Warnings: Mild Violence. Period expected misogyny.
Summary: A knight from another century crashes -literally- into a florist’s life and turns her world upside down.
Word Count: 4.3k
Previous Chapter - Masterlist
The brief encounter with the street outside the store had done nothing to prepare him for this.
He counted the buildings without meaning to. Four here. Six there. All of them tall in a way that offended his understanding of what stone and mortar were meant to do.
Small stone, at that.
He tilted his head back once, studying the face of a structure looming over the street, and felt something close to vertigo.
The bricks -if that was even the word- were absurdly small, identical, and stacked in rows so precise they might have been drawn with a ruler and simply willed into permanence.
Higher than any keep he'd laid siege to. Higher than the bell tower at Wintermouth Cathedral, which had taken forty years and three master masons and had still needed scaffolding twice in his lifetime.
How does it hold?
She stopped in front of one such building, smaller than its neighbors, though smaller was doing considerable work in that sentence, and mounted three steps to a set of doors.
She pulled one open without ceremony, without announcing herself to anyone, without a steward or a porter to bar entry to a stranger, and walked inside as though the building belonged to her the way a woman owns a shawl.
He followed, because there was nothing else to do, and stepped into a hall.
Marble underfoot, or something convincingly like it. A row of small brass boxes set into one wall, each with a slot and a number, they purpose entirely opaque. Light again without flame, hanging in a glass fixture overhead, steady and shadowless.
This is not a florist's household, he thought.
He knew what it was to walk into a great house as a guest and be received as one. He knew, with rather more bitterness, what it was to walk into a great house as staff, had spent enough of his squireship fetching, carrying, standing at attention in halls not unlike this one, waiting to be noticed or ignored, whichever suited the lord in question that day.
Was that it, then? Flowers by morning, service by evening? some second position in a household large enough to warrant it, explaining the marble, the brass, the strange indifferent grandeur of the place?
He said none of this. He had learned, in the space of one morning, that his conclusions about this century had a poor survival rate once spoken aloud. So he held his tongue and followed her toward a narrow staircase at the back of the hall.
The climbing did nothing to improve his opinion of the day, since each step was a constant reminder of the state of his bruised ribs. He kept his breathing even through will alone, one hand trailing the rail, and said nothing.
She glanced back once, near the second landing, some question half-formed on her face. He gave her nothing to work with, so she turned around and kept climbing.
By the third floor, sweat had gathered along his spine beneath the ruined shirt, and his vision had gone a touch too bright at the edges, a warning he chose to ignore in favor of counting doors instead of stairs.
---
She'd clocked it two flights ago, the careful, deliberate way he was breathing, the hand that never quite let go of the rail, the fact that a man who'd crossed half of Camden without complaint had gone very quiet somewhere around the second landing.
She didn't say anything. She had a feeling he'd sooner collapse on her stairwell than admit to needing a minute, and there was something in the set of his jaw - stubborn, absurdly proud, entirely unbothered by what it was clearly costing him - that she found herself, against her better judgment, a little charmed by. Which was not a thought she had time for right now, with a bleeding stranger three steps behind her and a landing still to reach.
She kept climbing. Slower than she strictly needed to. Just in case.
----
A corridor stretched ahead of them, narrow, lined with identical doors, and identical brass numbers screwed into identical wood.
He catalogued it out of habit -the width, how many doors stood between them and the stairs- before it occurred to him that there was likely nothing here worth defending against, and the habit still refused to switch itself off.
From behind one door, there was music. Not lute or pipe, but something layered and strange, a woman's voice threaded through with instruments he couldn't place.
From another, the smell of onions frying, rich enough that his stomach gave a low, traitorous rumble.
He frowned at that second door as they passed it.
The kitchens were on the third floor. It made no sense.
Kitchens belonged low, ground level, or below it if the house could afford the excavation, close to the well and the fuel stores, far enough from the sleeping quarters that smoke and grease didn't creep into a lord's bedding.
Every keep he'd ever served in, ever laid siege to, ever simply visited, kept its kitchens low. He turned it over, half convinced he was missing some obvious explanation, and came up with nothing.
Unless this household ran differently. Unless the entire logic of the place inverted itself the way everything else in this century seemed determined to.
She stopped in front of a door indistinguishable from the others save its number, and drew a ring of keys from her purse, finding the right one without hesitation, the ease of long habit. The lock turned, and the door opened onto a narrow entry, dim and modest, but unmistakably a dwelling.
He stood in the corridor a moment longer than necessary, his gaze moving once more down the row of identical doors stretching in both directions. Service quarters, he decided.
"You may introduce me to your employer at your convenience," he said, following her through. "I would prefer not to be mistaken for an intruder in his household a second time today."
She turned to look at him with an expression he was rapidly learning to be wary of, the kind that came right before she informed him he'd misunderstood something, in a manner she found simultaneously exhausting and, despite herself, a little bit funny.
He didn't yet know what he'd said wrong. That, too, was becoming familiar.
"My employer," she repeated.
"The lord of this house." He gestured back toward the corridor and its row of doors, already bracing -without quite knowing why- for the ground to shift under him again.
She closed the door behind him and looked at him a moment, one hand still on the latch, working through how precisely to explain something she'd clearly never had to explain to a grown man before.
"Mr. Barnes," she said slowly. "There is no lord."
"Then whose house-" He stopped himself. Every theory he'd voiced aloud today had met the same fate, and he saw no cause to expect this one would fare better.
"This is my apartment." She said the word carefully. "It's mine. I pay rent on it every month, out of what the shop makes. Every one of those doors you just walked past, that's not one household. That's a different family behind every single one. A different kitchen, different bathrooms. Strangers to each other, mostly, sharing a staircase and nothing else."
He stared at her, and felt the shape of the building rearrange itself in his mind. It was not a great house at all, but something closer to a hive. Dozens of lives stacked one atop the other with nothing holding them together but shared stairs and walls.
"An entire building," he said slowly, "of strangers."
"Yes."
"Stacked."
"...Yes."
She was watching him, but with an attention that had nothing to do with the conversation they were having, and he felt it land somewhere just beneath his collar before he'd decided what to make of it.
"Hey," she said, softer than before. "You look like you're about to go down again. Sit for a minute?"
She gestured toward a low, upholstered thing pushed against the far wall. Two cushioned seats joined into one continuous piece, the fabric a bright, unrepentant orange.
He had never seen its like. Not a bench, not quite a settle, too soft-looking for either, its cushions plump and uniform in a way no upholsterer he knew could have managed by hand.
It looked, if he was honest, extremely inviting.
It also looked new. Unmarked. The kind of thing a household kept for guests of consequence, and he was aware, with some discomfort, of exactly how far he fell from that description at present.
"I would ruin it," he said.
She blinked. "What?"
"The seat." He gestured at himself, at the dried blood, the dirt ground into the linen, the general catastrophe of a man who had crossed six centuries without the benefit of a bath. "That fabric will not survive contact with me. And I am not dressed to sit in a lady's parlor regardless."
Something flickered across her face, not quite amusement, but not quite exasperation either.
"It's not a parlor," she said. "It's just the living room. And it's a couch, Mr. Barnes, not a coronation throne. It'll survive."
"All the same." He held his ground, aware even as he did it that the ground in question was faintly ridiculous: a man arguing etiquette while swaying on his feet in a stranger's home, in a century that had already proven it cared nothing for the rules he knew.
He couldn't seem to let go of them regardless. They were, at the moment, nearly the only thing of his own he still had. "If you have something less consequential."
She studied him a moment longer, then exhaled through her nose in a way he was beginning to recognize as her particular flavor of surrender. "Fine. The kitchen, then."
She led him into a smaller room with a tiled floor, pale and clean, a window over a deep basin, and, against the wall, a small table with two chairs, their seats covered in the same relentless color as the couch, though blue instead of orange.
He lowered himself into one carefully, his ribs complaining the entire way down, and studied the chair beneath him.
Bright, even, unfaded blue. The kind of pigment that, in his experience, cost more per yard than the chair itself was likely worth.
For kitchen furniture.
"Water?" she asked, already moving toward the far wall.
He nodded, distracted, still cataloguing the room: the smoothness of every surface, the absence of soot anywhere. Then she opened a tall white cabinet set against the wall, and he stopped cataloguing anything at all.
Cold air rolled out of it. He felt it from where he sat, and some old instinct, the one that had kept him alive through winters of campaign, sat up and took notice before the rest of him had caught up.
"What," he said slowly, "is that?"
"The icebox?" She glanced back, one hand still on the door, a bottle in the other.
"It has no ice."
"It doesn't need ice, it's electric. Keeps things cold on its own."
He rose, forgetting his ribs for exactly as long as it took three steps to carry him there, and looked into the cabinet himself before she could object.
Shelves. Bottles. A bowl of eggs, pale and ordinary, sitting beside butter, unmelted, in a room warm enough that any butter he'd ever known would have long since gone soft and glistening on a table.
He found himself wanting, absurdly, to touch it, to confirm with his own hand what his eyes were telling him couldn't be true.
"How?"
"I don't actually know," she admitted, and there was something almost sheepish in it. "Something with wires, a motor… I don't know the mechanics of it any more than I know how a telephone carries a voice across town. It just works. You plug it in, and it's cold, and that's as far as my understanding goes."
He stared at the shelves a moment longer, at the ordinary miracle of butter refusing to soften, and felt something very close to wonder. And beneath the wonder, quieter, something that felt uncomfortably like grief.
Traveling through centuries, he had arrived at a place where a woman kept the dead of winter locked in a box in her kitchen and thought nothing of it.
She poured water into a glass -clear, flawless glass- and set it in front of him as though it were nothing at all.
He was hardly positioned to complain, since she had taken a bleeding stranger into her home and fed him besides, but he found himself glancing toward the cabinets regardless, expecting a jug of small ale, a pitcher of cider, anything a household of any means offered a guest before water.
Water alone, had killed men he'd known. Good men, careful men, who'd survived worse than a bad well and gone down anyway with their guts turned to fire. Almost every house's table poured ale or wine for that reason as much as for taste.
That this place, with its marble hall and its brass boxes and its indifferent grandeur, should hand him water and nothing else struck him as strange enough to notice.
He lifted the glass and drank anyway, telling himself that whatever this century had done to its water, it had also apparently solved the preservation of food in a cool box, and a man who trusted one miracle might as well trust the other.
The taste caught him off guard. It wasn’t unpleasant, but strange. No hint of the barrel it had traveled in, no faint rot at the back of the throat that a man learned to drink around.
It tasted, as far as he could tell, of nothing at all. Clean. He'd never had water that tasted that clean, and some old, wary part of him kept waiting for the sickness to follow regardless.
"Is it safe?" he asked, careful to keep the question light, a thing he was merely curious about, rather than a thing he genuinely needed answered before his next swallow.
"Perfectly. It's tap water, comes straight out of the faucet, city runs it through filtration before it ever gets to a pipe. You could drink it all day and never think twice."
Faucet. He turned the word over, another one for the stack, and said nothing.
She caught the blankness on his face and rose, crossing to the basin set into the counter.
"Here. If the jug ever runs dry and you want more, don't wait around for me. Just do this." She turned a small metal handle.
Water came. No need to pour, carry, or draw it up on a rope from some hidden well; it simply arrived, a clear, steady stream falling into the basin, as though the house itself had a vein opened somewhere and this was where it bled.
He was on his feet before he'd decided to be, some part of him needing, absurdly, to see the mechanism of it, as if enough looking might finally make it make sense. "Where does it come from?"
"Pipes. Underground, runs under the whole city, connects to a reservoir north of here. Every building's hooked into it." She watched him with open curiosity now. "You want it hot instead of cold, there's a second handle."
"Hot?"
"Mm-hm."
He looked at the two handles. Looked at her. Looked back at the water, still running, and felt the day's tally of impossible things tip over into something he no longer had the will to keep counting.
"You are telling me," he said slowly, "that every house in this city commands its own well. Hot and cold both. Without a servant, a bucket, or a rope."
"That's the general idea, yeah."
He said nothing for a long moment, turning it over, what a man could build, what a man could stop needing, if he never again had to haul water himself.
He thought, unbidden, of every squire and servant he'd ever sent down to a well at dawn, or even gone himself when he squired, and wondered what those boys would have made of this.
She reached past him and shut the tap. The water stopped as abruptly as it had come, and the silence that followed felt, absurdly, louder than the sound itself had been.
----
She watched him sit back down, slower than he probably wanted her to notice, and felt her own worry sharpen in response.
He was pale under the bruising. Worse than in the stockroom, now that the adrenaline of the street and the stairs had burned off and left him with nothing to run on but stubbornness. She was starting to suspect stubbornness was mostly what he had left today.
He needed a bath. Badly. And rest, and quiet, all of which she could actually provide here, behind a locked door, away from patrolmen and gossiping bakery owners. That part, at least, she could manage.
What she couldn't provide was clothes, and that was the part actually nagging at her.
He couldn't wear what he had on; there was no version of a corner grocery where a six-foot-something man in a laced medieval tunic and thigh straps walked in without every head turning. She'd been running through options since the stockroom and kept landing on the same one.
"I can wash what I'm wearing," he offered, apparently following the direction of her thoughts more accurately than she'd expected. "It only wants soap and water. I've done worse with less on campaign."
"It's not really a laundry problem, Mr. Barnes." She said it as gently as she could manage, not wanting to make him feel worse than he already seemed to about needing help. "Even clean, that's not something a man wears walking down Camden Street in this year."
"I have nothing to offer you outright," he said, after a moment, "but I could part with something of value. The belt. The leg straps." He nodded down at the heavy leather still buckled across his hips and thighs, the only thing of worth currently on his person. "The leather alone is good work. It should fetch enough for whatever I need."
She wasn't sure whether to be touched or exasperated, and settled, after a second, on both at once. There was something almost unbearable about how hard he was working to make sure he didn't owe her anything. "I'm not taking your pants apart for scrap, Mr. Barnes."
"It is not scrap. It is craftsmanship."
"I believe you. I'm still not doing it. I know a place. Charity, secondhand, mostly donated. You don't have to pay, and you don't have to give me your belt to make yourself feel better about not paying. It's fine."
He didn't look like he agreed that it was fine, but he said nothing further, which she was coming to understand was as close to agreement as she was likely to get from him. She'd take it.
"Stay put and drink your water," she said, smoothing her skirt. Then she crossed to a basket near the icebox and drew out a cloth bundle with biscuits, plain and slightly dense.
"You're probably still hungry. One sandwich isn't much, considering whatever it is you've been through today. Eat those while I'm gone. I'll be as quick as I can."
He looked at the plate, then at her, something in his face she couldn't quite name, and she decided not to push for a name for it.
"Thank you," he said, quiet enough that she almost missed it over the sound of her own keys. "And… Bucky." He said it almost before he'd decided to. "Please. Call me Bucky."
She paused with her hand on the door, caught off guard. It was a small, private surprise hearing a man this formal hand her something informal on purpose, like he'd decided she'd earned it.
"Alright then," she said. "Bucky."
She was out the door before she could decide what to do with the rest of it.
----
She took the stairs two at a time, bags of flour-sack cloth knocking against her hip with every step, and allowed herself a small, private satisfaction over the haul.
Two pairs of trousers, both plain, both in decent shape. Two undershirts. Three button-up shirts, all in the largest size the donation bin carried; apparently the largest size was also the least popular, because she'd had her pick of three, tags barely worn off. Socks, a few pairs, unmatched but clean.
She'd even swung by the little men's shop on the corner for the one thing charity boxes never carried enough of, sliding two pairs of short underwear across the counter to a clerk who hadn't so much as blinked. Small mercies.
Not bad, she thought, climbing the last flight. Not bad at all for forty minutes and whatever cash she'd had folded in her coat pocket.
The apartment was quiet when she let herself in, quiet enough that her stomach gave one small, unpleasant lurch before she registered why. The living room was empty, and for one dumb second her mind went straight to worst-case: gone, hurt because he meddled with something unknown, collapsed somewhere she couldn't see.
She set the bags down just inside the kitchen doorway and leaned in.
There he was. Exactly where she'd left him, same chair, same table, the plate of biscuits reduced to crumbs and one lonely survivor. Relief hit before she'd even fully processed why she'd been braced for something worse.
His head had tipped back against the wall at some point, throat exposed, mouth slightly open, one hand still loosely curled around the water glass as though he'd meant to keep drinking.
He hadn't heard her come in. Whatever was going on with him, and whatever had actually happened to leave him bruised and half-convinced he was a knight out of a storybook, the exhaustion was real, and something about seeing it made her chest ache a little more than she felt entitled to on a few hours' acquaintance.
She crossed the room slowly, quiet out of some instinct she didn't examine too closely and stopped a few feet away. He frowned in his sleep, and she found herself wondering what a man like him dreamed about. Nothing good, probably.
It was, she noted with some irritation at herself, deeply unfair how good-looking he still managed to be while doing it. Even bruised, even filthy, even asleep in a kitchen chair with his neck at an angle that was going to cost him.
Great, she thought. That's exactly the thought you needed to be having right now.
She shook it off, mostly, and refocused on the more immediate problem: he was going to wake up with a crick in his neck to rival his ribs if she let him stay like that much longer.
"Hey," she said, gently, crouching down to something closer to his eye level before she reached out. She touched his shoulder. Lightly, carefully, and tried to say his name again.
It happened faster than she could track.
One second her hand was on his shoulder, his name half-formed on her lips for the second time, and the next, his eyes had snapped open, his hand had closed around her wrist like a manacle, and his other hand was at her throat.
Not gripping, not yet. Just a half-second suspended somewhere between reflex and intention, fingers pressed light but certainly against her skin, the pressure of a man who knew exactly where to close his hand and how much force it would take, poised on the edge of applying it.
Her whole body had gone very still, some animal part of her taking stock of the situation faster than the rest of her could catch up.
Then he saw her. Not whatever ghost his sleeping mind had conjured in her place, and his hand recoiled from her throat like he'd touched a stove.
He let go of her wrist a half-beat after, both hands snapping back, and shoved himself away from her so hard the chair legs shrieked against the tile.
"I'm sorry." Low, fast, wrecked. "I'm sorry- I didn't- are you hurt, milady? Did I hurt you?"
Milady? Well, at least it wasn’t wench.
"I'm fine." She kept her voice level, even though her pulse hadn't quite caught up with that fact yet, one hand coming up unconsciously to touch her own throat, still warm from where his'd been. "I'm… fine."
He didn't look like he believed her, and honestly, she wasn't sure she believed herself either. Not shaken by what he'd done, exactly, but by how close it had come, and how little time there'd been between his eyes opening and his hand finding her throat with that kind of certainty.
He was staring at his own hands now, jaw working, color gone from his face in a way that had nothing to do with the morning's injuries.
"May I see?" His voice had dropped, quiet and careful, stripped of all its usual formal armor. "Please. I need to see that I didn't-" He didn't finish it. "Please."
She lowered her hand and let him look, some instinct telling her this wasn't a moment to argue with him about it, that he needed the proof more than she needed the space.
He stepped close, close enough that she could feel him not quite touching her, his eyes moving over her throat, but there was nothing to find. The barest ghost of pressure, gone already, nothing that would leave a mark.
She was abruptly, uselessly aware of how near he was standing, and annoyed with herself for noticing it now of all moments.
He looked at her face once he was satisfied, and whatever was in his eyes in that moment, she didn't have a word ready for it.
"I shouldn't have grabbed you like that," she said finally, quiet. "Waking someone up out of a dead sleep, I should've known better. My fault too."
"No." His answer was fast, firm, and with no room in it for argument. "It is not. A man does not require permission to be startled to see reason before he raises a hand to a woman who has done nothing but show him kindness. No excuse covers what I nearly did. I won't let you make one for me."
She opened her mouth to push back -some instinct to smooth it over, to meet him halfway- then closed it again, because the look on his face told her plainly this wasn't a fight she'd win today, maybe not ever.
"I'm sorry," he said again, and this time it landed somewhere lower and more tired than the first two.
She let it sit a moment before she moved. Then she nodded toward the doorway, toward the bags still waiting where she'd left them, glad for once to have somewhere else to point his attention, and hers.
"C'mere. I want to show you what I got."
It wasn't subtle, the redirection of the topic, and she suspected he knew exactly what she was doing. But he let her do it anyway and followed her the few steps to the kitchen table, watching her upend the flour-sack bags across it with something that might, in a better hour, have been curiosity.
Trousers. Shirts, still stiff with the fold-lines of whoever had donated them and never worn out. Socks in mismatched pairs. A single undershirt he picked up and turned over in his hands, studying the cut like it was a garment he half-recognized, and half didn't.
"They're not much," she said, "but they'll get you through the next few days. We'll figure out the rest as we go."
He set the undershirt down and looked over the rest of the pile with careful attention.
"Thank you," he said. She was starting to lose count of how many ways he'd found to say it, and how much he seemed to mean it every time and how much, against all reason, she was starting to like hearing it.
"Don't thank me yet." She managed something close to a smile, enough to pull the air in the room back toward ordinary. "You still have to survive a bath. And getting dressed. I have a feeling that's going to be its own adventure."
He looked at her like he had no idea what she meant by that.
Summary: It's your birthday. Bucky remembered a comment you made three months ago about a restaurant. He found a necklace in Steve's things and thought of you. He wrote you a card and admitted he hates motivational posters.
This is what being loved by James Barnes looks like.
A/N: Apologies, but this is just a pure piece of self indulgence. Happy birthday to me.
The morning started the way most good things in your life did lately— slowly, and with Bucky.
There was a morning order to things: the first was the light of the sunny morning, filtering through the curtains, bright and consistent. Next thing that came to your senses as the warmth at your back— the consistent weight of an arm around your waist. When you were the first to rise, the thing you often noticed wash his breathing, the deep even breathing of restful sleep. He had been up late last night— some call with Sam that had stretched well past midnight. You and Bucky had gotten together with Sam to honor Steve, but the small celebration had gone sideways because someone had called in a favor. You were used to it, the usual chaos which came with being in close orbit to Captain America. You'd fallen asleep waiting for him and hadn't heard him come to bed.
But he was here now. He was always here now.
You chose to lay still for a while, letting the morning seep in from outside the apartment and thought about how different today felt from birthdays past. Ones where you woke up alone in your apartment and spent the first waking moments quietly deciding whether to feel sad about it. Before the fake-boyfriend-who-became-the-real-thing. Before the socks in the underwear drawer and Alpine colonizing your side of the wardrobe. Before the ring on your finger.
Before James Bucky Barnes had made himself so comprehensively a part of your life that your apartment felt wrong when he wasn't in it.
You turned your head to look at him over your shoulder, catching a glimpse of the still fast asleep super soldier. His was jaw soft and expression held a particular defenseless quality that only existed when he wasn't bracing against anything.
You'd seen a lot of versions of this man over the course of knowing him, loving him— the suspicious one, the sarcastic one, the one who looked at you like you'd personally rearranged his understanding of the world— but this one was still the one that got you. Every time.
Happy birthday to me, you thought with a smile, and settled back into him.
Bucky woke twenty minutes later.
You felt it happening, the slight shift in his breathing, the small adjustment of his arm, the way he went from deeply unconscious to quietly, calmly present in a matter of seconds. He'd always done that. There was no groggy intermediate phase that you usually experienced. He was just… awake.
His lips immediately found the back of your neck.
"Morning, Princess," he murmured.
"Hi," you said, turning your head slightly.
"Happy birthday."
That's all it took to undo you. Two words, in that voice, rough with sleep, against your skin. You closed your eyes.
"Thank you," you said.
He pressed another kiss to your shoulder, lazy and warm. His hand spread flat against your stomach, pulling you a little closer, and you felt the easy certainty of it all— the weight of him, this morning, this life you'd somehow stumbled into… and would choose again without hesitation every single day.
"Sleep okay?" he asked.
"Really well, actually."
"Good." He had been worried that the interruption to last night's celebration would have affected you badly. His thumb traced slow circles against your hip. "What d'you wanna do today?"
You shrugged. "Haven't thought about it."
"That's a lie," he said, smothering a grin against your shoulder. "You've been thinking 'bout it for at least… two weeks."
"That may be true... but I wanna hear what you had planned first."
He was quiet for a second before he came in with an accusatory; "Who said I had anything planned?"
"You've been weird about your phone all week, Bucky."
"I'm always weird about my phone."
"Weirder than usual."
He exhaled exasperatedly through his nose and you could feel him deciding what to say. "Okay," he said finally. "Here's what I had in mind. But if you hate any of it, don't tell me, 'cause I put a deposit on the reservation."
You turned over in his arms to face him properly. He was propped up on his elbow, looking down at you with that careful expression he got when he was a little worried how something would land with you, trying hard to look like he wasn't invested when he very clearly was.
"Tell me," you said, softly.
"I thought breakfast here. The good stuff… definitely not the emergency cereal. Then dinner— I booked the rooftop at that place on the waterfront." He paused. "The one you pointed at three months ago and said 'that looks like the kind of place you'd cry because the food is too good.'"
You stared at him. "You remembered that?"
He shrugged, brushing off the gesture. "Dinner at seven. But before that—"
He reached back to the nightstand and came back with something small, flat, wrapped in brown paper. He held it out.
"This first."
You looked at it, then at him. "Bucky, you didn't have to—"
"I know I didn't have to... Open it."
Inside the brown paper was a card.
A real card, not a printed one— thick cream paper, something handwritten on the front in his handwriting. Which had always been oddly elegant for someone who maintained such a persistently uncommunicative personality. Two words were on the front.
My Princess.
You opened it.
His handwriting filled the inside. Neat and carefully spaced, like he'd planned out each line before he committed it to paper.
I've been trying to write something impressive for three weeks. But this is all I got.
You came into my life like a grenade I didn't see coming. Which would be more poetic if I hadn't actually encountered enough of those to last a life time. But the metaphor stands.
What I'm trying to say is: before you, I was just existing. Since you, I've been living. And I know that sounds like something off a motivational poster. And I want the record to reflect that I hate motivational posters.
My point is, you're the best thing I didn't plan for. And I plan for everything.
Happy birthday. I love you. Please don't make me write another one of these for at least six months.
— Bucky
And then, underneath, in smaller letters:
P.S. Alpine tried to help. She sniffed the card, then sat on it… twice. Basically contributed nothing useful.
You sat there for a moment with the card in your hands.
"Bucky," you said.
"Before you say anything—"
"You said you hate motivational posters."
He blinked. "That's what you got from that?"
"I'm getting to the rest of it." You looked up at him. He was watching you with that careful expression— the one he wore when he'd made himself vulnerable and wasn't sure yet if it was going to be okay. "I love you too, Buck," you told him. "This is the best card I've ever received in my entire life, and I'm including my grandmother's birthday cards which always had a twenty dollar bill in them."
The corner of his mouth lifted. "So I'm better than twenty dollars."
"Significantly better than twenty dollars." You leaned across and kissed him— properly, with your hand on his jaw— and felt him soften into it the way he always did when you caught him off-guard with something real, something tender. His hand crept up to the back of your neck, thumb brushing your cheek.
When you pulled back his expression had changed. Less guarded, much warmer.
"Now the present," he said, a shy grin appearing on his lips.
"There's more?"
"There's always more. For you." He reached over you to the nightstand drawer and came back with a small velvet pouch. Dark green, soft, the kind you recognized immediately— the kind that held something special. Your eyes narrowed.
"What's this?"
He held it out. You took it, turned it over once gently before opening it. Inside, on a square of dark felt, was a necklace.
Fine gold chain. And hanging from it, a crescent moon with three stones set along the inner curve catching the morning light. Dark. Deep. The blue of a midnight sky.
Your breath caught.
"Bucky." Your voice came out smaller than you intended.
"Apparently they are Montana sapphires," he said. "I found the pendant in Steve's things a few months back. His ma had kept them— wrapped up in a cloth in an old tin." He paused. "When I saw them, I couldn't stop thinking 'bout you. So I took them to Anita. She sorted the rest."
You looked down at the stones. That deep, deep blue, that sometimes showed in his eyes. Usually in the dark late at night.
Your throat tightened.
"The moon," he added, quieter now, like he needed to get the rest out. "That crescent sketch. The one in your personal folder. You told me once it was the first thing you ever made that you were actually proud of." He gave you a small shrug in response to the look you gave him. "I remembered."
You set the necklace on the nightstand, took his face in your hands and kissed him. He pulled you into him immediately, warm and solid and certain, and kissed you back the way he always did when you caught him off guard with something real.
When you pulled apart he pressed his forehead to yours.
"It's perfect," you told him. "Buck, absolutely perfect."
He exhaled slowly. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
You turned your back to him and lifted your hair. He fastened the chain carefully, then pressed his lips to the back of your neck. When you faced him again he was already looking at you— at the pendant, at your face— like he was trying to hold onto both images at the same time.
Neither of you said anything else for a moment.
Then Alpine landed on the bed between you with a thump and sat down like she'd been there the whole time.
Bucky looked at her. "Really?"
She purred.
You laughed, and felt him laugh against you, quiet and real.
Your lives have always moved in parallel: close enough to touch, yet separated by an irreconcilable distance. Bucky is a prince and you are his sister's lady-in-waiting. But love ignores rank, and so does the kingdom's newest desire-inducing substance.
▸ PAIRING: Prince!Bucky Barnes x Lady-in-Waiting!Reader
▸ WARNINGS: NSFW 18+, dubcon because of sex pollen, so much yearning, slight hurt/comfort, public sex, porn with too much plot tbh, possessive!bucky, degradation, filthy talk that border on dubcon but know that she wants to be there as much as him, breeding kink, insecurities, both virgins, bucky is nasty and a lil mean under the influence, probably a lot of historical inaccuracies
▸ WORD COUNT: 16.1K
▸ A/N: "this will be a short pwp," i say, famous last words. thank you so much to @iamthatonefangirl and @barnesonly for organizing this collab. dedicated to @artficlly in honor of pursuit of jade episode 37 iykyk — i'm gifting you the sex pollen by the stream that we never got <3 hope you enjoy this baby of mine. if you do, please let me know your thoughts (even if they are incoherent) through reblogs, comments, and likes!!
↤ main masterlist | bwat summer masterlist
Princes James Buchanan Barnes has everything he could ever want. A palace fit for the king that he will eventually become. Mountains of jewels that shine brighter than the sun and all the stars combined. Bespoke dress uniforms made from the finest fabrics, adorned with elegant aiguillettes and medals of his valor in battles fought and won. Countless women and men alike throwing themselves at his feet for the opportunity of him even sparing them the briefest of glances.
But the only one he truly wants, the only person he truly wishes to hold, is the one thing he cannot have — and it’s you.
You’ve been destined to become Princess Becca’s helper since you were born. Your mother had served the family for two generations; you were born in the palace, raised in the hustle and bustle of the castle with all the live-in staff. You spent years refining your cooking skills in the kitchen that seemed to function twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, decades toiling away in the garden with the landscaper to take care of the queen’s prized roses, and occasionally sneaking into the palace library for a quick novel or two when your mother took her eyes off you.
It was a natural pathway for someone who wasn’t born to nobility yet was constantly surrounded by it.
Fortunately, growing up in this kingdom that is governed with kindness and compassion means that there are paths to advancement that you never anticipated, mainly becoming Becca’s lady-in-waiting. The two of you had been raised together, joint at the hip, to the point where you may not even distinguish which of you is the real princess. The king and queen had welcomed you as if you were one of their own.
Of course, you know that it’s far from the truth. Despite their accommodations and generosity, you’ve always known your place in society. There is a reason why Becca is the one covered in silver and gold, while you’re handstitching the holes in your clothes. She’s seated at a table for twelve with a wide array of dishes and pastries all created to her liking, while you join your fellow staff members for a family meal, cramped together in a table meant for half of you.
You’ve always drawn that line, regardless of how many times Becca tries to cross it.
“Come now, you must come with me to Viscountess Romanoff’s ball!” She huffs, stomping her feet as she always does when she does not get what she wants.
You let out a sigh and Becca’s face falls as she prepares herself for your disappointing response. “Princess—” she glares and you bite your tongue, “Becca, that is not my place.”
“Of course, it is! Many ladies-in-waiting go to these balls.”
“Ladies-in-waiting that were born into nobility,” you correct her with a look.
“It doesn’t matter. You’re my lady-in-waiting and I need you there to— to— fix my dress!”
You know it isn’t true — well, it is only true to the extent that Becca may become ridiculously inebriated and has to be stowed away before she can go as far as risk the royal family’s reputation, and you somehow have become the most reliable person for those circumstances.
However, there are many there that will surely keep her on her toes — literally, including her brother.
“Did you hear that? She needs you to fix her dress. You simply have to attend now.”
The interruption brings both of your attention to the door where Bucky is leaning against the doorway, a smirk curled on his lips. His eyes skip past Becca and land on you and — heaven almighty.
He drinks you in, you in your simple gown, yet his sapphire eyes warm all the same. They darken like the evening has arrived far too early and the moon is nowhere in sight. His smile dims slightly, if only for him to clamp down on the inappropriate sound that climbs up his throat.
Bucky has never been good at subtlety.
You drag your eyes away and back to the lady that you’re supposed to be waiting on. The lady who is currently huffing and puffing as she plops down on the sofa with a scowl. “Will you please convince her to come, Buck?”
He steps further into the room. The air is a little heavier, like his presence has sucked all the oxygen out of the space — but only for you. Your fingers twist quietly together in front of you as you force yourself to stand upright, force yourself to keep looking ahead when his arm brushes yours — an inappropriate proximity for a prince and a member of the staff.
Discreetly, you take one step to the side, just enough to put distance that allows you room to breathe, lest you risk Becca suspecting something transpiring between the two of you.
“You should come,” Bucky murmurs. His gaze is warm on your cheek. His blue eyes no doubt soft as they take you in.
You resist and instead address Becca. “That would be unacceptable, Pr— Becca. Please. The crown prince will be in attendance and the viscountess’ staff are more than capable. I’ve met many of them and you will be in good hands.”
“Well, the crown prince would appreciate his ability to drink the viscountess’ liquor supply for the night without worrying about whether his dear sister can control her alcohol,” Bucky chimes in, which earns a roll of the eyes from Becca.
“I can control my drinking, Bucky. Can you control your deviant desires in the presence of all the other women in the ton?”
Your heart skips a beat. A little nick in your chest to draw blood. You can practically hear the smile wipe off Bucky’s face, his face red as he grits his teeth. “You know that’s not true, sister dear. I’ve never once laid a hand on them.”
“Doesn’t mean you don’t try,” Becca shoots right back.
Another scratch, enough to peel back another layer to your bleeding heart.
It shouldn’t — doesn’t — matter. There has never been anything between you and Bucky. He is the crown prince and you were born to be a lady’s maid at best; it was only the queen’s philanthropy and Becca’s friendship that you were granted this promotion.
Bucky is meant to marry a princess from another kingdom, or at the least someone born to a proper, respectable family with titles.
Neither of which is you.
“Rebecca Marie Barnes.” Bucky’s voice is sharp; it slices through the air and straight towards Becca whose face goes cold the moment it lands.
Becca’s lips purse in annoyance. “I’m going to look for a dress for tonight.” Then she’s lifting her dress and stomping away.
You make a move to follow, only for Bucky to swiftly take your hand. You don’t turn. Bucky forces you to when he tugs you towards him, spinning you around so you land against his chest. You’re quick to flatten your palm on it to push yourself away, but instead, he catches your hand and presses it over his heart.
“It’s not true,” he murmurs. “I’ve never once shown any of them any interest.”
Don’t cry. You’d be a fool to cry over a prince. You steel your gaze as you look up at him. “It would be in your right to do so. A crown prince is meant to take a wife.”
Irritation flickers across his eyes. “There’s only one woman I wish to take as a wife but she seems to deny me that right at every turn. What say you to that?”
“A crown prince is meant to take a proper wife. One fit for the ton.”
“I don’t give a damn about the ton.”
“Bucky!” The chiding comes out on instinct, his name sliding on your tongue like water. Habit — one that you should’ve curbed a long time ago if it weren’t for the two of them always insisting that you call them by their names.
Bucky’s face thaws, mouth curving into a delighted smile. You try to extract yourself from his grasp again but fail to do so when he ducks his head, lips brushing the shell of your ear. A shiver snakes up your spine as he drags you closer to him. “I love when you say my name. I’d love it even more if you called me your husband.”
Your traitorous heart slams against your ribs. Foolish desires plague your very being. It’s been decades since you were first introduced to Bucky, ten years since you first defended Becca against Bucky’s teasing, and far too long since you first fell for the crown prince.
It’s not as if your feelings are not reciprocated; Bucky has made it clear from the start that he adores you dearly. Adores you in a way that is far from acceptable for a prince. But your mother has reminded you time and time again that, no matter how intimately acquainted you are with them, you will never be one of them.
And Bucky deserves a partner — an equal. Someone who can stand tall and proud beside him without the risk of gossip and mockery. You would only give him grief and he would certainly bore of you in the future once the thrill of the chase is done.
So you exert more effort this time to push him away. “Prince Barnes, I must ask you to maintain some semblance of decorum. If you’ll excuse me, I have to tend to the princess.” You do a small curtsy, ignoring the flash of pain in his eyes as you walk away.
This is how it’s supposed to be. This has always been your fate.
“You have to try this on. Please? For me?”
It begins as an innocent enough request. Becca was in the midst of selecting her gown for the evening and that meant that you were right by her side, providing her with the necessary words of affirmation for her to make a decision.
These are the most challenging questions that royalty have to deal with. Sometimes you dream of living such a comfortable life, pampered daily with the sweetest of treats and lavishing yourself with the praise of society. However, you know that things aren’t so simple. There are restrictions that come with being part of this family.
You saw firsthand how many classes Becca had to take as part of her education — in addition to the typical academic courses, she had to spend hours learning proper etiquette, how to sew, how to play a musical instrument, how to entertain and host a gathering. They had to prepare her for her future as a wife. While options are limited for women in society, they are practically a straight-line path for a princess who is not in line for the throne.
Her career, her future, her partner — everything is almost pre-destined.
One day, Becca will marry someone. While she dreams of a happily ever after, she also understands the political nature of matrimony. To maintain power, you have to seek power. She may not be here a few years from now when she’s officially married off to extend her father’s reign. Her parents have insisted that they would never force her to marry, but Becca has always had a strong sense of responsibility.
You both admire and hold sympathy for her.
Unfortunately, in this very moment, you would like to push her out of the carriage so you too could make your escape. Somehow, she has managed to rope you into going to the ball — in one of her dresses.
“This is completely inappropriate,” you hiss. “I should not be here.”
“I want you here.”
“Becca,” you exhale deeply, “if your parents knew about this.”
“It’s a masquerade ball! Nobody will know.”
“I’m coming with you! I fear that makes it quite obvious.”
“I’ll tell them you’re one of our very distant cousins — one from a land far, far away.”
You pinch your nose as the carriage rattles, the silk of your glove glides along your skin. Pulling your hand away, you can’t help but look at the delicate fabric on your skin.
When you first tried the clothes on, you could hardly believe your eyes. You didn’t even look like… you. Gone were your well-worn gowns. The tightness of the corset has you a little breathless, but the dress adorned with intricate sequins and embroidery sliding over your body like water. The silver shimmers underneath the moonlight that spills past the curtains of the carriage, white camellias sewn in a river down your shoulder to your waist.
You reach up to tuck your hair behind your ear, only for your fingers to brush over the diamond necklace that Becca has so thoughtfully loaned you. The gems catch light, winking at you as if they’re letting you in on a secret. Then your fingers catch on your mask, a combination of beads and lace trimming, the same flowers framing the corners of your eyes.
In all your life, you could never have even dared to dream of wearing such things. You never imagined that you would be swimming in such luxury.
If your mother could see you now, she would absolutely murder you. She would bury you six feet under before the royal guards could even get to you.
You know that neither the queen nor king would mind, but what would the rest of them think if they knew? What if they found out that you were no more than a girl born into somewhat fortunate circumstances? That your blood was redder than most of them. Common.
A hand lands atop yours. Becca peeks at you with a nervous smile. “Hey, it’ll be fun. You’ve never been to one of these. Please try to enjoy yourself. I promise that nobody will say a thing.”
“What if I stand out? What if they know that I don’t fit in with the rest of them?” You whisper.
Becca squeezes your hand. “If you stand out, it’s because you look far more beautiful than the rest of them. If you stand out, it’s because they are looking at you with envy. You could’ve easily been the diamond of the season.”
Warmth creeps up your neck as the carriage pulls to a stop. You can already hear the music filtering through the entrance; the sound mingles with the fast rhythm of your heartbeat in a symphony that echoes through your mind.
“Showtime,” she beams.
Now, as someone who has been directly involved in the planning, decorating, and organizing of the extravaganzas, you’ve seen your fair share of ridiculously opulent displays. The palace is, after all, renowned for hosting the grandest of balls, bringing together only the who’s who of society. The guest list is selective, both for security and exclusivity reasons. It is the most sought-after invitation of the season. So when you walk into the viscountess’ home, you didn’t think you would be impressed.
However, you have never been happier to be proven wrong. Every inch of this place has been meticulously swathed in a color scheme perfect for the summer. Florals in every shade of the sunset draped across banisters, hanging over the staircase leading down to the dance floor, and standing tall in structures that do not look humanly possible.
Butlers and maids dressed head to toe in fine fabrics float around the room carrying hors d'oeuvres that look more like miniature works of art. Macarons that match the colors of the flower arrangements, tarts with crusts that crumble perfectly on your tongue, bonbons in perfect spheres dusted in cocoa, and fruits plucked from the vines at their ripest, sweetest point.
The stars twinkle above you to complement the tiny candles that string across the railings to illuminate the room, only outshone by the chandeliers with flickering flames hanging above you. Guests in their Sunday bests drift around the room in excited chatter, spreading the newest gossip that will surely make the papers by morning.
Heads turn as you and Becca enter the room and, before you can duck behind her, she’s linking her arm through yours and pulling you forward into the crowd.
“Becca—”
“Breathe, this will be fun. Enjoy the treats and the wine. The viscountess has exceptional taste, she has gathered the best chefs in the kingdom in her kitchen. Mother simply adores visiting her for tea for the food alone.”
Becca walks through the room with the confidence of someone who owns it. Everyone knows her as the princess even hidden behind the mask, murmurs of awe rippling across the crowd. The men pay particularly close attention, eager to get hers. The women speak of her in resentful admiration.
Becca — the belle of the ball. You, her companion.
“They’re looking at you,” she giggles quietly in your ear.
“No, they’re looking at you, Princess.”
“I’ve been in enough of these rooms to know when people are looking at me. While some are focused on me, most of them are keeping a close eye on you.”
“Likely to see when they would have the opportunity to speak to you alone no doubt,” you mutter under your breath.
Becca frowns at you. “Must you be so cynical? You look absolutely stunning. If you gave the room a chance, you’d know how many of them are keen on dancing with you. In fact, why don’t we put it to a test?”
Right as you’re about to ask her what she means, Becca moves away from you, pretending to be drawn by the dessert that appears to be running away from her. Her name leaves your mouth but you don’t get very far when three men approach you. All of them impeccably dressed, all of them handsome — at least, from what you can see with the mask.
“My lady, would you grant me the honor of joining me for a dance?”
Your lips part in surprise, eyes darting around the room to search for the princess. Becca stands off in a corner, grinning proudly to herself as she nibbles on a cream puff. You bite down the urge to curse before politely turning to the men. “My apologies, I should be getting back to my companion. I can’t leave her for far too long.”
You take a step and one of them moves directly in your path. “I’m sure she’ll find the company of others just as pleasant. Please, you must grant each of us a dance. It would be a privilege for us.”
Although you’ve danced before, it’s mostly to help Becca with her training. You have no idea how these dances work during the balls — the coordination, the etiquette. Your heart begins to race as your throat closes in a panic.
“I can’t—”
“One. One song is all I ask.”
“Then mine next.”
“And then me.”
Your chest flares as you search around the room for Becca again but she is nowhere to be found. Your skin begins to burn as your survival instincts kick in. The last thing you need is for these men to notice and question how they’ve never seen you before at such events, and you would have to craft a convoluted fib that you would be forced to maintain.
Just as you are about to deny them again, a hand presses against the low of your back.
“My lady.”
The voice grounds you in a familiar presence. You look up to find Bucky — even through the mask, you’d know it was him. His favorite cologne clings to the threads of his jacket and his hair, thick and styled, is one you can practically feel on your fingertips. Those days spent by the riverbend, his head on your lap as you read him sonnets—
No. This is not the time to be sentimental.
“Your royal highness.” The men stumble over each other to greet him, their energy shifting to nervous jitters as they look amongst each other.
“I believe the point of the masks is anonymity,” he says smoothly. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I would like to invite this lovely lady to a dance.”
He doesn’t wait for your answer, he simply takes your hand and whisks you into the crowd. You don’t have time to think about the consequences of this, more relieved that you’ve escaped that sticky situation.
“Thank you,” you breathe out.
“I believe I should be thanking you for this dance,” he grins.
“How did you find me?”
“I could find you even if you were across the world, mon cher.” You roll your eyes and Bucky huffs a quiet laugh. “I don’t think you’re supposed to respond that way to the crown prince.”
“Perhaps if the crown prince didn’t use such predictably embarrassing lines.”
His lips curl again. “I noticed you the moment you walked into the room. Most beautiful woman tonight. Most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, in fact.”
“Haven’t you been taught that dishonesty is unbecoming on a man?” You snip back.
“You wound me,” he gives a little shake of his head, “Out of everyone, you know that you would be the last person I would attempt to bathe in false affirmations. I know you can see through those pretenses.”
“Then why try?”
“Oh ye of little faith. If you wanted praise from me, you could just say so—”
You balk, snapping back in surprise. “That was not my intention!”
Bucky squeezes your hand as he shifts you around the room. It is then that you realize he’s been guiding your movements all along, every one of your steps falling in line with the others around you. He’s always been a good dancer, far better than Becca who had resisted these lessons for the longest time.
“You look absolutely ravishing tonight,” he ducks his head to whisper in your ear. The smell of him infiltrates your senses, his warmth, the brush of his hair against your cheek. “Of course, you could’ve worn nothing at all and you would undoubtedly still be the most fetching person in this room.”
“If I wore nothing at all, then I’m sure I would fetch the eyes of everyone in this room,” you tease with a small quirk of your lips.
Bucky goes momentarily taut, stiff as he spins you and then pulls you in even closer. His hands tighten around you, like he’s fearful you would slip away at any moment. “Thank the heavens you opted for clothing today. I would rather not imagine anyone else seeing you in such a state. I’d have to dramatically increase this kingdom’s beheading rate. If I do that, what kingdom would I have left to rule?”
“Because you’d have to eliminate the witnesses to my humiliation of the royal family?”
“Because I have limited self-restraint when it comes to you.” You cock an eyebrow in question. “I would have to eliminate anyone who has ever seen you in such an intimate state. I’m a tad possessive you see, I’d rather be the only person alive who’s ever seen you in all of your raw beauty.”
Heat flushes along your skin, a sudden rise in temperature that rarely occurs at this time in the evening. “You’ve never seen me in such a state.”
“I would be the first and the last, my dear. I’ve never been very good at sharing.”
“I am not an object to own, your royal highness,” you bite out with a sour curl of your lips.
“You’re not,” Bucky murmurs softly, “but my heart belongs to you and I was hoping that yours to me — and your affection is the one thing I refuse to ration.”
You look up to meet his eyes. Earnest blue eyes that are far too honest for your liking. That gaze that’s dripping with the kind of affection he cannot counterfeit. Your movements nearly falter, your knees suddenly weak, but Bucky holds onto you even tighter.
“Bucky, I—”
Your gaze snags on the view behind him — a line of women watching the two of you, glowering green seeing your frame tucked against Bucky’s. Women who undoubtedly come from near and far in search of a notable husband to match or increase their standing in society. What better catch than a prince?
Instead of investing his time looking for a proper candidate for a wife, he is instead wasting these minutes with you. It’s been three songs, far from appropriate for two acquaintances, suspicious enough that you can hear the whispers of speculation begin to circulate the room. As the song comes to an end, you’re quick to curtsy in front of him.
“Thank you for the dance.”
You whirl around before he can say another word and disappear into the throng, leaving Bucky to be swarmed by women who are far better suited for him.
Becca stands by a corner, having watched all of this transpire. She’s barely paying any mind to the gentlemen suitors around her. When you come around to her, she’s immediately distancing herself and rushing towards you. Her gaze is eager, far too eager.
She’s had at least two drinks then.
“How was it? I saw you out there.”
“It was fine,” you mutter.
“You’ve only had one dance and it was with my brother. Methinks it’s time to expand your registry. How about the Duke? I hear he gets a little bit handsy and a little fun can do no harm.”
After your conversation with Bucky, you seriously doubt that. You would rather avoid this ball turning into a beheading festival tonight — or Bucky ruining his pristine reputation with society when he decides to do an execution in the middle of the dance floor.
Bucky is many things but he is not a liar. Whether he exaggerates is up for debate but that is not a theory you want to test tonight.
“Or shall we have a few more to drink in the meantime? Their champagne is quite lovely. I heard the viscountess had sourced all of the vintages from her favorite year.”
“Ladies.”
Speak of the devil. The two of you find yourselves in front of the viscountess. Even beneath the mask, her vibrant ruby hair is an easy identifier. She is cloaked in a glimmering black fabric with touches of red, breasts pushed up with the tight wrap aroung her waist. Spiders are stitched into her mask, crawling up the sides.
“Lady Romanoff,” Becca cheers, “what a lovely ball you’ve thrown. This is stunning, our chefs simply must learn from yours, otherwise I’d be tempted to sneak a few of those macarons up my sleeve before I leave.”
The viscountess laughs. “Princess, if you desire the macarons, I shall ensure that they are delivered to the palace by the morning. I believe your queen mother is also rather fond of the bonbons I source from France, I’ve already arranged for it to be sent tomorrow and I’ll make sure we include your macarons with that delivery.”
“You are most kind and gracious.”
Then she turns her eyes to you and you freeze. “And I do not believe we’ve met. Your name, dear?”
Your eyes flick to Becca momentarily before returning to her. You should lie. You should give her another name, but the viscountess has been known to be shrewdly intelligent. If you were caught in a fib, you would likely have your tongue cut out. There have been rumors of what she has done outside this kingdom, things that are far from proper; still, nobody has been brave enough to validate any of that gossip.
So you tell her your name.
“And I presume you are the princess’…” she trails off for a second and you go rigid once more, her gaze sharpens a fraction. “…cousin from far, far away?”
“Um, yes! She has decided to do an impromptu visit because she missed me so. I hope you don’t mind my bringing her, my lady.”
Lady Romanoff smiles like she knows — and you have a feeling she does. She simply doesn’t care. After all, she has always danced to her own tune, including how she’s wearing all black tonight that would be typically reserved for funerals.
“Not at all. I hope you enjoy your visit and my ball tonight. I would avoid Lord Smith, he’s in desperate search of a wife and may latch on to the one new face who appears unaware of the reputation of his temper.” Then she laughs.
“Fair advice, Lady Romanoff, thank you,” you murmur.
With one last squeeze of your arm, she brisks away from the two of you. As you follow her movements, you also spot Bucky as he makes his own escape with a few of the gentlemen you’ve seen come around the palace. He turns in time to catch your eye, his mouth curling into a smile as he winks at you from the distance, right as he disappears out the door.
“Now, shall we indulge in more treats?”
You’ve always been a quick study and there are three things that you now understand about the nature of these functions.
The first is to eat your fill — between the champagne and the specially mulled wines, intoxication is a friendly foe that rears its head far too fast. You have to learn to balance properly.
The second is that the marriage market appears dreary. None of the ladies are interested in the gentlemen, no matter how desperately they try. It appears that the women in the room aren’t too afraid of waiting a tad bit longer if it means they could find the one. This means that the gentlemen are far too preoccupied with harassing the help to keep themselves entertained, not that Lady Romanoff tolerates that behavior; she’s kicked out a number of them already.
Last but not least is that Becca is a social butterfly. While you’ve always been familiar with her friendly nature, seeing her out and about like this, crafting budding friendships with every single person in the room, you’re once again reminded of why the two of you were fast friends. Becca has always been more welcoming, conquering all five love languages on top of the three spoken and written ones that she’s already studying. However, following her around, you are also reminded that you are, in fact, not like her and these interactions are beginning to wear you down.
There are only so many ways you can talk about your dress before the discussions start to sound inane.
There are also so many times you can tolerate the way these women look you up and down. What happened to camaraderie? The catty looks are one thing you don’t expect. In your eyes, you’re a nobody who just happened to be playing dress-up thanks to a good friend. However, you can see how you seem from their perspective — close enough to the princess to attend this ball, apparently attractive enough for the crown prince to steal you for more than a handful of minutes.
You swallow the urge to scream, “I’m nothing more than the help!”
“The prince does have peculiar taste, doesn’t he?” One of them comments and you have to resist rolling your eyes, lest you offend her publicly.
“What do you mean?” Becca asks as she nibbles on her third tart of the night.
Expectedly, the girl’s eyes flick to you for a brief second before her lips stretch into smirk. “I assumed he would take a wife by now. Have an heir to continue the lineage. However, it doesn’t seem that anyone in this room suits his preferences. He hasn’t asked anyone to dance yet — and not for a lack of trying from our part.”
“He did have one dance—”
You clear your throat to interrupt Becca. She looks at you quizzically.
God bless her heart. Becca means well but sometimes she misses some of these cues; she’s too trusting, which is why you have to be the exact opposite.
“Apologies, I meant a dance that would count—” she smiles saccharine sweet. “—that would matter. You’re a visiting relative, right?” This question she directs towards you.
All eyes turn to you. The attention has your cheeks burning. “Correct.”
“She’s actually a very dear friend, but she’s practically family. She knows Bucky very well.”
“Is that so?” You don’t appreciate the way the woman’s gaze flashes with something akin to amusement. “Practically a sister then. I don’t believe I recall where you’re from. I haven’t heard anyone speak of you either.”
“I didn’t say.” Your lips twist up in an irritated smile.
Awkward tension falls upon the conversation. Becca looks nervously between the two of you; this cue is far too hard to miss. “That doesn’t matter! What matters is that we are here now. How about we get some lemonade? It’s quite warm here, isn’t it?”
As Becca busies herself with resolving the tension, which is the last thing a princess should be doing, you take this opportunity to slip away from the suffocating atmosphere of the room.
Perhaps the garden can be healing this time of night.
Bucky would rather be anywhere else but here. Let him correct himself — there is exactly one place he would rather be than here and it would be to be back inside. With you. Dancing. Fetching you drinks. Keeping those overly-excited, unworthy vultures away from you.
The moment you stepped through those doors, he knew he was in for a long night of suffering. Time and time again, you’ve rejected his advances. He knows you feel the same way, has felt you leaning into his touch before you would pull yourself away. Your stubbornness has always been endearing, but Bucky yearns for the day when he finally breaks through those walls.
It’s not an if, it’s a when.
Because Bucky has always achieved everything he’s dreamed of and you are his most important one.
However, for now, he is instead subjected to the debauchery of his peers. Dukes, viscounts, and fellow noblemen who have far too much time on their hands to be exploring substances that shouldn’t be explored. Sam is in the midst of lecturing their tight-knit group about this vial he procured while out in the countryside, some fermented liquid that supposedly produces the most vivid, imaginative visions that have you questioning reality.
The others ooh and aah in fascination but Bucky’s eyes continue to stray towards those double-doors where you stand on the other side.
“Your royal highness, I have something that may be of interest to you.”
To that, he does turn with a raised brow.
“I specifically obtained this one for you. I am sympathetic to your cause—” Sam teases and Bucky responds with a withering glare that does nothing to deter his friend. “—and when the time comes and you hope to last, this will be immensely beneficial.”
“His cause is hopeless if he doesn’t do anything about it,” Steve laughs.
“I appreciate your vote of confidence, Rogers. Believe me, it’s not for a lack of trying,” Bucky mutters as he leans back against the stone pillar.
Sam grabs his hand, slips it into his palm and closes his hand around a small tin. “Very potent. I wouldn’t recommend more than a pinchful at a time. A pinchful should last you through an hour, but what a delicious hour it will be.”
He doesn’t know how to tell him that Bucky doesn’t need this sort of chemistry to make him last. Every time he’s near you, his pants tighten like a schoolboy again. Thirteen and realizing that this desire to kiss you isn’t a result of friendship. As he got older, he realized that these urges aren’t those that should be held against his sister’s lady-in-waiting.
Urges that blossomed into far more when he feels his chest constrict, breath stolen from his lungs, whenever he catches a whiff of that perfume. Or how he can’t resist peeking at you from around the corner whenever you sneak into the library, wondering what book has absorbed you this time, how quickly he could read it to spark conversation with you. Or how desperately he tries to make you laugh just to hear that tinkling melody that loops like the nation’s best symphony in his mind.
There are days that Bucky wishes he wasn’t born into this family, that he could be normal, so he wouldn’t be forced upon societal standards that he has no desire to follow. He could pursue you and you wouldn’t constantly put this chasm between you.
But then if he hadn’t been born into this life, then he would’ve never met you. He would have never known what it means for love to consume his very soul, how one person could mean the world to him, to a point where he would give it all up — the riches, the rule — to be with you.
Fate is a funny thing.
“I don’t need this, Wilson,” Bucky grunts as he tries to push it back into Sam’s hands.
Sam raises them. “No, sir. Think of it as an early coronation gift. Perhaps once you can change the rules of the kingdom, you would be inclined to follow them too.”
“Think he’s a jester,” he mutters to Steve with a roll of his eyes.
“In another life, my prince, perhaps in another life,” Sam grins cheekily. “You simply have to breathe it in. Like the usual stuff. Again, very powerful so be careful. Otherwise, you’d be trapped in that state for hours on end and your only relief would be to…”
Bucky’s eyes rise to meet his. Sam only wiggles his eyebrows in response. He makes a face of repulsion. “That’s how you rid yourself of the effects?”
“The more you finish, the lighter the effects will be. However, if you don’t find any form of… relief, then it could last for hours and you’d be hurting everywhere — and I do mean everywhere. It’s the strongest form of desire that can be relieved if you fulfill it.”
Bucky looks down at the tin again. Unassuming. Small. How powerful could this little thing be? He tucks it inside his coat, if only to appease his friend, and lets them resume with the conversation.
By the time they adjourn, Bucky is sufficiently exhausted. All he wants is to go search for you. It’s only been an hour and he already misses you. What a fool he is — if only the kingdom knew that the crown prince’s only weakness is a woman who doesn’t even want him.
As the other men filter back indoors, Bucky moves to follow. That is, until your perfume tickles his senses. You’re outside. He whips around to try and find you but you’re nowhere in sight.
Perhaps this is his chance. The two of you would be in Lady Romanoff’s prized garden, far away from the prying eyes of the palace or the rest of the ton. He looks at Steve and Sam, waves them away. “Go on. I’ll enjoy the fresh air a little bit more.”
“Alright, don’t look too thrilled that all those women inside are waiting for their prince to return.”
Bucky winces. Of course, he’s felt their hungry gazes all night. All of them practically vibrating where they’re standing, fanning themselves a little faster, batting their eyelashes a little more rapidly. He has zero inclination to humor any of them because the one person he wants to dance with is the one who won’t even look at him.
With one final gesture, he begins to prowl further into the grounds, further away from the mansion, to find you.
Little does he know that the tiny tin rattles like a cry against his chest, lid loose as he walks at a pace that’s far from careful.
After exploring the gardens for a bit, you almost wish that Lady Romanoff would adopt you under her wing to understand her excellent taste in design and decoration. The architecture is as old as time. Each brick feels intentionally placed like it’s meant to be part of history. The stream that sits quietly further away from the palace brings a touch of natural life to the otherwise manmade masterpiece.
A boat sits swaying in the gentle evening breeze and you’re half tempted to paddle yourself out to the middle to find some form of peace. However, given how deep it is into nightfall, you assume you’d have to eventually make your way back to find Becca. She’s promised not to touch another drop of champagne for the evening so you trust her to make good decisions.
Just as you turn to begin your journey back to the mansion, the last person you expect is standing before you.
“Bucky, what are you doing here?”
In the darkness, he stumbles towards you, mumbling incoherently. You strain your ears to decipher him but it’s near impossible when his words blur together. He’s clearly intoxicated. You wonder how much liquor Steve and Sam have fed him and lord knows what else.
When he finally stands where the moonlight shines across the concrete, you see the flush that sprawls like an illness across his skin. His breathing is labored and his fingers continue to tug at the collar of his shirt, clawing almost desperately. With his mask long gone, you can see how his pupils are blown wide as they drink in the sight of you, a mix of relief and desire in the constantly shifting shades of his ocean eyes.
He breathes out your name like a prayer when he sees you. “Gods, you look…” he trails off again as he moves towards you, walking side to side as if his legs can’t bear the weight of him.
You catch him before he can topple over, his entire body draped over yours. You thank the heavens that you’ve done enough manual labor in your life that you’re able to prop him up, pushing him up against the wall. Your hands on his shoulders as you frown at him.
He doesn’t smell too heavily of liquor but there are strange particles on his coat that you suspect are the reason why he’s behaving like this. You bite back the urge to scold the crown prince of all people to be more responsible. When you look up at him, he’s looking down at you with a lazy smirk.
“Bucky, what did you take?”
“Y’smell…” he leans forward again, nearly tipping over but his nose ends up buried in your neck. You feel him inhale, deep, before a long, extremely indecorous moan rumbles against your skin. Heat slithers up your spine, pushing your blood south between your legs. “Fuck, you smell so good.”
Biting your tongue, you try to push him back against the wall but he’s faster. His arms wrap around you, holding you tight against his chest as his mouth trails warm against your skin. He whispers your name again — like a promise. “Bucky, please, I can’t help you like this.”
“Need—” he chokes then, whimpering.
“What do you need? Tell me.”
“You.”
You stroke his hair gently as he continues to mumble words you cannot hear against the pulse in your neck. “I know, I’m here. Tell me what you need.” Worry torments your heart as you press the back of your hand against his forehead. “Heavens, you’re burning up.”
“So hot,” he whines, “so, so warm.”
Without removing himself from you, he begins to shed off his tailcoat first, casting it aside. Then his fingers reach for the buttons of his waistcoat, fingers seemingly too uncoordinated to undo them.
“Please. Help,” he pleads.
How can you say no when he asks so sweetly? But at the same time, you really shouldn’t be doing this. “Bucky, this isn’t a good idea. I don’t think you should—”
“Help me.”
Gods, you’ve never been good at saying no to this man, not when he sounds like he’s in pain. Your gloved hands reach towards him as you begin to unbutton him slowly, revealing more and more of the linen underneath. Then Bucky pushes it off his shoulders.
“My shirt next.”
“Bucky!” you gasp, “That’s completely out of the question. I couldn’t possibly.”
“It’s so warm, mon couer. Please.”
He’s never played a fair game, but particularly when he addresses you so charmingly in French. You remember when he first started calling you those terms, practicing the foreign language on his tongue in a way that had you leaning in to listen for more. You asked him what they meant, and he said, “Only the truth.”
My love. My heart. Your heart feels like it’s been lit on fire when you read the translations.
You never questioned it further. Becca always took it as teasing, like Bucky’s being his usual charismatic, mischievous self. But every time he calls you that, you know that it is the truth. A truth you keep contesting for the sanctity of your mind.
Because if you accept that you are his love and that you are his heart, you don’t know how much of your resolve would be left.
And Bucky deserves more than that. He deserves the world, which he already has. You can’t be the reason that he loses all of it.
“We should head back. Becca’s going to be wondering where we are.”
“Becca can be patient,” he murmurs as he finally finds the strength to rip his shirt open, the buttons flying off as the fabric is torn off his body, leaving him bare in front of you. His abdomen ripples with the kind of muscles that come from the hours spent training, the hours you spent watching him practice.
Saliva pools on your tongue and you feel like a dog taught to drool at the sight of its master. You’ve seen him shirtless before, of course — god knows the man loves to be fully exposed to the sun in seasons like this. However, something about him is different this time. He’s practically soaked through his shirt, his body glows with a sheen layer of sweat.
“You have a fever, Bucky. You need help.”
“Need you,” he repeats, clearer this time. His brows then meet in the middle as he looks down at you. He tugs the mask off your face, letting it drop to the floor as he searches your eyes. Deep blue, bluer than the summer sky. “There you are,” he says softly.
Your heart stutters as you shy away from his gaze, his fingers catching your chin to tilt you to face him again. His eyes fall to your lips, your lips separate, sticky with whatever Becca had swiped onto you earlier.
Then he slants his lips over yours and you feel the fireworks explode inside your chest. Bucky’s moan spills down your throat as he kisses you deeper, harder. Ravenous is the only way you can describe it. He’s chasing after your lips like you’re the last drop of water for a parched man. He breathes the air from your lungs, an intimate exchange that has noises you’ve only made in the quiet of your room — alone — rising from your stomach.
It’s everything you’ve ever imagined, and so much more. You spent nights picturing what this could feel like in painstaking detail, hoping that it may happen one day — in the slightest of chances.
But then that anxiety seeps back in, creeping under your skin enough to wake you from this dream.
“Bucky—” He kisses you again, quashing whatever rational thought you’ve only just begun to formulate.
“Tastes so sweet, even better than I thought,” he murmurs. “So sweet, my love. Gods, I could kiss you for days and I’d never tire of it.”
“We shouldn’t—” Your protest once again dies in your throat as Bucky begins to kiss along your jaw, placing a wet trail of fire as he mouths down your neck, counting your racing heartbeat. Your palms flatten against his chest, damp and humid. He’s sweating bullets but you don’t get the chance to interrupt again.
“I need you,” he groans, “lord, I need you.” His fingers catch your hand and press it against his chest. Your heart pushes against your ribs. “You smell so good. I can’t stop thinking about you. Thinking about what it would be like to kneel at your feet, your leg over my shoulder, and bury my face in that pretty pussy of yours.”
A gasp wrenches from your throat as you jerk back. “Bucky, that is— oh my god, that is unacceptable!”
“It’s the truth,” he growls, “I can practically smell you between your legs, your sweetness on my tongue. I want you to press your hips against my face and let me feast like a king. Slip my fingers in there and feel how you resist me, how you act like you don’t want this but you’re dripping all over my fingers.”
The moan that climbs out your chest is involuntary and it’s all Bucky needs before he’s flipping you around and he’s pressing your back against the pillar. A gust of wind blows, providing some semblance of reprieve to the sudden sweltering heat that blankets you. It does nothing to soothe Bucky who looks at you like you’re the perfect prey, skin exposed to him with your hair twisted up like the forbidden fruit.
Bucky isn't a godless man, but in that moment he swears there isn't a higher power who could stop him from having you.
He silently asks the heavens to turn their gaze away from the sin he's about to commit. Because whatever happens next, he won't be seeking forgiveness.
He will only offer his thanks.
He kisses you again, tongue slipping past your lips just as he swallows your surprised sound. His tongue strokes against yours, licking up and pressing against it until you’re trembling against him.
You no longer have authority over your body, how every ounce of energy dissolves into thin air against him, knees nearly sending you crumbling to the ground if it weren’t for his own strength holding you up. One of his hands is ont he back of your neck, keeping you close, and the other on your hip. His mouth continues to move against you as if he’s savoring every inch of you.
Distracted by the taste of him and his seemingly contagious fever, you barely realize when Bucky peels back layer upon layer of your eveningwear. The weight of the fabric pools around your feet with a soft thump. His fingers are frantic as he pushes each piece off your shoulders, leaving you only in your shift and your stay. The corset is tight around your body and Bucky snarls to himself when he can’t seem to untangle the loops.
Then you hear it, the sound similar to clicking tongues as Bucky tears it off your body. When the haze clears just enough for you to realize what’s been done, you shove him away from you, but your power doesn’t throw him very far.
“Bucky, this is indecent. I can’t be—”
“We’re too far past decency, my love.” He stalks back towards you, capturing your lips in a languid kiss that eviscerates your objections into ash. “Beautiful. You had the eyes of everyone in that room tonight. I loathed seeing you surrounded by all those men earlier. Undeserving creatures who think that they have an opportunity with you.”
“I—I wasn’t interested in any of them,” you whine as he works his way down your neck, teeth and lips marking slow, deliberate claims against your skin. Ones that spell out mine.
“I know,” he murmurs against your pulse, smiling as if the answer was never in doubt. “You don’t need to fret. You’re mine. I wouldn’t let them near you. I wouldn’t even allow you to look their way.”
His mouth drags lightly over your skin again. Unhurried, certain.
“Only me. Always me.”
It’s not a question, nor an order. He’s stating a fact. For as long as you can remember, regardless of how many handsome bachelors walk through the palace doors — or even through the staff entrance, you haven’t spared any of them a second glance. Your heart and eyes have always belonged to him.
Bucky takes your hand and gently removes your gloves. He brings your hand up to his lips, placing one gentle kiss after another. First on your wrist, then up your forearm, to your bicep, until he’s on your shoulder. He moves this final layer to the side just enough for him to press wet kisses on your collarbones.
However, despite his attempts to divert your attention away from the actual matter at hand, you can’t help but worry. His temperature is a far cry from normal, you fear what would happen if he weren’t observed and provided the necessary remedies.
“You’re sick, Bucky. Please let me take you back to the palace. Let me fetch your carriage so we can at least summon the royal physician to assess you.”
“No, won’t help,” he grunts, “need to— need to—” and the next word that slips from his lips has your heart slamming against your ribcage— “fuck.”
Your mouth dries and your own desires begin to overwhelm you. This isn’t right. He’s not himself. He’s not in his right mind. What he needs is a doctor and a bed and—
“Sam said,” he exhales harshly, “I need to get it out. To stop this.”
“Get what out?”
“Need to finish.”
Finish. Fuck. Your throat suddenly feels like sandpaper.
He needs to climax.
“Don’t think I’ll be satisfied with finishing once,” he huffs honestly as his hands reach up to cup your breasts. He lets out a little pleased noise as he feels up your soft flesh, the shape of your breasts molding to his hand as he massages them. With only one barrier left between the two of you, it feels as if there’s nothing at all there. “My gorgeous girl with her gorgeous tits. I always knew you’d fit so perfectly in my hands. You don’t know how many times I’ve dreamt of this, putting my hands on them, pinching these lovely pert nipples—” he moans as he tugs on your nipple, electricity coursing through you in a zing straight down to your core. “How it would feel to have my cock tucked in between your tits.”
You don’t have the voice to argue, nor the mind. All you can think about is how delicious it feels for Bucky to be touching you. Your head leans back as your eyes slide shut, your mind lost in the sensations of his touch.
“Please, let me have you, my love. I need— I need you.”
His hand doesn’t wait for an answer, they begin to bunch up your skirt, pinning them against your hip with his wrist as his fingers trail up your inner thigh. You fight against your shudder and he lifts his mouth back to your lips to kiss you, just as his fingertips make contact with your core.
You’re sticky down there already, a mess from the proximity and his scent and his feverish warmth. This is still Bucky — your Bucky — but he’s also different, like all of the chains that have held him back, that have granted him the patience all these years, have been shattered. This is the result of all the times you’ve rejected him again and again and again. All of the times that you have rejected these feelings within yourself.
Now the dam has been destroyed and all those times you’ve swallowed your pride and your wants, they’re finally being released and they completely drown you.
The moon reflects off the water, illuminating Bucky’s face in a shifting series of ethereal colors. Even with the glimmer, his eyes are dark. A fog clouding his judgment. His desire is unwavering. The more you touch him, the more you let him touch you, the stronger the effects of his fever.
If possible, he grows even warmer. His skin practically searing against yours but nothing burns more than his fingers between your legs, the delicate stroke of your lips, moist with the evidence of your lust.
“You’re drenched down here, my sweet girl,” Bucky moans, “is this all for me? Were you thinking of me the same way I was thinking of you?”
“Bucky, please,” you jolt, hips rising when he dips a tentative finger inside you.
It’s almost embarrassing how easily he slips himself in there, aided by the slick between your legs. He pushes a finger in as he gulps down your pleasured sound, a desperate little cry as his fingers stretch out your insides.
You’ve never had anyone else touch you like this. You’ve barely even touched yourself like this; even when left to your own devices with nothing more than your imagination and the lingering scent of Bucky’s cologne on your threads, shame still restricts how much pleasure you allow yourself.
However, out there, with Bucky in control, you relinquish that power to him. You let him determine how much pleasure you experience, how much gratification you can get under his ministrations.
Bucky’s fingers are skilled as they work you open, scissoring you open until your teeth sink into his shoulder. “My pretty girl, look at you. I want to hear you cry for me, want to know how good I make you feel.”
Obediently, your lips split open in a wail that shakes the air.
“Let me have a taste of you,” he murmurs and draws his hand away from you. The loss is almost instantaneous, a sudden chill where his touch had been, but it’s replaced by the fire that burns bright in your gut the moment he drags his wet fingers along his lips. He breathes it in like he’s memorizing the scent of you before he slides his fingers over his tongue. “God, you’re perfect. Sweet, as I expected.”
Then Bucky sinks to the ground and there’s something about the crown prince on his knees before you that has you faltering. Someone whose blood is bluer than the ocean shouldn’t risk scraping his knees for a mere maid — and yet here he is.
“Hold your skirt up for me, sweet girl.”
You want to protest. You want to say no. You want to remind him again that this isn’t a good idea but there’s determination in his eyes that have you whimpering, fingers reaching for the hem of your skirt to reveal yourself to him.
Bucky drags a finger along your slit again, collecting the moisture and wiping it on his tongue with another moan. He leans forward and your eyes slide shut, heart thrumming in anticipation with the steady pulse in your veins. He kisses you slowly at first, making his way up your thigh but his patience is thin and soon enough he’s burying his face between your legs.
His tongue strokes up your pussy, legs still clamped shut in your apprehension. Bucky looks a little irritated when he can’t seem to properly taste you so, with one hand, he holds one of your legs up by the thigh and opens up your leaking cunt to him. He curses under his breath when he sees you glisten in the flickering night.
The stars in the sky blend in with the ones behind your eyes when he finally lays his lips on you. He mouths at you hungrily, like he’s wolfing down his last meal. His tongue presses eager strokes along your walls that have your legs closing in around him again — only for his hand to pry them open once more to grant him access to the nectar between your thighs.
“So sweet, so soft,” Bucky groans against your pussy. His lips suckle eagerly, the lewd slurps ricocheting off the surfaces in this quiet night. In the distance, the music continues quietly, but here — you’re accompanied by the sound of your quickening heartbeat and Bucky’s delighted grunts.
Each time he licks you, he buries himself deeper and deeper, until his nose bumps against your clit and his face glistens with your arousal. Your fingers tangle in his thick hair, damp with the sweat from his fever. When you tug on it slightly, Bucky sticks his face in even deeper, moans even louder.
You can see how his erection only grows underneath his trousers, needy for attention, and yet satisfied all the same by your own pleasure. He tilts his face to reach new angles, his fingers pushing inside of you to keep you full while his tongue flicks that sensitive bundle of nerves.
It doesn’t take you long fall apart, walls closing in around his tongue and his fingers, spasming with your orgasm — the first of the evening.
For a moment, guilt enters your system and you’re forced to look down at Bucky remorsefully that he didn’t even achieve what he set out to do. However, you notice the shaking of his shoulders, a shudder wracking through him as his hips twitch upwards. A pulse down there.
“Y-you finished?”
Bucky nods, unabashed as he comes to a stand. “Do you see what you do to me? Cumming untouched in my trousers like a prepubescent boy who can’t even control himself.”
“I didn’t— I mean, you didn’t even touch it.”
“The mere thought of you finishing around my mouth like I’ve always dreamed is enough for me, my love.” He tucks a loose strand of your hair, one that have fallen loose from your updo, behind your ear. “However, I’m far from done. This fever — I can’t break it without you. I have to have you.”
Again, he doesn’t wait for your permission as he steals the air from your lungs with a passionate kiss. This time, you can taste the sweetness of champagne on his tongue along with something a little more unique. Something that belongs solely to you and now also belongs to him.
“I’ve been leaking for you all night, sweet girl,” Bucky mumbles, “I couldn’t stop thinking what you look like underneath this dress. How soft and supple your body would be. Apparently, everyone else had the same thought. I could see how they looked at you. I should have them all stripped of their titles and banished from the land.”
“Bucky,” you chide, warmth flaming your cheeks. “That would be incredibly rude. Nobody did anything.”
He rolls his eyes as he presses you back against the pillar, reaching down to his pants. You hear the fabric shifting as he holds you up and frees himself. You’ve never seen one in real life before, only those diagrams that Becca likes to tease you with.
And the real thing looks far more intimidating.
It stands upright, a thick vein running along the top as the head strains red. It looks almost as if that line pulses, encouraged by the purplish lines that sit underneath the surface. A new pearl sits at the tip of him, pearlescent as it rolls down the length of his cock, already sticky and stained creamy white from the mess in his trousers. It’s fat and it’s long and you can’t imagine that fitting inside you.
You must’ve voiced your fears aloud because Bucky is then saying, “Don’t worry, mon couer. We’ll make it fit.”
He lifts you up, drawing a squeal from your lips, as he wraps your legs around his waist. The head rests against your entrance, the sight of it already has your pussy drooling over the tip, like it’s preparing for his cock.
“She’s excited to have me,” he muses quietly, “she’s dripping. So eager to have me. You haven’t been filled before, have you? You’ve never had another man touch you?”
You must’ve taken a moment too long to respond, too preoccupied with the incredulity of the situation.
The low roar sounding from Bucky’s chest has you looking at him. Fury claws at his eyes, the usual bright blue shifting darker as he sneers. His hands tighten around your hips. “Has anyone else touched you? Who is it? Is it the stableboy? I’ve seen the way he looks at you. I’ve been meaning to replace him—”
“Bucky, god, no. Nobody!” You pant, “Where would I find the time?”
“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you? I know your good heart would want to protect them.”
Your lips curl. “No, I would have no reason to lie to you.
“Good, because I fear the dire action I would’ve had to take if you told me otherwise.”
“I’m not yours to own, Bucky,” you snap.
“That’s where you’re wrong, sweet girl. You’ve always belonged to me, whether you knew it or not. You’re mine and I’ll kill anyone who even dares to think about you.” Another surprised sound escapes your lips and Bucky only smirks. “This pussy especially. I’ll shape it to the size of me, you won’t ever know pleasure with anyone else. I’ll train her to only please me and only me.”
Before you can admonish him for acting so barbaric, Bucky notches the tip into you. You can already feel the stretch, your pussy resisting the entry of something so… large. So imposing. But he pays it no mind; instead, he uses your own juices to lubricate his entry as he pushes slowly into you, inch by inch.
He drives deep inside of you, swift and merciless the first time, to yank a gasp from your throat. Another expletive leaves his lips as his head rolls back, eyes slamming closed as he relishes in the feel of your cunt wrapping around him.
Your entire body is under a spell, experiencing something otherworldly that no language you know could describe. It burns like you’ve been placed on a stake to be set ablaze, like every atom in your body is being torn apart and rearranged. It’s divine deliverance in the pain, but one that provides you with the kind of relief you don’t expect.
“You feel so—” he chokes as he drags himself out before pushing back in, faster this time, the slide easier. The ache still screams between your legs but you let them fall apart anyway, allowing Bucky to take control over the situation.
His name falls from your lips — this time as a plea, but you can’t tell if you’re begging for him to stop or to go faster. You want to get past the hurt, want to feel the sort of pleasure that you’ve only heard whispers about. But at the same time, a small piece of you relishes in that pain — it reminds you that you’re human, that this is new, that this is real, and that Bucky is right here with you.
“So tight, so fucking wet. You’re completely soaking my cock, sweet girl. I always knew you were meant for me, this pussy was made for me. No one else can ever see you like this, do you understand me?”
Bucky jerks his hips forward, his arms under your knees, hands on your ass as he presses you against the wall. The surface is solid against your spine, holding you upright as he fucks up into you. His grunts are muffled into your neck as he breathes you in, like your scent fuels the fire in his veins.
When you don’t respond, too drunk off the sensations of Bucky driving into you at a pace that has you delirious, he punctuates one thrust particularly hard.
“I asked, do you understand me?”
A sob crawls out of your throat as you nod, tears leaking down your eyes. He doesn’t apologize for your cries, he knows you better than that. These tears are from the overwhelming waves of emotion, the heightened tension that grips your lungs until you can’t seem to find the capability to breathe.
“You feel like heaven, my love. I’ll fuck you to the shape of my cock, until you can’t take anyone else but me — until you won’t even consider taking anyone else. I’ll ensure everyone in this kingdom knows that I’ve defiled you, that you’ve taken my mark on your skin and inside of you. I’ll ensure that you will only be mine.”
The shame settles hard and fast in the pits of your stomach. If everyone could see you like this, pinned outside against a wall by the prince, fucked like a whore in heat with your pussy clamping down around him, you could never show your face again. A desecrated maid who couldn’t keep her legs shut for a prince.
Anyone would be lucky to have him, but no one in their right mind would let even the crown prince take them before marriage. They would rather die than be labeled a slut. A harlot. You would be the bane of your family, no one would speak of you again and you would be banished to the outerlands.
But this is Bucky and even the concept of him keeping you as his dirty little secret only sends thrills through your veins.
“Bucky, you can’t—”
He laughs, dark and sinister. Like the idea of him unable, unallowed to do anything is absurd. “I’m the crown prince, sweet girl. I am the future of this kingdom. What I say goes. If I say you are mine then it is true. No one will come within a foot of you. Not after I’m done with you. I’ll make sure everyone sees the marks of my affection for you. I’ll imprint them in places everyone can see and other places that nobody will ever see.”
His words have your heart clenching in mortification and a humiliating level of arousal. The debasement of your character, the degradation of your morality — apparently none of it means anything if it means you have Bucky between your legs and his cock buried deep inside your cunt.
“I’ve laid my claim on you. No one else will ever touch you. You—” thrust “—are—” thrust “—mine.”
Staying true to his promise, his fingers dig deep into your flesh. Deep enough that you’ll surely carry those bruises with you for some time. The litter of prints on your neck and above your breasts will have to be covered by your high necklines, gowns that would only raise suspicion in the summer.
But most of all — the taking of your virginity, your purity plucked from your hands and placed into Bucky’s — is the kind of mark you will never undo.
Bucky is too lost in his own pleasure, too focused on delivering you to your second peak of the night to recognize the telltale signs of your climax approaching. Your whines crescendoing, the stutter of your heartbeat as your fingers sink into his shoulders. His name spilling from your mouth in an uneven rhythm.
“I will cum in you, sweet girl. I’ll fill you up with so much cum, I’ll have you dripping all the way home, I’ll make sure you’re leaking all over the carriage before I take you again in my chambers. Gods, I’ll tie you to my bed, make sure that you’ll never deny me again.”
Your heart smashes into your chest, threatening to catapult out with his warning. For some godforsaken reason, the idea of being Bucky’s plaything — tied up with no other purpose than to serve his pleasure — has you gasping in desire, your legs closing in around him as you feel your senseless craving crescendo.
“You want that, don’t you? You just want to be my pussy. Keep your legs open, this pretty cunt dripping yours and my cum all over my sheets. My darling girl is nothing but a whore who wants cock to keep her plugged up at all times. You won’t have to worry about a thing ever again.”
“Bucky, please—”
“I’ll breed you until you carry my heir.”
That jars you awake and you’re scrambling, a conflicting concoction of pure, unadulterated want with the terrifying fear of the consequences to follow. “You can’t! Bucky, you have to stop. You can’t get me—” you hiccup, “—you can’t get me pregnant. Your heir has to come from a proper bloodline.”
“I no longer care about propriety and bloodlines. They have kept us apart long enough. I’m the crown prince and, what I want, I get. What I want is you and you alone. Why would I need some uptight, prissy noblewoman who doesn’t know how to cum around her husband’s cock?”
“Bucky!” You gasp as he fucks you hard and fast. His pace is unrelenting and every slide of his cock inside you scrambles every single sensible thought in your mind.
“And I have you — I can feel your pussy choking me. You — while you’re getting fucked outside with the risk of someone finding us. Yet, look at that, you’re squeezing me even tighter, my love. I always knew you were made for me. Every inch of my depravity, you take it even further. You complete me.”
Your stomach coils with something deep and tight, an unknown force set out to subject you to the strongest cut of humiliating pleasure. As a proper woman, you shouldn’t take such words, even from a prince. You shouldn’t stoop so low as to attain this form of high.
However, your mind and your body and your heart do not align. While your rational mind screams at you to put a stop to this, your adoration for Bucky — now forced to surface after years of stomping on it and swallowing it with guilt — and your pure primal need — what many consider to be your purpose — join and meld to push you to keep going.
To chase after this sought-after pleasure that few can even dream about. If the cost of is to reduce your dignity and pride, then so be it.
“And now, I will complete you,” Bucky murmurs sweetly before he shoves himself inside you over and over again until you’re a weeping mess, your legs quaking as your body slides up against the wall with every thrust. Tears leak down your face, destroying Becca’s efforts to make you look beyond yourself.
But all that physical destruction is worth it when your insides are being remade.
With one final thrust, Bucky spills inside you. Warmth coating every part of your walls, thick, clinging onto your skin like it’s marking you with a permanent mess. Your second climax twists inside your gut, rising up to your chest to constrict your lungs as your pussy curls tight around him. His need to complete you is complemented by your own need for the same. Your walls keep him in, trapped, until every single drop is milked from his cock and buried deep inside your cunt.
Bucky doesn’t let up, he fucks into you until he’s groaning sensitive against your neck. His breathing is even hotter than before, each exhale like a furnace in the middle of the desert.
“I’m not done with you yet.”
Those words no longer spark fear, but zealous anticipation.
Then Bucky takes you again — you on your feet, him behind you as he fucks you against the wall, your breasts in his hands to hold him steady as he cums into you again, the milky white seeping out from where you two are joined. But then he misses your face too much so he grabs your chin, turns you to face him, and devours you in a messy kiss that has your teeth clicking almost painfully.
Then he has you laid out over his clothes, your back on the floor, your knees and thighs against your torso, as he fucks deep inside you, promising you that it’ll take this time. That he’ll try as many times as he needs to until his seed takes.
Then you’re on your hands and knees as Bucky pounds into you from behind, his thighs slapping against yours, his fingers reaching around to your clit in intentional circles that have your body quivering underneath him, and he doesn’t stop until you’re cumming around his cock and he’s filling you up with another load.
Then you’re cleaning him up, the taste of his cum and your pussy a more potent substance than all the liquor in the nation combined. The thick liquid spurts down your throat like you’re being fed your dessert, a treat for having done so well.
And again and again and again.
For a while, you forget that Bucky is relentless only due to the poison in his veins, his depraved hunger only exacerbated by the delicious textures of your cunt around his cock. An addiction that he could never suppress.
When both your limbs finally give and enough of the toxins have been excreted — inside you, mind you, the two of you slump down on top of both your clothes. A mess of damp fabrics and fluids that even the best solvents in the kingdom could never remove.
Bucky turns over to you with a groan — the same sound that’s been rattling inside your mind, the same sound that will surely affix to every crevice inside your brain for weeks, if not months — and slumps an arm over your waist.
He nuzzles his face against your cheek, a small chuckle tickling your face. He hums, pleasantly exhausted. You’re a disarray of tangled limbs and gummy skin. You can’t help but laugh too.
“Why are you laughing?” He smiles, leaning down to press a kiss on your bare shoulder. Somewhere along the way, you’ve stripped yourself of your final layer too, leaving you completely nude.
The circumstances are far from believable. If you had told yourself that this was how your night would end, even your wildest imagination couldn’t have conjured up this conclusion. “I can’t believe we’re doing this in the middle of Lady Romanoff’s ball.”
“She would skin us alive if she knew,” he smirks.
“Yes, she would.”
The third, unexpected voice has the two of you jumping, your fingers immediately reach for more clothes to cover you up, at the same time Bucky also drapes his jacket over your body.
Lady Romanoff stands closer towards the land, where the water doesn’t extend. She then approaches, oil lamp in hand. You can’t unriddle whether her expression is contemptuous disgust or unpredicted amusement.
Meanwhile, the two of you are still clad in nearly nothing, only the moonlight to cast shadows that cloak you.
“Lady Romanoff, I apologize profusely. We didn’t mean any disrespect—”
Bucky’s quick to interject. “It was entirely my fault. I have been subjected to… urges that were outside my control. It was a substance, you see.”
His words have your heart palpitating in an uneven rhythm. The words land unexpected sharp, like a piercing wound straight through your beating organ.
Urges that were outside my control.
This was never meant to happen. You and Bucky. This night. All of it is a fever dream. A product of your desires catalyzed by a chemical compound. Bucky never would’ve done it otherwise; the two of you have always run in parallel lines, never meant to intersect.
All of his words — sweet nothings.
Just like this evening.
“I’m fully aware of the substance you speak of, I am frankly surprised that you would be so careless as to consume it at such a public place, your royal highness,” Lady Romanoff muses.
Bucky winces, scratching the back of his ear awkwardly. “I stumbled and the container had been loose. Unfortunately, I was forced to consume nearly all of it — at least, what didn’t end up on my clothing.”
Lady Romanoff only hums thoughtfully. “If I remember correctly, the aftermath to this substance would be a deep sleep. Rather fast, I’m afraid.” This time, she turns to look at you. “I shall set up a room for the two of you — you can enter through the back. Most of my regular staff is gone and I’ll arrange for my lady-in-waiting to prepare it. She is most discreet.”
“We can—” Bucky stops then, seeming caught off guard by the sudden dizzying spell. He sways slightly, words slurring together in a jumbled mess before he falls against you. His breathing even.
“It appears my memory serves me well,” she says, voice tinged with unexpected pride. “Come, my dear.”
As promised, most of the party has dwindled down to a few inebriated guests that Lady Romanoff organizes to be delivered home in their respective carriages. You and Bucky have been set up in a wing far from the prying eyes, this is where they’ve restricted most of Lady Romanoff’s staff, only the trusted are allowed.
Her lady-in-waiting and her most trusted butler had been sent to help carry Bucky back — of course, after you properly dress him. No explanation was provided beyond the crown prince getting “ill from the food”, but you assume that they suspect something else is at play, particularly when you yourself look like you’ve been mauled by a wild beast.
After Bucky has been settled into his room and you’ve been provided your own as a guest, which you insisted against, but Lady Romanoff insisted against your insistence, her staff is sent away. Bucky snores quietly on the bed, he’s been in and out. He was somewhat awake long enough to help the butler walk him back into the mansion, enough to plop himself down on the mattress.
Your heart is uneasy with worry but Lady Romanoff touches your shoulder. “He should be fine. He has most of it out of his system, I presume?” She cocks an eyebrow. Heat crawls up your neck as you nod. “Then he will recover by morning. He may be weary for a while but he’s in good hands.”
“Thank you for your generosity, Lady Romanoff,” you murmur, “I do apologize for the inconvenience and my… impudence.”
“No apologies needed. I spoke to Wilson and he’s received an earful from me about bringing untested substances — in unsealed containers, at that.” She pauses then turns to you, “You’ve been quite the kind… relative, for a distant one.”
She knows. You know that she knows. She knows that you know that she knows.
This is a mess.
“Yes, I’m rather used to caring for him,” you clear your throat, and then realize what you’ve just said. “In a way where he’s almost like my brother. We grew up together.” And that one isn’t a lie per se.
“I’m sure,” she says with a twinkle in her eye. “Well, take my words with a grain of salt, but I would like to ask you to proceed with caution. You seem to be a smart woman, I’ve seen you with Becca, how you manage to fit right in with society. While I am a romantic at heart, I am also a realist — and the truth is that the challenge will lie with you. As the crown prince, he will be untouched. Unharmed. The realm will protect him before it will protect a woman.”
“I understand that,” you nearly sigh, glancing back at Bucky.
It’s what you’ve always known — your position in society. It’s why you never accepted Bucky’s advances, nor your own feelings regarding him. It’s easier to pretend that it doesn’t exist, that you aren’t in love with the crown prince as a mere maid — even if it hurts.
“But his royal highness is also a good man. I’m sure he will choose wisely,” Lady Romanoff smiles. “Now, please rest. I will arrange for separate carriages to deliver you both home in the morning.”
“I should return now—”
“What you should do is rest,” she presses with a pointed look. “Furthermore, I believe he could use some tending to tonight — in case he wakes or has… remaining urges.”
She’s teasing you, and it’s working because your face feels like it’s been trapped in a heatwave all day. “I’ll make sure he gets through the night and will depart first thing in the morning. I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you any further.”
“No inconvenience. This has perhaps been the most entertaining occurrence this season.” Her eyes are practically twinkling in delight.
Your teeth sink into your bottom lip. “Lady Romanoff, please forgive me for overstepping, but if I could ask for your discretion regarding this matter—”
She waves you off with a reassuring smile. “You need not ask. I understand the position you are in and I would never trouble another woman more than necessary. I also would not enjoy making an enemy out of the palace and I doubt the crown prince would let things slide if anything were to happen to his precious lover.”
Your mouth opens to correct her, she gives you a look that tells you not to even attempt to lie to her. You technically wouldn’t be fibbing.
After all, it was only his urges that allowed him to do such things to you tonight. At the end of the day, you’re still nothing more than a maid — a member of the royal staff. A lover is what you are not.
“Have a good evening, dear.”
“You as well, Lady Romanoff.”
Once she leaves the room, you go to check on Bucky one last time before you move to your own room; it is an adjacent space, connected by a door should you need access to his room. That distance, while small, still feels much too large.
You pull the blanket up higher on his waist, brush the wet strands away from his face as you check his temperature again. His fever has come down plenty, he’s at least broken through it and now he’s simply sweating out the rest.
With that, you pull your hand away and ready yourself to move to your own room.
Except, you don’t get the chance, not when you feel those familiar fingers wrap around your hand before you could move. You whirl around to find Bucky drowsily looking up at you. His eyes glow in the moonlight spilling through the massive windows.
“Stay,” he murmurs.
“Your royal highness, I should return to the chambers Lady Romanoff has provided. If the staff were to return, I wouldn’t want to have to explain the circumstances.”
“How many times have I told you not to call me that?” He says, but there’s no bite to his words, only affection.
You swallow thickly, chancing another look at your door.
“Stay,” he insists again, “please.”
Who are you to deny the crown prince? Your frail heart can’t seem to do that, not when it could be your last evening with him.
So, you slide under the covers when he makes room with a giddy little smile. He tucks you into his chest and kisses the top of your head. “Sleep, sweet girl.”
And for once, you listen to him.
Come morning, the reality of the situation has carved itself deep into your bones. While you wake up in Bucky’s warmth, his arms around you and your legs on top of each other, you know that this is the last part of your dream. The epilogue. This will be nothing more than a memory, maybe even the figment of one.
You swiftly clean yourself up, ensuring that you are properly clothed and presentable before you make your way to where Lady Romanoff had directed you. She is nowhere to be found but a carriage has been arranged to take you back to the palace. The sun hasn’t even risen when you slipped out of bed.
With one last look at Bucky who’s still sleeping peacefully, you take your leave.
You’re back early enough that none of the staff are awake yet, but you also can’t bring yourself to sleep. The gown Becca had lent you hangs by your door quietly, a stark reminder of the evening you thought you had crafted in your mind. You turn over to ignore it.
However, slumber doesn’t find you and so you begin your duties early. The princess’ gown, the tea, everything a lady-in-waiting should do in the palace.
It’s expected that Becca has questions about where you went last night. She was frantic with worry at the thought of losing you somewhere, or if something had happened to you that she refused to leave.
“Lady Romanoff informed me that you and Bucky had returned earlier because he was ill,” she says, forehead creasing with lines, “I apologize that your night was ruined by my brother. I was hoping you would enjoy the remainder of the ball.”
“I enjoyed it plenty already, don’t worry,” you smile. “Thank you for giving me that opportunity.”
“Well,” she eagerly presses, “were there any handsome bachelors that caught your eye?”
Only one and he is the one you certainly cannot have.
“No, I believe we were out there to assess the men for your own relationship.”
Becca blushes, fanning her face. “No, no one of importance.” She’s never been a good liar. “Okay, there was one but Bucky would kill me if I tried. Have you ever noticed how attractive Lord Rogers is? He also has such a kind heart.”
If he had a kind heart, he would’ve stopped Bucky from taking that ridiculous substance, you think bitterly, unfairly.
“I’m sure he is,” you only say.
“How was your evening then? Did you really not see anyone to your liking?”
You smile softly at her. “Princess, even if there were, it would not be my place.”
“That’s rather unprogressive of you! I’m sure there are suitors who would care little about such trivial things.”
Naive, hopeful Becca. This is why you love her.
Before you can respond, Becca perks up and waves behind you. You turn and that’s when you see him — Bucky. He’s crossing the ground with long strides like a man possessed. He’s a man on a mission as he wastes no time at all in closing the distance.
He looks furious.
He also looks an outright mess — shirt unbuttoned, sleeves haphazardly folded, hair sticking up at odd angles. It looks as if he rolled right out of bed at the Romanoff house and came straight here. Here to this garden that you’re walking with Becca.
You have a feeling that that’s exactly what he did.
“Brother, you’re looking much better—”
“You left,” he instead speaks directly to you.
You grit your teeth, doing your best to avoid Becca’s look of utter confusion. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean, your royal highness.”
“I thought we’ve established that we’re past that level of formality,” he snaps, “I’m not letting you escape this conversation. If you’ll excuse me, sister dear, I need to have a little chat with this one.” His hand covers yours, none of the gentleness from last night, instead he squeezes it tight like he’s afraid of you slipping away again.
Becca doesn’t follow, she’s too busy gaping and slowly piecing things together.
All the while Bucky is dragging you stumbling and tripping over your own feet towards a more secluded part of the gardens, away from the curious eyes.
You’re trying to pry his fingers off you to make your escape. “Bucky, stop. Stop this.”
He does stop dead in his tracks but he immediately spins around to face you. “No, you stop,” he growls and the sound shoots straight for your chest. “After last night, after everything that’s happened, you simply – what — leave? I woke up and you were nowhere to be found. Lady Romanoff was the one who had to tell me that you departed earlier.”
“I had to return to my duties first,” you say brusquely, “I have responsibilities to tend to, your royal highness. It also would have been inappropriate and highly suspicious if we arrived at the same time.”
“Damn propriety,” he barks, eyes glowering, “I think you should cross that word off your vocabulary after last night.”
Said last night flashes before your eyes, like paintings that could force a priest to pray. You’re warm all over now, the ghost of his touch on your skin, his mouth mapping out every inch of you like he’s memorizing the dips and curves of your body. The feel of his cock, hot and wet, sliding inside you, spilling evidence that took you far too long to clean last night.
Even now, you can almost still feel it dripping down your legs.
“You left,” Bucky presses.
“You weren’t yourself last night. Like you said, they were urges as a consequence of the substance you accidentally took. It was nothing more than a fulfillment of the circumstances.”
He scoffs, “I said that to Lady Romanoff, not to you. I did not want her to hold you responsible for the state we were in. To me, last night was— last night was everything.”
The lump in your throat only grows, tears prick your eyes. He can’t do this. Not now. You’ve made your decision to let that dream go.
“It shouldn’t have happened,” you whisper.
“Shouldn’t have happened?” He echoes, aghast. “Is that regret I hear in your voice?”
“Bucky…”
“Because I don’t regret it. Not a single damn thing. I want you, I’ve always wanted you. I’ve made it very clear that I love you and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. If I had to give it all up, I would — if that meant that I could finally hold you.”
“You can’t say such things!” You hiss, “You are the crown prince!”
“And sometimes I wish I wasn’t! Because it would make this easier, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t have to restrain yourself every time you speak with me. You wouldn’t have to call me such ridiculous titles when all I want is for you to say my name. Because I know you love me, I know you do. You can’t look at me the way you do and expect me to believe that you don’t feel anything for me.”
Your heart splits down the middle, parts of it chipping away. “I— it doesn’t matter how I feel or what I want. You have a long line of noble ladies waiting for you to make your choice—”
“I’ve already made my choice and damn anyone else who gets in my way. I’ve already had a taste of you, my love. I’m never letting you slip through my fingers again. I’ll speak to my parents—”
“Don’t!” You interrupt. “Please don’t. It’s— it won’t be you who would suffer the consequences. If they know of what… we did, if they know that it goes far beyond the previous evening, it wouldn’t be you they punish. My mother and I…” Your sentence trails off as your voice cracks.
Bucky cups your face, presses his forehead against yours. “I wouldn’t dare let a thing happen to you.”
“It’s not your choice.”
“It is. If they want me to be their heir, this is my choice. They have to make theirs.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No, that’s love.”
You swallow thickly as he leans back only slightly, pained like he can’t even bear this amount of distance between the two of you.
“I love you. I love you and that’s a fact truer than the sun that spills light onto this earth. I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise to care for you, to cherish you. I promise to be a man fit for you. I won’t be perfect because god knows nobody in this world could deserve you, but I’ll always try my damndest to make you happy.”
“Bucky,” you breathe out..
“Say yes. Say you’ll be mine. You’ve made me wait all this time. All these years wasted. Don’t let us forego anymore.”
Could you really do this? It would be a risk — not only to you, but to your mother, to the staff. They would be questioned if they’ve ever encouraged your entanglement with the prince. Becca — oh god, what would Becca even think? It would be an incredibly selfish decision.
“Don’t do that,” Bucky murmurs as he tightens his fingers around your face, “don’t think about anyone else. Think about you and what you want.”
You want him. You do.
“You’re mine regardless, sweet girl. I’ll protect you no matter what you decide. My heart is yours.”
“Yes,” you whisper and the answer comes easier than you think, “yes. I’m yours.”
Bucky lets out a wet laugh, blue eyes glistening as he presses his lips against yours. “You’re mine. I’ll protect you, I swear it.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know,” he rasps, “I know. Thank you for trusting me. I promise to do right by you. No matter what happens, know that my entire life is yours. I’d burn the kingdom down before I let anyone lay a finger on you.”
“Becca might get to you first,” you choke out a laugh.
Bucky swipes the tears from your cheeks with the pads of this thumb. “Then maybe I will have to take your protection first.”
“Deal.”
+ sam: my google searches from this are so embarrassing but hey i tried. i havent written bucky in a hot second but this one took me by the throat so i hope you enjoyed it!!! i love hearing thoughts so please share them if you liked it <3
@biteofcherry @poindextersgirlforever can't drop this here and not expect me to melt. 🫠
Just imagine Bucky. Thick torso. Broad shoulders and chest. Big arms. Soft stomach. Visible strength beneath his calm and slightly gruff demeanor. Various parts of his body covered in tattoos and scars that tell stories.
Makes sure you eat, and he's a great cuddler.
His body is a built-in heated blanket and he has the most watchful blue eyes, okay?
Summary: Your father sends Bucky to bring you home.
Word Count: 300
Playlist Prompt: Say Something - A Great Big World & Christina Aguilera / “It was over my head”
Warnings: Mention of arranged marriage (not to Bucky), mob AU, possessive behavior, Bucky Barnes (he's a warning, okay?).
A/N: Day 17 of the June Jukebox Scribbles Challenge by @societynsoelsscribbles . ❤️ Not beta read and written on my phone, so any and all mistakes are my own. Divider by the talented @saradika-graphics. Please follow @navybrat817-sideblog for new fics and notifications as I no longer do taglists. Comments, reblogs, feedback are loved and appreciated!
You didn’t even make far when Bucky Barnes found you.
Of course, your father sent his best enforcers to track you down. He probably thought it would soften the blow since it was Bucky. You trusted him most of all out of his men.
Bucky looked almost bored leaning against his car, his hair blowing in the light breeze. You liked the leather jacket on him. You half expected him to show up on his bike, but that wouldn’t be practical if you tried to fight.
He’d win anyway.
“I’m not going back,” you told him, your eyes as defiant as your tone.
He sighed, but he made no move to grab you yet. “You shouldn’t have run.”
“And my dad shouldn’t try to force a marriage on me, but here we are,” you snapped.
You stupidly thought Bucky would speak up for you when your dad said the alliance with a total stranger would strengthen the families. It was a foolish thought. You weren’t together.
But you hoped…
And I am feeling so small
It was over my head
I know nothing at all
You backed up when Bucky suddenly moved toward you in purposeful strides. There was violence in his eyes. But he would never hurt you.
“And you should’ve trusted me to handle it,” he said through his teeth.
Your heart pounded. Bucky hardly ever let his emotions show. That was a reason why your dad liked him. He was lethal. Efficient.
Cold.
Not like this.
“I-”
He gripped your chin tenderly. “Do you really think I’ll sit back while you marry someone else?”
Your eyes widened.
Did… Bucky want you?
“Get in the car,” he ordered gently. “And trust me.”
You didn’t want to go back.
But you had to trust that Bucky had a plan.
He has to have a plan, right? Love and thanks for reading. ❤️
Happy (Belated) International Fairy Day! Do you think Miss Abby would leave out treats for fairies?
-Zombie
Zombie!! 🥰
This is the first time I've heard of International Fairy Day but it definitely seems like something The Gumdrops would be interested in! 😊
It's International Fairy Day and you and Bucky have the Gumdrops for the day. All 3 are dressed up as fairies with wings.
"You know what's, Mr Bucky?" Chloe's hand is held securely in Bucky's vibranium one, as they make their way down the sidewalk.
A small chuckle escapes Bucky, "Nope, what, Chloe?" The similarities of his daughter's best friends aren't lost on him.
"I so 'cited it's Fairy Day! Too bad A'pine no can comes wit us." Chloe's fallen in love with the family cat and she's the only Gumdrop that Alpine will tolerate.
Mia chimes in from Bucky's right side, "Me too, Mr Bucky!"
"And me, Papa!" Abby yells from behind. He glaces back at Abby holding your hand, doing her version of skipping by your side, fairy wings bouncing with every stride. "I so 'cited!"
Your little group is headed to "Books of Wonder," an independent bookstore that specializes in children's literature in Midtown Manhattan. They have an in-store event for Fairy's Day, with storytelling & crafts. You thought it'd be perfect for the little girls.
You arrive and there's a good crowd of children that showed up. Bucky helps you check the girls in & you're directed to the back of the store, where they are getting ready to start storytime. "You sit wit us, Mama."
"Thank you, Abby, but I'm too big. They need room for the other children. I'll be right over there with Papa," you say pointing to Bucky leaning against the bookshelf waving as he sees you looking his way.
"Ok, but don't weave us here."
"Never!! I promise. We'll be right there."
The storyteller read them 3 stories and had them get ready for crafts. They rolled up the carpets and brought in little tables and chairs.
"Mama! We can make faiwy wands or faiwy HOUSES!" Abby and the girls are all hopping up and down."
Knowing it's the wrong answer, Bucky asks, "So, we're making wands?"
"No, Mr Bucky!"
"We want houses so we can leave snacks and dey come visit wit us!"
"Papa, you know how cool it will be when we has fairy fwends?? We puts snacks in da houses so dey want to visits us."
"Ooooh! I understand now." The girls shake their heads at Bucky. Silly old man.
@kjah97 @ozwriterchick @buckysdoll85 @missvelvetsstuff @soa-queen @mega-kittyglitter-1 @lex-is-up-all-night-to-get-bucky @massivescissorsthingperson You guys!! 🥰 Thank you so much for reading a sharing!! 😘
Summary: Chris has no regrets when it comes to you.
Word Count: 300
Playlist Prompt: Pink Pony Club - Chappell Roan / “Every night's another reason why I left it all”
Warnings: Established relationship, fluff, having a baby with Beck, Chris Beck (he's a warning, okay?).
A/N: Day 10 of the June Jukebox Scribbles Challenge by @societynsoelsscribbles . ❤️ Not beta read and written on my phone, so any and all mistakes are my own. Divider by the talented @saradika-graphics. Please follow @navybrat817-sideblog for new fics and notifications as I no longer do taglists. Comments, reblogs, feedback are loved and appreciated!
Chris Beck was a responsible guy.
He had to be in his line of work. Being a flight surgeon meant he took care of others, making sure the crew members were healthy, fit, and able to perform their duties safely. He did his job well. He always had.
But when the opportunity for a new mission came up, he turned it down.
Because he had a new responsibility now.
He smiled gently as he stood in the nursery doorway, watching you hold your son as you rocked in the chair. The sight warmed his heart. Being away from you would’ve been tortuous enough. Being away from you and his son? He couldn’t do it.
He was needed here.
“How’s CJ doing?” he asked when you looked up.
You thought CJ would be a cute nickname for Chris Jr., and he agreed.
“Needy for attention, like his father,” you teased.
He laughed and walked over, crouching down to give his son a kiss on the top of his head. “Of course, we’re needy for your attention. You’re my wife. You’re his mother.”
You smiled at him. “Well, we love having your attention, too,” you said, your smile fading just a touch. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“You sure you don’t regret turning that mission down?”
His brows furrowed before his lips touched your forehead. “I will never regret it,” he promised.
The stars reminded him how vast and wondrous the universe could be, but he had his entire world right in front of him.
Every night’s another reason why I left it all.
You blinked away the mist in your eyes. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he whispered, giving his sleepy son a tender smile when he wrapped his small hand around his finger. “Love you, too, son.”
May I give him a family, please? Love and thanks for reading. ❤️
Summary: You and your friend play with a Ouija board in your new home.
Word Count: 300
Playlist Prompt: Living La Vida Loca - Ricky Martin / “I feel a premonition”
Warnings: Ouija board, soft dark vibes, creepy factor, Bucky Barnes (he's a warning, okay?).
A/N: Day 8 of the June Jukebox Scribbles Challenge by @societynsoelsscribbles . ❤️ Not beta read and written on my phone, so any and all mistakes are my own. Divider by the talented @saradika-graphics. Please follow @navybrat817-sideblog for new fics and notifications as I no longer do taglists. Comments, reblogs, feedback are loved and appreciated!
“I feel a premonition.”
You laughed a little. “This is a Ouija board. You don’t get premonitions from that.”
You weren’t sure how your friend, Beth, convinced you to do this in your new home. It was a little older and needed some work, but it was still nice. A perfect place to make a home.
Though for the few days you had been there, the rooms felt inexplicably cold at times. It felt like someone was watching you, especially when you were in the bathroom or bedroom. And you swore someone was whispering your name before you went to sleep.
But it had to be jitters since you lived alone.
No one was there except for you.
She rolled her eyes. “You’re no fun,” she joked, closing her eyes. “Is there someone here with us?”
“I don’t think-”
The planchette began to move, Beth’s eyes going wide when it landed on “YES.”
“That…” She swallowed hard. “That wasn’t me.”
“It wasn’t me either,” you said, your heart racing faster. “What’s your name?”
The planchette moved again, slowly stopping at five letters.
“Bucky,” you whispered.
“Who the hell is Bucky?” Beth asked.
You shrugged because you had no idea. “Are you the one watching me?”
“Watching you?” she questioned. “What the hell are you talking about?”
The planchette went back to the word “YES.”
You both froze. Beth had a terrible poker face, so you knew she wasn’t doing this. But spirits didn’t exist.
✦Bucky Masterlist - Main Masterlist - Read on aO3!✦
✦summary: you fell for bucky a long, long while ago. and you think about him, every day and every night. if only you knew that he thought about you too.✦
✦warnings/tags: bucky barnes x female!reader, friends to lovers, light emotional angst, everyone's bad at feelings, fluff, smut, plot and porn mix (dirty talk, use of sex toys , fingering, pussy eating like crazy, fantasization, praise kink, manhandling, perfectly "appropriate" use of bucky's metal arm, nipple play, dumbification, semi-public sex, dry humping, sensitive reader, finger sucking, masturbation, bucky gets nasty, body worship, overstimulation, mean!bucky, oral m!recieving, praise kink, monster dick bucky, he fucks like a machine), no use of y/n, no descrption of reader✦
✦wc: 7.5k✦
✦Author's Note: request! who wouldn't fantasize about bucky barnes?✦
You think you might be a freak.
Compared to everyone else in the building, you’re perfectly normal. On the outside. Where everyone can see. You don’t have any powers, and you’ve never been shot up with serums or infinity stones. You’re a human, with a sharp tongue and shaper brain, pretty features and a charming smile, and absolutely no desire to be anything else.
Tony even asked you once. If you’d consider it. The whole hero thing. You’d laughed and shaken your head. You told him that you’re not that kind of brave. That you prefer to stay behind the scenes, helping with the tech and med services. Tony had laughed with you, and remarked causally that you’d be good at it.
You’d smiled and waved him off. But he was wrong. Because you can’t be normal about anything.
You’re not casual. You’re obsessive, and quietly insane. You don’t become the top of your field like this while being anything else. It’s easy to contain yourself in this kind of work, in it’s order and chaos all at once. There are rules that you to follow, then break, and everyone praises you and you glow like a diamond catching sunlight.
Not absorbing it. Because it passes right through, and it’s never enough, and you get addicted to it. The praise, from these living gods. They all love you, and you bask in it, and then you look at him.
Bucky.
The only one who doesn’t praise you. Who doesn’t treat you like a good dog, bringing them treats and newspapers. When you met him, he barely treated you like anything at all. Tony had introduced you, he’d looked you up and down, shaken your hand, and walked away.
But you.
You’d been a fucking goner.
Bucky’s handsome in the way you used to only see in movies. Your exact type, from the hair to the eyes to the way he carries himself. Silent and in control, kind but not overly nice, polite without expectation. You’d made it two years without developing a crush on anyone. Somehow, surrounded by some of the world’s most handsome men, you’d maintained that tiny sliver of your sanity.
Then there was Bucky. And you lost yourself.
You’re not weird around him. You’re not a stalker, and you’re not that kind of insane. You’re perverted in the privacy of your head, drooling over his massive hands and muscles, but swallowing it before it leaks out of your lips. You don’t react when Tony says his name, save for a traitorous pulse in your cunt.
“You ready to look at his arm?” Tony asks, and you hum.
“Think so. Just maintenance?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Tony sighs. “I’d work on Terminator myself, but Cap says I spend the whole time looking like I want to throat chop him. So,” he shrugs. “Don’t look like you wanna throat chop him.”
You laugh softly, and grab the tools off the bench. It’s not a big deal. You’re the only person besides Tony, in the whole building, who’s qualified to work on Bucky’s arm.
But that means you get to be close to him. Just the thought of it makes your skin hot, your heart buzzing more than thumping, your fingers fidgeting with the straps of your toolkit as you restlessly wait.
Bucky says your name, and your head shoots up. He’s there. He’s right there, and watching you with those careful, beautiful eyes.
“Hi,” you say, and it sounds so pathetically breathless.
Bucky tilts his head. His hair looks soft. You want to run your fingers through it, to pull on it, to feel it tickling over your face as he ruts into your drooling pussy-
He’s staring at you. He must’ve said something that you didn’t hear. Fuck.
“What?”
His lips twitch. Just the smallest movement up, almost impossible to catch. Your heart skips, and you almost miss his words again.
“You the one workin’ on me today?” His voice is low. It rolls through the air like thunder.
You wonder, if there’s any part of him that isn’t addictive.
You’re here for a job. You’re here to give him medical treatment. You plaster a sweet smile on your face, and gesture to the chair. You can be normal about this.
“Tony has bad bedside manner,” you say smoothly, and Bucky chuckles.
God, that’s worse than the smile. It echoes through your chest, and you almost choke on it. How fucking bad you want him.
“He does call me Schwarzeneggerevery time I’m here,” he mutters, crossing the room. “Don’t even know what that means.”
You hum, pretending to look at your tools. He’s sitting down next to you. Your knees are bumping. You’re normal. “Arnold Schwartzinagor. Actor who played the Terminator.”
“Ah.” Bucky pauses. “Sam calls me that, too. It a good movie?”
“It’s fine.” You shrug. “If you like stuff from the 80s.”
“I don’t know things from the 80s.”
You laugh softly, and look up with an apology on your tongue. You find Bucky staring at you, and your breath catches in your throat.
His eyes are so intense, you think they can see right through you. To the lust, pounding in your bloodstream. You have to open your mouth to breathe. Bucky’s eyes flick down. Just tracking a movement. Nothing about you.
You kick yourself internally, and push the casual smile back into place.
“I think you’d like some of it.” You reach for his arm, and Bucky turns it palm up, still staring at you. “I mean, any decade will have it’s ups and downs.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” You run your fingers over the plates of metal, and for a second, forget all about the Bucky attached to them. It’s a beautiful artwork of technology. Overlapping, gold-inlaid, smooth under your fingers. You turn the wrist slowly, and there’s only a faint whir. No clicks. Shuri must be using a muffler, or some kind of fluid that moves the wires instead of gears-
“You want me to go?”
Your head shoots up, a panicked flush spreading over your cheeks. “No- No- I- I’m just-“
Bucky raises his brows, light amusement dancing in his eyes. Your words falter. He’s fucking with you.
“Shut up,” you roll your eyes, and Bucky chuckles again.
God, that sound. It’s going to be the death of you.
“It’s just- It’s amazing technology.” You mumble defensively, and Bucky shrugs.
“I can tell, from the way you’re eye fuckin’ it.”
“Eye fucking.” You shake your head, biting back your smile. “How do you even know what that means?”
“Too much time with Sam.”
“Hm,” you grab your screwdriver, running your hands up the mock muscle—he should be thanking Shuri even more, she didn’t have to give him biceps—looking for a panel. “Tony told me you weren’t going to talk.”
“Tony’s got that bad bedside manner,” Bucky shrugs with his good arm. “You gonna be nicer to me, doll?”
You just hum, ducking your head to hide your flush. Doll. He called you doll.
And Bucky huffs an amused laugh, at your non-answer. But he keeps talking to you. He tells you what Sam’s already gotten him to watch, and what Steve’s trying to get him to watch next, and what Steve’s saving so they can look at it together.
“Is Star Wars any good?” He asks, and you snort.
“Do you like cowboys?”
“I’m neutral.”
“Do you like space?”
“Yeah,” he pauses, then mutters, “I wanted to go to the moon. When I was a kid.”
You look up, and find a faraway look, etched over his handsome features. Your smile softens, and you lower your voice to a whisper, because this feels like a secret. “Yeah?”
Bucky nods, his eyes finding yours again. “I heard we got up there eventually.”
“We did. A few times.” It’s hard to hold his gaze. An unbearable ache is staring to pool between your thighs. “But now there are aliens on earth, so the final frontier is less… Coveted.”
Bucky’s lips twitch. It seems to be the closest he really gets to smiling. You want to see it over, and over, and over again.
“I think you’d like Star Wars.” You’re still whispering. You don’t know why.
“Alright,” Bucky says. And that’s it. He just… Trusts your words.
He asks for you again, next week. Tony claps you on the shoulder and thanks you, because Christ, he stares at me and I feel like I’m under surveillance. You roll your eyes and don’t respond. It doesn’t feel like that when Bucky stares at you, but he also does stare at everyone. So you’re not special. You’re just another person in his line of sight.
“I tried those donuts you were talkin’ about,” he tells you one afternoon, and you hum.
It’s the new routine. Bucky comes for you to work on his arm. You’re normal about it. You talk like people, and his lips twitch, and you feel something press on top of your chest, trying to gnaw your heart right open.
“Liked them,” he adds, staring at you. As always.
You hum, looking at him under your lashes. “Did you have the cookies and cream?”
He nods. “Just like you told me to.”
You smile despite yourself. It’s those small confirmations that he thinks about you, which get you the most. It means you mean something to him. It drives you insane.
“Sam says there are all kinds of ice cream flavors now, too.”
“Sam’s right.”
Bucky sighs. “Hate it when that happens.”
You laugh, a bubbly, pathetic sound that only Bucky pulls out of you. His fingers twitch under your hand, and you glance up.
It would be wise, if you stopped doing that. Every time you find him staring at you, you feel fucking insane.
“You should try cotton candy ice cream,” you murmur. “It’s fucking crazy.”
“That is my favorite kind of thing.”
“I know.”
Bucky’s lips twitch, and your heart almost bursts. “You got a good place? For ice cream?”
You shrug. “The grocery store?”
Bucky grunts, and his fingers twitch again. You focus back on his hand, because you don’t understand why they keep doing that. The rest of the session passes, and Bucky smiles at you before he goes, and you hold onto it like he just handed you a pearl-strung noose. Clutched between your teeth and priceless, but making your breathing short.
The rest of the day always passes in a daze, after you see Bucky. The seconds rush past you in an avalanche, and then you’re in your room, and you let it take over.
How much you want him. How much you need him.
You lay, flat on your back in bed, and let your thoughts run wild. Bucky’s massive hands, one cool and one burning hand, would wander up your thighs. He’d shove your knees open, and kiss over the sensitive, hidden patches of skin. The stubble he’s been growing would scrape and tickle, as he kissed over your weeping pussy.
“All for me?” He’d murmur, and you’d nod helplessly. “You just walk around, pussy leakin’ because of how bad you need it?”
And you’d whimper. You do. There’s nothing you can do to help it, but save that desire for locked doors and hot, tangled sheets. Your fingers—smaller than Bucky’s, but all you have—rub over the swollen lips of your pussy, spreading your arousal as you picture that it’s Bucky instead. You push one finger in slowly, then a second one because you need them to stretch you like Bucky’s would.
“Messy girl,” he’d coo in your ear, and your back arches. You start to fuck yourself, slow and tentative as your thoughts run wild.
This is what just one of his fingers would feel like. Pumping in and out of you, his palm grinding down on you clit until you’re trembling beneath him. You’d try to push up into his hand, but he’d shove you right back down and kiss over your throat. Licking and nipping and driving you out of your fucking mind.
“Buckyyyy...” You moan at the air, and when you squeeze your eyes shut you can almost feel him.
“There you go, babydoll,” he’d kiss under your ear, his body pressing over yours. Warm and massive, pinning you to the bed, forcing you to just take it. “That’s it. You like that, don’t you. Like fallin’ apart on my fingers.”
You whimper and grab at the sheets. Your wrist aches, and you can’t hit that gooey, wet spot inside you, but god you just need to cum.
“I know,” Bucky would hit deeper. Wet, lewd sounds would fill the room, as he pounded his fingers into you at an unforgiving pace. “I know, sweet girl. C’mon, show me how pretty you are when you cum.”
Your back arches off the bed. Your hand shoots over your mouth as you moan and cry out his name, your thighs shaking and pussy squeezing down on your fingers. You lay there for a while after you’re done, holding the sheets in a vague form of Bucky.
Tomorrow, you’re going to see him again. Maybe just over breakfast, or passing in the hall. But you’ll see him. And you’ll have to look him in the eyes, and pray that he can’t see it just under your features. That all he’d ever need to do it touch your head, and you’d fall to your knees.
You’re devoted to him. He thinks of you as a friend, and he’s not your boss, but he’s boss adject, and there’s nothing about him that’s accessible. There’s no world where this ever goes beyond fantasy.
But god, you’re going to fantasize. You can’t hurt anyone, by just fantasizing.
That’s what you’ll tell yourself over and over, to avoid the guilt.
It’s all just a fantasy.
You‘re perfectly professional about it. It’s not Bucky’s fault that he’s so handsome it feels like you shouldn’t be allowed to look at him. You can keep your desire bottled up, keep in the warmest, wettest pits of your stomach. It can seep out between your thighs when it becomes too much to bare. It can breed into itself and spread up into your heart, festering in the dark. But Bucky will never see it. You’ll be good, and you’ll act sane, and that will be it.
He’s been through too much already, to add your insatiable, ardors devotion to his list of problems.
You’ve developed an easy friendship. That’s all you’ll allow yourself to have, all you let yourself think about in his presence. When you’re working on his arm, you don’t think about those big, cold fingers being buried in your pussy until you’re alone in your room. All your daydreams are trapped in your sheets, and your moans absorbed and locked in your pillowcase.
You think about Bucky pinning you down with a warm, splayed hand on your abdomen. About his smirk, as he bullies three metal fingers into your pussy, forcing a perfect stretch before fucking you like a toy. His cold thumb swiping over your clit, sending shivers through your body. His eyes gleaming and attention burning, as he drags out orgasm after orgasm.
That hand would be like having a personal fuck machine, and he’d act like it until the very end. All taunting and teasing until you were spent and limp below him. Then he’d kiss the corner of your mouth, your cheek, the space between your eyes. He’d coo about what a good girl you were for him, and you’d whimper, your voice lost from screaming his name.
“What’re you thinking about?” Bucky says, sitting next to you at the kitchen counter.
You swallow, and shrug meekly. You never feel small around anyone but him, but you’ve never been this lost in anyone but him. It’s a miracle no one’s noticed, how Bucky shows up and suddenly you’re all flushed cheeks and girly giggles. You might as well be twirling your hair and kicking your feet. It’s pathetic. You can’t stop.
“Nothing?” Bucky pushes a little, and you give him a close-lipped, full smile.
“Nope.”
“You looked like you were thinkin’ about something.”
“I wasn’t.” You look back to the sandwich you’d been working on. Bucky keeps staring at you. He always does. “Nothing going on up here, Barnes.”
Bucky’s lips twitch.
The whole world seems brighter, like he’s just like some holy kind of candle.
“I don’t believe that,” he murmurs, and you shrug.
“You don’t have to.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“Good for you.”
“It is, isn’t it,” he chuckles. “I’m gonna love being right.”
You blink, shooting his a sideways look. “Being… Right?”
“I know you’re thinkin’ about something.” He shrugs. “I’ll figure out what.”
Oh. Under no circumstances can he find out what you’re thinking about. “It’s not anything interesting,” you try lamely, and Bucky smirks.
“Ah. So it’s something.”
“I- That’s-“ You sputter. “Why do you even care-“
“I like knowin’ what you’re thinking,” he shrug. “It’s always interesting.”
You blink at him. For some reason, that makes your throat close up, your eyes burning with embarrassing tears. Your knees are wobbling, and you’re sitting down. You grunt and look back to your sandwich, and Bucky chuckles.
“C’mon. Tell me.” He leans closer. There’s a gravity, from his heat, and it makes you want to just collapse over his chest.
You look at him from the corner of your eye, and you won’t tell him. That’s against the rules. It defeats the purpose.
But god, he’s looking at you. Really looking at you. You can count each shade of blue in his eyes. If you move just an inch, your noses might bump.
“I’m hungry,” you whisper, and Bucky’s brow knits.
He looks down to your sandwich. Then back to you. Adorable confusion flashes over his face. “You should… Uh- Eat.”
You nod, and he clears his throat, leaning back. You wish you could grab the collar of his shirt, and drag him back.
“You ever seen this thing called the Princess Bride?” He asks, not touching any food himself.
Just sitting there. With you. You try not to think about it too much.
You nod, chewing on your sandwich with puffed out cheeks. “’S a really good movie-“
“Chew then swallow, doll.” Bucky’s lips twitch, and you flush and obey.
“It’s a good movie,” you mumble, giving him a sheepish smile. “Sorry.”
Bucky shrugs, his gaze dropping to your mouth. Your breath hitches. You go perfectly still, afraid that if you shift, he’ll look away.
His tongue darts over his lips. He tips his head, his forearm flexes as he curls his fingers, and your breathing gets shallow. Something electric has shifted in the air, and it’s making you dizzy. Bucky reaches up slowly, and if you weren’t rooting in place, you think you’d fall out of your chair.
His thumb wipes the spot right above your lips, and a shock rushes through your body. His nostrils flare, his eyes lock onto yours, and his touch lingers.
When he pulls back, the movement is slow. Controlled. Your tongue flicks out, to lick where his thumb had been. Bucky’s nostrils flare.
There’s something on his thumb. Tiny little breadcrumbs that must’ve been stuck to your cheek from the sauce. Bucky brings the finger up to his mouth, holding your gaze, and sucks the crumbs away. Heat pools in your tummy, and your thighs press together.
Bucky stares at you. You grab the edge of your seat with white knuckles, trying to keep yourself from falling off.
“Crumbs,” he mutters, and you nod.
“Yeah.”
“I- Uh-“ He coughs, and looks away. Disappointment sinks like a boulder into your stomach.
You don’t know what you expected. Hell, you’ve told yourself what to expect. You’re not allowed to be disappointed by him. You’re not allowed to want anything from him, except for what your head can offer.
“Sam’s been tryin’ to make me watch it,” he mutters, and you blink.
“What?”
“Princess Bride.”
“Oh.” You’re still a little drunk on his proximity. He smells like something rich and spicy, and it’s fogging up your brain. “Cool.”
Bucky nods. “We’re gonna watch it next Friday. In that common room, where Stark makes us do game nights.” He gives you a sideways look. “I never see you at those.”
You shrug. “I’m not an Avenger.”
“Stark says you get invited.”
You do. But that would be a night of drinking and laughing and being closer to Bucky than you can handle, so you usually lock yourself in your room and pretend he’s fucking you stupid.
“You’re invited to movie night, too.” He adds casually, and you swallow.
Movie night. Where Bucky would be near you. In the dark. You can’t go there. You’ll lose your mind.
But he’s looking at you with such dim, cautious light in his eyes. There’s no expectations. Just hope. And it pulls the words out of you before you can stop them.
“Oh- Okay.”
Bucky beams, and that makes it worth it. The risk, that he might brush your hand in the dark and you’ll moan loud enough for everyone to hear.
He reaches up, and wipes a few more breadcrumbs from your cheeks. Time seems to stop, when he touches you. It’s dangerous, and you barely manage not to fall all over him before he pulls away.
“You get messy,” he mutters, and oh, God.
You shouldn’t have said yes. Why the fuck did you say yes. Now you’re going to have to sit next to him, after that.
You get messy. He has no idea.
That night, you end up back in your bed with a vibrator pressed over your panties. It makes the feeling stronger, with the friction of the fabric, and you toss your head back. It’s easier and easier to get lost in the fantasy, lately. The better you know him, the clearer it gets.
You can almost feel his hands, mapping over the curves and soft dips of your body. You can almost smell him.
He mouths at your breast, pinching and rolls your nipple between metal fingers. You make a broken, pathetic sound, and he smirks.
“I know, doll. Too much, isn’t it?”
You whimper, pressing the vibrator down. Bucky hums, his hand wrapping around yours, and your hips jerk when he angles it to shove right against your clit.
“Too much,” he coos, making out with the softness of your breast. “I’m barely even touchin’, and you’re already about to fuckin’ fall apart for me.”
Your eyes roll back, as Bucky starts to guide the vibrator up and down. Your mouth falls open in a long moan, as he grabs your hips and pushes them higher, further exposing your pussy. He bites at your nipple, then turns his attention to the neglected one. You writhe in the sheets, gasping his name, and he smiles.
“Dirty girl.” He pushes your hand back, just enough for him to rip away your panties, exposing your cunt to the cold air. “Look at that, pretty little pussy fuckin’ shining for me.”
You grind down, trying to find friction on the sheets. Bucky pushes the vibrator against your bare pussy, and your eyes roll back in your head. He starts kissing all over your chest, pawing at your breasts and swirling his tongue around you nipples, sending electric shock through your body. He licks the sensitive buds the same way he licked his thumb. Your hips start to roll mindlessly, as the coil in your stomach threatens to snap.
When you cum, it’s with a cry of his name. The coil snaps, and heat floods out of your pussy, all over the vibrator and your hand. Your body convulses with the sheer force of it, and Bucky kisses down. Over your abdomen, your hips, your inner thighs.
“What a mess, baby.” He mocks, before pressing the sweetest kiss to your clit.
You sob, trembling in the sheets, and grab at his hair.
But your hand finds nothing.
Because it’s just another fantasy, kept in the confines of your mind.
Movie night was a bigger mistake than you could’ve ever imagined.
You show up, and it’s just Bucky and Sam. Sitting on opposite ends of the couch, because men are strange creatures.
“Stevie’s on a mission,” Bucky says, staring at you like he’s seeing an angel. Like he didn’t invite you.
There’s an odd rasp to his voice, too. Maybe he’s just tired.
Sam says your name, that signature, I know something that everyone else doesn’t smirk on his face. You don’t think much if it. He always has it, even when he doesn’t know shit.
“Buck told me you’d be comin’. I didn’t believe him.”
“Sam.” Bucky grunts, and Sam shrugs.
“What? I didn’t.” He grins at you. “You never leave your lab-“
“She leaves her lab.” Bucky gives you an apologetic look, but you just laugh.
“No, he’s right. I really don’t.”
Bucky sighs, rolls his eyes, and pats the seat next to him. You smile to yourself, taking a long breath before you move. You’re going to be normal about this. Very, incredibly normal. So normal, they’ll think something’s wrong, because no one’s ever been this normal in history.
You last ten minutes.
The movie starts. You’ve seen it before, but you try to pay attention to every, tiny detail. The only other option is paying attention to Bucky. To the weight of him at your side, the way his knee brushes against yours and his arm is slung over the back of the couch. You’ve never seen him so relaxed and tense, all at once. He’s sunken into the cushions, but whenever you look over, his jaw is tight.
You could swear you catch his gaze, once or twice. If you do, he looks away immediately. And you feel it, that buzzing heat over your skin. But you’re supposed to be watching the movie. He’s supposed to be watching the movie. So you really, really try not to look over.
Bucky’s knee pushes against yours, and you swallow. His fingers trail near your shoulder, and you wrap your arms around your stomach to suppress the shiver. He’s warm. So fucking warm you can feel it, blooming in your core. You shift in your seat, and you’re already wet.
The movie isn’t even a third of the way done.
Bucky’s fingers rest on your shoulder. It’s so light, so casual, you’re not even sure he knows he’s doing it. You take the risk, and turn to fully look at him. He’s gotten even more relaxed, the knit of his brows loosened, pretty pink lips parted as he watches the TV. You want to reach up, and trace the stubble of his jaw. Maybe kiss up the column of his throat, dig your nails into his pecs and make out with that full, perfect mouth.
You let out a tiny sigh. Bucky doesn’t react to it. Too lost in the movie. Not paying you any mind.
And you should look away. You’re not here to Bucky watch.
You turn your head for three whole seconds, before your eyes start to ache. As if they can’t stand not to look at him. You try to resist it, but it plays over and over, on a loop in your brain. The image of him in the dark. The heat from him, almost penetrating under your skin and making you rise up like a balloon. Your head is in the clouds. You have to look at him.
You close your eyes, trying to fight it. Bucky’s hand drops from your shoulder, down to your upper arm, and your breath hitches.
Your eyes shoot open, and Bucky’s right there. Staring at you, with the same intense, focused need that’s clawing at your ribs and up your throat.
He grabs your chin, between strong but gentle fingers. You swallow, letting your gaze trail down his body. His massive chest, torso that looks perfect to hook your legs around, his thick thighs and his crotch.
The bulge, pushing through his sweats. It looks thick. Long and thick, demanding some attention. You look back to Bucky with your best, doe-eyed pout. He smirks, and leans down to kiss you. It’s slow and deep, his tongue swiping over your lower lip before pushing into your mouth. You moan, and Bucky weaves his hair through your hair, tugging slightly. Your second moan is downright pathetic. You grab his thigh, letting your nails brush against the outline of his cock.
Bucky hisses against your lips, and pulls back. You bat your lashes at him, and his lips twitch.
“Messy girl,” he mutters, before pressing a sweeter, mocking kiss to your lips.
He pulls away too quickly, but before you can give chase, you’re lost in a daze. Bucky’s pulling down his pants, taking his boxers with him. His cock springs free, thick and veiny, massive even in his own hand. He strokes himself slowly, giving you a prompting, amused look. You swallow, licking your lips.
“C’mon, doll,” he beckons. “Show me what you can do.”
Almost in a trance, you nod. Bucky’s eyes darken, as you crawl over his lap. You move his hand away, and fist his cock in one hand. He grabs the back of your neck, not to push, but for balance. A low, guttural sound rolls through his chest as you start to pump him, and you smile to yourself.
He really is perfect. A heavy, certain weight in your hand, jumping slightly whenever you squeeze him near the base. You shift back on your knees, using your other hand to massage his balls. He hisses, his grip tightening on your neck, and you smile.
When you look at him, there’s nothing but pure devotion in his gaze. You squeeze again, then pick up your pace, and he groans out your name.
You kiss him, pushing his head back against the couch cushions. He grunts, but lets you guide him. As if he knows that it’s all just a show, before you let him fuck your face like an animal.
“Relax, baby,” you breathe against his lips.
Bucky lets out a deep, rough laugh. “Little hard to do that right now.”
You giggle, swiping your thumb over the slit of his cock. “Is it? Hard?”
Bucky groans, and deepens the kiss. You slide off of him, before he can just grab your hips, pick you up, and sit you on his dick.
You move back, lowering down to your stomach so you’re eye level with his dick. He’s pulsing in your hands, trying to hold himself back. You don’t want him to. You want him to cum everywhere. Down your throat and over your face and tits, claiming you in one of the most primal ways possible.
“Doll…” Bucky rasps, and you look up at him under hooded eyes. He’s a wrecked. Bulging muscles and sweat, slicking on his brow. “Don’t tease- Jesus-“
You wrap your mouth around him, and take him as deep as you can go. He bumps against the back of your throat, but you suppress your gag reflex, relaxing to try and get even more. Your nose brushes against the hair at base of him. Your tongue presses flat against Bucky’s shaft, your fingers still working his balls, and he fists his hand in your hair.
“So- So fuckin’ warm-“ He chokes out. “Holy- You’re somethin’, sweetheart- God-“
You hum, and Bucky’s hips jerk up. He stutters out an apology, but you just moan again. He tries to pull you off, muttering more apologies, and you dig your nails into his thigh. You want it. You want him to use you.
He gets it, after a moment. His grip on your hair tightens. He starts slow, jerking his hips up as he pushes you a little further down, before yanking you back. You moan around his cock, drool falling from your swallow lips. Your eyes roll back. He’s using you, god, he’s using you, and it’s the best fucking thing in the world.
Bucky fucks your face like a fleshlight, and you grind your ass up against nothing. He hits the back of your throat, over and over, salty and heavy on your tongue. The sounds he makes are beautiful and sinful, and-
“Something on my face, doll?”
You blink, and Bucky’s cock isn’t in your mouth anymore. You smack your lips, trying to find it. Bucky frowns at you, the light of the movie making him even more, impossibly handsome. Sam ignores you both, popcorn stuffed in his mouth.
Bucky looks worried. He said something.
“Hm?”
“You were, you were- Uh-“ He clears his throat, then shakes his head. “Never mind.”
He looks back to the TV, and your face burns. His thigh is pressed right against yours. You can swear, when you lick your lips, you can still taste his dick.
You’re so, so fucked.
It only gets worse.
Eating breakfast becomes a trial, because Bucky is always there, and you’re always thinking about his fingers while he eats. How they’d feel stuffed down your throat, gripping your hips, scissoring deep inside of you. He wipes cream cheese off your cheek, and you almost moan.
“You feelin’ alright?” Bucky says, always so caring and worried, and you nod weakly.
“Yeah. Just- Just tired.”
He looks at you like he doesn’t believe you, but lets it go. If you were smarter, you’d be avoiding him. But you’re not. And you still have to work with him, anyway. It makes avoiding him rather impossible.
For a while you cling onto the idea that work would be sacred. That while Bucky’s in your office and you’re examining his arm, it’s purely professional. Not a single dirty thought.
You last about a week, with that one. Bucky startles you walking in. You trip, and he catches you around your waist.
“Careful,” he smiles down at you, all handsome and stupid.
“Uh huh,” you breathe out, and you could’ve sworn a flood gushed out between your legs.
Bucky’s nostrils had flared, and he’d helped you up to your seat. You’d already had the new fantasy, blooming in your mind like the little fucking pervert that you were. You’d tried to shove it down, swaying in the middle of the room, but then you’d looked at him. Sitting with his legs spread in your chair. And you’d been lost.
You imagined climbing into his lap. His arm wrapping around you as you sat down on his cock, grinding slowly, lashes flutters as he kneaded and pulled at your hips and breasts. He’d stand up, taking you with him like you weighed nothing, and pin you to the wall. One arm would stay around you, holding you in place as his mouth started to explore your dripping cunt.
His tongue would work you open, pushing in and out of your pussy. He would’ve already cum inside of you, and every stroke of his tongue would send a wave of your mixed arousals over his beard. You’d watch him, moaning his name, and his thumb would bully and flick and tease your clit, until your were dazed and gasping for air and-
Bucky says your name, and you could slap yourself. This is getting out of hand.
“Sorry,” you mumble, sitting next to him. He smiles at you, so kind.
Always so kind.
“You’ve been kinda out of it, lately.” His words are casual. You still daydream about shooting yourself and running away.
“Just getting lost in thought,” you murmur, and he hums.
“Anything I can help with?”
You shake your head, because if you speak you’ll start begging. Please, please, please, he’s the only one who can help you, you’re going insane with how much you need him, and he could save you, he could really save you-
“Movin’ usually helps me.” He offers softly. You almost don’t hear him. “Y’know. Using my body. Remembering that it’s mine.”
“Yeah?” You say softly, cleaning the panel near his shoulder. He looks at you, and you risk looking back.
You can’t read that expression. You’re not sure you want to.
“Yeah,” he mutters. His gaze might flick down to your lips, but you don’t trust your own mind anymore. “You wanna try it with me? I head to that gym in the basement every night. It ain’t bad.”
And you should say no, but you can’t help it. You nod, and Bucky’s lips twitch, and God, what you won’t do just so he smiles.
You will torture yourself, apparently. Bucky’s too hot to be allowed in a gym. Wearing a tank top that shows off his massive arms, smiling at you all lazy, in the way that’s more of a guard than the slip that you always crave, but a smile all the same.
First, you try walking on the treadmill and just watching him the mirror. He’s lifting weights, and his arms, they should be classified as weapons. You want those biceps keeping you in a head lock, against his chest or at his side. Keeping you still, while his cock pounds relentlessly into your pussy.
Bucky meets your gaze in the mirror. His lips twitch, and you look away, face burning.
You feel him, more than you see him coming over. The gravity of his presence, you think you’d be able to feel him blindfolded and dropped in a crowd of a million people.
“Come on,” he offers you a hand. “Lemme show you something.”
And you can’t say no to him. You really should learn how.
Because the something is training. Wrestling. Throwing fucking punches and trying to get the other down.
“Bucky, I can’t-“
“Yeah, you can.” He raises his fists, nodding to your own. “Up, doll.”
You sigh, raising them slowly. “You’re going to kick my ass-“
“I am. And then you’re going to get better.”
You scoff—he’s ridiculous—but listen. Bucky smirks, and lunges. You yelp and try to scramble away, but he’s too fast. You’re pinned under him in seconds, whacking at his arms and wiggling.
“Bucky- Get off-“
He laughs, standing up with a proud grin. You’ve never seen him so relaxed, so confident. It makes you hornier than you ever could’ve imagined.
He’d been over you. Everywhere over you. Pinning you down and manhandling you, and- Oh God-‘
“Up,” he beckons, and you swallow.
“I- I don’t know-“
“Yeah, you do.” He gives you a playful smile. “Get up.”
You sigh, and scramble to your feet. Bucky raises his fists again. You narrow your eyes, and match.
He chuckles. “Getting competitive?”
You shrug. “You wanted me to.”
Something flashes in his eyes. You’re not sure how to read into it.
“Damn right I do,” his voice is lower. You’re not imagining that.
You don’t get time to think about it, before he’s moving again. You hold your own exactly a second longer than before, but it ends the exact same way. You, pinned under Bucky’s broad, strong body. His face is pressed near your breasts, his fingers digging into your hips, his legs shoving yours apart to stop you from flailing around.
It goes on longer than it shoulder. This strange game that you like playing more than you should. Bucky starts trying to properly get you to throw a punch, but he gives up fast. Soon you’re more play wrestling than doing anything else. You’re giggly and dazed, charging at him like a bull, and he acts as bored and collected as always, but you can see the amusement dancing in his eyes, every time you try to climb him like a tree.
Then something shifts.
He gets you beneath him, and you try to shove at his chest. He catches your wrists and pins them up over your head. Your breath hitches, and he blinks. His hips drop against yours, and you can feel it. The bulge of his cock, pressing into your core.
He’s hard.
Not fully, but enough. Enough that you can imagine every ridged and curve of him, sliding between the puffy lips of your pussy. Your thighs clench, and Bucky grunts, rutting forward.
You both freeze, and your eyes lock. It’s one of those seconds, where you just stare hopelessly at each other. You almost apologize, but your tongue is limp. Bucky’s face is redder than you’ve ever seen it. His cock twitches in his pants.
And this isn’t a dream or fantasy. Bucky mutters your name, and it’s so real you think your heart might pound of your chest.
Bucky moves first. He clears his throat and moves to his feet.
“Better.” He offers you a hand. “That was…”
He trails off. You stare at each other, lost for words.
Bucky turns, and leaves without another word. You sway in the center of the room, breathing shallow, head spinning.
What the fuck just happened.
Bucky kisses up your spine, his mouth hot and possessive. His tongue flicks against your neck, and his fingers dig into your hips. He drags your ass up in the air and you mewl, pressing your face into the sheets.
“Ah,” he scolds, slapping your soaked, swollen pussy. “Lemme hear you, doll.”
You turn your head, moaning loud and shamelessly. Bucky chuckles, kissing a soft spot on your neck.
“That’s it,” he murmurs, notching his cock against your entrance. “Good girl.”
You coo like a baby bird, flushed and dazed. He’s big, so big that it almost hurts. He doubles over you with a groan, pressing his face into your shoulder as he slowly pushes every inch inside of you. The stretch burns in the best way, and you clench down around him.
“No,” Bucky leans down, kissing the corner of your mouth. “Nothin’ to apologize for. Just gotta relax, babydoll. Lemme do the rest.”
You hum, and take a deep breath. You’re grounded, in the feeling of Bucky everywhere. His warmer arm wraps around your neck, forcing you up enough for his lips to trail open kisses over your face.
“That’s my girl,” he mutters against your ear, bottoming fully out. “That’s it. Just take it for me, just like that.”
You mewl, pushing your ass back up, then crying out with delight as Bucky pulls out, and slams back in. He’s met with no resistance, from how your pussy is gushing out with every thrust, every touch, every hot kiss.
But there’s nothing else to be expected. Not with how Bucky’s using you, how worshipful his every touch and kiss is, all while he fucks into you so hard you think the bed is going to break. His breath is hot on your back, the head of his cock drill against that one, gooey spot deep inside you. His cold arm locks around your middle, and his fingers tease and graze over your clit. Rubbing in tight little circles, making your eyes roll back in your head.
Bucky grunts, hauling you up so you’re pressed against his chest. You’re pinned down on his cock now, wet and warm and tight. So fucking tight that it pulls a low, rumbling moan from his chest. His hips slam up in a barely controlled rhythm, chasing more of your heat. You’re limp in his arms. Dazed and smiling like you’re drunk. Bucky uses his arm around your neck to push your head further back, and you have the nerve to fucking giggle.
You’re so beautiful like this that he almost cums right there. Fluttering lashes and the sweetest sounds, you pussy milking him like a machine. He kisses you because he can’t help it, and you hum happily, grinding your ass down into him.
He needs you to cum first. He gropes at your clit, letting his fingers fumble for a second to work you up into a teased, messy frenzy, before he pushes down and rubs in a steady, unyielding rhythm. You cry out his name, squeezing down so hard on his cock, and Bucky buries his face in your neck.
He cums, so hard that his vision goes white. Thick ropes of cum spurt over his hand, squeezing hard at the base of his cock.
It’s not as warm as you’d be, he thinks.
And he thinks. All the time, Bucky just thinks about you. About how you’d feel, molding around him. About how you’d sound right in his ear, how you’d get smiley and drool, and he’s feed you his fingers just so you have something to do with that pretty mouth. You’d moan around them, and he’d thrust up into you so hard he’d knock the damn worries out of your head.
It’s his favorite time of the day, this. Your rooms are closer than you seem to think, or you just forget how good his hearing is.
And every night, right before bed, he gets to settle into the mattress and beat his cock into his hand, listening to you moan and call his name. He’d never tell you. You deserve better, than a broken robot like him. He counts himself lucky he even gets to be your friend, because he’s a man well practiced at restraint. At not getting what he wants.
But this space, where no one can see, he allows himself things. He allows himself you.
But only ever in his head.
✦End note: this might be one of my fave bucky fics i just got to be soooo horny with it✦
✦If you like this story, please reblog, share, or leave a comment! <3✦
Series Summary: Some wounds don’t bleed. They just teach you how to disappear. Before being adopted, you learned early that love had rules: don’t ask, don’t need, don’t take up space. Bucky – your brother in everything but blood – was the only exception. Now you’re an adult, brilliant, controlled, almost untouchable… until one dinner shatters the fragile balance.
Wordcount: 6.8k
Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female Reader, mentions of past Steve Rogers x Female Reader (no use of Y/N), Bucky Barnes x Natasha Romanoff
Warnings: childhood trauma, adoption trauma, abandonment issues, orphanage abuse, corporal punishment mentioned, religious trauma-adjacent themes, emotional self-hatred, shame, suicidal ideation / one moment of passive suicidal thought, complicated family dynamics, raised-as-siblings but not blood-related romantic tension, implied non-explicit underage intimacy in the past, emotional aftermath of sex, verbal cruelty, heartbreak, therapy, healing, reconciliation. See the whole exhaustive list on the masterlist post.
A/N: Gentle reminder that this series is heavy on trauma so I beg you to read the whole list of warning on the masterpost. I won't tolerate any complaints about not being warned of something. Beta read by Cassie (@blobfishlol ) as always. We're still in the past.
You all have no idea how much this week chapters are going to hurt. You're going to hate them, hate me, and probably throw rocks at me.
Masterlist - Series Masterlist - Prev- Next
Bucky didn’t just date Dot.
He committed to her in a way that made the whole school notice.
Dorothy – Dot – was the kind of girl people watched without meaning to. Captain of the cheerleaders, loud laugh, confident walk, hair always perfectly done like she had a personal agreement with gravity. She had friends who took up space in hallways and boyfriends who thought they were lucky just to be seen next to her.
And somehow, she chose Bucky.
Or maybe Bucky chose her like he was making a point.
Because at first it looked like one more name on his list – one more girl he’d walk to class, one more set of fingers tangled with his for a week until he got bored.
But a week passed.
Then two.
Then a month.
And Dot was still there.
You started seeing her at your house sometimes, sitting at the kitchen counter while your mother made snacks, chatting like she’d always belonged there. She called your mother ma’am at first, then stopped, like familiarity snuck up on her and stayed. She started greeting you like you were normal, like she wasn’t walking into the middle of something she couldn’t possibly understand.
And Bucky – Bucky looked different with her.
Not softer.
Not gentler.
Just… placed.
Like he had found a spot to stand that didn’t require him to keep shifting his weight.
He put an arm around her waist in public. He waited for her after practice. He walked her to her car. He sat with her at games, laughing at things she whispered into his ear.
He did all of it loudly enough that no one could miss it.
And you hated that the sight of it made your chest ache.
Because your relationship with Steve was good.
It was steady and kind and safe in a way that felt almost miraculous. Steve never made you feel like you were too much or not enough. He didn’t make you earn affection. He didn’t punish you with silence. He didn’t keep score.
If anything, after your first time together and the tattoo and the tiny rebellion of it all, you felt closer to Steve than ever. Like you were building something real, brick by brick.
So it made no sense that seeing Bucky with Dot – seeing him keep her – hurt.
At first you told yourself it was just adjustment. Just surprise. Just the weird whiplash of watching your brother figure out what commitment looked like.
But the pain wasn’t logical.
It lived in the same part of you that flinched when Bucky’s eyes passed over you too quickly. The same part that remembered the nights he used to climb into your bed when you were little, bringing safety like it was something he could hand you.
It wasn’t jealousy in a clean, obvious way.
It was something messier.
Something like grief.
Because Bucky staying with Dot meant he wasn’t just dating.
He was choosing.
He was investing.
He was giving someone time, attention, space in his life.
Things he had always given to you without thinking – until he stopped.
And watching him hand those things to someone else made your stomach twist with a strange, private kind of mourning.
You found yourself noticing stupid details you didn’t want to notice.
The way Dot laughed and shoved his shoulder playfully and Bucky actually let his face soften for it. The way he’d roll his eyes when she talked and then lean closer anyway, like he couldn’t help it. The way he’d hold her hand without looking like it cost him anything.
And then you’d catch yourself thinking, Good. He deserves to be happy.
And immediately after, So why does it feel like he’s leaving me?
It was the kind of thought you didn’t tell anyone.
Not Steve.
Not your mother.
Not Pietro.
Not even Wanda, who could usually drag the truth out of you with a single raised eyebrow.
You swallowed it.
You filed it away.
You told yourself it wasn’t important.
The air shifted as winter crept in.
Not just the weather – though the mornings got colder and the sky darker and everyone started talking about Christmas break like it was a finish line.
It was something else, too.
A sense that the present was running out.
That soon, you wouldn’t all be trapped together in the same building every day. That the hallway dramas and lunch table politics and after-school practices were temporary.
One afternoon in early December, you were all piled into your living room in various stages of doing homework and pretending not to do homework.
Steve was on the floor with a sketchpad, eraser shavings scattered around him like snow. Wanda sat cross-legged on the couch, flipping through a magazine and commenting on outfits she claimed she’d never wear. Pietro was sprawled in an armchair with a textbook open, actually reading for once. Bucky was leaning against the wall near the doorway, watching Dot text him while he tried to act like he wasn’t smiling.
And somehow – without anyone planning it – the conversation drifted.
“What are you doing after graduation?” Wanda asked out of nowhere, eyes bright with the thrill of imagining a future that didn’t smell like cafeteria food.
Pietro didn’t even look up. “Psych.”
Wanda blinked. “That’s it? Just… ‘psych’?”
Pietro shrugged, a smug little smile tugging at his mouth. “Psychology. Bachelor’s, then grad school. I want to be a therapist.”
Steve glanced up from his sketchbook, brows lifting. “You’ve had that decided forever.”
Pietro finally looked up, expression unbothered. “Some of us enjoy having a plan.”
Wanda made a face. “Couldn’t be me. I just want to get out of this town and breathe for a while.”
“Translation,” Pietro said, dry, “Wanda wants to party.”
Wanda threw a pillow at him. “I want to live.”
Steve laughed quietly and went back to shading something on the page. “Living is good.”
Bucky snorted, pushing off the wall. “You’ll live in a museum.”
Steve looked up, unoffended. “Maybe. At least museums are quiet.”
Bucky rolled his eyes, then – almost unconsciously – glanced at you like he was checking whether you were listening.
You were.
You always were.
“What about you?” Wanda asked Steve, chin tilted. “You’re doing what, art school?”
Steve’s cheeks flushed a little, but he nodded. “Yeah. If I can get in. I want to do fine arts. Maybe illustration. Maybe gallery work. I don’t know yet.”
“You’ll get in,” Wanda said confidently, like she’d decided it was a fact.
Steve’s eyes warmed. “Thanks.”
“And you,” Pietro said, turning to Bucky, “are going to be insufferable.”
Bucky raised a brow. “I already am.”
Pietro’s mouth twitched. “Fair. But I meant professionally. Stark Industries. Engineering. You’ve been talking about it since you were, like, ten.”
Bucky’s expression shifted – subtle, but real. Like the topic hit something genuine under all the bravado.
“Yeah,” he said, voice quieter. “That’s… the plan.”
Dot texted again, and his eyes flicked to his phone before he could stop himself. Then he tucked it away, as if he didn’t want anyone to notice how much she mattered.
Steve smirked faintly. “Stark’s gonna put you in a lab and never let you out.”
Bucky scoffed. “Better than being broke.”
Pietro hummed thoughtfully. “You’ll be broke too. You just won’t know it because you’ll be surrounded by expensive equipment.”
Wanda grinned. “He’ll finally stop talking about Stark like he’s a god.”
Bucky shot her a look. “He is a god.”
You snorted despite yourself.
Your mother, passing through with a basket of laundry, rolled her eyes at the phrase the way she always did when teenage boys worshipped businessmen.
“Okay,” Wanda said, turning again – because she was always the one who dragged conversations into the light. “We’ve got Pietro saving everyone’s mental health, Steve painting sad people in museums, Bucky building robots for Tony Stark, and me… existing.”
Pietro smirked. “Accurately summarized.”
Wanda pointed at you.
“And what about you?”
The room went a little quieter.
Not dramatically.
Just enough that you felt it.
Steve’s eyes lifted immediately, soft and attentive. Bucky’s gaze slid to you too, as if he’d been waiting for this question without realizing it.
You stared at your hands in your lap.
Because the truth was: you didn’t know.
Not in the way Pietro knew. Not in the way Bucky had known for years. Not even in the way Steve’s uncertainty was still anchored by passion.
You were smart. Everyone told you that like it was a destination and not just a trait. You had skipped classes and been “the gifted kid” and had adults praise you so often it started to feel like pressure disguised as love.
And yet, when it came to the future -
You had only ever focused on surviving the present.
Pietro leaned forward slightly, eyes curious but gentle. “What do you like?”
You almost laughed.
What did you like?
You liked books. History. The feeling of understanding something no one else had seen clearly yet. You liked puzzles. Languages. Old maps. Museums that smelled like dust and paper and time.
But saying that out loud felt silly, like a hobby wasn’t a career.
Steve, quietly, filled the silence. “You light up when you talk about ruins.”
You blinked and looked at him.
Steve shrugged, a small smile on his mouth. “You do. Like… when you explain things. You get that look.”
Pietro’s brows lifted. Wanda nodded slowly like she could see it too.
Bucky’s gaze stayed on you, sharper than the others, as if he was trying to solve you like he always had.
“You ever think about archaeology?” Steve asked, carefully. Like he didn’t want to steer you, just offer.
The word hit you like a bell.
Archaeology.
Not history as a subject you read about.
History you unearthed.
History you touched.
History you brought back into the light.
Your stomach twisted – not with fear, but with recognition.
Because it fit.
It fit the way your brain worked. The way you craved answers. The way you wanted origins, context, proof. The way you had always felt like you were missing a piece of your own story and had spent your life compensating with knowledge.
You exhaled slowly.
“I…” you began.
Then you looked up, and the room felt different – like for the first time, you could see a path.
“I think,” you said, voice steadier now, “I think archaeology makes sense.”
Wanda grinned. “That’s hot.”
You blinked. “What?”
Wanda waved a hand. “No, like, cool. Cool. Smart. Mysterious. You’ll be in the desert in a hat.”
Pietro snorted. “Indiana Jones but with better grades.”
You rolled your eyes, but the warmth in your chest stayed.
Steve’s smile was soft, proud. “Yeah,” he murmured. “I can see that.”
Bucky didn’t say anything at first.
He just stared at you, expression unreadable.
Then, quieter than the others, he said, “You’d be good at it.”
The words landed oddly.
Not because they weren’t kind.
Because they were… sincere.
And because they came from Bucky in that tone that meant he wasn’t teasing, wasn’t posturing, wasn’t trying to win anything.
Just telling the truth.
You met his eyes for a moment.
There was something in his gaze that made your throat tighten – something like acceptance, and something like loss, braided together.
Then Dot’s name lit up Bucky’s phone again, and the moment fractured.
He looked away first.
You looked down.
The conversation moved on.
But later that night, lying in bed with winter wind tapping softly at the window, you replayed it all.
Bucky with Dot – serious, chosen, steady.
Your own future – finally forming into a shape you could name.
And beneath all of it, a quiet, unsettling truth you weren’t ready to say out loud yet:
You were all starting to pick the directions you’d walk in.
And even with Steve’s hand in yours, even with your heart safe and loved, some part of you still watched Bucky choose someone else and felt, impossibly, like you were being left behind.
Prom night arrived like a movie you’d half convinced yourself wouldn’t happen to you.
It was ridiculous in all the ways it was supposed to be – too much effort, too much money, too much glitter – and somehow it still felt… perfect.
Not perfect because it was flawless.
Perfect because for one night, everything slid into place like it had always belonged there.
Wanda came over to help you get ready, practically vibrating with excitement. She had spread makeup across your bathroom counter like she owned the place, music playing from her phone, humming as she pinned your hair with more precision than you thought she was capable of.
“You’re going to murder people,” she announced, stepping back to evaluate you.
You blinked at your reflection, unsure what to do with the girl staring back.
You wore a dress that made you feel like you’d stepped into someone else’s life – something soft and elegant, long sleeves, a neckline that didn’t demand attention but still made you look older than you felt. You looked… sure of yourself.
Or at least, you looked like someone who could be.
Wanda smiled at your face in the mirror. “See?” she whispered, like she was letting you in on a secret. “You were always there. You just needed the right lighting.”
Downstairs, Pietro whistled like a menace the moment you walked out of your room.
Steve was waiting at the bottom of the staircase.
He froze when he saw you.
Not dramatically – just a stillness that softened his whole face, like his brain took a second to catch up with how beautiful you looked.
Then he smiled, slow and warm.
“Hi,” he breathed.
You felt your chest tighten. “Hi.”
He stepped closer, offered his arm like it mattered, like you weren’t just his girlfriend but something precious he was proud to stand beside.
“You look…” Steve started, then stopped like he didn’t want to use the wrong word.
Your lips twitched. “Like what?”
Steve swallowed, eyes steady on yours. “Like you.”
And somehow that felt better than any compliment.
He leaned in and kissed you – gentle, careful not to smudge anything Wanda had done – then rested his forehead against yours for half a second, as if he needed to anchor himself before stepping back into the world.
Bucky showed up later, of course.
With Dot.
Dot made an entrance the way Dot always did – hair perfect, dress loud enough to start a rumor, her smile practiced and bright. She held onto Bucky like she was claiming him.
Bucky, for his part, looked uncomfortable in his suit for the first ten minutes, then started to relax the moment he realized people were looking at him.
Because Bucky could pretend not to care, but he always did.
You watched him from the hallway for a second.
He looked good – annoyingly good – handsome in that effortless way that made girls sigh and made teachers soften when they yelled at him. Dot leaned into his shoulder and laughed at something he said.
And you felt it, that familiar, complicated ache.
Not jealousy.
Something older.
Something quieter.
Steve’s hand slid into yours, grounding you.
“Hey,” he murmured, leaning close. “You okay?”
You nodded. “Yeah.”
And you meant it.
Because you were there. With him. In a dress you’d chosen. In a life you were beginning to actually live.
The gym had been transformed into a cheap imitation of elegance – string lights, a balloon arch, a DJ playing songs that made everyone scream even though half of them didn’t know the words. The punch was awful. The photos were aggressively staged. The floor was sticky by ten o’clock.
And still.
It was perfect.
You danced with Steve until your feet hurt. You laughed, genuinely, when Wanda dragged you into a ridiculous group dance and Pietro acted like he was too cool for it before getting pulled in anyway. Steve spun you once – awkward, endearing – and you laughed so hard you had to cling to his shoulder to stay upright.
At one point, Steve pressed his mouth to your ear over the music.
“This is nice,” he said.
You nodded, blinking against the sudden sting behind your eyes. “Yeah.”
“It feels like…” Steve hesitated, searching for the words. “Like we made it.”
You tightened your arms around him, cheek against his shoulder. “We did.”
And for a while, you believed it.
The crown happened at the end of the night.
Everyone gathered around the little stage, half drunk on sugar and adrenaline. Dot’s friends were already squealing, already shrieking her name like the outcome was inevitable.
You watched Dot stand with her hands clasped in front of her, smile wide, eyes shining with calculation.
You watched Bucky beside her, tall and broad, looking bored.
Like he didn’t care.
Like he wasn’t part of her strategy.
The announcer fumbled the envelope, made a few jokes. People booed and laughed.
“Prom Queen: Dorothy ‘Dot’–”
The gym exploded.
Dot shrieked and clapped a hand over her mouth like she couldn’t believe it, then immediately stepped forward as if she’d been practicing the walk all year. Her friends screamed. Someone pushed her gently toward the stage. She turned back and threw her arms around Bucky’s neck so the cameras would catch it, kissed him like it was part of the performance.
Bucky kissed her back.
But there was a stiffness in it you caught even from where you stood.
A second later, he stepped away from her mouth with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
Dot put the crown on her head, accepted the sash, posed. Posed again. Posed again.
And you saw Bucky watching her like he was suddenly looking at a stranger.
You didn’t think much of it in the moment.
Not until later.
Not until the night finished and you were back home, shoes kicked off, makeup half smeared, your ears still ringing with music.
Not until the following week, when Dot stopped showing up at your house.
Stopped laughing as loudly in your living room.
Stopped texting Bucky constantly.
Bucky didn’t say anything at first.
He made jokes. He shrugged. He acted like it didn’t matter.
But you could see it anyway.
The way he stared at his phone too long. The way he stopped being quite as loud with his friends. The way his shoulders carried something heavier, even when he pretended they didn’t.
It didn’t take long for the truth to surface.
You overheard it by accident.
Dot’s name, giggled in the hallway, followed by someone saying: “Of course she stayed with him until prom. She needed the crown.”
The words hit you like cold water.
And when you looked up, you saw Bucky at the end of the corridor, frozen.
He had heard too.
He didn’t storm off.
He didn’t yell.
He just stood there, jaw tightening, eyes glassy with something he refused to let become tears.
Then he walked away like nothing had happened.
But that night, a few days later, you found him sitting on the back steps of your house.
No Dot. No friends. Just Bucky, hunched slightly forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the yard like it held answers.
You hesitated in the doorway.
Bucky didn’t look up. “Can’t sleep.”
You stepped outside anyway, the night air cool against your bare arms.
You sat beside him with a careful distance.
Neither of you spoke for a long moment.
Then you said softly, “I heard.”
Bucky’s breath hitched almost imperceptibly.
He didn’t ask what you meant.
He didn’t have to.
“Yeah,” he muttered.
You glanced at him, at the tension in his jaw, at the way he kept his eyes forward like if he looked at you he might break.
“I’m sorry,” you said, and you meant it.
Bucky let out a small, bitter laugh. “Don’t be.”
“It was shitty,” you insisted.
Bucky’s shoulders rose in a shrug that wasn’t convincing. “Whatever. She wanted the crown. She got it.”
You studied him carefully.
He wasn’t devastated.
Not the way you thought heartbreak looked.
He was… bruised.
Disappointed.
Quietly embarrassed.
Like someone had played him and he’d been arrogant enough to think it couldn’t happen.
Still, it mattered.
Because it was the first time you’d seen him genuinely hurt by a girl.
Not in an ego way.
In a trust way.
You shifted a little closer.
“You didn’t deserve that,” you said.
Bucky finally glanced at you sideways.
And for a second, his eyes looked younger.
Less cocky.
More human.
He looked at you like he didn’t know what to do with your sympathy.
Then he exhaled, long and shaky.
“Guess I’m not as smart as I thought,” he muttered.
You swallowed, throat tight. “You’re smart.”
Bucky scoffed softly. “Yeah? Then how did I not see it?”
You didn’t answer.
Because the truth was, he hadn’t seen it because he hadn’t wanted to.
Because he’d liked having something simple. Something that looked normal.
Dot had been a costume Bucky could wear: the popular girlfriend, the easy relationship, the boy who was wanted.
And now the costume had been yanked off, and he was left with himself.
Bucky stared at the ground for a moment.
Then he said, quieter, “It doesn’t… destroy me. I’m not–” He shook his head, frustrated. “I’m not broken over it.”
“I know,” you whispered.
He looked at you again, more directly this time. “It’s just… humiliating.”
You nodded. “Yeah.”
Another silence.
Then Bucky leaned back slightly, head tipping against the railing.
“Steve’s gonna marry you one day,” he said suddenly, voice flat but not cruel.
Your stomach flipped.
You stared at him.
“What?”
Bucky didn’t look at you, eyes still on the dark yard. “You heard me.”
You swallowed. “That’s not–”
“It is,” he cut in, not harshly. Just certain. “He looks at you like you’re the only person in the room. Like you’re…” He frowned, searching. “Like you’re a religion.”
You huffed a weak laugh through the tightness in your chest. “That’s ridiculous.”
Bucky shrugged. “Maybe. But it’s true.”
You didn’t know what to say to that.
So you said the safest thing. The thing that wouldn’t reveal how much your skin still reacted to him noticing you.
“I’m happy,” you said quietly.
Bucky’s jaw tightened again.
“Good,” he murmured.
But it didn’t sound like a celebration.
It sounded like resignation.
You stayed on the steps with him until the night air made you shiver and Bucky finally stood, rolling his shoulders like he was shedding something.
He didn’t hug you.
He didn’t touch you.
He just said, “Go to bed,” like he was still older and still protective and still refusing to be anything else.
You watched him disappear inside.
And you told yourself it had been nothing more than siblings, sharing the aftermath of a bad relationship.
You told yourself that over and over.
A few weeks before the end of school, Steve asked if you could talk.
He didn’t say it like a threat.
He said it like someone asking to sit down before a storm hit.
You met him in the small park near the school, the one with the old swings and the benches where you’d studied together freshman year. The grass was damp. The air smelled like spring trying to arrive.
Steve sat beside you on a bench, hands clasped tightly between his knees.
You watched him for a moment.
He looked exhausted.
Not physically.
Emotionally.
“Hey,” you said softly.
Steve looked at you, and his eyes were too bright already.
You felt your stomach drop.
“What’s wrong?” you asked.
Steve swallowed hard. “Nothing is wrong with you.”
That sentence hit you like a warning.
You stared at him.
“Steve…”
He exhaled shakily, staring at his hands. “I love you.”
Your throat tightened instantly. “I love you too.”
Steve nodded, eyes closing briefly. “That’s the problem.”
You went still.
“What–?”
Steve opened his eyes again and looked at you with something raw in his expression.
“I can’t pretend I don’t see it,” he said quietly. “I can’t pretend it’s not… there.”
Your chest tightened. “See what?”
Steve’s jaw worked like he was trying not to cry.
“Bucky,” he said.
Your pulse thudded hard.
Steve looked away toward the swings, voice lower now.
“I’ve tried,” he admitted. “I’ve tried to be mature about it. Because I know you love him in a way that’s not simple. And I know he loves you in a way he doesn’t know what to do with. And I–” His voice cracked. “I don’t want to be the thing that keeps you tied in knots for the rest of your life.”
You shook your head quickly. “Steve, no–”
“It’s not about cheating,” Steve said immediately, like he could read the panic on your face. “It’s not about you doing something wrong. You’ve never done anything wrong.”
He turned to look at you again, eyes wet.
“It’s about the fact that every time his mood shifts, you shift too,” he whispered. “Every time he’s quiet, you get quiet. Every time he looks at you, you… you disappear a little.”
Your throat burned.
You opened your mouth.
Nothing came out.
Because he wasn’t wrong.
Steve’s voice softened, almost tender in its honesty.
“I love you enough to want you free,” he said. “Not just… loved. Free.”
You stared at him, hands trembling in your lap.
“Are you breaking up with me?” you asked, voice barely there.
Steve flinched like you’d punched him.
“I don’t want to,” he whispered. “God, I don’t want to.”
Tears slipped down your face before you could stop them.
Steve reached out immediately, wiping them with his thumbs the way he always did, like your tears were something precious he didn’t want the world to see.
“It’s not because I don’t love you,” he said fiercely. “I do. I do so much.”
You swallowed hard, breath shaking. “Then why?”
Steve let out a broken laugh that wasn’t humor. “Because I love you,” he said simply. “And because I can’t be the person you choose out of fear.”
Your eyes snapped to his.
Steve’s gaze held yours, steady and devastated.
“You’re safe with me,” he said, voice trembling. “And I think you love that. I think you needed that. And I’m grateful– God, I’m grateful I got to be that for you.”
Your chest ached so badly you thought it might split.
“But when I look at you,” Steve continued, tears sliding down his own cheeks now, “I don’t want you to stay with me because it’s easier than facing what’s between you and him. I don’t want you to wake up at twenty-five and wonder if you chose the wrong person because you were trying to make the complicated thing go away.”
You shook your head, sobbing quietly. “I didn’t– I wasn’t–”
“I know,” Steve whispered, leaning in until his forehead touched yours. “I know you didn’t mean to.”
He inhaled, shaky.
“And maybe you’d never choose him,” Steve said. “Maybe you’d stay with me forever and we’d be fine and we’d be happy and you’d bury it all and it would still work.”
You clutched at his sleeve like you could anchor him with your hands.
Steve closed his eyes.
“But I don’t want ‘fine’,” he whispered. “Not for you.”
You were crying openly now.
So was he.
“You’re my best friend,” you choked out. “You’re… you’re my–”
“I know,” Steve said, voice breaking. “And I’m not leaving you. I’m not disappearing. I’m not going to stop being in your life.”
He pulled back just enough to look at you.
“We can still be us,” he said. “Just… different.”
You shook your head again, helpless. “It hurts.”
Steve’s smile was wet and soft and ruined. “Yeah,” he whispered. “It does.”
He leaned forward and kissed you – slow and gentle and familiar, like he was memorizing you. Like he was giving you something to carry.
When he pulled back, his thumb brushed your cheek.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
You swallowed, throat raw. “Me too.”
Steve shook his head. “Not you. Not you.”
And even as you sat there with your heart cracking, you knew something else too.
He was doing what Steve always did.
Choosing the hardest thing.
So you wouldn’t have to keep living inside a triangle you never asked for.
You stayed on that bench until the sun dipped lower and the air grew colder, your fingers laced together like you were both afraid to let go.
When you finally stood, Steve pulled you into his arms and held you for a long time.
And you held him back just as tightly.
Because even if it was the end of the relationship – it wasn’t the end of the love.
That night, you didn’t even make it to the part where the house settled.
You went through the motions because that was what you did when your insides were collapsing – brushed your teeth, washed your face, folded your dress from earlier like it mattered, answered your mother’s questions with the right amount of normal. You even laughed once at something Pietro said at dinner, the sound thin and wrong.
Then you climbed into bed.
And the moment the door closed and the light went out, your body stopped pretending.
At first it was silent – just your throat tightening, your breath catching, the ache spreading through your ribs like a slow bruise.
Then the first sob slipped out of you, involuntary, ugly in a way you weren’t used to allowing.
You clapped a hand over your mouth, pressing hard, trying to force it back down.
It didn’t work.
You turned onto your side and curled in on yourself like you could fold the pain small enough to fit somewhere you could ignore it.
You couldn’t.
Steve’s voice replayed in your head, quiet and devastated.
I love you enough to want you free.
The sentence was a knife that cut both ways.
Because it was love.
Because it was true.
Because it was the kindest thing anyone had ever done to you – and it still felt like being left.
Your pillow was damp under your cheek.
Your chest hurt.
Your throat burned.
You tried to breathe quietly.
You tried to stop.
But grief didn’t care about your rules.
So you cried, shaking, muffled, trying not to let the sound carry through the walls.
Trying not to let anyone know.
Trying not to let Bucky know most of all.
Bucky heard anyway.
Because Bucky always heard.
He was halfway down the hall when the sound reached him – a small, broken noise that didn’t belong in your room. Something thin and strangled, the kind of crying you did when you thought no one could see you.
He stopped dead.
For a second, he thought maybe you’d had a nightmare.
That was what it used to be. When you were little. When thunderstorms made your skin buzz and you’d lie awake staring at the ceiling until your breath turned too fast.
He used to fix it by climbing into your bed like it was nothing.
But he didn’t do that anymore.
He hadn’t in years.
Because you weren’t a kid.
Because you were sixteen and Steve’s girlfriend and the world had rules now, even inside your own house.
Bucky stood in the hallway, fists clenched, listening.
Another sob.
The sound hit him in the gut.
It wasn’t a sniffle. It wasn’t a soft cry.
It was pain.
Real pain.
The kind you tried to hide.
Bucky moved without thinking.
He crossed the hall, stopped at your door – hand hovering, jaw tight.
He almost knocked.
Almost opened it.
Almost did what he’d done a hundred times when you were small – walked in and pulled you close and made the world quiet again.
He didn’t.
He stood there, breathing hard, like the door itself was a barrier he couldn’t cross without changing everything.
Then he heard you whisper something into your pillow, words muffled and broken.
Not a name.
Not anything clear.
Just… that sound, like you were pleading with the universe to undo what had happened.
Bucky’s face tightened.
He turned on his heel and walked away fast, like he was afraid he might go back and do something he couldn’t take back.
He went downstairs.
He didn’t go to your mother.
He didn’t even go to his own room.
He went exactly where his instinct took him.
Across the lawn.
To Steve’s house.
Steve’s porch light was on.
Bucky didn’t bother ringing the bell.
He knocked once – hard enough that it rattled the door.
Steve opened it almost immediately, like he’d been sitting there waiting for something.
His face was tired. His eyes were puffy, like he’d been fighting his own tears all evening.
When he saw Bucky, his shoulders tensed.
“Buck–”
“What did you do?” Bucky demanded, voice low and sharp.
Steve blinked, expression tightening. “What?”
Bucky stepped closer, just inside the doorway, like the porch wasn’t enough space for the anger filling him.
“She’s crying,” he bit out. “In bed. Like–” He cut himself off, jaw working. “Like something’s wrong.”
Steve’s gaze flicked away for a split second.
That was all Bucky needed.
Bucky’s eyes narrowed. “What happened?”
Steve exhaled slowly, like he’d been holding his breath since the park.
“We talked,” Steve said quietly.
Bucky stared at him. “Yeah? And?”
Steve’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “And we broke up.”
The sentence landed like a punch.
Bucky went still.
His face didn’t change at first – just a blank, stunned stillness, as if his brain refused to accept the words.
Then the shock shifted into something sharper.
“What?” he said, and it didn’t sound like a question. It sounded like disbelief.
Steve didn’t flinch. “We broke up.”
Bucky’s breath hitched.
He took one step back, then forward again, like his body didn’t know where to put itself.
“You’re–” His voice cracked with frustration. “You’re kidding.”
Steve shook his head once. “No.”
Bucky stared at him like Steve had just admitted to burning the house down.
“Why?” Bucky demanded. “Why would you do that? You were happy.”
Steve’s eyes flashed. “We were.”
“You were,” Bucky insisted, voice rising. “I saw you. Every day. You were fine. You were–” He swallowed hard, anger tightening his throat. “She was happy, Steve.”
Steve’s face crumpled for a moment – grief flickering across it.
Then he forced himself steady again.
“I know,” he whispered.
Bucky laughed once, harsh and incredulous. “Then what the hell is she doing crying like that?”
Steve’s jaw tightened. “Because breakups hurt even when they’re the right choice.”
Bucky’s eyes went wild.
“The right–?” He stepped closer, furious. “Don’t. Don’t do that. Don’t talk like you’re some kind of saint. You don’t just– you don’t just leave her when she’s finally–”
He cut himself off mid-sentence.
Because what he meant to say was: when she’s finally safe.
When she’d finally chosen something steady. When she’d finally let herself be loved without fear.
But Bucky didn’t say that out loud.
Because the thought hit too close to something he didn’t want to touch.
Steve watched him, breathing hard.
“Buck,” Steve said softly, like he was trying not to escalate. “This wasn’t because I stopped loving her.”
Bucky’s hands curled into fists at his sides. “Then what was it?”
Steve hesitated.
And the hesitation made Bucky’s stomach drop in a way anger never did.
“Steve,” Bucky warned, voice low. “What did you do?”
Steve’s eyes snapped to his. “I didn’t do anything to her.”
“Then why–”
“Because of you,” Steve said, and his voice cracked on the words.
Silence.
Bucky went very, very still.
“You’re lying,” he said, immediately, reflexive.
Steve’s laugh was bitter. “I wish I was.”
Bucky stared at him as if the room tilted.
“I didn’t–” Bucky began, then stopped. “I didn’t do anything.”
Steve nodded, too fast. “I know. She didn’t cheat. You didn’t–” He swallowed. “You didn’t even say anything. Not recently.”
Bucky’s eyes narrowed. “Then what the hell are you talking about?”
Steve looked exhausted.
Like he had carried this thought alone too long.
“Look at me,” Steve said quietly.
Bucky’s jaw clenched. “I am.”
Steve’s voice went softer, almost pleading. “You don’t see it, do you?”
Bucky stared at him, breathing through his nose, the anger beginning to shift into something that felt uncomfortably like fear.
“See what?” Bucky demanded.
Steve hesitated again.
Then he said it anyway.
“The way she reacts to you,” Steve whispered. “The way she… changes around you. The way she tries to make herself smaller when you’re in a mood. The way she watches you even when she’s laughing with me.”
Bucky’s throat tightened.
“That’s not–” he started, but the denial tasted weak even to him.
Steve stepped closer, voice trembling. “She loves you, Buck. I don’t even think she knows how deep it goes, but she does. And you–” Steve’s eyes shone. “You love her too. I’ve known that for a long time.”
Bucky’s face flickered – pain, shock, something raw.
“No,” he snapped. “That’s– she’s my sister.”
Steve’s expression didn’t change.
Because he wasn’t buying it.
“Technically,” Steve said quietly, “she’s not.”
Bucky’s breath hitched.
His hands shook slightly.
He hated that Steve could say it out loud like that.
Hated that the words made something in him feel exposed.
“You don’t get to decide that,” Bucky said, voice low and dangerous. “You don’t get to decide what she feels.”
“I’m not deciding,” Steve whispered. “I’m seeing.”
Bucky’s eyes stung, suddenly, violently.
He blinked hard like he could shove it away.
“Then why did you leave her?” he demanded again, desperate now. “If you love her. If she loves you. Why would you do that?”
Steve swallowed, tears finally spilling.
“Because I love her,” he said simply. “And I don’t want her staying with me because she’s scared of what she wants. I don’t want her choosing me because it’s easier than admitting something else.”
Bucky’s voice cracked. “Something else.”
Steve nodded slowly, wiping at his face with the heel of his hand, angry at his own tears.
“She deserves to be free,” Steve whispered. “Even if that freedom hurts.”
Bucky stared at him, chest tight.
“You broke her,” he said, and it came out rough and devastated.
Steve flinched. “I didn’t.”
Bucky’s jaw clenched. “She’s crying, Steve.”
Steve’s own voice broke. “So am I!”
Silence stretched between them, thick and vibrating.
Bucky looked away, like he couldn’t stand the sight of Steve’s grief.
He didn’t know what to do with this.
He didn’t know how to fit it inside his head.
Because Steve and you had been the plan.
Steve and you had been the safe option.
The clean one.
The one Bucky could watch from the sidelines and pretend it didn’t matter because it didn’t involve him.
And now Steve had stepped away, and suddenly there was nowhere left to hide.
Bucky swallowed hard, throat raw.
“She didn’t tell me,” he muttered.
Steve’s gaze softened despite everything. “No. She didn’t.”
Bucky’s eyes flicked to him. “Why?”
Steve shook his head slowly. “Because she doesn’t want you to feel responsible for her pain. Because she thinks she has to hold it alone.”
Bucky’s stomach turned.
He thought about you in your bed, crying into your pillow like you were trying to disappear inside yourself.
He thought about the sound through the door.
And something in him – something he had kept locked down for years – shifted.
Not neatly.
Not safely.
But undeniably.
Bucky’s voice came out low. “I don’t understand.”
Steve nodded, tears still clinging to his lashes. “I know.”
Bucky looked at him for a long moment.
Then he whispered, almost like he didn’t mean to let the words exist.
“But you were happy.”
Steve’s mouth trembled.
“We were,” he repeated softly. “We really were.”
Bucky’s eyes burned.
He turned abruptly, like staying one more second might make him fall apart in front of Steve.
He walked out onto the porch, the cold air hitting his face like a slap.
Behind him, Steve didn’t follow.
He didn’t call out.
He just let Bucky leave with the weight of the truth.
Bucky stood on the steps for a moment, staring out at the dark yard between his house and yours.
The distance felt wrong.
Too big.
Like a gap he couldn’t cross without changing everything.
Then he walked back home, fast.
Not to your room.
Not to your bed.
Just… back into the house that suddenly felt too quiet.
And as he reached his bedroom door, he heard it again – faint through the walls.
Your crying.
Bucky stopped.
His hand hovered on the knob.
His chest hurt like he’d been punched.
He didn’t go in.
He didn’t know how.
So he leaned his forehead against the wood of his own door and shut his eyes, breathing hard, like he could will the world back to the way it had been.
But it was already different.
And he could feel it in the same place he’d always felt you – deep under the ribs, where love didn’t ask permission and didn’t care what anyone called it.
Oh, i remember this! No truck fucking, but also hard to explain...?
Basically, a lot of truckers feel VERY attached to their trucks, to the point where it's common for truckers to refer to them as their "first baby".
So, knowing this, this trucker's wife organised a photoshoot where her husband's "first baby" got to meet his "second baby". Kind of like those pregnancy photoshoots with dogs?
He thought it was great, and they shared it on social media trucker groups. In a turn i would not expect, a lot of other truckers got really emotional about it. Like, grown men cooing over a stranger's pregnancy photoshoot, going to their wives and asking if they can do something similar 🥺🥺🥺. All in all, strangely wholesome???
A/n: I think I’m going to make this a thing, like take a favorite gif of mine and just make a drabble or small oneshot based off of it. Anyway, bringing back another one of my favorite buckets, Biker Bucket y’all enjoy, because again I don’t know what this is other than fluster.
All Other Works Can Be Found On My Masterlist In My Bio!
The rumble of the bikes sound through the quiet of your room, a low groan threatening to bubble up past your lips as the sleep that was once there now begins to evade you. Your too tired eyes twitching to open behind your just closed lids.
You had hoped for one quiet night, just one.
The rumbling doesn’t cease as it seemingly gets louder the closer they draw till there likely at a standstill right under you.
You can see them now, their bikes just beneath the light pole that shone through your apartment balcony.
It’s a minute, maybe two later when their loud burly voices kick in, specifically his. It’s like he’s beckoning you to kick the sheets off your bed in a hasty manner, beckoning you to stomp out to your balcony and scream his name.
Though you’re sure you both prefer when your screaming it in a different manner, but that’s a story for another day.
The rambunctious laughter penetrating your balconies closed doors is what has your heavy eyes shooting open, a tired groan bubbling through your chest and past your lips.
“One night Barnes, just one,” you cry to your room.
You refused to let him win this one; you would not throw the sheets back and stomp your barely clothed body to the balcony doors, nor would you swing them open hastily as you glared down into those ocean greys.
You knew the game he was playing, you knew the outcome he was aiming for and you would not give in no matter how irresistible the temptation was.
You lasted all but thirty minutes.
Between clenching your teeth beneath your fluffiest pillows, to burrowing further into your bed as it allowed when the low rumbles of their bikes started up once more, it was five minutes more before you had, had enough.
You threw the sheets off with a growl, your feet stomping to the balcony doors with no remorse to your neighbors below you. You yanked open the doors roughly before reaching for the railing your glare being thrown over.
“there she is,” he called up, “a sight for sore eyes sugar!”
“One night Barnes, would it kill you to keep it quiet for one damn night!”
A smirk kissed the corner of his mouth, “now where would the fun in that be, this is the only way i can get you to come out!”
You rolled your eyes though heat rushed your cheeks, “you ever think of, oh I don’t know, trying a normal approach to taking a girl out, or are you that used to women falling at your feet that you’ve forgotten how to do so?”
“Ooo she bites,” Sam whistled, your eyes slid over to him though the glare softened, “Wilson i expected better from you.”
He raises his hands legs bracing him and the bike, “to be fair,” he starts, “I’m only here because I like watching Barnes fail at picking up the only girl he has his eyes set on.”
Your eyes float back over to the long-haired brunette, brow shooting up in question, “what can I say I like a challenge!”
“well do you think you can hold off one night, there’s some of us that actually work early tomorrow morning!”
“sure,” he answers and you have half a mind to want to breathe a sigh of relief because you think tonight might be the night he actually gives in to what you want, but then he’s adding, “just come get the keys.”
A loud groan leaves your lips, head thrown back as you stomp your foot, “Barnes please for the love of god!”
“Come get the keys from me, and the boys and I will call it a night,” he answers as he shuts the bike off the keys jingling into the dark of night.
When your eyes meet his you know it’s a challenge on his end, he’s never asked this of you personally. This is never how your nights with him go, sure most of them end with him at your door, and your back hitting your bed, but he’s never asked this, so he thinks you won’t do it.
Well two could play this game.
You don’t hesitate as you push off the balconies rails your feet carrying you back through your room, and out through your apartment, a determination set in your stride. You’re taking the steps down two at a time, your lips set in a thin line as you reach the door nearly yanking it open.
A low whistle meets your ears and your glare lands on the man in question as you reach the last concrete step. The keys are in his hands, an almost taunting look to him, “come an get em sugar.”
You let out a huff as you move over to him no clear plan of attack as you quite literally lunge for the keys.
You knew he wouldn’t make it easy, Bucky never made it easy for you, “Barnes, give me the damn keys,” you whined pushing up on your feet as he pulled them high over his head.
He leaned into your space, voice just by your ear as you struggled to reach the damned chain that held the keys, “you want it, take it.”
His words nearly have you freezing in your lame attempt, because those are words he only shared in the quiet of your bedroom as he towered over you, his hands guiding yours to the tops of his jeans.
Oh so that’s the game he wanted to play.
You let yourself fall back onto your feet, your eyes finding his, “if you’re planning on knocking on my door tonight with the hopes of being let in, you’ll give me the keys, if not you can use your hand for that warmth you crave.”
Steve and Sam are stifling their laughter, “my man,” Sam howls, “she told you!”
A smirk plays at his lips as he lowers the keys, though he still holds them away from your reach, you raise a brow as he leans his face closer to yours, his warm breath fanning your face, “you’re not serious.”
“oh,” you question, “well maybe you’d like to find out just how serious I am, maybe Sam would like to come upstairs, I’m sure he’d hand over the keys with no question.”
“well she ain’t wrong,” you hear Sam drawl, “I’ll hand them over right now.”
Bucky shakes his head, though the smirk remains even as he passes you the keys, another round of low whistles being emitted from his friends.
He’s dipping in closer, his eyes magnetized to yours, “leave your door unlocked, I’ll be up soon.”
You have half a mind to not let your reaction show as you fist the keys, your feet pulling you away from him as you walk backwards to the apartment steps. You turn for the first step when you find yourself freezing at his next words, “and I expect to find you on your bed already, you know how I like you.”
Your cheeks flame, as the whistles meet the night air around you, a silent curse of his name falling past your lips as you make your way hastily up the rest of the steps.
Two could play this game, but Bucky could always play it better.
I beg of you please write us Bucky reader and our son in a heatwave🙏🙏🙏🙏
Bucky’s Beach Day
WC 1.5k
TW established relationship, Husband!Bucky x Wife!reader, you and Bucky have a son called Jamie, fluff!!
Could be read as a one-shot, but you can read more stories in this universe here!
The cooling function in Bucky’s arm had been designed for missions. That was what Shuri had said to him when she installed the upgrade.
It was intended for harsh desert operations, or long exposures to tropical heat. It could save someone’s life in a life or death heat stroke situation. The section she had it in was called Tactical Temperature Regulation. It was brilliant and sleek, and Bucky nodded very seriously while pretending he understood half of the science she was explaining to him.
It was not, technically, made so his wife could cling to it on a beach towel because she was “literally going to perish without it.”
But Bucky knew better than to argue with you. Especially when you were sprawled under the umbrella in your swimsuit, sunglasses slipping down your nose, one hand thrown over your forehead like a woman in a tragic period drama.
“Buckyyy,” you said weakly.
He looked over from where he was helping Jamie dig a sandcastle with the yellow shovel. “Yeah, sweetheart?”
“I’m dying.”
Jamie gasped. “Mommy?”
“She’s not dying,” Bucky said calmly.
“I am,” you insisted with a sigh, beads of sweat rolling down your skin that Bucky was really trying not to pay attention to, not while he was building sandcastles with your son. “The sun has chosen me as tribute.”
“Mmm,” Bucky’s mouth twitched into a small smile. “Is that so?”
“Yes,” you frowned, “I need your arm.”
He glanced down at the vibranium arm, then back at you.
Jamie looked between the two of you, very interested. “Daddy’s cold arm?”
“Daddy’s cold arm,” you confirmed. Jamie knew because when he sprained his ankle last month, Bucky used his arm to “ice” the bruise.
Bucky huffed a laugh.
Then, without making a big deal out of it, he reached up and detached the arm.
Your eyes widened behind your sunglasses. “Wait. I was joking.”
“No, you weren’t.”
You considered you answer for a second. “I was joking a little.”
“No, you weren’t,” he repeated, because apparently being the love of your life meant that he knew you better than you knew yourself.
He walked over and gently set the vibranium arm beside you on the towel, cooling function already humming faintly through the vibranium.
You immediately wrapped your arm around it.
“Oh my God,” you sighed, pressing your cheek against the cool surface. “I love you.”
Bucky arched an eyebrow and chuckled. “Me or the arm?”
“At this exact moment,” You tilted your head, “I need you to be emotionally secure enough not to ask that.”
Jamie toddled over and patted the arm with both little hands. His eyes went huge. “Cold!”
“Very cold,” you said reverently at his adorable little face, blue eyes not unlike Bucky’s own.
Jamie turned to Bucky, delighted. “Daddy, mommy has your arm.”
“I know, buddy.”
“You only have one hand now.”
Bucky looked down at himself, then at Jamie. “Yeah. Looks like I’m gonna need help with the castle.”
Oh. Daddy needs me! He seemed to think.
Jamie straightened like he had just been promoted to general.
You watched the exact second your six-year-old became the most important construction worker on the beach.
“I can help,” Jamie said, very solemnly.
“I was hoping you would.”
Bucky went back to the sandcastle one-handed. To be fair, he could still do most things better than most people with one hand.
He packed sand with his right palm, dragged the shovel toward him, smoothed down walls with his fingers. But every time one of Jamie’s little structures needed steadying, every time a bucket had to be tipped or a shell had to be placed or the moat needed “more water but not too much water,” he looked to Jamie.
“Can you hold this side for me?”
Jamie rushed in. “I got it, daddy!”
“Good job,” he smiled, “Don’t let it fall.”
Jamie’s little face went slightly pink with concentration. “I won’t.”
You hugged the cold arm closer, your heart melting for an entirely different reason.
Bucky could have done it faster on his own. You knew that. He knew that. But Jamie absolutely did not know that.
To Jamie, his father needed him.
To Jamie, he was not just watching the castle happen. He was making it happen.
He held the bucket while Bucky packed wet sand inside. He pressed both hands against one crooked wall while Bucky reinforced the other side. He selected shells with the concentration of a professional jeweller. He added one piece of seaweed to the top and declared it a flag.
Bucky squinted at it. “Looks like kelp.”
Jamie gave him a look.
“I mean,” Bucky corrected himself immediately. “Strong flag, buddy.”
Jamie nodded. “It means no bad guys.”
“Good rule.”
“And no stepping on mommy.”
Bucky’s eyes flicked to you, curled shamelessly around his detached arm like a sun-drunk cat. “Definitely no stepping on your mom.”
You lifted one hand lazily. “This kingdom has great laws, baby.”
Jamie beamed.
The castle got bigger. As it got bigger, it got stranger. Then, Jamie insisted it had a garage, because Jamie insisted all castles needed garages, and Bucky, being a better father than anyone had any right to be, didn’t argue with the logic.
“For what kind of car?” Bucky asked.
Jamie frowned like the answer was obvious. “A fast one.”
“Right. Of course.”
“A blue one.”
“Blue fast car. Got it.”
“And it flies.”
Bucky paused. “A flying car?”
Jamie nodded.
So Bucky built the garage one handed.
The left side collapsed twice, and Jamie gasped both times like there had been casualties.
“I need you,” Bucky said seriously. “This wall’s no good without you.”
Jamie dropped to his knees beside him. “I fix it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You hold it, Daddy.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bucky held the wall while Jamie patted wet sand onto the side with tiny, clumsy, determined hands. Half of it stuck, and half of it slid down. But none of it mattered, because Bucky looked at your son like he had just watched him solve cold fusion.
“There,” Jamie said, sitting back on his heels. “I did it!”
Bucky smiled proudly. “You did.”
Jamie looked down at the castle, then back at him. “You needed me.”
Bucky went very still.
It was brief, but you saw that little pause he got sometimes when love hit a wound he forgot he still had.
Then he reached out and brushed sand from Jamie’s cheek with his thumb.
“Yeah,” Bucky said quietly. “I did.”
Jamie accepted that like it was simple. Because to him, it was.
His daddy needed help. He helped. Because of both their efforts, the castle stood.
The world was very easy at six years old.
By the time the tide started creeping closer, the castle had three towers, a moat, one flying-car garage, sixteen shells, a kelp flag, and Jamie’s full emotional investment.
When the first little wave reached the edge of the moat, Jamie gasped. “No!”
Bucky turned immediately. “You want me to move it?”
You lifted your head. “Bucky, you cannot move a sandcastle.”
He looked at you. You looked at him.
He looked back at the castle like he was genuinely considering whether he could get a big enough shovel to move a sandcastle.
“Don’t,” you warned.
Jamie, thankfully, solved the crisis by flinging himself into Bucky’s side.
“It’s okay,” he said, though he sounded heartbroken. “Ocean can have it.”
Bucky wrapped his one arm around him and pulled him close. “That’s generous.”
Jamie sniffed. “But not the garage.”
“No,” Bucky agreed. “That part’s between us and the ocean.”
You laughed into the vibranium arm.
Bucky glanced back at you, sun-flushed, hair messy from the wind, one arm missing and the other full of your son.
He looked perfect.
Eventually Jamie wore himself out completely. He crawled into Bucky’s lap, sandy and buzzing with sleep, mumbling something about blue flying cars against his father’s chest.
Bucky sat under the umbrella with him, broad shoulder curved protectively around Jamie’s small one.
You scooted closer, still holding the detached arm. “Do you want this back?” you asked.
Bucky looked at you, then at Jamie asleep against him, then at the arm tucked against your cheek.
“Keep it,” he said softly.
You chuckled and kissed his cheek, “It was made for dangerous missions.”
“It’s on one.”
You smiled. “Taking care of me is a dangerous mission?”
“Keeping you comfortable is my life’s work.”
You laughed, and he only smiled wider. Jamie shifted in his sleep, one small hand fisting in Bucky’s sleeveless shirt.
Bucky looked down at him, and there it was again. That disbelief and gratitude all the same.
He had been made into a weapon once.
Now his metal arm was keeping his wife cool, his only hand was holding his sleeping son, and a crooked sandcastle with a flying-car garage was being swallowed by the sea in front of him.
Shuri’s desert-grade cooling system had probably not been built for this.
But it was hard to imagine a better use.
—
Note: please send me more blurb/short story ideas of this little family! I adore writing for them sm 😭
Winter's Girl @winterslove1917 - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
