To Whatever End

It Only Cost Everything

[jessaerys]

i complain in a more virtuous and ethical way than other people

[caprifiles]

[persegrace-deactivated20250921]

The Cavalry of Woe | s.reid

When the work starts to get to you, Spencer reminds you why it still matters.

Pairing: BAU!Reader x Spencer Reid (no use of "y/n") Contains*: angst, comfort, established relationship, references to canon typical violence, non-graphic description of violence against a child, fainting, reader has a panic attack, biblical allusions, atheist!reader, drowning imagery, implied passive suicidal ideation, implied self-harm (non-physical), burn-out, secondary trauma, avoidant!reader Length: ~4k Notes: I posted this to ao3 like almost a year ago but posting this here too since it's a one-shot. it was the first cm fanfic I wrote after getting back into the show again. it's kind of a study on secondary trauma and also inspired by an Emily Dickinson poem lol [ao3 link] *you are responsible for the media you consume*

Worker bees will kill themselves to protect their hive. 

A single sting, a final stand, and their innards are ripped from their body. Is it altruism and hope that drives the bee, the faith in the power of One, or is it the blind stupidity in believing that individual sacrifice will ever truly save the collective?

You can’t say. You’re not a bee. You’re just a person.

But you’re familiar with sacrifice all the same, as familiar as a smoker is to nicotine and twice as addicted. You'll happily let its sickness pollute your body as long as you feel its rush. It’ll kill you eventually, you know, but in the now, it makes you sharp.

You have cases to solve. Innocents to protect. Killers to put away. 

Your job is not easy, not in the slightest. A lesser person would close their eyes at the first sign of depravity. It is the smart thing to do; the devil does not exist to the non-believer. But instead, your eyes are pinned open, always looking for the next sign, the next evil. It hurts—god, it always hurts—but you can bear the brunt of the world’s suffering if it means the soft can sleep. 

Sometimes, though, in moments when the extent of human cruelty is laid before you on a motionless battleground, you wonder what it’s all for. If it matters. If adopting the pain of the world is worth anything at all.

Is the sacrifice still valiant if you’re a casualty in the fall out? Are you not one of the collective, too? Why do you matter the least?

Why must you hurt again and again for the sake of heroism?

And therein lies the difference between you and the bee—the worker bee does not doubt its sacrifice nor succumb to the basal instinct of self-preservation when the hive is threatened. It just acts. You, on the other hand, despite your best efforts, will always be addled by the inherent selfishness of humanity. If you were drowning, instinct should force you to try and claw your way to the surface.

But you’re always drowning, and you’re tired of fighting the weight of the ocean. Would it really be so terrible to sink?

No person wants to hurt to ease the suffering of others. But you just can’t stop. Less selflessness, more compulsion. Self-harm masquerading as altruism.

Someone must bear the burden of the evil in the world. Someone must die so all others may live. 

Christ did not resent the Romans when they crucified him. He begged the Lord for their salvation, to forgive them. They knew not what they had done; they were guiltless, infants rebelling against elders. They all played their part precisely as the story commands.

This is the oldest parable. And you’ve known your role for a long, long time.

Still, sometimes, you wonder what it might be like to be rocked to sleep by the tides instead of suffocated by the sea.

It’s a fantasy. And when the ocean floor calls to you so sweetly, you remember that tenderness does not exist for people like yourself. It can’t. 

You think as much as you stare at a body, not yet made palatable by a thin sheet from forensics. 

It’s so small. And utterly unrecognizable from the photo given to you by her parents—a child turned canvas for the wicked.

You can see it now: the look on their faces when you tell them the fate of their daughter. They’ll hate you for not saving her. You’ll hate yourself more, and add her name (Elise—so delicate) to a long, long list of failures.

Is it a comfort or a cruelty to at least have the body to bury? There is peace found in laying the beloved to rest, but what if the beloved no longer looks human? Will they recognize Elise as their daughter, or is identity tied to the form?

They won’t be able to look at her like this, and you won’t be able to say anything to take that pain away.

The unsubs are in custody now. That should count for something. Two fewer deviants in the world are free to roam and slaughter those that aren’t even aware of such concepts. You should look away, do the rest of your job.

But you can’t. You just. Keep. Staring.

It’s one of the worst crimes you’ve seen, and yet you hope you never forget it—this body, this broken little girl, those men and what they did to her—so that the next time (and there’s always a next time, another one, a worse one), you’ll get here in time. Memorizing this is your penance.

You’ll save them next time. And the time after that. And the time after that…

Someone’s talking—to you, to a police officer, to another member of the team, you don’t know. You don’t care. You just continue to stare.

Something hurts. It’s your head (it seems like it always hurts) and your ribs (still bruised from a bullet caught by your vest during the last case) and maybe everywhere else. When you inhale, your chest just feels tighter, and you, more breathless. Sweat leaves your face shiny and your skin sticky and god why is it so hot in this room?

You sway and catch yourself, blinking.

Somewhere in the distance, a voice calls your name. It’s familiar, comforting, reminiscent of early winter mornings beneath warm comforters and the sun glittering off the crests of waves, so at odds with the gruesome scene in front of you. You love that voice; if only it weren’t so far away, so far above.

You turn towards it, and the dark rushes in.

When you wake, there are two men hovering over you. One shines a light in your eyes, and the other grips your hand.

“I’m fine,” you say, sitting up despite the ache in your ribs and ignoring how the room spins with you.

Spencer waves the paramedic away before grasping your face in his hands, eyes scanning yours. Beyond him, Prentiss and JJ talk in hushed voices amongst the chaos of forensic documentation and dusting and photography. Luke talks to a police officer, and Matt is being inspected by another paramedic. Prentiss glances at you, her brows knit together with worry, but she doesn’t move toward you.

You brush his hands off. “I’m fine,” you repeat.

“You fainted,” Spencer says. “You were unconscious for—”

You cut him off. “I just got dizzy. It’s fine now.”

It’s not. It never has been, it never will be.

It’s a quiet trip back to Quantico from Sacramento. The plane touches down just past midnight, and you finally get back to Spencer’s apartment by one. You haven’t said more than a handful of words to him since you left California.

You can see it in his eyes; he’s studying you, a notch between his brows, and it’s so soft and so worried and so loving that it chafes, like stiff denim against an open wound.

“What?” you ask. You hang up your coat and drag your luggage with you into the bedroom.

“Are you feeling alright?” he asks, trailing after you.

“I’m fine. I just need to sleep.” Whether or not you actually would was a separate question.

He pauses at the foot of the bed, watching you as you dump dirty laundry into the hamper in the corner. “You’ve just…” He presses his lips together, and doesn’t say anything else.

You know—you’re being cold, you’ve been cold, for… you’ve lost track. You’ve been trending towards the depths of the ocean for a while now, longer than usual, long enough that you’re finding comfort in suffocation.

He knows that you’re sinking; he always does. He probably noticed the exact moment you stopped looking towards the surface. 

A few cases back, a miscalculation on your part, and three names added to your list of failures.

And now, another.

You look over to Spencer and find his soft brown eyes open and pleading—just look to the surface, and I’ll dive down to find you.

He must find something in your expression, because he dares a few steps towards you. You don’t protest when he folds his arms around you, but you don’t return the gesture either. If it bothers him, he doesn’t say.

“I just want to know how I can help,” he murmurs into your hair, and something twists in the pit of your gut.

He’s honey sweet, and right now, you’re caustic. If Man was molded from clay, the universe shaped you from bile instead.

“I’m going to wash up,” you say, stepping out of his arms. You don’t let him get a word in before you disappear into the bathroom, standing beneath scalding hot water like you can burn everything that’s wrong out of you. Then, when you stare at yourself in the foggy mirror afterwards, clad in an old oversized t-shirt growing damp from your dripping hair, you frown and steel your resolve.

You’ll do better next time. You’ll catch the next killer faster, save the next victim before they have the chance to become one. And you’ll do it again, and again, and again…

The feeling catches you so quickly that your legs nearly buckle beneath you thinking about the sheer amount of evil in the world, taunting from the shadows, watching your successes through the media. You may pluck one of us from the dirt, but a hundred more will rise from the soil overnight.

The body of the girl flashes through your mind, along with the idea of the hundreds of others you’ll miss. Your eyes are always open; you’ll never shy away from it, but you'll never be able to see it all before it happens. You can't stop it.

You breathe deeply against the growing tightness in your chest, but the warmth sucks the air from the room. You’re drowning, deep below the surface, and here, standing on dry land.

You manage to stagger out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam, collapsing to the ground just beside the bed. Something’s wrong—you can hear your breath echoing through the bedroom, a grating keening sound that’s far too close to screaming. 

Spencer’s beside you immediately—of course he is. He’s saying something, but you can’t hear it over the ringing, god the ringing—

His hands are on you; you push them away.

But he’s not deterred.

He gathers you into his arms, and you’re too busy trying to remember how to breathe to fight him off. You don’t really want to, anyway. You just feel like you should.

Two parents found a mutilated body instead of a daughter today because of your failure, but you are the one feeling the weight of the world’s malevolence crashing around you.

It’s pathetic. You’re pathetic. And you don’t want Spencer to see.

But you just rasp and shake and pray to something you’ve never believed in, can’t believe in, because what god would let two men turn a little girl into something barely reminiscent of a person, of a body?

You don’t know how long it takes for your lungs to stop feeling like broken glass, or for your body to remember how to feel the things touching you—the scratchy rug against your legs, Spencer squeezing you tight against him—but eventually, it wains, and you’re a husk again.

Spencer sits with his back against the bed, his legs straight out in front of him. You’re in his lap with your cheek against his chest, tucked under his chin. It’s not particularly comfortable; your lower back aches, your bruised ribs throbbing after how tightly Spencer clutched you, but you can’t bring yourself to move.

Do you remember how? It seems impossible.

Spencer’s arms loosen around you, and for a moment, you’re scared he’ll try and stand. Instead, he strokes a hand down your arm and murmurs something into your hair.

“What?” you manage to whisper.

He repeats, “Sorry if I hurt you. I thought deep pressure therapy would help.”

You might’ve laughed at his apology if you could find any humor at all. You collapsed onto the floor like a wounded animal, yet he’s sorry for what he tried doing to help you.

You can’t fight the prickling at the backs of your eyes. “You didn’t.”

He hums and kisses the top of your head, and you close your eyes against the tears, trying to swallow through your narrowing throat.

“Can you tell me what happened?” he asks after several moments.

You don’t want to. You don’t want him to see you like this, to know how deep you’re sinking, how much you’re failing. You knew what you signed up for when you took this job. You wanted this job. You wanted this, because you knew that you could handle it. Because someone has to hold evil accountable.

You knew it would be hard. You knew it might hurt. But it’s nothing in comparison to all of the victims that still appear in your dreams. You should be so lucky to be here breathing and hurting than not breathing at all.

Still. It hurts. And you’re weaker than you thought.

The words are out before you can stop them: “We didn’t save her.”

He knows what you’re talking about. “We couldn’t have,” he says softly, sadly.

“No, but if I’d—we could’ve—there’s—” You can’t find the words because you know he’s right. But it feels like surrender to believe it. Your voice wavers when you just say, “I should’ve driven faster.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference. You know that. Forensics determined her time of death—”

“Stop,” you beg, because you can’t bear to hear the facts again, to be told that there was nothing you could have done to change the outcome. There’s always something. You’ll replay every second of the case in your head for clues on what you missed, places where you could’ve worked faster.

Then, next time, you’ll be better.

Spencer sighs, not a lament but an apology, and his breath rustles your hair. “We stopped them from doing the same to more girls. That matters. But we won’t save everyone.”

You know that. You know that, but you still can’t stop yourself from saying, “Then what’s the point?” 

Because you’re selfish. Because you know your role in this life, but you can’t rationalize adopting the pain of the world when others will continue to feel it, too.

You didn’t ask it expecting a response, though in hindsight, you should have. It’s the age old unanswerable question, the burden of every human.

Spencer winds a lock of your hair around his finger. “It depends on which school of philosophy you look at. Are you familiar with The Myth of Sisyphus?”

You are, not because you’re a philosophy scholar or even particularly knowledgeable of Camus, but because you were twenty-years-old and insufferable once, too. “One must imagine a BAU agent happy,” you muse with a sodden laugh.

Spencer laughs through his nose, but you add in a wavering voice, “I’m not Sisyphus, Spencer. I can’t find happiness doing this.”

“Do you want to quit?” he murmurs.

If you say yes, he’d tell you to. But you suspect he asked because he already knows your answer. “No. Never.” You take a deep breath. “It just… it’s so hard, sometimes, and it feels… inadequate.”

“Inadequate, how?”

“Every time I think I’ve seen the worst of it, something else tops it. And I—it makes me feel like… like I haven’t even made a dent.” You take another shaky breath. “We found the unsubs today. I know that matters. But there are countless others doing the same, doing worse that we don’t know about yet, and nothing feels like enough.”

“I understand,” he says softly. “I’ve thought the same thing. Countless times.”

“So how do you rationalize it?”

He’s quiet for a bit, and the silence in the room feels less oppressive now, and more comforting. But guilt settles beneath your breastbone. It was already a hard day, an even harder case. You know he’s exhausted, and probably just as disgusted by today as you are. But here he sits, holding you, running his fingers up and down your arm, threading them through your hair, comforting you, even though you have the luxury of being alive, of being whole.

How he isn’t disgusted by your weakness, you don’t know.

But when he finally answers, his voice is soft and soothing like a lullaby, and it’s hard to focus on anything else when he talks.

“There’s something admirable about trying to save every person, stop every killer,” he says. “But I think that there’s far more importance, more… strength, in knowing that you can’t and doing the work anyway.

“There’s another essay by Camus that helps exemplify it—Don Juanism. He starts with a reference to Don Juan—a fictional libertine whose archetype has captivated great writers and thinkers for centuries. He lives his entire life seducing different women, never staying with any of them for very long. He sleeps with them, and then he’s off to find the next. Many analyze the character and claim that he’s searching for something—some great love that he’ll find in the right woman—or that he’s depressed and aimless and searching for meaning in all of these meaningless trysts.

“But, actually, according to Camus, he’s perfectly content the way he is. He’s not looking for anything, or trying to fill something that he’s missing. He knows exactly what he’s doing, what he’s getting, and he’s enjoying it every time. Each woman he sleeps with thinks that she’ll be the one to change his mind, that she has that thing that he wants, but none of them do, because there’s nothing that he wants.”

“Hmm, tread carefully, now,” you say.

A laugh rumbles through his chest. “It’s a metaphor, not an ideal,” he says, flicking your ear. Your weak responding laugh cues him to continue:

“Don Juan is just another example of the absurdist hero, like Sisyphus—”

“How’s a manwhore the same as Sisyphus?”

He scoffs, and you can hear the smile on his face as he says, “I’m getting there.”

Your lips twitch upwards despite it all. “Sorry, sorry. Keep going. I’ll stop interrupting.”

He shakes his head, squeezing your upper arm affectionately. “Don Juan rebels against the abstract idea of love—that it’s this great intangible thing to aspire to. But the reason that he’s happy is that there is nothing that he’s aspiring to. He’s living in the present, finding love in the individual woman, then finding a new one in the next. And that, in itself, is absurd—to deny the existence of this greater ideal but yet still create a version of it himself every day.

“The absurdist hero knows that there isn’t a greater meaning, a greater purpose, but still chooses to make his own meaning. Sisyphus is punished by the gods to push the rock up the hill, only to have it roll to the bottom once he reaches the top, for eternity. There isn’t a greater meaning to the task except for the one he chooses for it. And if he chooses to find meaning in it, to be happy in the routine, well, then he negates the punishment. He negates the gods. He creates his own fate despite the task.

“Now, Camus is a far better writer than he is a philosopher. There are countless fallacies in his idea of absurdism, and plenty of criticisms to be made, but…” His voice softens. “Maybe it’s absurd in its own right to keep doing this job. There will always be more serial killers. There will always be more victims. There will always be something worse waiting in the dark. We’ll never ‘solve’ cruelty. We’ll never stop violence.” He finds one of your hands and laces his fingers through yours. “But isn’t there something to be said about knowing all of that, and still choosing to do the work, anyway? In looking at all the individual good we do instead of all of the bad that we’ll miss?”

He hugs you close to him, and you bury your face into the crook of his neck. He smells vaguely of sweat from the day, but beneath it all, it’s still sweet coffee and old books and laundry detergent.

“I’m not saying that we need to find happiness in every part of this job. I’m not saying that it’s not difficult. But if you tally every case in hopes of solving an arbitrary amount that will stop every active serial killer, you’ll miss the fact that you’re still saving lives with every killer we do catch.”

For the first time in the conversation, he tugs you away from him. You finally look him in the eye, and he cups the side of your face, dragging his thumb across your cheek affectionately. “There was another girl there.”

You close your eyes and sigh. You know there was. Sacramento PD found her (Valerie—seven-years-old) tied to a radiator in the basement, terrified but breathing. She would have been next, but in all your self-loathing, you couldn’t think past Elise, what you couldn’t do.

You must wear your thoughts on your face, because Spencer says, “It doesn’t change the fact that we couldn’t save Elise, but we saved another girl, and countless others. That’s still important. That still matters.”

You swallow thickly, your eyes stinging again. “I know it does,” you whisper.

When you open your eyes, you find Spencer smiling. “I know you know. And I’ll always be here to remind you. Because I love you.”

“I love you, too,” you say, because it’s impossible not to, because even with every terrible thing in the world, Spencer’s unfailingly good.

It will take you a while to adopt the attitude yourself. Spencer has been at this job for far longer than you; he’s had time to make amends with all that the BAU won’t do. But still, that night, his words soothe something in you.

You sit on the bathroom floor while he showers, and as soon as you both finally make it into bed, he’s asleep within minutes.

But you stay awake for just a bit longer, mulling it all over.

You’ve given a piece of yourself to every case you’ve worked. That’s how this work goes, you know. You suspect you’ll lose more of yourself before you figure out how to preserve what remains. 

You used to think there was something valiant in it, something noble in hurting, that maybe if you sacrificed enough of yourself that it would be enough to stop it all. To save everyone.

But if you keep giving yourself away, and keep absorbing all of this pain in its stead, then you won’t have the strength to help anyone at all. 

The killers win. And suddenly, the ocean floor loses its appeal.

The worker bee wouldn’t concern itself with the absurdity of contradiction. It doesn’t ponder the dignity in dying for a cause, or whether its sacrifice will make a difference, or how to ascribe meaning to a life that, individually, is meaningless. It can’t comprehend what it might be like to rebel, to be free. If the hive was threatened, it would just act—sting, then die, like a good worker bee does.

But you’re not a bee. You’re a person. 

Your head nestled in your pillows, the weight of Spencer’s arm around your waist, you close your eyes and begin to remember how to float.

[glowcowboy]

i am full of love and also fatigue

[cheekybarnes]

promise without ceremony | bucky barnes x reader

Summary: Bucky Barnes gave up on marriage a long time ago. But then, somewhere deep in a storm-soaked safe house, he pulls a bullet from your leg and accidentally proposes in the process.

MCU Timeline Placement: Post TFATWS

Master List: Find my other stuff here!

Warnings: blood loss, injury, bullet wound, field medicine, pain, mild medical trauma, emotional vulnerability, war references, ptsd mentions, marriage talk, soft angst, accidental proposal

Word Count: 3.9k

Author’s Note: i am once again asking bucky barnes to know peace (he will not). anyway i cleaned my kitchen at 1am and now i’m emotionally compromised about fictional men again. if you need me i’ll be lying facedown on the floor, thinking about laundry and commitment.

The idea of marriage had died sometime in the ice.

Not all at once. Not dramatically, like a final gasp of a man slipping into the Atlantic with a ring still in his coat pocket. No, it had been slower than that. Eaten away in inches. First by frostbite. Then by fire. Then by the sound of screaming that wasn’t his own but came from his own mouth anyway.

It used to mean something to him. Marriage. A porch swing. Warm soup. A house with windows that didn’t rattle in the wind. The kind of thing you promised a girl in church shoes, hands clasped over the Sunday paper. 

James Buchanan Barnes had once thought he’d get that life. That he’d earn it. If he fought hard enough, if he came home in one piece, if he smiled the right way when he walked her back to her door.

Then war had cracked the world open like a rotten egg, and everything inside had spilled black.

There were no porches where Hydra took him. No rings. Just cold steel and code phrases. Needles and electrodes. Years swallowed by fog. And when he remembered again, when he started to remember, he couldn’t even picture a wedding band without wondering how deep it would slice if it caught against bone.

So no, marriage hadn’t crossed his mind in years.

Not until you.

Not even with you, not in the usual sense. You hadn’t crawled into his life and started naming curtains or pointing out flower arrangements like a threat. You’d just…stayed. Through the Accords. Through the fallout. Through Wakanda and the long, sterile quiet of the recovery halls. You never flinched when he woke up screaming. You never tiptoed around the word past like it might set off a bomb.

You were there during the repairs. The recalibrations. You’d worked with Shuri on something far above his understanding, fingers stained with grease and ink, hair always pinned messily away from your eyes. You’d curse under your breath in three different languages. You argued with Ayo. You laughed loudly.

By the time he was sent back into the field—once he had left the mountains, left the quiet—he expected the connection to die out. Most things did. The world had taught him that. You could try to keep something alive outside the place it was born, but roots snapped when you pulled too hard.

And it had. He had left you. Not by choice, not really. One blink and he was gone. Another blink, and you’d aged five years without him.

But then he saw you again. In D.C. In New York. Even in Louisiana. Out of nowhere, standing in a pair of sunglasses too big for your face, grinning like it hadn’t been years for you.

“Miss me, Barnes?”

And damn him, he had.

You’d joined the mission against the Flag Smashers. Temporarily, at first. That’s what you both said. Just this op. Just this briefing. Just this one joint task force run with Sam. 

And then it wasn’t temporary anymore. And then there was a room in the same safe house that you’d claimed. A bunk on the same floor. Your stuff beside his. And his toothbrush in your travel kit, and he had no idea how or when that had happened.

There were no conversations. No declarations. Just a slow merging.

He liked your laugh. The dry, cut-glass one you used when Joaquin said something stupid. The low, real one that came out when you let your guard down, when the weight on your shoulders slipped just enough to let joy through.

You liked to touch him. Not in the way that made him flinch. In the way that made the back of his neck burn. A casual hand on his spine when passing behind him. Fingers brushing his sleeve. A nudge with your elbow when he got too serious. You were constant.

You grounded him.

And he didn’t know how to name that. He wasn’t good at words anymore. Hadn’t been in decades. But he knew how it felt when you were hurt. When you bled. When someone touched you too rough during an extraction and he saw red before he even registered why.

He had never said “I love you.” Not outright. Neither had you.

But there were nights you fell asleep on his chest, breathing slow against the metal plates, and he’d whisper it in your hair like a secret. Like a curse.

Because he did love you.

And it terrified him.

Not because he thought you’d leave, though that was always a part of it.

But because he didn’t believe in the future. Not really. Hydra had broken that part of him, rewired him to think in terms of seconds, triggers, threats. Even now, after all this time, after all this healing, the idea of forever felt…dangerous. Unrealistic. Like planning for spring in the middle of a war zone.

But the truth was: he wanted to grow old with you.

He didn’t say it. But he wanted it.

The thought came loudest during quiet missions. When your hand found his under the table. When you scolded Sam like a sitcom wife. When you kissed him before leaving in a rush and forgot your ID badge, and he chased after you just to hear you laugh when he caught up.

That was what marriage looked like to him now.

Not churches or tuxedos. Not parties or speeches. Just this. Just you.

It was raining now. Somewhere deep in the woods outside of Vienna, a safe house blinked on like a dying star. One generator. One flickering lamp. One bullet in your leg, and his hands slick with blood that wasn’t his.

You hissed as he dug the tweezers in.

“I told you,” he said, voice low, steady even as his gut churned, “you were too exposed on the ridge. You shouldn’t have gone up alone.”

You shot him a look. “Wasn’t alone. You were covering me.”

“I was supposed to be covering you,” he muttered, breath tight. “Didn’t exactly do a great job, did I?”

You didn’t answer.

He hated this part. The way the pain made your voice tighten, the way you bit your lip hard enough to bleed rather than make a sound. It reminded him too much of everything he couldn’t fix. Of every mission where he hadn’t been fast enough. Every loss that had turned to ash in his mouth.

You were trembling now, sweat slicking your brow. The bullet was lodged deep. He could feel it with the tip of the tweezers, but it wouldn’t come clean.

His jaw clenched.

“Bucky.”

“Almost got it.”

“Bucky.”

He angled the tweezers just slightly, catching the edge of the casing with a surgeon’s precision, eyes fixed on the wound like it was the only thing keeping him tethered. You were trying to steady him. He knew that. Heard it in your voice. But he couldn’t afford to believe you were okay. Not yet. Not until the metal was out and you were still breathing.

“James.”

He looked up at that. Your eyes were glassy, lips pale. And yet, somehow, you smiled.

“You smile too much when you’re in pain,” he muttered, tweezers angled again.

“Maybe you just give me a lot to smile about.”

“Yeah?” His voice came quieter, almost bitter. “Like what?”

“Like this charming bedside manner,” you rasped. “And your tendency to monologue when 

you’re worried.”

“I’m not—”

“You are.”

The bullet shifted. Your body jerked, a hoarse cry caught in your throat.

“Shit—sorry,” he said instantly, his free hand anchoring you at the hip. His palm was warm. Steady. “You okay?”

“Peachy,” you breathed.

And then, silence.

Heavy. Close. Pressed between bodies that had seen too many battlefields, too many exits. The only sound was the storm outside, ticking against the roof like bones, and your ragged, uneven breath.

He bent closer, eyes narrowed on the wound.

“You need to hold still,” he said softly. “If I nick your femoral, it’s over.”

“I know.”

“I mean it. It’s deep. If I miss this—”

“You won’t.”

“I might.”

“You won’t.”

Another silence.

He couldn’t look at you. Not now. Not with the bullet half-extracted and your skin flushed with shock and fever and trust. Trust he hadn’t earned. Trust that felt too close to faith. 

And he was always bad at faith.

He adjusted the angle of the tweezers again, fingers tight with precision, breath shallow. If he moved just a millimeter too far to the left, he'd sever an artery. Too far right, and he'd leave metal behind. His mind kept listing the options like a file folder: all the ways he could fail you. All the ways he could lose you. 

“Keep talkin’ to me,” he said roughly, not looking at you. “You pass out, I’m gonna be pissed.”

“What, no pressure or anything,” you slurred, but he caught the strain in it. The thin layer of humor barely stretched over real pain.

The tweezers hit resistance. He felt it in his bones.

“You’re doing good,” he muttered. “You’re—fuck. Just hang on. Almost there.”

“Bucky.”

“I said keep talking.”

You let out a ragged breath. “You want a story or a monologue?”

“Dealer’s choice.”

Your voice wavered. “One time I saw Sam fall off a boat trying to impress a group of kids with his balance—”

“Not funny enough.”

“He hit his head.”

“That’s better.”

Silence ticked between your words. His grip steadied. He’d have to go in again. Just a little deeper.

You winced as the metal tip shifted.

“Fuck,” you whispered. “You know, I thought this would be the day we got pizza. Not playing Operation.”

“We’ll still get pizza,” he muttered.

“Oh yeah? You cooking?”

“I’m not cooking. I’m buying.”

You didn’t reply. And when he glanced up, your eyes were fluttering, breath shallower.

“Hey,” he barked. “C’mon. Eyes open.”

“M’tired.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

You laughed faintly again, breathe hitching, and it cracked something in him.

“Do me a favor?” You asked.

He hummed.

“If I lose consciousness…don’t let someone else try to patch me up.”

“Not a chance.”

“And if I die…”

“You’re not gonna die.”

“If I did. Hypothetically.”

His jaw ticked.

“If you did,” he said slowly, “then I’d kill whoever touched you. Then myself, probably.”

You let out a hoarse huff. “Jesus. That’s grim.”

“It’s honest.”

And it was.

Because he would. That was the part that terrified him. He would level cities for you. Not because it was right. Not because he’d made a vow. But because he couldn’t breathe without you anymore and he didn’t know when that had happened.

He leaned in. Flashlight shifting under his elbow. Blood soaked the makeshift cloth beneath you. The bullet was lodged against something slick and resistant. He knew the second he twisted, you’d scream.

He swallowed. Adjusted his grip.

“If this fucks up, it’s gonna hurt like hell,” he muttered. “So you need to stay with me, alright?”

You made a noise. Not quite a word. Not quite a yes.

He couldn’t stop now.

“Just keep talkin’, sweetheart. Anything. Tell me what kind of pizza we’re getting. Tell me a lie. Tell me where you see yourself in five years—”

“I’m bleeding out on a rotting cot in the woods, Buck,” you rasped. “Not interviewing for my dream job.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t wanna hear it.”

You blinked slow. “You first, then.”

He didn’t think. Couldn’t. The panic had tunneled too deep. He started speaking before he meant to.

“Five years from now,” voice low, working the metal free inch by inch, “we’re retired. You hate the house I picked but only complain about the goddamn mugs. You make fun of me for how I fold laundry. You still steal all the blankets. And some poor bastard down the road asks what it’s like being married to the grumpiest man alive and you tell them I’ve always been soft on you.”

His fingers adjusted instinctively, and there it was, the clean edge of the casing caught between the tips. A perfect hold. He didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink. Just braced himself, every nerve wound tight as wire.

He cleared his throat. “Got it. On three.”

You didn’t speak.

“Three.”

He yanked.

A scream ripped from your throat, half-swallowed into his shoulder as you surged forward, clutching at his arm. Blood poured hot and fast, but the bullet clinked into the basin beside the cot.

He dropped the tweezers. Hands went to pressure. To cloth. To you.

“You’re okay,” he murmured. “You’re okay. Just keep breathing.”

You nodded faintly, head lolling back against the pillow.

He didn’t realize how close his face was to yours until the storm flash lit up the room—and he saw the way your eyes were fixed on him. 

“Did you mean that?” 

He blinked.

“What?”

Your lashes were heavy, lips pale, but there was no mistaking the way your gaze held him now. Steady. Anchored. Like you’d come back to yourself just enough to feel it. The weight of what he’d said, the shape it had taken, the shape it could still take if either of you were stupid enough to say it again.

“You said we’d be married,” you whispered.

His jaw ticked. “You were going into shock.”

“I wasn’t hearing things.”

“You were half-conscious.”

“And you still said it.”

He exhaled through his nose, sharp and shallow, dragging the blood-soaked cloth tighter around your thigh with more care than force. His hands didn’t match the way his mouth tensed.

“It was nothing. Just words.”

You didn’t believe that. He could see you didn’t. And that was worse. You weren’t teasing. You weren’t cornering him. You were just looking at him. Like maybe you’d known this was in him before he did. Like maybe you’d been waiting for it to slip out.

And god, he wanted to run.

Not because he didn’t mean it. But because he did. Too much. Too fast. In ways he couldn’t survive.

He pressed the cloth harder against your leg, then grabbed another strip of cloth from the field kit, wrapping it tight, methodical, just above the wound. Tourniquet style. Not too high and not too tight, just enough to slow the bleed. 

His hands moved on instinct, the muscle memory of field medicine kicking in even as his mind spun. He checked your pulse. Inner thigh. Faint, but steady. He exhaled. Forced himself not to shake.

“I wouldn’t mind,” you said softly, “being a Mrs. Barnes one day.”

He stilled.

For a second, you thought maybe he didn’t hear you right. Or maybe he’d frozen, like his mind shorted out and hadn’t rebooted yet.

His heart flipped. Fucked off entirely, probably.

You shifted slightly, voice smaller. “But only if you keep folding laundry the wrong way. And keep picking ugly mugs.”

His laugh cracked at the edges. Like old bark. Like something split down the middle.

“You hate those mugs.”

“Yeah,” you murmured. “But you love them. And I love you.”

His breath caught. Chest tight. No armor. No dodge. No shield left between the two of you now.

“You’re not allowed to say that,” he said hoarsely. “Not when you’re this fucked up.”

“I’m lucid enough,” you whispered. “Don’t make me take it back.”

He didn’t.

He looked at your hand, still curled near his arm. Blood beneath your nails. Pulse stuttering in your wrist.

“I don’t even have a ring,” he said before he could stop himself.

You laughed. Soft. Breathless. Real.

“That’s okay. You’ve got gauze.”

He swallowed.

“I’d want to do it right,” he said, more to the floor than to you.

You reached up, brushed your knuckles against his cheek. Just barely there.

“Right now,” you whispered, “you just pulled a bullet out of my leg and said you’d kill the world for me. I think that counts.”

He leaned into your touch. Just for a second. Just long enough to let the part of him that still believed in things like vows and porches and soft lives feel it.

“Mrs. Barnes,” he murmured, testing it, letting the sound break in his mouth. “You sure about that?”

Your lips barely moved. “Why don’t you ask me?”

His head lifted just slightly, eyes catching yours through the stormlight. And it hit him like a second shot to the chest—cleaner than the first, but just as deep.

Why don’t you ask me?

So simple. So fucking impossible.

Because it was too big. Because it wasn’t a joke anymore. Because the second he said the words, really said them, he couldn’t take them back. Not like all the other things he’d lost to time. Not like the names they’d stripped from him or the missions they’d made him forget. This one, he’d remember.

He looked down at your leg, at the blood still leaking through cloth. His hands had steadied. His breathing hadn’t.

Why don’t you ask me?

Because what if you said yes just because you were scared. Because you thought you were dying. Because he looked like a man who needed saving and you were always the type to offer your hands even when yours were already shaking.

He looked at you, chest tight, and thought you don’t know what you’re saying. Not really. Not now. Not like this.

But then your thumb moved. Just once. Across the hinge of his jaw. And the quiet in your eyes told him yes, you did know. You always had.

He dropped his gaze, voice rough. “It’s just…”

He let it sit there. Let it ache.

“It’s not supposed to be this way,” he murmured, eyes flicking to the bloodied gauze still pressed to your leg. “I was supposed to have flowers. A ring. I was supposed to have something better for you than a leaking roof and a med kit that expired in 2015.”

His throat worked. His jaw locked.

He should’ve said it right then. Should’ve just spoken.

But instead—

“I didn’t think I was allowed to want this,” he said, voice low, uneven. “Not after everything I did. Not after everything that was done to me.”

You didn’t interrupt.

He swallowed. Continued.

“I used to think if I ever got out, I’d live quiet. Alone. Keep to myself. Go somewhere cold. Make peace with the fact that I’d never get to be anyone real again.”

His hand twitched where it held yours.

“And then you showed up. Like some pain-in-the-ass fever dream with too many opinions and terrible taste in music. You just—you didn’t leave. You stayed. You made fun of my shirts. You memorized my nightmares. You never once flinched at what I used to be.”

He looked up, then. Just barely. Just enough to meet your gaze.

“You made me want things again.”

You blinked. He could see the tears gathering now, not falling yet, just clinging to the edges like dew. Shaking. Waiting.

He shifted, exhaled through his nose, then slowly reached toward the chain tucked under his shirt. The tags clicked quietly against one another as he drew them out—worn, scraped, edges dulled. He hesitated. Thumb running along the groove of his name.

Barnes, James B.

Property of the U.S. Army.

And below that werenumbers. Codes. The echo of orders that used to own him.

They were the only thing he’d ever been given back when he’d stopped being a person. They were the last thing that made him his.

He huffed a breath. Shaky. Wet around the edges.

“And I don’t know how long I’ve been in love with you. I think maybe it was the first time you told Sam to shut up without looking up from your lunch when you knew it was a bad day. Or maybe it was the time you stayed up with me for four hours just so I could get ten minutes of sleep without a nightmare.”

His mouth quirked, not a smile, just a break in the grief.

“I’d want to give you more than this. Not a safehouse or some half-muttered promise with your blood on my hands. I’d want to give you everything.”

He looked at you now. Really looked.

“But I can’t.”

Your breath hitched. “Bucky—”

“All I’ve got is this.”

His voice was rough, worn down to its bones. He lifted the tags where they rested, cold and inert against his chest, like they hadn't once hung heavy with every name he’d buried, every order he’d followed. He hadn’t taken them off in years. Not since Wakanda. Not since they rewired the storm in his head and called it healing. Not since he’d started remembering how to breathe without a trigger warning stitched into his ribs.

But now?

Now he held them in his palm like they were something fragile. Like they might mean more in yours.

“I know it’s not a ring,” he muttered. “I just... I didn’t want to wait.”

His heart was punching up into his throat, each beat louder than the last. He wasn’t sure when he’d started shaking. Just that it was everywhere—under his skin, in his voice, in the ghost of a life he’d never thought he’d want back until you gave it shape.

He didn’t look away. Couldn’t. You were still bleeding. Still half-broken in his arms. But you were there. And alive. And looking at him like maybe he wasn’t a ruin of a man. Like maybe, even now, there was something left in him worth holding onto.

So he asked.

“Will you marry me?”

It didn’t sound the way it had in his head. It wasn’t confident. Wasn’t clean. It cracked at the center, frayed at the edges, barely held together by the breath it rode in on. Wrecked and unguarded and true in the way only something broken and rebuilt could be.

But it was his. And it was real.

You didn’t answer at first. Just stared at him—wide-eyed, wrecked, like the question had hollowed you out from the inside. And maybe it had. Maybe this was a bad time. Maybe he was a goddamn idiot for doing it now, here, with blood on his hands and guilt in his lungs and everything still burning in the corners of the room.

But then you nodded. Once. Then again. And again.

“Yes.” A whisper. Broken glass and salt. You swallowed hard, voice splitting again as you said it louder. “Yes. Of course I will.”

The sob hit him sideways. He didn’t mean to. Didn’t plan it. It just caught in his throat and stayed there, and suddenly your hands were on his face, and he was leaning in, and—

He kissed you.

It was desperate. Salty. A little off-center. His lip caught on yours, and your nose bumped his, and neither of you could breathe right but it didn’t matter. It was messy and clumsy and wet with tears and still somehow perfect.

His hand cradled the back of your head like he thought you might slip away, like if he didn’t hold on, the whole world might tilt again. And yours fisted into his jacket like you’d forgotten how to let go.

You were both shaking.

You pulled apart only because you had to. Because the world hadn’t stopped spinning even if it felt like it had. And then, quiet again, he moved.

He brought the tags forward.

Didn’t rush.

Didn’t speak.

He waited until you nodded, slow, sure, already teary again, and only then did he lift the chain and slide it over your head. Careful. Reverent. Like it mattered.

The tags settled on your chest, clinking softly as they touched your skin. They were cold. Real. Still streaked faintly with red.

But they were yours now.

His breath caught again, sharper this time. Not because it hurt. But because it didn’t. Because maybe this was what hope felt like when it didn’t come with a body count.

He pressed his forehead to yours and closed his eyes.

Mine, he thought. Not the government’s. Not the ghost’s. Not the weapon’s.

Yours.

tag list (message me to be added or removed!): @nerdreader, @baw1066, @nairafeather, @galaxywannabe, @idkitsem, @starfly-nicole, @buckybarneswife125, @ilovedeanwinchester4, @brnesblogposts, @knowledgeableknitter, @kneelforloki, @hi-itisjustme, @alassal, @samurx, @amelya5567, @chiunpy, @winterslove1917, @emme-looou, @thekatisspooky, @y0urgrl, @g1g1l, @vignettesofveronica, @addie192, @winchestert101, @ponyboys-sunsets, @fallenxjas, @alexawhatstheweathertoday, @charlieluver, @thesteppinrazor, @mrsnikstan, @eywas-heir, @shortandb1tchy, @echooolocation, @inexplicablehumanbean, @maribirdsteele, @daddyjackfrost

[stillgotscars]

happy salt air and the rust on your door month to all those who celebrate

[thoughtkick]

“Before the truth can set you free you need to recognize which lie is holding you hostage.”

— Unknown

[clarktologist]

SICK AS A DOG!

summary: spencer comes home to his girlfriend being... well, sick as a dog. pairing: spencer reid x gf!reader. tags: afab reader, no use of y/n, pre-established relationship, just a bunch of comfort and cuteness because i don't write enough fluff

You were stubborn, determined, focused. Everything you did was done until it killed you. There was nothing that knocked you off your game. It was one of the things Spencer admired about you. Nothing made you stumble or stop. Not even the hundred and two degree fever that was weighing down on you like a sack of bricks. 

He’d been away from home for a week now on a case, speaking with you in the small gaps of time he had between work and the minimal amount of sleep he was getting. The updates had been normal, talking about how your coffee tasted that morning or your loud neighbors, until that morning. As soon as he had landed, he’d received your text.

Feel like shit. Will meet you at your apartment. Quieter there.

While it seemed like a nonchalant text, he’d immediately known something was wrong. In the couple of years the both of you had been in a relationship, you’ve never admitted sickness. Even when you had a low fever, even when a cold had your voice sounding raspy and raw, you just stated that you were under the weather and moved on.

Spencer had left for his apartment straight from the airport with nothing more than a wave and a comment about needing to get home, picking up a few things from the drugstore and a Tupperware of soup along the way. It would no doubt be a struggle to get you to eat, hydrate, take painkillers or do anything, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try. Slowly stepping through the doorway into his apartment, the first thing he notices is how dark it is. Usually, you found joy in turning on the multiple lamps and lowlights settled through the mess of his apartment, allowing the warm light to cascade across the phthalo walls and his mahogany and walnut furniture. While you shared his distaste for big, bright lights, you also despised how much he tended to brood in the darkness. 

His eyes scan across his apartment, taking it all in. Everything, from the makeshift office to the messy living room, seems untouched. No candle lit on any of the tables, no returned book laying on his kitchen island, not even an attempt at cleaning up. If it wasn’t for the car keys abandoned on the desk closest to the door, hidden among his things, he would think that you hadn’t arrived yet.

Setting aside his go-bag and his satchel, he empties his hands before flicking on a few of the lamps. He steps around his couch to get to the ajar door of his bedroom, opening it slowly with a soft rap of his knuckles against the doorframe and a murmur of your name.

The response you give him is a hazy groan, laying curled up on his green duvet, the blankets kicked to the end of the mattress. Once the light streaming from the living room hits you, his brow furrows. Your body is hidden in one of his hoodies, oversized on him and drowning you, the hood pulled over your head and concealing all of your features.

“You okay?” Spencer murmurs as he discards his shoes and tie onto the floor haphazardly, crawling into bed behind you. A slender hand cups your elbow before he pulls back slightly, shocked by the heat radiating through the thick fabric. “Sweetheart, you’re burning up.”

As soon as he’s laid behind you, you turn around, legs pushing through to press your feet against his calves. Leaning your forehead against his chest, you seek out warmth even despite the fever overtaking your body. “One hundred and two degrees,” you mumble through your haze, trying to cut out any questions he may have and minimize the amount of energy you had to use.

Frowning, his hand slides beneath his hoodie, pushing it up and exposing your skin to the cold air. At your soft mewl of discontent, he shushes you gently, large hand smoothing over your stomach. “I know, honey, but this hoodie isn’t helping. Can you take it off, please? I can get you a shirt, if you want.”

“No. Can’t take it off. Can’t move.” Your tone is slurred, voice muffled by the material of his button-up, fingers curling to fist his shirt and keep him there. “Just wanna sleep.”

To your dismay, he simply shakes his head, one hand untangling yours from the material before he sits up. Another large hand slides behind your neck, fingertips pressing into the sides as he slowly lifts you to a good-enough sitting position. “Come on. Hands up, please.” 

Your movement is slow, his hands pushing up the hoodie higher and higher and coaxing your arms to straighten so he could pull it off. Despite your fever, he can feel the goosebumps sprouting on your skin, rubbing them away with his palm as his other hand tosses the hoodie away. Placing a kiss to your forehead and fighting a grimace at the heat, he slowly brings you to lay down again. “I’m gonna go get you some painkillers and some water. We need to break your fever.”

That pulls a whine from your throat, reaching out and brushing your hand along his thigh as you try to find any way to pull him back down. “Please just come back. We can worry about that later.”

Spencer’s heart thuds a bit harder against his chest at the request, never wanting to be the one saying no to you. But he knows the science, both biological and psychological, behind sickness behavior. Autonomic and behavioral changes triggered by soluble proteins produced at sites of infection. Lethargy, sleepiness, confusion. The body releases cytokines that affect moods and lead to a desire for social connection, hence the need to cling to him.

With another soft hush, he smooths down your hair and places another kiss to your hairline before stepping away from you. Moving quickly to keep himself from giving in and crawling back into bed with you, he heads back into the living room and fills a glass of water, making sure it was cold enough to feel nice but not cold enough to not drink quickly. Last but not least, he grabs a clean rag from off the counter, running it underneath cold water and ringing it out until it was just damp.

By the time he gets back to the bedroom, you’ve pulled the duvet over your legs again, letting it cool your calves as your hands tuck beneath your cheek. He stands in the doorway, watching you fondly and admiring just how small you look in the bed that his feet hang off of. For a moment, he thinks about how he’d love to do this for the rest of his life. Have his apartment be the home you crawl to when you’re not feeling your best, be the person your subconscious deems safe when it’s at its most vulnerable. 

Only once his arms ache from holding the water for too long, Spencer returns to your side, hand cupping the back of your neck to lift you up again. “Take the pills and a couple sips, sweet girl, and then you can go to bed, okay?” He murmurs as he holds out his hand, two white pills balanced in the middle of his palm.

Your nose wrinkles in distaste, eyes glancing at him pleadingly as you hope he changes his mind, only to be met with a soft yet stern gaze. Letting out a deep sigh, you pluck the painkillers from his hand and place them in your mouth before taking the glass he holds out, letting the cool water soothe your throat and the heat of your face.

After a few gulps, he plucks the glass from your hands, setting it on the side table and swapping it out for the cool rag. Leaning his back against the headboard, he pulls your head to lay on his chest, draping the towel over your forehead and ignoring the chill when one corner drapes onto his neck. Fingers work delicately to smooth loose strands of hair away from your forehead and cheeks before working through it, lips pulling down at the corners when they get stuck in a knot. 

“Thank you for taking care of me,” you murmur into the fabric of his shirt. “I know you’re probably tired from your flight.”

The sound is so soft that he barely picks it up, although he lets out a gentle hum in response. “I don’t feel as bad as you, that’s for sure,” he teases. His lips find your hairline again, breath brushing against your skin as he keeps his mouth there. “Social and emotional support is scientifically shown to be beneficial towards an individual’s health. Support encourages health behaviors, such as consuming more fruits and vegetables and the ceasing of certain sickness behaviors, like mood changes.”

That pulls a soft laugh out of you, shuddering from a chill. “I think it should be a crime for you to talk all scientifically and sexually to me when you can’t even kiss me,” you grumble playfully.

Spencer scoffs from beneath you, the arm wrapped around your shoulder tilting your chin up towards him. “To hell with that. I take my vitamins.”

And then he’s kissing you, all soft and slow, giving your foggy brain time to catch up to what was happening. You’re still uncomfortably warm in his arms, transferring your higher body heat, but there isn’t a single part of him that can find a problem with that. Not when you’re fully leaning into him, arms and legs pressed against his own, cheek tucked against his chest and lips so soft against his mouth.

The both of you part only after he’s stolen all of the breath out of your lungs, leaving you trembling from a fever and breathless from his lips. Your lips pull into a grin as you open your eyes to glance up at him. “If you get sick, I’m not taking care of you.”

“Shush,” he snips, arm moving down to pinch your hip, soothing it with a brush of his thumb. “I thought you were ready for bed, huh? Not ready to keep ogling me?” He tops off his teasing by pressing the back of his hand to your forehead. “In fact, are you sure you’re even sick?” You giggle in response, lifting an arm that feels like lead to swat away his hand. “Leave me alone,” you whine dramatically before nuzzling your face into the fabric of his button-up. As soon as your nose bumps with one of the buttons, you wrinkle it, pulling back to look up at him. “Can you please go and change so we can go to bed? This cannot be comfortable.”

Spencer’s response is quick. “It’s not.” Then, he braces the back of your head with a large hand to lift you, sliding out beneath you to make a mad dash for his closet. Your head falls back onto the pillows as you let out a soft whine of displeasure, even despite being the one to tell him to get changed.

He cannot help but laugh at you as his fingers brush through his clothing options. He can feel your eyes burning through his back as he slowly slips his arms through his shirt, tossing it into the laundry basket tucked in the bottom of his closet before pulling on a larger shirt. They stay on him as he pulls off his belt and socks and tugs on some plaid pajama pants. It’s not the first time he’s undressed in front of you, however your gaze would always cover his body in goosebumps. Once he’s properly dressed and ready for bed, he crawls back in next to you, this time pulling the duvet over the both of you. With the painkillers and the lack of a hoodie wrapped around you, he can feel the change in your body heat. Still too warm, but definitely lowering. 

You let out a soft squeak in surprise as his arms wrap around you, giving you a tight squeeze as you’re brought close to his chest. Immediately, your head is snuggled into the crook beneath his chin, inhaling the spot of cologne he had spritzed there that morning. Despite the small rush of adrenaline you had had in his presence, your exhaustion and illness are quickly catching up to you, eyes heavy-lidded as you relax into him. 

“Get some rest.” Spencer murmurs as he feels the tension relax out of your body, lips brushing against your forehead. A subtle check of your temperature.

The only response you can give him is a soft hum of acknowledgement, curling your fingers into his shirt as you slowly drift into sleep.

[lena-oleanderson]

also a poem from the new, unreleased collection. very possibly my own all-time favourite.

[luvlyk-13]

“don’t touch her.”

post prison!spencer reid x bau!reader

summary: an unsub grabs you during a raid and spencer looses his mind.

The shift is subtle at first.

After prison, Spencer doesn’t hesitate anymore.

He moves quicker. Shoots straighter. Speaks less.

The team notices.

You notice more.

He stands a little closer to you during briefings.

Walks half a step behind you instead of beside you — strategic positioning.

His eyes scan rooms constantly.

Hypervigilance.

He says he’s fine.

You don’t push.

⸻

The warehouse smells like rust and old oil.

Abandoned auto shop. Unsub cornered. Two hostages unaccounted for.

You’re clearing the east side with Spencer. Morgan’s voice crackles over comms from the other entrance.

“Clear left.”

“Clear.”

You move forward.

Spencer’s gun is steady. His breathing even.

But his eyes? Cold.

That’s new.

You round a stack of tires.

And that’s when it happens.

A hand shoots out from behind a metal shelf — too fast to react.

An arm wraps around your throat.

Gun pressed to your temple.

Your body slams back against a chest that smells like sweat and gasoline.

“Drop it!” the unsub snarls.

Spencer freezes.

Everything goes silent.

Not the room — just him.

You feel it.

That shift.

His gun doesn’t waver.

His voice, when he speaks, is calm. Controlled.

“You don’t want to do that.”

The unsub laughs, pressing the gun harder against you. “You gonna risk it, genius?”

Spencer’s eyes lock on yours.

And you’ve never seen that look before.

Not fear.

Not panic.

Calculation.

Cold. Lethal calculation.

His voice drops an octave.

“Let her go.”

The unsub tightens his grip. You choke slightly.

Spencer takes one step forward.

Morgan’s voice crackles faintly in the distance, but Spencer doesn’t answer.

His entire world has narrowed to the way the unsub’s finger is resting on the trigger.

“You shoot me, you die,” the unsub spits.

Spencer tilts his head slightly.

“No,” he says quietly. “You shoot her, and I promise you won’t.”

The room shifts.

You feel it in your bones.

The threat isn’t professional.

It’s personal.

The unsub falters — just slightly.

That’s all Spencer needs.

Two shots.

Precise.

Controlled.

The unsub drops.

You stumble forward, gasping, and Spencer is there instantly.

Gun gone. Arms around you. Pulling you into him so tightly it almost hurts.

“You’re okay,” he breathes. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

His hands are shaking.

Not yours.

His.

Morgan bursts in, scanning the scene. “We’re clear.”

Spencer doesn’t look up.

He’s checking you — hands at your shoulders, your face, your neck where the gun had been.

“Are you hurt?” he demands.

“I’m fine—”

“Are you hurt?”

His tone makes you blink.

“I’m okay, Spence.”

His jaw clenches.

Too tight.

⸻

Back at the SUV, you’re sitting on the bumper while EMTs check your throat.

Spencer stands a few feet away.

Still.

Too still.

Morgan approaches him carefully. “Reid.”

No response.

“You good?”

Spencer nods once.

Morgan studies him, then walks off.

You watch Spencer instead.

The way his hands flex at his sides.

The way his breathing is just a little too sharp.

When the EMT clears you, you slide off the bumper and walk toward him.

“Spencer.”

He doesn’t answer.

You step closer.

“Spence.”

His eyes finally snap to yours.

And there it is.

Not anger.

Rage.

Not at you.

At himself.

“I had the shot earlier,” he says suddenly.

Your stomach drops. “What?”

“When he moved behind the shelf. I saw the shadow. I calculated the trajectory but I hesitated because I didn’t have full visual confirmation and that hesitation allowed him to—”

“Stop.”

His voice rises slightly. “I should have taken it.”

“You could’ve hit me.”

“I wouldn’t have.”

The certainty in his voice makes your breath hitch.

He believes that.

“I was trained to respond faster,” he continues, words tumbling now. “In prison if you hesitate you lose control of the situation and I promised myself I would never—”

His voice cracks.

You step into him, grabbing his jacket.

“I’m here.”

His breathing stutters

“I almost—” He swallows hard. “I almost lost you.”

“You didn’t.”

His hands hover near your waist like he’s afraid to touch you.

“You don’t get it,” he whispers. “When he had you—”

His voice drops to something raw.

“I went somewhere.”

Your heart squeezes.

“You mean protective?”

He shakes his head faintly.

“No.”

That scares you more.

You cup his face, forcing him to look at you.

“You did what you had to do.”

“I would have killed him,” he says quietly.

You blink. “You shot him.”

“No.” His eyes darken. “I would have killed him.”

Oh.

Not neutralized.

Not stopped.

Killed.

The prison edge.

You step closer anyway.

“If he had shot you,” Spencer continues, voice trembling now, “I wouldn’t have stopped.”

Silence hangs between you.

You slide your hands into his hair gently.

“Spencer.”

His composure cracks.

“I can’t—” His voice breaks. “I can’t watch someone take you away from me.”

There it is.

Not control.

Not dominance.

Fear.

You pull him into you, wrapping your arms around his waist.

He collapses into it instantly.

All that sharpness gone.

His face presses into your neck.

His shoulders shake once.

“I’m okay,” you whisper into his hair. “I’m right here.”

His hands clutch you tighter.

“I don’t like who I become when you’re in danger,” he admits against your skin.

You pull back just enough to look at him.

“I do.”

He frowns faintly.

“You don’t scare me,” you say softly. “You love me.”

His breath catches.

“That’s different.”

“It’s not.”

You brush your thumb over his cheek.

“You don’t have to protect me from yourself.”

His eyes soften.

Slowly.

“I just…” He exhales shakily. “I can survive a lot of things. I can’t survive losing you.”

Your throat tightens.

“You’re not going to.”

He studies you like he’s memorizing the promise.

Then, finally, he pulls you in again — gentler this time.

Not crushing.

Just holding.

Grounding.

Morgan watches from a distance, giving you both space.

Because everyone saw it.

That flash in Spencer’s eyes.

And everyone knows—

You’re the one thing that keeps him human.

[cheekybarnes]

hold fast | bucky barnes x reader

Summary: A winter mission goes sideways, forcing you to cross a frozen lake under fire. The ice doesn’t hold—and when you go under, Bucky is the only thing between you and the dark.

MCU Timeline Placement: Post Thunderbolts*

Master List: Find my other stuff here!

Warnings: THUNDERBOLTS SPOILERS, hypothermia, near-drowning, descriptions of drowning, blood, injuries, limb trauma, hospitalization, PTSD symptoms, emotional vulnerability, protective behavior, team banter, soft angst with resolution!

Word Count: 9.5k

Author’s Note: had so much fun with this request!! this one really reminded me of no way but through, which holds such a special place in my little cold-weather-loving heart. i loooove icy mission settings, hypothermic chaos, and painfully soft bucky barnes, so this was basically a dream to write. also couldn’t help myself and had to bring in the full thunderbolts/new avengers crew at the end. i am nothing if not predictable <3

The wind off the lake bit harder than it had twenty minutes ago.

Not that it mattered. You’d stopped registering the cold a while back, after the second ridge, where the frost had started creeping into the inside seam of your gloves. Or maybe when you heard the first round of gunfire echo through the trees, half-muted by the thick snow-laden branches overhead.

Your teeth weren’t chattering. That would’ve meant your body had enough energy to waste on something so useless. Instead, everything inside you was pulling inward. Tightening. Conserving. Slowing.

“Keep moving,” Bucky’s voice snapped, low and close behind your left shoulder, and you did.

Not because he told you to. Because you had to.

The mission had gone wrong in the kind of way that didn’t leave room for debriefs. No secure exit point, no external comms, no second wave coming in behind you. Just you, Bucky, and the last evac flare tucked in Yelena’s pack two klicks east—across a frozen lake, through the trees, past whatever was still hunting you from the west ridge.

You hadn’t seen what hit the quinjet. Just felt the shockwave under your boots, then the plume of smoke curling over the horizon. Yelena had been the one closest to the treeline. She moved faster, covered more ground when it mattered, and she was carrying the extraction beacon. So when everything went to hell and the team scattered, it was you and Bucky left circling back to pull recon on the ones who shot your ride out of the sky.

Bucky walked behind you now, a half-step slower than usual. Calculated. Watching your six, probably watching your feet, too. 

“Northeast ridge is clear,” Yelena’s voice crackled softly in your comms. “Found an evac point. I’ll hold position.”

“Copy,” Bucky muttered. He was closer now. You could hear the rough edge in his voice, the constant scrape of concern just underneath it. “Let us know if anything shifts.”

There was a pause, a soft click, and then silence.

It had been thirty-two minutes.

Thirty-two minutes of sprinting across a frozen forest, every breath burning in your lungs. Thirty-two minutes of feeling Bucky’s presence hovering behind you like a shadow stitched to your spine, keeping pace, always watching. Watching your six, probably watching your feet, too.

“We’re near the lake,” Bucky said quietly.

You nodded once. Didn’t slow.

The lake had shown up on recon, a massive spread of black and silver on the satellite map, completely iced over and ringed by skeletal trees. You hadn’t planned to get near it. No cover. No depth perception. And the ice…

There were warnings. Cracks. Inconsistent freeze. The warm weeks earlier in the month had made it unreliable. Solid in places, dangerously thin in others.

Your fingers flexed around your weapon. You could still feel the scabbed-over cuts along your knuckles from the last mission. You hadn’t even gotten the blood out of the gloves. It had frozen stiff.

“They’re pushing,” Bucky said, eyes scanning the treeline. “Trying to flank.”

“We keep moving.”

“You’re hurt.”

“Not bad.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Your jaw locked.

There was blood soaking into the seam of your left leg, trailing down to right where the fabric met your boot. You didn’t look down. Couldn’t. It hadn’t slowed you down yet. If it did, you’d think about it. Not now.

You didn’t tell him how deep the cut went. You didn’t need to. He could smell it by now, metallic, sharp, slicing through the scent of ice and pine. It left a trail behind you, carved like a signature across the snow. If any of the hostiles had dogs, you were as good as marked.

The lake came into full view as you crested the ridge. It didn’t shimmer, didn’t glint—it was too dark for that now. Instead, it stretched wide and waiting, flat as glass and just as merciless. A wound in the landscape, glossy and black, veins of fracture spidering out across the surface where the snow had been blown off by the earlier blast wave.

Bucky said nothing, but he stopped just behind you. You could feel the weight of his silence.

“We don’t have time to go around,” you said, voice thin. “They’ll have us before the trees thicken again.”

“There’s no cover out there.” His tone wasn’t harsh. It was worse, quiet, steady, resigned. “If they catch sight of us, we’re open. Sitting ducks. You know that.”

“They won’t.” You adjusted your grip on your weapon. The trigger guard was sticking, your blood had frozen at the seam. “There’s mist coming off the surface. It’ll give us some visual buffer if we move fast.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“Which is why I can’t climb another fucking ridge.”

Your voice barely made it past your lips. It felt thinner than the air you were pulling into your chest. You didn’t need to look at Bucky to know he was staring at you again—sharp, narrowed, assessing you the way he did before a breach. Not checking for weakness. Measuring the cost.

But there was no time for costs anymore.

The crack of gunfire ricocheted off the ridge behind you. 

Not the echo of distant threat, but close. Immediate. 

Bark splintered off a tree trunk ten paces from your position, and Bucky moved instantly, grabbing your arm and yanking you down into a crouch behind the lip of an ice-encased boulder. 

You landed hard on your knee, your injured leg screaming in protest. Warm blood surged and stuck to the inside of your pants, and it was only then that you realized the muscle was torn. Not grazed. Torn.

Bucky didn’t flinch at the impact, but you caught the way his jaw clenched. “They’ve got fucking elevation,” he muttered under his breath. “How the hell did they—”

Another round cracked off a rock to your left. You ducked lower.

You didn’t answer him. You were trying not to pass out.

The second ridge. That was where they’d circled back. They must’ve doubled back around while you were sweeping east, using the wreckage and smoke trail from the quinjet as cover. You should’ve clocked it. Should’ve seen the trail crossing itself on the HUD.

But you’d been too busy bleeding.

A comms stutter broke through your earpiece. Yelena’s voice, brittle and curt: “Multiple heat signatures—tracking southeast. Six or seven. Aggressive push. Fast. You need to move.”

“Noted,” Bucky muttered, and clicked off.

He turned toward you, and there was something behind his eyes now. Not fear. Urgency. That hard-edged tension you’d only ever seen once before, when he’d carried your unconscious body out of a compound fire and spent the next forty minutes in complete silence.

“We’re not getting around the lake,” he said flatly.

Another shot cracked the air.

You flinched. He didn’t.

“They’re herding us,” you said quietly, barely audible. “Driving us into the open.”

He nodded once. “They want the intel. They don’t want to kill us. Not yet.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

More shouts. They were getting louder. You heard the low whine of an engine somewhere, a snowmobile, maybe. Not yours. Yours was ash.

“We need to split,” Bucky said suddenly.

You turned sharply. “No.”

“I’ll draw them off. You follow the lake’s edge. Keep to the trees.”

“They’re tracking us both. They know there’s two.”

“They don’t know where you are,” he said, already rising to his feet. “Not exactly. You haven’t fired since the breach. You’re harder to trace. Let me pull them west, and—”

“No.”

It came out louder than you meant it to. It silenced the forest.

You were breathing too hard. The edges of your vision had started to smear. Your leg was going numb.

“Bucky—”

Another shot. Close. Too close.

He didn’t hesitate.

He turned and hurled a flashbang toward the sound. The white light ignited against the snow with a violent hiss, smoke billowing out and momentarily masking your position.

Then—

Movement.

From your left. Fast.

You turned, raised your weapon, but it was too late. Something barreled through the trees and tackled you full force, body slamming into yours and driving you back, pain blooming white-hot in your thigh where the wound tore wider.

You hit the ground hard, your weapon flung into the snow. The hostile landed on top of you, mask fogged, breath rapid. He went for your throat. You reached for your boot knife, fingers numb, clumsy.

The lake was right there. Ten feet behind you. Maybe less.

You heard Bucky shout your name.

The knife slid into your hand. You didn’t think. You just moved.

You drove the blade up under his jaw, hard and clean, and rolled him off you before he could finish choking.

You were on your feet again—limping, half-hopping, gun lost, blood pouring down your leg now—and the others were coming.

You saw five through the smoke. At least five .

Too many.

You could try to crawl back to Bucky. Hope they didn’t shoot you in the open. Hope he could carry you.

Or—

Or you could do the thing you shouldn’t.

The thing that would buy you time.

The thing that would probably kill you.

You turned and ran toward the lake.

Bucky was still shouting, but his voice was muffled now, lost to the scream of your pulse and the way the air changed as you broke through the treeline.

Your feet hit the ice, and it sang beneath you.

A deep, haunted groan that vibrated up your legs and through your spine. The kind of sound the earth makes when it doesn’t want to be touched.

You didn’t stop.

The mist coming off the surface curled like fingers, wrapping around your boots, your knees, your breath. It shielded you, just enough. You heard the men behind you shouting, confused, uncertain. They’d lost you in the fog. For now.

But they’d find you again if you stopped moving.

You didn’t expect to make it across. That wasn’t the point.

You weren’t stupid. You’d seen the fractures on recon. Knew the freeze was uneven, knew the surface tension wouldn’t hold under sustained weight, and certainly not without punishing you for the arrogance of trying. You also knew there were at least four men behind you, maybe more, and you weren’t going to outrun them through another ridge. Not on a torn leg. Not dragging blood like breadcrumbs.

But you could give Bucky a chance. A window.

You weren’t going to last much longer anyway. Your sidearm was gone. Your rifle was jammed. Your limbs were starting to seize—not from fear, not from cold, but from simple math. The cost of staying alive had begun to outweigh what your body could give.

So you played the only card left.

If you could get two of them on the ice. Maybe three. And if you timed it right, kept your distance, baited them into giving chase, made them run heavier than you walked, there was a chance the lake would decide who stayed topside and who went under. You weren’t built like them. Smaller frame. Lighter gear. You knew how to move soft. They wouldn’t.

They were cocky. Angry. Trigger-happy and armored to hell. That kind of weight broke tension in seconds. You’d seen it happen. Watched it once during a training exercise, how a man with sixty extra pounds of ammo sank in four seconds flat when he tried to follow a sniper across a riverbed in spring thaw.

It might kill you too. But it might not. And if even one of them went in—

That was one less gun Bucky had to deal with. One less bullet in the air. One less thing clawing for your neck.

That was something.

Your breath came faster, colder. The cut in your leg had gone numb, finally, but you could feel the wetness inside your boot. The weight of it. The imbalance.

You didn’t know how far out you were.

The fog was thicker now, curling up your spine, swallowing the tree line. You could’ve been ten meters from shore or two. Could’ve been standing over solid ice or the thinnest patch on the lake.

Didn’t matter. You had to keep going.

There was shouting again. Closer. Heavier footsteps now, rapid and uncoordinated. They’d spotted your prints. One of them yelled to the others. Someone fired, blind and stupid, too far to your left to matter. The shot cracked across the lake and echoed, turning the world sharp and brittle.

You heard the ice answer.

A moan beneath the surface. A shift. A warning.

Still, you didn’t stop.

Another shot hit near your feet, spitting a web of cracks like a warning flare. You stumbled. Went to one knee. Pain flared up your hip. You hissed through your teeth and scrambled upright.

Behind you, closer now, another shout.

And then, footsteps on ice.

They were following you.

You felt the lake notice. The way it strained. The way it listened.

You started weaving, not running, but changing angles. You knew better than to move in a straight line. Spread the pressure. Make them adjust their balance. You could almost hear their weight dragging the surface down. Could hear how reckless their strides were. One of them slipped, boots sliding, cursing and shouting, and the others answered in angry Finnish.

You adjusted again, shifting your weight to the balls of your feet as you zig-zagged across the ice, lungs straining, vision speckled with spots. The cold had crawled under your skin now—made a home in the corners of your elbows, the hollow between your shoulder blades, the soft hinge of your jaw. You weren’t shivering anymore. That would have required your body to care whether it was dying.

Behind you, the men had begun to split. Two followed your path directly, weapons raised and boots clumsy across the frost, the third veering wide, trying to cut off your arc. You didn’t know where the fourth had gone. You didn’t have the capacity to guess. You’d passed beyond the edge of tactics and into instinct.

The ice beneath you moaned again, longer this time, a groaning, glacial sound that rippled underfoot like a living thing. The cracks spidered wider at the edges of your vision, faint lines of fracture glowing pale beneath the frost-dusted sheen. You counted every step in your head, each one a wager against weight and water.

You needed them closer. Just a little closer. You needed them to get stupid again, greedy for the kill.

And they did.

One of them shouted something guttural in Finnish, laced with adrenaline and mockery, and opened fire. The shot missed your side by inches, skimming the air close enough that you felt it kiss your ribs. You dropped hard into a crouch, used the momentum to pivot left, and rolled back into a full sprint. The surface answered with another shriek of pressure.

You couldn’t tell if it was a warning or a promise.

Then another sound, behind the gunfire—something real, something known.

Bucky’s voice.

Low at first, almost lost in the chaos. Then sharper, clearer, a shout that carved through the storm like a blade. He was yelling your name. You didn’t turn. Couldn’t. You could barely see anymore, and the fog curled tighter now, clouding everything but the space directly in front of you.

A second burst of fire came from the opposite edge of the lake—sharper, faster. Controlled. You recognized it immediately. Not hostile. That was him.

He was flanking.

You caught the flicker of movement through the mist just ahead and to your right. Bucky breaking the line of trees at a full sprint, a blur of black and gunmetal, eyes fixed on you like he could will you to stop. He was shouting again, but your ears had gone dull. All you could hear was the ice. The awful, pulsing hum of it underfoot, vibrating with your heartbeat.

And then one of the hostiles did what you’d hoped. He fired while running.

The recoil jolted his center of gravity, boots sliding out from under him as he fell sideways. He hit the ground hard, and the impact buckled the surface beneath him, cracks detonating outward like glass under a hammer. It sounded like thunder.

The other two tried to stop, but it was too late. One went down to a knee, skidding, scraping across the slick, and the third barreled into him, toppling them both in a tangle of limbs and shouted curses.

For a breath, you thought it had worked.

But it didn’t matter.

Because the fourth man, the one you couldn’t see, had circled wide, just like you feared. You didn’t hear him until he was right behind you. There was no gunshot. No shout. Just the thud of weight as he tackled you square in the back.

You hit the ice with a sickening crack, elbows slamming down first. The pain stole the breath from your lungs. Your vision whitewashed. Your cheek scraped frozen mist and split open.

He tried to roll you, get leverage to pin you down, but you were already moving. Already driving the knife from your belt up under his ribs, your fingers so numb you couldn’t tell if it connected.

It did. You felt him grunt, deep and surprised, before he staggered back, and you surged to your feet, but—

But the ice had had enough.

It screamed beneath you. A seismic groan, deeper than the others, wrong in every register. You felt the surface ripple like a muscle torn mid-strain. Your knees bent automatically, weight shifting light, trying to disperse, but it was too late.

The cracks burst outward from where the hostile had landed. The seams raced under your feet, intersecting, multiplying, fracturing the world beneath you in real time.

You heard Bucky shout your name again.

Closer.

Desperate.

And then he was there, just at the edge of your sightline. His face was bloodless, teeth bared, feet skidding to a stop as he reached out like he could catch you from twenty feet away.

“Don’t move!” he barked.

You didn’t.

Didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink.

But the ice moved anyway.

It bowed beneath you.

Then split.

The water came up like a hand and yanked you under.

Bucky saw the ice go before he heard it.

Not the split, but the way your knees flexed, just slightly, the way your arms went out as if your body knew before your mind did. That half-second of weightlessness right before everything collapsed. Bucky knew that look. He’d seen it in jump footage, in buildings on fire, in the eyes of people who understood they weren’t getting out unless someone came back for them.

He was already running.

Not thinking. Not planning. Just moving. Snow churned under his boots, breath barely fogging the air. He heard your name tear out of his throat, loud and raw and useless.

You were looking right at him. Eyes wide. Mouth slightly open. But you didn’t say anything. Didn’t scream. Didn’t even move.

You just dropped.

The ice beneath you opened like a mouth.

He reached the edge just in time to see the water close back over you.

The sound was sickening. One second you were there, the next you weren’t. The lake swallowed you whole, and all that remained was mist and the soft sound of new cracks racing toward him.

Bucky didn’t hesitate.

He launched himself forward, boots slamming into the ice, the weight of his landing enough to make the surface whine under him. He dropped into a slide, knees bent, palm out to brace, momentum hurtling him across the ice toward the place you’d gone under.

The cold didn’t register. Not the air, not the wind, not the water as it seeped through the cracks already kissing the soles of his boots. The serum kept his blood from reacting the way a normal man’s would. No immediate shock. No burning in the lungs. But it didn’t make him immune to the knowledge of what cold did to you.

You had maybe ninety seconds before the water started convincing your body to stop trying.

His hand was already going to his comm.

“Belova, she fell through,” he said, voice sharp, clipped. “The lake. Northwest section. I’m going in.”

Yelena’s reply came fast, static, then her voice, tight with urgency. “That lake is thirty meters deep in the center, Barnes. If you lose her—”

“I won’t.”

“You better not. I’ll find a snowmobile. If you’re still breathing, I’ll come get you.”

He reached the hole, just barely visible now. It was a jagged, black wound in the surface, already sheeting over at the edges with a thin glaze of refreeze. He dropped to his knees, leaned over, peered in—

And saw nothing.

Just black.

No movement. No sound. No trace.

“Northwest,” he repeated, already stripping his rifle off one shoulder and driving it into the snow at the edge of the break. “Tell evac. We’ll need heat. And a med kit.”

“Copy,” she said. “Don’t die.”

He could feel the press of his heartbeat in his teeth.

“Shit.” His voice cracked out of him like a whip.

He stripped the rifle from his shoulder, shoved it into the snow behind him, and without another thought, threw himself in.

The lake gripped him like a vice.

It wasn’t like diving into water. It was like diving into a vacuum. It swallowed him. Crushed him. Everything disappeared at once. Sight, sound, weight. He didn’t kick. Didn’t thrash. He let himself drop, arms out, the metal of his left dragging him faster. One breath in his lungs. That’s all he allowed.

He opened his eyes.

There was nothing.

Only black, smeared with silver light from the hole above him, already shifting, narrowing. Snow-dust had drifted across the opening. It would vanish in seconds. He needed to find you now.

He rotated once. No sign of you. Kicked again, deeper. The pressure increased, the cold turning the skin of his right arm to fire. He ignored it. Turned again. Saw—

Movement.

To his left.

A flicker. A shape. Limbs caught in the water’s drag. No fight in them.

He pushed toward it.

You weren’t moving. Your arms floated loosely, your legs bent at strange angles, one boot still half-trailing a blood-red ribbon through the current. Your head was tilted, hair haloing out in the dark.

For a split-second, something in him broke.

He reached you in three kicks. One arm wrapped around your chest, hand braced under your jaw, holding your head above your shoulders. Your face was waxy, mouth parted, lashes spiked with ice. He pulled you in, curled his metal arm across your ribs, and angled upward.

The surface was gone.

The hole was gone, nowhere near.

He turned in a tight circle, one-handed, dragging you with him. No openings. No shadows above, no light. The ice was seamless.

His vision tunneled.

He launched upward, fist first, and when his knuckles hit solid, he didn’t stop. He punched.

The sound was muffled underwater, more sensation than noise. The vibration hit his bones, the resistance of ancient ice refusing to yield. He drove his arm up again—once, twice—until the metal met fracture.

The ice split.

The hole widened just enough. He kicked upward and shoved you ahead of him, breaking the surface with a gasp you didn’t make.

The air burned. The cold above was nothing compared to below.

He hauled himself out of the water, grabbing you under the arms and dragging you with him, the both of you half-dead and slick with lakewater, steam rolling off your clothes as the air hit them.

You weren’t breathing.

“No—” he rasped. He dropped to his knees, pressed two fingers under your jaw. Nothing. His hand flattened against your chest. Still nothing. He tipped your head, cleared your mouth, and without pausing, sealed his lips to yours and breathed.

Twice.

Again.

Your body jerked, but only from the force.

He pressed down hard. His hands trembled, just slightly. Not from the cold.

“C’mon,” he muttered, voice cracked and low, barely human. “Don’t you fucking dare—”

Another breath.

You coughed.

Violent. Wet. Your whole frame arched up before collapsing into him, lungs sputtering lakewater and whatever else you’d swallowed, mouth opening to drag in air like it hurt to exist.

Bucky’s arms locked around you the second your head tilted forward.

You were shaking now. Not convulsing. Not yet. But the kind of full-body tremor that said your blood wasn’t moving fast enough. That your skin was freezing from the inside out.

“I got you,” he whispered, over and over, voice half-strangled as he pulled you close, as close as he could get without hurting you more. “I got you, I got you.”

He didn’t realize he was rocking you until your fingers clenched in his jacket. A tiny, involuntary twitch—no force behind it, no awareness—but it was enough. Enough to tell him you were still here. Still fighting. Still fucking breathing.

“Easy,” he whispered against your hair. “Just stay with me. I’ve got you.”

You made a sound. Barely anything. A cracked whimper caught in the wreckage of your throat. He pressed a hand to the back of your neck, fingers splayed wide, trying to shield as much of your skin as he could from the wind.

Your body was ice. Every inch soaked through. Your gear, your boots, the back of your neck, all of it was clinging to you like a second skin, each layer working against you now, not for.

The low snarl of a snowmobile engine cut through the trees, carving hard across the frozen ground. He didn’t look up. Didn’t shift. Just curled tighter around you and angled his body between yours and the open lake.

The engine cut off twenty feet away, skidding to a halt. Snow crunched under boots. Then—

“Shit.” Yelena’s voice dropped the usual smirk. “She’s hypothermic?”

“Full submersion,” Bucky said, barely audible. “At least a minute. Maybe longer.”

Yelena was already moving, yanking her pack off and crouching beside him. “Then we need her out of those clothes, now. You too. You’re soaked.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re wet,” she snapped. “You’re not immortal.”

“She’s freezing.”

“Exactly why we strip her down and use what’s dry. I brought a tarp rig for the back—get her on it. We’ll wrap her, I’ll drive.”

Bucky didn’t argue. He peeled his jacket off one arm, then the other, movements sharp and economical. It hit the snow with a wet slap. His gear vest followed. Then he reached for the zipper at your collar, fingers already numbing where they met the icy fabric.

“Hey,” he said softly, tipping your chin. Your eyes fluttered open for a breath, then closed again. “I know it’s cold. But we gotta get you out of this stuff. Alright?”

You didn’t answer. Just let him move you, limp and loose like your bones had gone slack. He tried to be fast. Careful. Stripped your coat first, then the soaked thermal underlayer, exposing your shoulders to the air. You flinched. He wanted to curse out loud. Wanted to punch the goddamn lake.

Yelena shrugged off her own jacket. “Here.”

He took it without looking and shoved your arms through the sleeves. It was warm. And dry. It didn’t matter if it was hers or his or stolen off a corpse. He’d have wrapped you in skin if it meant getting your body temp up fast enough.

But it wasn’t enough.

Your pants were soaked through. So were the boots. And your left leg—fuck.

He saw the blood pooled inside the boot as he started to peel it off. Frozen red around the seams. Your thigh was still bleeding, sluggish now from shock, but still enough to be dangerous.

“Yelena,” he barked without turning. “Gauze. Whatever you’ve got.”

“Med kit’s in the sled,” she called, already unrolling the tow platform and yanking the thermal tarp open. “Field wrap’s on the side.”

He ripped the second boot off, tossed both aside. The pants clung like wet parchment. He muttered something sharp under his breath and took the knife from his belt, slicing the fabric clean up the seam to the waistband. He didn’t pause. Didn’t look at your face. Just cut them free and tossed them into the snow.

Your leg was a mess. Torn muscle, ragged edge, blood sluggish but still weeping. He didn’t have time to be gentle. He grabbed the wrap from Yelena’s outstretched hand and packed the gauze into the wound, fingers fast and precise. Then he cinched the bandage tight just above your knee.

You groaned, weak and hoarse, but it meant you were still responsive.

“I know,” he muttered. “I know it hurts. Just hang on.”

Yelena was already back at the sled, lifting the flap on the side and unfurling the padding. “We’ve got maybe ten minutes before she drops out completely. Help me get her in.”

He moved without answering. One arm behind your back, one under your legs. You were a deadweight bundle of wet limbs and heatless skin.

Together, they settled you into the tow rig—padded, shielded at the sides, thermal canopy overhead. Standard evac mod. But it still looked like a coffin.

He hated that it looked like a coffin.

Yelena threw him a blanket roll, and he tucked it tight over your chest and shoulders, then your hips and thighs, arms crossed low over your ribs. Your skin was damp, your hair frozen at the ends, lashes rimmed in ice. He didn’t let himself stop moving. He kept one hand pressed just over your heart, the other ready to shield your face from wind.

His hand stayed there.

Just a second too long.

She didn’t call him on it.

“You’re going with her,” Yelena said instead, already climbing back onto the snowmobile. “I can drive. You monitor her breathing. Try and get her talking if you can. If she fully passes out—”

“She won’t.”

“I’m just saying—”

“She won’t.”

His voice was steel. He wasn’t yelling. He wasn’t pleading. He just knew.

Yelena didn’t argue again. She gunned the engine, and the machine roared to life.

He climbed into the tow sled, kneeling beside you, one hand on your chest, the other braced against the frame. Wind blasted past them as they launched forward, but he didn’t feel it.

All he felt was the shallow rise and fall beneath his hand.

You surfaced slowly.

Not all at once. Not in a cinematic way—no gasping, no full-body jolt, no sudden realization that you were still alive. Just pressure. First behind your eyes, then in your chest. A tightness, dull and deep, like your lungs had been filled with stones and someone had stacked their weight across your ribcage to make sure they stayed there.

Your mouth was open. You hadn’t meant it to be. Something cool and artificial was feeding air through your nose, down your throat. Plastic tubing, you realized after a beat, half-formed thoughts dragging behind sensation. An oxygen cannula. 

Your head ached.

Not a sharp pain. Not even pain, really. Just distance. Like your skull had been filled with static and your thoughts had to crawl through it on hands and knees to reach you. When you tried to move, just a twitch of your shoulder, your body didn’t respond. Not fully. Your nerves were slow, reluctant. Your arms felt like they belonged to someone else.

Then, light. Soft, not blinding. White above you. Clinical. Cold. You tried to blink and felt the dry pull of your lashes against skin that had been left too long without moisture.

There were sounds now. Somewhere in the periphery.

Muffled voices. Beeping.

A hiss of something mechanical resetting. Maybe a vitals monitor, maybe a heat unit.

The next thing you noticed was your skin.

Your entire body felt like it had been peeled back and glued together wrong. Your legs ached. Not in the sharp, obvious way of a gunshot or blade, but deeper. Bone deep. Joint deep. There was a dull, pulsing throb in your left thigh that you couldn’t place, and you realized after a moment that you didn’t want to.

You were alive.

You weren’t supposed to be.

A slow breath pulled through your chest. It hurt. Not like you’d broken anything, but like your lungs had fought too hard to keep you, and they were punishing you for it now. You could feel the heaviness in them, the stiffness—residual fluid, probably. You weren’t coughing, but your chest was tight, and something wet shifted faintly every time you inhaled.

Hypothermia. Near-drowning. Soft tissue trauma. Blood loss.

The words filtered in one by one like files retrieved from a burned cabinet.

You didn’t remember the evac. Just ice. The smell of pine. A scream half-swallowed by the wind. The weight of water crushing your body into stillness. And then, heat. Arms. Metal against your ribs. Something solid that refused to let go.

Something you’d stopped fighting for before it found you.

There was a voice outside the room, beyond a curtain surrounding you. Sharp. Familiar.

Yelena.

“—two hours max. That’s what the doc said. She needs rest, not another round of brooding Bucky Barnes breathing exercises.”

A grunt. Quieter. Male.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

A beat.

“Oh my god. You’re already doing it.”

You tried to turn your head toward the sound, but your body was too heavy. The world tilted and dragged behind you. Then, footsteps. Two sets. One softer, reluctant. One clipped.

They didn’t come in.

Their voices faded just enough to let the quiet crawl back in. Only the monitors kept humming, a soft rhythmic count of your survival, like the room was measuring every second you stayed alive and wasn’t convinced yet that you would.

You lay there, still and heavy, unsure if your body would obey you at all. Everything felt wrapped in gauze. Muted. Far away. But your chest remembered. The weight, the pressure, the water. The ache that lingered behind your ribs told you the lake hadn’t really let go. Not completely.

You tried again.

It wasn’t even a word at first. Just a shift. A breath caught too sharply in your throat. Your fingers twitched against the blanket. Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe you imagined it. You turned your head, just barely, toward the voices outside the curtain, and let your lips part.

“Buck—”

Your voice wasn’t a voice. It was air dragged across a raw throat, shredded in the middle, collapsing before it made it to sound. But it was enough. Enough to make the effort real. Enough to make your pulse spike on the monitor. Enough to send a tremor through your lungs.

The curtain shifted instantly.

Then opened.

Bucky’s silhouette filled the space between the light and the noise. For a second, he didn’t say anything. Just looked at you, jaw clenched, shoulders set. His face didn’t change, but you saw it anyway. Relief. The kind that didn’t need expression to be known.

“You’re awake.” His voice was low. Too steady.

You swallowed—or tried to. It scraped. Burned. Your throat felt flayed.

He crossed the room in two strides, dropping into the chair beside your bed like he’d been ready to launch himself forward the whole time and was only now allowed. His hand hovered near yours, not quite touching.

“Do you need the doc?” he asked. “I’ll go get them. Just hold on—”

You moved before you could think.

Not much. Not even fast. But your hand lifted, weak and trembling, and curled around his wrist as he started to move. The motion cost everything. Your arm dropped a second later like it had been cut loose, but it did its job.

Bucky froze.

You tried to speak again. The word caught halfway up your throat and crumpled. You coughed instead, once, hard enough to burn, and his hand was on you instantly, palm flat against your sternum like he could keep you from falling apart just by holding you still.

“You’re okay.” His voice was different now. Thinner. “You’re okay. Just breathe.”

You tried.

Your chest shook with it. Your lungs were still too tight. Too full of memory. But the oxygen tubing helped, and eventually the coughing stopped. Your body settled back against the sheets, exhausted from the effort of existing.

His hand didn’t move.

“I’m fine,” you rasped. Or tried to.

The word sounded nothing like a word.

It scraped the back of your throat and shattered. You winced. He shook his head once, almost imperceptible.

“Don’t,” he murmured. “You don’t have to talk. Not yet.”

You blinked up at him.

He was too close. Not in a way that made you uncomfortable, never that, but in the way that made you aware of how much space he took up without saying a word. The way his presence made the machines quieter. The way the lines around his mouth looked carved from stone. The way his hand hadn’t left your chest.

“You scared the hell out of me,” he said, softer now. “I thought—”

He didn’t finish.

You didn’t need him to.

You felt it in the way his shoulders curled forward. In the way he kept watching your pulse monitor like it owed him something. In the way his eyes kept returning to your mouth, to your neck, to the shallow rise and fall that proved you were still here.

You opened your mouth again.

The words didn’t come. You weren’t sure they could. Your throat felt like someone had taken a wire brush to the inside of it. But you moved your lips anyway, slow, deliberate, shaping around the simplest thing you could mouth.

How long?

Bucky blinked.

For a second, you thought maybe he hadn’t caught it. Then his hand left your chest—not completely, just enough to curl around your wrist again, warm and solid, anchoring.

“Seven days,” he said quietly. “You’ve been under for seven.”

You let that sit. Let it press.

Seven days.

Not just unconscious. Unresponsive. Monitored. Kept warm. Intubated, probably, if your throat was any indication. You were certain there’d been a moment, maybe more than one, where they weren’t sure you were going to come back at all. Where your body might have decided to give up on the rest of you even after the lake let you go.

You let your head tip, eyes dragging slowly across the room. The motion made your neck ache. Even that, especially that, felt like a small defeat.

There was a table beside the bed. Narrow. Stainless steel. You hadn’t noticed it before.

It was cluttered.

Not with the usual medical shit. Not gauze or tubing or pill cups. Something else. Something… softer.

There were a few folded paper cranes, wings dipped in bright marker ink. A knitted square of fabric, uneven at the edges, with a giant uneven “W” stitched into the center in dark blue yarn. A cheap plastic snow globe—Branson, Missouri—with fake snow and a peeling label. A tiny flickering LED tea light. A single packet of hot chocolate. A folded sketch torn from someone’s notebook paper.

You stared at it. Confused.

Your brow furrowed, unsteady, and you felt Bucky’s eyes move with yours.

He shifted in his chair, the leather creaking faintly under him.

“Those are from Bob.” He nodded toward the cranes. “He said paper folding helps with anxiety. Sat outside your room for two hours trying to get that red one right. Said you’d like it because it was ugly. Had character.”

Your lips twitched. Or tried to. He saw it.

Bob had tried to teach you once, back when missions were lighter and your hands steadier. He’d brought a pack of neon origami paper into the rec room like it was contraband, all sheepish grin and muttered instructions, and you’d spent an hour cursing under your breath while he quietly folded a perfect flock beside you. 

You never managed a proper crane, just a deeply cursed paper lump with uneven wings, but he’d kept it anyway. Called it your “battle bird.” Said it looked like it had been through something. Just like you.

“The tea light is Ava’s,” Bucky continued. “She said you always lit a candle on briefing nights. Figured you’d want one burning when you woke up.”

You did. Always the same squat little votive, tucked on the corner of your desk, flickering through every debrief while the rest of the team pretended not to notice. Ava had, though—said the sound and smell helped her keep her pacing in check, the rhythm of it steadier than her own breath some nights.

Bucky pointed at the snow globe, grimacing. “Walker. No note. Don’t ask.”

You made a rough sound, not quite a laugh, and regretted it immediately. Your chest ached. You swallowed it down.

Of course he brought Branson, Missouri.

The man had one week of leave and spent it sending you unsolicited selfies from a dinner theater called “Yakov’s Last Laugh,” wearing a cowboy hat two sizes too small and arguing over text about whether Silver Dollar City technically counted as “historic.”

You’d told him Branson wasn’t a real place. Just a Midwest fever dream built entirely out of unlicensed Elvis impersonators and knockoff Dollywood energy. He’d called it “America’s soul.”

You’d called it “a cry for help in gift shop form.”

And now it sat beside your medical chart, a tiny, glittering monument to the world’s pettiest inside joke.

God help you if it made you smile again.

“The sketch is from Alexei,” he went on. “It’s supposed to be you in the snow, fighting a bear. Or dancing with one. He wasn’t clear.”

You blinked slowly. That tracked. He’d once told you, entirely unprompted, that your “ferocity under pressure” reminded him of a Siberian she-bear. You’d assumed it was a compliment. Probably.

“And that,” he added, gesturing to the hot chocolate, “Yelena. Said hospital cocoa was an abomination and if she caught you drinking any she’d pull your IV herself.”

You smiled faintly. Yelena was the one who started it. Midnight cocoa in the mess when neither of you could sleep, hands still shaking from whatever dreams you'd clawed your way out of. No talking. No questions. Just heat, sugar, and silence until your pulses evened out again. A truce in a mug.

Your throat was still raw. You didn’t dare try a full word, but the question was there—in the slow blink, the glance toward the yarn.

“That’s from Walker too,” Bucky said, deadpan. “He learned to knit. Apparently.”

Your eyes drifted back to him. He hadn’t looked away from you once. Not really.

There was one more thing on the table. You hadn’t noticed it before. Smaller than the rest. Set slightly apart. A small matchbox-sized tin. Dark blue. Metal. Worn at the corners.

Bucky followed your gaze. His jaw tightened.

You looked at him.

He didn’t speak.

Just reached over slowly, picked it up, turned it once in his palm like he wasn’t sure if he regretted leaving it there.

Then he held it out to you. Didn’t press it into your hand, just let it rest there, cradled against his fingers, waiting.

You tilted your head toward it, but your muscles were still too slow, coordination still too shot. He noticed. Said nothing. Just flipped the lid open himself.

Inside, nestled into the tin’s base on a folded strip of linen, was a tiny object. Barely bigger than your thumb. Faintly metallic. Dull silver at the edges, matte black at the center.

It was a music box cylinder. A fragment. Something old, worn smooth. The kind used in hand-crank players—the ones tucked inside the little wind-up boxes you used to fidget with as a child, flipping them open and closed like they were meant to be solved.

You blinked.

Once.

Twice.

Bucky was watching you. Carefully. Like the weight of your reaction might crack him open.

“You said,” he said quietly, “a few months ago… that you had one when you were a kid. Broke in a move. Said you remembered the sound but not the song.”

You remembered. You hadn’t thought he had.

You hadn’t thought anyone had been listening.

“I found that in a market in Riga,” he went on, voice low, roughened at the edges. “The guy didn’t know what it played. Didn’t have the housing. Just this. It was rusted shut. Took me a few days to clean it.”

He paused.

“I was gonna wait to give it to you. But I didn’t know when the right time was.”

You tried to speak again. Your throat clenched. No sound came.

Still—you pushed the air up, forced it out like it owed you something. Like you had to say it, even if it burned.

“Why?”

It rasped out of you like broken glass dragged across stone. More breath than voice. But the word made it past your lips this time, and that was enough.

Bucky didn’t answer right away.

Didn’t look at you, either. Not at first. His eyes had dropped back to the tin, as if the shape of it might tell him how to start.

The silence stretched.

You didn’t push him.

“I didn’t know if you’d want it,” he said finally. The words came low. Barely above a whisper. “Didn’t know if it meant anything coming from me.”

He shifted in the chair like he didn’t trust it to hold his weight. Like he was trying not to lean too close.

“You said that thing about the music box and it just—stuck. I don’t even think you realized you said it. We were talking about… something else. Some mission. I can’t even remember which. You were just fiddling with your comm and you mentioned it. How the song used to help you sleep, but now you can’t remember the tune. Just that it made you feel… safe. Back then.”

He rubbed his thumb over his knee, like he needed something to ground himself.

“I remembered,” he said again, quieter this time. “And I kept looking. For months. In every market, every junk bin, every fucked-up antique shop we passed through. Most of them were trash. Broken. Stolen. Or the wrong kind. But then I found that one. Just the cylinder. No box. No sound. Just…possibility.”

His jaw twitched.

“I figured I’d give it to you when… I don’t know. When things slowed down. When we weren’t bleeding every week or crawling through wreckage or losing people left and right. But things don’t slow down. Not for us. So I waited.”

He finally looked at you.

And the look in his eyes—God. It made your breath stutter beneath the oxygen tube. It wasn’t pity. It wasn’t soft, either. It was sharp. Too sharp. Like the only way he knew how to look at you was like he was still checking for exit wounds.

“I thought I missed my chance.”

He said it so plainly you almost didn’t feel it at first. But it settled in your chest like a weight. Like truth.

“I thought you were gone,” he went on. “On that lake… when I couldn’t find the surface, when I finally got you out, when your body—” He stopped himself. Shook his head. “You weren’t moving. You weren’t breathing. You were just drifting. And I remember thinking—that’s it. That’s the end. That’s where I lose you.”

Your chest tightened. Not from pain. Not from cold. Just the sound of him.

“I don’t lose people like that anymore,” he said. “Not like I used to. Not if I can help it. And sure, I’ve said that before. But this time—” His voice cracked, just once. “This time it was you.”

You blinked. Hard.

He leaned forward now, elbows braced on his knees, voice lower than before.

“You don’t get it,” he said, rambling on like the words were exiting his mouth before he even thought about them. “You think you’re just… part of the team. That you’re one of us. And you are. But it’s not the same. Not for me.”

He exhaled, sharp and tired and fraying.

“You get under my skin in ways that nothing else does. You keep me tethered when shit goes sideways. You ask questions no one else asks. You call me on my bullshit without making it feel like I’m back in some shrink’s office getting dissected. You make space. And I didn’t know how much I needed that—no—wanted it. Until I thought I’d lost it.”

You didn’t know you’d started crying until you tasted salt at the edge of your mouth. Just a few tears. Silent. Clean. Your throat hurt too much for sobbing. Your eyes hurt too much to keep them open.

But he noticed.

He sat forward quickly, hand reaching for the call button. “Shit—do you want the doc? I can get them, they said to page if you—”

You lifted your hand again. Just barely. Just enough to curl your fingers around his wrist.

“No,” you whispered. Barely there. Barely sound.

His hand hovered an inch above the call button, frozen. You felt the way his wrist flexed beneath your fingers, the way the tendons in his forearm pulled tight like he wasn’t sure whether to move or stay. His eyes searched your face again, sharp and clinical for one second—checking your color, your breathing, your pupils—and then he exhaled, quieter this time. Sat back.

Didn’t pull away.

You swallowed. The effort scraped down your throat like sandpaper, but you did it anyway. Forced air past the ruined edges of your voice until it shaped something. Small. Crooked. Yours.

“I didn’t… know you remembered,” you rasped, each word a dry scrape across something bruised and tender. “The music box.”

Bucky exhaled. Short. Quiet. Almost a laugh, except there was nothing funny in it.

“I remember everything you don’t think I do,” he said. “You always think no one’s paying attention. But I see it. All of it. The way you cover for people when they’re tired. How you pass your dessert off to Bob when he pretends he’s not hungry. That little stretch you do before every mission.”

Your lips parted, breath caught halfway to forming something else. But your throat cracked mid-inhale, so you let it go. Let him keep speaking.

He leaned forward again, this time more gently, his forearms braced on either side of your legs, like he was trying to fold himself smaller. Make himself quieter. Like he didn’t want the rest of the world to hear what came next.

“I see you,” he repeated, quieter now. “Even when you think you’re blending in. When you’re holding it together for everyone else.”

You blinked slowly. The tears had stopped, or maybe your body had just run out. Your eyes burned from the effort of keeping them open. But they stayed on him.

“I think…” You paused, tried to clear your throat, but it made it worse. You grimaced through it, blinked hard. He moved like he might reach for you, or call again, but you shook your head, barely. 

“Let me,” you croaked, voice shot to hell, every syllable catching like thread pulled through torn cloth. “I think I… do the stretch… because I’m scared.”

His eyes didn’t widen. He didn’t flinch. Just watched. Still. So fucking still.

You blinked again, slow and raw. “Not of dying. Not really.”

That earned a twitch of his mouth. Not amusement. Something darker. Sadder. Knowing.

“Of what, then?” he asked, voice low.

You swallowed hard. The air in your lungs felt too thick now, heavy with what you hadn’t said before the lake took you. “Of… getting close. Of being… close. And then it ending.”

Something in his expression fractured. Not broken, not open, just bare. Like you’d peeled something back without meaning to. Like you’d stepped too close to the place he kept boarded up with silence and mission reports and one-liners that didn’t quite pass for humor.

He nodded once. Not like he was agreeing. Like he understood.

“You’re not the only one,” he said quietly. “You think I didn’t notice how long it took you to unpack after the Bataysk job? You kept your bag zipped by the door for three weeks.”

You almost laughed. Almost. But it came out too soft, caught on the edge of a breath.

“You knew?”

“I always knew.”

You looked at him again. Really looked. His hands weren’t covered by gloves like they normally were. They were bare, calloused, fingertips nicked and bruised. His left hand rested beside your blanket, the metal dull and wet-lit under the fluorescents, motionless.

Your hand moved before your brain caught up.

Weak. Slow. You lifted your fingers and reached for the edge of his sleeve, but your arm shook with the effort and dropped short. He caught it before it fell completely—his flesh hand, warm and scarred and careful—and guided your palm over the metal one like it wasn’t strange at all. Like you’d done it a thousand times. His jaw ticked.

“It’s cold,” you whispered.

He nodded. “I know.”

“I don’t mind.”

He let his thumb brush across the edge of your wrist, slow and grounding. Not a stroke. Not comforting. Just there. “I didn’t think I’d get to tell you any of this,” he said. “When I pulled you out, when you weren’t breathing, I—” He cut himself off again, jaw tightening. “I thought you were already gone.”

You wanted to say something, anything, but the only sound you made was breath.

It was enough.

“I wasn’t ready to lose you,” he said. “Not like that. Not ever. But especially not without… you knowing.”

Your throat pulled tight.

“Knowing what?” you whispered, wrecked.

He didn’t hesitate.

“That I give a damn. That I think about you more than I should. That you’re not just some mission partner I cover in the field. That you matter.”

You opened your mouth again. Closed it. Your lips trembled.

Bucky moved closer, just slightly, head still bowed low like the words had weight. Like if he spoke too loud they might splinter.

“You matter to me,” he said. “More than I ever planned for.”

Your eyes burned. Your hand twitched in his, a pathetic excuse for a squeeze, but he felt it. He held on tighter.

You swallowed again, painful and raw. “Me too,” you said, barely audible. “You… matter.”

Something broke in his face. Not his composure. Not his strength. Just the smallest trace of distance, pulled away. A breath he hadn’t been able to take until now.

You saw it in his eyes.

And maybe that would’ve been enough. Maybe in another world—one with less noise, less blood—you would’ve stayed like that for another minute. Maybe you would’ve reached for him again, said something more, pulled the words from the ruin of your voice just to hear him say your name in that same, low, wrecked way.

But this wasn’t that world.

And the curtain tore open before you could even draw your next breath.

“MY BEAR CUB LIVES!”

Alexei’s voice exploded through the medbay like cannon fire, and before you could brace for it, before Bucky could so much as turn in his seat, there were arms. So many arms. Warm, clumsy, massive arms wrapping around you like a weighted blanket made of noise and Soviet linen.

You wheezed. A sharp, involuntary gasp you couldn’t help as Alexei crushed half your torso in a rib-cracking hug.

Bucky was on his feet instantly. “Hey—hey! Easy! Watch it, she’s still—”

“Bah!” Alexei cut him off with a wave of one enormous hand. “She is strong! Like small elk! Look at this—already upright, already beautiful, skin like ice sculpture!” He reached out and cradled your jaw for a second, then kissed your forehead in a way that nearly knocked the oxygen cannula askew. “You do not die on me. You are not allowed to die on me. I would never forgive you.”

“I tried to stop him,” Yelena muttered dryly, appearing behind him with arms crossed and absolutely no remorse. “I tackled him in the hallway. Didn’t matter. He just kept bounding.”

She was flanked by three more figures—Bob, shifting awkwardly and clutching a bouquet that looked like it had been stolen from a funeral arrangement, Ava hovering beside him with a look of cautious relief, and John leaning just far enough into the room to smirk.

“Look who decided to rejoin the land of the living,” Walker called, voice light but eyes sharp. “Don’t do that again. It’s bad for team morale.”

Bucky hadn’t moved far from your bedside, just enough to make room, to stop Alexei from inadvertently crushing a vein or breaking an already-bruised rib. He was still watching you, eyes flicking between your face and your vitals monitor like he couldn’t help himself.

Alexei finally released you with a thud and an affectionate slap to the shoulder that nearly dislocated something. You blinked hard through the swirl of motion, coughing once as your lungs protested the sudden influx of people and oxygen.

“Careful,” Bucky muttered again, more to himself than anyone else.

But you caught his wrist before he could move back.

Just a small touch. Nothing demanding. Just enough.

He didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to.

The others kept talking—Yelena launching into a commentary about how ugly the paper cranes were before realizing Bob made them and immediately changing the subject, Ava threatening to install a lock on the medbay door, Bob quietly asking if you wanted him to adjust the light overhead, Walker declaring he’d brought “real food” and pulling a suspicious-looking bag from behind his back that Yelena immediately swatted out of his hands.

It was chaos. Loud and jagged and human.

But you didn’t look at them.

You looked at Bucky.

And he looked at you.

And in that small, quiet moment—under the hum of machines, under the curtain pulled halfway back, under the noise and the mess and the aching throb in your chest—you felt it settle. All of it. The tension. The fear. The distance you’d both kept because you didn’t know what would happen if you crossed it.

He stayed exactly where you needed him. Elbow resting on the frame of your bed, hand lax in your grip, eyes never leaving yours even when someone bumped the curtain again or when Yelena started swearing in Russian under her breath because she had opened the bag Walker had and apparently it smelled.

You didn’t speak.

Neither did he.

But your fingers stayed curled around his wrist, weak and unsteady, still trembling from the cold that still lived somewhere in your bones, and he didn’t pull away.

Didn’t shift.

Didn’t give you some line about rest or recovery or needing to take a break from all this noise.

He just stayed.

Not because you asked.

But because that’s what he did.

What he’d always done, quietly, behind the chaos.

tag list (message me to be added or removed!): @nerdreader, @baw1066, @nairafeather, @galaxywannabe, @idkitsem, @starfly-nicole, @buckybarneswife125, @ilovedeanwinchester4, @brnesblogposts, @knowledgeableknitter, @kneelforloki, @hi-itisjustme, @alassal, @samurx, @amelya5567, @chiunpy, @winterslove1917, @emme-looou, @thekatisspooky, @y0urgrl, @g1g1l, @vignettesofveronica, @addie192, @winchestert101, @ponyboys-sunsets, @fallenxjas, @alexawhatstheweathertoday, @charlieluver, @thesteppinrazor, @mrsnikstan, @eywas-heir, @shortandb1tchy

[tragicbutpretty]

The hottest thing a man can do is be a awkward little nerd 

[imreidswifey-deactivated2025041]

Hii,

Saw you wanted some requests and I love your writing sooo…

Would you write a Spencer x wife!reader where there’s a case somewhere cold and an unsub has taken a little girl. The BAU chase the unsub to a big icy lake and reader goes to save the little girl. Just as she reaches them the ice breaks and they fall in. You can decide the rest. Angst with fluff at the end and worried Spencer!

Would love if you wrote this, thank you!!!

𝐁𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐜𝐞

Spencer Reid x Wife!Reader

w/c: 10k+

a/n: I hope when you requested this you wanted a long story and not a short one because I saw this prompt and like ran with it 😝 i'm so excited to be getting requests now and hopefully you like this!! also, did you notice that I switched the colors from pink to blue cause like icyyy 🤭

———

The cold was relentless. It seeped through your layers, through the thick FBI-issued tactical jacket, biting into your skin as the wind howled through the trees. The snow was fresh, untouched in some places but disturbed in others—jagged footprints cut through the frost-covered ground, a desperate path leading deeper into the forest.

You weren’t far behind.

Your breath came in heavy puffs, curling in the freezing air as you ran. Your boots crunched against the hardened snow, but the sound barely registered over the pounding of your heart.

“Y/N, wait—damn it, slow down!” Spencer’s voice crackled in your earpiece, tight with worry. “You’re too far ahead!”

You ignored him, gripping your gun tighter as you weaved between towering trees. There wasn’t time to slow down. The unsub was getting away, dragging a terrified seven-year-old girl with him.

Sophie Miller.

She had been missing for seventy-two hours.

You had memorized her picture the moment Garcia pulled it up on the jet—a bright, smiling face framed by golden curls, her blue eyes wide with innocence. The kind of child who loved bedtime stories and left crayon doodles on the walls, the kind of child who should have been safe in her home, not stolen from her bed in the dead of night.

Your team had been hunting this man for days, piecing together the horror of what he had done to his previous victims. Two children taken. Two found frozen, discarded in the woods like they were nothing more than broken toys.

You weren’t going to let Sophie be the third.

“JJ, give me an update,” Hotch’s voice came through, steady despite the urgency.

“I’ve got footprints leading northeast—fresh,” JJ responded, breathing hard. “He’s heading for the lake.”

Your gut clenched.

A frozen lake in the middle of nowhere.

A last-ditch escape route.

Or a death trap.

Your earpiece crackled again. “Y/N, wait for backup,” Spencer urged, his voice edged with frustration. “If the ice isn’t stable—”

You tuned him out, eyes locking on the dark figure moving just ahead. He was close—thirty yards, maybe less. Sophie stumbled as he yanked her forward, her tiny arms flailing, her cries swallowed by the wind.

Your stomach twisted at the sight.

“FBI!” you shouted, leveling your gun. “Stop right there!”

The unsub whipped around, his wild eyes meeting yours. He was breathing hard, his clothes disheveled, his grip on Sophie iron-tight. He looked like a cornered animal.

Desperate. Dangerous.

For a second, you thought he might surrender.

Then—he ran.

Straight onto the ice.

“Shit,” you hissed, breaking into a sprint. “He’s on the lake—he’s trying to cross!”

Your pulse hammered as you reached the lake’s edge. The ice stretched out before you, smooth and pale beneath the overcast sky. Cracks ran through parts of it, thin, dark lines spidering across the surface. It wasn’t safe.

But Sophie was still out there.

“Y/N, don’t!” Spencer’s voice was sharp now, a mix of panic and authority. “The ice won’t hold—wait for us!”

You didn’t listen.

You stepped onto the ice.

The moment your foot made contact, you felt it—a slight shift beneath you, a groan so faint it could have been the wind. But you didn’t stop.

Sophie was crying now, her little body shaking as she struggled against the unsub’s grip.

“Let her go!” you ordered, gun trained on his back.

He ignored you, stumbling forward. Each step sent ripples through the ice, the cracks widening.

Your heart pounded.

He was going to get them both killed.

“Stop moving!” you shouted. “If you take another step, the ice will—”

A deafening crack split the air.

For a heartbeat, time seemed to freeze.

Then—the ice shattered beneath them.

Sophie screamed. The unsub’s eyes went wide with horror as the frozen ground gave way, swallowing them whole.

And then—they were gone.

Your breath caught in your throat.

The water was dark and violent, swallowing everything in seconds. Jagged chunks of ice bobbed in the freezing depths, the hole gaping like an open wound in the lake’s surface.

Cold fear slammed into your chest.

“Sophie!”

There was no hesitation. No second-guessing.

You ran forward—

And the ice gave way beneath your feet.

The world tilted. The breath was ripped from your lungs as the freezing water consumed you, dragging you under.

The cold was unbearable. It burned, stealing the air from your chest, wrapping around you like an icy fist. Your limbs felt sluggish, your body already fighting against the shock.

But you didn’t stop.

You forced your arms to move, kicking hard, pushing through the numbing water. You could barely see—the world was a blur of darkness and white, ice and air mixing in a chaotic swirl.

Then—you saw her.

Sophie.

Her tiny body was flailing just a few feet away, her movements slowing. Her lips were blue, her wide eyes filled with terror.

You reached for her, fingers grazing the fabric of her coat—

Something yanked you back.

The unsub.

His grip was iron-tight, his frozen fingers clawing at you as he fought to pull himself up. His weight dragged you downward, the icy depths swallowing you both.

Panic flared in your chest.

You struggled, twisting in his grasp, your lungs screaming for air. He was drowning, and he was going to take you with him.

But you weren’t going to die here.

And you weren’t going to let Sophie die, either.

Summoning every ounce of strength, you drove your elbow back—hard. It connected with his face, and his grip loosened just enough for you to break free.

You surged upward, breaking through the surface with a gasp.

The cold was unbearable, but you didn’t let it stop you. You lunged for Sophie, grabbing her by the arm, pulling her against you.

She wasn’t moving.

No, no, no—

“Hold on,” you choked out, gripping her tightly. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

You tried to swim, but your limbs were sluggish, heavy. The cold was seeping in, your body betraying you.

Then—

A hand.

Strong, warm fingers wrapped around your wrist.

Spencer.

His face was pale with fear, his eyes wide as he reached for you, his own body half sprawled on the cracking ice.

“I’ve got you,” he gasped, voice breaking. “Hold on to me.”

You used the last of your strength to push Sophie into his arms. His grip on her was firm, secure, and within seconds, Morgan was there, pulling her to solid ground.

Spencer didn’t hesitate—he reached for you next.

“Y/N,” he breathed, voice shaking. “Come on, take my hand.”

You tried.

But the ice beneath him groaned.

His weight shifted, the cracks spreading.

If he leaned out any further—

The ice was going to break again.

“Spencer,” you rasped. “You have to move back.”

His grip tightened. “Not without you.”

The darkness was pulling at you, the weight of the cold pressing down. Your body wanted to sink, to let go.

But Spencer was still holding on.

And you weren’t going to make him watch you drown.

With the last of your strength, you gritted your teeth and reached—fingers brushing his.

He caught you.

And then—

He pulled.

———

The ice cracked.

It happened in an instant—a sharp, splintering sound that cut through the frigid air like a gunshot. Spencer’s heart stopped.

He watched in horror as the frozen lake gave way beneath your feet.

One second, you were reaching for the little girl, your arms outstretched, eyes wide with determination. The next—

You were gone.

The icy water swallowed you whole.

“No!”

The scream ripped from Spencer’s throat before he could even think. His body moved on instinct, every ounce of logic drowned beneath sheer panic.

His knees slammed against the ice as he threw himself forward, fingers desperately clawing at the jagged edges of the hole where you had disappeared. His vision blurred, his breath came in sharp, ragged gasps.

Where were you?

Seconds stretched into an eternity.

Then—movement.

A hand.

Your hand.

Spencer didn’t hesitate. He lunged forward, fingers closing around your wrist, gripping so tightly his knuckles went white. The water around you was dark and churning, but he could see your face now—pale, eyes wide with terror, lips already turning blue.

“You’re okay,” he gasped, tightening his grip. “I’ve got you.”

The ice groaned beneath his weight.

“Reid, don’t!” Morgan’s voice cut through the chaos. “You’re too close!”

Spencer ignored him.

Your body jerked as the freezing water pulled at you, trying to drag you back under.

“No,” Spencer choked out, panic clawing at his chest. “No, no, no, just hold on—”

Your fingers trembled in his grasp, so cold, too cold.

“Spence,” you gasped, voice barely above a whisper. “I— I can’t—”

“Yes, you can,” he insisted, desperation bleeding into his voice. His eyes darted frantically to the ice beneath him. Cracks spiderwebbed outward from where he knelt, groaning under the pressure.

If he wasn’t careful, he was going in after you.

He didn’t care.

All he cared about was getting you out.

“Reid, stay put!” Morgan was closer now, inching toward them, his body low against the ice. “I’ll get her. Just don’t move.”

Spencer’s grip tightened.

“She’s slipping,” he gasped, voice shaking. “I can’t— I can’t let go—”

He felt it then—your fingers weakening in his grasp, your body going limp.

You were fading.

The cold was winning.

A sickening fear twisted in his gut. He was losing you.

“No,” he whispered, sheer terror making his voice break.

A firm grip on his shoulder yanked him back.

Morgan.

“I’ve got her,” Morgan said, voice steady, unshakable. “Reid, you have to let me do this.”

Spencer’s whole body tensed. His grip on your wrist was ironclad, unyielding.

“I can’t,” he admitted, voice raw.

Morgan’s eyes met his—serious, steady.

“You can.”

For a moment, Spencer hesitated. Then, with every ounce of trust he had, he loosened his grip—just enough for Morgan to take hold of your arm.

Morgan moved fast, pulling you upward with sheer strength.

You barely made a sound as your body was dragged onto the ice.

The moment you were clear, Spencer lunged forward, gathering you into his arms. His hands skimmed over your frozen skin, searching for injuries, grounding himself in the fact that you were still here.

But you were barely moving.

You were shaking violently, teeth chattering, eyes glassy and unfocused.

“She’s going into shock,” JJ’s voice cut through the wind. “We need to warm her up—now.”

Emily was already beside him, wrapping a thick thermal blanket around your shivering frame.

“Sophie—” you croaked, barely able to form the word.

“The girl’s safe,” Morgan reassured you, his voice softer than usual. “She’s with the paramedics.”

Relief washed over your face, but your body continued to tremble.

Spencer pressed his forehead against yours, his breath shaky.

“I thought I lost you,” he whispered, voice cracking.

You tried to respond, but your lips were too numb, your body wracked with tremors.

He cupped your face in his hands, his thumbs brushing over your icy cheeks.

“You’re okay,” he repeated, like saying it would make it true.

But you weren’t okay.

Your skin was cold—too cold. Your breaths came in sharp, uneven gasps, and your eyes kept fluttering shut, as if you were slipping away.

Spencer’s heart clenched.

“No, no, stay with me,” he begged, shaking you gently.

“So tired,” you mumbled.

“No,” Spencer whispered, panic rising in his chest. “Don’t close your eyes.”

You forced them open, just for him.

“I’m here,” you whispered.

Something inside Spencer broke.

He surged forward, pressing his lips to yours.

It wasn’t just a kiss—it was desperate, raw, a silent plea. A promise that he was here, that he wasn’t letting go.

When he pulled back, his hands never left you.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured, his voice barely above a whisper. “I’ve got you.”

Then, finally, the paramedics reached them.

Spencer didn’t let go—not as they wrapped you in more blankets, not as they strapped you to the stretcher, not as they rushed toward the ambulance.

He held your hand the entire way.

And he didn’t let go.

———

Warmth.

It was the first thing you felt.

Not the biting, numbing cold of the ice, nor the sharp sting of wind against your skin. This warmth was different—gentle, constant, like a fire burning low in the hearth.

The weight of thick blankets pressed against your body, cocooning you in layers of soft heat. The steady, rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor echoed in the quiet space around you. The faint scent of antiseptic and something familiar—Spencer—lingered in the air.

You were safe.

You tried to open your eyes, but they felt heavy, as if the exhaustion had settled into your bones, unwilling to let go. You managed a small inhale, and the moment you stirred, a hand—warm, shaking—tightened around yours.

“Sweetheart?”

Spencer.

His voice was hoarse, cracked at the edges, as if he’d been speaking—pleading—for hours.

You forced your eyes open, blinking sluggishly against the dim light of the hospital room.

And there he was.

Spencer sat hunched over the bed, his fingers curled tightly around yours, his knuckles white with the force of his grip. His hair was a mess, wild and disheveled, his normally neat curls tangled from where he’d clearly run his fingers through them too many times. Dark circles lined his eyes, and his lips were slightly chapped, as if he hadn’t had a sip of water in far too long.

But none of that compared to the raw emotion written all over his face.

Relief. Fear. Love.

He looked exhausted, like he hadn’t slept in days, like the weight of the world had been sitting on his chest.

You swallowed, your throat dry.

“…Hey.”

The word barely made it past your lips, but Spencer sucked in a sharp breath, like it physically hurt him to hear how weak you sounded.

“Oh, God,” he whispered, his grip tightening. “You’re awake.”

You tried to nod, but even that small movement made your body protest. Your limbs felt sluggish, as if you were moving through molasses.

Spencer must have noticed, because he was already adjusting the blanket around you, tucking it in carefully, like he could shield you from even the faintest chill.

“Don’t move,” he murmured, his voice laced with quiet urgency. “You need to rest. Your body’s still recovering from the hypothermia. The doctors said—” His voice wavered, and he shook his head, as if the memory of whatever they had said was too much. “You scared the hell out of me.”

You blinked at him, trying to push past the fog in your mind.

“How long?” you rasped.

Spencer swallowed, his throat bobbing.

“Two days.”

Your heart clenched.

Two days.

Spencer had been sitting here, in this exact spot, for two whole days.

Waiting.

Worrying.

Loving you through it.

“Spence,” you whispered, trying to squeeze his hand.

He let out a breathless, broken laugh.

“You almost died,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “You almost—” He stopped, squeezing his eyes shut. “I thought I lost you.”

Tears burned at the edges of your vision.

You hated seeing him like this—so wrecked, so shaken, like he had been forced to watch his worst nightmare unfold in front of him.

“I’m here,” you whispered. “I’m okay.”

Spencer let out a shaky breath, then lifted your hand to his lips, pressing a lingering kiss against your cold skin.

“You almost weren’t,” he murmured.

Your chest ached—not from the cold, not from the exhaustion, but from the sheer emotion in his voice.

“I had to save her,” you said, barely audible. “The little girl…”

Spencer nodded, his eyes searching yours.

“You did,” he whispered. “You saved her, sweetheart. She’s okay. Because of you.”

A soft breath of relief escaped your lips, but Spencer’s grip never loosened.

“You could’ve died,” he said, his voice breaking. “I watched you fall through the ice. I saw the way the water swallowed you whole, and for a second—” He stopped, inhaling sharply. “For a second, I thought I’d never see you again.”

Tears slipped down your cheeks.

“Spence,” you whispered, your heart shattering.

His own eyes were red-rimmed, his jaw tight as he fought against the storm of emotions threatening to swallow him whole.

“I can’t lose you,” he confessed, his voice trembling. “I don’t know what I’d do. I— I can’t—”

You didn’t let him finish.

With every ounce of strength you had left, you tugged weakly on his hand, pulling him closer.

He understood immediately.

Spencer surged forward, his forehead pressing against yours, his breath warm against your skin.

For a long moment, neither of you spoke.

You just breathed together.

“I’m here,” you whispered again, this time for him.

Spencer exhaled shakily, then—without hesitation—he kissed you.

It was slow, soft, his lips feather-light against yours, like he was afraid you might break.

But you kissed him back, pouring every ounce of love, every unspoken word, into the press of your lips.

When he pulled away, his hand never left your face, his fingers tracing over your skin as if memorizing every inch.

“I love you,” he whispered, raw and unfiltered.

You smiled, despite the exhaustion tugging at your body.

“I love you too.”

Spencer exhaled, relief washing over his face.

For the first time in days, he looked like he could finally breathe.

And with him by your side, so did you.

———

[corollaim]

"what would you do without me?" "perish." | s. reid

summary: your boyfriend is more than happy to take care of you while you recover from a hip injury. 

relationship: spencer reid x chronically ill fem!reader 

genre: fluff

word count: 2.9k

tags: established relationship, reader is implied to have hEDS because i am nothing if not a self-indulgent writer, totally not inspired by my recent bedridden & injured state of being, are tags really necessary when this is 100% fluffy?, i think that is all

You’re sprawled on your sofa, looking a bit like a pretzel as you attempt to keep weight off your right hip. A few days ago, you partially dislocated it. What were you doing? Walking. Literally just walking. Leave it to your shitty connective tissue disorder to make even the simplest tasks a waking nightmare. 

It’s early Wednesday morning, and you’ve had to call out of work while you rest. Doctor’s orders and all. You’re usually not up this early unless you’re getting ready for your commute, but you haven’t been getting much rest, what with the killer pain in your leg. So, you’ve resigned yourself to tapping away on your Kindle, indulging in some smutty romance to entertain yourself. 

There’s a knock at your door, and your head whips in the direction of the sound. You aren’t expecting anyone; if you were anyone else, you might be embarrassed to have your reading interrupted mid-sex scene, but you’re as shameless as they come. You keep scanning the screen as you call out. There’s very few people on this earth that could drag you away from this book.

“Who is it?” you yell, suppressing a delighted giggle at a particularly good line. 

“Spencer,” your boyfriend’s voice shouts in return. “Do you have a spare key out here?”

As immersed in your reading as you are, Spencer’s number one on your list of people you would drop everything to hang out with (not that you would openly admit this to him). You shut off your tablet and carefully sit up, not wanting to get a head rush.

“No,” you answer. Once the threat of a blackout has passed, you rise to your feet and announce, “Coming!”

“No, don’t! I’ll have the landlord—hello,” Spencer cuts himself off as the door flings open, revealing your pajama-clad form. You grin brightly.

“Hi!” you reply happily, excited to see him. 

“You’re not a very good listener, you know that?” Spencer says flatly, crossing his arms across his chest. His sass does little to dampen your spirits.

“To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” you ask.

“Okay, first of all, it wouldn’t be unexpected if you answered your phone,” Spencer points out, stepping across the threshold into your entryway as he adds, “Second, ignoring me when I call you a bad listener only helps me build my case.”

“And you’re suing me on what grounds, exactly?” you question, quirking a brow and locking the door behind him. 

“Criminal negligence. My ego is facing irreparable damage,” Spencer declares with an exaggeratedly dejected sigh. 

“That’s your own fault. Confidence is key,” you chide. “Never let someone else have that much power over you, even someone as hot as me.”

Spencer’s eyes trail down your body, and he pretends to be unimpressed as he meets your gaze. 

“Those are the frumpiest pajamas I’ve ever seen,” he deadpans, and you click your tongue. 

“You can’t faze me,” you decree, tossing your mussed hair over one shoulder. “See? Confidence.”

“Fascinating,” Spencer says sarcastically. “Now, if only there were a way to make your joints as strong as your horribly misplaced faith in your fashion sense.”

“I dunno what you mean. I’m fine,” you say with a shrug. You’re lying, of course. You’ve been in such unbearable pain these past few days that you’ve been reduced to tears on more than one occasion. Still, Spencer has literally been shot at work, so you would feel a little ridiculous complaining to him. His eyes fall to your feet, noting the way in which you’re obviously heavily putting weight on your good leg. 

“Your flamingo impression is impressive, by the way,” he muses. 

“Thank you,” you reply kindly, ignoring his sarcasm and pretending like he’s paid you a genuine compliment. “I’ve also recently mastered ‘pogo stick’. Wanna see?”

“That’s okay,” Spencer declines. Unfortunately for him, you’re a stubborn thing, and you decide to demonstrate, anyway. You turn on your heels and hop away from him on your good foot.

“Boing, boing—ah! Hey!” you exclaim as you’re lifted off the ground. Spencer throws you over his shoulder like you weigh no more than a bag of groceries, carrying you toward your bedroom.

“You’re gonna kill yourself,” he chastises, careful not to jolt your hip as he maintains his hold on you. 

“Unhand me!” you command, kicking your legs like a petulant child. 

“Sure, I will,” Spencer promises. “In your bed. Where you should be.”

He reaches your bedroom and shoves the door open with his foot, depositing you next to the side of the bed he knows you prefer. You know he’s expecting you to lie down, but you’re a bit miffed by being manhandled—even though the fact that he can carry you so effortlessly is rather attractive—so you just stand there and glare at him.

“God, who invited the fun police?” you scoff.

“Hopping around on one foot because your other leg is hurt is fun to you?” he retorts, gesturing with a flourish toward your bed. You ignore him.

“It’s not that hurt,” you argue, though you don’t even sound convincing to your own ears. Spencer huffs, shaking his head at your antics. 

“Is that an official prognosis?” he inquires with narrowed eyes.

“Yes,” you affirm. “I’m a doctor.”

“And in another world, you might actually be a medical one,” Spencer replies unenthusiastically. He raises his hands to your shoulder and attempts to coax you into bed, gently guiding you toward the mattress. “Now, sit.”

“Woof,” you say flatly, obediently sinking onto your bed. Spencer looks like he’s resisting the urge to facepalm.

“Jesus—you’re impossible,” he remarks with another shake of his head. 

“Oomph,” you sigh, flopping down. You rest your head against your mountain of pillows and watch Spencer assess the room with an intent gaze. 

“Where’re your painkillers?” he asks. You wordlessly respond by pointing to the living room. He starts to head out the door, and then warns over his shoulder, “You better not move.”

“Yes, Daddy,” you tease, speaking as sweetly as you can. Spencer grimaces.

“Ew,” he gags. “A nod or something would’ve been fine.”

“But so much less fun,” you reply, pulling back the covers to make yourself more comfortable. 

“Uh-huh,” Spencer responds noncommittally from the living room. You hear the rattle of a pill bottle as he retrieves it from the coffee table. Moments later, he’s reappearing in your doorway. 

“You’re back,” you state.

“Bearing gifts,” he answers, holding up the bottle for emphasis. 

“I missed you,” you complain. You sound a bit sarcastic, but the sentiment is genuine. You love Spencer more than you’ve loved anyone else before, and he knows it, despite your constant joking and teasing. Part of what makes your banter so enjoyable is that it’s all in good fun. You would never needle at his actual insecurities, nor would he at yours. When you peel back the layers of quips, there’s genuine affection there, more potent than you feel for anyone else in this world. 

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Spencer tuts, though his cheeks flush slightly, betraying his nonchalant demeanor. “When was your last dose?”

“Half past nunya,” you stubbornly joke. Spencer squints at you.

“Which is your oh-so-polite way of saying, ‘Why no, Spencer, I haven’t yet taken my medication. Thank you for reminding me. I’m so lucky to have you. Have I mentioned how handsome you’re looking today?’” he retorts without missing a beat. He practically shoves the pill bottle into your hands before rounding the foot of the bed and flopping down beside you.

“I thought flattery got me nowhere,” you argue, turning to face him. “Are you done kissing your own ass?”

“Maybe,” he concedes.

“Thank God. A big head doesn’t suit your gangly shoulders,” you declare, uncapping the bottle. 

“Gang—take your damn steroids,” Spencer says exasperatedly. You sigh dramatically before popping the prescribed dose into your mouth.

“Fine,” you huff, your response garbled by the pills in your mouth.

“Thank you, baby,” Spencer praises as you sip some water, swallowing your medication. 

“Ah.” You open your mouth as wide as you can and stick out your tongue to prove that you’ve swallowed the pills. It’s not like he asked you to do this; no, you just feel like being annoying. 

“So charming when you actually follow directions,” Spencer coos sarcastically, lifting a finger to your chin and encouraging you to close your mouth. You snap your lips together and snuggle deeper into your pillows. Despite the obvious answer being that you’re about to sleep the day away, Spencer asks, “So, what’s on the agenda for today?”

“Well, I’m glad you asked. I was thinking of doing some squats, maybe going for a bike ride—” you start, staring dreamily at the ceiling. 

“Do you have a sarcasm filter?” Spencer interrupts. 

“It’s in my hip. In other words, it’s not working,” you reply quickly. He huffs with amusement. 

“Smartass,” he remarks. Then, he cracks his knuckles, as if preparing for some kind of major adventure. “So, I was thinking we could catch up on Survivor, or maybe I could do some cleaning for you while you read, or—”

“We?” you cut him off. 

“Well, yeah. I took the day off,” Spencer shrugs. That probably should’ve been obvious, in hindsight. He’s not dressed for work, and it’s now well past the time that either of you would have to leave this apartment to make it to headquarters on time. Apparently, you were just too distracted by your excitement at seeing your lovely boyfriend to take any of this into consideration. 

“To torment me,” you sigh. 

“To take care of you,” Spencer corrects. “Ya know, since you’re too stubborn to do it yourself.”

“I resent that,” you whine, though he’s absolutely correct. 

“They hated Jesus for speaking the truth, too,” he replies confidently, and you snort. 

“Heh. Alright, fine, you’re very thoughtful,” you cave. “I maintain that I’m okay, but I am not opposed to having you all to myself. Or whatever.”

“Sweet. So, TV?” Spencer asks, already reaching for the remote. He turns on your TV and flips through your streaming services as you reply.

“Only so I can ogle Jeff Probst,” you say sarcastically. Spencer narrows his eyes at you in a sidelong glance. 

“Remember who you’re talking to,” he threatens lightheartedly. You pout in mock apology.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot you called dibs on him,” you reply, intentionally misinterpreting his warning. 

“You’re very annoying when you’re pretending to not be in crippling pain,” Spencer complains, opening the CBS app on your television. 

“Pretend—” you start.

“—ing schmetending,” Spencer finishes. “How original.”

“Aw, Spence. It’s so cute how you can read my mind,” you beam, leaning over to hug his arm and press your weight against him in a dramatic show of affection. “We’re just two little peas in a pod.”

“Pea pods typically hold five to ten peas, actually,” he responds, abandoning his faux annoyance in exchange for that familiar, excited tone he uses when he gets to tell you a fun fact. Like always, you’re absolutely fascinated that he just knows these things, but you’re too preoccupied being a smartass to shower him with compliments. 

“Okay, and? I evicted the others. Fuck them,” you declare, gesturing in a shooing motion. 

“Alright, sure,” Spencer concedes. Then, because you’re practically shoving him off the bed, he demands, “Move over. Carefully.”

“Fine, fine,” you oblige, scooching back to your side of the bed and making a conscious effort not to jostle your hip. “Make yourself comfy.”

Spencer notices your awkward shimmy just as easily as he notices literally everything about you. He turns to you, concern etching his features. 

“Do you need anything? Would a heating pad help? I can go buy some lidocaine patches, or—” he starts to ramble, but you cut him off. 

“You know those don’t help,” you remind him. You feel a bit guilty when he responds with a dejected frown. Really, you don’t have anything to feel guilty about, since you would much rather prefer if lidocaine did help, and it’s not your fault that it doesn’t. You add, hoping to cheer him up a bit, “Thank you, though.”

“Of course. I hate seeing you in pain. And—”

“I’m—” you interject, but Spencer goes on. 

“Stop interrupting me,” he directs. Your lips part, stubbornly trying to finish your sentence, but he continues, “And don’t try to convince me you’re not in pain. If it was bad enough for you to go see a doctor last night, I’m sure anyone else would be crying like a baby with that hip.”

You’re flattered that he seems to think you’re some sort of badass with an insanely high pain tolerance. You want to argue, to remind him that you’re just used to living with pain, and that you’re not actually that tough at all, but something about his sentiment gives you pause. You shoot him an amused glance. 

“Even you?” you tease with raised eyebrows.

“Oh, especially me,” Spencer replies, nodding solemnly. He’s pretending to be more serious than he is, you know that, but you’re still comforted by the notion, regardless. You still feel pretty ridiculous complaining about a sore hip, but maybe being honest about it won’t be as humiliating as you’ve been imagining. 

“...I considered going to the hospital and demanding their finest opioids,” you mumble, trying not to sound as vulnerable as you feel. You hate that your entire life has (and perhaps always will be) a struggle between being too sick to function “normally”, yet not feeling sick enough to be valid in being miserable. As much as you doubt yourself and put yourself down, though, Spencer’s always there to lift you up. 

“I’m sorry, honey,” he says sympathetically, lifting a hand to run his fingers through your hair. “Hopefully, you’ll start to feel better when the inflammation goes down.”

“Yeah,” you shrug, leaning into his touch. His fingers trace your jawline, moving to cup your cheek.

“You look tired,” he notes softly. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

“A, you’re supposed to think I look beautiful at all times,” you retort, though you are tired, so your attempted sass falls a bit short. “B, no.”

“You do look beautiful, baby,” Spencer assures you, leaning down to press a light kiss to the crown of your head. He pulls back and assesses the—surely very noticeable—dark circles under your eyes. “Just a little… sleep-deprived.”

“I need a cursed spinning wheel,” you sigh, dropping your head against his shoulder. You’re not even pretending to watch TV; you’re too exhausted. 

“Oh, but I would miss you if you fell asleep for a hundred years,” Spencer responds, smoothing your hair as you curl against him. 

“Well, I would hope so,” you mumble into his shoulder. “Just kiss me after like, a week or two.”

“Too long,” Spencer decides. You snort, lifting your head just enough to look up at him incredulously.

“A week is too long? What would you do without me?” you question, quirking a brow at him. 

“Perish,” he declares, sighing heavily. You huff.

“Dramatic ass,” you tease. “I like that answer, though. Very devoted.”

It isn’t long until you’re drifting off, relaxing against him. Your brain feels foggy, and you vaguely register people’s voices emanating from the TV. You’re not sure how long you’ve been laying here like this, but eventually, Spencer pats your shoulder and whispers to you. 

“Baby, roll over, please,” he requests. 

“Mngh,” you grumble, not wanting to be disturbed. You were so damn comfy, what the hell is he bothering you for?

“You’re laying on your hip, just—” Spencer points out, trying to gently guide you into a different position. When you refuse to move, he groans. “Ugh.”

“‘M comf’,” you mumble, nuzzling impossibly further into his side. 

“‘Comf’ or not, you’re gonna regret it,” he asserts, slowly extracting himself from beneath you. 

“YOLO,” you declare, lazily pawing at his arm as he pulls away from him. 

“Yes, dear,” Spencer chuckles softly, pulling his arm away from you and looking at you as sternly as he can muster. “Help me help you improve the quality of said life by getting off that hip.”

Knowing he’s not going to relent, you sigh a dramatic “hmph” and roll onto your good side. You’re immediately grumpy, given the fact that your back is now to Spencer and you’ve lost your favorite pillow (his arm). 

“Thank you,” he says, squeezing your shoulder. You crane your neck to look over at him.

“We have to switch spots,” you decree. 

“Why?” Spencer asks.

“I don’t like facing away from you,” you explain in a near-whine. Spencer’s perplexed look fades into a fond smile, and he rises from the bed without another question.

“Alright, hon,” he concedes, rounding the bed once more to slip into the other side. Once he’s laying beside you, you press up against him, smiling contently—and sleepily—as you rest your head on his chest. “Better?”

“Yes,” you hum approvingly, eyes fluttering shut. 

“You going back to sleep?” he inquires.

“Mm,” you reply tiredly. 

“Sleep tight,” he whispers into your hair. For the first time in days, you feel something other than pure pain as you’re overcome by sleep. 

taglist: @reidmiss-3 @dc-reid-heliotrope @theglitchywriterboi @toomanyfanficsbruh @lotsie2234 @opaliite13 @spencerreids-wife @rairaine

[b6rntosdiee]

[moonstruckme]

hiiii mae if you’re up for it would you pretty please write spencer and intern reader when she gets hurt? holding her hand while she gets patched up or comforting her when she’s concussed or something of the like. i love your writing so much xoxoxo

Thank you for requesting <3

cw: blood, concussion, vague mention of a murder case but it's really just background

Spencer Reid x intern!reader ♡ 946 words

“Look this way, please.” 

When you don’t move, Spencer gives your shoulder a kind squeeze. “Hey. Can you look over there?” 

You turn your face from Spencer’s jacket, and the paramedic offers you a smile. She knows you weren’t ignoring her; you only hadn’t been paying attention. “Follow my finger,” she tells you. 

Spencer watches as you do, her pen light gliding over your bloody face. There are tear tracks diluting the red. 

Staying with witnesses is supposed to be a safe part of the job. That’s why Hotch assigned it to you. But when Morgan walked the handcuffed unsub through the station, one victim’s husband lost it completely, and when you got into his warpath he shoved you so hard Spencer heard your head knock against the precinct’s tile floor. Blood puddled around your left temple before anyone could even make it to you. 

You started crying nearly as soon as you woke up. It was more than understandable, given the blood all around you and the confusion you must have been feeling after a head injury like that, but what scared the team was when you wouldn’t stop. JJ tried talking to you, even Morgan softened his teasing and offered you a hug, but to everyone’s surprise all you wanted was Spencer. You calmed some once he sat down in front of you. Tears still dribbled from your chin, but you didn’t seem quite so distraught, and you let the paramedics look at you so long as Spencer stayed. Eventually he wound up in the back of an ambulance, an arm around your shoulders while you sniffled miserably into his windbreaker and a paramedic applied butterfly bandages to the cut on your head. 

Your eyes water as the paramedic clicks off her pen light and begins asking you questions. It takes a few moments for your gaze to settle on her. 

“It’s…it’s Wednesday.” You turn to Spencer. “Is it Wednesday?” 

His heart throbs at the vulnerability in your tone. “Focus on her,” he says, softening the directive with a stroke of his thumb over your shoulder. 

You turn back to the paramedic, answering her questions with varying degrees of uncertainty. Your fingers curl in the material of Spencer’s jacket. He has the urge to tuck your head underneath his chin. 

The paramedic informs you (or informs Spencer, really, you’re not paying much attention) that they’re going to take you to the hospital for a CT scan. They’ll let him ride there with you if he wants to. Spencer says yes without a thought. 

While she goes to pack up her supplies, he takes your fingers and unbunches them, warming your palm between his. 

“How are you feeling?” he asks you. 

You make a soft, stymied sound, bringing the unhurt side of your head to Spencer’s shoulder for a rest. “I don’t like this.” 

Spencer doesn’t need to ask which part you mean. He imagines none of it is pleasant. The light and sound of an ambulance in general has to be torment for your head. 

“Try closing your eyes,” he suggests. 

“I’m worried that will make me dizzier.” 

“Do you feel sick?” 

“Not really.” 

“Just try. It helped last time.” 

You sigh but do. You turn your head so your forehead is pressing into the bump of his shoulder, and Spencer reaches up to stop you before you can get close to rubbing against the bandages keeping your cut closed. 

Your voice is a watery consistency. “I really don’t feel right.” 

Spencer feels a painful tug in his middle. “I know. I’m sure it’s scary, but it won’t be forever. We’re going to the hospital, and the doctors are going to make sure you’re okay.” 

“I just don’t like this.” 

“Yeah, I know.” 

“Spencer?” 

“Hm?” 

“I really feel like I messed things up.” 

He has to remind himself not to move. In his surprise, his instinct is to pull back, to search your face for answers, but you’re pointed where he can’t see you with your voice trailing down his arm. 

“You didn’t. What makes you think that?” 

“It just…it feels like…” 

The words take a while to come. Spencer forces himself to set aside his curiosity. 

“It’s okay,” he says gently. “You don’t have to think about that right now. Just rest. You didn’t mess anything up.” 

“It feels like I’m…” you forge on, determined. “I’m always either not helping or in the way.” 

Again, Spencer’s first thought is to ask what you mean by that. But he doesn’t want to force you to overexercise your injured brain, so he tries to go along without elaboration. He fills in the gaps. 

“You’ve never been in the way,” he assures you, meaning it. “And you help us a lot. We wouldn’t be nearly as efficient without you, especially on this last case.” 

“I’m just an intern.” 

“Exactly. So it’s even more impressive how valuable you’ve been to our team.” 

You’re quiet for a few moments. Spencer starts rubbing slow circles into your shoulder with his thumb. Your forehead warms his arm through the jacket. 

“Thank you for staying with me. You’re always so nice.” 

“It’s no problem. I like hanging out with you.” 

“I don’t feel very well.” 

“Are your eyes still closed?” 

A pause. “Were they supposed to be closed?” 

Spencer smiles at the top of your head. Even confused as you are, there’s a familiar note of inquisitiveness to your tone. Like all you ever really want is to be sure you’re doing the right thing. Spencer is warmed that you trust him to tell you what that is. 

“Try closing them.” 

“Oh. This is better, thank you.” 

“It’s no problem.”

[heldbybarnes]

ooh! i had an idea!

as much as i adore the fics where it’s reader comforting bucky after a nightmare, i wanna know how bucky would comfort the reader after a nightmare.

like i get really bad night terrors where it’s either i wake up screaming or i wake up with the sudden inability to breathe. how would bucky take to - maybe - him waking up to see reader completely unbreathing next to him?

because i KNOW he would be so worried but so soft at the same time.

Bucky doesn’t dream much anymore—not in the way he used to. Most nights, the darkness is just darkness, quiet and neutral and empty. And on the nights where the old ghosts do come creeping, he’s learned the sound of your breathing, the feel of your body beside his, the subtle, warm weight of your hand curled against his chest, and it settles him before he ever has to ask.

He never expected to become the one who sleeps peacefully.

He definitely never expected to be woken by your nightmares.

It starts with the smallest thing—your fingers clutching at the sheets like you’re falling. At first he thinks you’re shifting in your sleep, and he squeezes the arm around your waist, a lazy press of reassurance as he buries his face into your shoulder.

But then your body locks.

Every muscle goes rigid, your back a tight, trembling bow, and Bucky’s eyes snap open in an instant.

“Baby?” he whispers, already pushing himself up on one elbow.

You don’t answer. You can’t. Your mouth is parted like you’re gasping, but no sound comes out. No air either.

Your eyes are still closed—caught in whatever terror has its claws in you—but your chest isn’t rising. Not even a hitch. Not even a trembling struggle. Just stillness.

And Bucky’s heart stops.

“Sweetheart—hey, look at me.” His hand comes to your cheek, gentle but urgent, his thumb brushing the corner of your mouth. “C’mon, angel. Breathe. Please.”

You jolt awake with a strangled inhale—except it isn’t an inhale. It’s a choke. A desperate, empty gasp that brings nothing with it.

Then panic hits you like a collapsing building and you arch forward, clawing at your throat, at the sheets, at him—because your body thinks you’re dying and Bucky has never felt terror like this, not even in the war.

He gathers you instantly into his lap, one strong arm around your upper back, the metal hand braced protectively behind your head.

“You’re okay. You’re safe.” His voice is steady, but his pulse is pure lightning. “You’re with me. Right here. I got you. I got you.”

Your breaths keep coming in short, shallow, broken bursts—your lungs trying to drag in air they can’t quite grab. You shake like you’re freezing, like your bones remember the nightmare even if you don’t have the words yet.

Bucky sways you gently, forehead pressed to yours, trying to anchor you back into your body.

“Follow me, okay?” He exaggerates a slow inhale—not too big, not too sharp, just steady. “Just like this. ‘Atta girl. Try again. You can do it.”

You’re crying now, silent tears slipping down your cheeks, and your fingers twist into the front of his shirt like you’re terrified he might disappear.

He grips your wrists softly to keep you grounded. “I’m not going anywhere. You hear me? You’re not alone. Breathe with me.”

It takes a few more tries—a few shaky, failed breaths—before the first real inhale finally lands. Small, thin, but there.

“That’s it,” he murmurs, voice breaking in relief. His hand slides up and down your spine in slow, comforting strokes. “There you are, baby. Keep going.”

You tuck your face into his neck, sobbing quietly as the tremors in your chest start to lose their violent edge. Every so often your breath stutters, but Bucky’s right there every time, whispering soft directions and brushing his thumb beneath your eye.

When your breathing evens out—still shaky, but normal enough—he kisses your hairline.

“God, honey,” he whispers, not even trying to hide how scared he’d been. “Thought I lost you for a second.”

You pull back just enough to look at him. Your voice is a scratchy mess. “S-sorry.”

Bucky’s expression softens instantly. “Don’t you dare apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I— it felt so real.” Your lip trembles. “I couldn’t breathe. In the dream… and then when I woke up it—it wouldn’t stop.”

He cups your face in both hands like it’s as precious as oxygen itself.

“You’re safe now,” he tells you, slow and deliberate so it sinks into the places the fear just hollowed out. “Whatever you saw, whatever happened in that nightmare—it can’t get you here. I won’t let it.”

You curl into him again, shaking with the aftershock of adrenaline and leftover dread. Bucky shifts until he’s leaning against the headboard, pulling you fully into his chest and wrapping the blanket around both of you.

His arms never leave you—not for a second.

Whenever your breathing hitches again, he rubs soothing circles between your shoulder blades. Whenever your body jumps with the memory of falling, he presses a kiss to your temple and whispers, I’ve got you.

He means it with every beat of his heart.

After a long while, when your body finally begins to relax, Bucky speaks softly into your hair.

“You wanna tell me what it was about?”

You shake your head weakly. “I don’t… I don’t even think I want to remember.”

He nods. “Then you don’t have to. You don’t owe me anything. I just want you to feel okay.”

You let out a fragile exhale. “I’m scared it’ll happen again.”

His grip around your waist tightens, warm and protective. “If it does, I’ll be right here. You wake up fighting for air, you wake up screaming, you wake up shaking—I’ll wake up with you. And I’ll get you through it every single time.”

He doesn’t sound dramatic. He sounds like he’s stating a simple, unshakeable fact.

You stare up at him through damp lashes. “You’re not scared of me?”

He smiles—soft, sad, endlessly tender. “Sweetheart, I’ve lived in fear most of my life. But you? Being the one who needs me? That doesn’t scare me. It… it makes me feel like I finally get to be something good.”

Your throat tightens, not with panic this time, but with something warm.

He presses his forehead to yours.

“You’re not a burden,” he murmurs. “You’re my girl. My responsibility. My heart. And I’m gonna protect that heart in the light of day and in the middle of the worst goddamn nightmare.”

He lays a kiss over your pulse point—slow, grounding—like he’s reminding both of you that it’s beating.

Eventually he eases you back down into the pillows, but he keeps you cradled against him, one hand spread over your ribs so he can feel each breath you take. Every rise and fall reassures him. Every soft exhale unwinds a little more of the cold fear he woke up with.

“Try to sleep, baby,” he whispers. “I’m right here.”

And he stays awake long after your eyes close again—watching your chest rise and fall, counting every breath like a promise he intends to keep.