pairing: boyfriend!Bucky Barnes x girlfriend!Reader
summary: It starts as a harmless prank. It ends with Bucky Barnes having a full-blown existential crisis over the possibility of you having a Tinder account.
word count: <1.5 k
warnings: domestic fluff, established relationship, Bucky Barnes being dramatic (and dumb), kissing, light suggestive content.
a/n: pretty sure this counts as a crackfic, but it's based on this Tiktok prank where you tell your boyfriend you saw X person on Tinder. thank you to my girls @herejustforbuckybarnes & @buckysdecaflove for beta reading this! | dividers by @viviansturns
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The rain had started a few minutes ago. You were sprawled across the couch, your legs were thrown over Bucky's lap, half-watching some old movie he'd put on while he mindlessly ran his hands up and down your calf.
This had become your routine after work for a few weeks now. You were acting like an old couple and you knew it, but you didn't mind… except today, you wanted to add some fun to the mix.
You'd been holding it since your lunch break, waiting for the precise moment when he was relaxed enough to be off-guard. You glanced down at your phone—still on the Home Screen, but he didn't know that— and cleared your throat.
"Babe."
"Mm?" He didn't look up from the TV.
"I think I just saw Sam on Tinder."
His fingers stilled completely against your skin. His head turned slowly, like a door hinge that needed oil. Then without warning, he burst out laughing.
"Sam?" He wheezed, clutching his stomach. "Oh, that actually tracks."
You blinked. That… wasn't the reaction you were expecting. "It does?"
"Sweetheart, it's Sam. He'd been waiting his entire life for an app that lets him judge people by a single photo and a witty one-liner." Bucky shook his head, grinning from ear to ear, fully delighted by the image. "I bet his profile picture is a picture of him with Redwing, shirtless at the beach, holding a fish he definitely didn't catch."
"He did have a fish," you said, scrambling to keep up. "And sunglasses."
"Of course he did." Bucky wiped at his eye, wheezing. "His bio probably says something like 'Former Air Force, current Captain America'. Or maybe just 'Looking for someone to do the talking at parties.' He's definitely got that smirk in his pictures, the one where he thinks he's being mysterious."
You were biting your cheek so hard it hurt. This was going off-script. "You're not… worried about him?"
"Worried?" Bucky scoffed, waving a hand, settling back into the couch with a smug grin. "Sam's a grown man. If he wants to swim in the shallow end of the internet, that's his business. I'm just saying—" He leaned back, hands behind his head, looking way too pleased with himself. "—the man's got the charisma of a used car salesman and the ego of a fighter pilot. He's probably out there collecting matches like Infinity Stones. I bet he swipes right on everyone to see what he catches."
He was having the time of his life, roasting his best friend, eyes bright with mischief, there was no shred of concern in sight.
"I bet he opens with some line about his wings," Bucky continued, warming to his subject. "'Hey baby, ever been with a guy who can literally sweep you off your feet?' Or maybe he just sends a picture of Redwing and says, 'He's trained, but I'm not'."
You lost it. A laugh escaped before you could stop it, and Bucky took it as encouragement, turning toward you with a boyish grin.
"And you know he's got his Spotify linked. It's probably all early 2000s R&B and one patriotic playlist he made ironically but listens to unironically."
He threw his head back and laughed, loud and open, completely unbothered and thoroughly entertained by the mental image of Sam Wilson navigating modern dating. And then, it was like a record scratch moment.
Bucky froze mid-sentence, his mouth still open on some joke about Sam's courting. His eyes narrowed, shifting from distant amusement at his best friend's expense to something much more immediate. He turned to you slowly.
"Wait," he said. You bit the inside of your cheek to keep from smiling. "Why are you on Tinder?"
Oh, there it was.
You looked up at him with your best innocent eyes. "What?"
"You're on Tinder," he said, pointing at you like he'd just discovered a new form of betrayal. "You're sitting there, on my couch. In our apartment, wearing my clothes… and you're swiping?"
"I'm not swiping right now."
"That's not the point, sweetheart!" He was gesturing wildly, all his earlier smugness evaporating into panic. "The point is you've got an account. You're out there, in a database where other men can see you."
"And women," you added helpfully. "It's very inclusive now, you know?"
Bucky looked like he might swallow his own tongue.
"Who else did you see?" he demanded, taking a step closer. "Did you match with anyone? Did you talk to anyone? Is that why you've been on your phone all week? Have you been— chatting?"
"Bucky—"
"I thought we were exclusive!" He was fully shouting now, but it was the most wounded shout you'd ever heard. "We live together! I always buy your favorite cereal!"
"I know, but—"
"What does your bio even say?" He lunged for your phone, and you had to scramble to keep it out of reach, which only made him more feral. "Let me see it! Did you mention me? Did you use a good picture? If you used that one from the beach I took I'm gonna lose my mind, you know the one, the one with the—"
"Bucky!" You were laughing now, couldn't help it, curling into the corner of the couch with your phone clutched to your chest. "Bucky, stop!"
"Why should I stop?" He shifted closer, bracing one arm on the back of the couch behind you, all his looming energy collapsing into pure, wounded-puppy devastation. "You're out here, marketing yourself to the entire—"
"It's a prank!"
He stopped dead.
The rain kept hitting the window, the movie was still playing on the TV. And Bucky stared at you, chest heaving, his t-shirt was askew. He looked like a man who had just run an emotional marathon.
"What?" he said, very carefully.
"I'm not on Tinder," you continued, fighting your smile. "I don't have an account, I just saw this Tiktok and wanted to see your reaction."
The silence that followed was thick. Bucky's expression cycled through approximately twelve different emotions—relief, betrayal, confusion, more betrayal, grudging admiration.
"You are the worst person I have ever met."
"I thought it would be funny."
"You thought—" He cut himself off, running both hands through his hair. "I was right there, about to text Sam about it. I had roasts prepared… and you were— you were pranking me."
"It was really funny, though."
Bucky looked at the ceiling like he was asking God for strength. Then he moved.
You shrieked as he grabbed you, hauling you off the couch and over his shoulder in one smooth move. The world tilted upside down—your hair falling toward the floor, his vibranium arm locked tight around the back of your thighs, his flesh hand swatting your behind with a satisfying smack that made you yelp.
"Bucky! Put me down!" You were pounding on his back, but you were laughing so hard you could barely breathe, kicking your legs uselessly as he straightened up.
"Nope." He started walking toward the bedroom, purposeful and unbothered by your squirming. "You wanna prank me? You wanna make me think you're out there swiping through the entire population of New York while you're wearing my clothes? Fine. But you're gonna make it up for me."
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" you gasped out, not sorry at all, giggling into the fabric of his t-shirt.
"No you're not, not yet at least," he muttered, but you could hear the grin in his voice. He bounced you once on his shoulder to adjust his grip, and you squealed, clutching at his waist.
"I will be good, I promise I will be good!" You said breathless with laughter.
"Will you?" He laughed, swatting you again just to hear you yelp. "You're not gonna keep running around, giving me heart attacks?"
He kicked the bedroom door shut behind him and dropped you into the mattress. You bounced, trying to scramble away, but he was already climbing over you, caging you with his arms. He tried looking furious but instead he looked absolutely smitten, with that boyish grin that made your heart jump.
"Just so we're clear," he said low, pressing a kiss to your jaw. "That phone is mine now. Consider it confiscated by the century-old boyfriend whom you just tried to give a heart attack. And you're gonna make it up to me, starting now."
You were still giggling as he leaned down, but the kiss shut you up pretty quick, his fingers threading through your hair. When he pulled back, his eyes were dark, but the corner of his mouth was twitching.
"No more doing pranks on me, okay? You can't go around giving me prank-induced arrhythmia for views."
You laughed, while your fingers traced the line of his spine. "I won't, I promise."
summary: For months, Bucky has looked forward to one thing: seeing his favorite camgirl live. He never expected to find her poolside in a white bikini... or discover that she's been flirting with him all summer long.
word count: <3.7k
warnings: +18 MDNI explicit sexual content, age gap, mutual pining, mutual obsession, voyeurism, mention of m and f masturbating, oral sex, face sitting, dirty talk, infidelity (reader has a boyfriend), porn with a little bit of plot, unprotected p in v. | english is ot my first language so I'm sorry in advance for any grammar mistakes or mistypos.
a/n: This request has been sitting in my inbox for months now (I'm truly sorry for the delay) I had to do a minor adjustment to the original one, since I've never posted my guidelines, but after talking with the lovely person who submitted it we came to this agreement ❤︎ as always a big thank you for my girls @herejustforbuckybarnes and @buckysdecaflove for beta reading.
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Bucky's alone in his department, laptop open on the bed, his door locked even though no one's coming over. It's become a routine—every few nights, sometimes more, he finds himself here… waiting.
The notification pops up: StarryKitten is live.
He clicks immediately.
The stream loads, and there she is. No face, she never shows her face—just that perfect body in black lace, the camera angled to show everything from her neck down. She's on her knees on the bed, and even through the screen he can see how her skin would feel under his hands.
"Hi everyone," she says, and her voice—fuck, her voice is what hooked him in the first place. Soft and breathy and just a little teasing. "Missed me?"
The chat explodes. He watches the usernames scroll by, all desperate and pathetic, and then he types his own message.
oldsoul17: Always.
She laughs, and he swears, he can hear the smile in it. "Well, aren't you sweet."
He's been watching for months now. He found her by accident—late night, couldn't sleep, scrolling through sites he probably shouldn't be on. And then there she was. Something about her pulled him in and wouldn't let go. The way she moved, the sounds she made, the little freckle on her left hip that the camera caught sometimes when she shifted positions.
He's spent more money than he cares to admit. Tips, private requests, custom videos. He's become one of her regulars, and she knows it—she calls him out by the username he uses, thanks him specifically.
"I see you there, old soul," she says now, shifting onto her back. "That mean it's going to be a good night."
His hand is already on his belt.
She touches herself slowly, teasingly, and he follows every movement. He's memorized her body at this point—the curve of her waist, the way her hips roll, the little sounds she makes when she's getting close. He knows what she likes, what makes her gasp.
When she comes, he's right there with her, and afterward he sits there in the dark, heart pounding, feeling like a fucking creep.
He doesn't know who she is. Doesn't know her real name, her face, anything beyond what she shows on camera.
It's safer that way.
The July heat is brutal, but your dad's summer house has a pool, and you're taking full advantage. You're stretched out on a lounger in your new bikini—white, high-cut, the kind that shows off your legs and draws the eye.
Bucky's here this weekend. Your dad invited him up, something about work and fishing. You've known him for years—he's been your dad's friend and business associate since you were sixteen—but lately, something's shifted.
The way he looks at you has changed.
You've noticed it over the past few months. The lingering glances, the way his eyes track you when you walk into a room. The way he stands just a little too close, lets his hand rest on your lower back a second too long when he passes behind you.
You've started testing it, wearing shorter dresses, leaning over in front of him to grab something, brushing against him in hallways… just to see.
He always reacts. A sharp inhale, a tightening of his jaw; but he never acts on it.
You're starting to wonder what it would take.
"You want something to drink?" your friend calls from the pool.
"I'm good!" you call back, adjusting your position on the longer. You tug at the waistband of your bikini bottoms, pulling them a little higher, and that's when you feel it.
Someone's staring.
You glance toward the patio, Bucky's standing there, frozen, beer in hand. But he's not looking at your face, his eyes are locked on your hip, on the small exposed stretch of skin where your freckle is visible. His face goes completely still. You watch his throat works as he swallows, his knuckles white around the bottle. His eyes are dark, intense, and when they finally drag up to meet yours, there's something in them that makes your stomach flip.
He looks almost… stricken.
Then he turns abruptly and walks back inside.
You sit there with your pulse racing, wondering what the hell just happened.
The afternoon drags on. Your friends eventually leave, pilling into cars with promises to meet up next week. Your parents head out for their dinner reservation, and Bucky claims he's not feeling well, that he'll just stay back and relax.
"Make yourself at home"your dad says, clapping him on the shoulder.
The door closes. The house goes quiet.
You're in the kitchen, still in your bikini with denim shorts pulled over it, bare feet on the cool tile. You're pouring yourself water when you sense him behind you.
You turn, leaning back against the counter. "Hey. Feeling better?"
Bucky's standing in the doorway, and the way he's looking at you it's different from before.
"Yeah," he says, but his voice sounds restrained.
You take a sip of water, watching him over the rim of the glass. "You sure? You left pretty quick earlier."
"Just needed to cool off."
"It is hot," you agree, setting the glass down. You stretch, arching your back slightly, and you don't miss the way his eyes track the movement. "I might go for another swim later."
"You should put more clothes on."
The words come out harder than he probably meant. You tilt your head, playing innocent. "Why?"
"Because—" He stops. "Because your parents will be back soon."
"Not for hours." You push off the counter, taking a few steps toward him. "It's just us."
You watch him fight it. Watch the tension coil in his shoulders, the way his hands curl into fists. You're close enough now to see his pupils dilate, to hear his breathing change.
"You should go upstairs," he says quietly.
"What if I don't want to?"
For a long moment, neither of you moves. Then you do something reckless—you reach up and adjust your bikini top, fingers grazing the tie at your neck, and his eyes follow the movement like he's starving.
"Shit," he mutters under his breath, turning away. "I—I'll be right back."
He disappears down the hall, and you hear a door close. The bathroom.
You bite your lip, because you know exactly what he's doing in there.
Bucky braces his hands on the sink, his head bowed, trying to breathe.
This was insane.
He knows that freckle. He's seen it dozens of times, hundreds, in videos and live streams and photos. Right there, just under the waistband of your left hip.
StarryKitten. You're the girl he's been watching for months, the one he's jerked off to more times than he can count, the one he's tipped thousands of dollars… you've been right here the whole time.
And you had no fucking idea he knows.
He's watched you parade around in those little outfits, leaning over in front of him, brushing up against him. You think you're just teasing your dad's friend. You don't know he's seen everything.
His cock is painfully hard against his jeans. He palms himself through the denim, groaning quietly. He shouldn't. He should get the fuck out of this house, drive back to the city, block your account and never think about this again.
But then he remembers the way you looked at him just now. The way you've stretched, arched your back, adjusted your bikini.
You want him.
Maybe not the way he wants you—you don't know about the months of watching, the obsession, the desperate need—but you want him.
He unbuckles his belt with shaking hands,.
Just once, just to take the edge off. Then he'll get his shit together.
He wraps his hand around himself and the relief is immediate. He braces against the sink with his other hand, eyes closed, and all he can see is you. In that white bikini, in those videos on your knees, on your back, touching yourself while saying his username.
"Fuck," he breathes.
It doesn't take long. He comes hard, biting back a groan, and in the aftermath he just stands there, forehead against the mirror, trying to catch his breath.
This can't happen.
But he knows deep down it's going to.
When Bucky comes back, his hair is damp like he splashed water on his face, and his eyes are darker than before.
"Better?" you ask innocently.
"No."
The honesty in his voice makes you shiver. You're standing in the living room now, the evening light slanting through the windows. The house feels huge and empty, but also full of possibilities.
"Your parents will be back soon," he says again, but it sounds less convincing this time.
"Two hours at least," you take a step closer. "Maybe three."
"You should—" He stops, exhaling roughly. "You don't know what you're doing."
"Don't I?"
You close the distance between you, and you can see him fighting not to back up, not to run. You're close enough now to feel the heat radiating off him, to see the muscle jumping in his jaw.
"I see the way you look at me," you say softly. "I've seen it for months now."
His hands curl into fists. "You're my best friend's daughter."
"I'm also an adult."
"You have a boyfriend."
"Do you care?"
The question hangs between you. His eyes are locked on yours, and you can see the war happening behind them.
"I should," he says finally. "But no, I don't."
Your heart is pounding. "Then why are you holding back?"
"Because I'm trying to be the responsible one between us."
You reach up and untie your bikini top. It falls away, and his eyes drop immediately, his breathing going ragged.
"There's no need to be responsible here," you whisper.
And that's all it takes. His hands are on you in a second, pulling you against him, and his mouth crashes down on yours. It's not gentle—it's months of build up tension breaking all at once, desperate and overwhelming. You kiss him back just as frantically, fingers tangling in his hair.
"We should go upstairs," you murmur against his lips.
He takes you to your room, and the second the door closes,he's on you again. His hands are everywhere—your waist, your hips, sliding up your ribcage to cup your breasts. You're pulling at his shirt, desperate, and when it finally comes off you run your hands over his chest, his shoulders.
"I've wanted this for so long," he mutters, backing you toward the bed. "You have no fucking idea."
"Tell me," you breathe.
"Every time you walk into a room, every time you lean over in those little dresses, every time you brush against me—" He groans, his hand sliding into your hair. "I've thought about bending you over and making you mine."
"Do it."
He pushes you back onto the bed, and you land with a gasp. He's over you in a second, his weight pressing you into the mattress, his mouth on your neck.
"Do you know how perfect you are?" He murmurs against your skin. "How fucking gorgeous?"
His hands slide down to your shorts, and he makes quick work of the button and zipper. You lift your hips and he drags them off along with your bikini bottoms, and then you're completely bare beneath him.
"Christ," he breathes, his eyes raking over you. His hand slides up your inner thigh, and when his fingers finally touch you, he groans. "You're soaked."
"For you."
"Yeah?" He pushes one finger inside, and you arch into the touch. "All for me? Not for that little boyfriend of yours, huh?"
"Yes—fuck—Bucky—"
"That's it baby, say my name." He adds another finger, curling them just right, and you're already trembling. "Does that little punk makes you feel this good?"
You just can shake your head while he works you with his fingers, his thumb finding your clit, and you're already gasping and writhing beneath him. But before you can get too close, he pulls away.
"Not yet," he says, and there's something wicked in his smile. "I want to taste you first."
He moves down your body, pressing kisses to your stomach, your hip—right over that freckle that started all of this. Then he's settling between your thighs and the first touch of his tongue makes you cry out.
He eats you out like a man starving, his hands grip your hips, holding you in place as his tongue works over you, and the sounds he's making—low groans of appreciation, like you're the best thing he's ever tasted—are almost as overwhelming as the sensation itself.
"Bucky—oh my god—"
"That's it," he murmurs against you. "Let me hear you, gorgeous. Let me hear how good I make you feel."
You're already so close, the tension coiling tight in your belly, but then he pulls back. Before you can protest, he's moving up the bed, lying on his back.
"Come here," he says. "I want you to ride my face."
"But I can suffocate you!"
"Get up here, sweetheart, it wasn't a question."
The command in his voice makes you move without thinking. You straddle his chest, thighs shaking, and he grips your hips and pulls you forward until you're positioned right over his mouth.
"Perfect," he breathes, and then he's pulling you down.
The sensation is overwhelming. His tongue is everywhere, licking and sucking and fucking into you, and his hands on your hips are guiding you to grind against him. You're gasping, one hand braced on the headboard, and the other tangled in his hair.
"Fuck—Bucky—that's so good."
He groans against you, the vibration making you jolt, and his grip tightens. He's relentless, working you higher and higher until you're shaking, until you can't hold back anymore.
"I'm gonna—oh god—I'm—"
"Come for me," he growls against you. "Come all over my face, kitten."
The nickname hits you like a shock. Your eyes fly open, but before you can process it, your orgasm crashes over you. You come with a cry, hips rolling against his mouth as he works you through it, licking up everything you give him.
When you finally slump forward, trembling, he eases you off and you collapse next to him on the bed, your chest heaving.
"What—" you start, but your voice won't work. "Did you just—did you call me—"
He sits up, and when you see his face—lips swollen, chin wet—your stomach flips. "StarryKitten," he says, and his voice is pure gravel. "That's you, isn't it?"
Your heart stops. "How did you—"
"This freckle." He reaches out, thumb brushing over the spot on your hip. "I've seen it before, dozens of times, in your videos."
Oh god. "You're oldsoul17," you whisper.
"Yeah," he moves over you again. "I've been watching you for months, baby, touching myself to your videos. Tipping you, messaging you… and the whole time, it was you."
You should be embarrassed. Mortified even, but instead heat floods through you. "Bucky—"
"I've wanted you for so long," he mutters, his fingers rolling your nipple, making you arch into his touch. "Both versions of you. The girl who walks around here in those little dresses, teasing me. And the girl on my screen who makes the sweetest sounds when she comes."
His other hand finds your other breast, and he's playing with both now, watching your face as you writhe beneath him.
"I've watched you touch these," he says. "Watched you pinch and tease yourself. But I've always wanted to be the one doing it."
"Then do it," you breathe.
He leans down and takes one nipple into his mouth, sucking hard, and you cry out. His hand continues working the other, pinching and rolling, and the dual sensation is overwhelming. He switches sides, teeth grazing sensitive flesh, and you're already getting wet again. But you need to touch him too.
You push at his shoulders, and he pulls back, confused. "What—"
"My turn," you say, and push him onto his back.
"Baby—"
"You've watched me," you say, moving down his body. "Now let me show you what I can do in person."
You settle between his thighs, and up close, he's even more impressive. Hard and thick, already leaking. You wrap your hand around him, and the groan he lets out makes you clench.
"You don't have to do this—" he grits out, but his his jerk against your touch.
"I want to," you stroke him slowly, base to tip, and lean down to press a kiss to the head. "I want to taste you."
You take him into your mouth, just the tip at first, swirling your tongue, and his hand immediately tangles in your hair.
"That's it," he mutters. "Just like that."
You take him deeper, hollowing your cheeks, and the sounds he's making are even better than you imagined. Low groans and muttered curses and your name over and over. You work him with your mouth and hand together, finding a rhythm, paying attention to what makes him grip your hair tighter, what makes his thighs tense. You pull off to lick along the underside, tracing the vein, and he nearly comes off the bed.
You take him deeper again, and his control starts to slip. His hips rock up slightly, and you relax your throat, letting him.
"Look at you," he groans, propping himself up on his elbows to watch. "So fucking perfect with your lips wrapped around me. I've imagined this, but nothing compares to the real thing."
You moan around him, and the vibration makes him curse. You can feel him getting close, his cock pulsing against your tongue, and you double your efforts.
"I'm close, you don't have to—"
But you want to. You want to taste him, feel him come apart because of you. You take him as deep as you can and swallow, and that's all it takes.
He comes with a shout, hips jerking, and you take everything he gives you. When you finally pull off, you look up at him through your lashes, and the look on his face is of someone absolutely wrecked.
"Come here," he growls.
You crawl up his body, and he pulls you into a filthy kiss, tasting himself on your tongue. His hands are on your breasts again immediately, kneading and teasing, and you're so turned on you're trembling.
"I need you inside me," you whisper against his mouth. "Please, Bucky—"
"Greedy girl," he mutters, but he's already hardening again. "Want more already?"
"Always."
He flips you onto your back, settling between your thighs. His mouth finds your breast again, sucking and biting while his hand works the other. You're writhing beneath him, desperate for more.
"Bucky— fuck—I need—"
"I know, I know sweet girl."
He lines himself up and pushes in slowly and the stretch is perfect and overwhelming. You grip his shoulders, nails digging in, and he groans against your neck.
"You feel incredible," he grits out. "So tight and wet."
He starts to move, slow and deep, and every thrust makes your toes curl. His mouth finds yours, kissing you deep and filthy while he fucks you into the mattress. One hand is braced by your head, but the other finds your breast again, rolling your nipple between his fingers.
"You're so perfect," he mutters against your lips. "My good girl, taking me so well."
"Faster, please—"
He shifts the angle, and suddenly he's hitting that spot inside you that makes your vision blur. You're gasping and moaning and he's talking you through it.
"That's it, baby. Let me hear you. Let me hear those sounds you make. I've heard them through my speakers for months, but this—" He thrusts harder, deeper. "This is so much better."
"Oh god— please—"
"You're close, aren't you? I can feel you getting tighter." He pinches your nipple again, and you cry out. "You gonna come for me, kitten? Gonna come all over my cock like a good girl?"
"Yes—yes—Bucky"
"Come on, let me feel this perfect pussy squeeze me."
Your orgasm hits you like a tidal wave. You cry out, back arching, and he fucks you through it, his rhythm getting rougher, more desperate. The hand on your breast slides down to grip your hip, fingers pressing into that freckle that gave you away.
"You're so fucking perfect when you come." He mutters before burying himself deep and groaning your name as he comes, and the feeling of him spilling inside you sends another wave of pleasure through you.
After, you're tangled together in the sheets, his hand tracing lazy patterns on your back. Your breasts are pressed against his chest, still sensitive from all the attention, and every time you shift you feel the pleasant ache.
"Your parents," he says eventually. "They'll be back soon."
"I know."
"This is insane."
"I know."
He tilts your chin up, forcing you to meet his eyes. His thumb brushes over your bottom lip. "I'm not done with you yet."
Your stomach flips. "Good."
"This isn't a one-time thing," he says, and there's something fierce in his voice. "Now that I have you, I'm not letting you go."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying you're mine now." His hands slides from your breast down to your hip, over your freckle. "Secret. No one else gets to know. Not your boyfriend, not your parents…"
You should feel guilty. Your boyfriend, your parents, the risk. But all you feel is a thrill running through you.
"Okay," you whisper.
He kisses you again, slower this time. You can feel him hardening against your thigh again.
"Again?"
"I've waited months for this," he says before rolling you onto your back. "I'm not wasting a single second."
And he doesn't.
By the time you hear your parents' car I the driveway two hours later, you've come three more times, and you can barely walk straight. But you both know this is just the beginning.
summary: Six months after disappearing, you're alone in a remote cabin in Norway, slowly becoming something not entirely human. Meanwhile, Bucky tears through the universe trying to find a cure because aftr everything you've gone through, Bucky refuses to believe your story ends in separation. And this time, he's not letting you go.
word count: 10.7 k
warnings: +18 MDNI smut, established relationship, hurt/comfort, isolation, near death expriences, panic/grief, lots of crying. angst with a happy ending(yay), mutual pining, canon divergence, fluff, a lot of cameos.
a/n: so, after binge watching the infinity saga + black panther + wakanda forever I finally came here with this resolution for the angstiest story I've ever written. I hope you all enjoy it and that it makes sense :) also big thank you for @herejustforbuckybarnes @buckysdecaflove & @kileyking for beta reading this ꨄ︎ you have a big place in my heart! | dividers by @strangergraphics
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Six months later.
The cabin is so remote that supply drops only come once a month.
You chose Norway because the cold helps. Something about extreme temperatures stabilizes the radiation — makes the constant hum under your skin almost bearable.
The cabin is small. One room, actually. A bed you rarely sleep in, a kitchenette you barely use, and a desk completely buried under research materials. Quantum physics textbooks in three languages, compound's database you stole before disappearing, including Bruce's notes.
Your hands hover over an equation, and they're glowing again. Faint purple light seeping through your skin like bioluminescence. You've learned to control it somewhat— channel it into small bursts of energy manipulation. You can move objects now without touching them, create shields, sense energy fields within a hundred-meter radius.
But it doesn't matter. None of it matters, because you're alone.
The dog tags hang heavy around your neck, you haven't taken them off once in six months. Sometimes you hold them when you sleep and pretend there's still a heartbeat behind them.
You wonder if he's given up looking yet. You wonder if Steve finally convinced him to let you go, if he started healing, started living, started forgetting—
Your hands flare bright purple and the coffee mug on the desk shatters.
"Shit." Your voice sounds strange. You haven't spoken out loud in three days, maybe four.
You clean up the ceramic shards with your bare hands, not bothering with the broom. The cuts heal almost instantly now, another side effect you discovered in the past weeks: accelerated healing, enhanced strength, and a bone-deep exhaustion that no amount of sleep can touch.
The latest book you've read is about quantum entanglement. The theory that particles can remain connected across any distance, that what affects one affects the other instantaneously. You'd laughed when you first read it, because of course that's what you are now. Quantumly entangled with Bucky across whatever distance you've put between you, feeling the ache of separation like a physical wound.
Your notes are getting more desperate, the handwriting sloppier. Margins filled with half-formed theories and crossed out equations. What if you could reverse the cellular integration? What if you could extract the energy signature? What if, what if, what if—
You slam the book shut and stand up too fast, the chair scrapes against the wooden floor, loud in the oppressive silence.
Outside, it's snowing again. You pull on your jacket—his jacket, actually, one of the things you took when you came here— and step out into the blizzard. The cold hits like a slap, but you welcome it. The wind screams, and you scream back, your voice low in the howl of the storm.
"TAKE IT BACK!"
Your hands are blazing now, purple energy crackling between your fingers like lightning. The snow around you melts in a perfect circle, steam rising as radiation meets ice.
"YOU GAVE THIS TO ME, SO TAKE IT BACK!" You're on your knees now, hands pressed into the snow, and where your palms touch the ground, the energy pulses outward in waves. "I DON'T WANT IT ANYMORE! I DON'T WANT ANY OF IT!"
The universe doesn't answer. It never does.
You collapse forward, forehead pressed against the frozen ground, and the sobs come like they always do: violent, wrenching and endless. Your fingers dig into the snow until they hit permafrost, and the dog tags swing forward, cold metal against your neck.
"Please," you whisper to no one, to nothing. "Please just let me go, let me fade… let me disappear. I can't do this anymore."
The wind howls.
You stay there until hypothermia starts to set in—which takes longer than it should, because apparently, cosmic radiation makes you resistant to temperature extremes too. When you finally drag yourself back inside, there's a perfect circle of dead earth where you'd been kneeling. Nothing will grow there for years.
You don't bother changing out of your wet clothes, you just curl up on the bed, still wearing his jacket, clutching his dog tags and stare at the wall. You probably should sleep, but instead, you reach for your phone.
You know you shouldn't do this, you've promised yourself every night you won't do this again, but you do it anyway.
The folder is called DO NOT OPEN and you've opened it 180 times, once for every night since you've been gone. Your finger hovers over one video for just one moment—one last chance for saving yourself— before you press play.
The screen fills with Bucky's face, and your heart immediately shatters. He's in bed, hair messy from sleep, early morning light streaming through the window behind him. This was recorded four months before everything went wrong. Before you knew that touching him could kill him.
"Stop recording me," video-Bucky mumbles, but he's smiling. That real, genuine smile he only ever gave you. The one that made his eyes crinkle at the corners.
"Never," your own voice responds from behind the camera, playful and so fucking happy it hurts to hear. "You're too pretty in the morning, it's unfair."
"I'm not pretty, I'm rugged."
"You're pretty and rugged, that's a dangerous combination."
He reaches for the camera—for you— and the frame shakes as you dodge away, laughing. God, your laugh sounds so carefree, like you didn't know that in four months, you'd be alone in a frozen cabin listening to this laugh and wanting to die.
"Come back to bed," video-Bucky says, and his voice is rough with sleep and affection and want. "It's too early for this."
"It's 10 AM."
"Exactly, too early." He props himself up on one elbow, and the sheet slips down to his waist. You remember this moment, remember thinking he looked like something out of a dream. "Put the phone down and come here."
"Make me."
His grin turns wicked. "Is that a challenge?"
"Maybe."
What happens next is blur—he's suddenly lunging forward, the camera spins wildly, and then you're both laughing, breathless and so in love it radiates from every frame. The video stabilizes eventually. Now you're both in frame, squeezed together in a selfie angle. His arm is around your shoulders and your head is tucked against his chest.
"Say hi to future us," you say to the camera.
"Hi future us," Bucky obliges, then he looks down at you, and his expression goes soft. "Hope you're having a good day."
"Hope we're still this happy," you add quietly.
He kisses the top of your head. "We will be, I promise."
The video ends.
You're sobbing before the screen even goes dark. It comes out in ragged, gasping waves—the kind of crying that feels like it's tearing you apart from the inside out. You curl tighter round the phone, pressing it against your chest like you can somehow press yourself back into that moment. Back when you were warm and safe.
"I'm sorry," you choke out to the empty room. To the ghost of him in the video. "I'm so sorry. I couldn't keep us that happy, I couldn't—"
Your voice breaks completely.
You replay the video again.
And again.
And again.
Then you close your eyes and try to sleep, knowing you'll dream of him. Knowing you'll wake up reaching for someone who isn't there. Knowing tomorrow night you'll watch the video again. Because it hurts, but it's all you have.
AVENGERS COMPOUND, month 2 since you left.
Bucky hasn't slept in thirty-six hours.
Steve finds him in the lab at 3 AM surrounded by data pads and holographic displays, Carol Danvers' contact information pulled up on the main screen.
"Buck—"
"She's out there somewhere, completely alone, probably thinking she saved me." Bucky doesn't look up from the screen, his metal fingers tap against the desk in an arrhythmic pattern that betrays his agitation. "She's got cosmic radiation tearing her apart from the inside and she's alone, Steve."
"You don't know that she's—"
"Yes, I do." Now Bucky looks up, and Steve flinches at what he sees in his eyes. "I know her, she took every piece of research she could carry. She's trying to fix herself, trying to find a cure so she can come back."
Steve sits down heavily. "Or she's trying to accept that there isn't one."
"No," the word comes out flat. "I don't accept that. Carol Danvers survived direct exposure to an Infinity Stone, so did Peter Quill and his entire team. Wanda got his powers from the mind stone. There are precedents, Steve, there are options."
"Bruce already—"
"Bruce doesn't know everything." Bucky pulls up a new file—Carol's SHIELD profile, her encounter with the tesseract. "Carol Danvers absorbs energy, that's her entire power set. What if she could absorb the radiation from—"
"Bucky, you're grasping at straws."
"I'm following leads," Bucky's jaw tightens. "There's a difference."
Steve watches his best friend for a long moment. The shadows under Bucky's eyes, the tension in his shoulder, the way his flesh hand keeps reaching for something that isn't there—your hand, probably. The habit is so ingrained that he doesn't even notice he's doing it anymore.
"If you find her," Steve says quietly, "and there's no cure… what then?"
Bucky's smile is sharp and humorless. "Then I'll find one anyway, I'll search every corner of this universe and the next if I have to."
"Buck—"
"She gave everything to save me, Steve. She walked away from me—the person she loved the most— because she thought it was the only way to keep me alive." Bucky stands, gathering his research into a neat stack. "So yeah, I'm gonna find a cure, and then I'm gonna find her. And then we're gonna have the forever she didn't think we could have."
"You sound pretty certain."
"I am certain," Bucky's smile heads for the door, pausing a the threshold. "I didn't survive seventy years of HYDRA just to lose her to bad luck and cosmic radiation. I'm getting her back, Steve. That's not a question. The only question is how long it will take."
He's gone before he can respond.
Month 3: Carol Danvers.
Turns out finding Carol Danvers is harder than expected. She's off-world more than she's on it, handling emergencies across multiple galaxies. Bucky makes a bunch of favors to Nick Fury so he can let him borrow his pager.
He waits patiently for one week until Carol materializes in a flash of gold light, landing in the empty field where Bucky's been waiting.
"You're Bucky."
He stands his ground. "Yeah, thanks for meeting me."
"Fury said you needed help with an Infinity Stone problem." Carol crosses her arms. "I'm listening."
So Bucky tells her everything. The mission to Morag, the power stone, the way you grabbed it to save everyone and the radiation poisoning that followed. Carol listens without interrupting, when he's done, she's quiet for a long moment.
"She grabbed the Power Stone with her bare hands," Carol says finally, "and survived."
"Barely."
"No, you don't get it." Carol shakes her head. "She should be dead. The fact that she's alive at all means her body did something right, it adapted somehow."
"But she's still emitting radiation—"
"Because her body doesn't know what to do with the energy it absorbed. It's trying to expel something it should be integrating." Carol starts pacing thinking out loud. "When I absorbed the Tesseract energy, my cells restructured at a molecular level, the energy became part of me. Your girlfriend's body is stuck in limbo—it absorbed the energy but can't process it."
Bucky's heart rate picks up. "Do you think… you can help her?"
"Maybe." Carol turns to face him. "I can absorb energy, it's literally what I do. If she's emitting Infinity Stone radiation, I might be able to pull it out of her system."
"Might?"
"I've never tried to absorb Infinity Stone energy from another person before," Carol's expression is serious. "But I'm willing to try. Where is she?"
And there it is… the question Bucky's been dreading.
"I don't know," he admits. "She disappeared three months ago, I've been trying to find her, but—"
"But she doesn't want to be found." Carol's expression softens slightly. "Smart girl."
"I need to find her first," Bucky says. "But when I do, will you help?"
Carol studies him for a moment and sees the desperation he's trying to hide, the determination, the love.
"Yeah," she says finally. "I'll help. But Barnes— even if I can absorb some of the radiation, it might not be enough. Infinity Stone exposure on this scale… there might not be a complete cure."
"Then I'll find one anyway."
Carol almost smiles. "Stubborn."
"You have no idea."
"Actually, I think I do." She pulls out a pager that looks exactly like Fury's. "Here. If you find her, call me and I'll come as soon as I can."
Bucky takes it carefully. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet," Carol's eyes glow faint gold. "Just find her, and when you do tell her Carol Danvers said she's a bad ass for surviving this long."
She's gone in a flash of light.
Month 4: Peter Quill.
The Guardians are harder to track down than Carol was. They don't exactly have an Earth address, they don't check in with any planetary authorities. They're mercenaries, pirates, heroes—depending on who you ask—and they move through the galaxy like ghosts.
Bucky has to call in a favor from Thor's old contacts. Has to promise things to people he'd rather shoot and has to follow a trail of bar fights and unpaid tabs halfway across the galaxy in a borrowed ship.
He finds them on Knowhere, of all places, in a dive bar that smells like engine fuel. Peter Quill is drunk… not falling-down drunk, but close.
Bucky slides into the seat across from him without asking. Quill looks up, squinting
"Do I know you?"
"I'm Bucky Barnes, I'm—"
"Yeah, yeah, I know, Steve Rogers' boyfriend or whatever." Quill waves a hand vaguely. "What do you want? We're not taking any jobs right now."
"I'm not here to hire you," Bucky pushes a data pad across the table. "I'm here because you survived direct exposure to the Power Stone."
That gets Quill's attention. He straightens up, suddenly more sober. "Why do you want to know about that?"
"Because someone I love is sort of dying from the same thing."
The words hang in the air between them.
Quill's expression changes. "Tell me," he says quietly.
So Bucky does, again. The whole story. By the time he's finished, Quill has ordered another drink.
"She grabbed it to save you," Quill says.
"To save everyone on the mission."
"But mostly you."
Bucky doesn't deny it.
Quill stares into his glass. "Gamora died because of a Soul Stone, because Thanos—" He cuts himself off, jaw tight. "I know what it's like, losing someone like that. Having to keep going when the only person you want is gone."
"I'm sorry," Bucky says, and means it.
"Yeah, me too." Quill drains his drink. "The only reason I survived the Power Stone was because my team shared the load—and because of my celestial DNA, without that, I'd be dead. Your girl doesn't have either of those things."
"But she survived."
"She did," Quill leans forward. "Which means her body did something extraordinary. The human body shouldn't be able to process Infinity Stone energy, but if she's alive, if she's still walking around, that means she's adapted somehow."
"Carol said the same thing."
"Carol's right. Your girlfriend is basically a living Infinity Stone battery at this point." Quill pauses. "The question is whether that's killing her or making her stronger."
"It's killing me," Bucky says flatly. "The radiation makes me sick, my body reads it as a threat."
"Because of that knockoff serum running through your veins, it's trying to protect you from what it thinks is a toxin." Quill drums his fingers on the table. "But what if it's not a toxin? What if it's just… power? Raw, uncontrolled, cosmic power that her body doesn't know how to use yet?"
Bucky's mind is racing. "You think she needs to integrate it, not expel it."
"I think she needs to stop fighting it, yeah." Quill meets his eyes. "When I held the Power Stone, I could feel it trying to tear me apart, but the moment I stopped resisting that's when it clicked. I could hold it and channel it. You need to find her and tell her to stop fighting it."
There's a long silence.
"I lost the person I loved most," Quill says finally. "I didn't get a choice, she was just… gone. But you've got a chance. Your girl is out there somewhere, alive. Don't waste it, don't let her think she has to do this alone."
"She left because being near me was killing me."
"So find a way to fix that part," Quill pulls up a holographic display. "I'll give you my genetic profile, the medical scans, all of it. Maybe it'll help."
"Why?" Bucky asks. "You don't know me."
Quill's smile is sad. "Because if I could go back, if I could save Gamora… I'd do anything, absolutely anything." He slides the data chip across the table. "So go save yours."
Bucky takes the chip carefully. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me, just—" Quill's voice cracks slightly. "Just get her back. And when you do, don't let go. Not for anything."
"I won't," Bucky promises.
Three hours later, Rocket corners Bucky in the cargo bay.
"So," Rocket says, eyeing Bucky's metal arm with barely concealed interest. "That arm of yours, if you happen to not need it anymore—"
"No."
"I'm just saying—"
"Rocket, I swear—"
"That thing is wasted on you! Do you even know what I could do with tech like that? The upgrades I could—"
"I am Groot," Groot interrupts gently.
"Fine! Fine, I'll stop asking." Rocket huffs. "But when you get yourself killed doing something stupid for your girlfriend, I call dibs."
Despite everything, Bucky almost laughed.
"If I die," he says, "you can have it."
Rocket's eyes light up. "Really?"
"No, not really. Stop asking."
"You're no fun."
But when Bucky lies down that night in the spare quarters they've given him, staring at the ceiling of an alien ship somewhere in deep space, he pulls out the locket and opens it. Stares at your face in the small photograph.
"I'm getting closer," he whispers to the image. "I'm gonna solve this and then I'm gonna find you."
The photo doesn't answer, but he keeps talking anyway.
"I know you think you saved me by leaving, and maybe you did—maybe I would've killed myself trying to get more time with you. But you gotta know, I'm not surviving without you, I'm just existing."
His thumb traces the edge of the locket.
"So I'm coming for you, and I'm bringing a cure. And then you're never leaving my side again."
He closes the locket and presses it against his chest. "Hold on a little longer."
Month 5: Wakanda.
Shuri doesn't look up when Bucky enters her lab. She's surrounded by holographic displays—genetic sequences spinning in mid-air, cellular structures rotating slowly, data streams flowing faster than he can follow.
"Sergeant Barnes," she says, still focused on her work. "I've been expecting you."
"You have?"
"Oh please, quit the innocent act. Captain Danvers contacted me three weeks ago, Peter Quill's genetic data arrived last Tuesday. I've been running simulations since then."
Bucky's heart jumps. "And?"
"It's fascinating," Shuri waves her hand and the displays reorganize themselves. "Your girlfriend grabbed the Power Stone with her bare hands and survived, do you understand how extraordinary that is?"
"I know she should be dead—"
"No, you don't understand." Shuri pulls up an image—a cellular structure that seems half-familiar. "These are her cells, or at least, what I'm projecting they look like based on the radiation signature Bruce detected. See these markers here?" She points to glowing purple threads woven through the DNA. "That's Infinity Stone radiation, not just touching her cells, but integrated into them. Part of her genetic code now."
Bucky stares at the image. "How is that possible?"
"The same way Carol Danvers survived Tesseract exposure, the same way Wanda Maximoff gained powers from the Mind Stone. The same way Vision was created." Shuri's expression turns serious. "When I was trying to remove the Mind Stone from Vision, I was working with approximately three million neurons, trying separate the Stone's influence from his neural pathways without destroying what made him… him."
"You didn't have time to finish."
"No," pain flickers across Shuri's face. "But I learned something important: you can't just rip Infinity Stone energy out of living tissue, it's woven too deeply. The only way forward is reintegration."
"I don't understand."
Shuri pulls up another display—this time showing Quill's genetic structure next to your projected one. "Peter Quill's Celestial DNA allowed him to hold the Power Stone temporarily because his cells could process that level of energy. Carol Danvers' cells restructured to absorb and metabolize cosmic energy. Your girlfriend's cells are trying to do the same thing—but they're stuck halfway."
"Bruce said her body was rejecting it."
"Because it doesn't know how to accept it." Shuri starts pulling up more data—complex equations, cellular models, energy flow diagrams. "Think of it like an organ transplant. Her body absorbed this foreign energy, but her immune system is treating it as an invader. It's trying to expel something that's already part of her."
Bucky's mind is racing. "So what do we do?"
"We teach her cells to stop fighting." Shuri's smile is sharp. "We program her DNA to recognize the energy as native rather than foreign. Molecular reintegration."
"Is that possible?"
"I did it with Vision's neurons. This is the same principle, just… broader scope." Shuri pulls up a simulation—cells reorganizing, energy pathways forming, the purple glow gradually fading from threat to integration. " If I can map her complete structure, I can design a recoding sequence. Nanobots that rewrite her cellular programming one cell at a time, teaching her body to metabolize the radiation."
"How long would that take?"
"The procedure itself? Six to eight hours. Full integration? Three to four weeks as the nanobots work through her system." Shuri meets his eyes. "But there's a complication."
Of course there is.
"The radiation levels are too high right now," Shuri continues. "If I try to recode her cells while she's emitting that much energy, the nanobots will burn out before they can complete the process. We need to reduce her baseline radiation first."
"Carol can absorb it."
"Exactly," Shuri nods. "Captain Danvers reduces the radiation to manageable levels—say, twenty to thirty percent of current output, then I perform the molecular reintegration. Her cells learn to process the remaining energy naturally."
"And then?"
"And then she stops being a walking radiation source. She'll still have powers—the energy is part of her now, that's not changing. But her body will know how to control it, contain it, use it… she won't be toxic to you anymore."
Bucky can barely breathe. "And you think it'll work?"
"I ran the simulation eight hundred and forty-seven times," Shuri pulls up the success rate. "Ninety-two percent success rate. The eight percent failure scenarios all involve variables I can control for with proper preparation."
"Ninety-two percent."
"Better odds than we usually get." Shuri closes the displays with a gesture. "There's one more thing. The reintegration works best when the subject is willing. When they stop fighting the energy and accept it as part of themselves."
Bucky remembers Quill's words: The moment I stopped resisting, that's when it clicked.
"We were trying to fight it the whole time," he says quietly. "She's probably out there trying to do the same thing."
"Then you'll need to convince her to stop." Shuri's gaze is steady. "This won't work if she's still trying to expel the energy. She needs to embrace it, accept that this is who she is now."
"She will," Bucky says with certainty. "Once she knows there's a way back she'll do whatever it takes."
"Good," Shuri starts compiling the data. "I'll need her here in Wakanda for the procedure. The lab has shielding that can protect you during the process. And Barnes—" She pauses. "I'll need a complete genetic sample. Blood work, cellular scans, the full profile. Which means you'll need to find her first."
"I'm working on it."
"Well, work faster. I've seen psychological profiles on prolonged isolation. Five months alone with that kind of power… it changes people. Find her soon."
"I will."
Finding you takes another four weeks.
Steve and Bruce work the digital angle—reading financial footprints, energy signatures, satellite anomalies. Tony's AI runs pattern recognition on global power fluctuations. But it's Sam who finds the real lead.
"Supply drops," he says, dropping a folder on the table in front of Bucky. "Remote locations, extreme climates. Someone's been ordering very specific brand of snacks to a location in Northern Norway, among other interesting things…"
Bucky's hands are shaking as he opens the folder. Shipping manifests. Your favorite brand of cookies, quantum physics textbooks. The deliveries stop at a drop point fifty kilometers from the nearest settlement.
"It's her," he breathes.
"Probably," Sam agrees. "But Buck—you can't be the one to approach her."
"Like hell I can't—"
"Think about it." Steve's voice is quiet. "She left to protect you. If you show up before we can implement the cure, she'll run. She'll think you're being reckless, that you're going to hurt yourself trying to be near her."
Bucky knows he's right. Hates it, but he knows it.
"I'll go," Bruce offers. "With Steve. We'll explain about Carol, about Shuri's procedure. We'll convince her to come back."
"She won't believe it's real," Bucky says roughly. "She'll think it's a trap, or false hope, or—"
"Then we'll show her the data." Bruce is already pulling up Shuri's simulations on his tablet. "The success rate, the genetic models, everything. She's a scientist, Bucky, she'll understand the evidence."
"And what if she doesn't want to come back?"
Steve's hand lands on his shoulder. "Then we'll keep trying until she does. But Buck—we need to move fast. Every day she's out there alone…"
He doesn't finish, doesn't have to.
"Okay," Bucky's voice is hoarse. "Okay, you go. But I'm coming with you. I'll stay in the jet, I won't approach her, but I need to be there."
"Bucky—"
"I need to see her, Steve. Even if it's from a distance, even if she doesn't know I'm there." His hand clenches into a fist. "I haven't seen her face in six months. Please."
Steve and Bruce exchange a look.
"The jet has radiation shielding." Bruce says slowly. "If you stay inside, behind the barrier."
"I will, I promise."
"Alright," Steve nods. "We leave in an hour."
You're halfway through a complex equation when you feel it—two energy signatures getting closer.
Your hands flare purple instinctively, defensive. Your supplies came two days ago, so no one should be out here.
You're at the window when you see them: Steve and Bruce, hiking through the snow toward your cabin. They're not wearing tactical gear, no weapons visible. Just two men in winter coats, looking like they're out for a walk.
No.
They can't be here. You were so careful, you covered your tracks, you—
They're fifty meters away now, close enough that you can see Steve's concerned expression. Close enough that Bruce is checking some kind of device in his hand—probably measuring your radiation output.
You grab your go-bag. You can run. There's a back exit, you can be gone before they get here. But Steve holds up his hands, as a universal sign of 'we come in peace' and you hesitate.
Bruce pulls out a tablet, holds it up so you can see the screen from this distance. It's still too far away to see it clearly, but looks like genetic sequences, cellular models and something about Wakandan technology you remember from Shuri's lab.
Your hands are shaking now. Slowly, carefully, you open the door.
"Don't come any closer," you call out. Your voice sounds strange after weeks of disuse. "I mean it, Steve. You know what I can do."
"We're here to help you." Steve calls back.
"There is no help. I've been researching for six months, I've read everything—"
"To find a cure," Bruce interrupts. "But that's not the right approach… we found an alternative."
"What?"
"Can we come in?" Bruce asks. "I'll show you the data, all of it. The procedure, the success rate, everything."
You should say no. You should run. This is exactly what you were afraid of—them finding you, giving you false hope, convincing you to come back when nothing has changed.
But god, you're so tired of being alone.
"Stay on that side of the room," you say, stepping back. "Don't get closer than five feet."
They enter slowly, Bruce immediately starts setting up the tablet on your desk, pulling up files and simulations, Steve stays by the door, watching you with that expression you know too well—the one that says he's trying to figure out if you're okay.
You're not okay. You haven't been okay in six months.
"Carol Danvers can absorb energy," Bruce starts without preamble. "She's agreed to reduce your radiation output by sixty to seventy percent. Then Shuri performs a molecular reintegration procedure—essentially reprogramming your cells to metabolize the Infinity Stone energy instead of expelling it."
You stare at the data, there are some cellular models showing the integration process, and there's a timeline—six to eight hours for the procedure, three to four weeks for full integration, the success rate is 92%.
"This is real?" Your voice cracks.
"It's real," Steve says quietly. "Shuri's been working on it for weeks. She's ready whenever you are."
"And Bucky—" You can't finish the question.
"He's been searching for this since the day you left," Bruce says. "Carol, Peter Quill, Shuri—he tracked down everyone who's ever survived Infinity Stone exposure. This solution exists because he refused to give up."
Your eyes are burning at this point. "Is he…"
"He's alive. He's okay." Steve's voice is gentle. "He wants to see you."
"No." The word comes out panicked. "No, he can't—the radiation—"
"He's not here," Bruce says quickly. "He's in the jet, behind shielding. He promised not to approach until after the procedure."
The relief and disappointment war in your chest.
"Can I—" You swallow hard. "Can I see him? From a distance?"
Steve and Bruce exchange a glance.
"The jet has observation windows," Steve says. "You'd be separated, but—"
"I don't care." You're already moving toward the door. "Please."
They set it up in the cargo hold.
A wall of reinforced glass, the kind designed to contain gamma radiation. You on one side, Bucky on the other. Five feet of separation plus a barrier that could probably withstand a nuclear blast.
It's not enough, but it's the closest you've been to him in six months. Bruce and Steve step back, giving you privacy. You can barely breathe as you walk toward the glass, your hands trembling, your heart racing so fast you think it might burst.
And then you see him.
He's thinner. There are shadows under his eyes that weren't there before. His hair is longer, tied back in a knot. He's wearing the jacket you bought him for his birthday last year—the one he claimed he didn't like but wore constantly anyway.
He looks like he hasn't slept in weeks.
But he still looks beautiful.
"Hi," you whisper, even though he can't possibly hear you through the glass.
But his lips move, forming the same word: Hi.
Your hand comes up, pressing against the glass. His mirrors it on the other side, flesh palm to your purple-veined one, separated by three inches of reinforced barrier.
"You found me," you say.
He nods, his eyes are red.
"I'm sorry." The words tumble out. "I'm so sorry, I thought I was saving you, I thought—"
He shakes his head sharply and pulls out his phone, types something and then he holds it up to the glass:
Don't apologize, you did save me. Now it's my turn to save us.
Your breath hitches. "Is it real? Bruce showed me the data, but—"
He types again: 92% success rate. Shuri's ready, Carol's ready. We just need you there.
"What if I'm part of the 8%?"
Then we find another way, but you won't be. I know you won't be.
You're crying now, tears running down your face. "I missed you so much."
I know, me too.
"I still love you, I never stopped, I—"
He's typing again, but his other hand is pressed so hard against the glass you can see his knuckles turning white: I never stopped either, not even for a second.
"I wear your dog tags every day." You pull them out from under your shirt, hold them up so he can see.
His face crumbles, he touches the locket around his neck.
You both stand there, hands pressed to opposite sides of the glass, crying, trying to get closer to each other through sheer force of will.
"After the procedure," you whisper. "How long until we can—"
He understands immediately and types again: Three to four weeks for full integration. But Bruce thinks maybe partial contact earlier. An hour, maybe two. We build up slowly.
"I can do that. I can wait." Your voice is steadier now. "I waited six months, I can wait a few more weeks if it means forever after that. When do we start?"
He looks over his shoulder—probably at Steve or Bruce. Then he looks back at you and types: Whenever you're ready. We can go to Wakanda right now. Carol's on standby.
You take a shaky breath and look down at your hands—still glowing faintly purple, still dangerous. Then you look at him, the man who crossed the galaxy to find a solution and refused to give up even when you'd given up on yourself.
"I'm ready."
The medical bay is unlike anything you've ever seen. Shuri's designed it specifically for this—a surgical theater surrounded by energy dampening fields, radiation shielding, and enough monitoring equipment to track every cell in your body simultaneously. Carol Danvers stands to one side, warming up like an athlete before a marathon.
You're in the center, sitting on the examination table in a medical gown, trying not to think about the 8% failure rate.
"Okay," Shuri says, circling you with a scanner. "Here's how this works. First, Carol absorbs as much of the excess radiation as she can. This will hurt—I'm not going to lie to you. It's going to feel like she's pulling your insides out. But it's necessary to get your levels down to where the nanobots can work."
"How long?"
"Ten to fifteen minutes, depending on how much energy she can safely absorb." Shuri meets your eyes. "You need to say conscious through it. If you pass out, your body might instinctively fight back, and we can't risk that."
You nod, even though your hands are shaking.
"After Carol's done, I'll inject the nanobots. They'll start the recoding process immediately—you'll feel that too. Warmth, tingling, maybe some discomfort as your cells restructure. The initial programming takes six to eight hours. You'll be sedated for most of it."
"And then?"
"Then we wait. Three to four weeks for full integration. But if everything goes right, you should be able to tolerate brief contact within a week. We'll build up slowly."
Brief contact. A week. You can do this.
"Where's Bucky?"
Shuri gestures to the observation room—a wall of glass where you can see him pacing like a caged animal. Steve's there too, one hand on Bucky's shoulder, probably the only thing keeping him from breaking through the barrier.
Your eyes meet across the distance. He presses his hand to the glass. You mirror the gesture, even though he's too far away to really see.
"He'll be there the whole time," Shuri promises. "Every second. Ready?"
No. Not even a little bit.
"Yes," you say anyway.
Carol steps forward and her eyes are glowing now, fully gold, power radiating off her in waves. "I need you to lower your defenses," she says. "Stop fighting the energy, let it flow naturally. Can you do that?"
"I can do that."
"Good," Carol's hands hover over your shoulders, not quite touching. "On three. One—"
She doesn't get to three.
The pain is immediate and absolute. It feels like she's reached inside your chest and grabbed your heart, except is not your heart, it's the energy, the purple lightning that's been living in your veins for six months, and she's pulling it out thread by thread. Your back arches, your hands grip the table hard enough to dent the metal and you can't breathe, can't think, can't—
"Stay with me!" Carol's voice cuts through the agony. "I know it hurts, but you need to stay conscious. Focus on something!"
You focus on the observation window.
On Bucky, who's pressed against the glass now, both hands flat against it, his mouth moving in words you can't hear but can read on his lips: You can do this, stay with me.
The energy streams from your body to Carol's in visible waves—purple light flowing into gold. Your veins are still glowing but fainter now, the spiderweb patterns starting to fade. Carol's gritting her teeth, absorbing more and more, her whole body incandescent.
"You're at your limit, any more and you'll destabilize."
Carol pulls back reluctantly, and the sudden absence of pressure makes you gasp. You collapse forward, would have fallen off the table if Shuri hadn't caught you.
"I've got you. Deep breaths, you did so well."
Your whole body is trembling. When you look down at your hands, the purple glow is still there, but it's so much fainter now. Almost translucent.
"Seventy-four percent reduction," Shuri reports, checking her scanners. "That's even better than projected. How do you feel?"
"Like I got hit by a truck," you manage.
Carol's leaning against the wall, breathing hard, her skin still glowing. "That was intense," she says. "The Power stone is no joke."
"Thank you," you whisper.
"Thank me when you get your happy ending," Carol straightens up with visible effort. "Shuri, she's all yours."
Shuri's already preparing the injection—a syringe full of silver liquid that seems to move on its own. Nanobots. Millions of them, ready to rewrite your genetic code.
"This is it," Shuri says. "Last chance to back out."
You look at the observation window again. Bucky hasn't moved. He's still there, watching, waiting, believing.
"Do it," you say.
The injection is almost anticlimactic—a small pinch in your arm. For a moment, nothing happens.
Then the warmth starts.
It begins at the injection site and spreads—through your arm, across your chest, down through your core. It's not painful exactly, more like your cells are waking up, reorganizing, learning a new language. You can feel the nanobots working, tiny machines rewriting your DNA one base pair at a time.
"Cellular restructuring has begun," Shuri announces. "Vitals are stable, neural activity normal. So far so good."
The warmth intensifies. Your hands start glowing brighter—not purple now, but silver-white as the nanobots flood your system. It's beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
"I'm going to sedate you now," Shuri says gently. "When you wake up, the primary recoding will be complete. Okay?"
You nod, already feeling drowsy as she administers the sedative.
The last thing you see before your eyes close is Bucky in the observation window, his hand still pressed to the glass.
Hold on, you think. Just a little longer.
Then darkness.
You wake up to Shuri's face hovering over you, concerned.
"Welcome back," she says. "How do you feel?"
You take inventory. Your body feels… different. Not wrong, just different. Like you've been taken apart and put back together in a slightly new configuration. The constant hum of energy under your skin is still there, but it's quieter now… more controlled.
"Weird," you say. "But okay?"
"Better than okay," Shuri helps you sit up slowly. "The primary recoding is complete. Ninety-seven percent of your cells have been successfully reprogrammed. The remaining three percent should finish integrating over the next few days."
"And the radiation?"
"Almost completely internalized. You're still emitting trace amounts, but we're talking background levels now—barely detectable." Shuri can't quite hide her smile. "We did it, it worked."
You look down at your hands. The purple veins are gone. Your skin looks normal… human. When you concentrate, you can feel the energy still there, coiled deep inside, but it's not fighting to get out anymore. It's part of you now.
"Bucky—"
"Right here."
Your head snaps toward the door. He's there, still on the other side of the glass barrier, but closer now. Close enough that you can see the tears on his face.
"The levels are low enough for brief contact," Shuri says carefully. "Emphasis on brief. We're taking five minutes, maybe ten. And I want you both in the shielded room so I can monitor his vitals."
"I'll take it," you say immediately.
"Me too," Bucky echoes.
Shuri looks between you both and shakes her head fondly. "You two are impossible. Give me ten minutes to set up the monitoring equipment."
She leaves to prepare. You and Bucky stay separated by the glass, just looking at each other. He looks exhausted, like he hasn't slept since you started the procedure.
"You were here the whole time," you say. He nods. "Eight hours standing there?"
A small smile. "I've done longer stakeouts."
"Bucky—"
"I wasn't leaving." His voice is rough. "Not when I just got you back."
Your chest tightens. "Five minutes isn't much."
"It's more than we had yesterday." His hand comes up to the glass again. "And tomorrow it'll be ten, then twenty, then an hour. We'll get there."
"You're really patient about this."
His laugh is sharp. "I'm really not. I'm dying to touch you, but I'm also not risking your health or mine by rushing. We do this right."
"When did you become so responsible?"
"When I almost lost you." His expression goes serious. "I'm not screwing this up. We're following Shuri's protocol exactly. Even if it kills me."
"Don't say that—"
"Figure of speech." He softens. "I'm okay, I promise. Just… eager."
"Me too."
Shuri returns with enough monitoring equipment to stock a small hospital. She sets it up in a side room—smaller, more intimate, with a chair for each of you and about six feet of space between them.
"Okay," she says, attaching heart rate monitors to both of you. "Five minutes. You can sit close, but no extended contact yet. If Bucky shows any symptoms—nausea, dizziness, elevated heart rate beyond normal excitement—we stop immediately. Understood?"
"Understood," you both say in unison.
Shuri gives you one more look, then steps out. "I'll be right outside. The system will alert me if anything goes wrong."
The door closes.
You're alone with Bucky for the first time in six months.
He's in the chair across from you, three feet away, close enough to touch, but not touching. His hands are gripping his knees so hard his knuckles are white.
"Hi," you whisper.
"Hey beautiful." His voice cracks.
"I don't know what to say."
"Me neither," he swallows hard. "I had a whole speech planned, had it memorized and everything. But now you're here, and I can't remember any of it."
"Try anyway."
He takes a shaky breath. "I missed you. Every second of every day. I missed the way you hum when you're concentrating, when you steal the covers in the middle of the night, the way you laugh at everyone's jokes even when they're terrible… I missed waking up next to you, I missed you so much it felt like dying."
Your eyes are burning. "I've missed you too. I missed everything about you. Even how you still pretend you don't like modern music but I've seen your Spotify wrapped—"
He huffs a laugh. "Busted."
"I'm sorry I left."
"Don't be." He leans forward, elbows on his knees. "You did what you had to do to save my life."
"I should've trusted that we could find another way—"
"Hey," his voice is gentle. "We found it. We're here now, that's what matters."
You nod, wiping your eyes. "Can I— can I move closer?"
"Please."
You shift your chair forward, then again, until you're right in front of him, knees almost touching. Close enough to see the flecks of gray in his blue eyes. Close enough to count his lashes. Close enough to reach out and—
"Two more minutes," FRIDAY announces.
You both freeze.
"That went fast," you say.
"Yeah." Bucky's staring at you like he's trying to memorize every detail. "Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow," you agree. "And the day after, and the day after that."
"Every day until you're sick of me."
"So never."
He smiles—real and genuine. "Never sounds good."
"One minute," FRIDAY says.
"I love you," you blurt out. "I know I said it through the glass, but I need to say it again. I love you. I never stopped, not for one second."
"I love you too." His eyes are bright. "So fucking much. And when we get through this, when we don't have to count minutes anymore, I'm never letting you out of my sight again."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
"Time's up," FRIDAY announces.
Neither of you move.
"We should—" you start.
"Yeah," he agrees.
But you still don't move.
Finally, Shuri's voice comes through the intercom. "I will come in there and separate you myself if necessary."
That breaks the spell. You both laugh, standing up reluctantly.
"Tomorrow," Bucky says again.
"Tomorrow," you confirm.
As you leave the room, you look back one more time. He's watching you go, one hand raised in a small wave.
You wave back.
It's only five minutes, but it's a start.
Week one: Ten minutes a day.
Day 1: You talk about the mission that started everything. About Morag, and the temple and the moment the orb split open.
Day 2: He tells you about tracking down Carol, about Quill and the Gamora parallel. You cry.
Day 3: You share your research notes. He's impressed by how far you got on your own.
Day 4: You sit in comfortable silence, just existing in the same space.
Day 5: He brings you a book. You each read quiet, occasionally reading passages aloud to each other.
Day 6: You almost hold hands. Get within an inch. Pull back at the last second.
Day 7: Shuri increases your time to fifteen minutes. You both cheer.
Week two: thirty minutes a day.
Day 8: First accidental touch—his knee bumps yours. You both freeze, wait for symptoms. Nothing happens and you both cry from relief.
Day 9: Intentional touch—fingers brushing, just for a second. His skin is warm.
Day 10: You hold hands for sixty seconds. It's the longest minute of your life.
Day 11: He brings your favorite snacks. You eat together, knees touching the whole time.
Day 12: You fall asleep during your sessions. Wake up to find him watching you with the softest expression.
Day 13: First argument—he wants to push the limits, you want to follow the protocol. You barely win.
Day 14: Shuri increases your time to forty-five minutes. His vitals stay perfect the entire session.
Week three: two hours a day.
Day 15: You watch a movie, sit on the same couch. His arm around your shoulders for the last twenty minutes.
Day 16: You talk about the future. About what happens after you're cleared. Where you'll live. If you'll go back to the team.
Day 17: He braids your hair. You've forgotten how good his hands feel.
Day 18: You meet his lips for the first time—just a quick press, barely three seconds. You both shake afterwards.
Day 19: Longer kiss. Ten seconds. His hand cups your face and you lean into it.
Day 20: You make out like teenagers on Shuri's medical couch. She threatens to separate you, but neither of you care.
Day 21: Shuri runs final tests and declares you ninety-nine percent integrated. Clears you for normal contact with monitoring.
Week four.
Shuri gives you a room. Not a medical bay, not a shielded facility. Just a regular room in the residential wing of the Wakandan complex. A bed, a bathroom, a window overlooking the city.
"You're cleared for overnight contact," she says. "But I want you both wearing monitors, if anything feels off, even a little bit, you come find me immediately."
"We will," you promise.
"I mean it. No being heroes, no pushing through symptoms."
"We won't," Bucky adds.
Shuri looks between you both, then sighs. "You're going to push through symptoms, aren't you?"
"Absolutely not," you both lie in unison.
She shakes her head fondly. "At least try to be safe about it, and for the love of Bast, use protection. I don't need any radioactive super-babies running around my lab."
You turn bright red. Bucky coughs.
"I'm a scientist," Shuri says drily. "I know what you're planning to do the second I leave this room. Just be smart about it."
She leaves.
You and Bucky stand there, suddenly awkward.
"So," you say.
"So," he echoes.
"We have all night."
"Yeah."
"No timers."
"Nope."
You take step toward him. Then another. Close enough to touch.
"I don't know how to do this anymore," you admit quietly. "Without counting minutes. Without watching the clock."
"Me neither." His hand comes up slowly, carefully, and cups your face. His thumb strokes across your cheekbone. "Guess we'll figure it out together."
You lean into his touch, eyes closing. Just feeling his warmth, his calluses. The way his breath hitches when you turn your head and press a kiss to his palm.
"I'm nervous," you whisper.
"Me too."
"What if—" you stop. "What if something goes wrong?"
"Then we stop." He steps closer, forehead resting against yours. "But nothing's going to go wrong, we've been building up to this for weeks. Your levels are stable, my body's adjusted. We're okay."
"You sound pretty confident about that."
"I'm confident." His other hand finds your waist. "I'm confident that I love you, that I want you. I've waited six months and four weeks for this. And I'm confident that we're going to be just fine."
"When did you get so wise?"
"When I married you."
You huff a laugh against his mouth. "You didn't marry me. We're not—"
"Technicality." He kisses you softly. "We will be. Soon as we're home, I'm gonna marry you properly."
"Is that a proposal?"
"That's a promise." You kiss him again, deeper this time, and his arms tighten around you. "Now, can I take you to bed?"
You nod and both move together slowly, carefully. He sits on the edge of the bed, pulls you between his legs. His hands settle on your hips, toying with the hem of your shirt.
"I'm going to make love to you now."
Your breath catches. "Okay…"
"And it's probably going to be emotional and messy, and we're probably both going to cry."
"That's okay too."
"And we're going to check the monitors every five minutes like paranoid people."
That makes you laugh. "Probably every two minutes."
"FRIDAY's going to think we're ridiculous."
"It's an AI… but it probably already thinks we're ridiculous."
His smile is so soft and so full of love it makes your chest ache. "Come here."
You climb into his lap, straddling him, and for a moment you just stay like that, your foreheads touching, breathing each other's air. His hands slide under your shirt, warm skin and cool vibranium against your skin.
"You're shaking," he murmurs.
"I'm nervous."
"We don't have to—"
"I want to." You pull back enough to look at him. "I really, really want to. I just— it's been so long. And I'm scared it's going to feel different. That we're going to be different."
"We are different," he says gently. "We've been through hell, we've been apart. We've had to rebuild everything from scratch. But—" His hand comes up to cup your face. "But I still love you the exact same way. And I still want you the exact same way. And when I touch you—" His hand slides down your neck, across your collarbone, "—it still feels like coming home."
"Bucky—" Your voice breaks.
"Let me show you," he whispers. "Let me show you that we're still us. That nothing's changed where it matters."
You kiss him in answer. Deep and slow and full of six months of longing.
His hands slide under your shirt, fingertips tracing patterns on your ribs. You arch into the touch, and he makes this low sound in his chest that you've missed so much.
He pauses, a question in his eyes. You nod, and your shirt comes off slowly, carefully, like he's unwrapping something precious. It gets tossed somewhere neither of you care about. His hands immediately return to your skin, mapping territory he knows by heart.
You tug at his shirt in answer. It joins yours on the floor, and then it's skin against skin and you both go very still. His eyes find yours for a second, you check the monitors on both your wrists, heart rates elevated but stable.
He kisses you again, and this time there's more heat behind it. His hands slide down your thighs, and he lifts you easily turning to lay you back on the bed.
He hovers over you for a moment, just looking. Making sure you're real. You reach up, trace his bottom lip with your thumb. He catches your hand, presses a kiss to your palm, then your wrist, then the inside of your elbow, working his way up your arm with gentle, deliberate kisses.
He continues his exploration, kissing every inch of exposed skin. Your collarbone, the hollow of your throat, the space between your breasts. When he reaches your ribs—where the purple veins used to be, now faded to nothing—he pauses and looks at you with so much tenderness it hurts. Then he kisses every faded mark, tender kiss across your chest and your arms. Everywhere the purple light used to shimmer.
You're crying before he's halfway done.
He kisses the tears from your cheeks, settles his weight more fully against you.
"I love you," you whisper. "I love you so much."
"I love you too," his voice is rough. "So much. So fucking much."
You kiss him hard, desperately, and he responds in kind. The gentleness gives way to need, to six months of missing each other, to all the times you thought you'd never get to do this again. Clothes come off—the rest of yours, all of his— and then it's just skin and heat and hands trying to touch everywhere at once.
You reach for the monitors, checking. He does the same. Both elevated, but still stable.
He kisses down your body again, this time with clear intent. You thread your fingers through his hair as he works, building you up until you're shaking and desperate. When he kisses his way back up your body, you're both trembling. He reaches for the nightstand and pauses to look at you.
The first moment he slides into you, you both go completely still. Your breath catches. His forehead drops to your shoulder. For a long moment, neither of you move—just feeling. Being connected again.
He lifts his head to look at you, and his eyes are bright with unshed tears. You cup his face with both hands, and he leans into the touch. Then he starts to move, slow and careful, and you wrap your legs around his waist, pulling him deeper.
It's perfect.
Not in a perfect movie way—there are awkward position adjustments and a moment where the bed squeaks really loudly and you both pause, half-laughing. But it's perfect in your own way.
The pace gradually builds. He's hitting all the right spots, finding the rhythm you both remember. When you finally come apart, it's together—him buried deep inside you, your name on his lips, your hands clutched in his hair. The pleasure crashes through you like a wave and you feel him follow seconds later, his whole body shuddering.
After, he doesn't pull out immediately, just stays there, face buried in your neck, both of you breathing hard. You check the monitors one more time. All vitals stable. No warnings.
"We're okay," you whisper, and your voice cracks. "We're really okay."
He nods against your neck, and you feel wetness—tears. He's crying. You're both crying.
He finally pulls back enough to look at you, and you're both a mess—tears streaming, smiling through them.
"I love you," you say quietly. "I love you so much."
"I love you too," he carefully pulls out, disposes of the condom and immediately pulls you back into his arms. "God, I love you."
You curl into his chest, listening to his heartbeat, feeling his warmth. His hand runs through your hair in long, soothing strokes. There's a long, comfortable silence.
Then: "FRIDAY, are you monitoring us right now?"
FRIDAY's voice fills the room: "I am monitoring your vital signs, as requested by Princess Shuri. I am not, however, recording or observing. Your privacy is assured."
"Thank you, FRIDAY." Bucky says.
"You're welcome, sergeant Barnes. And congratulations. Your vital signs remained stable throughout your… activity."
You burst out laughing . "Oh my god."
"FRIDAY just congratulated us on sex," Bucky says, grinning.
"I congratulated you on maintaining stable vital signs during intimate contact," FRIDAY corrects primly. "The sex is your own business."
You're both laughing now, that slightly hysterical post-emotional-sex laughter.
His hand trails down your spine, a silent question. You shift closer in answer.
You make love twice more that night—once slow and lazy, once with a little more urgency. Each time, you check the monitors wordlessly, a quick glance and a nod before continuing.
You talk in between rounds. About everything and nothing. About the future. About where you'll live when you get officially cleared. About all the mundane, beautiful things you get to plan now that you have forever.
"I want to marry you," he says at some point. "For real, proper wedding, all of our friends. You in a white dress walking to me, making me cry."
"I'd really like that."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." You kiss his chest. "Let's get married. Let's have the life we were supposed to have before everything went wrong."
"Nothing went wrong," he says quietly. "It was just… a detour. We took the long way around, but we're here now."
"We're here now," you agree.
You fall asleep like that. Tangled together. No monitors alarming, no timers counting down. Just you and him and the whole future stretched out before you.
When you wake you in the morning, his arms are still around you. And when you check the monitors—because old habits die hard—they're still perfectly stable.
You really are free.
A few hours later, Shuri finds you both in the dining hall, looking thoroughly rumpled and impossibly happy.
"Good morning," she says with a knowing smirk. "I trust you slept well?"
"Very well," Bucky says innocently.
"Mmhmm." She pulls data on her tablet. "Your vitals were stable all night. Eight hours of contact with zero adverse reactions. I'd say we can officially declare you're safe to be around each other."
You and Bucky look at each other.
"We're really safe," you whisper.
"We really are"
Shuri's expression softens. "You're free. No more restrictions, no more monitoring. You can go and live your lives."
"Thank you," you say. "Shuri, thank you for everything. For saving us, for—"
"For giving us our lives back," Bucky finishes.
"You're welcome." She closes the tablet. "Now go home, get married, be disgustingly happy. And please, do not name your first child after me."
"No promises," you say grinning.
She shakes her head fondly. "Impossible, you're both impossible."
But she's smiling. And so are you.
Because you're free. You have your whole lives ahead of you. And you're going to spend every single second of it together.
You get married in a small ceremony two months after. It's just the team and a handful of close friends on the grounds of the compound, under an arch decorated with simple white flowers. Steve officiates it. Sam cries more than anyone expected. Maria Hill catches the bouquet and immediately tries to give it back.
The retirement conversation happens on your honeymoon. You're in Greece, watching the sunset paint the sea in shades of gold and pink, and Bucky says quietly "What if we didn't go back?" So you call Steve from a café in Santorini and he takes it exactly as you'd hoped. You promise to come help them if something Thanos-level happens again.
Finding a perfect house takes three months. You look at a dozen places before you find it—a modest two-story in a quiet town upstate, with a front porch and a backyard and a garage that makes Bucky's eyes light up. The neighborhood is the kind where people know their neighbors' names, where kids play in yards, where nothing exciting happens. It takes you two weeks to move in and you spend the first month turning the house into your home.
You find work teaching physics at the local university. Your students are bright and curious and have absolutely no idea their professor used to save the world. You love teaching, love the routine of it, the normalcy, the way your biggest challenge is explaining quantum mechanics to undergrads instead of fighting cosmic threats.
Bucky starts small, fixing the neighbor's lawn mower, then someone's car. Word spreads, and soon he's running a modest auto repair business out of the garage, specializing in vintage cars and motorcycles. On the weekends, he volunteers at the VA, running support groups for veterans. He doesn't talk much about those sessions, but you can see how much it means to him. How much it helps. He's found his purpose outside of being a soldier.
Your life becomes beautifully ordinary. Morning coffees and breakfast routines, coming home to each other every evening, grocery shopping on Saturdays, movie nights on Fridays, Sunday mornings in bed with nowhere to be and nothing to do but exist together.
Two years into retirement, you're on the back porch with coffee going cold in your hands. Bucky's next to you on the swing, his arm around your shoulders, both of you watch the neighborhood slowly wake up.
"I've been thinking about having a baby," you say quietly.
Bucky's thumb stills on your shoulder for just a moment, then continues its gentle movement. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
He doesn't ask if you're sure. He just holds you a little closer and lets the words settle between you. His arm wrap around you fully, and you sit together in the golden morning light, thinking about what comes next. A family. The next chapter of this improbable, beautiful life.
It won't be simple. Nothing about you has ever been simple, there will be complications, uncertainties, moments of fear. You'll need to call Shuri, get answers, make plans… but you've survived worse than uncertainty.
You've survived impossible. And you'll survive this too, together.
"Should we call her?" Bucky asks quietly. "Shuri?"
You nod against his chest. "Soon. Let's just— let's sit here a little longer first."
"Okay."
So you do. You sit on your back porch on a Sunday morning, holding each other, remembering everything it took to get here, and choosing together what comes next.
summary: After the mission of returning the infinity stones goes wrong, the power stone leaves you with something you can’t get rid of. You survive the exposure, but now Bucky can only survive you in small doses.
word count: 5.2 k
warnings: angst, hurt/no comfort, implied smut, no happy ending (kind of open), graphic depictions of physical stress, mentions of blood and medical trauma, separation/implied breakup, self-destructive behavior. | english is not my first language so I'm sorry in advance for any mistypo/grammar mistake.
a/n: may I say thank you to the lovely anon who made this request based on Smallville Lara and Clark’s last kiss? Honestly I cried a lot while writing this 🥀 I hope you guys enjoy it and I’m sorry in advance for what you’re about to read.
read in AO3
The quantum tunnel spits you out on Morag in 2014, and the first thing you notice is how quiet it is. Dead quiet. Just wind and ruins and the distant sound of waves.
"We've got forty-five minutes before the window closes," you say, checking th GPS device on your wrist. "The temple's half a klick north."
Steve adjusts his shield. "Stay sharp, we don't know what we're walking into."
Bucky's already scanning the perimeter, rifle raised. "Looks abandoned."
"It is," you confirm. "Quill still unconscious down there. We're early."
The temple is exactly where it should be—a massive structure carved into the cliff face, a fascinating alien architecture. The power stone it's placed in its pedestal, sealed in the orb, pulsing with barely contained energy.
"Okay," Steve says. "Nice and easy. We secure the stone, get back to the platform and—"
The explosion cuts him off.
You're thrown sideways, slamming into one of the temple pillars. Your ears are ringing. Through the smoke, you see them: Sakaraans, maybe a dozen of them, firing indiscriminately. They must have followed you when they saw the quantum tunnel.
"Get the stone!" Steve shouts, shield already deflecting blaster fire.
Bucky's at your side, hauling you up. "You good?"
"Yeah, go—"
Another explosion, closer this time. The temple shudders and you watch in horror as the pedestal cracks, the orb rolls free splitting open on the ston floor.
The power stone tumbles out, raw, uncontained, pulsing with enough enrgy to level a planet.
Everything slows down.
Bucky's moving toward it—he's a super soldier, he might survive the exposure—but you're closer. You're already running. You can hear him screaming your name, but you're faster. Your hands close around the stone, and the universe explodes… at least for you.
Purple lightning crawls up your arms, through your veins, behind your eyes. It's not pain, it's way too big to be pain. It's everything, all at once. Every star being born and dying, every moment that ever was or ever will be, all of it flooding through you at once.
You can hear Bucky screaming but you can't let go. If you let go, the energy discharge will kill everyone. Will crack the planet open.
So you hold on.
Four seconds. Five. Six.
You slam the stone back into what's left of the pedestal and the world snaps back into focus. You're on your knees, your hands are still glowing, purple veins crawling under your skin like lightning scars. Bucky's hands are on your face, he's saying your name over and over, frantic.
"I'm okay," you manage. Your voice sounds wrong, distant. "I'm okay, I'm—"
You pass out in his arms.
You wake up three days later in the med bay. Bruce is there immediately, shining a light in your eyes, checking your vitals. "Welcome back, how do you feel?"
"Like I touched an infinity stone."
"Well, you're not dead, so, that's a good start." He's trying for levity, but you can see the concern in his eyes. "The glowing has mostly faded, you've still got some residual marks, but they should disappear completely in another few days."
You look down at your hands. The purple veins are still there, faint now, like a spiderweb under your skin.
"Where's Bucky?"
"He's been here the whole time, I finally convinced him to go shower about an hour ago." Bruce hesitates. "He was… he didn't handle seeing you like that very well."
You're about to respond, when the door crashes open and Bucky's thre, hair still wet, looking like he's been through hell.
"You're awake." He's across the room in three strides, hands hovering over you like he's afraid to touch. "You're okay, you're—"
"I'm okay," you assure him. "Buck, I'm fine."
He sits on the edge of the bed, and you can see his hands shaking. "You stopped breathing twice. Did Bruce tell you that? Your heart stopped once, I had to watch them—"
"But I'm here now." You catch his hand, lacing your fingers through his. "I'm right here."
He lifts your joined hands to his mouth, kissing your knuckles. "Don't ever do that again."
"No more infinity stones, I promise."
He manages a weak smile before leaning down to kiss you properly. You don't notice the way his hand tightens on yours or the way his breathing picks up.
Twenty minutes later, he's vomiting in the bathroom.
Bruce runs every test he can think of. Bucky insists it's just stress, just the comedown from the mission, but you all know better.
It happens again the next day. You're sitting together in the common room, your head on his shoulder, and after thirty minutes he has to excuse himself. You find him in the hallway, pale and shaking, leaning against the wall.
"This is connected to the stone," you say.
"We don't know that."
"Bucky—"
"We don't know that," he repeats, more firmly. "Could be a hundred things, could be—"
He doesn't get to finish. His knees buckle and you barely catch him.
Bruce's diagnosis is clinical and devastating: you're still emitting radiation from the power stone. Not enough to hurt a normal person, but enough that Bucky's enhanced metabolism reads it as a threat. The serum is trying to fight it, which is tearing him apart from the inside.
"It should fade," Bruce says, but he won't meet your eyes. "In theory."
"How long?" Bucky demands.
"I don't know. The levels are decreasing, but slowly. It could take weeks, maybe months." He pauses. "Maybe longer."
"So what do we do?"
Bruce looks between you both. "You stay apart, minimize exposure until radiation dissipates to safe levels."
The silence is deafining.
"How much exposure is safe?" You ask quietly.
"Based on today's readings?" Bruce checks his tablet. "Five minutes. Maybe ten if he's had time to recover."
Five minutes. You only get five minutes.
After a few weeks, the lab tests proof that you're safe for fifteen minutes.
You measure everything now.
Bucky sets a timer on his phone every time he enters your room. When it goes off, he leaves without arguments or exceptions.
Fifteen minutes isn't enough time for anything meaningful. It's enough for "how was your day" and "I miss you" and one kiss before the alarm sounds and he has to go.
You start writing things down. All the things you want to tell him, but don't have time for. You leave notes in his room, he leaves notes in yours.
Thought about you today when I saw a cat stuck in a tree. It reminded me of that mission in Prague. -B
Sam made a joke about your hair, I defended your honor. You're welcome. -You
I'm counting down the minutes until tomorrow, always counting. -B
By week four, your time increases to forty five minutes, and it fels like a miracle.
You can have a meal together now… well, most of one. You learn to eat fast, to tlk while chewing, to fit entire conversations into the space between bites.
"Bruce says the decline is steady," Bucky tells you over breakfast. "If it keeps dropping at this rate, we might have a few hours in another month."
"That's good," you say, but you're both thinking the same thing: What if it stops? What if this is as good as it gets?
The timer goes off and Bucky's only eaten half his food.
"I'll finish it tomorrow," he says, kissing your forehead on his way out.
His plate sits on your table for the rest of the day. You can't bring yourself to throw it away.
By the sixth week, you got two hours, and it feels like the cruelest gift.
It's enough time to watch a movie—if you start it the second he walks in and he leaves before the credits roll.
It's enough time to have sex—once, and only if you're efficient about it, and only if you're both okay with him leaving immediately after. You try it once, the alarm goes off while you're still catching your breath. He kisses you and walks out, and you lie there alone in the tangled sheets and cry.
When the eighth week comes, you notice the increase is slowing down. Bruce shows you the charts, the curve is flattening. The rate of decrease is dropping.
"What does that mean?" Bucky asks.
"It means we might be approaching a plateau," Bruce says carefully. "A baseline level that won't decrease further."
"But it's still going down," you argue. "It went up forty seven minutes this week."
"Forty-seven minutes in seven days. Last week it was an hour and twelve minutes. The week before that, ninety minutes." Bruce looks tired. "I'm not saying it's definitely plateaued, but we need to prepare for the possibility."
That night, Bucky comes to your room. You lie together in your narrow bed, fully clothed, his flesh arm wrapped around you.
"We have thirty more minutes," you whisper. "We should talk about something."
"I don't want to talk."
"Then what do you want?"
"This." His voice is rough. "Just this, just you."
You fall asleep like that. Wake up four hours later to Bucky convulsing beside you, blood streaming from his nose and ears.
"You could've died!" You're shouting, pacing, because if you stop moving you'll fall apart. "You could've— do you have any idea what it was like, waking up and seeing you like that?"
Bucky's sitting on the edge of the med bay bed, still pale but recovering. "I fell asleep, it was an accident."
"An accident? You stayed for four hours, Bucky! Four freaking hours! Your timer went off and you turned it off instead of leaving—"
"I didn't—"
"FRIDAY showed me the logs!" Your voice cracks. "You dismissed the alarm six times, six."
The silence stretches between you.
"I wanted more time," he says finly.
"You could've died."
"I wanted more time with you." He looks up, and his eyes are red. "Is that so fucking terrible? That I wanted to fall asleep next to you? That I wanted one night where I didn't have to watch the clock?"
"Yes!" The word tears out of you. "Yes, it's terrible, because you're killing yourself for a few extra hours—"
"Don't you get it? It's not about hours!" He's on his feet now. "It's about us. Us being together… that's the only thing keeping me—"
The nose bleed starts.
You've been here too long. Twenty minutes arguing, and he's already over the limit.
"I'm leaving," you whisper.
"We're not done—"
"I said I'm leaving!" You're crying now, shoving at his chest before walking out.
You sink to the floor of the next room and finish the fight alone, screaming at an empty room.
Bruce calls you both into the lab. You know it before he speaks, he has a terrible poker face.
"The levels have been stbale for two weeks," he says. "No decrease, no increase. I think… I think this is it."
"It could still drop," Bucky argues. "Could just be longer plateau before—"
"It could." Bruce agrees. "But it's been twelve weeks. The radiation signature should've decreased more by now if it was going to." He pulls up a graph. "I think we're looking at a permanent baseline, aproximately three hours of safe exposure per day."
Three hours for the rest of your life. Three fucking hours.
"There has to be something else," you say, but your voice sounds distant. "Another treatment, a way to extract it, something—"
"I've consulted with everyone I can think of. Shuri, Helen Cho, Strange… There's no precedent for this. Infinity stone exposure on this scale…." Bruce shakes his head. "I'm really sorry."
You're aware of Bucky's hand finding yours, holding it tight.
"Three hours," he says. "We can work with three hours."
You don't answer.
That night, you sit in your room and do the math.
Three hours a day is 1,095 hours a year. Divided by 24, that's 45.625 days. You get 45 days a year with him… the rest, you spend alone.
If you live by 80—optimistic, given your line of work— and Bucky lives to be 150 because of the serum, you'll get 58 years together: 2,668 days total out of 21,170.
12.6% of your life together. The other 87.4% alone.
You're still staring at the numbers when Bucky walks in.
"Three hours a day is 1,095 hours a year," he says, and his voice is so carefully controlled it hurts to hear. "That's 45 days, we get 45 days a year together. Some couples do long distance and see each other less than that. We could— we could make this work, right?"
He's standing in the doorway, hasn't crossed the threshold yet. Even now, he's trying to preserve your time.
"Buck—"
"I wake up at 5, come here until 8. Then lunch, 12 to 1. Dinner, 6 to 8. That's three hours, we just split it up throughout theday. It's structured but it's— it's something." He's talking faster now, desperate. "We could meal prep on Sundays so we don't waste time cooking. We could— I don't know, we could read books at the same time so we have something to talk about during—"
"Bucky, stop."
"No." He takes one step into the room, just one. "No, I won't stop. I've done the math every possible way and this— this is what we have, so we make it enough, we make it—"
"It's not a life."
The words land like a physical blow. You watch him flinch.
"It's our life." His voice cracks. "It is what he have, and people leave with worse. People— people do long distance, people have—"
"People don't get poisoned by the person they love."
"Don't—" The word comes out sharp, ragged. "Don't make this about—"
"What if it gets worse?" You're on your feet now, and you can see the exact moment the timer his head starts counting. He's been here for two minutes. You have 178 minutes left today. "What if the plateau is temporary? What if three hours become two, and then one—"
"Then we'll deal with it."
"What if it kills you?"
"Then it kills me!"
The shout echoes in the small room. Bucky's chest is heaving, his flesh hand clenched into a fist, and you can already see it— the slight tremor starting in his fingers, the way his pupils are dilating wrong.
Five minutes. He's been here for five minutes.
"Get out," you whisper.
"No."
"Bucky, please—"
"No." He crosses the room in three strides, and you can see what it costs him. There's already a slight drag to his left leg—the serum's propioception breaking down. "You don't get to decide this alone… you grabbed that stone to save the mission, to save Steve, to save the entire goddamn universe. You think I'm gonna let that sacrifice be for nothing? You think I'm gonna just walk away after—"
He stops and sways.
Seven minutes.
"Sit down." You grab his arm— his flesh arm, careful now— and try to guide him to the bed. His skin is already too warm. "Damn it, James, sit down before you—"
"No," he's shaking his head and the movement seems to cost him. "Not yet. I can't—I'm not ready yet."
"You're already past your limit—"
"I know." His voice drops. "God, I know. I can feel it. It's like fire in my blood, did you know that? It burns. Everything burns when I'm near you."
Your breath hitches. "You never told me—"
"Because I don't care." He cups your face with both hands, and the metal one is whirring wrong, plates shifting and clicking out of sync. "I don't care if it hurts. I don't care if it burns— the only thing I need is you."
His knees buckle. You catch him, barely, and you're both sinking to the floor. His back hits the edge of the bed and you're kneeling between his legs, holding him up.
"I need one more time," he breathes out. "I need to kiss you one more time without the fucking timer, without counting the seconds in my head, without wondering if this is the one that finally—"
He doesn't finish. Can't finish.
"This is cruel," you whisper as your hands frame his face, and you can feel the fever radiating off his skin. "This is so cruel, letting you stay when you—"
"Then be cruel." His eyes lock on yours, and even unfocused with pain, they're still looking at you with so much love it hurts. "Be cruel, let me have this, let me—"
"It's killing you—"
"You think leaving me won't?" His metal had comes up—jerky and malfunctioning— and catches your wrist. The grip is weak. How could it be? His metal arm is never weak. "You think walking away and leaving without you won't kill me just as dead? At least this way I got to…"
His nose starts bleeding.
It's been ten fucking minutes.
"Please, stop." You sob, reaching for something to stop the blood, but he catches your hand.
"No, please, just—" He's pulling you closer, even though every instinct you have is screaming to push him away, to save him. "Just stay, please. I know we're out of time, I know this is it, I know tomorrow you're gonna leave and never come back, so just— god, please just let me have this."
"How did you—"
"I know you." His thumb brushes your cheekbone. "I know that stubborn look in your face… you've already decided. You're planning on disappear and going somewhere I can't find you, because you think that way you'd be saving me. But baby, I'm not gonna survive without you, you understand that?"
He's crying now, and the tears are pink-tinged. There's blood on his tears. That's new.
"I can't lose you again," he chokes out. "I can't be the one left behind again. I can't wake up and find out the person I love the most is gone."
"Then you have to let me go." You're crying too, your forehead pressed against his. "You have to let me be the one that walks away, because I can live knowing you're out there, somewhere, safe and whole and alive. But I can't live watching this kill you. I can't, Bucky, I simply can't."
"One more time," he whispers against your mouth. "Let me have one more time where I'm not counting… where I can just pretend we have forever."
"We don't have forever…"
"I know. And I know I'm past it, I know I'm gonna pay for this, I don't care."
And he kisses you.
It's not gentle nor careful. It's desperate and drowning. His mouth is relentless against yours, like he's trying to memorize the taste, the feeling, the way you feel together. Your hands are on his hair, on his face, feeling the fever burning through him.
The kiss tastes like copper and salt. And somehow you feel it like the one last thing you'll ever have in your life.
His body is shaking violently now. You can feel every tremor, every muscle spasm. His metal arm is now hanging useless at his side, but his flesh hand is still cupped around the back of your neck, still holding you close as his strength fails.
You break the kiss against to breathe and he makes this desperate, broken sound that breaks your heart and chases your mouth. "Not yet, not yet, please—"
"Bucky, you're—"
"I know." He kisses you again, softer this time, gentler. "Just one more time."
Another kiss, this one starts to taste like blood. His hands are sliding down from your neck, he's losing motor control and his eyes are rolling back. You catch him as he slumps forward, his full weight collapsing into you.
"No, no, no…" You're holding him, lowering him down to the floor, cradling his head. "FRIDAY! Get Steve here! Get Bruce! Please someone—"
Bucky slurs something low, barely conscious. You look down at him with tears in your eyes. "Please, please, stay with me—"
But he's out.
You lay down, screaming until your throat hurts for what it feels like forever, even though it only has been two minutes.
You're still holding him when Steve and Sam crash through the door. Bruce arrives a bit later to the med bay. They try to pull him from your arms and you won't let go.
"How long?" Bruce asks quietly, already prepping an IV.
Your voice barely comes out and sounds distant. "Fifteen minutes, maybe more…"
Steve's face go white. "Jesus Christ."
"Get her out of here," Bruce orders and Sam pulls you away gently.
You watch from the doorway as they work in him. Watch as they load him onto a gurney and wheel him past you to medical.
His metal arm is hanging off the side of the gurney, completely loose. Blood is still trickling from his nose. But on his face, even unconscious, there's this ghost of a smile.
Like it was worth it.
You slide down the wall in the empty hallway and sob, praying in silence for him to be okay.
When Steve finds you an hour later, you're still there. Still staring at the same spot where they took him away.
"He's stable," Steve says quietly, sitting down beside you. "He's gonna be okay…"
You don't answer, looking down at your hands.
"Bruce says the exposure set him back weeks, maybe months. He will need time to recover before…" He trails off but you already know what he means.
Before you can see each other again.
"I'm leaving," you say. Your voice is flat, empty. "Tomorrow, somewhere he won't find me…"
"He'll look."
"I know." You finally look at Steve. "That is why I need you to stop him. You need to make him understand that this is— this is the only way I know how to save him."
Steve remains in silence for a long moment. Then: "He's not gonna forgive you for this."
You close your eyes, leaning your head on the wall. "…But at least he'll be alive."
The next morning, you're gone.
You leave a note on his bedside table in medical, anchored down by a small locket with your initials and a picture of you both inside. You took his dog tags in exchange. The paper is covered in your handwriting, and in some places the ink is smudged.
Bucky,
I'm writing this while you're still unconscious, and I'm trying not to look at you, because if I do, I won't be able to leave. So I'm staring at this paper instead, forcing my hand to move and trying to get all of it out before I lose my nerve.
By the time you read this, I'll be gone. And I need you to understand that this isn't me running away from you. This is me running forward the only future where you survive.
I love you. I love you so much it feels like it's burning me from the inside out. I love the way you still sleep on the left side of the bed just because I asked you once to do so because I felt more comfortable sleeping on the right. I love how you pretend you don't like when Sam calls you "Buckaroo" but I can see you trying not to smile. I love that you learned how to braid hair just so you could braid mine on the nights we actually had time together.
I love you for fighting so hard, for pushing your limits for wanting me badly enough to hurt yourself. But that's exactly why I can't stay.
Last night I watched you almost die in my arms just for some extra time with me. I felt your heartbeat falter under my hands, I saw the blood and I saw you smiling unconscious when they were taking you to the medbay. And that's how I know you're never going to stop. You'll never choose yourself over me. You'll push and push until there's nothing left, and I will have to watch you fade.
I can't do that, Buck. I can't let the person I love most in this world destroy himself for stolen moments and rationed hours. I can't live knowing that every kiss might be the one that finally kills you.
So I'm choosing for the both of us. I'm doing the thing you can't do.
I'm leaving. And I need you to let me go.
I know you're probably already planning how to find me. I know Steve is probably going to help you, and if they ever find me Sam is going to yell at me for breaking your heart, and you're going to pull every favor and every resource until you track me down.
Please don't. I'm begging you baby, please don't look for me.
I know it's not fair to ask, I know I don't have the right, but I'm asking anyway because I need you to live. I need you to have a full life without timers and blood and goodbye kisses that might be the last one.
You've spent so much time being a weapon, being used, being told you don't get to choose. So I'm giving you a choice now: you can spend the rest of your life chasing a ghost or you can let me be the one that got away. You can hold on the hurt or you can let it make you strong enough to move forward.
You probably already know which one I'm hoping you'll choose.
Be happy, James Buchanan Barnes. Be reckless and stupid and alive. Get a cat. Let Sam teach you how to use social media, let Steve drag you to those museums you always pretend to hate. Flirt with someone at a coffee shop, have a one night stand, fall in love again.
Live the life I can't give you.
I'm sorry I couldn't be strong enough to stay. I'm sorry for choosing this way. I'm sorry for every fight we won't have and every meal we don't share and every tomorrow we won't get.
But most of all I'm sorry that loving me turned into something that could kill you.
I'm serious, James, don't look for me. This is the only way I know how to save you.
Always yours, even from far away.
When Bucky wakes up, the first thing he see is the letter. The second thing he sees is that his dog tags are gone. The third thing he realizes is that you are gone too.
He reads the letter and the machine monitoring his heart rate starts screaming.
"No." He's already ripping off the IV from his arm, swaying his legs over the side of the bed. "No, no, no—"
Steve's hands land on his shoulders. "Buck, you need to calm down."
"Where is she?!"
The scream echoes through the medbay. Bucky shoves Steve back hard enough that he hits the wall.
"You need to lie back down," Bruce says, trying to use his calm voice. "Your system is still recovering, you can't—"
Bucky's on his feet now. The room spins but he doesn't care. He's moving toward the door and Steve's blocking it and Bucky can feel it rising in his chest—that cold, dark thing he's spent burying.
"Move."
"You're in no condition—"
"I said move!"
His metal fist goes through the wall next to Steve's head. Sam is there too now, both of them trying to corral him back towards the bed, but Bucky's fighting them… really fighting them. There's blood running down his arm from where he tore the IV out and he can feel his body failing, feel the weakness on his legs, but he doesn't care.
"She's gone!" He's shouting, or maybe sobbing, he can't tell anymore at this point. "She's gone, I have to find her, I have to—"
"Bucky, listen to me—" Steve tries.
"No!" Bucky slams his metal arm into a medical cart and sends it crashing across the room. "You don't understand, she thinks—the letter says—"
He can't get the words out, can't even breathe properly. His chest is too tight and the room is spinning. You're gone.
"We need to sedate him," Bruce intervenes.
"Don't you fucking dare!" Bucky spins toward him and Steve has to physically tackle him. They go down hard, Steve pinning him to the floor and Bucky's still fighting, thrashing, his metal arm whirring as he tries to throw Steve down.
"I'm sorry," Steve is saying and he means it, Bucky hears it in his voice. "I'm sorry, Bucky but you're gonna hurt yourself if we don't stop you."
"I don't care!" Bucky's voice cracks. "I don't care, let me go, let me find her—"
He feels the needle slide into his arm.
"No, please, I have to— she doesn't understand—I need to tell her." His vision is blurring, Steve's face above him, both of them looking wrecked. "Find her, please find her…"
The darkness takes him back.
When he wakes again, it's dark outside.
He's restrained now. Steve's asleep in the chair beside the bed, Sam is gone.
Bucky lies there for a long moment, staring at the ceiling, his body aches and his head pounds. Underneath it all, there's this hollow space where you used to be.
The letter is folded on the bedside table. They must've picked it up after… after whatever happened. He doesn't remember all of it, just the rage and the panic, the desperate need to move, to chase you and fix everything.
But he's not panicking now, he's thinking.
What if all of it wasn't permanent? What if there was a cure? Bruce said there was no precedent for infinity stone exposure like this. No treatment, no solution. But Bruce doesn't know everything. Bruce couldn't save Tony.
Bucky's mind was starting to work, clicking through possibilities: Carol Danvers got her powers when she was exposed to the space stone. Wanda's powers were the result of an experiment trial with the mind stone. Peter Quill was exposed to the power stone, along with his team, according to what Steve told him.
There were options. Leads. Possibilities.
And if none of them worked, he would find new ones. He'll search every corner of the universe if he has to. He'll make deals with gods and monsters and anyone else who might have answers.
The restraints are loose enough that he could break them. They're meant to slow him down, not stop him. But he doesn't move. He just lies there, breathing steadily, his mind cataloguing resources and contacts and next steps.
He reaches back for the letter and reads it one more time.
I'm serious, James, don't look for me. This is the only way I know how to save you.
He folds it carefully and picks up the locket you left there, a picture of the both of you staring back at him. He closes his hand around it and presses it against his chest.
"I'm going to solve this out," he murmurs quietly, low enough to prevent Steve from waking up. "And then I'm going to find you, and we're going to have forever. I promise."
pairing: (firefighter) boyfriend!Bucky Barnes x reader
summary: Bucky had been trying to adapt himself to modern world getting a new job at the Fire Department. He only meant to stop by before his shift, but things escalated quickly after you saw him in his uniform.
work count:1.9 k
warnings: +18 MDNI, explicit sexual content, unprotected p in v, uniform kink, dirty talk, oral sex (m and f receiving), light dom Bucky, established relationship, porn with a little bit of plot, roleplay, fingering. | english is not my first language so sorry in advance if I have any mistypos/grammar mistakes.
a/n: this was a request by the lovely @wintersoldier-gal ❤︎ just Bucky wearing uniform and reader losing it.. I hope y'all like it. It was beta read by my girls as always @herejustforbuckybarnes @buckysdecaflove & Denice, lysm!
read in AO3
The knock at your apartment door comes exactly when Bucky said it would. You're still in your work clothes, haven't even kicked off your shoes yet, when you pull the door open. And then you freeze.
"Hey, baby, I—" Bucky starts, but whatever he was going to say dies when he catches the look on your face. "What?"
You can't answer. Can't do anything but stare.
He's in uniform. Full dress uniform. The dark navy button-down stretched across his shoulders, his firefighter badge glinting on his chest, the peaked cap tucked under his arm. His hair is pulled back, neat and professional, and there's something about seeing him like this—squared shoulders, official, heroic—that makes heat pool low in your stomach.
"It's that bad?" He shifts his weight, suddenly self-conscious. "I know it's not exactly—"
"Get inside," your voice comes out rougher than intended.
His eyebrows raise. "I've only got a few minutes before I need to get to the station—"
"Inside," you fist your hand in his shirt and pull him through the doorway, kicking the door shut behind him.
The second it clicks closed, you're on him. Your mouth finds his, hungry and demanding. Bucky makes a startled sound against your lips before his hands come up to grip your waist.
"Okay," he breathes when you break away to mouth at his jaw. "Okay, so you like the uniform."
"Shut up." You bite gently at his neck, feel him shudder. Your fingers find his badge, trace the edge of it. "You look so fucking good."
He goes very still. Then he murmurs: "Oh, we're doing this?"
You pull back enough to meet his eyes. They're dark, pupils blown wide, and there's a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. "You showed up at my door looking like this, what did you think was going to happen?"
"I thought I'd show you before my shift, maybe get a kiss—" His hands slide down to your hips, his fingers digging in. "—not have my girlfriend look at me like she wants to eat me like I'm a piece of candy."
"Maybe I do."
His breath catches for a second, you can see the moment he makes his decision. His expression shifts, settles into something more controlled, commanding. When he speaks again, his voice has dropped an octave.
"Then get on the couch." His hands grip your wrists and he walks you backward until your legs hit it. "I need to check you over. Make sure you're not overheating."
You're already reaching for his belt, desperate and wanting, but he catches your hands.
"Not yet." He guides you down to sit on the edge of the couch. From this angle you have to look up at him, and the sight itself sends heat flooding through you. "Let me do my assessment first."
Bucky's hand come up to cup your jaw, his thumb brushes over your bottom lip before pressing inside of your mouth. "You're going to sit there and let me check you over. And if you make a sound without permission, I'll have to find other ways to keep you quiet." He taps the side of your mouth with his thumb. "Understand?"
You nod, not trusting yourself to speak, and he smirks.
His hands go to the buttons of your blouse, working them open with careful precision. The contrast of his vibranium fingers against your skin makes you shiver, and when he pushes the fabric off your shoulders you arch into his touch.
"Already running hot," he murmurs, palms sliding over your skin. His fingers trace the edge of your bra, then dip beneath it to palm your breast. You gasp and his lips quirk. "Elevated heart rate, flushed skin… I'm seeing all the signs."
"Bucky, please—"
"What did I say about staying quiet?" He pinches your nipple lightly in reprimand and you bite back a moan. "I need to focus on my assessment."
He takes his time, his hands map every inch of exposed skin, pushing your bra up and out of the way so he can lower his mouth to your chest. The badge presses cold against your stomach as he leans in, and the sensation combined with the hot pull of his mouth on your nipple makes you whimper.
"That's better," he murmurs against your skin. "Just feel it."
His hands drop to your pants, undoing them with quick efficiency. You lift your hips to help him slide them down, and when his fingers brush against your underwear—already damp—he makes a low, approving sound.
"Already so wet," he says, hooking his fingers in the waistband. "This needs to come off."
You're shaking by the time he gets your underwear off, leaving you bare from the waist down, blouse open and bra pushed up. Bucky stands there for a moment just looking at you, and you can see him hard and straining against his uniform pants.
"Spread your legs," he says, voice rough and commanding. "Wider. I want to taste you."
You comply, heart hammering and watch as he drops to his knees between your thighs. The sight of him in that crisp uniform, on his knees for you, makes your head spin.
"Bucky," you breathe and he glances up at you with dark, hungry eyes.
"Look at you," he murmurs, his hand gripping your thigh hard enough to leave marks. "Already so wet for me." His tongue drags slow and deliberate up your center and you gasp. "Stay quiet, that's an order."
He's relentless, using his tongue and lips and the gentle scrape of teeth, alternating between broad strokes and focused attention on your clit that makes your legs shake. When you whimper he pulls back just enough to speak against you.
"What did I say?" His breath is hot against you. "Quiet, or I stop."
You bite your lip hard, trying desperately to obey, and he rewards you by sealing his lips around your clit and sucking. Your hips buck involuntarily and his vibranium hand slides up to press against your lower stomach, holding you in place until you're writhing against him, fingers twisting in the couch cushions.
"Bucky—fuck—I'm going to—"
"Not yet." He pulls back, ignoring your whine of protest, chin slick with you, and stands up. "You don't come until I'm inside you."
You're still catching your breath when you push yourself up and reach for him, hands going to his belt. "My turn."
"Baby, we don't have time—"
"Then you better not distract me." You undo his belt with shaky fingers, popping the button on his pants and freeing him. He's hard and flushed and already leaking. When you look up at him through your lashes, you can't help but smirk. "Besides, I should probably know how to handle a fireman's hose, right?"
He laughs, surprised and breathless. "Did you really just—"
"Shut up." You stroke him once, twice, and watch his expression go dark. "Unless you want me to stop?"
You take him in your mouth, watching his face as you work him with your tongue. His hand comes up to tangle in your hair—not pushing, just holding—and the groan that escapes him makes heat pool between your legs all over again.
You take him deeper and he curses, hips jerking slightly. You can feel him getting close, the tension building in his body, but before he can finish he pulls you off gently.
"I need to be inside you," he says. "Right now."
He pulls you up, turning you so your chest is pressed against the back of the couch. The position leaves you bent over, exposed, and when you feel the head of his cock press against your entrance—slick and hot—you push back desperately.
"Look at you," he mutters, one hand gripping your hip while the other guides himself. "So fucking eager for it."
"Please."
His hand comes down on your ass, and you gasp. "I've got you."
He enters you in one hard thrust and you cry out, the stretch and fullness of him almost too much. The angle makes everything feel more intense—you can feel every inch of him, the way he fills you completely—and when he bottoms out, buried deep, his hips flush against your ass, you both moan.
"You feel so fucking good. So fucking tight around my cock." He pulls almost all the way out and he thrusts back in, watching where you're joined. "Taking me so well, taking all of me."
He doesn't wait, just starts moving with deep, punishing thrusts that make his badge press against your neck. You can hear the shift of his uniform with every movement and it makes you clench around him.
"That's it," he growls, one hand sliding up your spine. "Just like that."
You're babbling now, incoherent pleas and curses, and he responds by fucking you harder. One hand slides around to find your clit, circling it with rough insistent pressure that makes your vision blur.
"Are you going to be a good girl and come on my cock?"
His words, his fingers on your clit, the relentless drive of his cock hitting that perfect spot inside you—it's too much. The pressure builds impossibly fast, winding tighter and tighter until you're shaking with it, thighs trembling.
"Bucky, please, I need—"
"Come." The word is firm. "Come for me right fucking now."
The permission breaks you. You come with a sharp, broken cry, clenching hard around him, and the sensation of you falling apart tears his own orgasm from him. He buries himself deep with a groan, hips stuttering as he fills you, and you feel the hot pulse of him inside you while you're still shaking through the aftershocks.
He stays there for a moment, forehead pressed between your shoulder blades, both of you trying to remember how to breathe. After a few seconds, he carefully pulls out and you immediately turn to face him, wrapping your arms around his neck. He holds you close, one hand stroking up and down your back.
"Hi beautiful," he says, soft and a little sheepish now.
"Hi hottie," you kiss him slow and sweet. "That was— wow."
"Yeah," he's smiling against your mouth. "I really have to—"
You both look at the clock on the wall. 7:14 PM.
"You're so late," you say.
"So late," he agrees, but he doesn't sound particularly sorry about it as he tucks himself back into his pants and tries to make himself presentable. His hair's a mess now, the bun half undone, and there's a hickey blooming on his neck just above his collar.
"They're gonna know," you point out, still sprawled on the couch in your state of undress.
"I don't care." He leans down to kiss you one more time.
You watch him head for the door, adjusting his belt and attempting to smooth his hair. He pauses with his hand on the doorknob and looks back at you.
"Same time tomorrow?" There's mischief in his eyes.
You grin. "You're working a double tomorrow."
"Then I'll come by after." He winks. "Fair warning though— I might still be in my turnout gear."
The door closes behind him and you flop back against the couch, already counting down the hours until his next shift ends.
Firefighter Bucky is definitely your favorite of his career attempts so far.
i need a bucky fic where he really really falls in love and idk that girl left him/dies or something that makes him believe he will never be able to love again but then reader shows up in his life and slowly but surely he starts to believe again and its all sappy and idk i kind of need it :( or does this fic exist? someone let me know🥹
“... in those moments I go "Look, uh, this is happening. I'm not going to be at my hundred percent today but when I lay down and I put my head on that pillow at night, I'm going to feel so much better that at least I give fifty percent rather than nothing"”.
pairing. rockstar!bucky barnes x popstar!reader
synopsis. after a chance encounter at paris fashion week, you find yourself entangled in a web of sex, lies, and watchful eyes alongside the drummer of beloved rock band the howling commandos. a problematic boyfriend is a rite of passage for every pop-girlie… but bucky barnes is not your boyfriend, he’s your drug. no matter how hard you try, can you truly quit him?
warnings. smut (multiple sex scenes, switch!bucky, unprotected piv, oral sex - f + m receiving, public sex, pussy pronouns, dirty talk, use of slut, exhibitionism, spit, licking?, breeding kink, nipple play, hair pulling - f + m receiving, sex tapes, light degradation, cum eating, cockwarming, dacryphilia, biting, overstimulation, messy sex??, he has a massive dick because i said so!!), no use of y/n, idiots in love, age gap, very toxic behaviour, jealousy, possessiveness, drug/substance abuse, addiction, misogyny, revenge porn, attachment avoidance, dead parent, so much yearning, angst, fluff, & more.
reader inclusivity. the reader has hair that can be pulled and an assigned nickname.
wordcount. 24k (it's big, but you can take it baby, can't you?)
hyde's input. throwing this slop at the wall and hoping it sticks... okay but i also want to give a really big thanks to my bwamily for putting up with listening to me whinge, and stress, and ramble about this fic more than i should have/needed to. every fic that's been written for this collab has been amazing, i'm so happy to have taken part in something with so many talented writers, but i’m even happier to call you guys my friends. you're all amazing, i am in constant awe of you all. ps. take a shot every time i reference bwa in this fic.
bwa collab masterlist. - read & reblog every fic or istg i'm deactivating (/j... but also /srs)
There comes a point where you have to question your self-respect.
Or, better said, your lack of self-respect.
Every kid has big dreams. Take little Tommy L. for example: first day of elementary school, he got up on a chair and proclaimed to the class that he would be the first person to step foot on Jupiter. Everyone applauded his bravery, a cheerful ruckus of whiny children egging on the fantasies of a dreamer. No one dared to dampen the mood by pointing out the fact that Jupiter is made of gas and therefore cannot be stepped on — this, of course, was not out of consideration for his feelings, but out of the sheer ignorance that comes with being young and unaware.
The next person that comes to mind is Natasha R. Head-strong and confident, not once in the ten years of knowing her have you doubted her ability to make her dreams a reality. Mostly because her dreams were relatively simple, to the point, and oh-so Nat: I just want to get payed to boss idiots around.
Low and behold, you are now that idiot she gets payed to boss around.
Because only an idiot would find herself in a public bathroom, squandering her dream away for Bucky fucking Barnes.
“Christ alive,” speak of the devil, and he shall moan in your ear — or however that saying goes. It’s a little hard to remember, or care, in your current predickament. “How’s she getting tighter?”
Blunt nails dig into skin, scratching off the body glitter sprayed over you by a team of stylists. If they could see you now, bent over a sink with the frilly shorts of a matching, custom, two-piece set billowing out around your ankles, while a mirror forces you to confront the state you’re in: eyeliner smudging at waterlines, a tangled web of dishevelled extensions, and a hue of lipstick now staining the mouth of rock legend, James Buchanan Barnes… Well, they would not be surprised, but they would certainly be disappointed.
“Wider, baby. Theeeere we go,” steel-toed boots push against dainty heels, forcing you into a state of compliance in which your legs spread further apart and you feel the tip of his cock nudge a part of you that previously you had not known existed. “Need to stretch her out again, don’t I?”
The only need you should have right now is to get back to your table. To sit with Nat on your right, a labelmate on your left, and the impeccably dressed CEO of Thunderbolt Records directly across from you, hawk-eyed and waiting to see if his newest protégé takes home the award of Best New Artist.
“Figured a pretty slut like you wouldn’t have this issue,” against your own best intentions, you grind back against Bucky, walls squeezing him in a momentary vice. Worst of all, he doesn’t gasp, or groan, or giveaway the slightest sign of surprise — because he expects this, knows what kind of a reaction his degrading pet names rouse from you. “Them other guys not been fucking my girl’s pussy right, hmm?”
My.
Ownership, possessive. An object belonging to he who speaks it.
Bucky says it with conviction, no waver in the familiar rasp that takes over his voice during times of pleasure. He means it and believes it, almost in spite of the fact it could not be further from the truth. You are not his, this has been made clear more than once throughout these twisted sexcapades you’ve allowed yourself to indulge in — your better judgement has not taken the backseat but, instead, has been fully booted out of the car.
A cruel laughter rips through his chest and cuts straight into your own, a gash that threatens to bleed all over the bathroom floor. Instead of blood, a tear of arousal drips onto the ground.
“Or have you been savin’ her for me? Yeah, bet you been keeping her nice and tight. Just wanted to relive the memory of me splitting you open that first time in Paris, didn’t ya?”
Like any ego-maniac, coke-fuelled jukebox hero, Bucky Barnes is a man in love with the sound of his own voice.
“Shouldn’t you be- Aah!” Mission failed: you reach for your voice and, consequently, Bucky reaches for your hair.
His chest presses flush against your back, your head meets his shoulder, and ring clad fingers tangle themselves in the mess of your hair, tugging just enough to rouse a sting over your scalp. Liberation is found in the pain; a reminder that Bucky can hurt you, that pleasure is not the only thing his touch can bring. What is the virtue of pleasure to a thousand vices?
“You’re so stupid sometimes, you know? Can’t even finish a simple sentence once I get you all cockdrunk,” there’s an irritation in his voice that you almost believe, like he can’t stand seeing you act this way. Like he’s not the one to blame, rolling his hips slowly only to snap back into you, filling the tiled room with the squelch of your soaked walls. “Go on, finish what you started. Shouldn’t I be what?”
He’s evil.
And, sadly, you’re more than accustomed to him by now, “Shouldn’t you be saving your voice? Fans- Oh god!”
“Not quite God, baby,” something about the condescension injected into each syllable has your eyes rolling back, fingers shooting out in search of something to stabilise your sanity with. Your torturer grants you this small favour, binding his hand to yours in a collision of flesh that almost mimics a lover, so woefully contradictory to the manner in which he’s fucking you. “But if you wanna call me that, go right ahead.”
“You’re annoying,” you gasp, half in frustration and half in shock, eyes growing wider the longer you stare at your reflection.
Never once had you thought yourself a voyeur, so used to hiding from the visual un-pleasantries of sex beneath dimmed lights and bedsheets and placid lovers… Then came along the devil to drag you down a path of temptation, fucking you into the silk sheets of his bed. You had not only felt the act, but watched it too: a performance mirrored onto the ceiling, your face of ecstasy peeking out from his left shoulder while Bucky buried himself in your neck and your cunt.
The image haunted you for weeks, through rehearsals and studio sessions, the memories of your ankles interlocked at his back while his unjustly perky ass rocked back and forth with his thrusts plagued your waking hours; until, at last, your paths crossed again and he gave you a new sexcapade to reminisce over. Now here you are, months later, back in front of a mirror and dreading the fact you will never look at your reflection the same way.
A version of your name is groaned into your ear, as the mirror displays the frantic speed overtaking his hips, a final burst of energy to sprint towards his finishing line.
“Shut up,” your voice is pathetic, reducing your command to a pitiful request. The last thing you want is to be haunted by the sound of your own name tearing through his throat in a destructive crescendo of lust. “Save your voice for your- Ngh! Your performance.”
Bucky relieves your scalp of pressure, hand skirting down the length of your body, over the dips of your hips, and between the valley of your thighs. Frozen on the reflection, your eyes are entranced by how the static, overhead white-light catches on the grey steel of his rings as his fingers continue their descent. While his thumb takes to circling your clit in slow, torturous movements, his index and middle finger spread your folds apart. You try to run from the sight, from the shame of watching how he fills you so easily, how your tight opening hugs his girth, but you can’t, he won’t let you.
“Stars like me don’t perform at these things, pretty girl,” he drops your hand in favour of clutching your face, callouses built over decades of plucking strings now pressing into the soft of your cheek and holding your face in place, pinning your stare to his own in the glass. “That’s for rookies like you. Still need to sell yourself like a whore to the masses.”
Five years in the game amounts to nothing and slips down the drain. His words are a short and unsweet reminder that, despite the time and effort already put into your career, you’re still new to this part: the glitz and the glamour, the screaming fans and the intrusive paparazzi, the late-night shows and early-morning radios. A once heathen indie artist, now the gods of success have baptised you in their waters. The corporate machine of the industry treats you like a wilted flower, at last warmed by the spotlight of a main-stage and watered by the profits of a record deal.
“Need to cum.” The words are terse, not quite a request, not quite a warning. The mirror holds no secrets, laying you both bare for the other to see: the twitch of your thighs as the circles he teases your clit with grow harsher; the exertion of his body fucking into yours causing tears of sweat to run down his face, smudging the messy charcoal lining his eyes; the parting of his lips as he turns his face into yours, nose pressing into your cheek and his breath hitting your skin. “Gonna let me cum in you, hmm? Fill you up, like you deserve? C’mon, know you want it, don’t you? Wanna feel me seeping out this pussy, all sticky and warm, staining your panties while you’re up on that stage.”
What you intend to be a protest, a denial of his outlandish claims, quickly devolves into a whine of his name, hand meeting the one between your thighs. To pull him away, to hold him place, to just feel how the bones, muscles, ligaments of his fingers all work together to send you towards a maddening spiral, nirvana born only at his touch.
“Of all the pretty girls that chant my name, you’re definitely my favourite,” is Bucky’s twisted version of a compliment, something to make you swoon and weak in the knees. Instead, it makes you sick to your stomach, flash-images of every faceless body he’s taken his pent-up frustrations and post-performance high out on. Groupies and band bunnies, faceless shapes in crowds that got lucky and captured his attention from behind the drum kit. You’re no better than any of them, nor more important, yet a knife twists in your chest like you should be. You should be more than that, more than a cheap fuck in a public bathroom, more than a desperate quickie amidst the award show you’ve dreamed your whole life of attending. “‘S only fair of my favourite girl to let me cum in her. Wanna watch you doing your cutesy dancing across the stage and know your walls are wearing me like a good luck charm. Hell, you win that little award and we can make a tradition out of it, make sure I fuck you full of me every award show.”
“Do it,” your chest heaves, and you tell yourself this is you giving in, this is you letting him get his way, one last time. Not because you’re weak, and certainly not because you want him to cum inside, but because you want him to stop talking like your lives are interlinked, like any form of a future exists where you two have private pre-show rituals or good luck charms. “Fuck, James- Cum in me, please! Just get it over-”
A hand clamps over your mouth, fingers wet with you and staining your lips in the taste of lust, while Bucky’s voice hits your ear in a harsh whisper, “Don’t you dare finish that sentence, you little slut. Take what I’m giving you like the gift it is, and make sure you thank me in that speech of yours, when you’re holding that award in your hands and my cum in your cunt.”
Seconds later, Bucky tips over the edge. Warmth floods your insides, melting away the part of you that can think clearly, and leaving nothing but the desperate soul that strives for some form of human connection, something a little deeper than niceties and handshakes. Your walls clamp down around his cock, a spasm creeping up the length of your spine as he continues to grind into you, feeding his cum deeper while you ride out the waves of your orgasm, head thrown back against his shoulder and eyes blinking up at the now blurry ceiling.
Seconds pass. Maybe minutes. Time warps, bending to the will of Bucky’s existence while he holds you pressed against him. Breaths fall in sync, deep and heavy and exhausted. You faintly register the brush of his lips along your skin: your shoulder, your jaw, your cheek, your neck, your forehead. He’s relentless, smothering you in the musk of day-old cigarettes, burnt whisky, and expensive cologne.
You take the initiative to part ways, shifting forward to lean one palm flat on the sink and the other against his torso, shoving him back in a weak effort. He grants your request, slipping out of you with a hiss. Despite the shame that overwhelms your heart, you still can’t help but moan when you feel his index and middle finger swipe through your folds, collecting the spill of his own spend. He fucks it back inside slowly, rings kissing against your puffy lips.
“We can’t keep-” You pause, trying to gather all the willpower you have to inject it into your wavering conviction. “Doing this. I don’t want to. Not anymore. Please.”
“You’re pleading, baby,” he muses, fingers curling up ever so slightly just to give him the pleasure of watching you clamp down on your bottom lip, trapping a whine inside. Bucky chuckles, mockery imbued into it, and your traitor of a stomach flips. “Acting like you didn’t come running to meet me here.”
You want to tell him that it shouldn’t flatter him. That he should not mistake your eagerness for enjoyment. You come running to Bucky like a moth flies towards a flame: entranced and yet wholly unaware of its incoming destruction.
“I mean it, James.” That was good. Well done. You almost believed yourself, which means you’re halfway to convincing him too. “This is it. The last time. I don’t want to see you, ever again.”
“Ever again? ‘S a bit harsh, sweetheart. We work in the same industry, under the same record label. Gonna have to see me at some point,” his fingers depart from you, Hallelujah!
Only to shatter your joy when you spot Bucky in the mirror, wrapping his lips around them and savouring the taste of you both on his tongue. Instead of reacting how the feral animal inside of you longs to — bending over the sink and inviting him to take a taste straight from the source — you take to pulling your shorts back up, trying your best to manufacture a composed, talented, busy woman out of the wreck of a girl he’s made of you.
Bucky speaks up before your hand can hit the door handle, halting you in your tracks, “Not even gonna answer me? You’re breaking my heart here, baby.”
Your shoulders lift with a deep breath and then you’re wrenching the door open and taking a single step out into the backstage halls, not even bothering to glance back at him, “Delete my number, James.”
The first time you met Bucky Barnes, you were in a sheer dress and a state of utter panic.
Seven months have passed in the blink of an eye, yet even now you can still recall every detail.
The uncomfortable quiet of the hotel’s lobby, the blood rushing to your cheeks as you catch your heel on the carpet, the bracing for impact of both the floor and everyone’s attention. And then a grip wrapping itself around your arm, an effortless tug back against a solid figure, and a condescending laugh ringing in your ears.
“Careful, sweetheart, don’t want you bruising those pretty knees,” a voice like caramel, sweet but sickly, threatening to erode not only your teeth but your mental well-being. In an act that would have the suffragettes tutting in shame, a tornado of butterflies swipes through the valley of your loins. “At least not like this. Would rather see them put to good use first.”
The last person you expect to see leering at you, as you turn to assess your dirty-minded saviour, was rock legend James Buchanan Barnes, founding member and drummer of ‘The Howling Commandos’. Unlike you, he’s far from dressed for the nines: hair an unbrushed mess, face in desperate need of a shave, sporting a miscellaneous stain on his hoodie and a pair of untied basketball shorts that, if you were looking — and you aren’t — you would notice his thigh tattoo peeking out at the bottom.
With a stuttered apology, and a glance over your shoulder to assure your nerves that no one had noticed your near-mishap, you stumble back and inflate the space between you both. Though he makes no attempt to secure his grip, hand dropping back to his side at the first sign of you fleeing its touch, his eyes pin you beneath his stare, the blue of his irises a near perfect match to the designer dress clinging to your curves.
“Do I know you from somewhere?” Barely five minutes into unofficially knowing him and he has already caught you off-guard twice, a feat which should be an omen for the future trajectory of your complicated relationship. Instead of acknowledging that right now, you’re too busy feeling starstruck by the fact he possibly knows who you are. “Yeah, I do, don’t I?”
Your attempt to make eye-contact is abandoned instantly, the intensity of his stare too much for you to handle, “Uh… I don’t know. Maybe? We’ve never actually met-”
“Course we haven’t, I’d never forget meeting that pretty face of yours,” against your better nature and the voice screaming at you that a man like him flirts with anything with a pulse, you regrettably feel yourself smile shyly in his direction, fingers fiddling with the borrowed ring sitting snug around your index finger. “You’re Thunderbolt’s golden girl, aren’t you? His shiny new toy.”
Once again in retrospect, the lighting bolt of surprise that strikes through you is unjustified.
Bucky Barnes has every right to know of you and your position within the industry. And not just because you are still riding the wave of becoming an ‘overnight success’, your sophomore album hitting number 1 on the global charts and your presence in the industry suddenly becoming a lot more noticed by fans and media like. No, he has every right to know you through the simple fact that you are both under the same record label.
Half of the enigma surrounding Thunderbolt Records is focused on the matter of how, in less than two decades, they have grown from indie label to household name — the Oxford University of music labels, a company that every up and coming artist dreams of signing with.
Rumours have forever surrounded the illusive CEO; ludicrous tales ranging from him being born into generational wealth, to internet theories speculating on the uncanny resemblance between him and a high-ranking member of the Ruska Roma family. But, no matter what people believe when it comes to the company’s origins, the whole world can agree on this: the musical legacy of the company lies in the calloused hands of The Howling Commandos… A musical legacy you are now inscribed upon.
“I don’t know if golden girl is the right term,” a wolfish grin overcomes his face, tongue swiping over his bottom lip and slipping back into his mouth. He hums, pleasured, like he can taste you in the air, a snake locking onto the scent of new prey. “Rusty bucket is more up my avenue.”
There is a distorted laugh that comes with wealth and power; one that is loud, and abrasive, and shamelessly punctuates one’s presence. That’s exactly how Bucky laughs at your self-deprecating claims: head thrown back, hand splayed over his torso, nose ring shaking slightly as exaggerated humour scrunches up his face. He shows no care for the fact the clock has hardly passed ten in the morning, or that the decadently decorated hotel lobby carries an air of sophistication and library-level silence. Why would a man who’s had the whole world grovelling at his feet care for decorum?
“So, what brings you to Paris, goldie?” There are his eyes again, trailing down the length of you. As he lingers over your chest, you begin to question your stylist, Wanda’s decision to have you go bra-less, leaving the hue of your nipples perfectly visible beneath the see-though fabric. “Dressed like that, I’m guessing Fashion Week. Channel?”
A shake of your head, “Dior.”
The brand still tastes strange in your mouth. Foreign, like it belongs anywhere but between your teeth. A girlish part of you, the one that is still very much a fan in the presence of her celebrities, almost wants to ask Bucky if he had felt this way at the start of his stardom. If the sound of his name in strangers’ voices had felt intrusive, if looking up at the stage lights had felt like staring at the barrel of a gun, if the glitz and glam still felt like borrowed garments on his skin.
Somehow, you find the will to not sound like a complete loser, and instead adopted the attitude of someone speaking to just another co-worker… If you forget about the fact that said co-worker has just been announced as Sexiest Man of the Year and is known for making more than hearts throb.
“What brand are you here with?”
“Oh, me? Fashion Week’s not really my scene, too many people kissing up to Wilson for my liking.”
Sam Wilson, full-time guitarist and fellow member of The Howling Commandos, part-time runway model. He’s become a staple figure in male fashion, one of the top-to-watch at any MET Gala or red-carpet event. With a face sculpted by the hands of angels, it’s not hard to understand why every fashion house wrestles for a morsel of his attention. Amidst all this, he’s also known as the member James Barnes shares the strangest relationship with, both forever taking harmless jabs at each other in the press, only to go for blood the minute anyone else dares to throw dirt on their names.
“This is just a little treat, a vacation before the band heads back out on tour,” Barnes explains, after assessing the confusion on your visage. At the mention of tour, his eyes light up, like he’s just remembered the most interesting story in the world. “Congrats on your album, by the way. Yelena said the launch party was quite the rager. Sorry I couldn’t make it, I was busy.”
Busy was a cute way of putting it.
Photographed on a yacht off the Canary Islands, with a hand-full of super-models and enough drugs to put a pharmacy to shame was a better reflection of the truth.
“Thanks!” Whatever demon is ruled by anxiety possesses you, forcing a burst of energy in your voice that not only has you flinching, but the rockstar in front of you too. “Uh, for the congratulations. Oh, and the flowers you sent. They were beautiful, lasted a whole two weeks before they started to wilt. I don’t know how you guessed my favourite-”
“My assistant organised the flowers, doll, I just covered the bill.” Well, that shuts you right up… And invites in another anxious demon, doubling the dose in your veins and inflicting you with an overdose of nerves. You try to exorcise it, knee bouncing the back of your heel onto the carpet in a hope to work out that nervous energy he conjures within you. “Tell you what though, why don’t you tell me how long you’re in the city and we can try organise a night where I can take you for dinner. That sound like something you’d like?”
“Oh. I don’t know if-”
“Back off, Barnes,” Natasha is by your side in the blink of an eye, smoothing out the wrinkles in her suit jacket and pinning the man with a warning stare, the kind you only ever see her shoot towards intrusive interviewers and pushy paparazzi. “Don’t you have some other innocent victim you can go harass with your presence?”
“Good to see you as always, Nat,” unfazed by her diss and her glare, Bucky renews the intensity under which he studies you, picking you apart more and more with each blink. “What’s so wrong about a senior in the industry wanting to get to know the sparkly new thing under his record label?”
“Exactly what you just said. You’re her senior. A man your age should be looking for a wife, not terrorising the youth.” With the way Nat’s talking, you’d think you were freshly eighteen and still frightened of the world, and Bucky a man twice your age. Instead, your frontal lobe is months away from full-development, with a decade or so separating you from Bucky’s life experience. “And you-” Oh no, there she is pointing fingers at you, though her eyes have softened and there’s no longer an angry wrinkle cutting across her otherwise flawless forehead. “Quit being polite and learn to tell creeps like him to shove it where the sun don’t shine-”
“For the record, I really would like to take you to dinner-”
“Uh-huh, and what were you thinking of eating for dessert? Her? Get lost, Barnes, before I call Tony and tell him to put his star on a leash.” Nat’s hand lands between your shoulder blades, guiding you away from James Barnes without so much as a goodbye. Curiosity, your greatest nemesis, entices you to glance back, only to find him doing the very same, shooting you a cheeky wink while he waits for the elevator doors to welcome him in. “You’re late. Your first big brand event and you’re about to arrive late. I swear, someone’s getting fired once I find out who fucked up the hotel pick up-”
“How do you know him?” You interrupt Natasha, head already splitting with your own stress, the ache only growing as she rambles on.
“Who? Bucky?” The Parisian wind cuts at your cheek as the two of you pour out of revolving doors onto the street. A flash of blinding lights, a handful of photographers already crowding around the hotel entrance, has you wishing your outfit came with a matching pair of sunglasses. Nat keeps a hand clasped around your elbow, guiding you towards the open door of a car before shoving you both inside, out of the chaos and onto the leather seats. “He’s unfortunately my friend. I used to babysit Yelena Belova, she’s like a sister to me. Blame it on her that I have to know that idiot.”
Maybe that’s how Bucky got your number: he called in a favour from The Howling Commandos front-woman, Yelena Belova.
However he pulled off such a feat doesn’t matter in the grand-scheme of things. What does matter is that he called you the next morning, put the dinner offer back on the table, and convinced you to meet him in the hotel lobby at eight pm.
Right where you left me yesterday, goldie. Meet me there.
Dinner winds up being drinks, and a congratulations from Bucky Barnes winds up being you spread out in the middle of his suite, your vision going blurry while his tongue worked magic against you. By the time the time morning comes, so have you… A handful of times, no inch of you left untouched by him. While he snores away on a well-fluffed pillow, you make your great escape with your heels clutched to your chest and an ache between your thighs.
What should have been a one-time thing, another notch in both your bedposts, perhaps even a flirty line for a future song, has since spiralled into a car crash; the kind you can only hope that tossing yourself out the window can save you from the impending collision.
Which is exactly why you have blocked his number.
“Helloooo, earth to kiddo!”
You snap out of the reminiscent daydream to find Clint Barton waving in front of your face, something written across his features, as close to worry as he ever gets. Thrust back into the present, the studio comes back into full-view as your eyes skirt over the soundboard in front of you before at last settling on the screen where Clint has pulled up the latest demo you’ve both been working on.
He’s watching you expectantly, on the edge of his seat and on the verge of calling out to you again, “Are you even listening to me?”
“Yes!” You lie out of pure instinct, a defensive mechanism that you sometimes forget to disengage around him. “Actually, no, sorry. Can you repeat whatev-”
“You sleeping okay, kid?”
“I- Why? Do I look like I’m not?”
“You look like you haven’t been sleeping, full stop.” Concern is customary when it comes to Clint, now more than ever since he’s become a father.
Much like Natasha, he’s been with you since Day 1 — if Day 1 began the evening you sat down and decided you were going to release your debut album, sans label and backed by nothing but a low-wage job at the local zoo, a kick-starter, and a dream. Enter stage left Clint Barton, genius producer hiding amongst the low-lives in a dive bar.
“Is that what you asked me?”
“What? No,” Clint shakes his head, head turning back to the screen after taking an extra second or two to study your supposedly exhausted features. “I was asking about your thoughts on the track. Do we like it? Are we scrapping it? Is it lead-single material?”
The questions fly at you like a checklist he’s been ordered to fill out, and you have no doubt who put him up to this.
“He’s been emailing you again, hasn’t he?” The he in question is, of course, none other than your beloved CEO.
“Him and his assistant-slash-girlfriend are currently away on a business trip,” Clint slumps back in his chair, springs screeching at the same time as your phone buzzes on the table. “We have until Wednesday to confirm a lead single. They want to announce your next album before the end of the month.”
“Already? I feel like we just put out the last one!”
“You’re a hot commodity, kid,” he nods over at the anointed trophy cupboard where, perched upon the top shelf and shining in a way that seems to be mocking you, sits your latest and greatest award: Best New Artist. “Gotta strike while the iron is hot, and all that crap they say. That’s just Hollywood!”
“Hollywood is the movie business, you idiot,” though you roll your eyes, you can’t ignore the fact he’s soothing away those beginning embers of anger in your chest.
Another buzz from your phone.
Clint is back on the screen, mouse in hand as he moves around the layering of your vocals.
“Point is,” his voice drowns out another buzz, but it does not halt you from reaching for the device. “We need to come up with something before the boss-man throws us in the capitalist grinder and turn us into minced-meat. Minced-musicians!”
Poor Clint is left high and dry, not even a pity giggle thrown at his cheesy joke.
Because your attention is glued to your phone screen, heart lurching up into your throat as you scan over the notification bar, reading and re-reading with the hope that the words on the screen will disappear if you look long enough.
instagram
barnesonly: you blocked my number, that hurt me and not-so-mini barnes’ feelings.
instagram
barnesonly: i’m willing to forgive you if you meet me for dinner tomorrow, 8pm.
instagram
barnesonly: we can call it your early-birthday present to me.
His birthday is months away, absolutely nowhere near to passing.
You know that. You remind yourself of it by opening your browser and searching. Low and behold: James Buchanan Barnes was born 10th of March, 19… And yet, even with this staring you right in the eye, you swipe down, tap on the notifications, and open up your chat history.
Most of it features him responding to your stories with some variation of the thirsty emoji, with the occasional congratulations. Never once have you responded, leaving the infamous James Barnes to appear as nothing more than a mere fanboy, instead of a world-renowned, lady-adored musician. Before you can even dare pop your chat-cherry, he’s typing again, unknowingly answering the question you were about to ask.
barnesonly: i booked us a reservation at chateau barnes.
The restaurant is far from what you expect.
With Bucky, overindulgence is everything. No half-measures, no settling for a more palatable price, no cutting corners to get a cheap deal. Since the moment you met him, he’s tossed cash around as easily as he’s tossed you around in bed, manhandling the cards in his wallet and taking any excuse to flaunt his wealth. At first, it was attractive, a regrettable staple of his persona that only seemed to make you weaker in the knees and wetter between your thighs. Then, with time and the state of your questionable relationship, it soured and turned into something crass, a piece of him that turned your stomach.
You assumed tonight would be no different. He would take you to eat at a place where imposter syndrome would cage you in from every wall, where the menu is an amalgamation of dishes you’d sooner keel over and die than try — what is it with rich people and thinking the more obscure the food, the better it tastes?
Decadent is not the word you would use to describe Chateau Barnes. Comfy, quaint, cute all fall far more in line with the establishment, lively with customers yet not stuffy in atmosphere. This alone unwinds some of the knots in your gut, just unfortunately not enough for you to tolerate Bucky Barnes’ wandering stare.
“… Medium-rare, and d’ya think you could ask your chef to be generous with the peppercorn sauce?” He’s hardly looking the waitress in the eye, gaze flickering between the pad in her hand and the burst of cleavage peeking out the top of her shirt.
“The chef’s a bit of a grump here,” you watch the girl throw a look over her shoulder. Following her trail, you catch the back of a dark haired man through the kitchen window. Strangely, he looks like a cleaner-cut version of the man sitting across from you, whose lips are stained with red wine and eyes are widened from a trip to the gentleman’s room. “You’re in luck, though. Our sous chef is a sweetheart, I’ll ask him to pour you a little extra sauce.”
“Thanks, sugar,” with a parting wink from Bucky, the waitress almost seems to skip away to put in your order.
The glass on the table calls out to you, a siren tempting you to down it’s remnants of wine; to drown your sorrows in the aged grape juice until they are dead and gone. You give in, far too easily for a woman determined to keep her wits about her tonight, and swallow it down in one fowl gulp. Across the table, Bucky watches you attentively, like you hold the key to everything he’s been missing.
That is basically what he had said, right? When you sat down in the chair and let him tuck you in against the table, mouth dipping to press a chaste kiss on the crown of your head before a whispered confession met your ear: Missed my golden girl.
“You look beautiful tonight,” he takes the initiative of refilling your glass, the neck of the bottle hitting the rim with a soft clink as his unsteady hand hovers it over the dainty cup. “Not sure if I told you that yet.”
“You did.” It comes out colder than the late-night air blowing outside, your words clipped of any niceties as you watch him struggle to sit still. “Four times.”
“See?” Bottle back on the table, his fingers slide across the white cloth and tangle themselves in your own. Despite the nausea bubbling in the back of your throat, a part of you still wavers at his touch. “You’re just so damn pretty, I can’t get enough of telling you. Can’t get enough of looking at you.”
“Is that why you were perving on the waitresses’ tits?”
His spine straightens yet his hand does not flee from yours. Instead, it stresses its presence, pulsing a soft squeeze once, then twice, like he’s fighting to remind you that he’s here with you. It seems Bucky doesn’t realise that he is the one who needs reminding of it.
A pink tongue, now stained mauve, pokes out to wet his bottom lip, his jaw tenses and he turns his face to the left, eyes breaking away from your own to look toward a nearby table. A couple sit in a booth, impervious to the social norms of sitting across a table, and instead opting to snuggle side by side, too busy gazing into each other’s eyes to notice how their food is going cold. Bucky pulls in a breath, slow and through his nose, inflating his shoulders and, likely, his ego, before turning back to face you.
“What do you want from me?”
When you envisioned a scenario in which you wound up choking tonight, you hadn’t imagined it would be on your wine. Quelling your cough, you find the outrage in your system, “Excuse me? You invited me here, asshole.”
“Not talking ‘bout tonight,” something glassy overcomes his eyes, reflecting the twinkling of the restaurant’s low-lights. He squeezes your hand, instinctively, stabilising himself in holding you. It’s not enough to ease the shakes rippling throughout him, like wind over water. “You’re playing me like an instrument, baby. Dodging my calls, swearing you never wanna see me again, then you go and get pissy with me looking at another girl.”
“Playing you like an instrument? Quit being cryptic, Bucky, it doesn’t suit-”
“Last time I checked, it was me who was begging you for something more, something real. Practically served my heart to you on a platter,” finally, his fingers slip back over the cloth and settle at his side. A cold rushes in at the loss of contact but you tell yourself to ignore it, to clench your fist shut and sit a little taller in your seat. “Then you chewed it up, spat it out, and told me it wasn’t good enough.”
“Think you’re being a little dramatic there, Buc-”
“Am I? I told you I was serious about us and you laughed.”
You don’t mean to, you swear, but you can’t help the laugh that finds its way passed your lips this time either, “Because you’re full of shit, Barnes. You wouldn’t know serious if it slapped you in the face.”
“How do you know that? You won’t even give me the chance to take you on a proper date, and so here we are, acting like we don’t both feel this-”
“How do I know? Look at your history, James! You’re not exactly a symbol of monogamy and fidelity,” your voice attracts an unwanted amount of attention from a neighbouring table, to which you quickly dip your head and pray they don’t recognise either of you. “Remind me, how many time have you been caught cheating? Four? Five? Si-”
“That’s different. How I felt about them wasn’t this,” Bucky flattens a palm against his chest, right over where his heart lays. If you search hard enough through the archives of your mind, you can hear the beat of it beneath your ear, slowing from frantic to a steady thump, a melody played for no one other than you. “I could try, if it were us. If it were for you.”
You hate him. More than fire hates water, more than the Sun hates Moon, more than Moriarty hates Sherlock. If only you could will it, you would choose to never look him in those pathetically weepy eyes again…
Now, if you could only say all of that to him and not sound like you’re lying through your teeth, that would be great.
“I’m not a loyalty test for you to ace,” over his shoulder, you spot the waitress from earlier balancing your order in her hands, weaving past tables effortlessly. Your gaze fixates on her a few seconds longer than needed, but you’re just not quite ready to look at Bucky again. When you are, you find him scowling. “We aren’t lab partners, okay? I don’t want to be part of your experiment.”
“Stop twisting my fucking words-” His anger is intercepted by an overly joyous voice.
While you have enough etiquette in your bones to smile politely and thank the waitress as she delivers your plates and cheerfully tells you to Enjoy! Bucky remains seated and seething like a toddler, tattooed arms crossed over his chest and a damn near humph falling from his wine-sullied lips.
Even like this, looking pathetic and aggravating, something coils around your gut as you take in the swell of his biceps. Try as much as you do to fight it, your thoughts spiral down into memory after memory of watching those same arms, glistening in sweat and covered in ink, gliding over a drum kit and hitting every beat effortlessly, a man-shaped machine built for music who somehow still finds the time to wink at the audience the moment he feels the camera pointed at him. He also manages to find the energy, off stage and back in the safety of his dressing room, to bend you over a chaise lounge and smack his drum kits against something else.
Treating your brain like an Etch A Sketch, you shake it and watch the memories fade away, dragging yourself back into the present where the last thing you want is to be bent over by Bucky Barnes.
“I know this might be hard for that big head of yours to understand,” across from you, his lip teases a smile. You can practically smell the dirty joke defrosting in his brain, slowly spinning around like a dish inside a microwave, just waiting for the timer to ding and give him the go ahead to unleash it. “But not everything is about you. I wasn’t pissy at you for checking the waitress out, I was trying to defend an innocent girl from your pervy gaze.”
Steak knife in hand, he scoffs down at his plate, confirming the state of the meat before bothering himself, and subsequently you, with a response, “Innocent girl, my ass. She knows what she’s doing, practically shoving her tits in my face.”
“She’s doing her job!”
“And her job just so happens to involve slutting herself out for tips,” a splatter of watered-down blood bursts out of the steak as Bucky stabs it with his fork, crudely shoving the bite in his mouth before continuing to talk. “She was practically asking for me to look at her!”
James Barnes is such a peculiar brand of douchebag that you often forget how, beneath the layer of all his little quirks and mannerisms that make your blood boil, he is merely a man at his core. Therefore, he is bound to say something so despicable with an air of righteousness and a dismissive shrug of his shoulders.
If there weren’t a table between you and a room full of people who could recognise either of you at any moment, you would reach across the table and slap the food right out of his rotten mouth.
Instead, you wrinkle your nose and stick to twirling pasta onto your fork, “You’re actually despicable.”
“Yeah, well,” he shoots you a tight-lipped smile, as fake as the ones you shoot while being hounded on the streets by strangers shoving their phones into your face. “I’d say you love it, but we both know how you feel about that word.”
He stumps you into silence.
Bucky isn’t supposed to know about that.
About the way that word keeps you awake at night, twisting knots in your stomach and choking down your breath with boulders in your throat. About how it looms over you like a cloud, drapes off of you like a shadow, sits across from you at a table-of-one every morning as you eat breakfast. About how it feels like your personal Everest, a mountain that you will either die trying to climb or, worse, you will reach its peak only to find it wasn’t worth all the hassle that went into the climb. Bucky isn’t supposed to know the things you don’t vocalise to him; he is not supposed to read you like the pages of a book that is wide open, on display for his eyes to skim over and through.
Your defences activate, a bitterness overcoming you as you drop your fork. It clangs down onto the porcelain plate and his eyes flicker down to watch, only to shoot back up to yours and find themselves caught in your vengeful stare.
“Do you want to know the real reason we’d never work, Barnes?” As expected, he nods eagerly, elbows pressing down on the table as he leans a little closer towards you, awaiting to hear what opinion of yours he has to burden himself with changing. “Because we’ve been here for less than an hour and you’ve already been to the bathroom five times.”
“Harsh, sweetheart,” his lips kiss against his teeth, before stretching into a teasing grin. He’s not taking you seriously. “Didn’t know you had a thing against small bladders.”
“Don’t try bullshit your way out of this, James.”
“Now look who’s being cryptic-”
“You’re high.”
That shuts him up instantly.
The noise of the restaurant seems to double and pops the bubble surrounding you both. Conversations bleed into an amalgamation of unintelligible voices, cutlery scrapes against plates and grates at your ears, and footsteps fall like heavy weights on the floor.
Bucky is the first to clear his throat, eyelids suddenly looking a little heavier, like he’s hoping to conceal his blown-out pupils. “Let’s not go around throwing accusations, baby-”
“Oh so I just hallucinated you wiping powder off your nostril when you came back to the table?” Though you sit taller and more confident now than you have all evening, your skin crawls and you want to erase the weight of guilt that falls over you as you watch him shrink in on himself. “Next I assume you’re going to tell me your eyes aren’t bloodshot, I’m just colour blind.”
A sigh rips itself from his soul and tears into yours — and still you refuse to dampen the faux confidence in your features.
“Look, I know I’m an…” Bucky’s confessions is lost somewhere between his tongue and his teeth, voice faltering under the pressure of his jaw clenching shut. He swallows back whatever lump fills his throat. “But I’m working on it.”
“Working on it how? By sniffing up every last morsel until your dealer’s all dried up and has no bags left to sell you?” You may as well have reached over that table and slapped him, just like you had imagined doing, for Bucky flinches like you’ve actually wounded him. Worst of all, you don’t feel satisfied, you just feel pity. For both of you. “So, yeah, forgive me for not believing you can commit to me. From where I’m sitting, you seem pretty committed to cocaine.”
The night should end there.
You should throw a wad of cash on the table, wish him a happy way-too-fucking-early birthday, and storm out of the restaurant with that little bite of dignity still in your mouth.
Instead, you both eat in silence. You both drink in silence. You both drive back to his place in silence.
Past the threshold of double doors, the barrier of sound breaks around you both as Bucky let’s you put him in his place, eyes widened and bloodstream high on you instead of those thin white lines.
A necklace made of your hand tightened around his throat, your mouth around his cock, and the echo of his moans bouncing off the walls as you curl your fingers against his g-spot.
Just like Paris, you leave before he wakes, and tell yourself it won’t happen again.
The question haunts you from your phone screen in the back of a cab, as you wait to be delivered back to your apartment building without any wandering eyes noticing you.
instagram
are you sure you want to block barnesonly?
You press ‘confirm’ and tell yourself this is the end of the story.
It takes three weeks for you to cave.
You do not do so at your own volition but, more aptly, your hand is forced. Mid-rehearsals, clothes stained in far too much sweat than the public would ever wish to see dripping off a popstar — you learned fairly quickly how pristine of an image the public expects you to have, heaven forbid you do something human like sweat!
Wiping at your brow with a towel and excusing yourself from Maria’s choreography instructions, you open up your phone to find an alarming text from Natasha.
nat-attack: What the fuck did you do?
13:17
Ominous.
Not exactly the kind of message you want to receive from your manager; even less the kind of message you want to receive from your best friend. Heartbeat in your throat, you barely register your thumbs typing out a response.
is this about the lead single? you said you liked it’s in the woods more than the other demo?
13:23
Natasha is typing before your message has even been delivered, striking another wave of panic through you. At this point, your heart is in your mouth and you are one shocking piece of news away from spitting it onto the dance-halls polished floors.
nat-attack: Barnes instagram story. Check it.
13:23
Your thumb hits N, and another chat bubble appears on the screen.
nat-attack: NOW.
13:24
So, really, you can’t be blamed for breaking your own rules. After all, Nat wanted to boss idiots around, and you are her idiot.
At the very least, you don’t unblock him, no. You do the far more mature, absolutely justifiable act of making a whole new account just to immediately type his user into the search bar. Low and behold, that familiar pink-hued ring sits snug around a picture of him behind his beloved drums, tempting you with the knowledge of whatever could possibly have Nat on the brink of killing you so early in the day. Finger shaking, you tap his icon and wait for his story to load.
Regret may be your oldest and dearest friend, for she wraps herself around you with so much familiarity, you have no choice but to embrace her back. The known discomfort is the only thing preventing you from crashing out in front of your entire team of dancers as you come to terms with the image staring back at you.
The most striking feature is the red lace. Bright and commanding attention, it sits atop a set of hips and peeks down into the space between two ass cheeks. The owner of the hips is standing out of frame, the top left corner of the screen filled with the expanse of a naked back and the tiniest hint of under-boob. That’s hardly the most eye-catching part of the image, however. The spotlight is all on him, one hand spread open along the faceless back while the other snaps the crass selfie of his bite sinking into flesh, carving out the shape of his teeth into one of the cheeks.
Jealousy is not the emotion overcoming you. It’s shame, red-hot and coursing through your veins, as you feel yourself sink back into the past.
A hotel room in London. A brand launch party you both wound up at. A bottle or two of tequila… And then the stumble through your door, his voice in your ear begging so sweetly that it eroded any willpower you possessed to say no.
Please baby, don’t get to see you enough. Want something to remember you by, while you’re off making me proud and performing for all those crowds. C’mon, lemme put you on film. Pinky promise I won’t share it. Can you do that, just f’me?
Well, Bucky Barnes is clearly a fucking liar. Because there he goes posting a screenshot of the moment right before he pulled that lace to the side and buried his tongue between your cheeks to an account of 34.8m followers. While, yes, there is not a single identifiable trace of you on the screen for any stranger to distinguish your identity, that red lace is enough for Natasha to know.
Note to self: Never buy matching lingerie with Nat. Ever again.
You push aside the voice that nitpicks, telling you it should be something more along the lines of Note to self: Never sleep with Bucky Barnes. Ever Again.
When in doubt, it’s time to pull out the tried and tested method of deny, deny, deny.
checked it. don’t see what’s so surprising about bucky barnes posting a raunchy picture. isn’t that guy forever being linked to new women?
13:31
Either you are the world’s greatest actress or Natasha Romanoff decides you’ve suffered enough for one day, because she drops the subject and never brings Barnes up again… Until a song drops.
This time, she phones you.
Three forty seven in the morning, eyes finally shut and sleep secured after a gruelling day in the studio, you’re torn from the relaxing plains of a dreamless night by the only ringtone that can strike both love and fear through your heart in as little as one ring. You pick up on the fourth, vision still blurry and mind still laying on the pillow as you shrug off the sheets and sit up in bed.
“Why am I being wakened by the woman who kicked me out the studio to get my quote-unquote much needed beauty sleep?”
“Be thankful I called,” Nat’s tone tells you she means business, clipped and entirely uninterested in the light-hearted mood you’re trying to set. Whatever has happened, you’re certifiably screwed. “Instead of breaking into your apartment and slapping you awake, like I originally planned.”
Settling in for what no doubt is about to be a long conversation, you throw your legs over the side of the bed and search blindly for your slippers. “Pray tell, what have I done this time to warrant such abuse from my best friend?”
“Oh no, don’t try sucking up to me right now, missy. Not when you’re the reason I’m about to go prematurely grey!” Oh no. Oh no. The fear of every god strikes through you, just as your feet slip into the fluffy warmth of your house-shoes. If there is anything Natasha Romanoff takes immense pride in — apart from her killer business instinct and that time she floored a man in a boxing ring — it’s the fiery shade of her beautiful hair. Heaven forbid you be the reason she looses it, you might as well start packing you bags to flee the country now. “What did I tell you about getting involved with Bucky Barnes?”
“That it would be like playing Russian Roulette but the bullet is an STD.”
“And what else?”
“That it would be a safety hazard on my image?”
You’ve made your way out into the kitchen, balancing the phone between your ear and your shoulder while two hands occupy themselves with filling the kettle. By the time you switch it on, Nat’s in your ear again.
“Oh, so you do listen when I speak!”
You wince, pulling the speaker back from your ear as she barks a little too loudly down the line. Despite the laid-back demeanour you are wrestling to uphold, an inevitable fear strikes through you. Has he posted more screenshots? The whole video? Surely not. Bucky is many things, but he’s not cruel enough to harass you with full-blown revenge porn just because you blocked him out of your life… Right?
“Nat, listen-”
“Oh! I’ve done enough listening, thank you!” You can picture her eye roll so clearly, it’s like she’s in the kitchen with you, standing by your fruit bowl and nervously peeling the skin off an orange to avoid digging her nails into something else — ie. your neck. “Barnes released a song.”
“O…Kay?” The kettle, now boiled, tilts and expels water into your mug, steeping the chamomile teabag. “I really don’t know why you’re keeping me updated on everything that guy does, I mean he’s basically a stranger to me-”
“Oh, a stranger? Is that why he tagged you as a feature on the song?”
Your grip on the mug falters and it smashes on the floor, hot tea splashing up your leg and over your foot. The reaction is instant, a slew of curses falling from your mouth as you hop over to the bathroom and throw yourself into the shower cubicle, pointing the shower head at your leg and switching on the tap. All the while Nat is in your ear, ire on the back-burner while worry overtakes her voice.
“Are you okay? That yelp was pretty loud-”
“Yeah. I think,” you hiss, the cold water soothing the burn momentarily before the sting multiplies and rouses tears in your eyes. “Maybe not? I think I might’ve just given myself a third degree burn.”
“Shit. Okay. I’ll be at yours in 10, okay? We’ll take you to the emergency room.”
“Okay. I’m sor-”
“And don’t apologise or so help me God, I’ll give you a different reason to visit the hospital”
Nat hangs up before you get the chance to apologise for apologising — a habit she might just kill you over one day. While you wait for her to arrive and let herself in, you do what you do best: self-sabotage.
By which, of course, means you open up the first streaming platform you can find, type in that bastard’s name, and click on the most recent song you can find.
The song has no real name, just a date. A date that conjures too much recognition in you to be a mere coincidence. Pair that with the way your name sits pretty next to Feat., and suddenly the pain of your leg is the least of your concerns.
After an initial listen, you feel your shoulders immediately relax: at no point is your voice featured in the track. Then, because you must have an unknown vendetta against your own sanity, you press play again and swear, up and down, that it has nothing to with the fact you’ve missed hearing his voice. On your third listen, you catch it.
Subtle, soft, smothered between layers of bass and background vocals. You swear you hallucinate it, until you slide the song back and let it replay. A familiar cry plays, one that has your thighs clenching, as it melds into words you’ve tasted one too many times.
Please… Touch me… Harder… Bucky.
You weren’t supposed to meet him at the band’s studio that day. You weren’t supposed to meet him at all, really.
A shitty day of press and a headache pounding against the walls of your skull, you shutdown his offer of a midnight rendezvous with the excuse of needing rest. Then he promised you rest and sent you the door number of his studio… What were you supposed to do? You were already in the Thunderbolt Records’ building, what difference did it really make if you went home to lay your head on a pillow, or if your went up a few flights of stairs to rest your head in his lap?
Bucky’s fingers carding through your hair while he worked away on new music had been enough to lull you to sleep. When you awoke, alone on the couch and with his jacket draped over your shoulders, you sat up to find him behind the glass of the studio, soundproofing preventing you from hearing whatever tempo he was banging at the drums. But at least you could see him.
Shirtless and sweat-slicked, the overgrown locks of his hair clung to his forehead. Transfixed by the twirling of sticks in his hand, you inched your way quietly over to the door, only to startle when his eyes found yours through the glass port and his hand beckoned you in.
C’mere, doll. Been waiting for you to wake up, got something I was hoping to give you.
Low and behold, ten minutes later you were perched in his lap, thighs brushing over either side of his waist, head resting on his shoulder while he kept you stuffed full of his cock.
Helps me concentrate better. Less likely to keep fucking up my takes if I know I get to cum in this sweet pussy as soon as I’m done.
Nothing if not helpful and desperate to aid a fellow musician in the pains of recording the same thing, over and over, it was through pure charity that you let yourself sink down atop him. He managed three failed attempts at recording, whines pouring off your lip and the clench of your cunt around him with every jolt of his foot playing the bass-drum, before he finally gave into both your debauched desires and traded banging the drums for banging you.
At the time, it didn’t seem to matter that the recording light was still on. But now, listening to the faintest layering of your own voice pleading for him, you wish you had just gone home that night.
By some miracle, you haven’t given yourself a third degree burn — it’s barely even first degree.
The miracle in question is just the fact you’re a giant baby with the pain tolerance of a thousand exposed nerves. He had made fun of you once for it, teasing you after you hit him with a million questions about all the ink decorating his arms and the countless loops of metal pierced through his skin.
You ever get the courage to get a tattoo, gonna need to make sure you take me with you, goldie. I’ll let you squeeze my hand, even if the needle’s not actually touched you yet.
While Bucky should not be at the forefront of your mind, again, life keeps finding a way to bring him forth. This time, it’s not by force of him scaring Nat into a state of panic, but by an overly-smiley interviewer bringing him up while you do your best to stand still and look pretty for the camera.
Wrapped in a dress so tight it’s hard to breath, it’s no wonder you have to ask her to repeat herself, mind numbed between trying to pose and trying not to pass out. When are they going to call lunch?
“You’ve mentioned a few times how you’re still new to fame,” her voice cuts through the sound of the head stylist yelling at an intern, a sight you’re struggling to stand idly by and watch. “You’ve been photographed with the members of Firing Stars and Umbreoni, and even the Uni! Big, big names. Most recently, James Barnes was cited claiming you two are friends. I mean, how does it feel to go from a small town artist to brushing shoulders with someone as big as James Barnes?”
The second time she says his name, it’s stressed, like she’s trying to remind you how much of a nobody you are compared to the likes of him. Maybe it’s the high-pitched voice, or the bright lipstick on her lips, or maybe it’s just the fact you’ve spent too long quietly letting Bucky prod and poke at you as you continue to ignore his existence, but something vengeful in you snaps.
“Oh, he’s not that big. Average, if I’m being generous- Oh!” The surprise on your face is disingenuous, but the interviewer’s not even paying enough attention to notice, pen scribbling away at something in her notepad. Good, let her quote you. Hopefully the magazine will land itself in Bucky’s lap and he can get a nice slice of humble pie… Even if the pie is baked in lies. “Sorry, you mean big as in famous and not… My bad!”
It’s amazing how much people are willing to dismiss if you just giggle and shoot them a ditsy smile.
Things fall into place, like puzzles pieces at last reuniting with each other, and life feels good again.
In November, you release a new single. It hits number one on the charts.
In December, you announce a new album, set to release in June, Born With Anger — though you’ve been calling it BWA for short.
In January, you bag a 2 week break. Instead of home, you head south for a girls’ trip, and drag Natasha and your new assistant, Kate, with you.
In February, you find yourself entangled in your first real scandal. Unknowingly photographed on a late night walk with an actor friend, you wind up the front page of every gossip blog and TikTok page.
And then, in March, reality finally knocks on your door.
You originally have no intention of answering, snuggled into a blanket on your couch and watching The Princess Bride for what could easily be the hundredth time in your life. The sound echoes off the oak-wood door and you sink deeper into your comfort in protest, hoping that, if you wrap the dark grey fluff around you tight enough, whoever is at your door will slip away with the night and leave you be.
But the knock comes again. And again. And again.
It does not grow more frantic, nor does it grow louder, yet it affects you more each time, grating on your ears until you’re practically slapping the pause button, tossing the blanket aside, and marching over to your apartment door with one thing in mind: a very unpleasant fuck-off.
The door handle hits the wall with a thud and you prepare yourself to chew out whatever idiot decided it would be a good idea to disturb your peace at nearly two in the morning… Only to freeze the moment he melts into you.
“There’s my golden girl.”
Throwing himself forward in a trust-fall, Bucky cushions himself in your arms as you open them for him, a knee-jerk reaction to his body barrelling towards you. It’s been months since you last saw him, and the first thing you notice is the layer of red hair peaking out beneath the usual mess of dark brown.
Actually, it hasn’t been months since you last saw him.
The last time you really saw him was two weeks ago, his sharp jaw and bright eyes projected onto a number of screens while you stood in the artists’ tent of a festival. The Howling Commandos were headlining the very same stage as you had the night before, a feat which Bucky had no problem reminding you and the crowd of as they approached the final quarter of their set, his voice cutting in over the mic for the first time all night, greeted with a wave of screaming fans.
‘Fore we close this night out, I just wanna give a little shout-out to a special someone. She was amazing on this stage last night, and I just need her to know I couldn’t be any prouder. I don’t know if she’s in the crowd tonight, so I need you guys to sing as loud as you can so we can make sure she hears it, no matter where she is. This next song goes out to my golden girl.
If you didn’t have Clint dragging you out to the Flock & Feather’s after-party, you likely would have caved and unblocked him that night. Or, worse, waited for him backstage.
But now he’s here, dripping rain water onto your doormat and hiding his face in your neck. The tip of his nose is cold as it drags along your skin, but his hands are warm as they haphazardly rub your back at the first shiver that runs down it.
“Miss you,” he speaks so softly, you’re unsure of who he’s trying to not scare away: you or himself. “So much. Keep havin’ these dreams where you’re laying next to me and I make you happy.”
Longing unloads on you with no warning. Like a soda bottle shaken one too many times, someone has at last unscrewed the lid and a mess now lies — both in it’s wake and in your arms.
You drag him inside, trying your best to manoeuvre you both while being mindful to not slam the door. It’s late, after all, and your upstairs neighbours have a kid. As soon as you twist the lock, you’re pulling back from Bucky, only for him to chase after you with immediacy, head shaking in the crook of your neck.
“James-” You try to adopt a serious tone, but it falters the moment he interrupts you.
“Please don’t,” he pleads like a man begging for life, for respite, for salvation. The hands around your back are suddenly clinging onto your shirt, pulling you tighter against him. “Don’t send me away. Just… Let me be here, be yours, for the night.”
When silence persists from you, pensive as you shuffle a few steps further into your apartment with the hunk of muscles around you matching each step, Bucky attempts one last ditched effort.
“It’s my birthday. Don’t make me spend it alone.”
Not even a man made of the mythical metal known as Vibranium — from the world renowned fantasy series, Wildflowers and Vibraniun — could resist such a request, and so you let Bucky stay.
You don’t tell him with words, opting to instead wrap your arms around him. The embrace lasts for minutes, hours, as long as he needs it to. Hearts beat towards one another, magnets at last reunited through layers of cotton and flesh. His shoulders shake, every inhale a gust of wind against his fragile hold on reality. And all the while you bite your tongue, and ignore the fact that he stinks of alcohol, that his hands are shaky against your waist, that his eyes are more pupil than iris.
“Come on,” you whisper, two hands cupping his cheeks and finally getting a proper look at his face. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
The bathwater is warm but not scalding, the perfect temperature for Bucky to sink his aching limbs into — with the help of you, both hands holding his frame steady through his descent into the tub.
All plans of watching the rest of your movie are abandoned as you settle down on the tiled floor, back pressed against the wall and arms folded over your knees. It pains you to see him like this, as much as you try to will yourself to not care. His head is tilted back against the porcelain basin, eyes shutting out the offensively bright light, and his breathing keeps exploding out of him in heavy puffs of air, rippling the water as his chest bobs up and down.
Bucky Barnes is too beautiful for his own good, otherwise someone would have slapped him silly and told him to clean up his act by now… Or has he just not listened? God knows you tried to tell him, in your own vengeful, messy way.
“Think it finally dawned on me,” the words are soft-spoken, carefully put out into the space between you both.
“What did?” You call back to him, feet skating a little closer to the end where his head lays, hunching over your legs as your back unsticks from the wall.
“Why you don’t wanna be with me.”
Out of all the things you expected him to bring up, that was not one of them.
A part of you assumed he had moved on from his conquest of turning you both into something serious. A part of you had hoped he did, for his sake as much as your own. Months of no contact should have been enough to let the concept of you and Bucky disappear, a fantasy long faded into dust-particles and blown away with the winds of winter.
But now Bucky is inside your apartment, naked and high as a kite in your bath tub, and his eyes are reopening to pin you with a look so saturated in affection, you feel yourself ache. For him, for yourself, for both of you.
“You’re too good for me.” He doesn’t speak in search of pity, voice steadfast as he watches you from the tub, calm and collected, entirely decided in the stance he’s taken. You, on the other hand, have tears kissing your lashes and are dragging yourself a few inches further up the length of the tub. “Can’t let you be another thing I ruin.”
Whatever higher power sent him stumbling to your door tonight has not sent you the James Barnes you love to hate; the abrasive man with too many leather pants for a man of his age and an ego inflated through the roof. Instead, you sit face to face with something realer than you’ve seen of him before; a man stitched together by misery and mistakes, blinking back sadness before it can pour down his cheeks. His face is tired, his shoulders heavy, and his soul is infected with desperation.
No longer is James Barnes hungry with lust, but haunted by it. Hunted by it, prey to the very thing he predates with.
You reach for him with a sigh, only to falter and let your touch fall upon the tub’s edge, “You wouldn’t ruin me, Buck. ‘M not that fragile.”
“But you are that precious,” Bucky shifts, bending at the waist and sitting up in the bath. The movement causes a ripple effect that leads to water pouring over the the side of the tub, wetting your fingers and the floor. “Just wish I was the kinda man who knew how to treat you right.”
Then be that guy. For me. You can practically taste the words in your mouth, feel your tongue moulding to their shape, readying yourself to speak. Bucky continues before you get the chance.
“I know you don’t wanna be on my mind. I’ve tried forcing you out of it,” the bath water moves with him, dripping off the arm he reaches out for you with. Pruned fingers lock around your wrist and remind you, for the first time in months, what it feels like to be touched, handled, cradled. He guides your fingers away from the porcelain edge and over towards him. “But I don’t know how to get you out of here.”
Bucky presses your hand to his chest and it’s like a knife has been shoved in your own, twisted for extra measure before promptly being ripped out and leaving you to bleed to death. There’s insistence in the way he holds you against him, his larger hand clutching your own even tighter against him. His heartbeat dances against your palm, singing your name.
You can’t remember when you turned fully toward him, but suddenly your knees are bumping against the body of the tub.
“Can you tell me how, baby? Wanna do at least something right by you,” he’s come to you weak and defeated, a warrior trading in his sword and commanding you to drive it through him. “I thought seeing you with someone else would help. I don’t usually have the patience for jealousy. But… God, doll, when I saw those stories about you and Walker… Well, you’re looking right at my reaction, went out and got a hold of the first bag I could find.”
If you weren’t so afraid of hearing it falter, you would use your words to plead for his silence.
If Bucky were any more sober, you would slap him across the face.
The guilt unweighed atop of you is enough to suffocate, to bury you alive, six feet deep in a well of shame and blame. How dare he insinuate you are a cause of his addiction, a vehicle through which he turns to rot himself into a living corpse? Selfish, cruel, inconsiderate. All the big words one can pin onto rock legend James Barnes come flying back to the forefront of your mind, pickaxes that chip away at the empathy crystallizing around your heart.
And, then Bucky — sweet, pitiful, human Bucky — drags your hand up to his mouth and places the softest kiss against your fingers, “I love you.”
His eyes are two black pinholes, staring at parts of you that you do not even recognise, watching as you lay your head down on the porcelain edge and let the sleeve of your cardigan soak itself as you reach for his other hand. He looks at you like any ordinary man would look at the dawn, like a new day and a new life has begun simply because you have returned the light to him at last, after six months of darkness.
Beneath the buzzing of a bathroom light, with one hand pressed to his mouth and the other nestled between the spaces of his scarred knuckles, you want nothing more than to be his Sun, to soothe his worries with the warmth of rays, to truly become his golden girl. But your lips part and the words won’t come out.
“Don’t need you to say it back,” Bucky peppers a few more pecks over your palm, laying your fingers flat on his cheek. Days old stubble scratches at your skin and takes you back to simpler times between you both, where feelings had not yet been addressed and relationships had not been denied. There was no mess to be cleaned up back then; just you, perched on his bathroom sink, and Bucky standing between your legs as you dragged a razor over his cheek and left him rocking the kind of goatee only an 80s porno movie would dare curse the world with. “I’m stubborn enough to love you anyway.”
In an ideal world, you both stumble to bed that night as lovers do.
Bucky pulls you into his arms, you stake claim over his skin as a place to rest your head, while he marks his territory with a kiss to your forehead and a sigh of your name. Not even in sleep do you depart each others side, using one another as life jackets to wade through the dark sea of unconsciousness. When morning comes, eyes reopen to find one another and blink back longing stares that spill I missed yous down your features. He reminds you that he loves you, and you return the favour at last, and life is finally good again.
But, in the real world, you lay restless in your own bed while Bucky drools against your shoulder. And you wake before him to reach for his phone. And you watch him stumble out of your bedroom with Tony Stark dragging him by the scruff of his neck, cursing at him to ‘Get your act together, Barnes, or I’ll have you kicked out the band.’
By April, you no longer pay attention to the headlines you make, too busy focusing on his.
James Barnes, drummer of ‘The Howling Commandos’, checks into rehab.
The world comes crashing down on a Friday.
Or, at least that’s how it feels.
Like any and every woman in the industry, there comes a point where the general public decides they are no longer comfortable with your success. You have surpassed the sell-by date slapped onto you by them, and now it is time to tear you off the pedestal they mounted you upon.
All it takes is one post to turn the tides and, overnight, you go from most beloved to most despicable; from proof anyone can achieve their dreams to just another industry plant being shoved onto everybody’s screen.
Natasha had warned you before you even got the chance to stumble upon it.
nat-attack: Look, this happens. We were expecting it. I know it’s tempting to check, but stay off your phone while this passes. Once the album drops, they’ll be back to loving you, trust me.
07:52
Clint was next in line, not to warn you but to distract you.
clit: the barton family are heading out to a spa retreat this weekend, wanna join? we have room for one more in the car.
08:33
Even the CEO of Thunderbolt reached out to you, albeit not to comfort but inform you of news.
The Boss Man: Due to the current circumstances, myself and your team have agreed it is in your best interest to stay offline. Kate Bishop will continue to run your socials, though we have changed the passwords in an effort to ensure you do not engage in the wave of hate. Take care of yourself. See you at next month’s meeting. Kind regards, J.B.B.
08:47
When Bucky doesn’t reach out, you have to remind yourself that it’s your own doing, that his number is still blocked.
No matter how many loving messages you receive, however, that doesn’t stop you from spiralling. Now, three days after the shit-storm began, you’re sprawled over your mattress — instagram opened with the very same account you had used to check Bucky’s story — scrolling through the comments of your most recent post.
stopthepop
not to be that person but i never got the hype abt her anyway
sunflowerrrs
her music isn’t deep, her fans just salivate at mediocrity 😭
superbassbuck
you guys are literally sheep, hating on her just because the rest of internet decided to. smh, get a fucking life.
mornpony
okay so can we now address how she’s so male centred??? idk, i just find it weird that she’s always singing about a man.
opheliabbarnes
@mornpony wtf do you want her to sing about, the sociopolitical state of the world? she’s a popstar! hop off her dick, you freak.
iamthatonefangirl
hi, i just wanted to say i’m really looking forward to your next album. you’re amazing, please don’t let the hate get to you x
biscu1t55
idk the music’s just kind of mid, innit
lilcherubbutt
cant dance, cant sing, no stage presence, body not tea, and this is who you guys stan?
54nboo
@lilcherubbutt i’m exploding you with my mind rn.
juniebjonesin
i have a g*n, girl. let me know if you need me to use it on any of these weirdos/j, but also srs
The phone drops out your hand as a loud noise startles you. Two seconds pass, and then it happens again, enticing you out of bed and into the living room.
Deja-vu slaps you over the head as you approach the front door, a third knock already landing against the wood as you twist the key and hesitantly open the door, expecting to meet Nat and 21 questions on why you’ve been dodging her calls.
Instead, there’s just him, carrying a smile and a bouquet of poppies.
Bucky is far from the man that left your apartment all those months ago. There is a brightness in his eyes, no longer weighed down by exhaustion nor widened by drugs. His hair is perfectly styled, not damp from rain nor messed by fingers. The clothes he wears are clean, the shoes he wears are polished, and if it weren’t for the nose ring and the lick of ink poking out from his sweater, you’d almost think this was Bucky Barnes secret, unrockified twin.
But no, it’s him, in the flesh and more present in his own body than you’ve ever seen him. Rehab has clearly served its intended purpose. Too much pride and a wounded ego intercept you telling him as much.
You settle for a question injected with sarcasm, yet fully intend for the grin you stretch across your cheeks to come off as sincere,“Did your assistant pick those out too?”
“This was all me. Had to scour through my payment history,” he waves the bouquet, too focused on you to notice the red petal falling to the floor. “Wanted to make sure I got your favourite ones.”
The admission is what undoes you.
Your lips falter, the mask slips off your face, and the dam breaks.
Like a dying star, you implode. Your arms collapse around your waist, embracing you as though they possess any chance of holding the frame of you together. You feel a sob lurch from somewhere deep within and your knees begin to buckle, only for Bucky to catch your fall.
The plastic wrapping around the flowers crinkles as he brings you in against him, enveloping you in the safety of a steady figure. The door clicks quietly shut, his foot nudging it into place while he guides you through the perilous waves of distress rolling over you, threatening to pull you under.
In the span of 3 months, nothing and everything has changed: you both still stand in the entryway of your apartment, locked in comfort, yet it is now him who has become the lighthouse, the bright light to guide you to the safety of shore.
“I got you, goldie,” you feel the unmistakable pressure of his lips meeting the crown of your head and soften deeper into his hold, nose pushing against the smell of clean cotton and fresh aftershave. Had he gotten himself all dressed up, just to see you? “Been missing you so damn much, you know that? My notebook’s getting sick of me scribbling down songs about you.”
Your unwilling response is another sob, hiccuping out of you as a hand soothes up your spine, a rhythm so gentle you feel yourself longing to sway to it.
Much to your surprise, Bucky doesn’t hush you, doesn’t tell you to bottle it all back inside.He just holds you against him and let’s you spill it all onto his sweater. The stress, the anxiety, the self-pity. Everything that has stolen bites out of your sanity these past few days is finally spewing it’s teary guts out.
“Think you can do me a favour?” Bucky asks, another kiss engraved onto your skin. This one meets the space between your eyes. You nod, voice still thick with emotion. “Pack your bag, wanna take you somewhere.”
Somewhere turns out to be New York.
A six hour flight and a cab ride spits you out onto a street in Brooklyn. You barely find the time to notice if any fellow travellers fixate a camera lens on either of you, attention placed solely in the palm of Bucky’s hand as he entwines it with yours. Clasped in his other hand is your duffel bag, packed in a blurry hurry and with no real clue of what he intended to do with you.
Even now, following him up a set of steps like a loyal disciple, you have no real clue what stands behind the door he raps his knuckles against. Like he can smell the nervous energy, he trades your hand for your jaw, cradling it in his hold and inflating his lips with a reassuring smile.
“Relax, they don’t bite,” he punctuates it with a kiss against your forehead, lips lingering long enough for you jolt back in surprise when hinges creak open.
On the other side stands an older woman, with hair a stylish shade of ash and the kind of glint in her eye that screams of a mischievous youth. She smells of plum wine and home-cooked meals, and joy pours out of her pores like a fountain, promising to drench you in the feeling.
“James!” The woman wastes no time in pulling him down into her embrace.
“Hey ma,” He hugs her back, mindful of the bag still in his grasp. “Where’s pa?”
“Kitchen,” she responds, both hands rubbing over his back with the affection only a mother’s love could possibly conjure. “I locked him in there, he can come out once he’s done mashing the potatoes.”
“We’ve been over this, you can’t keep confining him. One o’ these days, he’s gonna call the cops on you!” The laugh the pair share is infectious, seeping into you and forcing a giggle to shake through your own frame. You regret it immediately, as both faces turn towards where you stand, four eyes as blue as the ocean pinning you beneath their stare. Bucky clears his throat, “I brought a guest.”
The past two years of performing for the faceless masses, of walking down carpets in heels that threaten your balance, of ripping out the loose threads of your soul and stitching them together into music… It all amounts to nothing when you meet the spotlight of her gaze.
“I mean, if that’s okay,” squirming slightly where you stand, you shift your weight from one leg to another and give your best attempt at a sheepish smile. “I don’t want to intrude.”
Bucky and his mother exchange a look, something unintelligible passing between them, information shared through nothing but a glance. And then, before you can brace yourself for impact, you’re enveloped in her arms.
“Don’t be silly,” she says, soothing your back with the very same affection she’d given her son. “There’s always room at our table.”
Muscles freed from a tension you’ve been holding in for who knows how long, you catch the wink Bucky shoots you over her shoulder, only for the peaceful exchange on the doorstep to be interrupted by an excited squeal.
“Uncle Bucky!”A blur of motion throws itself at him, and emerges in Bucky’s hold as a young boy — who has paired the superheroes of his Earth’s Mightiest Benders shirt with a plastic tiara.
“Well if it isn’t the birthday boy,” Bucky secures an arm beneath his nephew, letting the boy dangle his legs on either side of his waist, and straightens the crown atop the boy’s head. “D’you wanna tell my friend what big age you’re turning, Jamie?”
Made aware of your presence, Jamie takes barely a glance your way before he’s hiding his face in his uncle’s neck, the tips of his little ears blushing red.
Bucky chuckles as his nephew mumbles something you don’t quite catch, face full of affection as he looks at you, “You’re right, kiddo. She is very pretty.”
The Barneses welcome you in with open arms, full plates, and absolutely no questions. With Bucky on your right and his sister on your left, you slot seamlessly into the family. Smiles and side plates are passed over a table of seven, while music and laughter play on in the background.
Time passes slowly. Dinner transitions into a game night, hours spent with cards in hand, and Charade prompts, and the warmth of Bucky’s fingers drawing patterns over your knee. By the end of the night, your legs are sprawled over his lap alongside his nephew, who stakes claim of his left shoulder… So much so that, at one point, Bucky leans down to whisper in your ear, “Think you’re gonna have to cut this arm off’a me, goldie. Jamie’s showing no signs of letting go.”
When the wine comes out and the birthday boy begins to snore, sheltered safely beneath the blanket of Bucky’s tattooed arm, you find the courage to check your phone. Of all the missed calls and unanswered messages, the only one that captures your attention is the link to an article, sent by none-other than your endearing little stress-head.
of all the things you decide to abbreviate in text… you choose that?
22:24
nat-attack: It irks me to type his name.
22:27
nat-attack: But I guess I have to thank him for finally getting a response from you. Have fun, be safe, use protection! Or… are you just BB tonight?
22:29
you can’t just keep inventing shit and expecting me to understand.
22:48
nat-attack: Blowing Barnes, BB. Get with the program.
23:01
It’s not until after ‘goodbyes’ are bid and you find yourself staring up at the ceiling of Bucky’s childhood bedroom, a comforter clutched around your tired limbs and the steady sound of his breathing filling the room, that your voice crawls out of your throat.
“Your mom’s really nice,” you’re hesitant to speak too loud, afraid to wake him from any possible slumber. You hear movement from the floor — despite your insistence on sharing, he had stressed there wasn’t enough space on the twin bed and took up residency atop a blow-up mattress — and use it as your queue to keep talking. “Your whole family is, actually.”
“They’re pretty great,” you can hear the smile in his voice and finally drag your eyes down from the ceiling.
Moonlight has slipped through the cracks of curtains, casting a blueish glow around the room. The walls are a mess, scrap-art in the form of magazine clippings and band posters. Not even the closet is safe, decorated with scribbled lyrics and the names of Bucky’s favourite bands. A baby-sized drum kit takes up space on the left side of the bed — where several guitars and a bass hang from the wall — while the right side sports a nightstand housing a collage of photographs from Bucky’s earliest years, and the presence of the air-mattress. Who would ever think that, tucked away in the suburbs of New York, sits a time-capsule of rock-legend James Barnes’ childhood?
Just the thought of it is enough to rouse melancholy you possess no ownership of, an imposter staking claim over somebody else’s memories.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Bucky speaks up, tearing you away from the tears threatening your eyes. “How am I such a screw up, when I come from a family like that?”
Your thoughts sound so sinful aloud, invasive in a way you have always denied yourself of being when it comes to Bucky, “I’m sorry-”
“Don’t be. You deserve to know,” the mattress sighs beneath him as he rolls over onto his side, elbow digging into it as he props his head up. Shadows dance over his silhouette, mimicking the blinking of his lashes and exaggerating the sharpness of his nose. You follow suit and roll over, gazing down at him from the bed-frame. “There’s no big story, though. Just… A kid who got to live out his wildest dreams, and then crashed and burned in the middle of it. The band, we blew up so fast, so young, we didn’t really have the time to process it. One minute, we were playing for our high school prom, the next minute we’re on a world tour.”
You bite your tongue, swallow down the urge to confess how you went to one of their shows. How it was your first ever concert. How you stood in the crowd, gazing up at the man behind the drum kit, and fell in love with the thought of pursuing music.
Now is not the time.
You’ll tell him someday, in the future.
“The first time I tried it was at an after party. I was barely even drinking age, and I was surrounded by my idols. There was no hope in hell that I was about to refuse when one of them offered me a line,” Bucky laughs, like the story is funny and not devastating. Barbwire made of anger wraps itself around your heart, ripping it open with every contraction and letting the feeling fester throughout your bloodstream as you picture a bright-eyed, blank-canvas, younger Bucky being corrupted with something as rotten as addiction at the reckless hands of his heroes. “Then it just became a way to stay awake. Keep up the rockstar image, you know? Far as I was concerned, I could quit at any point… Did I ever tell you I’m an idiot?”
This time, you are the one that laughs, a choked out noise that you muffle into the pillow beneath your head, “I’ve definitely called you one.”
“‘Course you have, goldie,” he inches closer, nearing the edge of his makeshift mattress. “Thankfully I met the sweetest, smartest girl, who could knock me on my ass with the truth. Wouldn’t have wound up in rehab, otherwise… I thought about you in there.”
Head shooting up in shock, you somehow find the blue of his eyes in the unlit room, “You did?”
“Why’re you so surprised? I always think about you.”
A lump makes itself at home in your throat. Heavy, noted, emotion filled, “Oh.”
Bucky speaks so plainly, no gimmick or hidden agenda in his voice, that you have no choice but to believe him, believe that there is a tab open in his mind that forever features you, in moving colour and perfect memory. The revelation brings forth your own realisation that he is there too, in your mind, like a melody that plays on repeat in your head.
“There’s this thing in rehab, part of the road to sobriety, where you have to right your wrongs,” Bucky picks back up where he left off, distracting you before the balloon of emotions swelling in your chest gets the chance to explode. “I know I’ve given you more wrongs than you can count, so let me just start with the most recent. That night, what I told you in your apartment-”
“Don’t even mention it, Buck. Water under the bridge, okay? I know you weren’t in the right state of mind, saying things you didn’t really mean-”
“I meant it. Still do,” how is he even closer than before? If you wanted to, you could reach down and touch his face. Or his arm. Or his hand, intertwine it with yours and tug him up onto the single-bed. “I shouldn’t have told you. Not like that. It was selfish of me, knowing that you’re not- That you don’t feel that.”
You fall silent and the room fills with his breathing again.
Sinking back down onto the pillow, your eyes meet the ceiling once more. Sleep entices you, promising you safety and freedom from the pressure on your chest, the waver of your heartbeat, the ache in your soul that calls for no other but him to soothe it.
Those four letters take shape above your head, looming over you like a threat. Love. A nightmare on display in your waking hours. It terrifies you into a state of freeze, with nowhere left to run, and leaves you in the direct sight of your assailant, primed and readied to be consumed.
“It’s not that I don’t feel it, I just-” the hitch in your voice is unexpected, forcing you to pause. You find strength in the soft hum that leaves Bucky, followed by another squeak of his mattress deflating beneath his body. “I didn’t grow up in a home like yours… My parents, they, uh- They should’ve gotten divorced. But they loved me too much.”
Something cuts through Bucky’s inhale, strangling the descent of oxygen as he listens to you. In the dark of the night, you find yourself in a confession booth, spilling your guilt out your mouth for a faceless, forgiving figure by your side, who makes no attempt to interrupt yet reassures you of his presence with minute signs of life.
“They thought they were doing me a favour, keeping the family unit together, under one roof. And all it done was hurt me,” the sting in your eyes has grown too great for you to continue ignoring, and so you are forced to finally blink, only to send a tidal wave of hot tears pouring down your face and onto the pillow. “I was a kid but I wasn’t stupid. I saw it when I would sleep at my friends’ houses, how their parents looked at each other, spoke to each other, cared for each other. Then I would go home to snarky comments from my mother and lipstick stains on my father’s collar. All they wanted was to do what they thought was best for me, and even if they made themselves miserable in the process… I don’t want to end up like that. I can’t.”
Bucky cuts in, when the time is right and your voice has faltered, “What about now?”
“Now?” You echo back to him, wiping a hand over your wet cheek as a sniffle leaves your nose. “My dad passed a few years ago. My mom is getting remarried, next fall, and she’s happy. Happier than I’ve ever seen her.”
“I make a surprisingly good impression on parents,” he proclaims, so seriously that you can’t help scoffing in humour. Outside, a stranger beeps their horn, obnoxiously loud and prolonged. In the quiet of the bedroom, it feels like the firing of a starter’s gun, marking the beginning of a race — instead of running from Bucky, maybe it’s time to start running towards him. “Just, y’know, if you’re needing someone to keep you company at the wedding.”
“My mom already likes you. She’s a howler, or whatever your fans call themselves,” you sigh at the thought, turning on your side to face him again, one arm slipping under the pillow while the other drifts towards the edge of the bed. You swallow down hesitation, blink back tears, and mentally fall back into the confession booth, “I just wish my dad got that… To move on, be happy, instead of forcing himself to stay in a loveless marriage. Instead of spending the end of his life trapped and unhappy, all because of me-”
“Hey, no, none of that,” he takes the first step onto the field, it seems, his touch landing atop your outstretched hand and anchoring you in him before guilty thoughts get the chance to sweep you out to sea. “They were the adults, you were the kid. Them sticking things out for you, even if it did make them unhappy, that’s not your burden to bare. You hear me? Their misery was not your fault.”
You’ve lost all the willpower to fight off the sickness of emotions, burrowing yourself into his blankets and clutching your fingers around his own. No matter how tight you squeeze, he does not falter; he simply continues soothing his thumb over your knuckles and holding what little he can reach from mattress of the floor.
“I bet your parents woke up everyday thankful that, despite all their problems, at least you exist,” his voice delivers you into the arms of exhaustion, letting it envelop you for the night as you shift a little closer to the edge of the bed and pull your interlocked hands against your beating chest. “Can’t tell you the number of times I’ve done the same.”
The sleep is dreamless and swift; the kind that feels like a blink and then you’re awake again, eyes opening to find your hands still intertwined while he brushes an eyelash from your cheek with the other.
Fully clothed and ready for the day, Bucky leans over your sleeping figure and greets you with a smile, “Come on, sleepyhead, time to get up.”
Eyes squinting to block out the golden sun, haloing him from behind, you groan and hide your face in the pillow, “What time is it?”
“Early, but I told you, goldie,” he lands a kiss on your naked shoulder, sharing affection as casually as he had passed you the salt at the table last night. “Got someplace I wanna take you.”
“What the hell is this?”
“This,” Bucky, having almost flown over the car bonnet to open you door, slams it shut behind you. “Is the first thing I bought after the band got big.”
Stones crunch beneath feet as you both begin the ascent up a driveway. Before you lays a villa, made up of brown bricks, arched windows, and overgrown ivy. A dock sits outstretched on the left side of the house, leading out onto a lake filled with crystalline waters and a family of ducks. Up a staircase of dark wood sits a porch, circling the entirety of the house and decorated by several plant pots and a swing-chair fit for two.
In short, the building looks like something plucked right out of a fairytale or an animated movie. You half expect someone to open one of the windows and leave a homemade pie out to cool on the ledge.
Without even noticing, your jaw has gone slack, lips parting as you take in the sight of the building. Fingers, less calloused after months of relaxation and rehabilitation, draw a line over the side of your face before finding purchase under your chin and easing your mouth closed.
Out of force of habit, Bucky’s thumb brushes over your bottom lip, dragging it down with just enough pressure for it to spring back into place when his thumb releases it.
The action is familiar, something he’s done time and time again in the throes of pleasure — taking you from behind with one arm hooked over your torso, pinning you flush against him and tweaking at your nipples, while the other one pries open your lips and readies you to receive an offering from his mouth, spit dripping down like syrup onto your tongue.
It lingers between you, gazes meeting with an unspoken understanding: you are both recalling the ways you used to exchange body heat, the way neither of you has touched the other in half a year. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows back whatever thoughts are swirling behind the storms of his eyes, and takes the initiative to move two steps back; de-invading your space and allowing the cold breeze to fall over your skin.
“Well,” bringing his hand up, Bucky brushes back a handful of hair and devastates you with the sight of one strand falling perfectly over his forehead, framing the art that is his face. “Do you want the house tour?”
The house is more furnished than you expect.
Not with sharply cut and oddly shaped pieces plucked out of a home-decor magazine, worth so much money it feels wrong to do anything other than stare at them. No, the home is a fusion of comfort and style: a living room centred by an antique fireplace, a bathroom adorned with a row of rubber ducks along the tub, a dining room where the sun beams in and warms the table, a hallway filled with knick-knacks. Despite the dust and the cobwebs, the house feels lived in, feels like a home.
It’s in the kitchen that you’re stunned into silence, coming to a halt and forcing poor Bucky to stumble into you as a gasp tumbles out your mouth. Between the double-door fridge, the speckled marble counter-tops, the colourful azulejo designed tiles lining the wall, and the breakfast bar facing out onto the lake, you hardly know what to begin looking at first.
So you settle for none and instead spin around to face Bucky.
“Please tell me that you brought me here to hand over the keys so I can live here for the rest of my life.”
He coughs out a chuckle, taking hold of your shoulder to manoeuvre you both out of the doorway and fully into the room, explaining along the way that, “You’re welcome to stay, goldie, but that’s not why I brought you here.”
With an exasperated sigh, which you conjure up with the acting skills you honed after a 2 week stint in your school’s drama club, you cave and finally ask: “Then, why did you bring me here?”
Your question is met with a shrug, at first, as Bucky drifts away from your side. Strolling the length of the kitchen, he wipes a hand over the marble surface before finally coming to a pause, leaning back against the counter, pinning you beneath his interrogative stare, and crossing his arms over his chest.
Goddamn it, his arms look great, threatening the cotton prison of the faded Metallica shirt wrapped around them.
“Figured you could use a distraction,” he clears his throat, and you wonder if you’re making the great James Buchanan Barnes nervous. “I know things can get… Ugly, when the world turns against you overnight. Guess I didn’t want you resorting to any of my bad habits. So, when I got the approval from Nat, I decided to go fetch you and drag you away from the epicentre of the chaos, take you as far away from that part of our lives as I could get you.”
As obvious as it should have been, your mind finally begins to connect the dots: travelling to the opposite coast, surrounding you in the domesticity of his family, dragging you out to the middle of nowhere and showing you a personal gem he keeps hidden away from the public.
Every tiny action in the past twenty-four hours or so has been perfectly curated to get your mind away from the anarchy against your name taking place online.
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Then don’t, cause I don’t want you to,” Bucky shifts, body turning as his eyes follow you through the room while you approach the breakfast bar. “Told you right from the start, you’re Thunderbolt’s golden girl. As much as you may want to, you can’t just let yourself rust.”
Compliments sometimes feel as difficult of a mountain to climb as that pesky L word, which is why you choose to run from the sincerity in his voice and instead turn the conversation onto him.
“How come you have this place? Is it like, a vacation home? Or-” Mock-shock in the form of an outraged cry, you widen your eyes and do your best impression of disgust. “Don’t tell me you’re the devil incarnate… Don’t tell me you’re a landlord, Barnes!”
“You’ve been spending too much time with that actor o’ yours, y’know that?” Your confusion at his statement is kicked to the curb instantly, as Bucky proceeds to explain. “Our parents told us to choose our first big spend wisely, to make it something we would remember. Where Steve bought himself a guitar, and Ava went out and spent pennies on getting her tongue pierced, I bought this place. It was a bit of a fixer-upper, but I wasn’t really in a rush to move in. Now, I’m just… Waiting, I guess.”
“For what?”
“You’re not aloud to laugh, okay? You’ve given my ego enough lashings through the years,” if anyone else were to say such a thing, a sickly kind of guilt would overcome you. Instead, watching a wicked grin bleed onto his face has you matching it with your own, a girlish giggle squirming it’s way up your throat. Hands up as a quiet sign of your surrender, Bucky confesses, “A family. That’s why I bought it, wanted to find someone and spend the rest of our lives living under a roof I earned with the one good thing I’ve done in my life: music.”
Visions of a life flash before your eyes: children running through the kitchen, evenings spent curled up by the fireplace, swimming through the lake in summer and skating atop it during winter. It’s nothing you ever imagined yourself wanting, yet it clenches around your heart like an iron fist.
And then you spot the wall. A tiny bump of a foundational pillar, jutting out from beside the grandiose window.
“My dad used to mark my height against a wall in our kitchen. He said he was keeping a visual record, to remind himself one day of how far I’ve come from the little girl throwing tantrums before bedtime,” It isn’t often that you manage a full sentence about your father without a pinch in your voice, yet this time you muster a smile as you brush your fingertips against the pillar. “This would be a good spot to measure height, right? We could even-”
“No. You can’t do that.” You almost jump out of your skin, turning to find him no longer leaning against the kitchen but right at your back, towering over your figure and just about caging you between the pillar and the sunshine piercing through the glass. Bucky shakes his head, tongue darting out to swipe over his bottom lip, “Can’t talk about my future, goldie, like you’re going to be part of it.”
When did the sun get so warm?
It’s prickling your skin, rousing sweat between the neckline of your jumper. Not only is it heating you up, but it’s quickening your breathing, driving it from a steady inhale-exhale to an unsure waver of oxygen rolling in and carbon dioxide rolling out. And it’s turning you light headed, commanding your legs to sway forward, right into Bucky’s receiving palm, hovering over your cheek like touching you might burn.
Bucky’s face is closer than you remember, consequence of a magnet force that draws you both in. There’s a ghost of a touch when his head dips an inch, the cool metal of his nose-ring bumping against your nostril and the brush of his breath hitting your cheekbone. You watch as his eyes slip shut- No, squeeze shut, like a physical pain has overcome him and he’s fighting back a complaint.
“I’m trying real hard to be a good man, okay?” And yet he says it with all the frustration of a sinner, of someone salivating with the desire to consume. “Trying to turn a new leaf, to not force you to become the thing you criticised me for. So just… Work with me, goldie, help me be a good man.”
“What are you talking-”
“Walker,” he practically spits the name out, body slumping forward only for him to hold out a hand and catch his fall before he can fully collide against you. Which would be great, if it did not leave you now even more trapped, now between the pillar and his bicep. “John, the actor guy. I know you guys are… You know, together. And I’m trying to respect that, I really am, but baby, you’re putting me through hell here.”
Like an overheated computer, you shutdown.
It takes a minute or two for the power to come back on in your brain. For his words to slot themselves into place, for you to realise what nonsense he’s spewing, for the magazine covers and the social media comments to come flooding back in. The late-night walk, the unfounded rumours, the continued speculation…
“Bucky,” you cross the invisible threshold between you both, flattening your palm against his face and watching as you coax his eyes open with a tender brush of your thumb along his cheek. “I’m not seeing Walker. I’m not seeing anyone. Not since…” you.
Maybe saying it is too real, too close to that other word you won’t say. Despite this, you watch Bucky register the implication.
“So you’re single?” You nod as slowly as he speaks, vocally processing the news you just delivered. “Which means I’m free to…”
Whatever the end of his thought sounds like, you don’t hear it.
Instead, you find out just how much warmer the sun feels when you’re pressed up against the window.
Of all the people you’ve kissed, none have ever done so with as much hunger as Bucky.
He does not press, he tastes.
Soft lips pulling your own into an unrehearsed dance that, somehow, you both know how to move to. Thick tongue breaching into your mouth, laving over the shyer movements of your own. Sharp teeth grazing the threat of a bite over your skin, ripping an unexpected whine from you as he clamps down on your lower lip, pulling away just to dive back in with reinforcements.
The hand by your cheek has finally made contact, slipping down and around to the back of your neck, and tilting your head further back with a sharp tug at the roots of your hair. His tongues reaches deeper, savours the flavour of you as your fist balls up around his shirts and beckons him closer.
“Missed you,” he somehow finds the time to mutter, between all-consuming kisses and desperate hands scraping up all the pieces of you they can find, like you are moments away from slipping between his fingers. “Missed my golden-”
Quack.
The pair of you physically jump back from the window, lips swollen from one another and pupils dilated with horror as you come face to face with a duck, stood right at the window and staring at you both like you are today’s entertainment.
Another quack is muffled by the window.
“We should probably, uh, continue the tour,” never has Bucky sounded so sheepish, pink staining the tips of his ears as he looks anywhere but the invasive avian. “Lemme show you the upstairs.”
You don’t make it upstairs.
Not fully, at least.
“Buck-aah!” Your moan reverberates off the walls, echoing down the grand stairwell. “Oh my- Please!”
Three steps from the top is where you find yourself, one hand gripping the wooden banister and the other tangling it’s fingers in Bucky’s hair. You’re bare from the waist down, pants tossed over the side of the railing in his eagerness to get his mouth on you. A few stairs further down and sprawled upward is where he lays, a man who has ascended the staircase, parted the gates of your thighs, and is now devouring heaven with his tongue.
For all the fervour put into his kiss, it only ever seems to double once he properly gets his mouth on you.
His tongue drags up the expanse of your cunt, the velvet texture of it perfectly riling up your senses as it licks over folds. His lips pucker around your clit, giving the pearl of you just the right pressure of suction before his tongue joins the fray, tensing to a point and flicking over the sensitive nub. Tender-tipped fingers spread you open, put you on pull display to his hungry eyes and, without a doubt every time, Bucky groans as you clench around nothing and your hole winks at him, as though tempting him to dive in.
A cacophony of moans and groans are plucked from the both of you, the most sinful duet ever known to man. There’s eyes rolling to the back of skulls, breaths hitching, and a whole load of spit as Bucky watches you get wetter, shinier, a smoother yet messier surface for him to work his mouth over.
When his tongue dips in, game-over is practically hovering over you in flashing neon lights as your imminent slip and slide into an orgasm approaches over the horizon… Which is exactly why Bucky always chooses to get mouthy at this point, cutting off the high he’s building just to mutter profanities.
“‘S like drinkin’ sunlight,” Bucky’s eyes are on you. The look on him can only be described as wrecked, the lower half of his face glistening with your arousal, lips swollen from exertion, his eyes slipping back ever-so-slightly as you impatiently pull at his hair and try to drag him back down to finish his meal. “My pretty golden girl, hmm? Always so fuckin’ sweet.”
He’s barely finishing sentences, consonants slipping away as the need for propriety and enunciation disappears with your own ability to think about anything beyond the man between your legs.
“Know what she tastes like, goldie?” Whatever response you have is lost when Bucky plunges two fingers into you, giving no pause between the stretch and the way he curls them inside of you, pushing against the spongy softness of your walls. “Like she’s mine. Ain’t she?”
“Yours. Y-yeah,” you can’t get the words out quick enough, the culmination waiting far too long to just give in and lay all your cards on the table. No more hiding, no more feigning frustrations, no more pretending it doesn’t leave your pussy, your heart, and your soul aching to hear him so proudly call you his. “Yours, yours. All yours.”
You cum with the flavour of surrender in your mouth, foot accidentally kicking against his back as Bucky perches your knees onto his shoulders and dives deeper into you, unrelenting in his attention as he lets you ride out the orgasm, grinding up against his mouth and indulging in the the subtle brush of his nose against your clit.
By the time Bucky takes his mouth off of you, you’re panting with every breath, seeing nothing but stars, and trying to flea up the stairs from the overstimulation he unloads onto you.
He’s in no better state, lips parted for breath and brushing over your right thigh as he turns his head into it, staining your skin in your own lust. Like he has not savoured you enough, his tongue presses hot against you.
“James,” oh, and don’t you just sound like the most pathetic little thing? A whisper for a voice, as shaky as a leaf blowing in the destructive winds of fall. Bucky hums in acknowledgement, stormy blues flickering up to your face as he licks a strip up the length of your thigh, all the way up to your hip before he takes a bite, tattooing his teeth into your flesh. “How much is-”
You’re forced to pause, to recenter yourself and find the ability to speak while his mouth continues over your torso; one hand slipping under your sweater, fingertips slipping beneath the band of your bra and teasing himself with the promise of your soft breasts.
“How much is left of the tour?” You deserve a medal for finally getting the words right. “Can’t we just skip to the master bedroom?”
The pair of you are more tangle than tease, stumbling down the hallway and passing door after door. Hand in hand the entire journey, it only serves to complicate the attempts you both make at undressing one another. Yet, each time you pull away to slip a shirt down his arm or discard your bra on the floor, your fingers can’t find one another again fast enough.
Bucky finally comes to a halt outside a door, turning to cradle your jaw and pull you in for a kiss. Chaste yet lingering, he shoots you one of those heart-wrenching smiles right after he pulls back and twists the handle open.
While you want to take in the room — the plush carpeted floors, the vintage chandelier light, the perfect view out onto the lake — the sex-pest in your brain has you zeroing in on nothing but the four poster bed. Complete with curtains and a cushioned headboard, it is primed and ready for the upper echelons of society, aristocrats or royalty, to slumber within it.
But it’s you who crawls atop the mattress, squealing and tripping over yourself when Bucky lands a slap against the back of your thigh. You turn to face him on all fours and find him tugging down the waistband of his boxers, just in time to watch his cock spring free — literally spring up against his lower abdomen, freed from the shackles of Calvin Klein.
The sight of him alone is enough to have your thighs clenching and pussy pulsing: the vein that begs to be traced by your tongue, the almost angry red flush of his tip, the shine of precum beckoning you to taste, and the shape of him — longer than you should be able to fit inside of you, and the kind of thickness you can already imagine your walls stretching around just by looking at it. And then, waiting patiently beneath, lay two heavy balls, the weight of which you’ve memorised with both your hands and your mouth.
Unsurprised and nonchalant, Bucky welcomes you around his dick like he was expecting it, one hand sliding over your jaw to cup the back of your neck. Warm to the touch and soft against your tongue, you slip into the familiar gratification of watching how easily Bucky melts, turned to putty in your hands — well, your mouth, in this case.
“Come on, baby,” he croons from above, chin kissing his sternum as he stares down at you on the bed, lips wrapped halfway down his cock and a hand full of the rest of his length. “We both know you can do better than that. Relax that pretty jaw, and take me deeper.”
Thumb reaching over from behind your neck, he soothes the corner of your jawbone and, as you force it a little more slack, his hips jut forward to sink a further into your mouth, not hitting the back of your throat, yet still far enough for tears to sting at your eyes. You do nothing to hide them, to fight them off when the head of his dick finally breaches your throat, because you know crying won’t deter him.
No, crying will only make him…
“Fuck. Look so delicate when ya cry for me, like I could break you if I don’t handle you carefully.” He catches one of your tears, but not with his hand. Cock slipping out of your mouth, he bends down and laves his tongue up the side of your face, collecting the salted sweetness born from the mouthwatering pain he’s causing you. “Don’t need that, do you, though? To be touched gently. My good little slut likes it when it hurts.”
“Mhmm,” you hum, swallowing him back down with your mouth and relishing in how he gathers up your hair, fist clenching it into a makeshift ponytail. He pulls on it, sharply, just enough to make your scalp burn and your cunt clench around nothing, a teardrop of arousal running down the expanse of your thigh and dripping onto the bedsheets.
Reigns secured, Bucky wastes no time in pushing the boundaries of your limits and begins bobbing your head down on him, hips rocking forward just to fuck himself that little more down your throat and relish in the sickly, wet sounds of him hitting your gag reflex. Saliva spills past your lips and down your chin.
The bed is five minutes away from possessing it’s own lake, composed of all the fluids spilling out of you. Tears, drool, cum, pouring like a fountain. It’s messy, and sloppy, and exactly how Bucky likes it: when he can see just how desperate you are to get him off, to have him paint your mouth white and feed his cum down your oesophagus.
A depraved relief overwhelms your heart and a heavier set of tears spill down your cheeks as Bucky grants you your reward, balls pulling tight against him as he floods your mouth full of cum.
“Uh-uh,” he tuts, pulling at your hair until you release his dick from your mouth with a wet pop. “Don’t you dare swallow, lemme see the mess I made o’ you first.”
Your lips part to his command, tongue slipping over the bottom one and putting the dirty painting of hot saliva and thick cum on display. Thighs squeezed against one another, you grind carelessly down against your own flesh, cunt drooling all over yourself as he continues to study you.
Then, with a groan of approval and a good fuckin’ girl, Bucky pulls you up for a kiss and relishes in his own taste.
It’s you who entices him onto the bed, too desperate to function without your hands shaking and too wet to wait any longer. And all the while the cruel bastard is chuckling at you, stalling the moment with tender smooches trailed over your neck and possessive bites and bruises being mapped over your breasts.
“So eager,” he muses, leaning back on his haunches and wrapping a hand around his already-hardening cock, no refractory period needed when the sight before him is his golden girl, wide eyed and cockdrunk. “Think you need to show me just how bad you want me. I deserve it, after these months of hell without you.”
Bucky guides you by the hips, helping you slot yourself atop his body, your knees indenting the mattress on either side him. Your hands curl over his shoulders, propping yourself up until you feel the head of him waiting at your entrance, pleading you to sink right down until it’s somewhere in your guts, rearranging the layout of your organs just to fit the whole length of him inside.
A light bulb goes off above your head, just as Bucky teases you both, forcing you to sit on his thighs and rolling you forward to feel the first sparks of friction, folds slipping over his hardness, “I’ve not taken my birth control. Didn’t- Aah! Didn’t think I’d need it.”
You watch the words wash over his features and swear you see more of that soul-stealing black consume the blue of his iris. His answer comes through clenched teeth and with his tip rubbing up against your clit, forcing your head to fall back and leaving your chest on display for his wandering hands.
“You already know I don’t have any rubbers, goldie,” his thumb and pointer finger take to rolling one of your nipples, while the other is greeted with the heat of his kiss, sucking the peak into his mouth. “Never want somethin’ in the way when it comes to you.”
“Me neither,” you must be truly gone, a lost cause, to so freely admit secrets you usually shove away with an eye-roll and a chastising lilt that tells Bucky to get on with it already. “But we shouldn’t…”
You trial off at no fault of your own, voice stolen from you by a gasp as he lines himself up against your hole, the tip of him knocking now at the door of heaven and begging to be let inside.
“Yeah…” He whispers, just as wrecked as you are, mouth falling open as a moan festers in the back of his throat, just waiting for a real reason to breech the surface of his lips. “We shouldn’t, should we? ‘S risky.”
And despite the fact the reply is pregnant with understanding, that sure doesn’t stop him from testing the waters. From making use of your drooling cunt to seamlessly fill you with just the tip.
Your thighs tense up as you fight the urge sit right down and let him fill you to the brim, all the while his mouth is back on your chest, mouthing mayhem into your skin in the form of sloppy kisses and desperate bites, like he cannot risk a second being wasted on inaction while you are here in his arms.
“But y’like risky,” he peers up at you, dark hair framing his eyes and forcing you to brush it out the way so you can fully relish in the sight of him mouthing at your nipples, covering them in his spit. “Like testing how good of a boy I can be for you, like seeing me struggle to not cum inside o’ her. Pretty please, sweetheart, let me show you how good I can behave, I’ll cum wherever you tell me to.”
A wiser woman would say no.
A stronger woman would send him out to retrieve condoms from the nearest gas station.
A better woman probably wouldn’t be here in the first place.
Thankfully, you are none of those things, and are instead feeling his cock split you open as you sink flush into his lap, the swell of his sack kissing against the globe of your ass as you pause and savour the fullness, mouth empty and open in a gasp. Bucky fills it with his tongue, licking into your mouth with a grunt as you squeeze around his cock.
“Well if you do that, I’m gonna paint your walls,” despite the threatening tone to his words, you feel more thrill than chill, excitement dancing up your spine as you finally start to ride him.
The rhythm is steady, your skin is sweaty, and there is a perpetual rise and fall of your body against his. Your thighs burn with every bounce, yet the pain only drives you to work harder, to wind down on him slower, deeper, pulling moans, and groans, and earth-shattering whimpers out of Bucky.
He’s more lost-cause than he is a man at this point, pawing up the length of your back, nestling his face as deep as he can in the valley of your chest, bruising his fingerprints into your hips as he squeezes and eases some of the tension from your muscles, doing the heavy lifting for you and fucking you down onto his cock.
“Buck,” you sigh, hand cupping his face. Where you mean to soothe his skin, he has other plans, tongue dragging over the pad of your thumb before his mouth envelops it, an erotic display of how far gone he is, lost in the dessert wasteland of lust and relishing in the oasis that is you. You pull out a different name, hoping to catch his attention, “Pretty boy. Are you close?”
His reaction is nearly instant: a hazy eyed nod and a cut off moan.
“Yeah?” You taunt him, even if you don’t need to, like digging for gold after already finding diamonds. “Bet you’re thinking about what it would be like to cum inside me, fill me up like only you know how to do. Have me drowning in you, no wall untouched.”
“St-op,” torture has never looked better than on James Barnes, eyebrows furrowing and jaw clenching in a last ditch effort to hold his focus, to not stuff you full despite how badly his body craves it. “Please, doll, be nice.”
“Be nice? I’m sitting on your dick, baby, how could I be any nicer?” You feel him press against a part of you so deep it has even you descending into chaos for a moment, jaw falling slack as you lean into the feeling and grind your hips down. “Maybe if I let you cum in her, hmm? Don’t you like reminding me how this pussy is yours? Surely a man like you, a big bad rockstar, would take what’s his and ruin it whatever way he pleases.”
His hand lands at the back of your neck, pulling your forehead down to meet his. You take in how his eyes are squeezed shut, like he can block out the feeling of you gripping the life out of him and the wet sounds of your cunt, “Christ alive, you’re mean, you know that? Evil.”
“Hmm, don’t you need me to be bad, so you can prove you’re good?” Your nails bite into his shoulder and you can feel the finish line approaching, mind threatening to fray at the edges and slip into the same wrecked nature that’s overcome him. “This house isn’t gonna fill itself with kids, Buck. And there’s no time like the present...”
“You mean it? Shit- Baby. Goldie. Don’t say that if you don’t-”
“How much clearer do you need me to be, James?” You don’t even have to ask for him to take over, he’s studied the way you move for years, knows the tell-tale signs of exhaustion and overwhelm. And so quietly, without ceremony, his touch finds your waist and suddenly he’s the one winding you down onto him, guiding you closer and closer to the cliff where, if you toss yourself over, ecstasy awaits below for you to crash into her. “Cum in your pussy.”
The final syllable has barely parted ways from your mouth when Bucky succumbs at last, his arms moulding around your body, caging you against him. Through the turbulent pleasure of his orgasm shaking him to the core, his hips keep rocking up and into you, driving every spurt of his hot, thick cum further inside.
You soothe him as best you can, palms flattened against his naked back, mouth placing kisses over the ink on his arms, chest slumping into him and bidding him to anchor himself in the rapid beat of your heart.
“Wait, wait,” he’s muttering to himself, arms sliding his grip up to slot itself in your armpits and lift you off his cock, forcing you to hover over his abs. “Just wanna- Lemme see it.”
No further instruction is needed for you to give him what he wants.
Clenching the muscles of your pelvic floor, you stave off a squirm as you feel his cum spill out of your cunt, dripping down onto his torso. Bucky is entranced, spreading your folds apart and watching the whole ordeal like you’re Da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa… Only for him to smear his fingers in your masterpiece and deliver it up to your mouth.
Without a word, you open up and obey, let him lather his spill over your taste buds again. A kiss lands on your jawline, tender and careful, like he’s engraving a thank you into your flesh.
“I love you.”
Both of you freeze.
All that remains is the ragged sounds of your breaths, filling the gap of silence between you.
The words marinate in the air, swell both in weight and flavour. It reminds you of stepping off stage after a show and ripping your earpiece out, expecting silence only to find there is a persistent ringing in your ear that lingers even once your limbs find the comfort of your bed, tucked away from the screaming crowds yet plagued by more noise than ever.
Bucky is the first to move, face pulling back to find yours. To touch yours, hand falling over your cheek. His gaze assesses your features, as if scanning for signs that something is wrong, or different, or not quite real. Like, any moment now, he’ll blink and wake to find himself alone in bed, nothing but the faintest smell of your perfume on his sheet.
“D’you actually mean it?” When you nod, he forces your head to stay still. “Words. Use them, wanna hear you.”
“I love you, James,” the second time feels less scary, less like a grenade you have tossed into the air, and more like loaded gun you have pointed toward yourself. So you say it again, and hope the third time takes away even more of the threat. “I love you.”
“Huh,” despite the fact he’s not said it back, you’re not worried. You can see it, stitched into his eyes and curling over his lips, a fondness that parallels the one gripping hold of your heart and crushing it into submission. “I didn’t even make you cum, so you must mean it.”
“Aren’t you just the luckiest man?”
“Shit, I didn’t- You never came.”
And so you wind up on your back, knees pinned against your chest and Bucky smothering you from above, hips barely pulling fully back before they’re thrusting back into you, pouring noises of pleasure all over the bedroom floor.
Everything is warm, and sticky, and overwhelming, but at least you have him whining in your ear and working you towards nirvana.
“My golden girl,” just listening to him, breathy and aching from overstimulation — cock having pushed past the limits of his own biology to harden for a third time in a row — is enough to have you reaching that crescendo, one final shove all that remains to have your walls clamping around him. “Love you so much, you’ve no idea. Gonna be the man you need, okay? Keep you safe, and cared for, and satisfied, and-”
Say less, you’re already there.
You don’t even get the chance to warn him, walls clamping down on him in a vice grip as your orgasm joins the short list of things that are tearing you in two — his cock being the only other item on said list.
“God- Look at you, perfect, gonna- Fuck,” Bucky is barely intelligible, sensitive and aching, yet he continues rocking into you, shallow juts of his hips. “She’s milkin’ me, baby. I’m sorry, I need to- Aah! Fill you again. Sorry, I’m sorry, sorry-”
Bucky does not crack, he shatters completely.
The pieces of him that remain are laid bare in your arms, are filling you to the brim, are pouring out in thick rivulets with every barely-there thrust he re-burrows himself into you with.
Under the shine of a shared afterglow, limbs so light you fear they’ll float away from you, you’re more than compliant when Bucky rolls you both over, laying on his back and holding you down against his chest.
“Let’s just stay here,” he begs, fingers already playing in your hair. He’s still inside of you, plugging you full and keeping you warm. “Just want to feel you for a while. Forever.”
Morning arrives slowly.
The light of dawn washes over the room in an orange hue and teases your eyelids awake only to find Bucky wrapped around you. Dead to the world, he snores gently and holds you closer when you shift. At some point in the night, he slipped out of you and now the inside of your thighs are stained in him. Your heart is to, his name forever tattooed on it.
Your eyes slip shut for a moment, and you can picture it so easily.
A future where you wake tangled together, where you race home just to see one another sooner. Where you fill those empty bedrooms with race-car beds, and princess dolls, and the giddy laughter of a child who knows love in only the purest and truest of forms. Where you feed the ducks, and he mows the lawn, and both of you grow teary eyed, one glass of wine too deep, as you stand in front of that wall in the kitchen and come to terms with how quickly your baby has grown.
It is real, and visceral, and plausible, you know it.
But it is your future, not your present, for a reason.
Because you know the man in that bed is no doubt the closest thing to a soulmate you will ever have, but that the timing for either of you is not quite yet right.
Because you know there is still a part of you that craves the chase, that wants the excitement of running from love just to time how long it takes for it to catch you.
Because you know about the bag of white powder in his glove compartment.
In the greatest escape to date, you tiptoe away from Bucky Barnes once more, shoes clutched to your chest and an ache in both your thighs and your heart.
Sitting timid and with your head low in the back of a cab, you pull out your phone and take a deep breath.
And then you unblock his number.
i love you.
07:47
see you somewhere down the line.
07:49
+ extra hyde !
· … and with that, i am retiring my keyboard and never writing another thing. goodbye cruel world of writing, i will not miss you./j
· after reading this, is it obvious that silver springs is my favourite song?
· please be gentle, i really struggled to write this and idk why. maybe because it felt a little different to fics i've written before? idk, either way this fic put me through the ringer but i'm happy with how it turned out. thank you for reading <3
· a special thank you to @chateaubarnes and @blowingbarnes for helping me with a sentence i got stuck on, and to @unificsation and @flockoff-featherface and every other member of the bwamily who locked in with me on stream <3