always almost - this time for sure
author's note: heyyy guys sorry i lowkey disappeared ive been crazy stressed but i hope you guys enjoy! i also might branch out and write for some stranger things characters bc im getting the itch esp from the finale :o (ps: thank you guys for the requests! i've actually gotten quite a few so if i dont get to all of them im sorry <3)
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He doesnât know what to do.
He doesnât know what you think.
Long enough for the crease in the sheets to fade, but not enough for the feeling to leave the room. It lingers in the quiet hum of the radiator, in the ghost of your touch still folded into the pages of his journal, in the way Alpine curls on the windowsill, waiting, as if she knows the space in his heart is one that only you can fill.
He knows the times you leave your apartment, so he starts timing his own exits to follow just after, never early enough to cross paths. Sometimes he stands behind his own door, forehead resting against the cool wood, counting each quiet step you take away from him. He even times his laundry trips for late at night, when the hall is empty and the building feels quieter, though every creak of the floor makes his heart skip, hoping you might appear.
The thought about leaving crosses his mind. Maybe he could stay at Steveâs. But even the thought pulls on the thread connecting him to you, a tether stretched thin and taut, threatening to snap with the smallest tug. He canât imagine the empty space his absence would carve between you. Because for the first time in a long time, someone saw him. Really saw him. And maybe you hated what you found. Maybe the words sat heavy in your chest. He couldnât help but wonder what page made you pause the longest. What if the things he wrote, the darkness, the ache, the wanting, were too much. What if you read him differently now? What if you donât look at him the same way? Itâs the innocence in your eyes that undoes him. The way you look at him like he hasnât already ruined something. Like heâs still worth looking at that way. He canât bear to imagine it fading from your eyes, his last piece of hope, never to be seen again.
His throat tightens. His fingernails dig into his palm.
The air between your apartments feels different, thicker now. He tells himself itâs better this way. To give you space.
But on the seventh day, he ran into you. Heâd miscalculated. Heâs halfway down the stairs, hood up, cap low, when the front door of the apartment building opens. You came back early from the market. He thought he still had half an hour. You usually linger around the flower stall. At least, thatâs what heâs come to believe, piecing together habits from the glimpses he allows himself.
There you were, startled, a canvas tote of groceries slung over one arm, a bouquet of daisies in the other. You made your mind up quicker today. Your eyes go wide when you see him. You stop short. And for the first time in days, your eyes meet.
He freezes, not daring to break the fragile moment. He catches the slight tremor in your hands as you clutch the flowers, your hair messy from the breeze, the only sound being the crinkle of the wrapper they were sold in.
You open your mouth like you might say something, but you close it again.
Then he nods. Barely. Just a dip of his chin, tight and unreadable. He steps past you, shoulder brushing yours softly in passing. Not a word. Not a glance back.
But you stand there, the summer air rushing in from the street, watching him disappear out the front door.
That night, he doesnât sleep.
He sat up in his bed. The silence presses in too tightly. The walls feel closer than usual.
He contemplated just going over to your apartment, torn by the late hour, the desire was burning at him, hot and bright against the night.
Soft and sudden, muffled through the thin wall you share. Itâs light, unburdened, and something in it makes his breath catch. Maybe youâre reading something funny. Maybe youâre on the phone, talking to someone who knows what to say to make you laugh. Maybe itâs nothing. Or maybe itâs someone who didnât waste the chance he had. The thought presses heavy in his heart. He closes his eyes, leans his head back against the wall like it might somehow bring him closer to you.
And not knowing makes him feel like heâs chasing something that was never his to begin with. For a moment, it almost feels like things are okay. Like the sound alone might stitch the ache inside him closed.
He knows he has to leave again, early tomorrow, before the city wakes. Just a couple days this time. A clean job, they told him. Quiet, in and out. He moves around his apartment like a man wading through water, slow and uncertain. He packs lightly as always. Just the essentials. But when he steps into the kitchen, he stops. Alpine is curled on the counter, blinking at him sleepily. He runs a hand down his face, exhales through his nose. Then, quietly, he walks to the little drawer by the sink and pulls out the spare key. He hesitates with it in his palm, thumb running over the worn, rough edges of its teeth. Then, grabbing a notepad from the counter, he writes:
"If you're willing, would you look after her again? The salmon stuffâs in the cabinet.
I got her a new toy last week, little grey mouse with a bell. Sheâs not too fond of it, but maybe sheâll come around. Iâll be back soon."
No mention of the journal. No mention of what passed between them in the silence. Something simple. He tucks the key and the note into a clean envelope and slips it gently under your door. And for the first time in seven days, he lingers. He stands outside your apartment for a moment, head bowed, metal fingers flexing once in the empty air before he walks back to his apartment.
Inside yours, you hear it, the soft shuffle, the swoosh of an envelope slipping beneath your door. You donât move right away off the couch. You stare at the rectangle of white paper, something in your chest caught between hope and something heavier. You walk over, pick it up, and read his handwriting. Your fingers hover over the words, brushing the indentation of the pen like it might tell you what he didnât say out loud this past week. You donât know what you were expecting. A confrontation, maybe. But this throws you more than anything else wouldâve. A soft reentry into the space between them. You leave the key in the dish by the door, fold the note carefully, and head to your room to tuck it into the drawer where you keep your most worn-in novels, the notes he had left you before, and letters you never had the courage to send.
Of course they were all about him.
The ones where you pretended you were writing to him, even though you never wrote his name or signed them off. Just little notes full of almosts: almost said, almost sent, almost brave. You told him about the light in your apartment that keeps flickering. A song that reminded you of him. The screaming you heard from his apartment that one night in May at 3 A.M from a nightmare he had. You hadnât meant to hear it. But you did. You wrote all of it down. Not to send, but to keep. Because keeping it felt safer than risking the look on his face if you ever let him see it. And maybe thatâs the cruelest part, the irony of hiding your words away while reading his, of tracing his secrets with your fingers while yours stayed folded in a drawer, untouched. You told yourself it was different. That his pages were left for you on purpose, but you knew that wasn't true, and the guilt feels heavier than any words you could have spoken aloud.
And in the quiet moments just before dawn, the soft click of his door and his careful footsteps down the hall told you he was gone.
When the morning came, you tried to keep yourself busy for as long as you could. Youâd cleaned your apartment top to bottom, even the baseboards you usually ignore. Youâd gone to the cafe on the corner, lingering too long in the shop, even after the ice in your coffee melted, repotted the daisies, put on music, then turned it off when every song felt like it was about waiting, folded your laundry twice, matching socks that didnât need matching, smoothing wrinkles that werenât there.
The anxiety stayed tight in your chest, and every task you finished left space for the same thoughts to rush back in.
Soon was a word that stretched and shrank depending on how hard you stared at the clock.
And by the evening you couldnât sit still anymore. So you grabbed the key and crossed the hall before the fear could catch up. Alpine would need feeding soon. That was reason enough.
You slipped the key into the familiar lock.
The apartment felt weighed down by the heavy, summer storm overcast sky pressing against the windows, casting a muted, silvery-grey wash that barely stirred the shadows in the corners. The lights remained off, leaving the room wrapped in gentle gloom. Alpine appeared at your feet with a soft, tentative meow, pausing to sniff at the toy mouse lying forgotten near the leg of the chair. With a flick of her tail, slow and deliberate, she stepped over it and made her way to you, settling down beside your feet with a faint air of detached acceptance, as if to say: he meant well. You watched her for a moment, the quiet gesture stirring something uneasy inside you. You wanted to believe it was true, that he meant well, but the weight of the weekâs silence pressed heavy against your chest, twisting hope and doubt into a single knot you couldnât untangle.
You knelt down, pouring fresh food into her bowl, the same way you did last week, the soft clink of kibble hitting the cool metal.
As Alpine began to eat, your gaze drifted across the living room to his coffee table, where something caught your eye: a paperback. You paused, brows knitting slightly.
The book you borrowed from the library on his card.
Your heart raced as you approached the table. You noticed a page dog-eared at a passage he had clearly marked. You flipped to the makeshift bookmark, the same passage you read weeks ago stared up at you, now with a faint penciled underline felt like a message meant only for you:
"Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.â
The words blur for a moment as your chest tightens. You try to swallow, but your throat doesnât quite cooperate. Itâs too much and not enough. Itâs everything he couldnât say out loud, offered here in someone elseâs language, but the meaning is unmistakably his.
You glance down the hallway, wondering if more answers are waiting for you somewhere else. You tell yourself you wonât go down the hall, but the resolve to stay away dissolves almost as soon as it forms. Your feet know the way. Your body moves before your mind can catch up. And even though you donât know if what youâre going to find will comfort or undo you, you donât stop.
Youâre in his room before you can second-guess it again. The sheets on his bed are rumpled, a dent in the pillow where his head rests. Drawers are cracked open, half-closed like he couldnât decide what to take. His metal arm that he tries not to talk about has left faint indentations on the wooden desk, just barely visible in the right light under his lamp. The journal is there. Waiting. Your hand hovers for a moment, almost trembling. This is a line you shouldn't cross twice. But you canât help but wonder if these pages will say what the book only hinted at.
You pick it up and open the cover, hoping to find him waiting there.
"Tried to sleep. Couldnât. Every time I close my eyes itâs her face. It makes me ache. I think it hurts worse because sheâs just ten feet away."
You exhale, blinking hard. This was from just last night.
âI was coming down the stairs when I saw her slip into the elevator just as the doors began to close. She hasnât said anything. I havenât either. It hurts."
"Got Alpine a toy. She doesnât care for it. That tracks."
A breath catches in your throat as you notice it. Tucked near the back, a page folded once, as if it didnât want to be found right away. You unfold it slowly. The handwriting is slanted slightly, like always. But the toneâthis is no longer a man writing into the void.
If youâre reading this again, it means I asked you to take care of Alpine. You saw it. I know you did. You came into the room I donât let anyone near. You sat right here. Read everything. Every line I meant to keep hidden until it didnât matter anymore. And I havenât stopped thinking about it since. Part of me wishes you hadnât read it. Wishes I could rewind time, hide the damn journal better. Pretend I still had control over what you see. Guard those pages, protect the parts of myself Iâm still learning to face. But that partâs small, and scared, and full of all the old habits that tell me Iâm too much, or not enough, or some mix of both. The rest of me hopes it meant something to you. Iâm still trying to believe I can want something and not ruin it. But I wanted you to know. Even if you walked out and never looked back. I had to write it. Because youâve been in every thought of mine lately, and I didnât know how else to say it.
I want you.
Iâm scared Iâll mess this up, hurt you in ways I canât fix. If itâs too much and you walk away, I get it. But if thereâs even a little part of you left, please just let me know.
Heart racing, you head back to the living room, the journal suddenly weighing heavily in your hands as you sit down with it on his couch. Alpine curls against your side, purring low, and you open the passage again unbeknownst to you that he was closer than you thought.
The city is ready for slumber when he returns: subway tunnels groaning slow, bakery window blinds shutting, the sky just beginning to bruise with purples and blues. He walks the last few blocks instead of riding the train all the way, duffel slung low over his shoulder, boots scraping on the damp sidewalk. He tells himself itâs just to clear his head. But itâs not. He just needs more time to prepare for whateverâs waiting.
The hallway smells like rain and someoneâs burnt toast when he trudges up the stairs. He slows at your door, doesnât stop, doesnât look, but the air shifts around him like it knows something he doesnât yet.
His key turns in the lock. The apartment is still except for you standing up from his couch doe eyed and caught in the headlights of his eyes.
He drops his duffel by the door, breath caught somewhere behind his ribs. He doesnât bother turning the lights on.
He takes one step inside and the dim glow from the streetlight through the window catches the side of his face. A thin line of blood is dried from his hairline, down his temple, cutting a bright red path over the sharp line of his cheekbone.Â
You make a small, choked sound, half surprise, half something closer to panic.
âYouâreââ Your voice cracks. âYouâre early.â
He huffs something that mightâve been a laugh if it didnât hurt.Â
âYeah. Mission wrapped faster than expected.â
Youâre frozen for a second, eyes wide and flickering between his face and the blood. Your cheeks flush hot, you can feel it, the sudden rush of heat that has nothing to do with the apartment being warm. You werenât ready for this, for him, real and solid and bleeding in the doorway, home earlier than expected.
âYouâre bleeding,â your voice cracks, nothing like the calm youâre trying to reach for. You cross the space between you too fast, hands reaching out, fingers brushing his arm, his shoulder, careful but urgent. âJustâsit down Buckyâplease.â
He lets you guide him, sinking onto the couch with a quiet grunt that twists something low in your chest.
You drop to your knees in front of him,Â
âHow long has it been bleeding?â
âNot long, stopped about 20 minutes ago,â he murmurs, but his eyes are half-lidded, voice rougher than usual, trying to blink away how pretty you look kneeling in front of him.
âLet me see,â you whisper, more to yourself than to him. Your throat feels tight, panic clawing up the back of it. You reach up between his legs to press your fingers gently near the wound to tilt his head.
He doesnât flinch, just watches you with that steady gaze that sends a nervous rush of butterflies because you can see it: the faint tension in his jaw, how much itâs costing him to hold still for you, and knowing heâs doing it for your sake only makes your heart beat harder.
You get up to fetch a cloth from the kitchen, soaking it with warm water before coming back and sitting next to him on the couch.
âYou shouldâve gone to a hospital.â
âIâm fine,â he says quietly. âIâve had worse.â
âThat doesnât make this fine!â It comes out louder than you meant, edged with the fear youâve been swallowing since the door opened. You press the cloth to his forehead with careful pressure to wipe the dried blood away and he finally winces, just once.
Your eyes sting. You blink hard, refusing to let the tears win.
âI thought you were coming back tomorrow,â you say, barely above a whisper. âI thought I had time to prepare forâI wasnât ready to see you like this.â
âIâm okay. Just a cut.â
âYouâre bleeding on me,â you manage, voice breaking. âYouâre bleeding and Iâm scared and youâre not allowed to do this to me and you've been avoiding me all week andââ
His hand finds your wrist, warm despite everything, thumb brushing over your racing pulse.
âHey,â he says softly. âLook at me.â
You do, even though it hurts. His eyes are focused on you, dark and tired and piercing but impossibly gentle.
âI wasnât avoiding you,â he says, voice low, rough at the edges. âI wasâŠgiving you space. After the journal. After everything you read.â
âYou think I needed space from you?â
âI thought you might. Some of itâthe things I wroteâtheyâre not⊠easy. I didnât want you looking at me and seeing only the worst parts.â
You let out a wet, incredulous sound.Â
âI didnât read anything that made me want to look away. I read things that made me want you more, Bucky donât you see the way I look at you?â
His fingers tighten around your wrist, not hard, just enough to feel the tremor running through him too.
âI stood outside your door every night,â he admits quietly. âListened for you. Timed my steps so I wouldnât run into you. Thought if I stayed far enough away, youâd realize you were better off.â
âThatâs stupid,â you whisper, tears spilling over now, but he wasted no time reaching to brush them away. âThatâs the stupidest thing youâve ever done.â
The corner of his mouth twitches, the trace of a smile.Â
âYeah. Iâm starting to get that.â
âI shouldnât have read your journal, Iâm sorry,â your voice breaking, gazing down at the floor, but he reached for your chin, tilting your head up to meet his eyes.
âYou donât have to apologize. You were in everything I wrote, even when I tried not to let you in. And when I readâGod, even thenâit was like the whole world was whispering your name back to me. I couldnât stop.â
He shifts thenâcareful, closer.
âI wanted to knock. A hundred times,â his voice soft.
âI wouldâve opened the door, you know that,â your voice barely above a whisper.
âI kept thinking,â he says, voice barely above a whisper, rough with everything heâs held back, âthat if you saw it all, the nightmares, the blood on my hands, the parts of me that still feel broken, youâd stop looking at me like that. Like I could be good for you.â
You shake your head against his palm, tears slipping free again, but these ones feel differentârelief more than fear.
âIâd never stop,â you tell him, the words thick in your throat.
His breath catches, sharp and audible. For a second his eyes close, like the words are too much, and when they open again theyâre glassy, the blue brighter with unshed tears he wonât let fall.
âYou deserve someone who doesnât make you wait in the dark,â he says, voice cracking on the last word.
âI donât want someone else,â you answer immediately.
âI donât think I know how to feel anything that isnât you, you're the first thing I've felt sinceââ his voice cracked.
âThen why didnât you say something?â your voice tinged with half hurt, half wonder.
He swallowed, his answer squeezing tight in his throat.
âBecause you make me forget how to speak. Because when you look at me like this, I forget every defence Iâve ever built. And Iâm not used to being seen that way, not without it hurting.â
He shook his head once, voice barely a breath.
You give a wet laugh, and his follows as you place the cloth on the coffee table as you finished wiping away the blood.
âNo. Not the way it used to. It hurts in the way that makes me want to reach for you anyway.â
You watched him, breath caught as his gaze traced the shape of you with deliberate slowness, lingering at your lips, and back up to your eyes again.
âTell me to stop, and I will. I only want what you want.â
âPlease, Bucky, just kiss me,â you breathe a shaky whisper.
His gaze holds yours with an intensity that makes the world beyond them blur and fall away. The light catches the shadow beneath his lashes. Thereâs a slight tremble in his hand as it lingers against your cheek. His lips part just a fraction as he looks down at yours, breath warm and steady against your skin with a quiet confidence that heâs finally here, finally close, finally letting himself want without apology. With a purposeful lean, he closed the distance between you, and your lips met, gentle at first, until he moaned with a softness that barely contained the storm raging beneath the surface. His hand slid from your cheek, trailing down to cradle the back of your neck, fingers weaving into your hair with steady, possessive certainty. His breath mingles with yours, hot, slow, and heavy. His voice, low and rough, breaks the silence between you, barely more than a breath against your mouth.
âYouâve been mine, even when I didnât say it,â his voice low as his flesh palm, warm and callused, slides slow along your waist, metal fingers cool and steady at your hip, guiding you with gentle pressure until youâre shifting forward. You rise without thinking, letting him draw you in, knees settling on either side of his thighs until youâre straddling him fully. His head tips back slightly against the cushion to keep your gaze, his eyes flickering with wonder and a hunger heâs finally allowing himself to feel.
âYou were my new dream. The one good thing I let myself hope for when everything else felt impossible,â he whispers, lips brushing yours as the words spill out.
Your hands find his shoulders, then slide up to frame his face, thumbs tracing his cheeks, careful around the fading bruise of exhaustion under his eyes.
âThen stay,â he says, simple and devastating. âStay right here. Let me keep you.â
You kissed him again, his breath mingled with yours, every inhale drawing you in, every exhale letting you feel how much this cost him to keep gentle. He kissed you like a man whoâd waited too long and was terrified of breaking what heâd finally been given.
When he pulled back again, just enough to rest his forehead against yours, his thumb stroked once along your cheek.
âI want to get this right,â he said quietly. âI want to be good for you.â
He kissed the top of your head, then your temple, then held you close, one hand stroking your back in slow, soothing circles.
âIâll take care of you. Tonight. Tomorrow. However long youâll have me, doll.â
âIâve wanted to hear you say that for so long,â you admit, voice barely there.
âThen Iâll spend every day making sure you never have to wait to hear it again,â he says, low and certain.
The room grew quieter, though the city beyond the walls carried on as it always did, sirens, traffic, lives brushing past one another, unaware that, in the safety of his embrace, you finally let yourself believe the longing between you was real, reciprocated, and yours to keep.
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