into your room in thin and warm stripes through the curtains, landing across your legs and the crumbled up sheets. you wake slowly— not startled or filled with dread, just rising with a sense of awareness of things of you'd been too overwhelmed with to notice before.
your body feels lighter than it has in a while, rested in a way that almost surprises you. you're not sure if it's because you'd buried one of your biggest worries under four feet of sand or if it was because of your late night self-love session. either way, it was a win for you.
you sit up in the bed, sleep still fuzzy in your eyes, and you look over at the alarm clock— 2:34pm. you'd slept for a while.
then you hear it. the low rumble of a truck outside. it's definitely bucky's— because who else would pull over into this fuckass motel— but it sounds different, almost steadier, not rattling like it had been the last few times you'd heard it. it idles smoothly and confidently, like it finally wants to be running.
you kick the sheets off, pad across the room, shove your feet into your shoes with half-assed effort, and push the door open without bothering to check yourself in the mirror.
the afternoon suns shoots down at you from the sky, rays burning against your skin as you step outside, door closing behind you as you make yourself towards the scene.
bucky is at his usual spot near the hood, shoulders bend and back hunched over the engine, a dirty rag thrown over his shoulder and his grey tank dark in places, spotted with sweat and oil stains, clinging to his body in a way that makes it very hard for you not to notice how broad he is.
but you try to ignore those thoughts and the fact that you'd fucked yourself to the thought of him last night. you perk up, hands folding in front of you as you put on an award winning smile.
"morning." you greet, your voice still a little scratchy from sleep but still light.
bucky is quick to cock his head to the side, and when he sees it's you, he straightens, hands still leaning against the metal of the vehicle, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as the truck continues to purr under his palms.
"mornin'." he says back, low and easy like it's the easiest thing in the world. his eyes flick over you once— almost habitual— before finally settling on your face. "you look happy."
you grin. "i feel happy. she sounds better than she has all week. did you figure out what was wrong?"
bucky groans as he leans back up, pulling at the rag on his shoulders and wiping off his hands, eyes focused on the newly fixed engine. "yup. figured it out about an hour or two ago. somethin' wrong with the fuel line, but i managed to fix it up. i think she'll be ready for the road tomorrow morning.
he gives the metal of the truck a light tap as you nod before his attention drifts back to you. this time, his eyes dont just flick over you once; they take their time, slow and analysing, like he's reading something you're trying not to show.
his gaze lingers at your face, on your posture, on the way you hold yourself in an unwittingly protective stance in response to his peering eyes. his mouth curls into a smirk, almost amused.
he nods towards you, "how'd you sleep?" he asks, voice even, but now there's something in the way he speaks that makes you wonder if he knows.
"it was fine." you meekly reply with a pathetic smile.
bucky hums under his breath in acknowledgment. his eyes stay on yours, unreadable in nature but not unkind. after a second, he exhaled and rolls his shoulders back like he's trying to release the tension that weaves through his muscles.
"hey, you still got the leftovers from the dinner?" he asks.
you blow out a huff of air through your mouth as you glance back towards your room. "i think so. i can heat it up if you're hungry."
"yeah." he says easily. "that's be great."
so that's exactly what you do— after all, it's the least you could do for bucky after he'd practically sidelined his own mission just for you. you head back to your room, pull out the leftovers, head over to the kitchen.
you pop the lid off of the leftovers and slide it over to the microwave, but when you press the button, but there isn't a beep nor is there any numbers on display. you press it again, harder this time like it might flicker to life, but it doesn't. the microwave sits there dead and useless, smelling faintly of popcorn and disappointment.
"great." you murmur.
after a moment, you snap the lid back onto the container. there's only one other option, and you already dread it— trevor.
you enter the office, the air conditioning hitting you square in the face the moment you open the door. you step forwards and ring the cheap desk bell on the counter, and the back room door opens by the second ding. trevor steps out, glasses askew, a few strands of his dirty blonde hair sticking up in strange directions, and a lit cigarette hanging from his mouth like it's part of his uniform.
you don't bother with pleasantries and are quick to get to the point. "the microwave in the kitchen is broken. is there any way you could fix it or maybe heat this up for me?"
trevor squints at you, unimpressed. "i'm not doin' no favours for you after the attitude you've been givin' me ever since you stepped foot onto the property."
"it's not for me." you tip your head towards the window. "it's for him."
both of you glance towards the parking lot. bucky's by the truck, still working, still sweating, still leaning over the hood in a way that makes his muscles look extra toned in the sun and his body look carved out of heat and hard work. you feel your heart thump against your ribs and trevor lets out a pathetic huff, but you're sure you and trevor both look away for different reasons.
he sucks on his teeth as he looks you up and down once because he holds his hand out and makes a gesture for you to hand it over. "i got one in the back. it'll be a minute."
you hand it over with a shit-eating grin. "i can wait."
trevor murmurs something under his breath as he disappears behind the back door. a few seconds later, the microwave kicks on— a loud, rattling sound that you can hear even through the shut door.
you tap your fingers against the counter, eyes wandering around the offie. there's a popping noise that catches your attention, and you find yourself looking out of the window and watching bucky again.
he wipes his hands on his rag and tosses it back onto his shoulder, unaware of your eyes on him and focused enough that his tongue sticks out against his lower lip in concentration. there's something unusually calming about watching him work like this, like the world is simple under the hood of a truck.
"... authorities are still searching for the suspect responsible for the shooting of a man in central chicago last week.
your fingers curl at the edge of the counter? your eyes darting towards the small red radio in the corner of the room. you lean over and turn the volume knob until you can hear the words clearly over the microwave.
"witnesses describe her as..."
your blood runs cold.
the description never seems to end. your hair colour and texture, your eye colour, your skin colour, your height, your build, your type of clothing. everything is listed. it feels like everything about you is being peeled open and dissected live on air for millions to hear.
"... authorities urge anyone with information on the whereabouts of this individual to come forward..."
you turn to the back room door.
you're not sure if trevor can even hear the broadcast, but you hope that he set the timer for longer than a minute. the microwave whirs loudly behind the door, drowning out the radio, and you go silent as if the broadcaster could hear you if you spoke, like any sound you make would make them aware of where you are.
and then it ends. just like that, the radio clicks, replaced by cherry country music that spills back into the room as if nothing had ever happened. you don't realise how tight you'd been holding the counter until you hwar the beep of the microwave from behind the door, and trevor pushes it open with his foot soon after, the steaming container in his hands.
you swallow your fear as trevor slides the leftovers across the counter towards you, forcing your hands to uncurl from around the table.
"it's hot—" he starts, but your hands wrap around the container anyways and you pull it from him.
you turn and shoulder the door open with little care.
"not like i wanted a thank you or anythin'." trevor shouts behind you as you practically shut the door on his face.
the heat seeps through the container and into your palms as you cross the lot towards bucky. he straightens when he sees you, lips already curling into a smile and his mouth parting like he's about to say something.
"what were you doin' in th—"
you lean down and place the leftovers on the top of his toolbox, catching his wrist and pulling him to the side of the truck all without missing a single step. the shade from the truck's body swallows you both, and you almost bucky's quick to steady you, brows knitting as his free hand comes up almost instinctively to hold you by the upper arm.
his brows furrow at the worry in your face. "woah, what's goin' on?"
"we have to go. we have to leave today or tonight, okay? like right now." you rush out in a singular breath. it almost feels like everything from chicago had come back to bite you in the ass.
"hey— slow down." he says, another arms reaching out to hold you steady by your shoulders. he lowers his head slightly, looking at you through his eye lashes. "what happened, sweetheart?"
your lip quivers, and bucky reaches up to cup your face in one of his hands. his thumb presses firmly into the skin on your cheekbone, and the touch is reassuring enough for you to speak.
"in the office, they were talking about what happened— what i did. they started listing all these things about me. my hair, my eyes, my— just everything."
something ticks in bucky's jaw. he glances past you towards the office for half a second, his expression almost unreadable. his shoulders square like he's bracing himself for a hit he'd been expected but still hated taking.
the hand that cups your cheek falls back to your shoulder. "did they say anythin' about a location?" bucky asks, eyes boring into yours.
you shake your head. "no. it just said that there's a suspect, said my full name, and described exactly how i look." "
"and did he hear anythin'?" he asks again.
"no, he was—" you shake your head, glancing over your shoulder towards the office where you can see the top of trevor's head. "he was in the back room with the door closed and the microwave was way too loud."
bucky exhales long and slow, like he's trying to come up with both a plan and a promise at the same time. it doesnt help that you're watching him like he's the only thing keeping you afloat.
his hands fall from your shoulders and rest on his hips.
"alright," he says at last. "we're okay for now."
your chest tightens. "but bucky—"
"hey." his voice softens, his eyes the calm of the storm in the hurricane of emotions you feel. "if they knew where you were, they wouldn't be broadcastin' it all over the radio. this place'd be locked down and you wouldn't be talkin' to me right now. we're fine."
you nod, hesitant, but you're sure he means it.
"and even if they were here, i wouldn't go done without a fight." he adds, trying to cheer you up. "i've had my fair share of encounters with the law."
the mental image is ridiculous enough to shake a bit of the nerves out of you. you let out a soft scoff, eyes rolling just slightly as some of the tension actually manages to bleed away.
"i'm serious, princess." bucky defends himself, brows raised in complete seriousness even though you can hear the tinge of dry humour in his tone. "i fought the cops before and i'll do it again if i have to. just say the word and i'm goin' in there, fists swingin'."
"you can't fight the cops, bucky." you tell him.
"fine. maybe not, but look... how about you just—" he exhales through his nose, the humour escaping from his voice. he gestures vaguely to the toolbox you'd set the food down on. "sit down while i work, have somethin' to eat, and then we'll figure out a plan."
you nod, the last of the tension seeping out ouf you as you finally let yourself believe him. you both turn, bucky's hand falling to your back to direct you to the large toolbox, the metal still warm from the sun. you grab the food and sit down, appetite slow but present, while bucky turns back to the truck, his hands disappearing back into the engine.
you watch him while you eat. the way his shoulder flex, the occasional mutter of something irrelevant under his breath, the pause he takes every so often to think, his jaw set and his eyes focused. its ordinary— almost domestic— and somehow that normalcy steadies you a lot more than any reassurance could.
every so often, bucky glances over just to make sure you're still there with him, and you always are.
as you continue to eat, you realise you'd practically consumed the entirety of the leftovers. all that's left is a quarter of a cheeseburger and a couple of fries, and you feel a little guilty for taking what was meant to be bucky's food.
"are you going to eat anything?" you ask.
bucky pokes his head out from the hood. "no, i'm good. have what you can and i'll have whatever's left over."
you furrow your brows at the slight smile he has sitting on his face, and then it slowly dawns on you. he never really wanted the food— not for himself, anyway. he just wanted to make sure you ate.
you glance down at what's left, then back up at him. without a word, you extend the container out to him, eyebrows lifting just enough to make your point.
bucky pauses. he looks at the food, then at you.
"bossy." he mutters, but there's no real malice in it.
he reaches out and takes what remains of the cheeseburger and takes a bite out of it like he hasn't eaten all day. then another, and another, and the burger is gone in seconds.
you can't help the smile the spreads across your face.
bucky wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, gives you a quick, almost sheepish look, because he clears his throat and goes back to fixing the fuel line like nothing had happened.
you stay right there, sunlight warm on your skin, the truck humming beside you, bucky working hard, and for now, you decide this is enough.
night comes gently.
the texas heat bleeds out of the day, replaced by silence and the occasional cricket chirp, the low buzz of the motel sign outside ringing softly in your ears as you shuffle around the belongings in your duffel bag, reorganising the mess and ensuring you have everything you left with.
you have less than a day left here. in the morning, you'd have to leave. you dont know how you'll get there, but you've mustered up enough courage to ask bucky if you could hitch a ride to california. after all, you'd basically spent the past three days spilling your deepest darkest secrets to him; you aren't just going to leave him now.
you're in your room in the partial darkness, body enveloped in the shadows while the far corner of the room is covered in light from the table lamp. the curtains stir slightly in the breeze of the rattling air conditioning, and its so quiet that you can almost hear the electricity running through the walls.
you pause mid-movement, fingers brushing against something small and cold at the bottom of your bag. you reach in and pull it out.
a locket.
it's small. easy to forget. you'd ripped it off the moment you'd gotten on a bus to st louis and thrown it into your bag hoping it'd get lost and you'd never see it again.
you turn the locket over in your palm, the snapped chain curling around your fingers as you inspect the scratched piece of jewellery. it doesn't open, at least not anymore. the hinge bent inwards and snapped the last time you'd forced it closed, and you're almost grateful for your harsh treatment of the metal. you dont even try to open it. you already know what's in there: a picture of you and your boyfriend, one where you're forcing a smile and he isn't bothering to even try to look happy.
for a moment, you just stand there. the weight of it heavy against your skin in the same way it'd been heavy around your neck when you still cared for it. then you cross the room and drop it into the trash. it makes a soft, dull thud at it hits the bottom, and you barely flinch as the engraved flowers stare back up at you.
it's gone now, and although a version of you from the past wouldve mourned the cheap locket, the version of you now feels better without it weighing you down.
then comes a knock at the door. it's soft but firm, and you know who it is before you even look over your shoulder. you wipe your hands out of habit as if the locket was filth and cross the room, the lock clicking and the handle squeaking as you open the door.
bucky is standing there. he looks cleaner than he did when the two of you said goodnight a few hours ago, and truth be told, you're not sure why he's here. he's wearing a clean white shirt and a pair of jeans he probably thinks are comfortable but are covered in splashes of paint and dark spots of dried enamel. the shitty LED light that glows overhead bathes him in a glow that almost makes him look angelic, and you almost have to do a double take.
"hey." he says.
you blink. "hey."
the two of you stand there for a moment. bucky rocks on his heels with his hands in his back pockets and your fingers drum against the back of your door, both of you waiting for the other to say something.
"uh," you clear your throat. "did you... need something?"
his brows raise just slightly like you'd pulled him out of a thought, then he shakes his head once, "no, i just... wanted to check in. make sure you were okay."
something soft blooms in your chest at his words, and a part of you is glad that you shot your boyfriend. that asshole wouldnt have bothered to check on you, and he certainly wouldn't have asked if you were okay. if anything, he would've been the reason you were feeling like complete shit.
"you can—" you hesitate, door creaking open a little more as you step to the side, "you can come in. if you want. i could use the company."
"yeah." he nods. "okay."
you step back as he steps inside, his once confident footsteps falling just short of awkward as he steps into your room. you close the door behind him, the lock clicking shut, pushing the night out and sealing the two of you into the silence of your room.
bucky glances around the room, and the poor guy looks like he's never been in a woman's room before. his gaze falls on your shoes messily discarded by the door, then towards the bed and it's mess, and then it lands on your duffel bag. clothes are still thrown everywhere, and he looks like he might combust at the sight of so much... woman.
you smile softly as you walk back over to your bag, glancing over your shoulder just to glance at him. "you can sit down if you want to, bucky. you're not gonna get cooties or anything."
"...right." he mutters with another nod, and yet he hesitates anyways and decides to sit on the edge of your bed, his thigh just barely brushing against the side of your duffel bag, and he glances down at it before looking back at you. "reorganising?"
you huff out a small, tired breath as you go back to digging in your bag. "just trying to see what i brought. it all happened so fast that i forgot how fast i packed up my shit and left."
you pull out a hoodie and hold it up to the light. the logo of one of your favourite bands stares back at you, you haven't worn it in ages because your boyfriend insisted that you listen to 'girlier' bands, and you being naive and compliant, you listened. the small frown that grows on your face doesn't go unnoticed by bucky.
"you should put it on." he suggests, leaning back on the bed with his palms pressed firmly into the mattress.
you "i'm not even sure if it fits—"
"then you should see if it does. no harm in tryin'." he's quick to interrupt.
you blink at him, but he just cocks his head like he wants you to do just as he said. you hesitate, fingers tightening over the worn fabric, then you huff out a breath and tug it over your head.
its a little oversized, but it fits better than you expect it to. the sleeves fall just past your wrists and the hem brushes against your thighs, the fabric warm against your skin, finally yours again in a way it hasn't been in a long time.
you glance down at yourself, then at bucky. "happy?"
"very." he says, a grin pulling easy at his mouth as he tilts his head. he jokes, "suits you. i don't think you should ever take it off."
you roll your eyes at him, already reaching for the hem of the hoodie. "very funny, buck." you say dryly. "it's a million degrees outside. i'd die if i kept it on forever."
you grab the bottom of the hoodie, pulling it upwards to pull it off, the action slow and barely thought through. the cotton slides back over your stomach, the cool air brushing against your skin as it takes your shirt up with it for a couple of inches.
and bucky's eyes drop without meaning to— for a long, gruelling second— just long enough for him to catch the tiniest sliver of black lace peeking out of the waistband of your shorts, the fabric digging into the plush of your hips.
it's practically nothing— barely there— but it's enough.
"shit." he mutters under his breath, the word barely audible but still loud enough for you to catch it as you pull the hoodie over your head.
but just as quick as it had appeared, it vanishes as your shirt falls back down the length of your stomach. his eyes linger for a second longer before flicking back up to your face, hair messy from the hoodie.
"hmm?" you hum as you toss the hoodie somewhere on the bag, brow raised just slightly as you ask him about what he said. "did you say something?"
bucky blinks before he quickly shakes his head, tongue running over his teeth as an involuntary way to distract himself. he sits back up and readjusts himself, digging his elbows into his knees to try and hide the growing tent in his pants, but the faintest amount of tension in his posture has you furrowing your brows.
"nothin' important." he mutters, but there's a tightness in the way he says it. "it was, uh... nothin'."
you brush it off. you lean back into your bag, sifting through clothes and belongings before deciding that you've had enough. you lean over and grab a shirt and shove it back into the bag, not bothering to fold it.
bucky watches you for a second, completely silent. you can feel the weight of his eyes on you as you move, and you try your best to not pay him any attention. finally, he clears his throat.
"your... boyfriend," bucky starts, the title cold and a little accusatory on his tongue, but there's something in his tone that's more careful than it is angry. "you always talk about how he wasn't good to you. talks all big, but inside, he's really just an asshole with a tiny dick."
you sigh, just shy of a laugh. "sounds just like him."
your words come out flat, but there's a crack underneath them that gives you away. you hadn't meant to sound hurt— you tried not to— but the ache sneaks through anyways.
bucky. notices. of course he does. before you can turn back to your things, he reaches out and catches your wrist, his fingers closely gently around your skin, stopping you mid-motion.
"sit." he tells you.
and pathetically enough, you do exactly as he asks. his demands dont fall onto you in the same way your boyfriends did. bucky's are softer and rooted in certainty rather than control, and you're not sure if you could ever disobey him.
you sit on the edge of the bed beside him, your hand settling in your lap while bucky holds the other. your heart thuds against your ribs as your eyes flick between his, never quite brave enough to stay there for long enough. you exhale a small breath, eyes trailing down the curve of his throat, tracing over the bump of his adams apple, and settling on the hollow at the base of his neck where you can see the soft thump of his pulse beating underneath his skin.
bucky swallows when he notices. his thumb just barely shifts against your knuckles, like he's trying to ground himself more than you are.
but god, he smells so good. it's unfair how something so subtle can make your thoughts slow and your pulse speed up. you don't want to think about it, you just want more of it. you almost want to slip his shirt off of him and wear it so the scent lingers even when he moves away.
you want to sit a little closer. you want the bed to be smaller. you want any excuse just for him to touch you more, for him to stop holding onto your hand and touch you in all of the places you'd imagined him touching the night before.
bucky's head dips, eyes focused on where his hand begins to trail down to your fingers, the rough skin on his hands ghosting over your soft knuckles like he's memorising every single joint and every swirl embedded in your skin.
"did he ever pay attention to the little things?" he asks quietly. his thumb brushes gently over your ring finger, pressing into the skin where an expensive ring would sit if he had his way. "like how pretty your hands are. how careful you are with them."
your breath hitches as his hand trails back up your arm, the tips of his fingers climbing up until they're pressed firmly on the skin just under your shirt sleeve, warm and intrusive in all of the right ways.
"or how when you're nervous, there's a little hitch in your breath like you forget how to breathe." his thumb shifts, feeling it happen again as he presses into the plump skin. his eyes lift to yours then, searching your face for something you'd never say out loud. "he ever notice that?"
you whisper, "bucky, what are you talking about—"
"your boyfriend never... took care of you, did he?" the question is innocent, but there's something deeper hidden in the words. this isn't idle curiosity, this is something that wants to claim.
"what do you—" you swallow, your mouth suddenly thick with saliva that makes the words stick half out. "what do you mean?"
bucky doesn't answer immediately. his eyes drop back to where his hand is held against your arm, his other hand sliding slowly up the side of your thigh until he has a firm grip on you. his thumb traces tiny circles into the skin, and he can feel the slight quiver you try to hide so hard.
"never made you feel good? never made you cum?" he murmurs, lips parting just enough for his tongue to dart out and wet his lips. then a small smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth. "you probably got off better last night than he ever did for all those years."
and just as head observed, your breath hitches ahain, catching in your throat at his words. god, you thought you were quiet. fuck this stupid motel and fuck its stupid thin walls and fuck bucky. fuck him and his stupid deep voice and his stupidly big hands that make you shiver under his touch.
you blink. "you... heard that?"
he shifts in his spot, moving further onto the bed so he can face you completely. his hand moves from your arm and slides up the side of your neck. his hand cups your jaw, thumb digging into the dip of the bone as he tilts your head, eyes glazing over the soft skin and imagining how pretty it'd looked all bitten and bruised.
"the walls are thin. i heard everything, sweetheart." bucky admits, his voice so low and his lips so close to yours that arousal starts pooling low in your stomach. "your breathing when you touched yourself through your panties... that gasp when you finally dipped your fingers into your needy pussy. could practically hear every time you pumped yourself full of those pretty fingers."
the hand that rests on your thigh slides a little higher, just enough that his thumb digs into your inner thigh, dangerously close to where you need him the most.
"bucky." you almost whimper.
"heard you say my name too, just like that. almost burst through the door right then and there." he continues, his voice low and even, but you watch as his brows knit together softly as his thumb digs into your inner thigh. "but no. had to settle for my hand instead and imagine it was yours."
you lean into his hand, the warmth and the roughness of his skin something you'd been craving for far too long.
"tell me." he whispers, close enough that you can feel his breath against your lips. "tell me you want me to stop and i will."
you shake your head. "i don't want you to stop—"
and he doesnt wait any longer. bucky leans in fast, almost crashing into you as he pushes you back onto the bed. his lips find yours, demanding and insistent, and your chest tightens as soon as you meet him halfway, caught off guard with how much heat he's radiating. there's no teasing or testing, just the urgency of him needing to close the space between the two of you.
his tongue parts your lips in a quick and desperate action, pressing against yours like all he wants to do is taste you.
his knee slips up until it presses against your clothed cunt, the denim of his jeans rubbing against the soft cotton of your shorts. you pant into his mouth and he swallows them with ease, pressing his leg harder against you as you press down onto him.
the hand that rests on your throat trails down until he has a firm grip around your neck, pressing gently into the skin. his other hand digs into your hip, dragging your hips against his thigh until you leave a spot of your own arousal on the fabric of your shorts. you grind down on his knee, trying to find friction where you need it the most. your hands rest on his sides, and you barely have time to break away for a breath before he's swallowing your words.
"buck." you manage to whine.
a low groan leaves his mouth, his hands leaving your hips despite the small hesitant 'no' that leaves your lips.
"i like when you call me that." he murmurs before his lips are back on yours, his voice thick with something heavy and almost inhumane— a need to be close, a need to be in you.
his hands trail away from your hip, rough fingertips dipping inside of your shirt and dragging along the soft skin of your stomach, reaching higher and higher until he hits the band of your bra. you reach down and pull the hem of your shirt up until it bunches just below your neck, putting your bra on full display for him.
bucky pulls away from the kiss, his lips all bitten and coated in saliva. almost impatiently, he slides a hand under your back and lifts you up, hand fumbling with the clasp of your bra before it clicks open with a satisfying pop. they spill out as bucky pulls the confining fabric away.
"fuck." he groans, "such pretty tits."
his head dips down before he can even really think, dragging his tongue across the flesh of your breast, lapping up any of the salty sweat that'd gathered in the valley of your chest, his other hand massaging what he can't abuse with his mouth. and when he takes one of your nipples into his mouth, the sound wet and loud in the quiet of your room, you arch into his touch. your hips rut against the air trying to find friction— any friction— but he moves his leg the moment he feels you press against him.
"no, please—"
he detaches from your nipple with a wet pop, a string of saliva connecting his lips to the bruised skin. he pushes himself up onto his knees and eagerly tugs his shirt off, throwing it onto the ground beside the bed. he glows in the dim light, catching the dips of his shoulders and his chest, highlighting all the soft scars and burns from his work, and all of the muscle that he'd gained over the years of hard work. it's nothing you haven't seen before, but you're not complaining either.
he tugs at the waistband of your shorts, sliding them off, and you lift your hips to give him easier access. he slides them down the length of your legs and off of the tip of your toes before he discards them just as he did with his shirt, and the site that greets him steals his breath.
you're wearing possibly the laciest panties he's ever seen. there's almost no opaque fabric, thin lace barely covering anything. its more of a thong than actual underwear. his thumb runs along the edge of your panties, tracing the lace like it's a physical manifestation of everything you need and want.
"did you wear these for me?" he asks.
he sounds so sweet— so sure— that he's the reason you're wearing them, and if you entire body wasn't already warm with desire, you're sure it was burning from embarrassment.
"no, they were—" you swallow, almost embarrassed as the truth slips out of your mouth. "they were my only clean pair."
he hums softly, a small smile playing at his face as he lets out the smallest amused huff. "cute."
you smile, and he leans down to press a warm kiss to your lips. you chase his mouth when he pulls away, but let out a soft gasp when he presses a kiss to your cheek, then another onto your jaw. he presses one onto your neck, kisses your collarbone, and continues downwards until his lips find the delicate lining of your panties.
he hooks a hand under your knee and gingerly places it into his shoulder, his hands wrapping around your waist so he can pull you closer to his face. you hold your breath, waiting for what you think is going to happen to happen. your boyfriend could never get this part right.
and then he does it. bucky presses a chaste kiss to the fabric of your panties, lips pressing into the fabric with a delicious pressure. his tongue darts out of his mouth as he licks a long, slow strip across your clothed pussy, soaking what little fabric there is covering you with his saliva and your slick.
you bite down on your hand and he groans at the taste, eyes flicking from your face to the soaked fabric. he reaches forwards, hooking a finger around it and tugging it to the side, and you instinctively clench at the knowledge that you're practically laid out for him and on full display. he's so close that you can feel his breath fanning over your cunt, and you don't think you'd trade this feeling for anything in the world.
he leans in and presses a kiss to your inner thigh before he licks a slow wet stripe from the bottom of your leaking pussy right to your clit.
you let out a moan, biting down on your finger until it burns, but he reaches up and pulls your hand from your mouth. he interlocks his fingers with yours and places your hands firmly against your hips.
"don't be shy, baby." he murmurs into your cunt, not bothering to come up to make sure you can hear it. "wanna hear every noise you make."
he leans in again and laps at what he can, his nose nudging against your swollen clit every time he tries to stick his tongue further into you. you're not sure if you're the one grinding down on his face or if he's doing it himself, but his tongue pokes through your entrance and you find yourself hooking your other leg over his shoulder and holding him there, and bucky gladly accepts his fate.
his tongue plunges in and out of you, pulling away ever so often to suck on the soft skin of your folds. the ball of heat in your stomach in your stomach is so close to snapping and bucky can tell. he lets go of your hand and slides two thick fingers inside of you, pushing until he brushes up against the spongy spot that makes you curl into his touch, and you can't help but slide your fingers through his hair and tugging at the salt and pepper strands.
he continues the rhythm until your legs are clamping around his head and he tastes the sweetness that leaks from your heat.
"fuck—" you cry, your brain fuzzy and your body hot with arousal, "bucky, i'm gonna—"
but just as you're about to spill all over his face, he pulls away. you gasp, your legs instinctively try to tighten around his head to pull him closer, but bucky's stronger. he pries your legs open like it comes naturally to him and rises until he's on his knees.
and then he reaches for his belt buckle. the noise is startling, but it also brings a flurry of butterflies through you. the band of his underwear peeks from his jeans and you can't help but stare up at him as he pulls his belt from his jeans. his eyes bore into yours as he undoes his jeans and slides them down like he knows he's torturing you.
bucky's thumbs slide under the waistband of his underwear and he slides them down, his cock springing out and hits his stomach, the head all flushed and leaking and begging to stretch you open.
his eagerness is barely hidden in the way his hands are back on you, calloused palms running up your sides and cupping your breasts. the blunt tip of his cock presses against your entrance, sliding past your folds and resting there as he leans down for another messy kiss, but you stop him.
"wait, bucky—" you whisper against his lips, hands flat against his chest. you push him away with little resistance. you can feel his breath against your face, and the worry on his face sends a pang of guilt through you.
"am i hurtin' you?" he murmurs with furrowed brows.
youre quick to shake your head. "no, i'm okay, i just... you still don't know my name. you still don't know my name and we're about to—"
bucky's hand slides up from your breast and cups your cheek, his thumb running against your bottom lip. "you don't have to tell me it if you don't want to, princess."
your head shakes the slightest bit, "but if we're gonna do this, i want to tell you."
so you do. your name falls from your lips like a secret you're whispering to him in the dark, and bucky repeats it back to you with such reverence that you've never experienced before, and you find that you never want him to stop saying it.
you lean forwards and kiss him. the kiss is slower than the others you'd shared, and bucky groans into your mouth as he finally pushes into you. the stretch burns, but your hips push against him despite the pain because he feels just like safety.
his cock drags against your soft walls, every second feeling like pure heaven. every sound that slips from your lips is swallowed by bucky and echoed back into your mouth, a chorus of moans and heavy breathes that never seems to end.
he bottoms out with a low groan before he grinds against you like he can't get enough of how you feel, but before you can beg for him to start moving, he pulls out and rams back into you. a yelp jumps out of you, but you try to hold it back.
"be loud, sweetheart. i wanna hear those pretty moans."
"trevor's still— fuck— trevor's still here."
a breathy scoff spills from bucky's mouth, and the shit eating grin that he wears on his face tells you he couldn't care less. "let him hear. the only time that lowlife's gonna get any action is when he hears how good i fuck you."
then bucky's thrusts get harder and sloppier. his chest presses against yours with a welcomed weight, dragging out all of the pathetic bodies you'd been trying to hold back, and your nails dig into the rough skin of his back to try and make them stop. you're embarrassed. your eyes fall shut in a daze, but a growl stops you.
"no, look at me." bucky huffs out, hands coming to grab you by the jaw and redirect your eyes. his thumb digs into your cheek. "look at me, princess. want you to see who's fuckin' you better than that pathetic boyfriend of yours ever could."
and god, you can't do anything but obey. you practically fall limp in his arms as he looks into your eyes and fucks you, every thrust bringing you closer and closer to where bucky wants you. he's brushing against your walls and pressing into spots that you didn't know where there and dragging noises out of you that you didn't know you could make. your name falls from bucky's mouth like he's a sinner begging for forgiveness, like he's been promised that your name is all he needs to be pure again.
all you feel is warm. bucky's skin as your nails carve your presence into his back, your insides as he fucks you better than your stupid boyfriend ever could, your heart as you pull yourself closer to him with every bit of your being— everything is so perfect.
the noise the fills the dingy motel room is wet and filthy, the stickiness between you building, and with a few final thrusts, you cum with a loud moan, and bucky follows soon after, his head tucked into your neck as he fucks his seed into you with a groan.
you're trembling, every small movement wringing out the aftershocks of your orgasm. bucky pulls his head out of your neck and places a chaste kiss to the soft skin below your ear.
"took me so good, baby. just perfect for me," he murmurs.
bucky pulls out of you with a soft breath. his thumb swipes at the liquid that leaks from your weeping cunt before he brings it to his mouth without a second thought, his lips closing around the digit with a soft hum. his thumb pops out of his mouth and he lays beside you, quick to make sure you're tucked into his side, your body pressed against his perfectly like you'd both been shaped from the same mould. your head falls to his chest, a soft tired sigh escaping you.
a while passes. there's no noise coming from the outside world anymore— no cars or trucks, no planes overheard, no game show playing on full volume coming from trevor's office. you're not sure how long it's been quite for, but you know for a fact that the only thing that could've been heard for miles was your moans.
the bedside table lamp buzzes. bucky's heart beats steadily in his chest. there's the faint call of a coyote, and then another, and then silence. it's the kind of quiet that only happens when you're sure everything will be already.
but of course, nothing stays perfect forever. doubt creeps into your mind like a parasite and feasts on the security you feel. bucky is a stranger and you are just another girl. who's to say he won't just abandon you at this motel and leave you for another sketchy trucker to pick up?
"bucky?" you whisper into the silence, unsure if he's awake or if he's simply staring off into space just as you are. your fingers run through the wispy hair on his chest as you try to anchor yourself, but the wave in your tone gives you away.
"hmm?" he hums, his head tilting just slightly towards you.
"can i ask you something?"
"of course, sweetheart."
"this is probably too much to ask, and you can say no if you want." you hesitate. "but can i come with you? to california, at least. and you don't have to say yes, because i know it's sort of your thing to travel alone and everything, but—"
"i was just inside of you, sweetheart. i don't do that with just anybody. thought it was already a given that i'd be takin' you."
you shrug. "you might've changed your mind."
there's a soft silence until bucky shifts. his hand slides up the back of your next and his fingers glide through your hair. you prop your chin up until you're looking straight at him, eyes flicking between his as you await his answer.
"i'd take you around the world if you asked me to." he says.
your breath falls short, replaced by a smile that makes its way onto your face before you can stop it. "thank you, bucky."
"'course." bucky meets you with a similar smile. "now get some sleep. we've got a long drive ahead of us."
morning arrives faster than you'd like. the truck is packed, your duffel bag sitting snugly on the floor of the passenger seat, and the engine rumbles steadily outside in the texan sun. the familiar sputtering and mechanical sounds that had plagued it for days before was finally gone, and you couldn't wait to get the fuck out of this place.
"checking out." you announce as you place both yours and bucky's room keys onto the counter. the metal clatters against the counter, echoing in the silence of the office.
trevor looks up from the magazine in his lap and stops chewing on his piece of strawberry gum, eyebrows lifting from the keys to you, then towards bucky, who stands behind you with his arms crossed.
"hm." trevor sniffs. he eyes the two of you like you'd dropped a suspicious package right in front of him before he puts his magazine down and stands up. "didn't think you'd get your truck fixed. thought you two were never gonna leave."
"tempting." bucky replies dryly.
"right. you're all set. safe travels, sir." trevor grabs the keys from the counter and holds them in his hands for a second before he nods towards you. "you too, sugar."
the word spills from his mouth like he knows it'll be the last time he can piss you off before you disappear into the desert like all of the other visitors. you want to walk away— it's the responsible thing to do— but you're already on the run, so what's the harm?
you pull your fist back and slam it directly into trevor's face. a loud crack fills the office as he yells, his hands flying to his fac to figure out what damage you'd done. red seeps through his bony fingers and curses spill from his mouth, the man too preoccupied with his broken nose to notice that you and bucky are already leaving.
the last thing you hear is "you fuckin' bitch! you'll pay for—" before the office door shuts. his yelling is drowned out by the glass, and even if you could understand what he was yelling, you really couldn't care less.
bucky steps forwards with a smug smile. he reaches up and opens the truck door for you, a hand extended. "you feel better?"
"a little." you sigh, your hand in his as he helps you climb up the steps and hop into the passenger seat. "would've been better if i knocked out a few of his teeth."
"i could go back in there and bring back a few of 'em." bucky suggests with a grin, though you're not entirely convinced he's joking.
you shake your head, "nah, he can keep them. i'm sure i'm not the first person to hit him and i definitely won't be the last. they'll need something to aim for."
bucky sucks in a sharp breath with a playful shake of his head. "i think spending time with lil old me turned you into a monster."
you roll your eyes. "i shot my boyfriend, fled my homestate, and ran from the cops, bucky. i was a monster before you even pulled into this parking lot."
he hums, "touché."
the passenger door shuts behind you. bucky circles the truck and hops into his seat. the truck rolls forward, tires squealing as the vehicle veers into the road and takes off, and for the first time in a while, you finally know where you're going. your final destination? california.
ᯓ SUMMARY│older man at the local bar catches your attention. you lose your sanity trying to get his attention.
ᯓ WARNINGS│age gap, reader is a loser, crack, fluff, smut, reader's first time (she's shy pls be patient), unprotected sex, fingering, p in v, slight choking, praise and size kink, lots of petnames, dirty talk, aftercare│word count: 4k
you sit alone in the local bar late at night. having lived nearby for years, you've come to know this place well; it has become one of your regular hangout spots. lifting your eyes from a stack of homework, you take in the room around you. cigarette smoke hangs heavily in the air, blurring the dim lights overhead. conversations slur together beneath the scent of alcohol.
for a moment, you wonder what keeps bringing you back. suddenly, your attention drifts toward a man sitting alone in one of the darker corners of the bar, a half-finished beer resting in front of him. something about him immediately stands out. a few fresh cuts mark his face. he wears a black hoodie with the hood pulled low, casting shadows across his features. he looks much older than you.
you find yourself studying him longer than you intended. his expression remains unreadable, his eyes fixed on nothing in particular. then his gaze shifts straight toward you. for a brief second, neither of you look away. the noise of the bar seems to fade into the background as those cold, intense eyes lock onto yours.
heat rushes to your face. great, now he probably thinks you're some weird creep. you curse yourself for staring so much. you lower your head and pretend to focus on your book, but you're not reading a single word. even with your eyes on the page, you can still feel him glaring. you try to distract yourself, finishing up your beer and focusing on your book.
few minutes later you look up to check if he's still watching. fuck, he's staring. he seems trouble. it makes you uneasy.
it's getting late, and the longer you stay, the more uncomfortable you feel. deciding you've had enough for tonight, you quickly pack your things into your bag - your book, notebook, pens, and markers. eager to get out of there, you barely look at the table before leaving. because of that, you don't notice the hair tie sitting near the edge of the desk.
"good night, jenny!" you tell the bartender that you adore and head out to go home. thank god, you exhale loudly as you feel the cold air hit your face.
"hey!"
fuck. your heart races when you hear the unfamiliar, deep voice behind calling for you. you feel like you're in trouble and start making plans how to escape. no, It's okay. you calm yourself and turn around to see the man you were staring at earlier. he's holding... your hair tie?
"oh!"
"you forgot bout' this, sweetheart" he holds out his hand. it takes a few seconds to process his words. the petname threw you off, as well as his rough voice. so you stood there awkwardly while he was waiting for you to take your tie.
"thank you." you finally breathe out, your voice coming out quieter than you intended. your fingers brush against his much bigger hands, you take a peek to down at them. you continue inspecting. they're huge, and calloused and a little bloody. some cuts here and there. interesting, you think.
"no problem, baby" another petname? he turns around to return to the bar. you feel warm. very warm. even though it's very chilly outside. your heart is beating so fast you can hear it ringing in your ears. damn you're pretty desperate, you blame yourself. curiosity getting the best of you, you step towards him.
"hey, um" what are you doing? what are you planning to say exactly?
the man turns around, looking you up and down suspiciously. silence. very awkward one. you don't know what to say but you know you want to say something. something to make him stay. he probably has wife and kids, you think to yourself.
"can you maybe walk me home, I-" you stumble over your words. wow, just dig your own grave at this point. some kind of evil spirit has to taken over your mind to offer something stupid like that. asking a stranger - a scary, old man, to be specific, to walk you home? home out of all the places? he's gonna know where you live? fuck me. you exhale a shaky breath.
"it's dark and late and I- don't really feel safe." you finish your sentence. hands shaking and fidgeting, face probably red as hell, standing there looking stupid. the man looks taken back, he looks like he was expecting anything other than that. he probably thought you were crazy. who wouldn't.
"you sure?" he puts his big dreamy hands up like he's defending himself and tilts his head to the side. "you wan' me to walk you home?" he seems really confused. eyebrows furrowed together. looking very skeptical of you.
"if you don't mind..." you rub your cold hand on your neck to chill out. swallowing hard and biting your lower lip in anticipation. It's probably your last day on earth. you want the ground to swallow you whole. there's no going back. nothing that can get you out of this situation you created.
"yeah- uh, sure" the man walks towards you. "you live close?" he asks. you nod and smile awkwardly at him. "lead the way" he starts walking next to you. you thank him and introduce yourself properly.
"I'm frank, nice to meet'cha you, too"
the walk home is quieter than you imagined. first of all, you're too nervous to talk. even if you do, you'll probably stutter and embarrass yourself harder. second of all, what do you even talk about, his favorite color? frank's quiet too. and tense. his favorite color is probably black, though...
"we're here" you exclaim, scanning over his features once again, like it's your last time seeing him. he has a strong jawline you want to kiss, big nose to sit on, pretty eyes to stare at while you ride him. you're getting distracted. "thank you so much, frank, I-"
"ts' okay, kid, need anythin' else?"
yeah, you in my bed, you think, but your answer comes out different. "no, but I appreciate it- thank you again," you smile and try to not look too disappointed that he's leaving and you'll never see him again. he wishes you a good night and turns around to leave. fuck. you stare at his broad back, hoping he'll turn around and kiss you or something, yeah sure. you take out keys out of your bag and open the door.
"hey, sweetheart?" the angels must have heard you. you look up at him so fast and try your hardest to hold back your smile. "mind invitin' me for a coffee? been a long day." jackpot.
"oh my god, yes of course, come in!" you don't want to sound too excited but the plan fails miserably. you open the door for him and finally, he's here. you'll believe in god after tonight. "what kind of coffee do you like?" you ask from the kitchen.
"just black" of course, you smile once you know he can't see you. you let the coffee machine pour his coffee, while you quickly check yourself in the bathroom mirror, you know, just in case something happens you look alright. you do. you go back and bring frank his drink.
"thank you, darlin'" does he run out of petnames? you don't mind, keep em' coming. you smile and sit in front of him on the couch, the coffee table separating you. suddenly you feel tension growing in the room. you have a stranger in your house, you remind yourself.
"place looks good, coffee's good, too" he mentions. you thank him and look down at your coffee. you really don't want to drink it right now. sudden anxiety washing over you. what if he's not a good guy? you ask yourself. frank notices your mood shift. he stands up to sit next to you. the couch dips and your ears start ringing, heart pounding. uh oh.
"you okay?" oh god, he's incredibly close. your thigh is touching his, you feel his hoodie on your arm. you want to see how close his face is.
"I'm okay" you whisper when you look at him. your voice coming out breathy and shaken, staring deeply in his eyes. frank looks down at your lips for a split second, then he looks at your eyes again.
"you don't look okay, sweetheart." he brings his hand to your jaw, brushing his thumb on your cheek. okay, that's just not fair. you feel the tension growing. you look down at his lips instinctively. fuck, you wanna kiss him so bad.
"are you singe?" you blurt out randomly. the question sounds out of pocket for a setting like this. frank seems taken back again, confused. "I just- don't wanna be a homewrecker or something like that" you look away from embarrassment. his hand is still on your face. that makes him chuckle.
"I'm single, baby, don' gotta worry abt' nothin'" fuuuuuck his voice and smile. your head is spiraling. you feel dizzy - it's probably because of those two bottles of beer you drank back at the bar, or is that just an excuse for how hot and bothered frank is making you right now. you exhale after hearing his answer. your eyes return on him. he's still too close, scanning your features.
you feel drunk, you're not even drunk. you decide to push your luck and lean in closer. frank brings both of his hands to cup your face. he hesitates before slowly bringing his lips to yours. the kiss feels so soft and delicate. not what you expected from a man like him. you feel him holding back on you.
fuck it. you deepen the kiss, grabbing at his biceps to hold yourself. he tilts your head to get a better access at your mouth. one of his hand goes down to hold your waist. his cold hand going under your shirt to feel your skin. you feel goosebumps at the touch. frank wraps the same hand around you to push you closer to him. your body flushing against his chest.
you feel the adrenaline spread throughout your body. frank moves his hand down to grab the beck of your thigh. you take this as a chance and climb on top of him, your legs spreading on his sides. his hips jerk at the contact. you feel him between your legs and fuck, how it makes you lose control. you're falling apart on top of him.
"you sure you wanna do this, baby?" frank breaks the kiss. you've never said yes so fast in your life. he scans your face, your lips puffy, cheeks red, hair messy, he thinks you look so gorgeous like this. "look at you, pretty girl" he tucks hair behind your ear and softly slides his knuckles at the side of your face, smiling. he brings your lips back to his, more desperate and hungry this time.
you're getting hot and needy every passing second, arms wrapping around his neck, one hand grabbing his hair. you decide to test your luck and roll your hips on his bulge and fuck, it feels so good you let out a whimper.
"easy" frank groans and stops you with a hand on your waist. "you wanna lead me to your bedroom, sweetheart?" his voice is low and deep, vibrating against your lips. you let out a breathy 'yes' and tell him where to take you.
frank picks you up with no struggle, it makes you shy and you hide your face in the crook of his neck. he plants a few kisses on your throat and places you down on the bed softly, getting on top of you. he's hovering over you with eyes filled with lust and wanting. he brings his palm back on your jaw and looks at you intensely. you look so breathtaking under the moonlight coming from the window.
frank can't hold himself anymore, he feels like losing control, but he doesn't want to scare you off. meanwhile, you grow impatient and push him down for a kiss. "slow down, sweetheart," he smiles into it.
"tell me what you want, baby" he whispers. you really don't want to answer that with words, you're probably going to say something stupid. but you push through it because you want him.
"I want you inside me, frank"
frank's grip on your waist tightens. he starts slowly placing kisses down your throat. then his lips move to the back of your ear. "I'm no good for you, baby" he whispers, leaving trails of wet kisses under your jaw. "you sure you wan' me?"
you look up at the ceiling with your mouth open from the pleasure. you feel the heat growing, wanting more. your nails are digging on his back, pushing him closer.
"yes" you moan out and it brings him to the edge. frank starts to undress you, leaving you bare with a bra and an underwear. he takes a good look at you up and down before he takes his clothes off.
you look away for a second, feeling shy underneath his gaze but he notices and holds your face with one hand. "don' go all shy on me, baby, ts' okay" he kisses your cheek and forehead and gets back to work. wet kisses going lower your body. frank takes your bra off with one swift move and kisses your hardened nipples, palming your boobs and squeezing them. he gets distracted staring for a bit too long and it makes you a little embarrassed, making you cover your face with your hands.
frank lets out a breathy chuckle at your act and pins both of your hands up your head. "don' hide from'me, sweetheart, lemme know if you wan' stop, alright?" you nod and he praises, "good girl" he kisses your forehead and moves one of his hands down to palm your pussy.
you whimper at the contact. his hand slides down your panties and his fingers start exploring you. frank gathers your slick and starts circling your clit. a soft moan escapes your mouth, you want to grab something, preferably his bicep to squeeze but his hand's still pinning you down.
"attagirl, tell me if sum ain't right, okay baby?" fuck, the way he's talking to you. you feel one of his fingers slide in and your head falls back, mouth open and eyes shut. he slides a second finger immediately after. the stretch feels so unbelievably good.
frank starts to set a rhythm with his fingers, pushing in and out of you slowly but hard while his thumb is pressing down your clit, messily moving around it. you're getting louder every passing second, pleasure overtaking your body and mind. you feel him sucking on your throat just beneath your jaw and ear and fuck how it adds to the sensation.
"frank, I think I'm getting closer" you barely manage to whisper, voice too shaky and broken. you have no other choice but to start digging your nails harshly in frank's wrist that's holding you down.
"you're doin' so good, baby, don' hold back, yeah?" he comes up to give you a deep, desperate kiss, his tongue exploring your mouth, biting your lower lip. you moan into him, your walls pulsing on his fingers. frank grunts into your neck at the feeling.
you feel the wave of orgasm crashing through you. your brain short-circuits at the sensations you've never felt before. "fuuuck, frank! " you scream out at the pleasure, you feel your legs shaking, nails digging through frank's skin but he doesn't stop yet. getting you through it until you start chanting his name over and over again from the overstimulation.
"good girl, baby" he finally lets go of your hands and kisses your cheek.
"you really didn't have to pin me down the whole time" you say after you're done breathing for your life.
"oh yeah?" his chuckle sounds rough but sweet. "you already tellin' me what to do, woman?" he jokes, and brings a pillow underneath you to make you comfortable.
"I jus wanted to touch your arms" you admit smiling, face probably red as a tomato.
frank takes a good look at your face while you're smiling. you see him softening up on you in real time, his eyes filled with love even though he just met you today. it makes your heart ache, this moment with him feels so raw and real.
for a few seconds, neither of you say anything. frank just keeps looking at you, like he's trying to memorize every little detail before it slips away. the smile on your face starts to feel impossible to hold, too big and too genuine. when he finally smiles back, it's small but sincere, the kind that reaches his eyes. something shifts between you then, quiet and unspoken, and suddenly the space separating the two of you doesn't feel quite so wide anymore.
you feel different kind of yearning this time. you want more, this isn't enough. you hold his face in your hands and bring him down for a messy kiss. you're trying to dominate but he doesn't let you. the kiss deepened in an instant, shifting from hesitant to something far more desperate, like neither of you can bear to pull away.
your hand slowly goes down to take his pants off, opening up his belt when he stops you midway through. "careful" he warns and pins your hands down again.
"need you, frank" you try to fight off his hands but he's too strong and your arms feel like liquid right now.
"need you more sweetheart, I jus' wanna make sure you really wan' this, yeah?" he whispers in your ear, voice low and dangerous. frank bites neck out of frustration. "been holdin' back too much, doll, didn't wanna hurt you."
"I know you're not gonna hurt me, honey, I trust you" finally your turn to use the petname. frank's heart melts when he hears the words coming out of your sweet mouth. you trust him.
he kisses you once again and kicks off his pants with his leg. you look down at his dick for a split second. it's not what you expect. he's big. really big. you swallow hard and exhale loudly. frank notices the worry on your face and holds your face.
"you tell me when to stop, yeah princess?"
you nod.
"lemme hear you, baby"
"yes, frank"
"attagirl"
frank turns you around on your stomach, putting one of the pillows underneath you. he grabs your hips and starts gathering your wetness with his tip. you whimper out at the contact. he's holding you steady and firmly against him, slowly pushing his cock inside? inch by inch. his fingers digging harshly on your sides.
"fuck" frank's head rolls back at the pleasure. he gathers all of your hair in his hand and pushes your head back, his mouth right behind your ear. "talk t'me baby, you gotta relax a little cuz' fuck-" he stutters over his words when he feels your walls pulsing on him.
"too tight" he exhales and starts moving slowly. you're grabbing the sheets with whatever force you have left in you. the stretch feeling way different this time. it stings hard but the sensation of it feels otherworldly. your eyes roll back when you feel frank setting up the pace, ass slapping against him with the rhythm.
if the overstimulation wasn't enough, he brings a finger to your clit and starts circling it while his pace keeps picking up. pounding into you hard with every move. your limbs betray you, only thing keeping you up are frank's hands and the pillow underneath you.
"frank!" you cry out his name, feeling too overwhelmed and desperate chasing your high. frank notices your walls fluttering around him and he already knows you're close. he grabs you by your neck, softly squeezing it while he slams inside you at the new angle.
"you're gonna cum on my dick, baby? gonna be a good girl f'me?" he groans behind you, voice shaky, falling apart inside you.
"yes, frank, wanna cum on your dick, please, please, please" you moan out, completely fucked out, blabbering frank's name every second, hands digging in the sheets desperately, pussy pulsing aggressively around him. his hand goes back from your throat to your clit once again. he presses down on it and it males your whole body jerk and shake, the pleasure overtaking you. you didn't even get to process, it just happened. frank smiled behind you, feeling you orgasm around him.
"good girl, did so good f'me" he keeps going harder and faster to chase his own release now. you feel so tired and liquid but he still feels so good. you love the overstimulation you feel. "gonna cum inside you, doll, wanna fill you up" he grunts and in a few thrusts, you feel his release flowing inside you, making you feel so full and warm.
his body is slumps over you for a second, both of you breathing hard and loud before he pulls out and lays down on the bed. frank kindly turns you to your side so he can hug you to his chest. "you okay, sweetheart?" he asks as he strokes your hair and kisses your temple softly.
"just a little tired" you mumble, voice too quiet against his neck.
"lemme clean you up, princess, I'll be right back inna sec'" he gets up and goes to the bathroom, returning with a wet warm towel, softly massaging your legs with it. "all nice n' clean" he finds a new pair of underwear for you and helps you put it on alongside a loose shirt for the night. he returns to the bed and you’re already halfway gone, eyes heavy, breathing slowing in that soft way that tells him you’re close to falling asleep.
“there you go…” he murmurs, almost to himself, pulling the covers up over both of you. you shift closer without thinking, your body already knows you're safe with him. his arm slides around you, firm but gentle, holding you in place against him.
“you're perfect,” he whispers into your hair, pressing one last kiss there, lingering just a second too long. but you don’t answer. you’re already asleep.
frank stays awake a moment longer, just watching you, thumb tracing a slow, absent line over your shoulder until he stops. then he finally lets his eyes fall shut too, pulling you a little closer, and even though this is new, it sits with him like something familiar he didn’t know he was missing. he’s already sure he’ll want more of you every night after this.
[4.4K] loosely based on the movie float, lifeguard!steve, a summer full of swim lessons. mentions of drowning, eventual smut 18+
SWIM LESSON SCHEDULE
LESSON #4
Steve made Eddie leave.
Not immediately, not in any sort of cruel way; but eventually, after twenty minutes of the longer haired boy splashing around the deep end, Steve had levelled him with a look that could only be described as long suffering.
“You know,” Steve had sighed, arms crossed over his bare chest as Eddie floated on his back, his hair like seaweed on the pool surface, “some of us are trying to work here.”
Eddie grinned, entirely unashamed. Sunlight bounced off the water in fractured lines, turning the tattoos on his chest into moving pictures. “And some of us,” he countered, “are supporting our best friend through her aquatic trauma.”
“You’re cannonballing beside her every five minutes,” Steve squinted at him.
Eddie made a huffing sound, all faux offence and mockery. “It’s called exposure therapy, Harrington. Look it up.”
Steve looked to you for backup, brows raised expectantly, but you were far too used to this behaviour by now. Besides, the two boys were chest deep in the dark blue water now, Steve subconsciously floating further from you as he tried to wrangle Eddie towards the pool steps. And you found that the distance didn’t panic you as much as you once thought it would. You were still standing waist deep, happy to see your toes wiggle on the blue pool tiles.
Eventually Eddie checked the time on the cheap silver watch hanging from his wrist and cursed loudly, remembering he’d promised Gareth he’d help move some amps before band practice. He hauled himself from the pool in a shower of water, curls dripping onto the tiles as he shoved his feet back into his boots without drying them first.
“You two have fun,” he announced too loudly, pointing between you both. “No drowning. No weird sexual tension. Behave yourselves.”
“Get out,” you and Steve snapped, looking anywhere but at each other.
Eddie barked out a laugh at that, eyes too bright with vindication before he saluted lazily and disappeared through the gate, humming a song you didn’t recognise under his breath.
Quiet settled in his wake. The low hum of the pool filter continued steadily from somewhere behind you, bugs buzzed lazily in the trees beyond the fence line. Water lapped softly against your ribs where you stood in the shallows, fingers now curled over the edge of the pool in lieu of Steve’s arm. Somewhere in the distance, a lawnmower started up.
Steve exhaled through his nose and made his way over to you, careful not to splash too much. “Fuckin’ finally,” he muttered.
You snorted, a decidedly unattractive sound and you looked down at the water to hide your grin. Steve moved a little closer, shoulder brushing yours underwater. It shouldn’t have felt like such a big thing. It was barely even a touch. But fuck, your breath still snagged somewhere in your chest all the same. It felt like the water should have rippled from your body, bones rattling, heartbeat loud enough to make waves in the water.
“You okay?” he asked softly. It wasn’t exactly pity, nothing too gentle, just quiet enough to make you far too aware that Steve cared. Like he was constantly checking the weather inside your head, making sure the skies were still clear enough to continue.
You nodded quickly. “Yeah.”
Steve’s gaze caught your own, the steadily rising sun finally catching his features. Brown eyes turning gold, hair turning honey, skin turning bronze. “You sure?”
“Mhm.” You could only mumble, head nodding.
His eyes narrowed slightly like he didn’t fully believe you but he let it go after a moment, pushing himself away from the pool wall and motioning toward the middle of the shallows. “C’mon then,” he said. “Next lesson.”
You groaned immediately. “That sounds ominous.”
Steve grinned. “Nah. You’re ready.”
You wrinkled your nose, the distaste on your features more than apart t and the motion of it let you know your face was catching the sun, skin stinging. “People tend to say that before terrible experiences.”
The boy swam backwards, arms outreached, the water practically parting for him with every measured move. He grinned at you, watching you watch him. “You survived floating,” he offered helpfully.
“Barely.”
Steve barked out a laugh at that, loud and surprised, and god—it was addictive, making him laugh like that. His whole face changed when he did it. Softer and brighter, like summer had made him just for you.
“C’mon, when have I ever let you astray?” Steve held out his hands to you, water dripping from his forearms, beckoning you with his fingers in hopes you would follow him and after only the briefest hesitation, you did.
That alone felt monumental.
You sucked in a breath, resisted the urge to hold it, but you stepped forward all the same. Slow motion movements, like dragging yourself through a dream that was maybe once a nightmare, you followed Steve to the darker side of the pool. You gasped when the water hit your chest, a new cold lapping at your breasts until they were submerged too.
Your toes burned from staying up on them but still, you stayed, you didn’t panic. Steve noticed it too as he stood a foot away from you, his eyes warm, his chin dipped into the water. You could tell by the way his expression flickered into something almost proud.
“See?” he said quietly. “Already gettin’ better.”
The praise warmed you embarrassingly fast; faster than the sun, than the summer heat that was sticking to the skin that you hadn’t submerged.
“Alright,” he started, running a hand through his wet hair, “today we’re gonna work on going underwater.”
Your stomach dropped instantly, the quiet, gnawing ache turning into an open pit. Your heart fell into it, crashing between your ribs on the way down. “Oh absolutely not.”
Steve sighed like he’d expected that exact response. “C’mon.”
“No.” You didn’t have it in you to sound polite, to even attempt to make the word sound softer, more apologetic. The steps leading out of the pool looked like an ocean away. “Steve—.”
“You trust me, remember?” The boy’s words were much gentler than your own and he took a few steps towards you, hands up and laying across the surface like he’d catch you if you fell.
You felt the world tilt a little. “That was before I knew you were going to try to drown me.”
He rolled his eyes and scoffed but you knew him well enough now to see the fondness there, the lift of his mouth that almost made a smile. “You are not gonna drown from putting your face underwater for two seconds,” he told you softly.
You wanted to be home. You wanted to be on solid ground in dry clothes. You wanted to kick Eddie’s bedroom door open and demand to know why he set this stupid thing up in the first place. Instead, you swallowed the lump in your that and gave a weak laugh. “You don’t know that.”
Steve smiled then, an awfully pretty thing that made it much harder to deny him of anything. He shrugged, slipped deeper into the water. “I literally do. It’s my job,” he grinned at you.
“Look, why don’t we just—.” Steve made his way over to you, chest rising from the water and he took your hands in his own. His gaze met yours, his expression turning serious. “Hey, look at me, yeah? I’m not gonna let you go, okay? I swear to god, I’ll be here the entire time. Nothin’ bad will happen.”
Water dripped from his nose onto his lips as he watched and waited, his words tumbling over you as you tried to separate them from the irrational fear that was making your chest too tight. You thought back to lakes and dark skies and darker water. Deep and endless with fallen branches and weeds growing from the sand you couldn’t see.
Your pulse stumbled, your breath hitched. It was easy to remember the hands that pulled you out when the same ones were holding you now. You stared at the way Steve’s fingers wrapped around your own, his big palms engulfing yours. He was warm despite the cool water, an anchor in the middle of Hawkins community pool.
“Okay,” you whispered, the word getting stuck and twisted in your throat. But still, an agreement.
Steve’s brows shot up in surprise but he hid it well, replacing his shock with a smile that rivalled the sun above. “Yeah?” He murmured, double checking as his gaze travelled over your face, searching for anything that would suggest you were going to change your mind. He found none. “Atta’ girl.”
But still, your face must’ve shown your fear, because Steve tried another approach.
“How ‘bout you just listen first?” His voice was practically honey, melted butter on a open windowsill, softer than you’d ever heard. His thumbs stroked over the backs of your hands and you forgot about the water kissing at your collarbones. “You don’t even have to fully go under today, okay? We’ll just practice until your comfortable.”
You could only nod but the moment was firm and resolute so Steve took it as a good sign. But even though you knew Steve was there to help, the deep end glimmered darkly behind him, a seemingly endless blue that stretched beneath the surface and your chest tightened instinctively at the sight of it. Steve followed your gaze immediately.
“Hey.” Gentle again, achingly so. “Eyes on me.”
You looked back, blinking quickly until you felt the prick of tears that had threatened to show themselves subside.
“There you go.” His tone dropped quieter still. “That’s all you gotta think about, alright? Not the deep end. Not the lake. Just me.”
Your heart turned traitorous and you wondered if he’d hear it the way you did when you fell into the lake, if the drumbeat you’d heard in your own ears would be loud enough for Steve to hear too. Steve seemed entirely unaware of the effect he had on people sometimes. Or maybe just on you.
He moved closer again until your knees almost bumped beneath the water and the sun was suddenly too hot. You watched the muscles in his shoulders, watched the movement of them ripple and twist as he held you closer to him that you would’ve deemed necessary. But you didn’t mention it, you didn’t move away.
“First thing,” he murmured, “you gotta learn how to breathe properly.”
You scoffed, a little offended. “I know how to breathe, Harrington.”
He grinned at you, lopsided and boyish. His hands squeezed your own and he mumbled, “well, that remains to be seen.”
You glared at him halfheartedly, a weak attempt at best considering you were still stiff with fear, clutching his hands like a lifeline.
“When your face goes underwater,” he explained, ignoring your expression, “you breathe out through your nose slowly, okay? Little bubbles. If you hold your breath too hard, you panic.”
“Little bubbles,” you repeated skeptically. You stared at the surface of the water, as if daring something sinister to appear from its depths. Instead, you saw the wiggling outline of your legs and Steve’s, your feet close to his, toes almost touching. “Little bubbles. Fuck—“
“You’ll be fine, I promise,” Steve whispered. “It’s easier than you think.”
You nodded as if you agreed with him, chest rising and falling a little faster than before and you steeled yourself, hands holding Steve’s way too tightly but he didn’t complain. He only squeezed back. But still, you couldn’t bring yourself to drop any lower into the water. Frustration crackled in you, tears pricking at your eyes again but annoyance for yourself surpassed the fear and you swore, blinking harshly at the blue sky as you tried to pull yourself together.
Then Steve let go of your hands and lifted his own carefully, giving you every opportunity to pull away before he touched you. “Can I?” he asked quietly.
Hawkins seemed too quiet then, like even the cicadas had stopped their buzzing to hear your answer. The filters and generators were merely white noise as you stared at the boy and his hands that were reaching for either side of your face.
You nodded before you could overthink it.
One hand settled lightly at the back of your neck, fingers threading gently into the damp strands at the base of your skull. The other brushed your jaw, callouses rough against your skin, a gentle scratch that sent goosebumps over your forearms, across your chest, and you hoped to god that Steve didn’t notice.
“Relax your shoulders,” Steve said softly. “Good,” he praised instantly when you did, your breath coming out in a small shudder as your body went a little limp. His thumb brushed over the spot near your ear and you wondered if it was deliberate, you wondered if he knew. “Now, tilt your chin down a little.”
You obeyed automatically, a mortifying concept that you would dissect later in bed when you were alone and too warm but Steve’s eyes stayed fixed on yours the entire time, warm and honey brown and impossibly steady.
“You’re safe,” he told you quietly. “Okay?”
Something inside your chest ached at the sincerity in his voice and now more than ever, you believed him. You could only more once, heart hammering, your hands reaching to wrap around Steve’s forearms, clutching at him as he held you, as he guided you.
“Atta girl,” he said again, his voice so quiet it sounded hoarse, a little rough.
God. Fuck.
“Now,” Steve continued, “I just want you to put your mouth underwater first. Blow bubbles. That’s it.”
“That’s it,” you echoed weakly.
“Yeah, that’s it, sweetheart,” he smiled, voice dropping to an octave that was solely for you.
“And if I die?” You tried to sound serious, but maybe Steve knew you were just trying to buy some extra time. Your hands were tight around him, your fingers barely managing to meet as they held onto his wrists and his thumbs were stroking over the spots of skin they were touching, maddening circles that made everything seem a little fuzzy.
He snorted, the sound much more attractive than when you did it. “You’re so dramatic.”
“All I’m saying is, you’ll have to be the one to break the news to Eddie,” you shrugged. God, you felt like you were babbling, panic mixing with a dry humour that felt clumsy as the words tumbled from your mouth. The water was so close to your chin, your mouth, your nose. “Besides, you’ll miss me when I’m gone.”
Steve didn’t say anything about breaking the news of your demise to your best friend but he did say: “I’ll miss you as soon as this lesson is over,” he murmured lightly. “Now, c’mon. Give it a try.”
Your heart nearly stopped functioning altogether. Because what the fuck was that supposed to mean and how were you supposed to focus on your breath now? You stared at him for a second too long before finally inhaling, careful and cautious, and then you started bending your knees.
The water crept toward your chin immediately. Every instinct screamed at you to jerk back upright, the shock of the water near any part of your face a sign of something awful to come. The bottom of the pool suddenly seemed too far down.
Steve’s hand tightened slightly against your neck. Not crushing but a gentle squeeze, his thumb rubbed over the damp hair there, his eyes fixed on your own as he bent down with you, following you the entire time. “You’re okay,” he reminded you. “Slow breaths.”
You tried. Really, you did.
The second the water touched your lips panic sparked hot beneath your ribs, but Steve stayed right there, close enough that your knees brushed his underwater.
“Blow out,” he encouraged gently. “That’s it.”
You lowered your lips beneath the surface and immediately sputtered. Chlorine filled your mouth, a too clean taste that was cold and sharp ans shocking against your tongue. You couldn’t help it, you sprung back up from the water, coughing and embarrassing amount.
Steve caught you before you could stumble backwards, hands leaving your neck and jaw to grip at your waist. “Easy,” he soothed quickly. “Easy, sweetheart, you’re alright.”
He was watching you with wide eyes, as if he was worried he’d pushed you too far. But he held on, the ripples you’d made from your dramatic exit from the water circling you both. The sun was beating down hotter now, higher in the blue sky above but mortification burned through you warmer than any Indiana summer.
“I hate this,” you croaked.
“I know.” His thumbs rubbed absentminded circles against your sides before he seemed to realise what he was doing and quickly let go. He stayed near, cheeks pink and flushed looking, from the sun or his proximity to you, you weren’t sure. But his voice was achingly gentle when he told you: “But you still did it.”
“Barely.”
“Still counts.” He smiled, lopsided and soft.
You groaned dramatically, letting your forehead thunk lightly against his shoulder and you felt how he froze underneath you before his finger poked at your ribs. “You good there?”
His voice vibrated through his chest into your skin.
You wanted to die. Honestly, it seemed like the only reasonable solution to everything that had happened that morning. You wondered if today would’ve been easier if you’d taken Steve up on his offer to walk you home last night, if it would’ve been different now. If something would’ve happened. “M’gonna drown myself voluntarily now,” you mumbled into his shoulder.
Steve let out a breath of a laugh and warm hands settled carefully at your upper arms. He guided you backwards, just an inch or two, just enough so he could find your gaze with his own.
“Hey.” Sincerity threaded through every word. “You’re doing good. Seriously.”
“Really?” You asked reluctantly, brows crinkled, cheeks and neck warm. You hated how you sounded, how you felt. Weak and scared and a little bit pitiful.
But Steve nodded and grinned, thumbs tracing down your arms, leaving droplets of water in his wake. “Yeah, really. You wanna stop for today?”
You considered it, for a second, maybe five. But the surface of the pool had stilled, blue and calm and still very clear. You saw your toes, saw Steve’s. It wasn’t that deep, the logical conclusion was right in front of you. If you went under, you could stand and come straight back up.
You could.
You should.
Fuck.
You glanced at Steve, lips twisting as you thought about what to say, heart racing at the prospect. Fuckfuckfuck. “Uh, can you hold my hands again?”
Steve didn’t question you, but his brows rose all the same as he offered you both his hands. They engulfed your own, still amazingly warm despite the cool water and he waited for your next instruction.
He didn’t expect you to say: “I’m gonna just— dunk. Do it with me.” You swallowed tightly and then remembered yourself. “Please?” You added.
Steve looked too shocked to speak. He considered telling you to hold on, to wait, to maybe take some baby steps before leaping into the literal and proverbial deep end but you looked like you’d made your mind up. Determination set in your pretty features, your hands gripping his like they were your only lifeline.
So he nodded, held onto you a little tighter and moved close enough for his toes to touch yours. “Ready?” He whispered.
You nodded, too sick to speak.
“Three, two, one…”
Fuck. You bent your knees.
The water climbed your cheeks, cool against skin that was still warm from the sun. For a split second, panic flared bright and familiar, something instinctive and sharp and awful but then Steve squeezed your hands and the world disappeared.
Everything became blue.
The sounds of summer vanished. No incessant cicadas, no distant lawnmowers, no rustling leaves. The pool filter became a distant hum, softened into something that barely existed at all underneath the surface.
Your entire world was now just water and light. And Steve.
You blinked underwater, surprised that you could, wondering when the fear would spike, when absolute horror would set in, when things would turn too murky to see. But sunlight fractured above you in ribbons of gold, breaking apart against the surface. It turned Steve into something dreamlike, his features softened by the movement of the water between you. Not that there was much.
His hair floated slightly around his forehead, a wild thing and his eyes were on yours, his lips stretched prettily into a wide smile. Tiny bubbles escaped from your nose, little, tiny bubbles, exactly like he'd told you.
The realization hit slowly, rolling over you like a summer morning; warm and lazy, like you were just waking up from a too long sleep. You were doing it.
You were underwater and you weren't drowning. Your lungs weren't burning, an unblinking darkness wasn't reaching for you. There was no lake, no too strong current and fuck, weeds weren’t wrapping around your ankle, pulling you downdowndown.
Only blue tiles beneath your feet and Steve in front of you.
His eyes widened slightly as he saw understanding settle across your face, a pretty flicker of understanding in your own gaze and pride bloomed in him, an uncontrollable thing that broke free from his ribs. He couldn’t say it, not underwater, but you could tell. It made you smile too, big enough that water kissed your teeth and you jerked slightly at the coolness of it, but Steve just held you tighter.
The water shifted between you as he drifted towards you a little more. Hands tugging at your own, knees bumping, chests impossibly closer. If you hadn’t already been holding your breath, you were sure you would’ve.
His fingers remained wrapped around yours, shifting from cupping your hand to linking between your own, a wholly intimate thing, far more so than the two of you half naked beside each other. The strangest thing happened then, a whole thirty seconds after you’d been brave enough to disappear under the surface. The fear that had occupied so much space inside your chest, that awful, burning knot that had lived in your chest for so long simply just… loosened. Like unclenching a fist you hadn't realized you'd been holding for too long.
It hadn’t disappeared, not yet. Not that quickly. But it unravelled slowly, unwound itself from the spaces between your ribs and your heart and your lungs and it gave you space to breathe. It let you feel the water on your skin, it let you blink against the chlorine and watch the way the sun danced above you.
The expression felt ridiculous underwater, but you grinned wider still, lips parting as if you could laugh, and Steve saw it. His own grin appeared instantly, bubbles leaving his lips, his nose. They popped and fizzed between you both, reaching for the surface that was only a short swim away.
God. He was beautiful. Even distorted through the rippling water, especially in the shifting light of the sun, shapes of yellow and light blue scattered themselves over his chest, his cheeks. They caught his eyes, turned them from brown to honey, his cheeks warm and sun-kissed, even under the water.
A stream of silver bubbles rose from your mouth too, racing toward the surface, floating upward between you. You waited for the water to rush into your throat, to floss your lungs but nothing happened apart from a slight burn, a reminder that you would need to breathe soon. But staying down here worn Steve, alone and in the quiet together, seemed worth the sting.
The moment into something weightless and for a beat, neither of you moved. You simply floated there, hands linked and suspended in blue. The surface shimmered above your heads like liquid glass and sunlight painted Steve in different shades of gold.
His eyelashes looked darker underwater. His freckles softer. Closer. Jesus Christ, everything felt closer and the world outside the pool seemed impossibly far away.
The party, the achingly awkward goodbye. The walk home Steve never got to give and the disappointment you'd seen him try to hide.
All of it drifted somewhere beyond the water you were floating in. And whatever you were feeling, thinking, Steve seemed to feel it too. His grin faded, not completely. It just softened into something else, the corner of his mouth relaxing as his gaze lingered on yours. Underwater, here with the boy, you found you couldn’t look away.
The sunlight moved across his face and your own, a shifting mosaic of gold and blue. Your pulse stumbled and water made everything feel too slow. Dreamlike and hazy and so not real.
Steve's eyes dropped briefly to your mouth. The motion was tiny, a barely there thing but god, you still saw it. Heat flooded through you despite the cool water surrounding your body and for one absurd second, you wondered if he could hear your heartbeat. You wondered if the water carried it, if it echoed between you.
Reality caught up with you then, a full fifty one seconds after you first sunk underneath the blue surface. You felt the burn in your lungs get too hot to ignore, reaching your throat and the panic that had lived inside of you for so long came back, a rattling thing that had you planting your feet on the pool tiles and pushing up. You burst from the surface, droplets flying as you sucked in a breath and Steve was there too, hands still holding yours, fingers intertwined.
Steve looked just as startled by the moment as you felt, his chest heaving although you were so sure he could hold his breath much longer and more comfortably than you could. He shook his head, not daring to let go of you to sweep his hair back and dark brown curls were plastered to his forehead instead.
It made him look younger, boyish. With freckles and water droplets stuck to his cheeks and you were breathing too hard as you stared at him, wide eyed and in wonder. You just weren’t sure what had you feeling more astonished: the fact that you had willingly gone underwater or that Steve Harrington looked like he wanted to kiss you.
And then the world crashed back all at once. Sunlight. Heat. Birdsong. The stupid hum of the filter. Your gasp. Steve's laugh.
Water streamed down your face as you broke through the surface beside him and you sucked in a breath so large it hurt. Steve was laughing openly now, head tipped back and the sound was a joyous, ecstatic thing that made you smile so hard your cheeks ached.
“I did it,” you breathed. The words sounded almost astonished.
Steve looked at you and his laughter softened, pride taking place over excitement and all of it was bright enough to rival the sun over your heads.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. You hadn't let go of his hand but he hadn’t let go of yours either. “Yeah, you did.”
The water lapped gently around your chest, the surface of it still moving from your exit from below, the trickle of water surrounded you both as it dripped from your soaked hair, the lobes of your ears, the tips of your noses. Steve’s eyelashes were spiked together, too pretty to look at
Neither of you moved, to be honest, neither of you seemed particularly eager to. And somewhere beneath the celebration and relief and your racing heartbeat, a different realization settled between you.
You'd gone underwater.
Somehow the part that lingered in your mind wasn't the fear or the dark or the suffocating memory of the lake. You didn’t think about the weeds and the sludge that caught you from below, ankles trapped, your shirt wrapped around your ribs, branches clawing at your feet.
All you could remember was that it was Steve who was waiting for you when you opened your eyes.
pairing: scientist!bucky barnes x experiment!reader
warnings: 18+ NSFW, smut, daddy kink, dark!bucky, slight steve x reader, dubcon bordering noncon, stockholm syndrome, emotional manipulation, drugs, masochism and sadism, obsessive and possessive behavior, verbal abuse, mental illness, isolation, self-harm, mentions of the word "rape", angst, fingering, praise kink, innocence kink, medical malpractices, surgical inaccuracies, pet names, spanking
word count: 11.3k
main masterlist
a/n: please read the warnings listed before reading. i am not responsible for your media consumption. thank you to @danysdaughter and @iamthatonefangirl for giving me the courage to write this. clutching my shovel real close tonight ♥️
synopsis:
You are Bucky’s most prized possession. Your mind, body, and soul were crafted by his own hands—he gave you life, and he could just as easily take it away. He never imagined he’d feel threatened by his own creation, until the day you began to have desires of your own.
If you were to ask James Buchanan Barnes for the definition of ‘insanity,’ he would tell you “Insanity is a severely disordered state of the mind.”
If you were to ask him what the cause of insanity is, he would say “It’s triggered by a combination of many things. For example, if one becomes too fascinated—too fixated—on something to the point that it takes a toll on their mental health. It can shift their reality and potentially drive themselves to the very brink. It is a common denominator, I’ve noticed.”
If you were to ask him if insanity was correlated with craziness in any way, he would reply with “That’s exactly what it is.”
If you were to ask James Buchanan Barnes if he was crazy, he would say no.
Bucky never thought he was crazy—as a matter of fact, he was far from it.
From the day he found your corpse and brought you back to life through grueling experimentation, to the long months he kept you tucked away in the shadows of the hospital’s hidden basement laboratory—up until now, as he stood before you with a tray of cold hospital food in his hands.
No, he never thought he was crazy. Not then, and certainly not now.
“Darling? Daddy’s here,” Bucky murmured, knocking gently on the door.
He pressed his ear to the wood, waiting for a sound—that soft, gentle “come in!” he had taught you to say every time he arrived.
There was no sound.
Bucky smiled softly. He figured you were just asleep.
After looking around to ensure the coast was clear, as it always was, he pushed the door open quietly. As it shut softly behind him, a relieved breath escaped his lips at the sight of you.
There you were, lying on the cot on your side with your hands tucked beneath your cheek—sound asleep.
He couldn’t help his smile as he set the tray of food down on the table next to you. He sat at the edge of the cot, running his hand up and down your arm in a hauntingly slow motion. “I brought you dinner,” he whispered.
You only let out a sleepy moan. Bucky ran his hand down your hair, pushing it behind your ear. He frowned at how it felt beneath his fingertips. He had just brushed it this morning, and yet it was already a knotted, tangled mess.
“Come on, baby. Wake up. Your food’s not getting any warmer.”
He nudged you gently, but you still didn’t wake. He was beginning to grow impatient.
“Open your eyes for me,” he commanded, kneeling down as his voice rose.
When you still didn’t stir, his jaw clenched. Both hands found your shoulders, shaking you hard as he yelled in your face, “I told you to wake up!”
You jolted awake with a startled gasp, your eyes hazy with sleep as you stared back at the man in front of you. His grip on your shoulders was so tight it hurt.
He had yelled at you—what had you done wrong? Did you misplace something? Or was it simply because you had slept in?
Your master’s chest was heaving as he glared at you with wide, crazed eyes.
After finally getting your attention, Bucky’s breathing calmed slightly. Your eyes were wide with fear and your body was shaking, curling in on itself as if trying to make yourself as small as possible.
Your eyes—sunken, swollen, and bruised from his experiments a few days ago—were still prominent, and the sight of them made him feel even worse.
Slowly, he let go of your shoulders. “I… fuck,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair as he sat back on his heels. “I’m sorry, doll. I got ahead of myself.”
Your shoulders eased slightly, though not entirely.
“I just had a bad day,” Bucky went on with a sigh. “These idiots at the facility… they’re working me like a dog. They have me running all these labs, all these data sheets…” He rubbed the crease between his brows. “I’m just so tired. And all I wanted was for you to be waiting at the door to greet me.”
You felt your heart thump in your chest. You had to react carefully—otherwise, Bucky’s mood would only sour further.
“I’m sorry,” you said, pulling yourself off the short cot to meet him on the floor with a hug.
Your arms wrapped around his neck, your chest pressed against his. Bucky let out a sigh, his eyes fluttering closed in satisfaction as his large arms wrapped around you. His hands splayed across your back, pulling you in even closer as his nose nuzzled the side of your head, breathing in your scent.
Rubbing alcohol, acetonitrile, and just a slight hint of lavender. His favorite.
“That’s it,” Bucky cooed into your ear. “You can be so forgetful, but at the end of the day, you always know how to make Daddy happy.”
He pulled away slightly to look you in the face. “Look at you, your hair’s a mess.” His frown deepened again as he tucked the stray hairs away from your eyes. “What did you do all day while I was gone?”
“I’ve been reading—or… trying to read the papers you told me to read.”
Bucky smiled, reaching for the hairbrush on your bedside table. His hands found your hair, dragging the bristles through the tangled heap.
“You mean the books?”
You nodded.
He sighed wistfully. “I wish I could hear you read them out loud to me, but I haven’t had much time these days.”
“I know,” you said, sounding a little more solemn than you’d like.
Bucky heard the disappointment in your voice, and his heart broke. “Turn around for me.”
Still sitting on the floor, you scrambled around until your back faced him. His hand bunched your hair from behind as he did his best to fix the mess you created.
“Tell me more,” he prompted, encouraging you to continue.
“The words make my head hurt,” you explained, staring at the floor. “It’s all just… a jumbled mess of text. I don’t even know what half the words mean.” Your finger traced the cold, laboratory tile. “My head has been hurting a lot, and the books just make me feel worse.”
Bucky’s brush went still for a moment.
Every time the headaches came, you would start pulling and tugging at your hair, crying in frustration. You would roll around on the cot, hit your head against the wall, or yank at your own locks—anything to rid yourself of the pain. But you didn’t know that those things only made it worse. All you knew was to hurt the things that hurt you.
“Sorry, darling,” he said gently. “I need to operate on your brain to help fix this problem. Maybe this next experiment will help you remember words better—help you gain some of that reading memory back. I’ll find the time for it, I promise. I’ve just been so—”
“—busy,” you completed the sentence for him, a bitter bite in your tone. “I know.”
He paused again, and it dragged out longer this time. “Excuse me?”
“I already heard how busy you were the first time,” you mumbled. “I don’t need to hear it again.”
Bucky’s eyebrow twitched. He couldn’t believe this was happening. You were talking back to him?
He grabbed your shoulders, roughly spinning you around and making you yelp as you were forced to face him again. Before you could compose yourself, he pressed his face against yours, his hands cupping your cheeks with a hard squeeze.
“Where the fuck did this new attitude come from? Who the hell do you think you’re talking to, huh?” he seethed. “Did you forget your place? Did you forget who brought you here? Who took your sad, cold body from the grave and gave you a new life?”
You winced as he squeezed your face even harder.
“I gave you life. I made your heart beat again. I gave your brain a mind and your body a purpose. And if you disrespect me one more time, I can take it all away just as easily.”
That tone of his made your heart start to race. It was like a trauma response buried deep in your nerves he had rewired. Your vision started to blur as tears began to well up, spilling down your face before you even realized you were crying.
“I’m sorry,” you gasped, the words tumbling over each other. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it! I—I’m sorry, Bucky.”
You were apologizing profusely now, your hands hovering near his, not daring to touch him. You just wanted the pressure on your face to stop.
Bucky’s expression softened, just barely. He loosened his grip, his thumb brushing over your cheeks to wipe away the tears. He let out a long, weary sigh—the sound of a man burdened by… whatever it was you were to him.
He set the brush on the floor and pulled you back into his chest, hugging you once more.
“I’m sorry, doll,” he murmured into your hair. “I’m so sorry I had to do that. I hate when I have to talk to you like that, I really do.” He squeezed you tighter, his chin resting on the top of your head. “But I have to make sure you understand. How else am I supposed to get through to you? You know I only do it because I love you. I can’t have you forgetting who takes care of you.”
You stayed frozen in his arms, hiccuping between sobs.
When Bucky pulled back slightly to look at you, the small gap made you whine. He smiled in satisfaction. Of course—despite everything, you still needed him.
“There’s my girl,” he whispered. “Come here. Give Daddy a kiss.”
You wiped your eyes with the back of your hand, pushing yourself up from the floor just enough to press your lips to his in a soft, gentle kiss. That was all you wanted, really—just a kind gesture to remind you that Bucky cared for you as much as he claimed.
But then his hands found your face again, locking you in place before you could pull away. His lips began to explore yours hungrily. He pushed his tongue against the entrance, sliding in to dance against yours.
A moan of satisfaction vibrated in his throat, then to his lips where you felt it.
He always kissed you like he was starving. He kissed you until your lips were swollen and wet, until you were panting and your heart was racing. When he was finally satisfied, he pulled away, catching his own breath as he trailed his thumbs over your bottom lip.
“Beautiful,” he praised breathlessly. “Absolutely beautiful.”
Despite how he had treated you just seconds ago, you couldn’t help but smile. Being praised by him always made the pain worth it.
But your salvation didn’t last. Bucky pushed himself off the floor with a grunt. He extended a hand to help you up, but you remained where you were on the floor.
“W-where are you going?” you asked softly, staring up at him with wide, hopeful eyes.
He checked the watch on his wrist. “It’s getting late, doll. I need to head home and get some sleep. I’ve got a long day tomorrow—gotta be up bright and early for some projects at the facility.”
Your eyes widened. He had left you alone all day, and he was leaving already?
“No,” you protested weakly.
Bucky tilted his head. “No?”
You couldn’t imagine another night of silence. “Please,” you whispered with a voice crack. “Please don’t leave me yet. It’s so quiet and lonely here.”
Bucky’s hand paused halfway through his hair as he let out a sigh. He looked down at you, his eyes looking almost mournful. “You’re breaking my heart, darling,” he murmured. “You know I hate leaving you, but Daddy’s got to work. I do it all for you, remember?”
When he took a step away from you, that’s when panic started to flare in your weak heart and desperation took over completely.
You scrambled across the tile, your fingers digging around the fabric of his trousers as you clutched his leg.
“Don’t go!” you begged, looking up at him through another round of tears. “I’ll be good. I’ll read the books. I’ll do the experiments without crying—just stay. Please, just stay a little longer!”
Bucky froze, eyes widened in surprise. He looked down at your hands wrapped around his leg. A part of him wanted to laugh at this little attempt of yours. You were a just a weak, fragile thing. He could push you off and leave—it’d be so easy.
But instead of doing that, he just stayed put and smiled. He liked this. He liked the way you were anchored to his feet, reduced to a trembling mess at the mere thought of his absence.
Slowly, he sank back down to his knees until he was eye level with you again.
“You really don’t want me to go, do you?” he mused with a taunting purr. He reached out, tilting your chin up so you had no choice but to look at the hunger in his eyes. “You want me to stay here with you? In this cold, dark basement? Keeping you warm?”
You nodded frantically, a sob catching in your throat.
“Tell me then,” he prompted, his thumb tracing your jaw. “How bad do you want it? What are you willing to do to keep me here tonight?”
“Anything,” you admitted desperately. “I’ll do anything.”
“Oh,” Bucky’s smile grew wide. “You shouldn’t have said that.”
You tried to keep a brave face, to hold your ground, but the relief was too great.
Bucky let out a short, amused huff as he reached down, hooking his hands under your arms to haul you up from the floor. “Okay, fine. You win.”
He stood back and reached for his neck, slowly loosening the knot of his tie. You watched, mesmerized and trembling, as he pulled the silk from his collar and draped it over the back of the lone chair in the room. His fingers moved to the top button of his white shirt, then the next, and the next, until they were all unbuttoned.
Then he moved to his belt. The sounds of it making you shiver.
“I’ll stay with you,” he promised, his tone as sweet as honey—designed to make you feel safe, even when you shouldn’t.
He folded the leather belt slowly. Painfully slow, his eyes never leaving yours.
“And before I head to the facility, I’ll do a quick experiment on you tomorrow. We’ll fix those headaches and get your reading memory back on track, okay?”
With one hand still gripping the belt, he stepped closer. His free hand cupped your face, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead.
“Think of it as my way of apologizing for my little outburst earlier,” he murmured against your skin. “I just want you to be perfect. I want you to be happy.”
He wasn’t leaving.
He was going to fix you.
You leaned into his touch as a small, fragile smile broke across your face. The tears you had shed before were no longer born of frustration—they were tears of relief.
“I love you, Bucky,” you whispered.
Bucky’s hand settled behind your head, rubbing gently to soothe you—the way a master might pet a loyal dog. He nodded towards the small cot in the corner.
“Lay down, doll.”
The light in the basement was always the same—artificial and blinding through the fluorescent tubes. After several blinks, you managed to force your eyes open against the piercing white light.
You let out a garbled groan. Your limbs felt extremely heavy, as if you were trying to move through deep water.
“Easy, doll. Easy.”
A deep, gentle voice cooed nearby. The cot creaked slightly as he sat beside you. As your vision cleared, you saw Bucky. He was already back in his professional attire—white sleeves rolled up his strong forearms. The room already smelled like he had his morning coffee.
He looked refreshed, while you felt like you had been disassembled and put back together again.
Which… in a way, you had.
Your fingers drifted up to the pain that throbbed in the back of your neck. You shuddered at the feel of the surgical tape and the fresh incision.
“The experiment went perfectly,” he said gently, his fingers replacing yours to check the bandage. “Your reading should be much sharper once the grogginess fades.”
You couldn’t even find the energy to be upset about him drugging you in the middle of the night—even if you should have spent those hours cuddling instead. The only thing that mattered was that he actually stayed.
“You’re still here,” you rasped, your throat scratchy and dry. A weak, hazy smile pulled at your lips.
Bucky smiled. He reached for a glass of water on the tray, holding it to your lips so you didn’t have to lift your head.
“I told you I would stay, didn’t I? I’m a man of my word.” He watched you drink, smiling as your dried lips softened from the liquid and the delicate column of your throat bobbed as you swallowed. “I even stayed through the morning to monitor your vitals. I’m going to be a little late to the facility, but for you? My baby? It’s all worth it.”
You leaned your head against his leg with a soft, content sigh. “Thank you for staying with me.”
“Always,” he whispered back, his thumb tracing over your cheek. “I have to go now—but when I’m gone, I want you to go back to reading your books.”
Disappointment settled in your chest, but the chemically induced state you were in made it too straining to fight back.
“I’ll be back soon with your breakfast.”
You didn’t care about food. All you cared about was Bucky. He was your true sustenance.
“How long?” you rasped, blinking up at him.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Alright?”
He leaned down to press a kiss to your temple. The cot creaked again as he stood up, and the sudden loss of his warmth made your heart clench painfully—more painful than the throb in your head.
“I love you, baby,” Bucky said, grabbing his blazer from the chair and heading for the door. “Be a good girl while I’m gone, okay?”
You nodded, and he offered a handsome smile. Then, he pulled the door open and shut it softly. The click of the lock on the other side finalized his goodbye, leaving you alone once again.
Bucky walked quickly from the hospital’s sub-level entrance, hurrying across the grounds toward the main facility. He looked like any other dedicated researcher running late for a briefing, but every time he left you, his mind remained back in the basement.
His mind was always on you.
His fingers fumbled with the middle button of his blazer as he forced his breathing to level out. He couldn’t afford to look ruffled. He turned a sharp corner near the east wing, head down as he adjusted his cuffs, and bumped squarely into another man.
“Woah, easy there, Buck.”
Bucky didn’t need to look up to recognize the voice.
“Steve,” Bucky exhaled, finishing the last button on his blazer with a tug. “Didn’t see you there. You’re up early.”
Steve’s gaze focused on the dark circles under Bucky’s eyes. “The shift change was a while ago,” Steve explained quietly. “I tried to page your office, but you weren’t there.”
Bucky waved a hand dismissively, stepping around Steve to keep moving towards his designated workstation. “Dead battery. I stayed late last night—lost track of time in the mounting data sheets—”
Steve extended his hand, landing on Bucky’s shoulder and forcing him to halt.
“You smell like…” Steve scrunched his nose. “Rubbing alcohol? Acetonitrile? That’s some heavy duty solvent for someone just looking at paperwork.”
Bucky’s heart let out a traitorous little thump. He gave Steve a deadpan look. “It’s a research hospital, Steve. What else am I supposed to smell like?”
Steve let go, but the look he gave his friend was anything but convinced. “You look exhausted. You’ve been spending every spare second in the south wing,” he sighed. “You’re my friend—and I worry about you, is all.”
Bucky averted his gaze. He didn’t have time for small talk. He had to review the latest labs and then fetch your breakfast. The longer he stayed out here, the longer you went hungry. Especially after the surgery, you needed to eat to recover properly.
“If there’s anything I can do to help loosen your load, even just a little bit, you know I’m always here.” Steve stepped closer, his voice lowering. “‘Till the end of the line, right?”
Bucky clenched his jaw. “Thanks, Steve. But I don’t need your help. I’m perfectly fine working alone,” he said, moving past him. Without looking back, he added, “I’ll let you know if my projects call for additional assistance.”
A few hours had passed, and ever since that interaction, it felt as though the universe had cursed Bucky with a jinx.
It was supposed to be a brief meeting—a few papers to peer review, perhaps a few charts to sign off on.
Christ, you were probably starving.
He could already picture it—your stomach curling in on itself, groaning and painful. He imagined your fragile arms wrapped around your belly as you cried in hunger. With the desperation that hunger brought, you might be clawing at your own skin. And since your body wasn’t being supplied with the nutrients it needed to recover, the post surgery throbbing in your head must be unbearable.
You could be pulling your hair or banging your head against the wall at this very second—and he wasn’t there to stop you.
He stared at the man sitting across from him. His boss’s frames kept slipping down his nose. His hair had more grease than the fast food joints across the street. His grimy hands shifted through the pages slowly. Painfully slow.
Bucky sat rigid, his foot tapping impatiently against the floor. He couldn’t dismiss himself—this was his superior, for fuck’s sake. But the longer he sat there, restless and useless, the more his mind spiraled.
His eyes flickered from his boss, to the clock, to the door.
“Is something bothering you, Barnes?”
Bucky swallowed hard. “Just… need to use the restroom.”
The man’s eyes rose sluggishly to meet Bucky’s. He paused—a silence long enough for Bucky to have gone and returned already. “Make it quick.”
Bucky pushed himself out of the chair, the legs let out a loud creak. He lunged for the door. He thought about sprinting to the canteen to fetch you something, but it was all the way across the facility. He didn’t have the time.
“Fuck, fuck!” Bucky hissed to himself, pacing the hall just outside the office.
The sound of approaching footsteps echoed nearby. Then, salvation appeared.
“Bucky? You doing alright?” Steve asked, glancing up from his papers to find his friend in visible distress.
Bucky froze, his breath getting stuck in his throat. Steve. The very man who had been with him through everything. Before he even came to the facility. Before he even made you. Steve was the one person he could trust with his life.
So why not trust him with yours? Just for the time being?
“Steve,” Bucky started with a frantic voice. The words tumbled out in a breathless ramble. “I need—I need your help. I’m stuck in a meeting with that grease trap Henderson, and she’s starving. She hasn’t eaten before the procedure and I can’t leave, but if she doesn’t get nutrients now, the rejection levels will spike and I’ll lose all progress—”
Steve blinked, his brows furrowing in confusion. “Wait, what?” He shook his head. “Who are you talking about? What procedure?”
Bucky stepped closer, grabbing Steve’s forearm with a grip so tight, it made him grunt.
“The south wing, sub-levels. Level four. I have her there, Steve. A woman—” Bucky glanced over his friend’s shoulder, making sure the coast was clear before continuing. “I’ve been… helping her, fixing her. But I have her locked in for her own safety, and I can’t get to the canteen and back without Henderson noticing I’m gone.”
Steve looked at Bucky as if he were seeing a stranger instead of a friend. “Locked in? Bucky, what the hell are you talking about? There are no active patients registered in the sub-levels. If you found someone who needs medical attention, we need to report this to the board immediately—”
“No!” Bucky hissed, eyes wide and wild. “No reports, and absolutely no boards. They’ll take her away, Steve. Please. I need you to help me. You said ‘till the end of the line’, didn’t you?”
Steve stood there, frozen with the papers in his hands.
“A woman,” Steve repeated quietly. “In the basement.”
“She’s my everything,” Bucky pleaded with a vulnerability that Steve has never seen before. “Just get a tray. High protein—soft foods. Use your clearance to bypass the canteen line. She’ll try to talk to you—but don’t entertain her. Just… give her her food, make sure she didn’t hurt herself while I was gone, and then leave quietly, okay?”
Steve let out a long breath.
He looked around the hall, checking for witnesses, before turning back to Bucky with a grim, reluctant nod.
“Fine,” Steve whispered. “I’ll get the food. But Bucky… we are talking about this the second you get out of that meeting. All of it.”
“Thank you,” Bucky exhaled, a sob of relief nearly escaping him.
He quickly shoved the keys to your room in Steve’s hand.
“Thank you, Steve. I knew I could trust you.”
It had been hours since Bucky left. You were curled on the edge of the cot, arms wrapped tightly around your growling stomach, trying to breathe through the nausea of starvation.
The grumbling was unbearable. You couldn’t have slept the hunger away even if you wanted to. It felt as though your stomach were eating itself from the inside out. Had Bucky forgotten you? He had broken his promise—but he said he was a man of his word. So where was he?
The sound of keys and the lock being undone sounded like music. Your heart gave a hopeful leap. Bucky always knocked—three soft, gentle taps that signaled he was coming to take care of you.
Unless you were asleep, he always waited for you to call out “come in!” to let him know you were ready to be his good girl again.
But this time, there was only silence before the door creaked open.
You didn’t care about the lack of a knock. You were too desperate, too hungry, and too lonely. You scrambled off the cot, your legs feeling like jelly as you rushed towards the door.
“Bucky! You’re back, I—”
You stopped.
The man standing in the doorway wasn’t Bucky. But he was as tall as Bucky, dressed in a white button up similar to Bucky’s, but it wasn’t him. He held a tray of food, but the stranger’s presence made you too terrified to reach for it.
Your breath hitched, a panicked wheeze leaving your lips as you scrambled backwards. Your heels dragged against the tile floor until your back hit the corner of the wall.
“Who are you!” you gasped, your bandaged hands coming up to shield your face. “Who are you? Where is he? Where’s Bucky?”
The man froze, his blue eyes widening in horror as he took in the sight of you—the surgical tape on your neck, the oversized gown, and the way you were cowering like a wounded animal.
Steve knew he shouldn’t speak to you, that had been Bucky's direct order. But he couldn’t fight his own instincts.
“Hey, hey… easy,” Steve cooed. He stayed by the door, slowly lowering the tray to a nearby table to show his hands were empty. “I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.”
Despite the man’s kind and gentle tone, you couldn’t help the panic flaring in your heart.
“You shouldn’t be here,” you sobbed, pressing yourself harder into the corner. “He said… he said I’m not supposed to see anyone. He’s going to be so angry.”
“Bucky sent me,” Steve explained softly, taking a cautious step. “My name is Steve. I’m Bucky’s friend. He’s stuck in a meeting and he was worried about you. He told me you needed to eat.”
You sniffled. “… Worried about me?”
He reached for a piece of bread from the tray and held it out toward you, not moving any closer. “I know you’re scared. And I know you’re hurting. But you need to eat, okay? Then I’ll be on my way.”
You swallowed hard, glancing at the bread. He had spoken you so kindly, so soft and gentle, and to you, that felt like salvation in this lonely and cold room. Even if it wasn’t Bucky.
You took a hesitant step forward while Steve stayed still. He didn’t move until you approached him, treating you as if you were a stray cat. You grabbed the loaf with trembling hands, gave him a wary look, and he smiled.
“Not poisoned. Trust me.”
He tried to joke, but you didn’t laugh.
After a few seconds, you bit into the bread, letting the taste linger on your tongue.
Then, you started scarfing it down like a rabid animal.
Steve stood there, staring at you dumbfound as you ate. Without looking at him, you began to ravish everything else on the tray with your bare hands. He could only stumble back and watch in horror.
As you were occupied with the food, he took a mental note of your state. Your legs were marked with rows of stitches. Your skin was tainted with burn marks and various scars. You had bandages wrapped around your hands, wrists, ankles, and neck. Bruises decorated your body.
You looked exactly like a woman who had been plucked from the grave and brought back to life, but you were hardly living.
It didn’t take long for you to finish. When you finally looked up, you stared at Steve, waiting for him to disappear back through the door.
“I know I said I’d be on my way after you ate,” Steve explained slowly. “But Bucky also wanted me to check on your…”
He paused. He didn’t know what Bucky wanted him to check on exactly, but looking at you, it seemed as though everything needed to be checked. For now, he pointed to the freshly wrapped bandage around your neck.
“He just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
When you didn’t respond, he took it as a sign to step closer. You scrambled back immediately, and his gaze softened.
“I know this is scary for you. You haven’t seen or spoken to anyone besides Bucky, isn’t that right?”
You stayed silent.
“Have you ever been outside this room?”
Your eyes flickered to the door, then back to Steve. You slowly shook your head no.
“Well, the outside world is beautiful,” he began, speaking in a gentle tone. “There are lots of trees, flowers… animals. Like squirrels. You’d like the squirrels, they’re just like you—always scurrying around, especially in the courtyards.”
With each word, he moved closer.
Mentally, Steve was cursing himself.
He was a man of honor, yet he was currently violating his best friend’s trust while feeding a captive woman—Bucky’s woman—empty promises he wasn’t sure he could keep. He was falling back on his own medical training, using the standard practices he’d honed over years of patient care, hoping the routine would calm you as it did his other patients.
“Maybe Bucky will let you see it for yourself one day,” he lied. “But right now, your body is in no state for it. You’re fragile.”
He was close enough now to see the faint blossoming of blood staining your bandages.
“That’s why I’m here—to check on you,” he said, reaching out a hand slowly, palm up. “I just want to see how the stitches are holding up. If Bucky’s friend helps you, you’ll get stronger faster. And the stronger you get, the sooner you can go outside. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
You hesitated, your back still pressed against the cold wall.
“Bucky wouldn’t want you to touch me,” you admitted softly. “He always calls me his perfect girl—his good girl. He likes that I’m untainted and untouched by anyone else.”
Steve paused, his eyes widening slightly.
Ah. There it was.
That was how he could get through to you.
Against his better judgment and his friend’s wishes, he brought his hand up to your cheek. It was a gentle, steady touch—the kind of contact you had been waiting for all day.
“Just a quick look,” Steve whispered. “Just so I can tell Bucky you were being a perfect, good girl for him.”
You shuddered under his touch, your eyes closing slowly as you leaned into his palm.
That was all you wanted—to be Bucky’s good girl.
“Okay,” you nodded. “You can check me.”
You reached for the hem of your oversized gown and lifted it, baring yourself to Steve.
To you, this was simply the natural sequence of events. There was no shame in your movements, only the ingrained memory of how your sessions with Bucky always concluded.
The check up was just a prelude. The intimate inspection that followed was the reward.
Steve’s breath hitched, his face turning a bright shade of red when he realized what you were doing.
“No! No, no, no. You don’t have to do that!” he stammered, wrenching his head away. “I just… I just need to see the bandages. Just the neck and wrists. Keep—keep your clothes on, please.”
He was trying so hard to be a gentleman, his movements jerky and awkward.
“Bucky always tells me to undress so he can check me properly,” you said softly.
That concerned Steve. He let out a sigh. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen naked patients before, but this was different. He told himself all he had to do was check your stitches and leave. Quickly.
“Fine,” Steve rasped. His eyes tried his best to stay focused on your neck—not the curve of your breasts or hips, or the innocence of your bare slit between your thighs.
He stepped closer and his fingers traced the stitches of your neck.
His eyes met yours briefly, and his heart raced.
You had such a hazy, expectant look in your eyes.
“Okay,” Steve choked out, his voice cracking as he stepped back to put a safe distance between you. “I’m done. The stitches look... they look clean. I’m going to go now.”
As he turned to grab the empty tray, you moved.
You cupped his face the way Bucky always did with yours and pressed your lips against his.
Steve froze, his eyes nearly bulging out of his skull. His hands found your shoulders, giving you gentle shove that forced you back onto the edge of the cot with a yelp.
“No,” he panted, his chest heaving as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “No, we can’t—I’m his friend, I’m not... why did you do that?”
You tilted your head, your brows furrowing in confusion.
“Because the check up isn’t finished,” you explained softly, your voice small and defensive. “Bucky says the examination isn’t over until he’s had his fill. He says that’s how I show him I'm getting better.”
“His fill?” Steve looked concerned.
“He says it’s part of the treatment,” you added, leaning forward slightly, searching Steve's face for the approval you were used to receiving. “Don’t you want to see if I’m better, Steve? Don’t you want your fill?”
The air left Steve's lungs.
His eyes traced down your body shamelessly this time—but not for the reason you expected. He took note of the faint bruises around your waist and thighs, and he felt sick.
Quickly, he crouched until he was eye level with you from where you were sitting on the cot. He clutched your shoulders, and you winced.
“Tell me,” Steve urged. “What is Bucky doing to you? Why are you in this state? How long have you been here?”
“I—I don’t—”
“Did he rape you?”
Steve expected a reaction—the typical trauma response to a word that heavy. Most victims would never confess it outright, but he could make out the answer from your reaction if you gave him one.
But all you did was blink at him as if he were speaking a foreign tongue.
“What does that mean?”
Steve didn’t know what to say. He let out a breath of exasperation and stood up. He couldn’t help you now, not with the risk of Bucky’s meeting ending at any moment.
“I have to go, but I’ll be back, okay? I’ll be back to get you the professional help you need.” Steve grabbed the tray and hurried to the door, his hand trembling on the handle. “Don’t tell Bucky what I told you. Please.”
The door shut quickly as he left.
But the lock didn’t click.
The hours following Steve’s departure were the longest of your life. You tried to do as Bucky asked—to sit on your cot and lose yourself in the pages of your books—but you couldn’t retain anything.
Your mind kept drifting back to Steve.
You liked the way he touched your cheek. He spoke of squirrels and trees and a world that Bucky never mentioned. Your gaze drifted to the door, and for the first time, it didn’t look like a shield protecting you from the world—as Bucky liked to call it.
It looked like an obstacle.
You knew you needed to stay put and wait for Bucky, but you couldn’t. You stood up and pushed through the door, moving carefully and slowly.
The hallway was bright, and as you wandered out, your bare feet felt freezing against the tiles. You didn’t know where the trees were, but you followed the hall, hoping it would lead to the courtyard Steve had mentioned.
You could already imagine it—running through the grass with Bucky, chasing the squirrels. A smile ghosted over your lips despite the tremor in your heart.
Then, a shadow fell over you.
“Going somewhere?”
You spun around at the familiar voice, a smile on your face so wide it made your cheeks hurt. “Bucky! You’re back! I was looking for the courtyard, I—”
The smile died the moment you saw his face. Bucky wasn’t happy. He had that scowl, the look you recognized whenever he was displeased, except now it was multiplied tenfold. His gaze was harsh enough to kill, and you could only imagine what he would do to you next.
His hand clamped around your upper arm, forcing you to cry out.
“Bucky, you’re hurting me!”
He hauled you back, dragging you down the hall towards where you had come from. He was breathing like an animal, his eyes darting around crazily to ensure the corridors remained empty—no witnesses.
He threw you back into the basement room, the door slamming shut as he locked it from the inside. He approached you as you collapsed onto the cot.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he hissed in your face, his hands tugging at his hair in frustration. “What’s this talk about a courtyard? What was the plan, huh? To just walk out? To show everyone in this facility what I’ve been doing?”
“I just wanted to see—”
“After everything I’ve done for you!” Bucky roared, lunging to grab your shoulders and shaking you once, hard. “I saved you! I rebuilt you! I spent every cent, every hour, every ounce of my goddamn soul making sure you were perfect. And you’re choosing to run? You’re choosing to escape me?”
“No, Bucky, I—”
“You’re ungrateful!” He was spiraling, his eyes glazed with paranoia. “Someone saw you. Someone must have seen you. Who was it? Did you talk to someone? Was it the security feeds? I’ll have to wipe them. I’ll have to start over.”
You flinched at his cruel words. The pain in your arm was unbearable, but his accusations hurt more.
“No one saw me—”
“You can’t be certain!” he screamed in your face.
When he saw the tears welling in your eyes, he backed off slightly. His heart was beating furiously, and he didn’t foresee his temper cooling anytime soon. He let out a heavy sigh, releasing your shoulders. He couldn’t believe Steve had forgotten to lock the door—and now, he had filled your head with stupid ideas of going outside.
“I have to operate on you again,” Bucky said, walking to his desk. He removed his blazer and began rolling up his sleeves. “It’s a shame, really. I didn’t anticipate working on you so soon after your recent experiment.” He reached for the gloves, jerking them on. “I should even lower the dosage of the drugs, just so you could feel just an ounce of the pain I felt when I found you in the hallway.”
He glanced at you quickly before looking back at his tools.
“You did this to yourself, darling.”
You quickly scrambled off the cot, rushing to him and wrapping your arms around his waist from behind. “Please! I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean to disobey you, I swear! I—”
“I’ve been gentle with you,” Bucky said, his voice flat as he reached for a needle on the tray. He didn't even turn to look at you. “Maybe even too gentle.”
You held onto him tighter, burying your face into the expanse of his back as the fabric of his shirt dampened with your tears.
“Please, Bucky, please!” you sobbed. “I missed you so much. I was being so good all day. I read the books, just like you told me. I didn’t hurt myself. But it was so cold and so lonely.. and—and you were gone for so long. I just needed you. I just wanted to find you.”
Bucky didn’t move.
The hand reaching for the syringe hovered in the air, his fingers twitching. For a long moment, the only sound in the room was your crying. He looked down at the needle, then slowly, he pulled his hand back.
“You broke my heart,” he whispered. “You think your fruitless words mean anything to me now? After I found you wandering those halls like I meant nothing to you?”
“I didn’t—”
“Actions speak louder,” he snapped, still facing away. “What will you do to make up to me?”
“Anything,” you sobbed against his shirt. “Anything, Bucky. Just don’t hurt me. Don’t operate on me—please. I’ll do anything.”
Bucky stared at the wall, then at the needle, as if contemplating. Without turning around, his hands moved to his waist, the belt buckle echoing in the room as he undid the lather strap with slow movements.
“Put your hands over the bed,” he commanded. “Bend over.”
Your breath hitched in anticipation. You wasted no time rushing to the cot, placing your hands over the edge and bending over—exactly as instructed.
Your heart fought in your chest as you heard Bucky’s footsteps approach from behind. You heard the clinking of the belt in his hands, and then the air hit your skin as he lifted your gown, baring your bottom to his gaze.
The cold leather of his belt dragged slowly across your skin, and you shuddered, bracing yourself.
“Are you scared?” he murmured from behind you.
“Yes,” you whispered, your voice trembling so much it was barely heard. “Yes, Bucky. I’m scared.”
He leaned in closer, his chest brushing your back. You could feel the warmth, the scent of his cologne. When he spoke again, his voice was a low rasp against your ear.
“Good,” he breathed. “Fear is the beginning of wisdom, darling. It means you’re finally remembering who I am to you. It means you’re remembering that the world outside is just a fantasy, and this—this room, this bed, and my hand on you—is the only reality you have.”
He paused, the leather belt going still against your thigh.
“I didn’t want to do this,” he lied, smooth and deceptive. “But you forced my hand. I have to drive those silly thoughts out of your head before they ruin you completely. Before they ruin us.”
The belt lifted away from your skin, then came down hard with a whack against your bottom, jolting you and making you yelp.
“You’re so confused now, aren’t you, darling? I have a friend—my best friend come feed you, and suddenly you think you’re free to wander about? He was a fool. And so are you.”
Another whack.
“Ow!”
“It’s disappointing, really. I thought we were further along, doll. I thought you understood that you’re far too fragile for the sun. You’d wither like a flower, my perfect girl.”
Then another, and you let out a soft and shaky moan that was more breath than sound.
He leaned over you, the belt resting lightly against the back of your thighs as he watched the way your body reacted. He was being mean—his words were supposed to make you feel small, stupid, and utterly dependent—but to you, the condescension only felt like a caress.
With every smack, every word, you were arching your back and pressing yourself into him.
“Look at you,” he whispered, his hand reaching down to tickle the inner curve of your thigh. “I’m punishing you for being a bad, ungrateful girl, and yet..”
He paused, his fingers sinking lower and brushing against the wetness between your legs. It was slick, his middle finger gliding right through the folds. You gasped as he poked his finger against the entrance, and he could already feel you clench.
“You’re soaking wet for me,” he voiced in a way that sounded like disgust. “Even when I’m hurting you, you’re begging for me. Is this what you wanted when you walked out that door? To be caught and punished by your Daddy?”
Your face warmed with embarrassment. “No! I swear, I didn’t—”
Your words were replaced by a shameless moan when you felt Bucky’s finger slip into your entrance. He was only halfway in, yet he slid into you so easily. The way you stretched to accommodate his fingers was a testament to how much you needed him.
Bucky snarled against your ear. He was disappointed. He hated your denial—especially when your own body was betraying you, your hips rocking back to sink his finger deeper into your needy cunt.
But more than that, he hated how hard he was getting. He hated how much he wanted to rip his pants down and fuck you so hard that you’d be left crying and begging for his forgiveness.
“You could have it so easy if you just told me the truth,” he taunted. “But you like the struggle, don’t you? You like the attention—whether it’s good or bad. And you especially like it when Daddy’s being mean to you.”
He withdrew his finger slowly, the loss making you whine. His hands settled at your hips, he lifted you until you were standing on your tippy toes.
“Look at how you’re leaking for me,” he mocked, his eyes dark as he examined you. “A little attention from Steve, a little walk in the hall, and you come back to me looking like this. You’re like a little animal, aren’t you? So confused, so easily worked up by the first human who shows you a bit of kindness.”
Bucky grabbed your hands, wrenching them behind your back. He worked quickly, looping the leather belt around your wrists and cinching it tight.
You winced at the pressure as he restrained you, leaving you even more helpless than you were before.
“You’re right,” you whispered, face pressed against the cot. “I’m helpless. I can’t… I can’t function without you, Bucky. Please don’t leave me again. Hurt me. Kiss me. Just do anything so I don’t feel empty.”
Bucky hummed in approval.
He took a step back, and you heard the rustle of fabric and a zipper sliding down from behind. He didn’t utter a single word as he freed himself, but the sudden change in his breathing told you everything.
He began to stroke himself slowly. The sound was agonizing—that silky friction of his palm against his shaft, the shlick shlick noises of him spreading his pre-cum over and around his tip.
Every slide of his hand made you want to turn your head to look, to witness him in this state, but you knew better than to move.
You clenched your thighs together, your cunt pulsing as it reacted to the filthy noises. You were desperate to feel him, but you remained bound and helpless—exactly where he wanted you.
“Fuck,” he cursed, his breathing labored as he jerked himself off faster. “I should just finish right now. Let it all my cum drip to the floor—leave it there for you to stare at while I walk back out that door.”
His breathing grew even heavier. His movements quickening as he fucked his fist.
“But you’re so needy, aren’t you?” he whispered. “You wouldn’t let a single drop go to waste, would you, doll? You’d fall to your knees and lick it right off the tiles like my little pet, just to have a taste of me.”
You shuddered as his footsteps neared, flinching when his hand came up to cup your chin. He forced you to arch your back, making you strain to look up at him from over your shoulder.
“Is that what you are? My little pet?” He pressed the head of his cock against the curve of your ass, subtly rocking his hips forward. “My sweet girl that only functions when I’m inside her?”
“Bucky,” you breathed, squeezing your eyes shut. “Please. I can’t take this anymore.”
“Since you wanted to wander those halls so badly, I’m going to make sure you don’t have the strength to do it again. I’m going to fuck you so hard, doll, that you won’t be able to stand on those pretty legs for a week.”
One heavy hand landed on your hip, squeezing the flesh tight to hold you steady, while the other gripped his length, positioning himself at your entrance.
Then, surprisingly slow, he began to slide in.
The sensation was overwhelming. He was big—far too big. He knew you were fragile, and despite his harsh words, he didn’t want to truly break you just yet. That would ruin all the fun.
The stretch was slow and agonizing, yet perfect. You let out a broken sob, your fingers clawing at the thin mattress of the cot as your body was forced to accommodate him. He was thick, filling every inch of you, stretching you until you felt like you might break, yet your muscles tightened around him desperately—clinging to him like a hug that refused to let go.
“God,” Bucky hissed, his face twisting in both pain and pleasure. “So tight—even after last night…”
He kept pushing until he was completely sheathed inside, his dark curls tickling the curve of your ass when his pelvis finally met your bottom. He stilled there, his chest rising and falling as he waited for your body to accommodate him.
You could feel every ridge, every pulse inside, and in that moment, you wanted to cry.
You were so happy. Moments like this made your heart feel too big for your chest—because, despite everything, you were becoming one with the man you loved so dearly.
“Look at you,” he groaned possessively. “Taking all of it. Built just to hold me. Designed to take every inch... even if it hurts.”
Bucky began to move, his hips rocking violently as he started fucking you like an animal starved—as if he had been starving for this even longer than you had.
His hips slapped vulgarly against yours, and your eyes widened at the sudden, cruel change of pace.
“Oh—my!”
The cot beneath you began to groan, the frame creaking and rattling against the floor and the wall with every thrust Bucky gave you.
He leaned forward until his chest was against your back, his hand reaching around to grip the belt binding your wrists, using it like a handle to wrench your arms higher and force your chest deeper into the flimsy mattress.
“One taste of my cock and you’ve already forgotten everything that fool Steve told you, haven’t you?”
His pace became erratic, using your body like a sex toy. You were cock drunk for him, you were being his perfect, restrained little pet, your face buried in the cot pathetically while he claimed every inch of your body.
“You’re so pathetic, sweetheart,” he whispered affectionately and cruel. “Completely helpless. You can’t even touch yourself while I do this to you. You have to just lie there and take whatever I decide to give you.”
He slammed into you again, his cock rubbing deliciously against your tight, wet walls as they squeezed him for dear life.
“Ah, fuck... maybe if you keep being a good girl, I’ll let you suck on it later. How does that sound, hm?”
You nodded desperately against the cot, and mewling was the only answer you could manage.
The mere idea of being allowed to serve him like that—to have him look at you with something other than disappointment—it was all enough to make your head spin.
Bucky laughed darkly, you could feel his stomach vibrating as he was pushed up against your back.
“That’s it,” he growled. “Good girl. Daddy loves you, baby.”
Tears of overwhelmed pleasure started to spill down your cheeks at his admission.
He loved you.
Those four words were enough to make you fall apart right then and there as his approval was far more intoxicating than the pain and pleasure.
“Really? I—I love you too! I love you so much!” you squealed. Your cunt clenched around his shaft—squeezing him tight as if your body could prove just how much you loved him back. “I love you so much, Bucky. I love you. I love you.”
Bucky drawled out a long, tortured groan at the feel of you squeezing him. Buried deep inside you, he could feel you trembling, your body wound so tight it was nearly unbearable.
“That’s it,” Bucky cooed, his pace losing its rhythm as he fucked into you harder—chasing that delicious, sweet release. “You’re never going to walk away again.”
He leaned down, his pressing against your sweaty shoulder as he poured his devotions into your ear.
“I love you. Do you hear me? I love you more than anything. I’m the only thing you need. Just me and my love. You’re never leaving me again, doll. You’re staying right here where you’re safe—where you’re mine.”
He was chanting it now, a litany of possession that made your eyes roll back as you started to see stars.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.
“Don’t you ever leave me,” he growled, his hand tightening on the belt and jerking your bound wrists one last time. “Tell me you’re staying! Tell me!”
You couldn’t hold back anymore. He was fucking you so thoroughly, telling you exactly how much you meant to him, and you were desperate to show him he was your entire world.
“I’m staying! I’m yours!” you sobbed before you cried out in a pleasure that was so hot—it made you dizzy. Clenching your legs together, your pussy pulsed and convulsed as you let the pleasure wash all over your body.
Your entire frame shook and trembled, but Bucky didn’t let up. Every shake and vibration from you was just a stroke to his own pleasure, and before long, he buried himself as deep as he could go, his cock painting your pussy with his cum.
It was hot. It was too much.
He stilled, remaining plunged inside as he fought for his breath. Silence consumed the room. Then, the sounds of his seed—spilling out of your abused pussy and onto the tile floors took over.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Like a clock.
Bucky shuddered against your neck, the heat of his breath tickling you. He stayed draped over you as he slowly began to press soft kisses to your cheek, then to the curve of your jaw.
“Good girl,” he murmured, his thumb tracing your bare lower back while you warmed his cock with your body.
“My good, sweet girl. You did so well for Daddy. You always do.”
The atmosphere of the following morning was nothing like the night before.
Bucky had stayed the night with you. Again.
You were tucked over his arm, your head resting against his shoulder as you traced idle, wandering patterns across his bare chest. He was snoring peacefully, a soft sound that filled the quiet room.
Your heart felt full as you stared up at him with wide, adoring eyes.
His chest rose and fell in perfect time with his breathing, and you snuggled closer to his side.
“I love you,” you murmured, your finger tracing the outline of his abs. “I love you so much.”
Bucky slowly blinked awake, his eyelashes fluttering before he finally looked down at you. His eyes were clouded with the hazy, peaceful fog of a deep sleep he rarely ever got to enjoy.
“Morning,” he rasped.
A small, tired smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he took you in, his eyes softening at your adoring expression. “My girl.”
He slid his arm further under your neck, hooking his hand around your shoulder to pull you in until you were pressed tight against his side. He tucked his chin over the top of your head, nuzzling into your hair with a contented groan.
“Stay right there,” he murmured, his eyes drifting shut again as he squeezed you against him. “Don’t move. Just let Daddy hold you for a minute.”
And so you did. You both lay there for a long time, soft and snuggled up in each other’s arms.
But the peace, the silence, and the comfort didn’t last long.
The door—the one Bucky always made sure to lock with such clinical precision—was suddenly eclipsed by a violent crash that you made flinch.
Bucky bolted up, his body going rigid as his eyes snapped wide to the door.
“Bucky?” you gasped in fear, clutching his side. “What… what is that?”
“Fuck! Fuck!” Bucky hissed, the panic in his voice only startling you more. He threw his arm across your chest—not in a cuddle, but as a barrier, pinning you firmly behind his large body—as if hiding you.
He turned his head to catch your eye, a look in his blue orbs that you’ve never seen before. “Don’t—don’t say anything, got it? Not even a single breath of a fucking word.”
The door was kicked open, and a blinding flood of tactical lights and shouting turned your once private sanctuary into a war zone.
“He’s here! Target identified! Get him off her!”
Men in dark tactical gear you had never seen before swarmed the room, taking over the space that had once belonged purely to you and Bucky.
Before you could even process the intrusion, several agents tackled the very man who had been protecting you. The cot creaked and groaned as he fought to stay by your side, but even his strength was useless against so many men.
“Get your hands off me! Get away from her!” he roared, his voice louder and more frantic than you had ever heard it. He was terrified. You had never seen him lose control like this.
“She’s mine! You have no right—she’s mine!”
Bucky was going insane, fighting and kicking against the restraints of the officers. Everything happened so fast as the room blurred into chaos.
All you could do was sit there on the edge of the mattress and sob, reaching out for him in a confused daze.
“Bucky—”
Before your fingers could even brush his back, Steve was already there.
He pulled you into his arms, tucking your head against his chest to shield your eyes from the sight of the agents pinning Bucky to the cold tile floor.
“Don’t look,” Steve cooed, using that same comforting tone from the very first day you met. He held you tightly, his hand cupping the back of your head as he rocked you slightly to still your trembling. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, sweetheart. You’re safe now. I promise... he’s never going to touch you again.”
The sound of metal cuffs clicked in the room, accompanied by Bucky’s screams of your name.
“Get your fucking hands off of her!” Bucky seethed from the floor, his face pinned hard against the tile by a set of gloved hands.
“You traitor!” he roared, the word tearing raw from his throat. “You fucking traitor!”
Steve tried his best to ignore his crying friend, clutching your body tighter against his. You began to sob, your fingers clawing at Steve’s arm to let you go—to go back to him.
As the agents hauled Bucky towards the door, his feet scuffed and slid violently against the tile floor.
He twisted his head back, his hair a sweaty mess as his face was twisted in a rage that terrified you. Yet, despite the fear, his eyes stayed locked on yours until the very last second, and you couldn’t bring yourself to look away.
“Don’t listen to a thing Steve tells you, baby!” Bucky screamed, fighting against the agents. “He doesn’t know you! He doesn’t love you like I do! He’s just trying to tear us apart—”
Even with a dozen people there to ‘protect’ you, guilt settled in your chest.
Was this all your fault?
Did this happen because you wandered the halls the other day? Because you had dared to talk to Steve?
“You belong to me—only me!” Bucky continued to roar, forcing you to listen to him instead of your useless train of thought. “Stop ignoring me—say something!”
All you could do was sniffle and sob, muttering broken apologies into Steve’s chest that Bucky couldn’t even hear over everything else that was going on.
“I’ll come back for you,” Bucky promised as they dragged him out. His voice rang through the cold hallways that had once been empty, but were now teeming with strangers. “I swear it—I’ll find you!”
Bucky and the men rounded the corner, and his shouts began to fade. The basement grew quieter. Much quieter.
Everything you’ve known and loved had been stripped away from you within seconds. What were you to do now? Who was going to take care of you? You wanted to hate Steve for doing this—but he said he was protecting you. But Bucky also promised you the same thing countless of times.
You didn’t know what was real—what was right or wrong, and you don’t think you ever will.
With the sudden and unexpected loss of his presence, your mind felt… lost. But deep in your gut, a feeling you tried so hard to suppress out of fear for betraying Bucky, you felt relief.
Steve let out a shaky breath, his shoulders finally dropping.
“He’s gone,” Steve whispered, his voice partnered with a guilt he couldn’t quite hide.
He sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as you.
“He’s gone, sweetheart. He’s never going to hurt you again.”
And for some reason, those very words only hurt you more.
The interrogation light shined directly into Bucky’s face, but he had grown so used to the glare that he no longer flinched.
Heavy cuffs bound his wrists, he only stared lifelessly at the metal biting into his skin. By now, the chains wrapped around his ankles felt as familiar as socks. His eyes were sunken into dark hollows, and his hair had grown out, lank and unkempt. You probably would have thought he looked ugly.
“James Barnes.” The man across from him sat down with a heavy huff.
His glasses were perched precariously on the bridge of his nose, and his pudgy fingers rifled through a thick stack of papers. With his greasy hair and impatient sighs, he looked exactly like Bucky’s previous boss, Henderson.
Bucky hated it.
The interrogator leaned back, watching the man across from him.
“The woman was dead before you found her,” the man began neutrally, his voice echoing off the sterile walls. “You robbed her grave, took her body, and performed several experiments on her—somehow managing to bring her back to life.”
Bucky stayed quiet.
“Where did you expect this experiment to go?” the man pressed, flipping a page in the file with a dismissive snap. “Would you have returned her to her family? To the friends she had before she passed?”
Bucky hadn’t blinked in three minutes, and hadn’t spoken for longer.
“What made you choose her, of all the other freshly buried bodies in that cemetery?”
Nothing. Not even a breath of a word.
“What was she to you?”
Bucky’s eyes remained hollow, his expression indifferent. He might as well already be dead.
“Did you love her?”
Bucky’s head tilted—just slightly.
Slowly, he lifted his eyes to meet the interrogator’s.
“More than anything,” Bucky replied.
He didn’t look away from the interrogator, but his mind was already miles outside the concrete walls of the facility.
Behind his hollow eyes, he was already calculating. He felt the metal around his wrists, but he didn’t feel trapped. He felt like a spring being pushed down, gathering all this tension until he inevitably snaps. He could see it clearly—the precise moment he would finally break free.
It had been years since has been held captive. Since everything was taken away from him.
He wondered what you were doing right now. Without him there to guide your schedule, were you lost?
He imagined you in a park somewhere. He pictured you chasing squirrels, or perhaps laying in the grass and staring at the sun until your eyes ached. Or maybe you were reading one of those books he used to leave by your bed. He hoped you were reading. It kept your mind active. The books were good for you.
He’d find you.
It wasn’t a question of if, only a matter of when. He’d knock on the door of your new home—three times. Then, like the perfect girl you always were for him, you’d reply with “come in!”
The interrogator cleared his throat, leaning in closer.
“James,” he called for him, bringing his attention back. “Would you classify yourself as ‘insane’?”
For the first time in years, Bucky’s lips quirked into a smile.
Insane?
What kind of question was that?
“No.”
anyway how writing this fic found me
if you've made it this far, as always thank you so much for taking the time to read my work. interactions are always appreciated, I love reading every bit of them!
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Summary: As it turns out, you can’t outrun a monster in his own home. You can, however, learn to question whether he was ever a monster at all.
Word Count: 17.7k
Warnings: real big emotions and confrontations; secrecy in a relationship; lots of panic/anxiety/fear/insecurities; weapons (guns, knife); minor injury (cut); references to criminal activity and violence; Bucky is possessive and protective and in love; emotional manipulation (perceived/debated)
Author’s Note: Here we are my lovelies, the second part to His Name Was Never Just Bucky. Honestly, I’m so relieved it’s finally done and I can return to other projects. This took me so incredibly long, but it’s rewarding to have it completed and I’m so proud I didn’t end up abandoning it like so many other things before. I truly hope you enjoy where I took the story ♡
Masterlist | part one
This was probably the worst decision you have ever made.
But, hell, now you officially jumped without a parachute, the ledge is gone, the air is passing by quickly, and your only hope is that you’ll somehow learn how to fly on the way down and you’ll be able to land on your feet.
The hallway outside has lost its symmetry, as you have lost your sanity, and now nothing seems to make sense anymore. Everything seems longer and crueler, your panic stretching the hallways into a long, suffocating throat. Each of your hectic footsteps makes you feel too exposed in this big mansion, they seem to echo your exact coordinates throughout the floors. Every hallway hears you, the walls themselves are turning their heads.
You take the first turn on instinct, then another, and another, trying to remember the route, trying to retrace the thread that brought you here, but your terror and all that bottled-up panic smashes sequence, steals direction, leaves you with nothing but speed because you know that if you stop, you’re done.
Your feel your heart everywhere. In your throat, in your ears, behind your eyes, beating against your teeth.
You blow past a side table where a cluster of pale lilies sits, blooming so aggressively, looking so wrong and even ugly in the corner of your eye, you have to take another turn.
You’re no longer thinking, you’re just running.
Your chest is a hollow chamber and all you hear is your own pants when you pass a maid who startles and calls something you don’t catch. You pass a window tall as a church promise and for one insane second consider throwing yourself through it.
Somewhere behind you, from the office, you hear a loud crash. His voice follows. His voice. It sounds so much more blood-curdling now.
He’s calling your name. Loud and baffled and then sharper. He doesn’t sound angry yet, but definitely alarmed in a way that makes every warning bell inside you turn rabid. Because there is something uniquely petrifying about hearing alarm in the voice of a man like him. It means you have disrupted the script. It means he does not understand. It means he is coming.
You run harder, every nerve in your body overflowing with adrenaline.
But, as expected, the house doesn’t simply spit you out. Corridors feed into corridors, archways into alcoves, burnished halls into rooms you have never seen, and every choice you make seems to slide you deeper into the belly of the place instead of toward freedom.
With a ragged and desperate breath, you shove through one swinging door expecting another passage, and stumble instead into a kitchen vast enough to feed a wedding. There is all this gleaming steel and those butcher-block islands and hanging copper, bright under the lights in a way that feels grotesque after the dim severity of the office.
It is wrong, all wrong, too open and yet somehow still a trap, because there is no front hall here, no visible exit, only counters and cabinets and startled staff, and you realize with a sick plunge of your stomach, that you have run yourself into a dead end dressed as luxury.
This is bad, this is so bad.
You stop abruptly, spinning around helplessly. The breath tears in and out of you like it is trying to escape without the rest of your body. The halls behind you are full of pounding footsteps, and you know it’s just one single set, but you also know it’s him.
He’s advancing and you can’t keep escaping.
A woman near the far counter goes still with a mixing bowl in her hands. Another man freezes by the sink with his hands in water. No one speaks. No one moves. The whole room seems to hold itself in suspension around your panic, everyone watching without watching, and then from somewhere behind you in the corridor comes Bucky’s voice sounds again, practically yelling your name—no confusion left now, only alertness, apprehension; and it punches you in the gut. It rings through you, through the kitchen, through the bright metal and tile and silence, and you know it has all been for nothing.
But before there is anything you can do, before the ground can open a portal for you to fall through, Bucky appears in the kitchen doorway, looking like an avalanche with a name. A big name. A dangerous name. A name that will be the end of you.
He doesn’t look raging in the obvious way, but he’s lost a bit of control. And for the man that he is, you don’t know how to survive it. And this intensity with which he came thundering after you is so extremely frightening because it looks expensive on him, tailored to fit, like one of his suits, like one of his watches, like all the impeccable and dangerous things he wears so naturally you once mistook them for elegance instead of that blaring warning sign they actually are.
Why just have you been so stupid, my god.
He’s totally got you wrapped around his finger—and dick, as embarrassing and daunting as it is—or you would have maybe been able to open your eyes for a second, you idiot.
But now they are open, wide, wide open, and you see him. You see him as the man he is. But maybe it’s a little too late now.
He stops the moment he sees you pressed half-backward against the dark island, sees the way your hands have come up slightly as if your body has decided on defense without consulting you, sees the wet shine gathering in your eyes, the terror you are no longer managing to powder over, and something happens to his face that is so brief and so devastating, but all you can do is stare at him so you see that clean strike of realization.
He doesn’t look confused anymore, and it makes him even more menacing.
He knows. He knows that you know. And he probably knows what he’s going to do to you now but you don’t know if you want to know that.
The air seems to cinch around you, seems to wrap itself around your throat, and squeezes. You can’t breathe. You don’t try to.
Bucky—James, your mind insists now with a sick recoil, James Buchanan Barnes, James Buchanan Barnes, biggest crime boss in the city—does not look away from you when he tilts his face to the staff. That, more than anything, makes your blood run strange. His attention stays fixed on you with a steadiness so absolute it feels like a physical thing, a hand at the back of your neck, while his voice turns toward everyone else in the room and comes out low and unquestionable. “Everyone out.”
His command is dropped into the kitchen and nobody argues. The immediate obedience of his people makes you visibly shudder.
A woman near the stove sets down a towel with trembling fingers. The man by the sink lowers his eyes and moves. Another staff member glances at you once with a quick look that seems almost guilty, almost pitying, and you feel the pulse of it pounding all around you, everywhere inside you.
Nobody looks at you too long, nobody does anything besides leaving the fucking room. They won’t meet your fear and they won’t step between it and the source. Nobody here belongs to themselves enough to choose you over him. But it’s clear that they don’t. They’re his people for a reason. Nobody here will be on your side, whatever happens.
A door swings. The kitchen empties in a matter of seconds, everyone slipping out with the furtive speed of people evacuating a room where something dangerous has just unsheathed itself. They leave with the scene in their eyes. They leave you with him. And the silence after the last one goes is so sudden it roars.
You take another step back and only feel the unhelpfully solid press of marble against your spine. There is nowhere else to go unless you want to climb onto the counter like a cornered animal, and for one hysterical beat of a second, the idea does not even seem ridiculous.
You keep your eyes on him because looking away feels somehow more chilling, but your gaze is frantic within that line of sight, darting to the side entrance, to the swinging service door, to the corridor beyond him, to windows that suddenly seem decorative rather than useful, to every possible seam in the room where escape might be hiding in miniature.
There is none. The whole kitchen gleams at you with pitiless order that’s just full of steel and stone and copper, knives in their block and pots all around.
He notices you looking, but you can’t care; all you have to care about is the distance between you and him, the distance between you and anything that might become escape if panic suddenly grew wings.
Could you run past him? Maybe, if he were anyone else. Maybe, if this were some ordinary man with ordinary reflexes and an ordinary body and an ordinary life.
But he is none of those things. You’re in this damn situation because he’s none of those things.
He fills the doorway without even trying. He stands there in the collectedness of his dark clothes and encroaching presence, looking at you as if he can hear your thoughts tripping over each other and your fear has turned you transparent.
His shadow has finally caught up to his skin and you now realize how dark it is.
Even if you got around him, where would you go? The front hall might as well be on another continent. Every corridor in this house has already left you stranded. There is no map in your mind now, only panic. No way out.
The knowledge gathers in your chest until it hurts. Behind your eyes, heat stings. Your throat tightens around a lump and only something choked leaves your lips.
And Bucky sees all of it. You keep trying to shrink back from him because his very outline has now become a threat, and it doesn’t make your situation better, but he already knows, so you don’t have to pretend anymore.
And his face alters. It’s as if the floor has given way under him. As if he had stepped expecting hard tiles and found air.
He does not advance. That should help. It does not. He stays where he is, one hand dropping slowly from the doorframe to his side, as if he understands that any sudden movement from him might send you straight through the nearest pane of glass.
There is a fervor to him now that feels different from the one you knew in bed, at dinner, in the soft-lit luxury of his attention. It has made you feel protected, loved, worshipped.
But there is no feeling of that anymore, none of that, because now it’s stripped of adornment, revealed as what it perhaps always was beneath all that heat and gentleness. It’s focus. Pure and frightening focus.
His eyes are on you in that unwavering, devastating way of his, but the expression in them is nothing easy. There is something dark in there, something grim and braced, something that knows a door has just slammed shut and is already calculating what can still be salvaged from the wreckage.
His mouth is set. His jaw is hard enough to cast shadows. He looks, absurdly, heartbreakingly, like a man who has been struck and is refusing to touch the bruise. But he stands, and he’s still so tall, much taller than you thought he could become, and he is not the man you thought you knew.
He stands there with his hands visible, shoulders squared but not aggressive, and the intensity in him is bridled.
His stare does not feel like a threat in the crude sense, but it’s so full of attention, too much attention, because total attention from a man like him is its own species of fear.
“Sweetheart.”
His voice has changed. It is calm but only in pretense. It is soft, technically, but not the way it was before. Before, his softness had warmth in it, a hand held out in the dark.
But this is lower. Straighter. It has gone cool around the edges. It’s not vicious or unkind in any sense, but your body clocks it instantly. It’s almost formal in its restraint, as though he’s speaking across the lip of something that’s close to breaking and he’s trying not to widen the crack.
And that nickname makes you want to let the tears fall. Whatever he tries to achieve by calling you that, it doesn’t work. It’s just torture how familiar he tries to make it sound.
His gaze falls in fast snaps over your face, your posture, your trembling hands. “This looks bad,” he concedes roughly. His throat works once before he continues. “I know it does. But it isn’t what you think it is.”
The words land in you and do nothing. They just sink. Sit there.
He studies your face, sees he has not reached you at all. “What did you see, baby? What has you—” He breaks off with a crack, shakes his head slowly, and lets out a shuddering breath, eyes still on you. “Tell me what you saw.”
What answer could you possibly give him?
That you are looking at his mouth and thinking of all the times it softened around your name, and your own mind keeps turning traitor and overlaying that tenderness with headlines, with whispers, with ravening rumor?
That the same voice which once coaxed and soothed now sounds capable of making rooms empty and men obey and whole situations forgotten? That the current version of his voice is a masterclass in control and it terrifies you to no end?
That his hands are hanging open at his sides, looking so damn human and ordinary, as though they’ve never done anything wrong?
Which is a lie, you now know, a lie that runs deep and leaves you scarred, because all you can think is that these bare hands are the same hands you’ve had under your chin, lifting your face to his, tucking hair behind your ear, buttoning you up against the cold, and you’ve had them gripping you tight in the dark, moving inside you until you couldn't breathe, wrecking you in the best way possible.
These hands were your favorite things.
But looking at them now, you picture what they are doing when you aren’t around. Doing the dirty work, the ugly work, the unspeakable work, hidden back in the blacked-out corners of a life he kept under lock and key.
Your throat feels too dry to talk and you stay quiet, letting the stillness in the room ripen, letting your lack of words and the fear in your eyes speak for themselves.
A hard, hollow tension knots his face, makes his jaw grind, and look as solid as a piece of rock. His hands ball into fists and when your eyes snap to them immediately, your body already flinching, he flexes them, but it seems forced. There is an almost brute rigidity to his throat, a silent scream of dread choked down only barely.
“What do you know?” he grits out through clenched teeth.
The question is gentle in shape and brutal in substance. It makes your stomach turn. Because it sounds like a test. It sounds like inventory. It sounds like the kind of thing a ruthless man would ask before deciding what to do with the damage.
You let your fingers grip the edge of the counter. You can’t answer him. All you can do is try to breathe. All you can do is stare at the exit behind him, and his body standing between it.
He draws in a slow breath, lets it out. “Look at me, Y/n. Please.”
You didn’t know some part of you would still obey, but you notice too late. Maybe it’s better this way. Your eyes lift fully to his.
And you can actually see the way he has lost his grip. It’s right there in his eyes. If you were to describe it you’d say it looks distraught. As if he’s lost, his entire biography that’s been neatly written on paper now ripped away and he can’t find the next line.
Judging by the way you act and look at him, he knows you know something, he just doesn't know what, and the mystery is eating him alive. Just for one disorienting second he doesn’t look that much like this untouchable figure from all those disturbing rumors, but rather like a simple man who knows that if he tries to force his way out of this, he’s just confirming your worst fears about him.
“My name,” he starts with a little hesitance. The gravelly low timbre of his voice makes you shudder, “is James Buchanan Barnes.”
Something in your face gives you away.
You feel it the moment it happens. Some tiny involuntary flinch. Some helpless widening.
Because something crosses his expression, his throat bobs hard enough to show that everything inside him is suddenly in pieces.
He sees that the name is not new to you. He sees that you are already standing several steps ahead of where he hoped this conversation was.
He goes very still.
“You knew that already,” he acknowledges, and it almost hurts how he tries to sound calm about it all.
Your mouth is dry. Your whole body feels like a struck match. You let out a pitiful small breath.
He takes one careful step forward, and it’s not really a step, not even truly an advance, but you recoil so sharply, you ram your whole body against the wall of marble behind you. Your back stings, but your eyes sting more.
His face changes with your reaction, something like pain flashing through the severe framework of him before he reins it back in.
“How?” he asks, and he’s no longer trying for calm. He ducks his head, pleading eyes on you, and he speaks with a wounded quiet. “Sweetheart, how did you find out?”
Your throat works around the answer. “Your tags.” It comes out so faint it is almost nothing, just a shaking breath that accidentally caught a few letters on the way out.
For a second he shuts his eyes. For just one cut of time.
His head tips back the slightest amount, and he deflates. A breath of air leaves him in a hitching, rattling shudder, like he’s finally run out of things to hold onto.
He looks back at you and seems briefly at a loss. James Buchanan Barnes, man of closed doors and fixed outcomes, with no ready sentence in his hands.
It is strange and unnerving and it makes you talk more, bracing for him to yell and threaten and turn cold.
“And,” you whisper, voice wobbling and blundering around in your mouth, “there was a gun.“
You want to explain, want to urge that you didn’t mean to find it, didn’t mean to come across anything at all. You want him to know you would like to dump your eyes in a container of white paint so your vision is a blank canvas and you can color it with other pictures, but it’s too late, and your words already seem to break across him, differently.
He does not move at first. He almost flinches, but catches it halfway, as if his body forgot for a moment to be disciplined.
His eyes stay on you, and all that’s in there are things you’ve never seen in him before. Or in anyone, really. It is a stricken grief, resulting from the way every new piece of your fear is arriving inside him one by one and finding purchase.
He looks at you like he can see the exact route your mind took from one discovery to the next, and hates every mile of it.
“Baby, I—” he croaks, having to pause. Instead, he starts toward you again, even slower this time, palms open a little, perhaps meaning only to soothe, perhaps meaning only to be nearer, but simply more trepidation triggers in you before thought can intervene. “Please listen to me—”
Your gaze snags on the knife block.
The sleek black handles. The bright clean suggestion of defense. It’s without thought that you run to grab one.
It is graceless and frantic and you don’t brandish it like someone brave in a film. You don’t know how to do this well enough for that and you don’t have the nerve to think about it.
Your hand shakes around the handle almost immediately, and you pull it close to your chest, because fighting this vile man would be ludicrous considering who he is and who you are, knife or not, but you use it to protect yourself with the mere fact of holding something sharp. Hopeful that this thing will keep your horror from spilling out of your body altogether.
The blade catches the light and makes it meaner. You hate that you have done this. You hate more that you had to.
Bucky stops dead.
The whole room seems to stop with him.
His eyes go first to the knife, then back to your face, and what crosses his expression then is so nakedly agonizing it is difficult to bear.
Because he sees that you are not trying to threaten him, unlike how someone in danger might.
You are not foolish enough to think a kitchen knife turns you into his equal. You are holding it because your body needs one small fiction to survive on—the fiction that you are not entirely empty-handed in a room with a man who could ruin you if he chose to. The fiction that you still belong, in some tiny harrowed way, to yourself.
“Hey,” he says, and his voice cracks clean through the middle of the word.
You have never heard that happen to him before. Never heard his composure split like badly fired glass.
His stare stays locked on yours, but now there is no distance in it, no coolness, no stranger’s cadence. Just a visceral, human ache. “Hey,” he says again, softer, but it sounds so incredibly heavy. It’s the way you’d talk to someone who’s just woken up from a nightmare and doesn't know where they are yet. “I’m— I’m not going to hurt you.”
Your grip tightens. The knife trembles visibly. “Don’t come closer.”
He stops breathing for half a beat and nods slowly.
“Okay.” The word is a single rasp. “I won’t.” He swallows. You see the muscle move hard in his throat. “I won’t come any closer.”
You cannot stop shaking, no matter how hard you try, because a man with his power shouldn’t see you be so obviously afraid, but there is nothing you can do.
“Please believe me, sweetheart, when I say that I never intended to hurt you,” he swears, and there is no command in him now, none of that cold-sounding authority from a moment ago when he emptied the room with few syllables.
This is worse, in its own way. This undone version of him, this man trying to hold himself very still because the sight of you recoiling has clearly perturbed something structural inside him. “I have a thousand sins on my head, and it’s no use to claim otherwise now,” he speaks with a vulnerability in his tone that washes past you. “I’ve done a lot of things I can’t take back, but hurting you was never on the table. Okay? It was never even a possibility. You were supposed to be the only thing I didn’t ruin,” he ends with a lacerated wince.
You stare at him and have no idea how you can understand anything at all.
The knife handle bites into your palm. Your chest rises and falls too fast. The kitchen is suddenly too loud with all that humming of the refrigerator, the lights, the distant bloodstream of the mansion; and in the center of it all he stands facing you with that wrecked look in his eyes, as if your fear is not merely inconvenient to him but unbearable, and he’d rather be struck than watched this way by you.
And in a world that wasn't currently collapsing, maybe you’d actually care, maybe you’d actually notice how he would take a bullet to the chest just to stop you from flinching, but all you can think is that you are standing in the house of James Buchanan Barnes, with a knife against your own ribs as much as against him, and the man looking at you like heartbreak has found him at last is still the same man the city says should never be underestimated.
It’s so silent all of a sudden that the kitchen seems to be held in a trance. It feels as if there is a vacuum pressing against the walls and now the molecules of the room are terrified to touch the mess of what’s happening.
The last bit of help you could have possibly still leaned on due to your desperation has vanished, echoes of footsteps now pull back into the depths of this mansion.
The overheads feel hostile, throwing down a flat glare that skims over the stainless steel and floorboards with an inert eye.
And centered in that manufactured peace is him.
James Buchanan Barnes.
The name has already erupted once inside your chest, but it keeps echoing, reverberating through your bones in smaller aftershocks. It feels strange to attach it to the man standing in front of you, when his hands have mapped every part of you—right to the most intimate ones—you’ve come to recognize his voice even in half-sleep and his laugh once wound through the cage of your ribs, vibrating against the bone until you couldn't tell its rhythm from your own heartbeat.
It feels like a wronged ownership. It feels like a glitch, an error in the logic of the world, but who are you to find a way out of it. Surrounded by him, in a mansion that is now suddenly as big as the world itself.
But you see it now. And god, it’s so painfully clear. So agonizingly obvious.
You were delusional, you know that. It’s what hurts so terribly bad. You know exactly how this looks to anyone else. After all, this all started with you dating a guy for over a month and not even knowing his actual, legal name. But when you’re used to being nobody, a little bit of hyper-focused attention feels like a drug. He looked at you as if you were the only person in the room, and you would get this tight, anxious knot in your throat, thinking don’t ruin this. Asking for a last name or a background check felt like a quick way to feel high-maintenance, and you didn’t want to give him a reason to feel uncomfortable and walk away.
It was a habit born of pure insecurity, being so grateful for the crumbs of love that you don’t dare ask who’s baking the bread. He must have picked up on that on day one. He must have realized right away that as long as he kept making you feel special, you’d keep your mouth shut and let him stay hidden.
He used your loneliness, your blind spots. You were so desperately hoping to be seen, that you fell for the most obvious trap. And it’s your own fault, really. But it still makes you feel completely hollow, like someone scooped the air right out of your lungs with a cold spoon.
Now you have to live with the shame of that mistake.
Your jaw aches from clenching it, trying to swallow down the urge to throw up right there on the kitchen floor.
His presence alone seems to pull at the corners of the ceiling, dragging it down to squash you like a grape. He anchors the room to his foundation, consumes it with all he has, and tracks you with a pinpoint focus that has you shivering and sweating, because his gaze is treating the harsh thudding of your pulse as more vital than the massive, blood-stained kingdom currently cooling its heels on the other side of the door.
The roar in your ears turns outwards, seemingly engulfing the whole room with your panicked pulse. Your vision narrows down until the room stops spinning, and for the first time, you actually feel the air in the kitchen
And in the quiet, your awareness gives you the alarm that there is still something jarringly chilling resting just above your heart. It takes you a moment to realize it’s something physical. There is a weight there that now suddenly feels so deeply misplaced.
Your hand moves on its own, your fingers lifting toward your throat to find the source of that cold, sinister pressure.
The tips of your fingers brush pearls.
And for a moment, you stay frozen there, grazing the smooth curve of one luminous bead where the necklace drapes across your throat.
It once made you smile, had your shoulders drop in ease when you made contact with this present of Bucky. But it no longer feels like a present at all, it feels like a bribe, a hook, a trap because its ultimate purpose surely wasn’t meant as a gift but rather to restrict your freedom and keep you bound to him.
This necklace, these shiny pearls, they aren’t about you. Honestly, you don’t think anything is about you. It never was. It’s just a reflection of what he wants you to be, confining you in his version of your identity.
He manipulated you and stole you and wanted to make you believe you’re the luckiest damn girl in the world.
And you had been. But now you’re just the stupidest.
And you keep on being, because your mind just continues jumping back to the evening he gave it to you, how it felt so soft and intimate, something chosen carefully and fastened around your neck with that glint of pride that lived in Bucky’s eyes. And you want to cry and break down at the way he stood there in front of you so awkwardly with the luxurious velvet box in his hand like it was something far more serious than jewelry. The way his voice had gone rough when he said he saw them and thought of you.
And now, sitting against your collarbone all cold, these are no longer gems, but tiny hooks sinking deeper into your skin, reminding you with every little sting, that you walked into this prison willingly.
You let James Buchanan Barnes clasp it around your neck. The man whose name crawls across newspapers like a stain. The man whose stories carry blood and conspiracies and savagery in their wake.
Somehow you manage to close your fingers around the strand despite of their shakiness.
Across the kitchen, Bucky’s gaze drops to your hand the moment it moves.
The necklace feels impossibly smooth beneath your touch, each pearl round and shining like a row of innocent little moons.
A gift.
From a man you didn’t know.
Or maybe a man you knew too well, just not in the way the world did.
Your throat feels hot suddenly and you know it's the cursed pearls burning holes there, pressing into your pulse with every overwhelmed beat of your heart.
You cannot stand it.
Your fingers curl harder.
Bucky's gaze snaps up to your face, then quickly back to your hands, and then he goes still. But still in the way of an animal that sensed the crack of a branch in the forest. Every line of him tightens in subtle increments, his shoulders locking, his breathing halting so abruptly you see the pause ruffle through his chest.
He knows what your heart doesn’t yet.
His attention sharpens and his eyes grow wide. It almost seems like he’s about to move toward you.
“Hey—” he starts softly, though the word is unfinished, frail, fearing the direction your thoughts are taking.
But your brain is no longer interested in choosing to make decisions carefully.
The necklace feels oppressive, every inch of it tied to a truth you did not have when he first placed it there, and so you can’t think or react any differently.
Your hand jerks in one swift motion just as Bucky releases a desperate choking sound.
The strand snaps free from your neck with a sharp little noise, like a thread breaking under too much strain, and now the pearls explode outward from your hand and scatter across the kitchen floor like a sudden spill of tiny white stars. They strike the tile with a bright, haphazard clatter that echoes far too loudly in the empty room.
tik—tik—tik—tik—
Some bounce high, ricocheting against cabinet legs. Others roll wildly across the floor, spinning in spasmodic circles before coming to a stop beneath stainless steel counters and chair legs.
The sound fills the kitchen in poignant, crystalline bursts.
A rain of little impacts.
A beautiful mess.
For a second you don’t even breathe.
You just stare at them—those small, perfect pearls—rolling farther and farther away from each other, punctuating the heartbreak in the air.
Across from you, Bucky doesn’t move. Something is breaking across his face. His breath leaves him in a soft, stunned exhale, and all he can do is stare with his eyes unguarded. It startles you.
He takes a step back. Not a deliberate one. More like his body forgot the floor was there. His boot slides half a pace behind him as though the sound of those pearls hitting the tile physically pushed him away from you.
His mouth parts.
For a moment he looks like he cannot quite process what he just witnessed.
His eyes—those confident, storm-colored eyes that usually hold such controlled intensity—have widened in a way you have never seen before. It doesn’t seem to look like anger, or anything like it.
It looks like hurt. Pure, unhidden hurt.
His gaze falls to the floor, tracking the scattered pearls skittering across the kitchen tiles, watching them roll away from where you stand with that look in his eyes that says he never wished to see them destroyed.
Then his eyes return to you. Slowly. And the expression there is devastating.
Because it is not rage.
It is not even disappointment.
It is heartbreak so unexpected and unfiltered it seems to hollow his chest from the inside.
His jaw tightens as if he tries to speak, but no words come immediately. The muscles along his throat move with a hard swallow, his chest rising and falling once in a slow, unsteady breath.
You realize then that he is looking at your bare throat.
The place where the necklace used to rest, and he stares at the place with sullen eyes.
Then his eyes lift again, meeting yours, and they are still wide, still aching.
For the first time since you’ve known him, Bucky Barnes looks like a man who has just watched something precious fall apart in his hands and realized too late that he cannot gather the pieces fast enough to put it back together.
And in the bright, echoing kitchen, the last pearl finishes rolling.
Tick.
Then silence returns, and your dread turns harrowing and now Bucky doesn’t seem to know where to put his hands, which is such a small, irrational thing to notice in the middle of your terror and yet your mind notices it anyway, because this is a man who has always seemed like a structure that was built out of conviction, who has been a straight line for you to follow in your world of scribbles, a man who enters every room as though the room had the good sense to expect him, and now he stands before you with your fear pointed at him in the shape of a kitchen knife and looks, inarguably, like he has been shoved off-script and dropped into the crack that formed in his foundation and now he is walled in by the very bricks he laid.
His eyes stay on your face, then the knife, then your face again, careful, heartbroken, alert in that frighteningly intense way of his, and you feel yourself shiver as he is tracking every tremor in your fingers, every drag of your breath, every microscopic shift in your balance in case you bolt again or collapse or cut yourself by accident on the trembling edge of your own panic.
“What you think you know about me,” he starts, and his voice is lower now, roughened at the seams, “what you’ve heard… what people say, it isn’t the whole truth. It isn’t even most of it.”
You barely hear the words. They hit the air and fall uselessly to the floor. Because what else would a man like him say, standing in a cathedral-sized kitchen in a house full of people who obey him before he finishes speaking, after you found the gun and the tags and the name that can turn a city’s rumor mill rabid by itself?
No matter what he says, no matter that he looks so unbelievably shattered—the shape of him is wrong now. That is what your body keeps insisting on. Wrong in the doorway, wrong under these lights, wrong with that caution and that gentleness still trying to live in his face as if it is genuine. You cannot make him fit into one meaning anymore. He is split down the middle in your mind—tender and terrible, gentle and catastrophic—and the fracture is making noise inside you.
He takes a breath, slow, as if he is trying not to startle you even with the sound of his lungs working. “I know how this looks.”
A cough breaks in your throat, or maybe it's a huff or a wet laugh, or whatever, but it hurts coming up and out of your throat. Your hand shakes so badly the knife glints in nervous little flashes. “You used me.”
The sentence leaves you wheezy and small and much too true-feeling inside your own head. But they are out, and you take a whimpering breath, and two tears fall. They don’t arrive elegantly, and they sure as hell don’t spill subtly. They feel hot and you feel humiliated and betrayed, so deeply betrayed, and you hate that they are coming in front of him, giving him the satisfaction because your body is not able to choose a fight, to give you steel and armor and an exit and a miracle. All it can provide you with is dread and tears, and a terribly shaking kitchen knife in your unpractical hands. Your whole body has become an argument against calm and there is nothing you can do.
His face changes so sharply it is almost like watching a flame twist drastically in wind.
“No,” he gets out quickly, and his voice trips over itself. It is denial stripped to the bone. Pure and cruel because he’s genuinely the greatest actor on earth. “No,” he chokes out again, softer and somehow more desperate. “No, no, I— It's not— I never—” He swallows, the line of his throat moving hard. He looks like he is about to walk barefoot through broken glass without letting you see the blood. “You matter to me. You— God, shit, that doesn’t even come close to—”
“Stop,” you whimper while a fresh tear slips down. You shake your head because the words feel obscene now, feel almost insulting in their tenderness, like someone laying roses on a crime scene.
“I’m not pretending.”
“Stop.”
His jaw flexes. He looks toward the ceiling for half a second, and it seems like he is trying to gather language before it deserts him entirely, and when his gaze comes back to you there is something naked in it, something grim and pleading and painfully real. He seems to grope for something that keeps him standing.
“I wanted to tell you,” he despairs, voice scratchy. “I was going to.”
You stare at him through your blurred vision. Every instinct in you rejects the sentence on impact. It sounds nonsensical. The knife quivers against your chest with each breath you are somehow able to take, but they are shuddering.
“When?” you choke out. “After what? After I was stupid enough? After I—”
“No.” He takes a step before remembering himself and stopping immediately, hands opening at his sides. “No. When it was safe.”
The word safe almost makes you laugh, except there is nothing funny left in you.
He hears how deranged it sounds in this room, and grief moves across his face in one dark, swift shadow. “Listen to me,” he presses, and his voice cracks, stripped of that expensive control he wears so well. “I know this life is ugly from the outside. I know what my name sounds like to people. I know what kind of stories get told. I knew if I handed you all of it too soon, all at once, you’d run before you ever had the chance to know what was real.”
Your tears keep coming and you don’t have it in you to wipe them away. You fear your heart won’t ever be able to unclench again after this day. If you even make it out of here. “So you thought you’d just let me” —fall in love first— “into your life the way you did?”
He closes his eyes, and you know the sentence hit exactly where it meant to. When he looks at you again there is nothing smooth or seamless about him, and you have never seen him this way. Because you have never really known him. He is no longer buttoned-up and bulletproof. He honestly looks about ready to be hit in the heart one final, fatal time. “I thought I would give you time,” he supplicates quietly, voice husky. “I thought I would let you know me before the rest of it ruined everything.” The breath that follows his words sounds full of sorrow and a deeply seated regret. “Which it seems like it has.”
Yes, it has. Yes, he ruined it. But would you have felt any other way if you found out another way? In another setting, maybe while you were tangled in the sheets together, or while he was holding your hands? You don’t know because it didn’t happen that way and you found out the way you did and now the world is upside down and all wrong-angled, and your mind is spinning in a room with no corners, completely unanchored by a lie you never saw coming, or maybe you have, because a guy like him couldn’t ever want a girl like you, and perhaps first and foremost you’re just mad at yourself.
Your throat has gone tight with crying, with fear, with the dizzying effort of keeping your body upright when your whole nervous system is trying to flee in eight directions at once. He sees you struggling and looks halfway to moving again, then stops himself so hard the restraint shows all over him.
“I’m a patient man,” he keeps going, and you just want to run past him, out of this hell. You don’t hear how there is no pride in his voice, no menace, just a worn sort of honesty, as if this is the one truth he can still offer without it breaking on impact. “I would have waited. As long as I needed to. I was waiting for the right moment, for when you felt safe with me, for when I knew you wouldn’t hear my name and only hear every lie this city tells itself at night.” His voice lowers further. “For when you loved me enough to at least stay in the room while I explained.”
You blink at him as if he has said something in a language your body no longer speaks.
And then, because this nightmare apparently still has room to worsen, he says, very softly, “Because I love you.”
All you can do is stare at this stranger, and it feels like you are looking at him through a broken window.
It is not the first time he has said it, not at all, and you had loved how he had no shame in telling you, how he pressed those very words into your skin night after night, even this early into your relationship.
Gosh, you had cherished it, fallen deeper for him because of it, and now you know it's all been part of his manipulation. So what else should it be now. But at the same time—why should he still be saying it? How can he still say that? How can he say that now, after all of this, after you know who he is, after the room has filled with the bomb of revelation? What kind of man says I love you while being the very thing you are trying to escape from?
You don’t understand him. You have no clue about who this man is and it is making your hands sweat around the handle. You don’t understand how his eyes can look this shattered, how his voice can sound this human, how his face can hold this much pain and still belong to James Buchanan Barnes.
The knife is still trembling against your chest. Your arm aches from holding it so tightly. The tears keep slipping down no matter how furiously you blink. He stands there with grief in his eyes and power in every line of his body, and both things are true at once, and both things are hurting worse because no single version of him will stay still long enough to be hated cleanly.
“I was going to ease you into it,” he explains achingly, as if confession has broken loose now and cannot be coaxed back in. “Slowly. Over time. I was going to tell you what I could, when I could, and let you decide what to do with it piece by piece. I was never going to throw you into the deep end and watch you drown in it.” His throat works. “Y/n, I’m so fucking sorry you had to find out like this.”
But you are not really listening anymore. Or rather, you hear every word and none of them settle. They clatter against your panic and bounce off immediately only to land in a repressed corner of your mind.
Because maybe he means them. Maybe that is the tragedy of it. Maybe he means every single inconceivable word. But meaning them does not open the door. Meaning them does not make this house less of a trap or his name less of a threat or your pulse any less palpitating in your throat. Meaning them does not undo the gun, the tags, the scathingly smooth way everyone in this place disappears when he tells them to. Meaning them does not turn James Buchanan Barnes back into only Bucky, back into the man whose shirt you wanted to pull on because it smelled like him.
All you need now is a way out.
You don’t want justice, or answers, or even the damn truth. You just want a way out of this. You want to get the hell away from him and everything that smells and looks like him. And the room starts reorganizing itself around that instinct. The service door behind him. The hallway to the left. The distance to the far counter. Whether he is standing on the balls of his feet or flat. Whether the island might slow him for a second. Whether dropping the knife would help or harm you. Whether there is any point at all in planning when this is his house, his kingdom, his maze, and you are just a girl crying in the center of it with shaking hands and nowhere good to go.
He sees your eyes move and something in his face folds inward with understanding, with woe, with the excruciating knowledge that while he is pouring his heart out in rough little pieces, all you are doing is looking for exits. He looks completely emptied out, as if his ribs had been pried open and the only soft part of him had been torn away.
“Baby—” And now he just sounds pleading. But he doesn’t get the chance to keep on going with his drama.
The kitchen ignites with noise before you even understand what you are hearing. There was just you with your messy breathing and Bucky standing a few feet away with that awfully gutted look on his face and then the door slams open so hard the plaster cracks and the sound ricochets against your nervous system.
A crowd of men comes flooding through the opening, like a breach in a dam, so fast and threatening and all of them primed for dirtier work than anyone should ever have to do. The floor shudders under their hard slam of boots. Nobody hesitates and nobody asks questions. They all just move on some sick instinct, weapons out and raised in the space of a single heartbeat.
And now all of them are pointed at you.
The sound that hitches in your throat is not at all dignified or brave. You wish you could stare at the end of your life with at least a small sense of bravery, but it doesn’t seem like it. Every weapon these uniformed men hold is fixed on your ribs, your throat, your eyes, and the paring knife you are gripping feels pathetic. It is a useless piece of household metal against a wall of black iron, against men who don’t care that you are small and fearful.
Even so, your knuckles go numb around the handle from how hard you are gripping it. Your fingers lock up, your skin flashing from freezing cold to scorching hot while your heart thrashes against your ribs.
You think, irrationally, that this is how it happens then. There is no big speech, no lightning strike from the sky. It is just going to happen here on the linoleum, next to a bowl of apples on the counter, and a row of clean water glasses that are catching the light of the kitchen while strangers decide to put bullets in you.
Bucky pivots.
It happens so quickly it feels supernatural, like a weather change, like the room altering under the weight of him. He steps in front of you without quite blocking you, but enough that every single man in that doorway seems to remember all at once who exactly they have just disobeyed.
His expression does not merely harden; it shears. Whatever softness had remained in his face a moment ago is gone so completely it is frightening, scraped away until all that remains is authority in its most lethal form.
You feel fused to the counter behind you. You wish you would be.
He fixes his stare on his men and his eyes become glacial, pale and freezing, incandescent with a fury that somehow feels far more menacing than an outburst. He speaks, and the volume is so low that the room has to go completely breathless to catch it.
“Guns down.”
The response isn’t fast enough. No one moves quickly enough. One of the guards hesitates—just a fraction, just long enough to die for it in any other circumstance—and Bucky’s gaze lands on him so heavily, it’s as if he is deciding where to leave the body.
“I said,” he repeats, and his voice comes out with a rough friction, stripped of any emotion except the promise to do harm, “if any one of you ever points a weapon at my girl again, I’ll put you in the ground myself and make sure nobody bothers digging you back up. Do you understand me?”
His words are deadly. It doesn’t even sound like he’s acting at all, he just sounds absolutely lethal. He talks as though he has already buried people before and wouldn’t think twice about doing it again.
Around you, the momentum of the raid falters. The guards look genuinely unnerved, expressions switching so quickly between shame, panic, and obedience in ugly little flashes. Guns lower and now point toward the floorboards. A muted apology gets muttered into the silence and some of them take a step back. But it is too late, far too late, because the last thread inside you has already snapped, and your body no longer cares about reason.
You run.
There is no time for anything else; you simply hurl yourself at the nearest gap in the room, toward the delusive hope of open space, of slipping between bodies, of somehow becoming smoke, becoming speed, becoming anything but this cornered and shaking thing inside your own skin.
You aim for the narrow corridor between Bucky and the island counter, convinced by sheer panic that if you can just get past him this once, just this once, the house might cleft and let you go. Your shoulder twists, your breath catches, your feet slip against tile and then catch again, and the world blurs into motion and noise and the blood-bright animal need to escape.
But Bucky is faster.
His arms hook around your waist in one brutal, seamless movement, and it yanks you backward before you’ve even made it past his shoulder. Suddenly you are no longer running, your feet lose the air, leaving you floating for half a heartbeat, before you are driven hard into the breadth and heat of his chest.
The cry you let out this time actually tears your throat. You thrash on instinct, your body fighting him with the full deranged force of your mind freaking out, and somewhere in that struggle your hand jerks.
The knife you have been using as a means of senseless protection, hits resistance. It slides cleanly, sinking into skin and it makes you gasp sharply, your lungs suddenly jamming. It’s not your skin.
The blade has opened a shallow red line across his forearm.
And that’s gotta be it. You’re now totally and completely fucked.
The knife drops from your hand and clatters to the floor.
For one aghast second you stare at the bead of red welling against his skin, bright as a neon sign, and horror crashes through you so adamantly it almost eclipses your fear.
But Bucky does not let go. He does not even flinch properly or draw back his arms. His wounded arm stiffens only enough to keep you from pitching forward, his other hand coming up to cradle the back of your head, not pinning now so much as containing, as if he is trying to physically keep something from breaking apart right there in his grip.
He seemingly is completely blind to his own bleeding skin, as if the knife you were holding was never a danger to his life and only a threat to yours. Even with his blood on the floorboards, his only instinct is to pull you deeper into his chest.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he calls, and the transformation in his voice makes your head spin, because the man who just threatened death into a roomful of armed soldiers is gone again, folded away, leaving only this hoarse, pleading tenderness that feels almost more agonizing. His mouth is at your temple, right at your hairline, his breath gasping against your skin. “Baby, baby, stop. Please—please, don’t do this, you’re gonna hurt yourself.”
You fight him anyway because your body refuses to do anything else. Your hands shove uselessly at his chest, your shoulders wrench, your whole body convulses with the effort of getting free. But he is built like a locked gate, and every single push only burns through the last of your energy. Tears pour hot and shamefully down your face. Your lungs burn. The room swims at the edges. Somewhere nearby, boots shuffle, and Bucky snarls over your head without releasing you.
“Out.”
It is one word, but every person in the kitchen obeys it instantly. You hear the kitchen staff backing away, hear the door open and shut, feel the room empty until there is no one left but you and him and the sound of your own sobbing.
Bucky’s hold eases just a fraction, softening the pressure so you can actually draw in air even if inhaling right now feels like swallowing water. He presses his cheek against your hair for one heavy second, and when he speaks again his voice is breaking in places you have never heard it break before.
“Listen to me,” he murmurs, each word roughened by strain, by remorse, by something that sounds so heartbreakingly sincere you almost hate him for it. “Hear me out, sweetheart, please. I got you. I got you. Nobody’s gonna touch you, nobody’s gonna lay a hand on you. I won’t! I would never. You hear me? You’re safe.”
Safe.
The word is a total deformity. It is so grotesque in this moment you could probably laugh, except it comes out as a broken cry instead.
You feel the way his body tenses around the sound, how it seems to travel straight through him with his heart as the target. He bows his head, his lips brushing your temple by accident or desperation, you cannot tell which.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and now there is nothing controlled left in him, no command, no careful poise, only a man fraying in real time. “Jesus Christ, I’m so sorry. I wanted you to know, doll, I did, just—not like this. Fuck, not like this. You mean everything to me. You gotta believe that. You are everything.”
You shake your head against his chest, small and uncoordinated, feeling spent. You do not know whether you are denying him, begging him, or simply coming apart. His shirt is damp beneath your face now, whether from your tears or the sweat chilled over your skin or the blood from his arm, whatever it is, it feels symbolic somehow—one more blurred line in a night made of them.
“I wasn’t gonna let anybody hurt you,” he whispers, and even that seems to drag through his throat, hitting the walls of it. “Nobody would ever be able to hurt you. Especially me, my love, especially me! I swear to God.” His forehead grinds into yours until you can taste the heat of his skin. “I’m still the same guy who kissed you this morning. I don't care if I’m a monster to the rest of the world, but not to you, sweetheart, please not to you. I would never—god, I would cut my own hands off before I ever used them to hurt you. You have to believe me, darling, please!”
But your body no longer knows the language of swearing, or soothing, or reason. Your muscles don’t translate his pleading into safety. Your body only knows that he is stronger than you, and that the arms holding you are the same arms that can dismantle a life without raising his pulse. The palm mapped so carefully across the curve of your head is the exact same hand that commands a firing squad, directs the local precincts, and seals fates with a slight tilt of his chin.
Every touch from him now delivers a repulsive duality—a rescue that feels like an arrest, a stroke that resembles a chokehold, an overwhelming affection that wears the exact outline of a cell.
You can feel how easy this is for him, how negligible his effort is in keeping you contained even while he tries his best to appear harmless. That insulting fact finally starves out the last bit of resistance left in your veins. Your nervous system runs out of fuel, leaving your body to go completely toothless against his chest, without actually surrendering or any returning trust. Your body is simply done.
Your fingers drop their useless leverage against his chest, your joints go limp and your knees refuse to carry your weight anymore.
You sag in his hold all at once. The sobs keep coming, but weaker now, thinning out, scraping instead of breaking. Bucky feels the change immediately. His grip loosens just enough to become support instead of restraint, his palm rubbing between your shoulder blades in one of those soothing motions you used to love so much and it makes your chest ache with a fresh wave of grief.
“That’s it,” he coos, though his voice sounds completely mangled by the words. “That’s it, honey. I know. I know.”
You don’t know what he means by that. You’re not sure he does either. Perhaps he simply recognizes that your stamina has bottomed out, that even the sharpest panic has its boundaries, and that the rush of survival instincts always burns hot and fast, leaving behind this full-body collapse.
He holds your dead weight upright anyway. He keeps murmuring into your hair but it doesn’t glue your broken pieces back together or erase the reality of what he is, what this fortress hides, and what you stumbled into. His sliced arm stays locked around your waist. You can feel the sticky warmth of his blood soaking through your clothes. It is startlingly human, and it should probably make him look less like a monster, the simple fact that he can bleed. But it makes every detail about your situation so real and dreadful.
When your body finally ceases its rebellion entirely, it isn't an act of submission. It is pure depletion.
And Bucky, keeping you pinned against the wall of his chest, seems to grasp that exhaustion better than anyone else could. His lungs expand and contract in uneven hitching motions. He drops his chin heavily onto the crown of your head. He closes you in not like a conqueror taking a prize but like a man trying, too late, to keep a catastrophe from widening under his hands.
Beyond the kitchen threshold, the entire estate drops into a dead, listening sort of silence, as if the plaster and timber have cocked an ear to the room.
He keeps holding you as if you are something he has no right to touch anymore and still cannot seem to make himself release, and it’s crazy that even like this, even with your body rigid from all the things you have learned too quickly and too late, he is still somehow heartbreakingly careful, his hand spread wide and warm between your shoulder blades, his hold immovable but never bruising, his mouth close to your temple as though he cannot bear to put distance between you if distance means losing you for good.
It is all just so utterly confusing because this is not entirely what you had expected would happen.
“The way you looked at me,” he continues, and his voice comes out rough as gravel dragged through water, ruined by restraint, by panic, by the sheer effort of trying not to frighten you further with the depth of what is in him. He does not sound like the man in the hallway, not like the man who commands rooms into silence with a glance, not like the man whose name can make other people blanch and step backward and say yes, sir, with their pulse all up in their throats. He sounds flayed open. He sounds like the sight of your fear has gone into him like shrapnel and lodged somewhere vital. “The way you looked at me in there—” He stops, breathes in shallowly, like he has run straight into a blade and is trying not to lean on it harder. “Christ. I’ve taken bullets that didn’t hit like that. To have you look at me like I’m something you need to survive.”
Your face is turned into his chest, your tears soaking through the expensive dark fabric of his shirt, and still your whole body is listening against your will, because his voice is all around you now, low and urgent and splintering in places that make something cold move through you.
His hand slides back up the back of your head, not forcing, only cradling, his fingers threading carefully into your hair as though the gesture itself aches. When he speaks again, there is something almost disbelieving in him, some stunned grief that does not seem feigned, cannot possibly be feigned for this long without becoming madness.
“If I could do it over, I would do every goddamn thing different,” he breathes brokenhearted. “Every part of it. I would tell you sooner. I’d tell you cleaner. Shit, I should’ve just told you. I should’ve given it to you straight before it got this messy and before you had to figure it out by yourself and piece me together out of all the worst parts with nobody there to shield you. I would have died before I let it happen like this. I swear.” He swallows hard enough that you feel it where your cheek presses near his sternum.
The kitchen is too bright and everything is stinging so harshly with those clean counters, the severe gleam of copper pans above the island, the neat little arrangement of knives in their block where one slot is now empty, the overhead lights turning everything brutally visible.
There is nowhere for your agony to hide. It shivers right out in the open, lives in the tightness of your lungs and the salt on your mouth, and the fact that every soft word from him only makes the unreality of this more baffling. Because he sounds sincere. He sounds devastated. He sounds like a man speaking over the body of something precious he helped kill.
He says all of this like he’s offering you his throat, while all around you the evidence of his power still glints and twinkles from every glazed surface, every distant footstep, every forced silence in a house built to keep his secrets and carry out his will.
He is talking with all the gentleness he has. He is nearly breaking with it. And still, inside you, fear sits and it pants and it is unconvinced, because love does not make a cage less locked simply because the hands closing it are shaking.
You make a small sound then—not a word, not even close, just some thin and wrecked little fracture of breath—and he tightens around you reflexively, then instantly checks himself, as if terrified you will read force into even that involuntary movement.
His next words come faster, crowding each other, not panicked exactly but pressed by urgency, by the sense that you are slipping through his hands even while he is still physically holding you.
“I know what I am.” He breaks off again, and this time you feel the tremor that runs through him. “I know what kind of man I’ve been, what people say about me, what they’re right about. I know exactly what it looks like from where you’re standing.” His voice goes raw. “But, darling, I never meant for you to be afraid of me. This was never supposed to happen.”
The words enter you but you just don’t know where to store them. There is something so naked in the way he says them that your mind keeps tripping over it, keeps trying and failing to fit it beside the other truth—the guns, the guards, the coldness in his authority, the name that belongs in whispers, the empire standing tall all around you in all its obedience. Or maybe it’s just loyalty. Respect? What even is it?
It’s hard to acknowledge that he still sounds like himself. James or Bucky, the man who kissed sleep into your skin and tucked blankets around your legs and pressed absent-minded kisses to your shoulder while reading beside you in bed still exists inside this other, larger, more terrible man. He has not vanished cleanly enough to make your fear simple. You give a small whimper.
“I was selfish,” he rasps, and now the confession lands without defense. “That’s the truth. I was selfish as hell. Because I wanted you anyway. I wanted you even knowing I should’ve stayed away from you. I know I should’ve left you out of all this. A girl like you deserves something clean and safe, and I’m neither of those things. I knew that. Fuck, I knew that. And it’s been killing me. I let myself have you and it’s been so fucking selfish.”
His breath hitches around the last word, and the grief in it is so unexpectedly torturous it almost makes you nauseous. His forehead lowers for a second against your hair, and he scarily looks so weary, suddenly too full of feeling to carry it elegantly.
“Because you are...” He exhales a broken laugh with no amusement in it whatsoever. “Christ, sweetheart, you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You couldn’t ever imagine what you walking into my life did to it.”
Your eyes squeeze shut and fresh tears slip out anyway. Somewhere inside you, some tired and furious part wants to scream at him for speaking like this now, for laying tenderness over terror as if one can cancel the other out, as if love—even if it is love, even if it is real and not just another instrument in his alluring hands—can unmake what you know. But before you can push any of that into sound, he keeps going, quieter, the words drawn so close to your skin they seem less spoken than confessed into it.
“If you want to go,” he states, and there is a pause before it, the kind that tells you the sentence is costing him blood, “I’ll let you go.”
Your breath snags. You don’t trust it nor believe it instantly, but even imagining the words coming out of him feels like a tectonic event, a mountain bowing. He does not release you yet, but his body changes with the promise, some iron set inside him going rigid with the effort of saying it and meaning it.
“I will,” he says, with more force now, as if he knows you don’t believe him and cannot bear that either. “If that’s what you want, I will. I’m not gonna keep you somewhere you don’t wanna be. I’m not gonna turn into that for you. But, baby—” and here his voice gives way altogether, drops into something so human and stripped down it hardly seems to belong to the same man who froze a room full of armed guards with one look, “—I am begging you not to make that choice before you hear me. I am begging you. Stay this one night, give me one chance to explain it all to you, to answer every possible question you could have. One chance to do this right, even if I already did it all wrong.”
Begging. The word would sound absurd from almost any other man. From him, it sounds cataclysmic. His hand shakes at the back of your head before steadying, his chest rises too sharply under your cheek, and he continues speaking as if silence might kill him.
“I love you too much to let this be the end of it if there’s anything I can do to stop it,” he croaks. “Too much to let you walk out of here thinking none of it was real. It was real. Every second of it was real. Me wanting you, loving you, worrying about you, making room for you in my life in ways I never made room for anybody—none of that was a lie. The only lie was thinking I could hold both worlds apart long enough to protect you from what I am. That was the lie. That was my arrogance. My mistake.”
The mansion remains hushed in that eerie, cathedral-like way that comes after a disturbance, as if everyone occupying this huge mansion is pretending not to hear the aftershocks.
But here in the kitchen, everything feels narrowed to his voice and your breathing and the blood drying on his forearm and the fact that he is speaking to you like a man on his knees, even if he is still standing, even if his arms are still around you, even if his kind of desperation does not know how to unclench fully.
There is a daunting sincerity in him now, not because it is soft but because it is not. Because it is fierce. Because even his tenderness carries the shape of obsession, of decision, of something chosen with his whole irreversible heart.
What can you possible answer here. What can you possibly think.
“I’ll do whatever I have to do.” He sounds so full of conviction. Technically, the words are quiet, but there is a hard core somewhere in his tone, and it glows fiercely. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make you feel safe again. To prove this to you. To earn back one inch of your trust. I don’t care how long it takes, I don’t care what you ask for, I don’t care what I have to lay down at your feet. I’ll do it. I will.” He takes a beat and the next words are so low you almost miss them. “I know I don’t deserve another chance and you have all the best reasons to run, but I’m asking for it anyway, Y/n.“
At that, finally, he leans back just enough to look at you. It’s not much, but the hand at the back of your head can guide your face up with painful gentleness, giving you every opening to pull away if you need to, though you are too wrung out now to do much except tremble.
His eyes find yours and stay there, and the sight of his face nearly brings you to your knees all over again. There is no coldness in him. No cruelty. No mockery. Only a kind of bereft intensity, a ravaged devotion, and beneath it the severe understanding that he is seeing himself reflected in your fear and cannot survive the image.
The whole fact of how broken he sounds starts to mess with your head. It cracks the armor of your panic, if only just a little bit. You’re trying to hate him. Because, honestly, you want to. You want the fear to be this insurmountable wall between you, but his voice keeps crumbling pieces of it.
The worst part is that you can’t just flick a switch and stop loving the guy you were tangled up with this morning. You fell for him so fast, so completely, because his version of happy felt like the safest place on earth. But with all those shocking revelations, that same love feels like a trapdoor that just dropped you into a cellar, and you are so angry at your own heart for still wanting him to hold you.
Underneath the exhaustion, there is a nauseating doubt starting to rot everything you remember about the last few weeks, and you really don’t need your mind going that far, but it does. You start wondering if you ever actually loved him, or if you were just hooked on the way he looked at you.
He treated you like you were the only important thing in the world, and you just hung off that affection, soaking up the protective way he took care of you. Even though he’s standing here right now, bleeding and hollowed out, swearing that every single touch was real, how can you ever be sure? Every memory you have is suddenly poisoned by the thought that it was just a beautifully built illusion, and the whole thing makes you feel completely seasick.
It’s just too much to handle all at once. Your brain is trying to hold two completely different men in the same space—the gentle guy who tucked the blankets around your feet in the dark, and the boss who froze a kitchen full of killers with one word. They are both real. They are both right here in front of you, and the fact that he isn't a cartoon villain makes it a hundred times worse.
If he were just a monster, you could run. But he’s a monster who tells you he loves you with this gut-wrenching, unyielding honesty, and looking at his ruined face, all your willpower just turns to mush.
“I should have asked more questions,” you whisper, and still, your voice breaks, the words tumbling out of you like loose gravel. You aren’t trying to be eloquent anymore, you are just trying to get the noise out of your head before it chokes you. “From the start, I— When you wouldn’t tell me things. I— I don't know, I was scared, I guess.”
Your fingers tighten into the expensive wool of his lapels just to keep your knees from giving out. Letting this mob boss know about your fears is probably a bad idea. But your life consists of you making bad decisions and so your mouth keeps opening. “I think I just liked the way you were to me too much to risk messing it up.”
The words drag themselves out of you like they do not want to be born, like each one has to force its way through the knot in your throat and the salt on your tongue and the simple, mind-numbing fact that nothing in you knows where to place anything anymore—not him, not yourself, not the last weeks, not the hands that held you so tenderly and the empire those same hands command with a flick of the wrist.
Bucky’s gaze is piercing as he looks down at you, listening with his breath visibly held.
“But I— I still don’t understand. I think.“ Your voice comes thin at first, scraped nearly transparent by crying, but it sharpens on pain the way a blade sharpens on a whetstone. “I just— I saw this gun, and—,” you blur out, the memory making your heart do that awful stutter against your ribs again while Bucky nearly flinches. His eyes go wide, pupils shrinking until they look like two dark pinpricks. “It was an accident. I swear it was an accident. I was just— you told me to grab a shirt of yours but I couldn’t reach up your wardrobe and so I was just going to go grab the shirt you've been wearing, but your jacket was there and then it just fell out. And I— I completely lost my mind because I realized I didn’t actually know anything about you, and I’ve been so stupid, and I’m really not good at this. I'm not good at talking things out or figuring out the right things to say. It’s just— this is so much to take in.”
Bucky´s chest hitches, a rough, dry stutter or air that sounds like he just took a fist to the solar plexus. His face looks almost unrecognizable with the pain plastered on it. You feel his hands tremble against you and he slowly takes them away, putting himself at a small distance to perhaps give you some space. His palms stay open, as do his eyes. He looks entirely unhinged by the clumsiness of his own life seeping into yours.
How could anyone understand how a man can kiss your forehead like a saint and still have blood and fear braided into his name. It’s so hard to understand how someone can look at you the way he is looking at you now—like you are both miracle and mortal wound—and still have lied, still have omitted, still have arranged the world around you so skillfully that you walked through it unknowing, barefoot and bright-hearted, straight into the center of his hidden life.
You do not understand what parts were real and what parts were merely curated, and worst of all, there is a terrible little splinter of you that already suspects the answer is not clean enough to save you. That some unbearable amount of it was real.
Your mouth trembles and you know that he can see it.
“You lied to me,” you sob, and although you mean for it to, it doesn’t sound like a weapon you’re throwing at him. It just sounds sad. “You made it so easy. I didn’t even think about it. I just— I just woke up every day and trusted the way you looked at me. And the whole time, I didn’t even know you.”
You look down at his chest so you can stop having to meet those devastatingly sunken eyes. “You let me fall in love with you not knowing who you were.” Your sentence has a shape now, the grief in you finally managing to find a spine. But you still can’t make your words sound all that accusing. Because you got yourself into this situation. You’re supposed to be furious at yourself first.
You haven’t used the word love before. You just dropped it, being the first time it cleared your teeth and the timing of it feels completely disastrous.
And Bucky suddenly undergoes a drastic freeze, as if his nervous system has been struck by lightning. He seems to tip back just a tiny bit but stays in your orbit. He stares down at you, his mouth parted, his chest stalling on an intake of air that he forgets to let back out.
The fact that you love him—and that you are saying it right now, while covered with dread and shivering nearly against his chest—seems to completely break his brain.
There is a dark heat flooding his face, his jaw tight enough to snap a tooth. He looks agonizingly vulnerable like this, the dangerous mob boss utterly gutted by four letters. His fingers twitch where they are now hovering near your neck, desperately wanting to bury themselves in your hair and pull you back into his skin, but he forces his hands down to his sides, his knuckles trembling against his tailored trousers.
“You…,” he starts, eyes burning with a starved intensity that makes the air in the kitchen feel boiling hot. He swallows loudly, taking a moment, staring out into some space behind you, and switching focus back to you. “Don’t call yourself stupid,” he goes on, voice dropping into a rasp that shakes with the failure of his own arrogance. “None of what you told me and none of what you felt makes you stupid.”
His face leans closer to yours and somehow you only shrink back a tiny bit, not really at all. You can feel the wavering rhythm of his breath against your lips. He looks thoroughly undone by his own greed, stuck in the realization that he won the only thing he ever wanted, right at the exact moment he stopped being the man who holds you in the dark and turned into the reason you’re afraid of the dark.
“The love was real,” he sounds so convinced. His face is breaking, but his voice is not. He knows what he is saying. “Every single second of it was real. I am the one who ruined it. But what I feel, and what we have, that isn’t a lie. I swear to you on my life, it was never a lie.” His eyes close briefly, and it looks like he is losing his footing somewhere internal. “I know how it feels from where you’re standing. But I wasn’t playing some game with you. I wasn’t trying to—” He drags a hand over his face, and for an instant he looks older than you have ever seen him, not in years but in burden, in wear. “I wanted more time. That was my sin in it. I wanted time. I wanted to tell you in a way that didn’t make you look at me like this.”
Like this.
The phrase feels unkind. Because yes—there it is again, the damn nucleus of the whole thing. The way your eyes have changed on him. The way he has noticed every flicker of fear in you as if each one were a cut and he keeps taking your terror not as an insult to his pride but as an injury to something much more private and much more vulnerable. And that, more than any fake excuse could have, is so hard to process. 
Because men who only know cruelty do not usually grieve like this over being feared by the woman they supposedly love. Men who are only monstrous do not usually look half-unmade by it.
You don’t want that thought, you honestly don’t, but it does arrive.
Because he has not hurt you. He hasn’t done a single thing to hurt you, and that makes him so much more complicated at the exact moment you most need him to stay simple.
He has had a thousand opportunities by now to become the thing you are bracing against. In the hallway. In the office. In the kitchen. When you ran. When you fought. When you took the knife. When you cut him. At every turn, there has been room for rage, for punishment, for the kind of retaliatory violence your frightened mind keeps expecting from a man like him, and instead he has done nothing but hold himself on a brutal leash, speak softly, plead, bleed, look at you as if your fear is the one thing in this world he has no defenses against.
And it makes you weaker.
Because fear is easier when it is clean. Outrage is easier when there are no counterweights. But now your thoughts begin to buckle under the strain of contradiction, and you feel yourself growing tired in some deeper way, not merely from running or crying or panic, but from the effort of sustaining one total version of him against the evidence of another.
The story you are trying to tell yourself—that he is simply bad, simply dangerous, simply false—keeps snagging on the memory of his hands shaking when he begged, on the way he threw his men out for aiming guns at you, on the heartache in his face now, open and unarmored and miserable with not knowing how to reach you.
None of it erases anything, how could it this fast, but still it matters, and still some fatal hope flares.
Your lungs are burning. You become dimly aware that your body is leaning, not exactly by choice, but because exhaustion is making choices for you now. The kitchen feels too bright and too far away at the same time. Your fingers feel chilled, your knees unreliable, your heart still overworked from all that horror. Even your anger is beginning to lose its clean edges, dissolving into something wetter and more helpless.
“I don’t know what to do,” you admit, and there is no strength in it at all.
The sentence is barely more than breath, but it changes him instantly, makes his misery seem softer, as if your confusion pains him almost as much as your fear did. His gaze searches your face carefully, greedily, looking for any sign that you have not vanished completely from him.
“You don’t have to know right now,” he comforts, and this time his voice is gentler still, worn down to the most tender parts of his body. “You don’t have to decide anything this second. I know I dropped all of this on you in the worst possible way. I know you’re overwhelmed.”
Overwhelmed. The word is so pitifully insufficient you want to cry some more, but the sound catches and turns to another shivery exhale instead.
Overwhelmed is a rainstorm. A bad day. A missed train. This is seismic. This is having the floor beneath your life cleave open and discovering it was built over a fault line all along.
Still, you know what he means.
Because beneath all the fear, and the betrayal and the urgent need to flee, there is now also this leaden, disorienting fatigue, this collapse of certainty.
You cannot keep all your alarms ringing at once forever. The body is not made for it. At some point even terror begins to sag under its own weight, and in that sagging comes the most dangerous thing of all. Maybe not trust or forgiveness yet, but confusion. A human confusion. The realization that if he truly meant to destroy you, perhaps he would have done it already. That if cruelty were the point, he has passed up too many easy chances. That whatever else he is—and God, he is still intimidating, still hidden, still a man with too much power and too many locked rooms in his life—his feelings for you do not look counterfeit. They look catastrophic. They look real enough to have ruined him too.
He had every opportunity to end this argument with force, not even making his hands dirty in a physical sense. But he didn’t, and that roughened sincerity that seems so deeply wounded keeps gnawing at all the things you thought you found out about this man, the stereotype you made him out to be. It makes a guilty stone drop into your belly and land with damaging intentions.
And you do not know what to do with all this honesty and realness, when real arrives dressed as the very thing you were trying to escape.
But you have to acknowledge that your lack of strength is not the only reason why you have stopped fighting him, stopped trying to get away.
Bucky seems to read some fragment of this in your face, because he does not press harder. He does not crowd you with arguments. He simply stays where he is, close enough for warmth, far enough now that his care has space to breathe. His injured arm hangs at his side, blood drying in a dark seam along his skin, ignored. His other hand lifts as if to touch your cheek, then stops halfway and falls again when he sees the flicker in your eyes. That tiny restraint breaks something in you all over again.
“I know I lied by not telling you,” he says quietly. “I know that. I’m not asking you to call it something prettier. I’m just telling you it wasn’t because you meant nothing. It was because you meant too goddamn much, and I was trying to find a way to bring you closer without making you run.”
The honesty of it is so ugly, so naked, so free of self-congratulation that it feels like he just threw a wet sandbag right at your chest, knocking every scrap of air straight out of your lungs. It’s not an excuse, not quite. More like the shape of the selfishness itself, held out in his own hands for you to look at. He wanted you. He kept you. He delayed the truth because he was afraid the truth would cost him the one bright thing he had allowed himself to love. There is no innocence in that. But there is something crushingly human.
Your eyes burn again and your grip on your own certainty loosens another inch.
You hate that, too, because, damnit, it would be easier to stand here shaking and loathing him if he would just become less tender and less heartbreakingly earnest in his regret. But he stays persistently, ruinously genuine, and all at once you feel not only afraid, not only betrayed, but emptied out by the effort of trying to hold every contradiction at once. He is a bad man. He may also love you. He lied. He is also hurting. He hid things from you. He is also standing here looking like your fear is flaying him alive. None of these truths cancels the others. They just crowd together until your thoughts feel waterlogged, too swollen to separate.
So all that is left is the simplest truth again.
You really are overwhelmed.
You are so overwhelmed that language itself seems too heavy to lift.
Your breathing has started to slowly settle in increments, like a storm reluctantly retreating from a coastline it battered too long. It feels like there are bruises left behind in your lungs, but it no longer aches with each inhale.
Your fear has ebbed enough to make you think again, to make you see again, to make you look at him not as the single monstrous shape your panic tried to build, but as the complicated, human contradiction standing in front of you now.
His shoulders are still too tight, drawn up, and perhaps trying to seem smaller. He keeps his hands visible and loose at his sides to perhaps avoid startling you. The cut along his forearm has darkened into a narrow seam of red, drying in flaking lines against his skin and remaining completely ignored by the man attached to it.
His focus hasn’t left your face. And in that focus, there is not an ounce of triumph. Rather, the opposite. There is only pain. Such a grave torment that lives in the corners of his mouth, the prominent crease between his brows, in the cautious way he keeps tracking your movements as though you still might shove him away and try bolting for the door again.
You swallow and feel the ballast of everything press back down on your chest.
“I—” you start, timidly, using every last scrap of your bravery. You don’t meet his eyes, staring at the floor beside him. “I’ve seen them.” Your voice sounds strange to your own ears, small but a little bit more poised now, like glass that hasn’t shattered but still remembers the impact. “I've seen the news, and the headlines. All the stories about you.”
The words suspend themselves in the space between you.
Bucky takes a moment to answer. His gaze drifts downward, just briefly, as if the floor might offer him something easier to look at than the defenselessness sitting in your eyes. The vulnerable questions there. When he exhales it is long and tired, and it sounds like all the versions of himself he has spent years outrunning are catching up to him anyway.
“Yeah,” he mutters out breathily. But a little flat. There is no denial in it or some sort of excuse. He drags a hand across the back of his neck, his jaw flexing slightly before he speaks again. “I figured you probably had.” He takes a shivering breath, his whole chest lifting. “They’re not all lies.”
You hold your breath, but don’t step back, don’t let fear take its seat at the forefront of your mind again.
He lifts his eyes back to yours then, and the seriousness in them deepens, intensifying into something resolute.
“I’m not gonna stand here and tell you I’m a good man,” he says. The words come slowly, and his eyes are searching yours while he talks. He is placing them carefully like he’s building something honest out of wreckage. “I’m not.”
Your heart stumbles in your chest, but you still keep your feet grounded and meet his eyes.
“I’ve done things I’m not proud of. Things most people wouldn’t forgive if they knew the full story.” His voice lowers slightly. His eyes are full of sorrow. Despite the things he’s saying he unexpectedly doesn’t look threatening at all and it makes something startle abruptly in your chest. “And yeah, I’ll probably keep doing some of those things.” He doesn’t force anything into his tone that maybe should be there. He´s not saying those things with pride or arrogance or even threat. He has just accepted the callous contours that make his life the way it is. “But not for the reasons people think.”
His eyes soften then, slightly. And it makes you realize that they’ve actually been soft all along.
“I do what I do because there are people in this world who deserve protection. People who don’t have the power to protect themselves.” His gaze holds yours a little more firmly now. “And sometimes the only way to keep those people safe is to be the guy willing to do the ugly work.”
Your throat tightens.
“I’d do just about anything to protect you, Y/n. Even if it’s me you want protection from.”
The kitchen feels very still.
You don’t know what to say to that. You’re not even sure there is something to say. The statement isn’t a justification so much as a window, and looking through it leaves you with more thoughts to sort through and you’ve already gone through so many. But you hear him. You really do.
And he seems to notice that you’re listening now—maybe not agreeing, not forgiving, but truly listening, hearing him out—and some small measure of relief loosens the tension in his shoulders.
He doesn’t move a single muscle, standing before you like a brick wall, his legs pinned wide on the kitchen tiles, his frame perfectly still except for the anxious heave of his chest. His arms are hanging at his side, and shit, your gaze just has to focus on that bloody trail on his forearm. Because right, you’ve cut James Buchanan Barnes through his expensive suit enough to make him bleed. The redness runs from his wrist to his knuckles and you see some dots on the floor. The fabric of his suit is soaking it up, turning a dark wet black around the tear.
He still doesn’t glance down at it. He’s still so entirely anchored to your face, his broad shoulders squared as if he’s trying to shield you from the very room he owns. The survival instinct that had you clawing at the air drops away and now there is a sudden freezing emptiness in your head. And in that blank space, something takes place.
You look at the knife on the linoleum, then at the wet red tracking down his arm, and your stomach completely plummets through the ground. The panic you felt earlier didn’t protect you, it turned you clumsy and ignorant.
“Oh, no,” you choke out, gaze fixed on his arm, your words hacking up from your chest miserably. “Bucky, I— Your arm, I— I didn’t mean— This is my fault, I swear I didn’t mean to—”
“Hey,” he cuts in, his voice lowering into a rough, immediate hush that clips the words right out of your mouth. “Hey, no, sweetheart. No.” He steps back into your space and his huge palms come up, traveling slowly until they map themselves carefully across your jawline.
His fingers are trembling and the pressure is incredibly light. His skin is warm, smelling of that same familiar soap from upstairs, and his thumbs softly brush the wet tear tracks off your cheekbones, forcing you to look straight into his eyes. He doesn’t even spare a glance at his forearm.
“You don’t ever apologize to me for that,” he whispers hoarsely, his chest hitching against yours as he tries to get his breathing normal. There is so much regret in his voice, it is too much for your heart to handle. “You were scared out of your mind and I did that to you. That?” He tilts his arm toward you, indicating that he is talking about the cut. “That is nothing, sweetheart. Nothing.” The corner of his mouth lifts faintly, but the expression is gentler and definitely much more somber than humorous. “I’ve taken hits that should’ve put me in the ground, and none of them touched me.”
You shake your head in his palms. “But, I—”
“Doll,” he shushes, his arms keeping your chin locked, but not firm at all. His gaze is drilling into yours and it feels like he’s bleeding more from the inside and not the outside. “That little scratch hurts a hell of a lot less than watching you run from me.”
Your hands slowly stop trying to find leverage against his chest. The heat of his palms against your jaw feels like a grounding force, something so familiar but also completely new. It’s not entirely unpleasant in its newness.
You look up into his eyes, seeing the complete lack of the monster he just unleashed on his guards, and you can’t help but feel a little unmoored.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now,” you admit breathily, your voice cracking as your forehead drops forward to rest against his tie.
Bucky lets out a long, ragged exhale, his chin resting against the top of your head as his arms wrap around your shoulders, pulling you into a hold that feels firm but unforced.
“You don’t have to figure it out right now, darling,” he eases, his words spoken with a splintered scrape into your hair. “You don’t have to decide anything today, or tomorrow, or next week. Take all the time you need. Turn it over in your head. Think about everything you saw, everything I am. And whatever you choose to do—if you want to pack your bags, and disappear, if you never want to see my face again—I will let you go. I will make sure you are safe, and I will support whatever choice you make. I swear it.”
He pulls back just an inch, his thumbs gently guiding your face up again so he can look straight into your eyes. There is something desperately begging in his stare, but he keeps his posture completely still, refusing to pressure you.
“But please.“ His knuckles tremble slightly against your cheek. “Just stay the night. Don't run out now while this is all still so new. Stay until morning. As soon as the sun’s up, the car is yours,” he promises sorrowfully, his thumbs catching the last of the dampness on your cheek. “If you want to leave, you leave. You can walk out of here and never look back, and I won’t follow you. I won’t look for you. If that’s what it takes to make you feel safe, I’ll let you go.”
He stops, his jaw clamping tight for a second, a sharp, jumbled hitch in his ribs breaking his breathing.
“But god, I hope you don't,” he shoves the words past the tightness in his throat, his eyes wide and burning into yours so achingly. “I will spend every single day of my life doing whatever it takes to fix this. I’ll earn back an inch of your trust at a time. I’ll show you the rest of me—the real parts—if you just give me the chance to try. I want you to love me again. I want that more than anything.”
He hitches his weight just a fraction closer, his large hands still framing your jaw with agonizingly slow caution.
“But just stay this single night,” he pleads with a strain in his voice, his forehead dropping down to rest lightly against yours. “Just stay until morning. Let me get you out of this kitchen, and you can just sleep. That’s all. Just tonight.”
You stare at the dark red crusting on his wool cuff, then look into that heavy, broken-down look in his eyes. Trying to picture next week or even tomorrow feels like watching a knotted ball of wire and not finding out where to start untying it.
But right now, your muscles are just running on empty, completely flattened and powerless from feeling all that panic. You let out one long shudder of air, asking your awareness for any reasons why you should still try to get the hell away from this guy, and come up with nothing yet. It’s all too fresh to truly give this some thought and right now all you want to do is curl up in those silky sheets and sleep it all off.
You give him a small nod. “Okay. Okay, Bucky, I’ll stay the night.”
Bucky’s shoulders drop with a massive, rattling relief. He doesn't say anything else, he just tucks your head back under his chin, his big arms closing around you to carry your weight out of the quiet kitchen, leaving the knife and the blood behind on the floorboards.
You don’t know what comes when the sun is up. You don’t know what loving a man like him means. You don’t know if the life he lives can ever exist beside the life you thought you wanted.
You don’t know if trust can grow again from the cracked ground beneath your feet, and considering your decision making skills, you shouldn’t let your heart handle things anymore.
But, frighteningly and also not all that much surprisingly after all, when you imagine leaving now—truly leaving, turning your back on him and walking out of this mansion forever—the image doesn’t bring relief.
It brings something bleak.
Because for all the discoveries of tonight and all that fear, all that shock, and the trust that has been abruptly broken, there is a bullheaded part of you that understands something you can’t yet put into words for him to hear.
You could run from this house.
You could run from his name.
But you are not sure you could run from him.
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple”
- Oscar Wilde
A/n: Looking at the word count now, I honestly probably could’ve turned this into a mini series but because this whole thing is essentially one long scene, splitting it up even more just didn’t feel right to me. So I guess I just have to admit that this became an unexpectedly long two-parter lmao.
As always, I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts on this continuation, if it gave you hope, or even if you expected something different to happen. I always enjoy hearing your interpretations and feelings after reading ♡
I also wanted to gently address something else. I’ve received a few critical comments regarding certain reactions, choices, and dynamics in the story, and I truly hope this second part helped answer some questions or at least offered a little more perspective. If it didn’t, that’s completely okay too.
What I want you to know, I genuinely do appreciate helpful criticism, especially when it comes to my writing itself, because I’m always trying to improve and become better at what I do. Constructive feedback that gives me something to work with is always welcome and appreciated. But if something in the story simply wasn’t for you, or you personally disliked a choice I made, then sometimes it’s okay to just move on from it instead of tearing it apart. And if you do choose to criticize something, I just ask that you do it kindly. We’re still a community here, and there’s no reason to be harsh or blunt. Talk to me like a human being.
I put a lot of time, emotion, and effort into these stories, not to be told this makes no sense or this is weird without any real conversation behind it. Sometimes I don’t think through every single detail deeply because at the end of the day, this is still fiction born from messy little ideas in my head, written for comfort, entertainment, and emotion—not perfection!
Still, thank you to everyone who continues to boost me and my work and helped me stay motivated to finish this part ♡
And if you enjoyed my work, please consider supporting me at my ko-fi ♡
word count | 12.3k words
summary | you suggest taking a break from your deeply attached boyfriend. he reacts poorly and things somehow get worse from there.
tags | 18+ (MDNI), Explicit Sexual Content, age gap relationship, clingy!bucky barnes, loser!bucky barnes, crack fic, major co-dependency, dark humour, SATIRE, oral sex (f!recieving), fingering, unprotected piv, pussy pronouns, tiny bit of noncon unprotected sex, noncon kiss, they’re both very physical, bucky is very touchy and grabby, lots of toxic behaviour, suicide threats, gun violence, manipulative bucky, toxic bucky, reader lowkey likes it, reader is toxic as well, mj, darcy and yelena cameo
a/n | yall this is a completely satirical and unserious fic, pls do not take anything that happens in here seriously. anyway i want to thank @superbassbuck @iamthatonefangirl @pinksplace and @houseofhyde for all being present and encouraging when i came up and spiraled with the concept of loser bucky threatening to kill himself to keep you. yall real asf for that, and especially paul for harassing me and lowkey motivating me to finish it. finally i am free from the shackles that bind me (this fuckass fic)
likes comments and reblogs are much appreciated ✨
MASTERLIST
Dating an older man really did sound good in theory.
Everyone always said girls matured faster than boys, so you figured the math would math. Older boyfriend meant stable. A little boring, maybe. A little steadier. Someone who had already done the whole fuckboy lap around the block and come out the other side with a job, a routine, and the ability to go a few hours without needing proof you still liked him.
James Buchanan Barnes should have fit the brief.
He was older by ten years, and you’d been seeing him for seven months now. You were twenty-five. Your frontal lobe was fully developed. You liked to remind yourself of that whenever you did something questionable and then tried to justify it later, like, technically you were a grown woman with your own apartment and a 401(k). Technically you were not being preyed upon. Technically you made this choice with my eyes open.
Because you had.
You matched with him on Tinder on a bored Tuesday night, half in the mood to flirt, half in the mood to just entertain yourself with strangers, and there he was. Pretty eyes. Broad shoulders. Hot as hell, in this quiet, earnest way like he didn’t realise he was hot, which unfortunately made him hotter.
Even with his corny ass mustache.
It should have been a dealbreaker. It was not.
It was actually… kind of doing it for you, which was embarrassing, because you had a preference to maintain. You liked men clean-cut and put together. You liked men who looked like they knew how to order a drink without stuttering. You did not, in theory, like a man who looked like he’d tip his hat at you and call you “doll.”
Except Bucky did that sometimes, in this soft, old-fashioned way that made you feel simultaneously adored and slightly like you were being courted in 1945. He held doors. He walked on the outside of the sidewalk. He paid for dinners and surprised you with expensive gifts.
And you were pleasantly surprised by his big heart.
Even more so, his big dick.
If you were being honest, that was where half your patience came from. That and the way he acted like touching you was this privilege he didn’t want to take for granted. Like he could get needy and clingy, and still somehow turn around and treat you like you were precious. He overdid it, yes. He went too hard, yes. But he was sweet in a way that didn’t feel fake.
And, yes, there were red flags.
The texts, for one.
In the beginning you told yourself it was just excitement. He was older, he was awkward, he probably hadn’t dated much, and he definitely hadn’t dated someone like you. You were fun. You were pretty. You were not afraid to tell him “no” and then kiss him anyway. You made him feel brave.
He texted good morning. Then another good morning in case you missed the first. Then a third message that was just, “Hope your day is going okay.” Then, “No pressure to respond, I just like talking to you.” Then, “Sorry, that sounded weird. I’m not weird.” Then, somehow, you’d look down and realise he’d sent you five messages in a row and you’d been at work the whole time.
It was… a lot. But it was also weirdly flattering.
It wasn’t even love bombing in the normal slick, manipulative way. It was messy and unintentional. Like he didn’t understand the difference between affection and intensity yet, so he just threw it all at you and hoped you caught it. You could tell he wasn’t trying to impress you. He was trying to keep you.
And the clinginess didn’t exactly get better with time. It just got more comfortable. More familiar. Like a habit. Like you belonged to him now in the way he looked at you, in the way he reached for you in his sleep, in the way he convinced you to sleep over at his house numerous times a week.
You probably should have dumped him. You friends had already told you it wasn’t your job to manage a thirty-five-year-old man’s feelings.
Unfortunately, you didn’t give a fuck. And you told yourself you could handle the rest. That you could rein him in when you needed to. That you could keep the good parts, and teach him how to calm down.
You really, truly believed that.
And you tried to hold onto it while you were out with the girls at some new club opening up on the Lower East Side. Packed shoulder to shoulder, lights low and red, bass thumping through the floor like a second heartbeat.
You felt good. You looked good. You were supposed to be having a good time.
And like clockwork, every fifteen minutes, you felt your purse buzz.
You couldn’t even stay on the dance floor long without circling back to this little quiet corner by the bar or the wall, checking your phone like it was a habit you did not want your friends to notice. At first, it was manageable. Sweet. A check-in. The first hour was almost normal.
james barnes (bucky)
Are you having fun, beautiful? | 10:22pm
You
lots. music is peak. we got free drinks too | 10:37pm
james barnes (bucky)
Oh, really? From who? | 10:37pm
Was it the bartender or some random men? | 10:38pm
Doll? | 10:39pm
You stared at the screen, thumb hovering, letting the music wash over you while your brain did that stupid thing where it tried to decide the exact right balance of response. Too short and he’d spiral. Too detailed and you’d be feeding it.
You locked your phone, tossed it back into your purse, and went back to the girls like you didn’t just feel your mood get tugged sideways.
But it didn’t stop.
By the time you were heading to the bathroom, you were already sighing before you even unzipped your purse. You could see the stack of notifications lighting up the screen through the little transparent window of your purse, like your phone was trying to pre-warn you.
You slid into the closest open spot at the counter and swiped up.
More messages had piled in.
james barnes (bucky)
Where did you get the free drinks from? | 10:44pm
Who are you with right now? | 10:45pm
Just text me back for two seconds, doll. | 10:46pm
“Isn’t it past your grandpa’s bedtime?” Nicole said from your left, reapplying her cheap lip liner.
You didn’t look up right away. You kept your eyes on the screen, jaw tight, like you could will the irritation away by ignoring it.
“Don’t call him that,” you muttered. “And he’s not that old.”
“Yeah, and the sky isn’t blue, and my boobs are real.” Nicole snorted, still looking at herself. “Being paroled by an old ass man is crazy work. Could never be me.”
You knew she was being shady as fuck. And you knew your man was being annoying as hell. But you weren’t about to let this bitch act like she had moral high ground when her life was a revolving door of men who didn’t even like her.
“Come talk to me when you find a man who’ll eat your ass without having to ask,” you said lifting your eyes. “And not a baby daddy who thinks child support is optional.”
Nicole’s mouth snapped shut.
MJ and Darcy were behind you in the mirror, MJ adjusting her earrings, Darcy washing her hands, both of them watching you. They exchanged a quick look like they were sharing a thought without saying it out loud.
Nicole held your gaze for a second longer, nostrils flaring, then rolled her eyes like she hadn’t just gotten read.
“Whatever,” she muttered, tossing her lip liner back into her bag, and she pushed out of the bathroom without waiting for anyone.
You barely acknowledged it. You just looked back down at your phone, thumb resting over the keyboard again.
You
just the bartender. relax | 10:56pm
he was flirting w Darcy half the time anyway | 10:57pm
and you know im w MJ nd Darcy | 10:58pm
james barnes (bucky)
Right. I’m sorry, honey. | 10:59pm
I just don’t like the idea of anyone bothering you. | 11:00pm
You stared at that for a second, jaw working. It was always like this…. he’d pull, you’d give him an inch, and then he’d act grateful like you’d done him a favour by letting him breathe.
“Girl.” MJ’s voice cut through it.
You looked up and caught her in the mirror. She was standing a little behind you, brows raised, mouth twitching like she was trying not to laugh but couldn’t fully hide the exasperation either.
“Michelle,” you said back, tilting your head.
She shook her head, amused but pointed, and slid her hand over your shoulder as she brushed past you to the door.
“Just remember this is a girls’ night,” she said. “No hate. Just… saying.”
“Two minutes,” you muttered, eyes back on the screen.
Darcy, already halfway to the door, turned her head. “I’m timing it,” she announced. “Like, actually. One-twenty seconds. And if you’re still in here, I’m coming back and I’m flushing your fucking phone.”
MJ grabbed Darcy by the wrist and tugged her out, laughing under her breath as they disappeared back into the noise.
You exhaled, it came from deep down within your chest, and your screen lit again before you could even lock it.
james barnes (bucky)
When are you heading home? | 11:02pm
Do you want me to pick you up? You can stay at my place. | 11:03pm
It was honestly impressive how fast he typed. For a man who acted like technology was out to get him, he was weirdly efficient when it came to blowing up your phone. Full sentences, no typos, like he was sitting upright at his kitchen table drafting these messages like professional emails.
You
im sleeping over at MJs. girls night remember | 11:05pm
and i literally slept over the other day 😭 pls stop | 11:05pm
You knew exactly why you’d put that emoji. Not because it was funny, because it softened your words. Because it made it sound playful instead of like you were getting irritated.
You rolled your eyes and shoved your phone back in your purse before you could get sucked into another back-and-forth. You stepped out into the hallway, bass immediately swallowing you again, lights flashing harsh and bright as the crowd pressed past.
Your purse buzzed, faint against your hip. Again. You didn’t even look.
james barnes (bucky)
I will, sorry. | 11:06pm
Tomorrow night then? I miss you. | 11:06pm
Message me when you’re safe at Michelle’s please. | 11:07pm
You found MJ and Darcy posted at the bar the second you stepped out of the bathroom . Darcy was half-turned in her seat, pointing into the crowd and laughing so hard her shoulders were shaking. MJ was rolling her eyes at whatever Darcy was saying, but there was an unwilling little smile on her mouth like she didn’t even want to fight it.
The second you got close, MJ’s eyes slid right to you.
Darcy followed her gaze and started clapping softly. “Shame. Shame. Shame.”
You rolled your eyes so hard you saw your own brain for a second, but that just made them both worse. MJ started up too, syncing up with Darcy. “Shame, shame, shame.”
They were both snickering by the time you slid onto the barstool between them. Darcy didn’t even ask what you wanted, just shoved a cold glass of something colourful into your hand.
“Yeah, yeah,” you muttered, taking a sip. The drink was too sweet, too strong, exactly what you needed. “Laugh while you bitches can.”
You tried to get your head back into the night. The bass was steady, the lights were doing that neon blur thing, bodies moving around you like one big wave. For a couple seconds it worked. You let yourself sink into it, let the noise swallow your thoughts.
Then MJ, from your left, “You know I love you, right?”
You groaned into your drink on instinct. “MJ. Not right now.”
Darcy laughed beside you.
“I do,” MJ said anyway, undeterred. “I love you.”
“—Michelle, please.”
“Hey, I’m not trying to jump you. I’m just asking… what are we doing right now?”
You let out a slow breath and looked down at your glass. “We’re drinking right now.”
“Mm-hm.”
Darcy jumped in before MJ could keep going, because Darcy physically could not let a serious moment live longer than ten seconds.
“Sweetie, we’re not judging you,” Darcy said, talking with her hands. “But your man is on some serious Joe Goldberg crap.”
You couldn’t help the snort that came out of you.
Darcy took that as encouragement and leaned forward, eyes wide under her glasses like she was swearing on a Bible. “No, I’m serious. Like I would not be shocked in the slightest if he’s here right now. Somewhere we can’t see. Just… posted up in a corner and watching you.”
“Darcy,” MJ said, exasperated.
“What?” Darcy swung on her stool and started scanning the room, craning dramatically like she was about to catch him hiding behind a speaker. “Men do weird shit like that all the time.”
You laughed despite yourself, watching her spin like a damn security camera.
MJ pinched the bridge of her nose. “Darcy, please.”
You rolled your eyes, shaking your head as you took another sip. The alcohol was settling warm in your chest now, smoothing everything out around the edges. Megan was blasting through the speakers, bass vibrating up through the metal footrest of the stool, and for a minute the three of you just sat there listening to the music and watching people move around the packed dance floor.
Then your shoulders dropped a little.
You looked down at your glass, turning it slowly between your hands before speaking. “So what should I do?”
“Dump him.”
“Dump his old creepy ass.”
MJ and Darcy answered at the exact same time.
“Wow,” you said dryly. “Thank you two so much for helping me find a mature, adult solution for my boyfriend who I actually care about.”
Darcy, completely unfazed, took your empty glass out of your hand and replaced it with a fresh drink. “You asked,” she said.
MJ leaned against the bar, eyes still on you. “Then take a break.”
You turned your head slowly. “A break?”
“A break,” she repeated with a nod. Then she lifted a hand before you could interrupt. “Now hold on now. Not a breakup. I’m not saying dump him, block him and start the healing process. I’m saying… maybe spend some time apart so he can calm the hell down.”
You frowned faintly, listening.
“Because right now?” MJ continued, voice even, “that man wakes up, thinks about you. Goes to work, thinks about you. Eats, sleeps, breathes you. And I know you think it’s cute—”
You tilted your head. “It’s a little cute.”
“—but it’s not healthy,” she finished. “He needs to remember there’s a world around him that doesn’t revolve around you.”
Something in your expression shifted at that. You looked down at your drink again, thumb tracing the condensation on the glass. The idea rubbed you the wrong way immediately—the thought of him not orbiting you quite so hard. Which probably said something bad about you too.
Still… the rest of it sounded reasonable.
A break wasn’t a breakup. Just some distance. Some breathing room. Time for him to remember he was a grown man with a grown life and grown responsibilities outside of you.
“A break,” you repeated slowly, more thoughtful this time.
The conversation about a “break” had been looping in your head for some time, a persistent mental itch you couldn’t quite scratch.
You knew you had to do it—sooner or later—but as you let out a low, guttural moan, your back arching and sliding against the cool, expensive glide of Bucky’s Egyptian cotton sheets, the idea felt so far away.
It was hard to maintain a level head when your body was being systematically wrecked by the man beneath you.
The room was filled with the heavy, wet sound of unapologetic squelching that echoed in the quiet of his massive bedroom. You let out a sudden, sharp squeal, your hips jerking upward as you spared a glance down.
There he was.
Still in his slacks and that crisp button-down, his tie loosened and hanging haphazardly around his neck, looking every bit the stable, put-together man the world saw. But here, with your legs draped heavily over his broad shoulders and his face buried deep in your cunt, he was nothing but a starving man.
He had been at it for five minutes, meticulously edging you, driving you toward a peak he refused to let you hit.
He shifted, sucking your outer lips into his mouth one by one with this concentrated pressure, before sliding his tongue up your slit. He licked you from bottom to top, over and over, his tongue flat and insistent.
When he finally suctioned his lips over your clit, the vacuum was intense, pulling a loud, broken moan from your throat. You could feel the faint, rough scratch of his mustache against your mound, as he pushed his tongue inside you, humming low in his throat.
The vibration of that traveled straight through your nerves, making your walls clench tight around him. You collapsed back into the pillows, breathless and frustrated, your voice sounding strained.
“Bucky—please... just give it to me,” you whimpered.
He didn’t pull away. Instead, he let out a muffled, groan against your skin, his voice vibrating against your folds. He paused for just a second, glancing up at you with dark, blown-out pupils.
“I know, baby,” he rasped, his voice gravelly and thick that made you clench again. “But I’m just taking my time with her. Spent the whole damn day at the office thinkin’ about her...”
He leaned back in, his tongue swirling around your clit . “She’s so happy to see me, isn’t she? Look at her... just soaking wet for me.”
A broken, whiny sound escaped your throat as you felt the blunt pressure of one of Bucky’s thick fingers probing your entrance.
He didn’t rush; he sank in slowly, stretching you open, and the relief was so instantaneous that you instinctively arched your hips, pushing yourself hard against his hand to swallow him whole. Your fingers dove blindly into his hair, gripping the thick strands and scratching at his scalp.
Bucky let out a low hum, his body reacting to the touch like a devoted dog getting a scratch behind the ears.
“Another one,” you sighed, your voice breathless and strained, your head tossing back against the pillows. “Baby, please... another one.”
He paused, lifting his head just enough to look at you. His mouth was a glistening, wet mess, coated in your slick, his lips swollen from the suction. Bucky didn’t pull his finger out; instead, he kept it thrusting in a slow, rhythmic pace that made your toes curl.
“Another one?” he murmured.
He looked down at where he was joined with you, a smile playing on his lips. “Look at her... she’s greedy, isn’t she? Just begging for more.”
“Bucky, stop talking to my pussy and just do it,“ you whined.
He let out an amused, condescending huff, “I know, honey. I know you’re desperate.”
Without another word, he slid a second finger inside. The fullness made you gasp, your internal muscles clenching tight around him as he began to drive both fingers deep into you. His pace quickening as he found the exact spot that made your vision blur.
He shifted his weight, sliding upward until his heavy, broad frame blanketed your body.
He leaned down, pressing his chest against yours, until your noses were touching. His lips parted, hovering just a fraction of an inch from yours.
You clenched your eyes shut, your breath coming in shallow hitches. You were practically just moaning and breathing directly into his open mouth.
“Tell me how it feels,” he whispered, his breath hot against your lips. “Tell me how much you need me to fill you up.”
“I need... I need you,” you whimpered, your hips stuttering against his hand. “Please, Bucky, I can’t—I’m going to—”
“You’re going to do exactly what I tell you,” he said hoarsely.
He didn’t give you a moment to breathe, his fingers curling deep inside you, hooking upward to snag that hypersensitive sweet spot that made your brain short-circuit.
He trailed a line of searing kisses from your flushed cheek down to the sensitive curve of your neck.
“Uh-huh... okay,” you nodded insistently into the crook of his neck, your breath coming in jagged gasps. You could feel the heavy, rigid bulge of him through his slacks, grinding firmly into your stomach with every thrust of his fingers.
“Cum for me, baby. I wanna feel it,” he breathed against your lips. He nibbled at your bottom lip, teasing the skin before pulling it into his mouth, sucking on it. While his mouth claimed yours, his thumb found your clit, rubbing in fast, heavy circles.
“Bucky, please—”
“Look at me,” he insisted, his eyes locking onto yours. “Just let go for me.”
As he curled his fingers one last time, digging deep and applying a sudden, sharp pressure, you let out a loud, guttural moan. “Fuck, fuck, fuckkkk!”
An overwhelming volcano of pleasure surged through you, your pussy spasming violently around his fingers in tight contractions. Your back arched off the bed, your body straining upward, trying to push yourself even deeper into his touch as your orgasm rolled over you in waves.
As your peak subsided, you slumped back into this sheets, your chest heaving and your limbs feeling like lead.
Slowly, he slid his fingers out of you with a wet, suctioning sound. Without breaking eye contact, you watched through an amused, exhausted daze as he brought his hand up to his face, sliding his fingers into his mouth to taste the remnants of your orgasm.
He closed his eyes for a second, savouring the taste of you.
“God, you taste so good,” he hummed, his eyes snapping open to look at you.
You let out a weak, breathless laugh, reaching up to shove at his chest. “You are so weird.”
He leaned down, his lips brushing against yours. “You love it,” he murmured, his hand sliding down to grip your ass with a firm, possessive squeeze. “Now, tell me how much you missed me today.”
“Ha ha,” you mumbled sarcastically, rolling your eyes. You tried to maintain a shred of your composure as the heavy weight of him shifted off you.
Bucky loomed over your naked body, while he began to unbutton his shirt, the fabric straining against the breadth of his shoulders.
“How was your day, doll?” he asked casually.
Your mind was the furthest thing from a professional debrief. As the buttons gave way, revealing the expanse of his broad, muscular chest and the dusting of hair that trailed down toward his waistband, you felt a familiar, insistent tingle returning to your core.
“I really do not wanna talk about my day right now, Bucky. Thanks,” you breathed, your eyes locked on him.
You watched him like it was your own private strip show, your gaze tracing the line of his abs as his hands finally reached for his belt. The metallic clink of the buckle echoed in the quiet room.
Almost as a reflex, your thighs squeezed together, a subconscious attempt to soothe the ache building between them.
Bucky didn’t miss a thing. He let out an endearing, husky chuckle, “Still need me, huh? Good girl.”
With one fluid motion, he shoved his pants and boxers down to his ankles. His cock sprang free with a heavy thud, slapping against his stomach, bobbing up and down. It was thick, veiny, and the head was a deep, angry red, looking almost painfully engorged after how long he’d been eating you out.
“You ready for me?” he murmured.
You didn’t even use words. You nodded enthusiastically, your attitude completely gone. You swiftly turned away from him, shifting to your knees and arching your back in a deep curve as you wiggled your ass at him.
Behind you, he let out a jagged exhale, and before you could even blink, you felt one of his massive hands clamp onto your hip, his fingers digging into your skin, before both hands moved to spread your cheeks wide, exposing your still soaking pussy to the cool air.
You let out a small, pleased sigh, as you felt the scorching tip of him slide against your slit, teasing the entrance.
He didn’t go in yet; instead, he dragged the length of his cock slowly across your cheeks and through your slick, painting you in his pre-cum.
“So wet for me,” he murmured, almost fixated on the sight of his cock sliding between your cheeks. “Been thinkin’ about this all day. Just imagining me filling you up, stretching you out.”
“Just—fuck, put it in,” you whimpered impatiently, glancing back at him over your shoulder.
“Patience, sweetheart,” he whispered, his grip tightening on your hips. He pulled you back toward him until there was no space left between your skin and his, and then, without warning, your world shifted. With a sudden movement, he flipped you onto your back.
You let out a small, surprised squeak as he gripped your ankles, dragging you by your legs to the very edge of the bed. He hoisted your legs up, draping your feet over his broad shoulders, leaving you completely open for him.
“Need to see my baby’s face while I fuck her,” he rasped.
As you shifted your hips impatiently, trying to bridge the gap, he dragged the head of his cock over your slit one more time. The blunt tip caught your clit perfectly, sending a jolt of electricity through your spine that made you gasp.
He didn’t let the moment sit for too long; he nudged his tip against your entrance, popping the head in with a firm thrust that forced a loud, guttural moan from your throat.
Bucky’s brow furrowed, his jaw tightening as he felt the friction of your walls clamping down on him. He groaned, a sound of pure, agonized pleasure. “God, stretched you out so many times, but you’re still so tight for me... s’like you’re tryin’ to squeeze the life outta me.”
He paused for a second, buried just an inch deep, letting the pressure build. “You like feeling me in there, yeah? Like knowing I’m the only one who gets to do this to you.”
“Yes... please, baby, all the way,” you begged, your hands reaching up to clutch at his forearms.
“I got you, doll,” he whispered.
And just like that he drove the rest of his cock home, bottoming out with a heavy slap against your thighs that knocked the breath from your lungs.
You cried out, your eyes fluttering shut as he filled every available space inside you, the sensation of being completely stuffed making your mind go blank.
He stayed there for a moment, his chest heaving, a low groan rumbling from deep in his throat as he savoured the feeling of being completely encased in your pussy, your walls fluttering around him like they were trying to pull him deeper.
“Feel that, baby?” he rasped, his voice ragged and strained. “Feel how much I need to be inside you? You’re fuckin’ perfect... made for me.”
He began to move, starting with slow, agonizingly deep strokes that made you whimper with every pull. Each time he withdrew, he dragged the thick ridge of his crown against your inner walls, coaxing out a wet, obscene sound before he slammed back in.
Standing at the edge of the bed, he began to drive into you like a man possessed. The slaps of skin against skin was the only thing you could hear right now, alongside the wet squelch of your slick coating every inch of him.
His balls repeatedly slapped against your ass, and you could do nothing but dig your nails into the sheets, your body bouncing helplessly with every thrust.
Bucky’s eyes were locked on where your bodies met, his jaw slack, his lips parted as he watched his cock disappear into you over and over.
“Look at that,” he breathed, almost to himself. “Look how pretty she looks taking my cock, sweetheart. She’s so happy... she’s gripping me so fuckin’ tight, like she never wants me to leave.”
You tried to form a response, but all that came out was a broken moan as he angled his hips, finding that deep, sensitive spot that made your vision blur.
“You like being fucked like this?” he demanded, his voice dropping to a rough whisper. “You like knowing I can’t get enough of you? That I wake up every morning thinkin’ about burying myself inside you?”
“Yes... yes, Bucky...” you gasped, your voice barely audible over the sounds of your bodies colliding.
The frustration that had been simmering in Bucky’s chest finally boiled over—the desperate, gnawing need to be as close to you as humanly possible. His hips were already hammering into yours with a punishing rhythm, but it wasn’t enough.
He needed more.
Without breaking his pace, he hooked his hands under your knees and slid your legs from his shoulders, guiding them to wrap around his waist.
The shift in angle made him sink even deeper, and you let out a choked sob as he adjusted.
Then he leaned forward, his weight pressing you into the mattress as his hips continued their brutal assault, the force of his thrusts actually pushing your body up the bed. He crawled over you, his chest hovering just above yours, his breath ghosting hot and ragged across your face.
For a moment, his eyes dropped; fixated on the way your breasts bounced. His mouth twitched, the urge to lean down and suck one of those hard nipples between his lips almost overwhelming.
But he forced his gaze back up, traveling the line of your jaw, the curve of your neck, until he found your face. Your eyes were closed, your lips parted, your expression slack and utterly lost in the sensation of being fucked senseless.
He didn’t like that. He needed you with him.
He released your hips and reached for your hands, prying your fingers from the crumpled sheets you were gripping. He laced his fingers through yours, pressing your palms flat against the mattress on either side of your head.
Your eyes fluttered open meeting his. Those barely-blue irises were blown wide, dark with something raw and animalistic.
“This house is always so big and quiet, baby,” he breathed against your neck, his lips brushing the sensitive skin just below your ear before he nipped at your earlobe.
You could feel the thick ridge of him dragging against your inner walls, the friction building a pressure so intense it made your toes curl.
“I miss you when you’re not here,” he continued, as he buried his face in the crook of your neck, his words muffled against your skin. “I hate it. Hate coming home and not seeing you. Hate sleeping alone.”
You were barely coherent, lost in the haze of being absolutely pounded into the mattress. The world had narrowed to the sound of his grunts, the wet slap of skin against skin. You couldn’t form words, only broken moans and gasps.
Then his next sentence caught your attention.
“Think you should move in with me.”
He punctuated the words with little nibbles along your jaw, his teeth scraping against the tender skin before his tongue soothed the sting.
You were so dazed, your brain so thoroughly scrambled by the relentless fucking, that you didn’t even have the strength to turn your head and glare at him through half-lidded eyes.
He kept thrusting, kept spewing his nonsense into your ear like a prayer.
“I’ll fuck you every morning when we wake up—” He felt your walls flutter around him at the words, and mistook it for encouragement, his pace quickening. “—and every night before we go to sleep. You like that, huh? Wake up to me buried inside you, feel me stretching you out before you even open your eyes.”
He shifted his weight, pressing his chest flush against yours so that every inch of his sweat-slicked skin was molded to your own.
“And you can change anything in the house you want, doll. Paint the walls. Buy new furniture. I don’t care.” His voice dropped to a fevered whisper, his lips brushing against yours as he spoke. “Just come home to me. Let me take care of you.”
You finally managed to pry one eye open, staring at him through your lashes, your voice a breathless, broken mess. “Bucky, what the fuck are you talking abo—Oh fuck!”
He pulled back nearly all the way out, the thick, glistening head of his cock catching on your rim, and then drove back in with one devastating, deep thrust that hit the spot that made stars burst behind your eyes.
The sudden, blinding orgasm tore through you without warning, ripping a cry from your throat as your body arched beneath him, your inner walls clamping down on him in a vise-like grip that made him groan like a man possessed.
“Fuck, yes,” he hissed, his hips stuttering as he tried to keep thrusting through your climax, each movement sending fresh waves of pleasure through your oversensitive nerves. “That’s it, baby. Squeeze me just like that. Cum for me.”
The aftershocks of your orgasm were still rippling through you in waves, each clench of your inner walls drawing a deep grunt from deep in Bucky’s chest.
His hips never faltered driving into you, the loud, wet squelch of his cock pistoning in and out of your soaked pussy sounding obscene in the quiet room.
“Almost there, doll,” he rasped against your throat, the words barely intelligible through his heavy breathing. “So close. Fuck, you feel so good.”
You were still floating in the hazy aftermath of your orgasm, your limbs heavy and useless, but something nagged at the back of your hazy mind.
Something important.
It took you a second to remember it—the empty pack of birth control pills sitting on your nightstand. The new pack you hadn’t started yet. The four-day gap you were in the middle of… which Bucky knew.
Your eyes snapped open, clarity cutting through the fog like a blade.
“Baby,” you mumbled, your voice hoarse and breathless. “Remember to pull out.”
He didn’t seem to hear you. His hips kept hammering, his rhythm growing sloppier, more desperate. You could see the strain in his face, the pinch of his brows, the way his mouth hung open with broken, breathy groans.
He was seconds away, his cock twitching and throbbing inside you with every thrust.
“Bucky.” You managed to untangle one of your hands from his, slapping weakly at his shoulder. “Don’t cum in me.”
It barely fazed him. He caught your wrist and pressed it back into the mattress, his fingers lacing through yours again as he smashed his lips against yours in a bruising, desperate kiss.
His tongue thrust into your mouth in rhythm with his hips, and he spoke against your lips, his voice a low, pleading groan.
“She’s gripping me so tight, honey,” he breathed, his lips brushing yours with every word. “I don’t think I can pull out.”
Your eyes flew open, your words muffled against his mouth. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
“I can’t help it, doll.” His voice cracked. He pulled back just enough to look at you, his blue eyes blown wide and his face flushed red. “I’ll die if I don’t cum in her. Do you want me to die, doll? Do you?”
You could barely make sense of his absurd words, your brain still scrambled from the relentless fucking.
You tried to push at his shoulder again, but he was solid as a mountain. He captured your mouth in another searing kiss, swallowing your protests as his hips slammed forward one last time.
He stilled with a long, agonized groan that seemed to tear from the very depths of his chest. You gasped against his lips as you felt it—hot, thick jets of his cum flooding your insides, painting your walls with his release.
He pulsed inside you, his hips twitching through the aftershocks, holding himself buried so deep you could feel every spasm.
When he finally broke the kiss, he rested his forehead against yours, his breath coming in ragged, uneven pants. A low, satisfied hum rumbled in his chest as he slowly, almost lazily, rocked his hips, milking every last drop of his release into you.
“Fuck,” he whispered, his voice thick with post-orgasmic bliss. He pressed a soft, apologetic kiss to the corner of your mouth. “Couldn’t help it, sweetheart. She was begging for it.”
His hand slid down your sweat-slicked stomach, coming to rest on the soft swell just above where you were still joined. His palm pressed down, and you felt a fresh trickle of warmth as his cum began to leak around him.
“You’re gonna be the death of me,” he murmured against your skin, a lazy, satisfied smile spreading across his lips. “But what a way to g— ow!”
The smack echoed louder than it should have in the quiet room, connecting with the back of his skull with a satisfying crack that made him yelp.
His head snapped to the side, the lazy smile wiped clean off his face, replaced by a wide-eyed, dazed confusion that would’ve been almost endearing if you weren’t so overly irritated.
“Clean. Me.” Your glare could’ve curdled milk.
It took a full three seconds for the words to penetrate his post-coital fog. You watched the realization dawn slow, then all at once.
Bucky’s mouth opened and closed, a fish gasping for air, and you watched the guilt wash over his features; the sheepish crinkle of his brow, the way his gaze dropped to where you were still joined, a sticky mess of his cum leaking out around him.
He swallowed hard, and you felt the bastard twitch inside you at your smack, his half-hard cock giving an involuntary pulse that made your eye twitch.
“Right. ’Course. Yeah, I got it, doll.” He pulled out slowly, a wince crossing his face as he watched his release leak down your thigh. “Shit. Let me just—”
You said nothing.
Just stared at him until he scrambled off the bed, his softening cock bobbing between his thighs as his pale ass disappeared into the adjoining bathroom.
You heard water running, the rustle of a cloth, and then he was back, kneeling between your legs with the careful, contrite air of a man who knew he’d pissed you off.
You lay there stiff as a board, staring at the ceiling, refusing to give him the satisfaction of meeting his eyes. He worked in silence, dabbing at the mess he’d made, pressing kisses to your inner thighs when he was done.
You yanked the sheet up over yourself and turned onto your side, your back firmly to him as you reached for the remote on the nightstand.
And so began the silent treatment.
Bucky, to his credit, seemed to understand the gravity of his transgression. He shuffled around the room, pulling on a pair of sweatpants, and disappeared into the kitchen.
Ten minutes later, he reappeared with a plate bearing a warm brownie, a generous dollop of whipped cream melting on top, and a glass of ice water.
He set it on the nightstand beside you, then climbed onto the bed, his weight dipping the mattress as he slid up behind you. His arm snaked around your waist, pulling you back against his chest, and he pressed his lips to the curve of your shoulder.
You ignored him, reaching for the brownie.
He kissed your shoulder again. Then your neck. Then the shell of your ear. You ignored him like a persistent mosquito, taking a bite, letting the silence stretch.
“You know I love you, yeah?”
You paused mid-chew, turning your head just enough to glance at him from the corner of your eye. You hummed, a noncommittal and flat sound, and went back to your brownie.
His arm tightened around your midsection, pulling you closer, his lips finding the curve of your neck in a series of featherlight kisses. “But you know, sweetheart... if you hadn’t been squeezing me so tight, I might’ve had a fighting chance. How’s a guy supposed to think straight when you’re milking him like that?
You set your fork down, turned your head just enough to fix him with a deadpan stare. “Are you seriously trying to blame your cumming inside me on my pussy?”
He had the decency to look caught, his blue eyes wide and innocent in a way that was utterly unconvincing. “No, no—I’m just saying—”
“Uh-huh.” You hummed, turning back to the TV.
He sighed against your neck, his arm tightening around your waist. “I love you,” he murmured, trying a different angle. “You know I’d do anything for you.”
You took another bite, pointedly ignoring him.
At least the fool had enough sense not to bring up that moving in, living with him bullshit he’d been spewing while he was balls-deep inside you.
You had no idea where that came from.
His hand slid up to rest over your heart, his thumb tracing a soft circle over your collarbone. “And you know you love me too. Even when you’re mad. Even when you’re giving me the silent treatment like a brat.”
Your jaw tightened, but you didn’t rise to the bait.
You felt his lips press a lingering kiss to the crown of your head. His hand moving down to rub slow circles on your stomach, the gesture soothing, possessive.
Yeah, you thought, staring at the flickering TV screen, a break is definitely needed.
But even as you thought it, you leaned back into his chest, just a fraction, and felt him exhale against your neck. The idiot thought he was winning you over.
Let him think that.
“A break?”
The word hung in the air like a bad smell neither of you wanted to acknowledge. You stood awkwardly in his living room, your jacket still on, keys clutched in your hand, a clear signal that you weren’t staying, despite the way he’d lit up when you walked through the door.
Bucky was frozen across the room, a bowl of popcorn balanced in his hands. He’d made it fresh, the buttery smell still wafting through the air, probably with that hopeful little grin on his face when he’d heard your knock.
Perfect timing, doll, I just—
Except you’d cut him off before he could finish. Told him you couldn’t stay long. Watched his face cycle through confusion, hurt, and now this—a weird, controlled stillness that felt more unsettling than if he’d just thrown the bowl at the wall.
He set the popcorn down on the coffee table with exaggerated care as he rubbed his forehead.
“I don’t understand,” he said, his voice low and carefully measured. “What—what does that mean?”
You let out a long exhale, shifting your weight from one heel to the other. “Time to spend away from each other while we—”
“—so you’re breaking up with me.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement, flat and accusing, like you’d already handed him the pink slip.
“No, I’m not breaking up with you, I’m—”
“—then what are you saying?” His voice became rougher. He gestured vaguely, a jerky motion that nearly sent a lamp flying off the end table.
He caught it at the last second, fumbling it back into place, and the near-miss only seemed to rattle him more, “Because it sounds like you’re saying you wanna leave me. Like you’re done. Like I’m—”
“If you let me speak, then maybe I can fucking explain!”
You snapped it before you could stop yourself, the words sharp and loud enough to make him blink. His mouth snapped shut. His eyes went wide, completely startled.
The silence that followed was thick, heavy, and incredibly awkward.
You squeezed your eyes shut, took a long breath, and counted to four in your head. One. Two. Three. Four.
When you opened your eyes, you plastered on your sunniest customer-service smile, the one you reserved for difficult clients and, apparently, emotionally unstable boyfriends.
“A break,” you repeated, infusing the word with forced cheerfulness, “means we take some time apart. Space from one another. Time for ourselves. To breathe.”
Bucky’s jaw tightened. He was trying to stay calm, you could see it in the way his hands curled and uncurled at his sides, in the way he kept swallowing like he was forcing down words he wanted to say.
His eyes stayed fixed on you, searching, and the longer you stared back, the more he started shaking his head.
“Why?” His voice cracked on the single syllable. “Why do we need that?”
You opened your mouth, then paused. The truth was, you’d rehearsed this conversation about six different ways and still hadn’t landed on a script that didn’t make you sound like an asshole. So you winged it.
“To... grow as separate people. Become less... dependent on each other.” The words tasted like bullshit coming out.
He stared at you like you’d just started speaking in tongues. His brows furrowed, that deep V forming between them. “But we’re not dependent on each other.”
You bit the inside of your cheek.
No, you thought. I’m not. But you sure as hell are.
You let out a small, exasperated sigh. The popcorn on the coffee table was definitely cold now. The lamp he’d nearly knocked over had stopped swaying. And you were this close to just walking out the door.
“I mean, sweetie, c’mon. Let’s be honest with ourselves right now.”
You were dumb enough to take your eyes off him for just a second, glancing toward the hallway, mentally calculating the escape route, and that’s when you heard the shift of his weight, the quick, determined stride of his boots on the hardwood.
“Bucky, what are—hmph—”
Before you could finish, his hands were on your face. Not gently. Gripping. His palms cupped your cheeks like you were a football he was about to punt, and then his mouth was on yours.
His tongue pushed past your lips before you could even register what was happening, and for a solid three seconds, you just stood there, frozen, letting him practically molest your mouth with the enthusiasm of a man trying to kiss the words right out of your brain.
What the fuck.
He broke the kiss with a wet smack, but before you could say anything—before you could even catch your breath—his fingers squeezed your cheeks together, forcing your mouth into a fish-like pout. Your lips puckered involuntarily. Your words came out garbled.
“Mmph—Bucky—”
“I love you,” he emphasised.
Kiss. Another one, quick and frantic, against your squished lips.
“And you love me.”
Kiss. This one lingered half a second longer, like he was trying to imprint the words onto your mouth.
“I need you, doll.”
And then he went in for a fourth kiss; longer, deeper, his tongue sliding back into your mouth while his fingers still kept your face hostage. You couldn’t breathe. Could only make muffled, indignant noises against his lips and slap at his chest with increasing urgency.
Slap. Slap. SLAP.
Finally, he pulled back, breathing hard, a thin string of saliva connecting your lips before it snapped. His pupils were blown wide. His cheeks were flushed.
You gasped for air, wiped your mouth with the back of your hand, and stared at him in disbelief.
“What is wrong with you!” you said incredulously, shoving him back with both hands against his chest.
It was like pushing against a brick wall wrapped in an old knitted sweater. He barely budged, then tried to grab your wrists, those big, warm hands reaching for you like magnetic force,but you were faster. You dodged left, put the coffee table between you, and held up a warning finger.
“Don’t.”
The look on his face shifted from desperate to wounded to frustrated in about 0.3 seconds. He rubbed his eye with the heel of his palm. That was his tell. The impending headache was already setting up camp behind his temples. His mouth set into a firm line, barely visible under that stupidly attractive mustache.
Then he started pacing. Back and forth across the living room rug.
“I don’t understand where this is coming from,” he said, and the laugh that followed wasn’t a laugh at all, more a cynical huff of air. “I’ve done everything for you. Everything.”
You froze. There was an edge to his voice now, a sharpness you hadn’t heard before. He wasn’t looking at you anymore. He was staring at the wall, at the floor, at the ceiling, anywhere but your face.
“I buy you clothes.” Thud. Thud. “I pay for dinners.” Thud. “For hair appointments. For nails—”
Nails. Shit. You had an appointment with Yelena in thirty minutes.
“—I’ve been attentive. And supportive. And loyal.” His voice was rising, cracking with disbelief. “I don’t look at other women. I don’t think about other women. I don’t even notice other women exist unless they’re blocking my view of you. So what the fuck did I do wrong for you to break up with me?”
His eyes snapped back to yours, wounded and accusatory.
You opened your mouth to correct him—it’s a break, Bucky, a break, not a breakup—but he bulldozed right over you.
“Tell me.” He stepped closer. “What did I do?”
You scoffed.
Because suddenly every legitimate reason you had poofed right out of your head like smoke.
And still, despite the fact that he was standing there yelling at you like a madman, you had the decency to not want to hurt his feelings by calling him a clingy, obsessed loser.
You lifted a hand like it was obvious. “The texts,” you said, flat.
His eyes narrowed. Genuinely confused. Confused, like you’d just accused him of a crime he had no memory of committing. “What texts?”
You waved your hands around like you were crazy… because you felt it, the absurdity of having to explain this.
“The gazillion texts I get throughout the day from you. On the hour. Every hour. ‘Good morning, doll.’ ‘What are you eating for lunch, doll?’ ‘Did you see the sunset, doll?’ ‘Thinking about you, doll.’” You dropped your hands. “It’s a lot.”
He let out a disbelieving scoff, his head tilting back like he was seeking divine intervention. “You’re breaking up with me because I text too much?”
Your jaw dropped. There was no way this bastard was making you seem like the irrational one here.
“Okay, then how about asking me to move in with you during sex?” You crossed your arms, lifting your chin. “When I’m—when I’m literally so distracted and can’t form a coherent sentence?”
“Sue me for getting lost in the moment,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. The movement pulled his sweater tight across his shoulders, and you hated that you noticed. “I don’t hear you ever complain when I say I’m gonna breed you. Or fuck you through the mattress. You seem pretty into it then.”
“Oh my God.” You covered your face with both hands, pressing your palms into your eye sockets like you could physically block out the absurdity of this conversation. The pressure made little pinpricks of light dance behind your lids.
Bucky sighed, as if he genuinely believed he was the victim here. He rubbed a hand over his jaw, then dragged it up through his hair. “I can’t believe you’re breaking up with me.”
And then he turned and walked away, heading toward the foyer.
Your heart did that stupid thing it always did, lurched and twisted. Because the sadness in his voice was real. And you, absolute fool that you were, hurried after him, your heels clicking sharp and fast against the hardwood.
“For the last time, it’s a break, Bucky,” you said for what felt like the hundredth time that day. “It’s not forever. Just a few weeks… maybe a month or two… I don’t know, we’ll see.”
He was already at the entryway cabinet, the antique one with the brass handles that you’d helped him refinish last spring. He yanked open the drawers, rummaging through it with this kind of frantic energy that you did not notice at all.
“It doesn’t have to be this big dramatic thing. I just need—I dunno, space. To breathe without your texts vibrating in my pocket every forty-five minutes. To go a full day without you asking if I’ve eaten or if I’m still mad or what I’m wearing.” You waved a hand at his back. “Lots of couples do breaks, it strengthens the relationship.”
He shook his head, and you heard the soft click of his tongue against his teeth. “Can’t do a break, doll.”
You scoffed, irritation flaring hot again. “Well, that’s not really your choice to—”
He turned around.
And you stopped mid-sentence because he was holding a whole-ass gun in his hand.
You didn’t even register it at first, just a blur of metal and movement, but then he swung it, sweeping it in an arc like he was gesturing with it, and you ducked out of pure instinct, your shoulders hunching, your hands flying up.
“What the fuck!”
But Bucky didn’t look at you. He looked at the gun, turning it over in his hand like he was examining it for the first time. And then, without hesitation, he pressed the muzzle against his own temple.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.” Your hand clamped over your mouth, fingers pressing into your lips, “Why do you have that right by the door?”
He ignored you.
“You can’t leave me if I’m dead.” He said it like it was the most logical thing in the world.
You just stared at him, mouth hanging open. The seconds stretched, and somewhere in the back of your mind, you realized you should probably be scared. Worried. Calling 911. But instead, all that came out was a long, exhausted sigh.
“Bucky. Oh my God.” You rubbed your forehead. “Put that down!”
“No.” His voice was firm. Petulant. The no of a toddler who’d decided he was done with vegetables.
And because you had apparently lost every shred of self-preservation instinct you’d ever possessed, you took a step forward, hand reaching out like you were just going to snatch the loaded revolver from this six-foot man.
He backed up immediately, the muzzle digging deeper into his temple, the skin whitening around the metal. “I swear I’ll kill myself. I will. Don’t test me, doll.”
“Oh my God.”
“I love you so much. I can’t live without you.” He shifted the gun down, pressing it under his chin, tilting his head back so he was looking down the barrel of his own mortality. “I can’t live without you. You know that. You’ve always known that.”
You stood there, frozen, arms hanging limp at your sides. And because your mouth had no filter, you heard yourself murmur, “We’ve only been dating for seven months.”
Bucky’s eyes widened, just a fraction. The gun wavered. And for a split second, you could have sworn you saw a flicker of embarrassment cross his face.
But then he recovered, pressing the barrel harder against the soft flesh beneath his jaw. “Seven months and twenty-five days.”
“You counted?”
“I know what I’ve got, sweetheart. And I’m not letting it go.” His voice dropped, low and serious, “Not even if it kills me.”
You could only stare at this fool for so long before your head dropped to your chest, a small, disbelieving chuckle slipping past your lips.
His brow furrowed. The gun stayed pressed under his chin, but his eyes narrowed, “I’m about to put a bullet through my skull and you’re laughing?”
You pursed your lips, trying to smother your smile, and let out a long exhale, tilting your head as you looked up at him, “I wanna say I’m too old for this shit,” you said dryly, “but you’re a hell of a lot older than me, so… what do we do now?”
“I—” He faltered. Adjusted his grip on the revolver. “That’s not how you’re supposed to talk to me.”
Your brows knit together. “How am I supposed to talk to you, then?”
The more unaffected you seemed, the more his frustration bled through. The barrel shifted slightly, a tiny wobble, and he reset it against the soft skin under his chin. His jaw tightened. He looked at you like you were the unreasonable one.
“You’re supposed to be begging me to stop. Crying. Telling me you love me.” He gestured with his free hand, the motion jerky, like he was trying to reassert control over the situation. “That’s how this works.”
You stared at him for a long moment after that, not really knowing what else to say anymore.
Instead you clapped your hands together, and sighed, “Well. I gotta go.”
“Wait—what?”
You started edging toward the door, slow and casual, like you were just stretching your legs. Your eyes never left his face, but your hand was already reaching behind you, fingers searching for the doorknob. “I’ve got a nail appointment in, like, ten minutes that I’m probably gonna be late for.”
His eye twitched. A micro-spasm of disbelief. The gun rotated in his grip, not raising, just… shifting.
“I’m about to kill myself,” he said, each word enunciated like he was speaking to a child, “and you’re leaving for a nail appointment.”
“Yeah,” you said flatly, your fingers brushing the brass knob. “And you know how expensive Yelena’s late fee is.”
“You can’t be serious.” His voice dropped, softer now, almost reasonable. “I’m standing here with a gun to my head, begging you not to leave me, and you’re worried about a late fee? Is that really what our relationship means to you?”
“I am completely serious,” you said, ignoring the barb.
Before he could retort, your hand finally found the doorknob. You turned it, yanked the door open.
Late afternoon air hit your face, and then you were moving, sliding through the gap, your heels clicking on the hardwood of the foyer onto the worn birch of his porch.
“For fuck’s sake—”
He yelled your name, the sound bouncing off the walls and chasing you down the steps. Behind you, you heard the heavy thunk of the gun hitting the floor and then the heavy thud of his shoes on the porch, scrambling after you.
You had a head start. By the time you reached your car, you could hear him gaining, swearing under his breath, probably calculating how much force it would take to haul you back inside.
Your key found the lock on the first try. You slid into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and had the engine roaring to life before he reached the bumper.
He stopped at the end of the driveway, hands on his hips, chest heaving.
You rolled down the window. just an inch, just enough for your voice to carry.
“I’ll be back in a few hours.” Your tone was calm, almost kind. “We’ll try and have this conversation again. Try not to do anything stupid while I’m gone. And please, for the love of god Bucky, throw that thing away.”
His jaw tightened. His mouth opened, a cutting retort forming, something designed to burrow under your skin and make you feel guilty for walking out on a man who’d just threatened to blow his brains out—
But you were already pulling away from the curb, your taillights the only answer he got.
In your rearview mirror, you watched him stand there, frozen at the edge of the driveway, watching you disappear around the corner.
Let him stew, you thought, gunning the engine toward the salon. He’ll be fine. He always is.
“He pulled out a gun?”
Yelena didn’t look up from your hand, her focus razor-sharp as she filed the edge of your nail into a perfect almond shape.
The salon smelled like acetone and rose-scented hand cream, a combination that had become oddly comforting over the months you’d been coming here. Rows of pink-lit mirrors lined the walls, reflecting the quiet hum of drill bits and the occasional burst of Russian pop music from the speakers.
Yelena’s station was in the back corner, the one with the good lighting and the jar of complimentary vodka shots she kept under the counter for “loyal customers only.”
“Yeah,” you muttered dryly, adjusting your lashes as she moved to your left hand. “I won’t lie—for a moment there, I thought it was about to become a murder-suicide type of situation.”
Yelena pointed the file at you, nodding. “I see a lot of white American men do that on the news.” She tapped the file against her chin, thoughtful. “Where do they get such easy access to guns?”
You could only shrug, the movement pulling at the foil wraps on your other hand. “When you figure that out, please let me know.”
She made a noncommittal hum and returned to work, picking up a tube of gel glue and a single extension.
“So,” she said, not looking up, “you are done with this mad man, da?”
You opened your mouth to answer. Then you closed it. Then you opened it again, but nothing came out. Your face must have done something odd, because Yelena’s eyes snapped to yours.
“Girl.”
“What?” you said defensively.
“You have that look,” she said, pressing the extension into place with practiced care. “That look where normal, beautiful women stay with ugly loser men.”
You pointed a finger at her. “He’s not ugly.”
Yelena just stared at you. Three full seconds of that unblinking Russian gaze. Then she shook her head slowly, “Da. Is confirmed. You are hopeless.”
“It is not that simple,” you said a bit hopelessly.
“Then make it simple so I understand,” she said bluntly. She picked up the UV lamp and slid your hand under it, the blue light casting a sterile glow across your fingers. “Explain to me like I am child.”
You let out a long exhale, slumping back into the chair. The cushion squeaked beneath you. Where to even start? How to explain the gravitational pull of a man who was equal parts sweet and suffocating?
“See, being with a man—it’s like... taking the time to invest in him so it can benefit you a lot. And with James, I’ve invested a lot.” You gestured vaguely. “Time. Energy. Emotional labour. I know his routines, his moods, the way he takes his coffee. I’ve memorised which arguments get him to back down and which ones make him double down. That’s work, Yelena. That’s equity. And as a result I’ve grown very comfortable with him.”
She pulled your hand out of the lamp, inspected the nail, and grunted. “And you are still comfortable with the man even after he kept you hostage, threatening you with a gun?”
“But he wasn’t threatening me,” you emphasised, straightening up. “He threatened himself to keep me. There’s a difference.”
Yelena stopped. Set down the glue. Turned to face you fully, both hands flat on the table in front of her.
“There is no difference,” she said flatly. “Gun is gun. Threat is threat. Man who points gun at himself to make you stay is still pointing gun at you. You are just standing behind bullet path.”
“I probably sounds insane.”
“It is insane,” she corrected, picking up the glue again. “But I am not your mother. I am your friend, more importantly, nail technician. So I will make your nails beautiful, and you will go home to your crazy gun man, and maybe one day you will learn.”
She pressed another extension into place with a decisive click. “Or maybe you will be on news. I will watch and say, ‘I told her.’”
You stared at her.
“That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think?” you finally said, your voice dry as the cotton balls in the jar beside you.
Yelena just lifted one sleek blonde brow, her expression flat as a frozen lake. She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she picked up your right hand, examined your natural nails, and then looked you dead in the eye.
“He must have a big dick, huh?”
The question came out flat, like she was asking about the weather or the price of gel. No judgment. Just pure, clinical curiosity.
You felt your cheeks warm despite yourself. “Yes he does.”
“Of course. Is always the way. Beautiful women stay with crazy men for one of two reasons; money or dick.” She picked up a file, examining the edge of your nail with a critical eye. “Big dick explains many things. The gun. The madness. The way you keep going back like a moth to flame. Is biological. Men with big dicks and small brains create chemical dependency in women. Very common in America.”
“But he’s kind,” you said, holding up your hand to count on your fingers. “And thoughtful. And attentive—”
“And crazy, and pathetic, and clingy,” she interrupted, picking up a new extension, examined it against your nail.
You rolled your eyes, actually rolled them, like a teenager being lectured.
She lifted her green eyes to yours, and there was something almost fond in them. “You are just as crazy as him.”
“Excuse me?”
“You are,” she repeated, “You like his craziness. And his clingyness. And even when you complain about it, it makes you feel special.” She paused, her gaze flicking to yours. “And horny.”
You opened your mouth to protest. Closed it.
You thought about the way Bucky’s texts made your stomach flip; equal parts annoyance and that warm, someone wants me satisfaction. The way his desperation and dominance in bed made you feel like the center of his entire universe.
“Oh fuck,” you said, the realization settling over you, “I’m a cliché.”
Yelena shrugged, reaching for the topcoat. “Da. But you are cliché with very nice nails. So at least you look good while being pathetic.”
“… Thanks,” you muttered dryly.
Then your phone rang.
You reached for it automatically, half expecting Bucky’s name to light up the screen with another round of I miss you texts. But instead, an unknown number stared back at you,a New York area code you didn’t recognize.
You frowned, swiped to answer, and pressed the phone to your ear.
“Hello?”
Yelena pretended not to watch. She busied herself with oiling your cuticles, her blonde head bowed, her movements steady. But her eyes kept flicking up to you.
“He what?!”
The shriek tore out of you before you could stop it. The sound bounced off the salon’s white walls, and every head in the place swiveled toward you. You felt the weight of fifteen pairs of eyes on your back, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care.
You listened. Nodded. Your eyes stayed fixed on a spot on the wall where a poster advertised acrylics with a woman’s perfectly manicured hand draped across her face.
“Uh huh. Mhm-mhm.”
Your face scrunched. Then, slowly, your shoulders relaxed, the tension bleeding out of them as you let out a breath you didn’t realise you’d been holding.
“Seriously? Okay. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, thank you.”
You hung up and turned to Yelena, who had stopped pretending to be disinterested. Her eyebrows were raised, as she tilted her head. “What was that?”
You let out a long, slow sigh and held up your freshly done nails, admiring the pink gloss under the neon light.
“Fool shot himself in the foot. Literally. And guess who was listed as his emergency contact?”
Yelena let out a low whistle and shook her head, her lips pressing into a thin line of amused disbelief. She took the cash you dug out of your purse, counted it without looking, and tucked it into the pocket of her apron.
“That is a level of pathetic that has never been reached before,” she said. “Not even in my country.”
“Tell me about it.”
Your shoes clicked against the polished linoleum as you followed the signs to the orthopedics wing.
You still didn’t know what you were going to say to him. Every option cycled through your head—swearing him out, dumping him right there in the hospital bed, maybe throwing your heel at his head for good measure.
The words break up had been sitting on your tongue since you left the salon, a clean cut to end this unnecessary nonsense for good.
But then you rounded the corner to his floor, and your feet slowed without permission.
The door to his room was partially visible through the slatted blinds, and you slowed as you approached, your heels clicking to a stop on the linoleum. Through the narrow gaps, you could see him.
Bucky sat propped against the pillows, his right foot elevated in a crisp white cast that ran from mid-calf to his toes, the edges already starting to scuff from the hospital sheets.
He was still wearing that blue knitted sweater from earlier. It pulled tight across his chest as he sat up straight, hands resting on his thighs, nodding slowly at something the doctor was saying.
His jaw was set, brows furrowed in that serious, focused expression he used whenever he wasn’t speaking to someone other than you, the one that made him look very stoic and grouchy. A stark contrast to the disheveled, manic mess he’d been a few hours ago.
Bucky listened, his eyes fixed on her, the picture of a composed, well-adjusted adult. He didn’t look like a man who had accidentally shot himself in the foot.
And as you stood there, in the harsh fluorescent light of a hospital corridor, realized that you really did love him.
There was no way you were breaking up with him. Unfortunately, you were stuck with this idiot. This beautiful, emotionally unstable, big-hearted fool who couldn’t even orchestrate a proper suicide threat without maiming himself in the process.
The doctor finished her spiel, gave a polite nod, and turned to leave. You stepped back, plastering a courteous smile on your face as she passed, her heels clicking in a rhythm that matched your own. Then you pushed the door open.
Bucky’s head snapped up, and his blue eyes found you instantly.
The guarded, stoic mask crumbled replaced by something embarrassed, a flush creeping up his neck, his lips parting as if to speak but hesitating.
“Now before you say anything,” he started. “I really was planning on getting rid of it. And I did not plan on shooting myself in the foot. It was an accident. I was moving it, and I—”
You didn’t let him finish. You crossed the room in two strides, grabbed the collar of the blue sweater, and pressed your lips to his.
He made a surprised sound—a muffled mmph—but it melted into something softer, his hands finding your waist almost instinctively, pulling you closer until your knees bumped the edge of the bed.
The kiss was warm, tasting faintly of hospital coffee and mint. His fingers curled into the fabric of your jacket, and you felt the tension drain out of his shoulders, his whole body sagging into you.
When you finally broke away, you were both breathing a little heavier. You stayed close, your forehead resting against his, your lips brushing his as you murmured, “No break.”
His eyes fluttered open, and the look on his face was something else entirely. You’d never seen a man who accidentally shot himself in the foot look so happy. The corners of his mouth twitched, then spread into a slow, boyish grin that softened all the hard edges of his face.
And that’s how you ended up sprawled sideways across the narrow hospital bed, one leg dangling off the edge, clipboard balanced on your knee as you scribbled through the stack of discharge paperwork.
Bucky was propped beside you, his shoulder pressed into your side, his arm looping around your waist. Every few minutes, he’d shift, his lips brushing against your shoulder through the thin cotton of your top.
You were halfway through entering his insurance information when he lifted your free hand, and brought it to his mouth. His lips pressed against your knuckles, before he turned your hand over and examined the nails.
“Pretty,” he murmured, his thumb tracing the glossy edge.
You hummed, not looking up from the paperwork. “Yelena had a lot to say about us.”
“Yeah?” He shifted slightly, his interest piqued. “Like what?”
You shrugged, the motion jostling his head gently. “Just very true things.”
“Such as?” he pressed, his lips brushing your jaw, a gentle nudge.
You turned your face toward him, and he met you halfway. The kiss was brief and soft, your lips lingered just long enough for you to feel the warmth of his breath, the slight curve of a smile forming against yours.
“That we’re both crazy,” you said, pulling back just enough to meet his eyes, “And i agree.”
A beat of silence.
Then he let out a low chuckle, before settling his head back against your shoulder. “Whatever you say, doll.”
