Siren - Bucky Barnes x Reader (Part 1: Sweetheart)
You woke up the way you always did when you slept in Buckyâs bedâwarm, heavy, and breathing him in like he was the only safe place left in the world.
His chest rose and fell under your cheek in that slow, steady rhythm that meant heâd actually slept. Not the light, one-eye-open soldier sleep he did when something was wrong. Real sleep. Deep enough that his armâthe metal oneâwas draped heavy over your waist, his fingers curled loosely against your hip like even unconscious, he couldnât let go.
You didnât move. You never did, not right away. These were the minutes you stole for yourself, the ones where you got to pretend this was something more than what it was. Whatever it was. Youâd stopped trying to name it somewhere around the third time you fell asleep watching Twister with your legs tangled up in his on this exact bed, his vibranium fingers carding through your hair while Bill Paxton chased tornadoes.
Itâs not like that, youâd told Sam once, and heâd just looked at you with that Sam Wilson lookâthe one that said sunshine, you are so full of shitâand gone back to his coffee.
Bucky stirred. His chest expanded with a deeper breath and his hand tightened on your hip, pulling you closer like a reflex. Then his lips pressed against the top of your head, slow, warm, deliberate.
âPunk.â
His voice was gravel and sleep and something that made your stomach flip every single time, no matter how many mornings youâd done this.
You smiled against his chest. âThatâs not my name.â
âItâs your name when you steal all the blankets.â His fingers traced a lazy circle on your hip. âYouâre a menace, Y/N.â
âYou love it.â
He didnât answer that. He never did. But his arm stayed where it was, and he kissed your hair again, and you closed your eyes and let yourself have it for just a few more minutes.
The thing about the Thunderbolts safe house was that it was too small for secrets and too loud for silence.
The kitchen was ground zero. Always. Yelena had claimed the counter closest to the stove like it was sovereign territory, and she sat cross-legged on it most mornings in an oversized hoodie with a mug of tea sheâd fight someone over. Bob was usually there too, hovering, doing that thing where he tried to make conversation with everyone like a golden retriever whoâd been given a security clearance.
You came downstairs in one of Buckyâs shirtsâa dark henley that hit you mid-thighâand bare feet, hair still a mess, and you didnât even think about it. It was just what you wore. His clothes were softer than yours and they smelled like him and that was reason enough.
Yelena looked up from her tea. Looked at the shirt. Looked at you.
âSo.â
âDonât.â
âI did not say anything.â
âYou were about to.â
âI was going to say good morning.â Yelena sipped her tea with the energy of someone who was absolutely not going to say good morning. âThat is a nice shirt. Is it new?â
Bob looked between you. âThatâs Buckyâs shirt.â
âThank you, Bob,â Yelena said, not looking at him. âVery helpful.â
You poured yourself coffee and pretended your face wasnât warm. âItâs comfortable.â
âIâm sure it is.â Yelenaâs mouth twitched. âIâm sure it smells very comfortable.â
You pointed at her with the coffee mug. âI will end you.â
âYou would never. You love me. I am your favorite.â
âBobâs my favorite.â
Bob lit up like Christmas. âReally?â
âNo,â Yelena said. âSheâs lying to make a point. I am the favorite. This is not a discussion.â
You laughedâthat real laugh, the loud one, the one that made everyone in whatever room you were in turn and look because something about it was magnetic, like youâd figured out how to make joy a frequency and you were broadcasting it. You didnât know you did that. You never knew.
Bucky came downstairs. He was in sweats and a t-shirt, hair still damp, and he didnât look at you first but you knewâyou always knewâthat you were the first thing he clocked when he walked into any room. The slight tension in his shoulders easing. The way his jaw unclenched a fraction. Like some part of his brain was running a constant threat assessment and you were the all-clear signal.
He poured coffee. Stood next to you. Close enough that his arm brushed yours.
âMorninâ.â
âMorning.â You bumped his hip with yours. âSleep okay?â
The corner of his mouth twitched. âHad some punk hogging the blankets.â
âWeird. You should talk to someone about that.â
Yelena looked at Bob. Bob looked at Yelena.
âThey are impossible,â Yelena said.
âTheyâre so cute,â Bob whispered.
âThey are not cute. They are stubborn and stupid and in denial.â
John Walker walked in, took one look at you in Buckyâs shirt standing shoulder to shoulder with Bucky, and said, loudly, âDamn, Y/N, those legs thoughââ
Buckyâs head turned so fast it was almost mechanical. The metal arm flexed. John stopped talking.
âWhat?â John held up his hands. âIâm just sayingââ
âDonât.â Buckyâs voice dropped about two octaves.
ââshe looks nice today.â
You put your hand on Buckyâs forearmâthe metal one, because you never flinched from it, never hesitated, never treated it like anything other than part of himâand squeezed.
âDown, boy.â
Bucky looked at your hand on his arm. Looked at you. Something shifted behind his eyes, fast and unreadable, and then he took a sip of coffee and said nothing.
Alexei wandered through in a bathrobe. He ruffled your hair as he passed.
âMy little songbird. Good morning.â
âMorninâ, Alexei.â
He looked at Bucky. Looked at you. Leaned in close to Bucky and said, in what he clearly thought was a whisper, âIf you hurt her, I break every bone. Both arms. Even the shiny one.â
âAlexei,â you groaned.
âWhat? I am being supportive father figure. This is what they do in American movies.â
Ava drifted through like a ghost, grabbed an apple, and paused long enough to look at the entire tableauâYelena on the counter, Bob grinning, John nursing his ego, Alexei threatening Bucky, you standing there in Buckyâs shirt with your hand on his armâand said, âIâm not getting involved in this,â before disappearing again.
You watched her go. Made a mental note to invite her to movie night. Again. Sheâd say no. Again. But youâd ask, because that was what you didâyou reached for people, whether they wanted to be reached for or not, and most of the time they didnât even realize how much they needed someone to try until you already had.
That was the thing about you. The thing that made you dangerous in ways that had nothing to do with the voice that could shatter bulletproof glass.
You walked into a room and within fifteen minutes, the bartender was telling you about his kidâs soccer game and the woman in the corner booth was showing you pictures of her dog and the guy whoâd been having a shit day was suddenly laughing. You remembered names. You remembered details. You asked about the thing they mentioned last time and you meant it, actually meant it, and people could tell.
It was a gift. It was also the thing that would almost kill you.
Because the flip side of making everyone feel like they were your best friend was that you needed them to feel that way. You needed to be needed. You needed to be liked, loved, wanted, useful. And when someone took that need and twisted itâwhen they figured out that the girl who would do anything to make you feel special would also do anything to keep you from leavingâ
Well.
You werenât there yet. Not today. Today you were in Bucky Barnesâs kitchen in Bucky Barnesâs shirt, and his hand had found the small of your back, and when you looked up at him, he was already looking at you with those blue eyes that had seen every kind of horror the twentieth and twenty-first centuries had to offer and still went soft when they landed on you.
Tell him, you thought.
Tell him youâre in love with him.
Tell him youâve been in love with him since the first time he called you sweetheart in that stupid Brooklyn accent and you forgot how your own powers worked and nearly blew out every window in the building.
But you didnât. Because you were terrified. And because the thing you had right nowâthe bed sharing and the forehead kisses and the way he looked at youâfelt like standing on the edge of something beautiful and knowing that one wrong step would shatter it.
So you drank your coffee. And you leaned into his side. And you started planning what youâd sing tonight.
I've been a fan of Sebastian Stan for A week and I have found that there are sooo many fans of him on here and it makes me feel less lonely! (unlike how I feel with other actors sometimes, I need to admit) soooooo it would be GREAT if you could share with me some of your favorite Sebastian Stan-related blogs/ Bucky Barnes-related blogs/ any other his character-related blogs. I'd like to follow them!! You can share your own account, I don't mind. âŁïž
Oh you have no idea what you've asked, I'm infamous for my recommendations đ
So here's some of my favourites
@chateaubarnes, she has all kinds of Bucky fics you might want to read (you must check out werewolf bucky, though)
@quantumbarnes, its actually illegal to not read my auntie doesn't have a boyfriend by her, it's my favourite
@imnotjustreadingg-volume-two, Nerdy bucky, that's all I'm gonna say. You HAVE to read it!!!!
@superbassbuck, two of my most favourite series are from her (wildflower and grade a pain in my ass)
@imthatonefangirl, you should totally read the dad's best friend series she has ongoing rn
@sunday-bug, you'll tire yourself reading her stuff but the stories will never end, it's literally a treasure
@navybrat817, I don't even have the words for her, she's the most immaculate bucky writer ever. There is not one thing she has written that isn't God tier.
@barnesonly if you want to make yourself cry and then giggle like a school girl check out little dove and illegal
@orellazalonia for the best bucky crack-fics of the entire universe
@singulartoast for the most Taylor swift and lana del rey coded fics âšïž
@epiphanyrogers for her chef's kiss drabbles
@eterna1reverie for her series spiracle and literally everything she writes has me drooling so....
@vunblr is a cavern of amazing series
@daydreamgoddess14 is actually a celebrity, her stories will make fireworks light up in your brain
@metal-armed-muse, I can never forget kie, her one shots are literally my pride and joy đ
Okay I'll stop before you block me for being insane lmaoooo đ (but i may come back to edit this with more of my favourite writers. I'm sorry i can't help it)
NOTICE: As more and more fanfic writers are using generative AI for their works (you uncreative dweebs), I hereby swear on everything I hold dear that I have not and will NEVER use generative AI in ANY of my written work. Everything I post will be organically and creatively my own.
AN đ: My anxiety has been an absolute bitch recently. I was sitting here thinking about how Bucky would react if he saw you, his girl, his world, in the midst of a panic attack and this is what came out âš
TW: Anxiety, Panic Attacks
The couch was too close, too convenient. You barely kicked off your shoes before sinking into it, limbs tight, chest already stuttering. You tried. You really tried to hold it in. He wasnât supposed to be home for another two days. You could fall apart now and tape it all back together before he ever saw a crack.
But your body had other plans.
The texts had stopped four hours ago. Then reports started coming inâscattered mentions of a skirmish gone sideways. A blast radius. Radio silence. The same cycle every time: silence, dread, desperation. You knew better than to believe everything online, but knowing better didnât slow your breath down. It didnât keep your hands from shaking or your ribs from clenching inward like your body wanted to fold itself out of existence.
So when the door clicked openâsoft, early, wrongâyou were already past the edge. Shoulders heaving. Face wet. Both hands braced over your mouth like that might muffle the panic clawing its way up your throat.
And thenâ
âHeyâhey.â
His voice. Rougher than usual. Lower. Breathless, maybe.
Your eyes flew open.
Bucky.
Bucky, standing just inside the doorway. Boots muddy, jacket torn at the sleeve. He looked like hell.
But the moment he saw your face, you were the only thing he cared about.
âOh, sweetheart,â he saidâhoarse, wrecked. He dropped his bag instantly and was on the floor in front of you a second later, kneeling, metal hand unbuckling his glove like it offended him just to wear it near you.
âNo, no,â you rasped, shaking your head, already wiping at your face, trying to stand, trying to hide, anythingâ âYouâre hurtâyou donât have toââ
He caught your wristsânot rough, not fastâjust firm. Grounding. Real.
âStop,â he said, quietly. âYou think I give a damn about bruises right now?â
You opened your mouth but nothing came out.
His handsâflesh and metalâcupped your cheeks with the kind of reverence that made you cry harder.
âIâm fine,â he whispered. âIâm here. You hear me? Iâm right here.â
You nodded. Then shook your head. Then covered your face again, breath still ragged.
He moved closer. Not crowdingâjust steady. âOkay. Iâve got you. Just do one thing for me.â
He waited until you cracked your eyes open.
âBreathe with me, baby.â
He took a slow inhaleâdeep enough you could hear it shudder through his chestâthen let it out through parted lips. You tried to match it. Failed. Tried again.
âThatâs it,â he whispered. âYouâre doing so good. Just keep going. Iâve got you.â
Your hands trembled. âI didnât thinkâI thoughtââ
Your voice broke.
âI know,â he said. And he did. God, he knew. âI hate those missions. Hate being away from you. But I came home. I always come home.â
You gave a cracked soundâsomething between a laugh and a sob.
He leaned in, pressing his forehead to yours. You could feel the sweat on him, the grime, the sharp sting of smoke still clinging to his clothes.
And stillâhe held you like you were the one in pieces.
âI donât care what I have to go through,â he said, voice barely a breath now. âThe world, Hydra, hell itselfâIâd do it a thousand times if it means I get to come back to you.â
You finally let yourself fall forward, into his chest. Your arms wrapped around him like you could fold into his ribs. He didnât flinch. He just wrapped you up, one arm locking behind your back, the other brushing through your hair with a touch so gentle it undid you all over again.
âI thought you were gone,â you whispered.
âIâm not.â His lips brushed your hair. âNot going anywhere. You hear me?
Your breath hitched.
You didnât know how long you stayed there, curled into him on the living room floor, but time stopped mattering. Your chest had started to slow, breath evening out in shaky little exhales, and stillâhe didnât let go.
Not once.
His hands moved slowly. One at the back of your neck, warm and steady. The other across your spine, knuckles brushing light, like even now he couldnât stop making sure you were still real.
Your face was tucked against the crook of his shoulder, and you could feel the tension in himânot the kind that came from the mission, but the kind that came from seeing you like this. From not being here when it started.
âI shouldâve called,â he said suddenly, voice low and tight. âI shouldâve let you know sooner.â
âYou were in the field,â you murmured, voice raw. âYou donât need to babysit my breakdowns.â
He leaned back just enough to see you. âThatâs not what this is.â
Your eyes flicked up to his. His jaw was set, his brows drawn together in a way that was all too familiarâguilt, pulling at every line in his face.
âI hate knowing you went through that alone,â he said.
âYouâve gone through worse,â you whispered, and his expression darkened instantly.
âDonât.â His voice was quiet, but sharp. âDonât do that. Donât compare your pain to mine like mine makes yours less real.â
You opened your mouth, but he stopped you with a look. Not angryâjust devastated.
âYou think I survived all that just to come home and watch you suffer in silence?â he said. âSweetheart, no. I made it through all of it because I knew I had you waiting.â
Your throat tightened again. But this time, it wasnât panic. It was something else. Something warm and unbearable all at once.
âI couldnât stop thinking you werenât coming back,â you said. âAnd if I lost youâif I lost thisââ
His hand came up to your face again, cupping your cheek with that same reverence. Like you were something holy.
âYouâre never gonna lose me,â he said. âNot if Iâve got a heartbeat left.â
You leaned into his hand, eyes fluttering shut.
He let out a slow breath, pressing a kiss to your forehead, then another, softer one to your temple.
âCâmere,â he whispered. âLet me take care of you.â
You didnât resist when he stood, arms slipping under you like it was second nature. He carried you like you weighed nothing, but you could feel the careful way he held youâlike something breakable but precious.
He brought you to the bedroom and set you down on the bed with impossible gentleness. You watched him move around the roomâpeeling off his jacket, tugging off his boots, moving slow for once.
Then he climbed in beside you, under the covers, and pulled you into him againâthis time wrapped in warmth and softness and clean sheets that smelled like home.
âYâknow,â he murmured, voice sleep-thick and close to your ear, âif it ever gets like that again⊠donât wait âtil Iâm gone.â
You looked up at him.
He met your gaze. âI mean it. You wake me up, you call me in the field, you throw a book at my headâanything. You donât go through that alone. Not ever again.â
You nodded slowly.
Then, softer: âCan you hold me? Just until I fall asleep?â
Alice scrambled to her feet.
Fast. Clumsy. Hands slick with moss and adrenaline.
Her heart jackhammered as she stumbled backward.
"What the fuckâ"
The grin remained perfectly still.
And then, slowly, it moved.
Upward.
Sideways.
Pivoting in the air like a coin on an invisible string. Light bent around it. Space gave it clearance.
Alice's lungs felt too small.
The voice came again, a little softer this time. More curious.
"Don't remember me, do you?"
She didn't answer. Couldn't.
The grin drifted left and turned into a smirk, reshaping itself just slightly into something disturbingly expressive without changing form.
"It's alright," it said. "The first arrival is always a little... traumatic."
Alice's fists clenched at her sides.
"What is this?"
"This," the voice said patiently, "is Wonderland."
Her brain short-circuited.
She didn't speak.
She laughed. A short, shocked, brittle sound.
"Nope," she said. "Absolutely not."
The grin didn't move.
She stepped back again, slower now, her voice rising just slightly.
"That's funny. Really. Wonderland. Because my name is Alice. Ha ha. Cute."
Nothing around her changed.
The grin hovered, patient. The forest didn't blur into whimsy or dissolve into nostalgia. It just stayed wrong.
Alice shook her head hard.
"This is a fuckin'âthis is a subconscious thing. A glitch. A stress dream. Or some corporate-sponsored VR shit. I'm in a fucking Squid Game psychology trial and my subconscious is a literary asshole."
"Language," the voice said mildly.
"Fuck you, floating cat."
The grin twitched.
The trees did not.
She started pacing in a tight loop.
One-two-three steps. Stop. Turn. One-two-three again.
"I read that book when I was nine. The Disney version when I was five. The creepy version when I was twenty-two and manic and trying to impress a guy with a neck tattoo."
She turned toward the grin again.
Pointed.
"I'm hallucinating you. That's all this is. Neural feedback loop. Maybe AI. Maybe just a break. I've been due for one."
"You're not hallucinating," said the voice.
"You're a disembodied goddamn smile in a forest that breathes."
"And yet, still more trustworthy than most people you know from your world."
Her mouth snapped shut.
The silence after that was sudden and loud.
The grin stretched slightly. Not wider. Just... deeper.
"All stories come from somewhere, Alice."
"Bullshit."
"Is it?"
"Yes."
"Then where did you come from?"
Alice's throat went tight.
She didn't answer.
The grin brightenedânot in color, but in intensity. A pressure behind her eyes.
"You think you're in a simulation. Or a dream. You want a framework you can solve. But you walked through the crack."
"I didn't walk. I fell."
"Same thing, if you're clever."
A slow beat passed.
Then the voice softened.
"You are here. Whether you like it or not."
She stopped pacing.
Her arms wrapped around her middle without permission.
"So what, I'm stuck?"
"Not necessarily."
"But you're not going to tell me how to leave."
"Not until you're ready to ask the right question."
She looked up.
Right into the teeth.
"What question?"
"Why you're here."
Alice didn't answer.
She just turned on her heel and started walking.
Away from the grin.
Away from the voice.
Away from the flicker of something ancient and smug curling around her name.
The trees parted for her, which should've been the first sign something was wrong.
The forest was endless. But not wide.
It folded around itselfâtwisting gently, imperceptibly, like a kaleidoscope that waited for her to blink.
She moved fast at first, hands clenched into fists, boots scuffing damp earth that refused to make sound. The light never changed. The sky didn't move. Her shadow dragged behind her even when there was no clear source of light.
After the fourth minute, she stopped.
Not from exhaustion.
From familiarity.
Thereâoff the pathâa tree with a lightning-shaped scar in its bark.
She'd seen it already.
She turned right.
Kept walking.
The moss underfoot grew in curls and swirls, like fingerprints pressed into the ground.
She passed the tree again.
Another loop.
Her breathing picked up.
"Okay," she said aloud. "So that's what we're doing."
She veered left. Ignored the fake path.
Pushed through brush that whispered like fabric.
Branches snapped, vines clung. Leaves stroked her shoulders with fingers far too soft.
The air didn't feel thickâbut it resisted. Like she was moving through memory foam.
She emerged onto a trail.
Familiar.
There was the tree.
The same one.
"You have to be kidding me."
A soft, purring hum sounded just above and to the left.
"Most mazes are built with walls," said the voice. "But Wonderland's more efficient than that."
Alice turned in a slow circle.
The smile was back.
No body. No eyes.
Just floating teeth, watching her as if she were the one who hadn't figured out the rules yet.
She snapped.
"Oh, right. This is Wonderland. Your Wonderland. I'm supposed to play the game. Solve the riddle. Eat the cookie. Grow small, grow tall, lose my fucking mind, and clap like a good little Alice. Is that the deal?"
The grin didn't flinch.
"You're not here to follow the rules," it said. "You're here to remember why you broke them."
That landed wrong.
Too close.
Too calm.
Alice exhaled slowly through her nose.
"Nope. See, you've got the wrong bitch. I didn't break any rules. I followed them. I paid my rent. I took my meds. I didn't scream when my best friend got disappeared. I didn't even scream when my boyfriend told me I was making it all up. I'm not broken."
"I never said broken."
The voice had lowered. Less smug now. Still inhuman.
Still everywhere at once.
"Cracked, maybe."
Something about the word hit her stomach before her ears.
A pressure she didn't have language for.
"Why can't I leave?"
"Because you're not done."
"Done what?"
The grin widened.
"Deciding whether you exist."
That stopped her.
Flat.
Just air in her lungs, sharp and cold and useless.
She didn't cry.
Not yet.
She looked up.
And finally asked:
"What is this place?"
"The question," said the grin, drifting slowly around her like a tide, "is what do you think it is?"
She wanted to scream. Wanted to punch a tree. Wanted to lie down and wait for her brain to finish misfiring.
Instead, she clenched her jaw.
"A simulation."
"If it is," said the voice, "then someone built it just for you."
"A test."
"But no pass or fail."
"A dream."
"Then why does it hurt?"
She didn't have an answer for that.
Her hand still ached from the coffee burn.
Her shoulder throbbed from where she'd landed in the moss.
None of it faded like dream-pain.
None of it behaved.
The grin circled once.
"You think fiction is invention."
"It is."
"It's memory," the voice said. "Collective. Inherited. Translated. That story you read when you were nine? That was a warning."
"No."
"Then why did you come?"
The sky flickered.
Once.
A glitch in the wrong color.
The ground pulsed under her again.
A rhythm.
Slow. Like breathing.
Like waiting.
She looked around.
The tree with the lightning scar had vanished.
The trail she thought she came from no longer existed.
The forest had folded again.
Silently.
The grin stopped moving.
Just hovered.
Patient.
And thenâ
A sound.
Distant.
Low.
A laugh.
Not cruel. Not bright.
Warm.
It echoed through the trees like music played on a broken record.
The grin twitched.
"Ah."
It almost sounded fond.
"The Mad One's awake."
Alice's brow furrowed.
"Who?"
"He might help you."
The smile dimmed slightly.
"Or he might eat you."
A breeze stirred the moss at her feet.
And from somewhere deeper in the treesâ
Footsteps.
Slow. Measured.
A voice, low and amused:
"You know, most people at least knock."
He stepped into view and for a moment, the world lost definition.
Like it had been waiting for him to appear.
Like it needed him to load properly before resuming whatever story it was trying to tell.
Alice stopped breathing.
The man was tall, sharp in silhouette. He wore a coat that might've once belonged to a soldier, now fraying at the cuffs, stitched in places with mismatched thread. Beneath it: a dark vest, collar undone, gloves with the knuckles worn through. His hair fell in curls around his face, unkempt but deliberate, like he'd once cared and forgotten how to stop.
He looked like someone caught between a masquerade and a war.
And his eyesâ
Not warm. Not cold.
Something in between.
Pale, strange. Blue or green or something that refused to decide.
He was beautiful in that dangerous kind of way. Like a knife, polished.
And he smiled.
Not like the Cat. Not wide. Not weightless.
This smile had edge.
Alice took a step back.
"Nope."
He tilted his head. "Nope?"
"You know that questionâwould you rather meet a man or a bear in the woods?"
He raised an eyebrow.
"I always picked the bear."
She gestured vaguely at the trees. "Bring it out. I'll take the floating cat. The toothy grin. Literally anything else."
He laughed. A short, surprised sound. "And here I thought you'd be more excited."
"To meet who?"
He gave her a small bow.
"Me."
She took another step back. "Don't come closer."
He held up his hands in mock surrender. "Wouldn't dream of it."
His tone suggested otherwise.
There was something unsettling about how he looked at herâlike she was a puzzle he already knew the answer to, but enjoyed watching her try to solve it anyway.
"You don't look like her," he said quietly.
Alice narrowed her eyes. "The fuck does that mean?"
"The last one."
"Last what?"
He met her gaze without flinching. "Alice."
Everything inside her pulled tight.
"What do you mean, the last Alice?"
He shrugged. "Easy, now."
"No," she said, voice rising. "See, that's the part where I lose it. This isn't real. This is a psychotic break or a simulation orâwhat? You're going to throw riddles at me until I accept it? Say some tea party bullshit and expect me to clap?"
"I never said tea."
"Shut the fuck up."
He didn't.
He just watched her.
She could feel itâthat dangerous calm again. Like he wasn't trying to calm her. He was waiting for her to arrive at something.
Her voice dropped. "How many?"
He blinked. "What?"
"How many before me?"
He looked away, just for a second.
Then: "Too many."
Her chest felt hollow.
"You said you didn't expect me."
"I didn't."
"Then what the fuck am I?"
He was silent for a long moment.
"Maybe the last one."
He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes.
"Maybe the right one."
Alice exhaled hard, turned away.
"Fuck you."
"That's new."
"Is it?"
"No," he said, with the ghost of a grin. "But I deserved it less this time."
She turned back. "What's your name?"
"They call me the Hatter."
"That's not a name."
"Depends who's asking."
"I'm not staying."
"We all say that at first."
"Try me."
He studied her for a beat. Then nodded, like she'd passed some test he wasn't grading.
"Alright," he said. "Let's walk."
"Why?"
"Because the trees don't stay still this long unless something worse is coming."
She scowled. "Worse than you?"
That actually made him laugh.
"Oh, darling," he said, stepping into the trees. "You haven't met worse yet."
He didn't look back.
Didn't wait.
He just walked.
And the forest made room for him.
The trees leaned away, shadows shifting underfoot.
Alice didn't move.
Not at first.
She counted to thirty in her head.
Watched him weave effortlessly between branches that hadn't existed until he reached them.
Then:
"So fucking stupid," she muttered, and followed.
The forest changed as soon as she crossed the threshold.
The air cooled.
The quiet deepened.
It felt like stepping behind a curtain.
The light was softer here, filtered through leaves that shifted in color the longer she looked at them. The ground beneath her boots was moss and stone and something elseâsomething she didn't have a word for yet.
The Hatter moved like he'd done this a thousand times. Like the forest knew his shape and didn't mind making space for him.
She didn't trust him.
But she didn't trust standing still, either.
"You said there were others," she called.
"Yes."
"What happened to them?"
He didn't stop.
"Most left."
"And the ones who didn't?"
"Stayed."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I've got."
The path veered left.
Then again.
Then again.
They were circling something.
She felt it in her teeth.
The trees didn't grow toward themâthey watched.
Alice stayed just a few steps behind him. Close enough to speak. Far enough to bolt.
Eventually, the trees thinned.
The light changed againâamber this time, warm and unreal.
Half-crumpled, yellow-edged, and crooked, it sat in the narrow slat of light between the front door and the silence of the apartment. "Final Notice" was stamped in red that had bled through the paper like a wound.
Alice didn't pick it up right away.
She stared at it from across the room, barefoot on the cold wood floor, mug in handâthough the tea inside had long gone cold. She hadn't meant to stare for so long. But the envelope had gravity. Her muscles had none.
The fridge was humming again. Loud, like a migraine. Like it was trying to warn her. Like it knew something she didn't.
She rubbed her eye with the heel of her palm and tried to pretend it wasn't shaking. Her hand. Or her breath.
Outside the window, Los Angeles groaned under June heat. Sirens distant, but never far. Someone shouting on the sidewalk. Someone always shouting. The apartment building across the alley had a new ICE van parked out front. Third time this month. Maybe fourth.
Jules' shoes were still by the door. Canvas sneakers with frayed laces. She hadn't taken them when she left.
No note. No message. No text. Just gone.
The mug slipped from her fingers and clattered into the sink, the sound louder than it should have been. She winced, then stepped forward and picked up the envelope, peeling it up from where it stuck to the tile.
Her thumb hesitated on the flap.
She already knew what it said.
She opened it anyway.
"NOTICE OF FINAL BALANCE AND RENT DUE
Property Management: Aetherland Holdings
Total Due: $1,840.00
Due Date: June 15th
Notice Issued: June 12th
Failure to remit payment may result in eviction proceedings."
Three days.
Alice blinked once. Then again.
It didn't hurt, not really. It didn't feel like anything at all. Just numbers on a page. Reality, scribbled in a font called Fuck You. She folded the letter back into the envelope, tucked it under the pile of other unopened mail on the windowsill, and stood very still.
The fridge clicked off. Blessed silence.
The heat pressed against the apartment like a palm on her chest.
Her phone buzzed. Once.
She didn't look at it.
Instead, she crossed the room, stepping barefoot over a fallen pen cap, an old envelope, a spoon she didn't remember dropping. The bathroom door creaked when she opened it, hinges gritty with rust. She didn't bother turning on the lightâthe sun bleeding through the frosted window was enough. Barely.
The mirror over the sink was a rectangle of old glass, edges oxidized into a faint copper bloom. She hadn't cleaned it in a while. The toothpaste smudge near the bottom corner had started to look like a skull.
She looked at herself. Not long. Just... long enough.
Her hair was pale blonde and fine, shoulder-length, frayed at the ends like unraveling silk. She used to dye it blue. The roots were starting to forget.
Her face was too pale. Not porcelainâjust faded. As if someone had turned her contrast all the way down. Blue eyes ringed in grey, the color too bright against the rest of her. They looked artificial, in a way that didn't quite feel human. Doll-like. But tired.
She hadn't slept. That part showed. Puffy lids. Undereye bruises. Skin that looked like it had been washed in grief. Her lips were dry. One corner cracked. She licked it without thinking and tasted copper.
There was still glitter stuck in the side of her hairâbirthday shift at the coffee shop last week. She'd forgotten to wash it out. Or maybe she hadn't forgotten. Maybe she'd left it on purpose. To see how long it would stay.
She bared her teeth at herself.
Not a smile. Just a check. Still there. Still human.
A faint burn marked her right hand where she'd grabbed a hot kettle the day before. She'd forgotten to turn on the cold tap right away. She'd just stood there. Watching it turn red.
Alice leaned forward.
Put her palms on the edge of the sink.
Watched her reflection breathe when she didn't.
That was new.
The air shiftedâsubtle, like a room holding its breath.
Her spine stiffened.
"I'm fine," she whispered.
Her voice fogged the mirror slightly. The condensation bloomed where her breath touched, the words leaving a ghost-trace in their wake.
The reflection didn't match it.
For a fraction of a secondâtoo fast, too slowâher mirrored self didn't move. Didn't fog. Just stared back, mouth slightly open, like it had something to say but had forgotten how to form words.
Alice blinked hard.
The mirror flickered.
Just once.
Like it disagreed.
The hallway outside her apartment smelled like hot dust and old cooking oil.
She locked the door out of habit rather than necessity, jiggling the knob twice, then once more for reasons she couldn't justify. The metal was warm beneath her fingers. Everything was warm now. Even the shadows.
Someone's television murmured behind a nearby wall. Laughter track. Too loud. Too sharp. It cut through the corridor like broken glass.
By the time she reached the stairwell, her phone buzzed again.
She knew who it was before she even looked.
Evan.
His name sat there on the screen with the quiet insistence of a bruise. No emoji. No softness. Just five letters that still managed to tighten something low and unpleasant in her chest.
The buzzing stopped.
Then came the small, passive-aggressive punctuation mark of modern cruelty:
Voicemail (1).
Alice stared at it.
The stairwell light above her flickered faintly, humming with that sick electrical whine she'd started noticing everywhere lately. Or maybe it had always sounded like that. Maybe she'd just never listened so closely before.
Outside, a helicopter chopped the sky into pieces.
She pressed play.
For a second, there was only staticâthin and brittle, like someone breathing through their teeth.
Then Evan's voice slid into her ear, warm and familiar and immediately unbearable.
"Hey."
A pause.
Not hesitant. Calculated.
"I don't know why you're still doing this."
Alice descended one step. Then another.
His voice had always had that tone when he was pretending to be reasonable. Calm, patient, exhausted by her alleged irrationality. As if he were a tired parent. As if she were a problem to be managed.
"I tried to give you space," he continued, the faint clink of dishes in the background. A bar. Or his kitchen. Or someone else's apartment. "But you can't just vanish and expect me to be okay with it."
Vanishing.
The word snagged in her brain.
Jules had vanished.
People vanished every day now.
Alice pushed through the building's front door and stepped into the sunlight, instantly swallowed by heat. It pressed against her skin, thick and wet, crawling down the back of her neck.
Traffic roared past. Somewhere, a car alarm wailed without urgency.
"...you've been spiraling for months," Evan was saying. "You don't sleep. You barely eat. You're paranoid about everything. The news, the helicopters, the fucking vans you keep obsessing overâ"
Alice's gaze lifted involuntarily.
Across the street, a white utility van idled at the curb.
No markings.
Two men inside.
Watching nothing. Watching everything.
Her stomach tightened.
"I'm not your enemy, Alice."
His voice softened here, dipping into that intimate register that used to melt her defenses. The voice he used when he wanted to sound wounded rather than angry.
"I was trying to help you."
She nearly laughed.
A brittle, humorless sound lodged somewhere behind her ribs but never made it out.
"You need to talk to someone," he said. "A professional. Not your weird Twitter friends, not Reddit, not whatever conspiracy spiral you're stuck in this week."
A pedestrian brushed past her on the sidewalk, shoulder bumping hers hard enough to jolt her sideways.
"Watch it," the woman snapped, not slowing.
Alice murmured an apology automatically, though she hadn't been the one drifting.
"...because this isn't normal," Evan continued, relentless. "The way you think the world is closing in on you? That's not reality."
Not reality.
The phrase echoed oddly, like the acoustics of the street had changed.
Alice stopped walking.
The van across the road shimmered.
Not visibly, not exactly. But something about its edges felt... unstable. Like bad compression. Like reality rendered at the wrong resolution.
She blinked.
It looked normal again.
"You always do this," Evan sighed. "You build these narratives where everything is out to get you, and I'm the asshole for pointing out that maybeâjust maybeâyou're not seeing things clearly."
Alice's jaw tightened.
The city surged around herâvoices, engines, footsteps, a dog barking somewhere far too loudly. Every sound felt sharpened, hostile, invasive.
Above her, the helicopter passed low enough to rattle something deep in her bones.
"I still love you," Evan said.
There it was.
The hook.
Weaponized tenderness, dipped in guilt.
"But I can't keep getting dragged into your episodes. It's not fair to me."
Episodes.
Alice resumed walking, slower now.
A billboard ahead of her flickered.
Not electronically.
Visually.
The smiling model's face seemed to lag behind itself for half a second, eyes misaligned, teeth stretched too wide before snapping back into place.
Alice stopped again.
No one else reacted.
No one even looked up.
"...call me back," Evan finished, irritation bleeding through the last words. "Or don't. But stop acting like the world is ending. It's not."
The message clicked off.
The sudden silence in her earbuds felt enormous.
Alice stood on the sidewalk, heart beating too fast, skin prickling.
The billboard smiled down at her.
Perfectly still.
Perfectly normal.
For a moment, she wasn't entirely convinced it had ever moved at all.
A child passing by on a scooter turned his head as he rolled past her.
Looked directly at her.
And grinned.
Too wide.
Too knowing.
Alice's breath caught.
But he was already gone, wheels rattling against the cracked pavement, laughter trailing behind him like something torn loose.
The city roared.
The heat pressed closer.
And somewhere, deep beneath the noise of traffic and helicopters and voices, Alice felt itâ
WANDERBLOOM
âPainted in distressed white cursive across the green awning, like whimsy could be gentrified.
Inside, everything smelled like old espresso and dried lavender. The air-conditioning was broken again. A small fan on the counter pushed around more dust than cold. She clocked in. No one looked up.
There was a flower crown nailed to the wall by the tip jar. She stared at it for a second too long, then tied on her apron.
She didn't remember putting on the apron. Her body did that on autopilot now.
"Hey, umâ"
The guy in front of her was already annoyed.
Young. Sunglasses still on. Phone in hand. Expensive. He drummed his fingers on the counter like it was a snare and she was late to the beat.
Alice blinked.
The register waited. So did he.
"Do you want to order?" she asked finally, voice soft.
"Yeah." He rolled his eyes. "Oat milk flat white. Not too hot. No foam."
She turned. The espresso machine hissed. The milk steamer groaned.
Her hands felt thick today. Her skin too tight. The machine handle stuck when she tried to lock it. She ground the beans too long. The rhythm was off.
He sighed behind her.
The next customer coughed loudly. A passive-aggressive shove of sound.
Alice's vision blurred a little as she poured the steamed milkâhands trembling just enough to make it dangerous.
She tipped the pitcher too far.
A slosh of scalding white poured down her wrist, across the top of her hand, curling around her thumb.
The pain didn't land immediately. Just heat. Then heat. Thenâ
"Oh fuck," she whispered, dropping the pitcher hard into the sink. Metal clanged.
Someone laughed behind her. Not at her. Just... laughing. Loud. Meaningless. It hit her like a slap anyway.
The guy in the sunglasses looked up from his phone.
"Is this gonna take long?"
Her skin was turning pink. The milk hadn't been boiling, but it had been close. The burn throbbed in a dull pulse she couldn't look away from.
Her manager's voice rang out from the back like a gunshot:
"Alice, what the fuck was that?"
She didn't answer. Couldn't. The world had narrowed.
To the heat.
To the hum of the espresso machine.
To the smell of scorched milk and synthetic lavender.
Her hands shook worse now.
She turned off the steam wand.
She finished the drink. Put it on the counter.
He didn't say thank you.
She smiled anyway.
In the back, the bathroom was cool and dim. She locked the door behind her.
Sat down on the closed toilet lid.
And exhaled for the first time in hours.
The tile was cracked in one corner. The grout near the sink had started to blacken. The tiny square window was painted over in a frost that let in sunlight but no view. A flickering LED overhead buzzed like a dying insect.
She stared at the wall.
Her hand stung.
She peeled the corner of a paper towel off the dispenser and pressed it gently to the skin.
A small patch of redness.
Not blistered. Not serious.
Not serious.
Not serious.
She closed her eyes.
Inhale.
Hold.
Exhale.
Something clicked. Far away. Or in her own ears.
Her phone buzzed. Again. She didn't check.
Ten minutes passed. Maybe more. She wasn't sure.
When she stood, her legs felt like static.
She splashed water on her face. Dried it on a paper towel. Tossed it. Missed the bin.
Stared at herself in the mirror above the sink.
Still here.
Still real.
She opened the door.
The hallway looked too long.
"I'm gonna run to the store, we're out of gauze," she told her manager, who barely looked up from the register. "Back in five."
She said it casually. Like a thing she'd done before.
Grabbed her bag from the back.
Walked out the side door.
Did not look back.
The heat was worse now. Dense. Sweaty.
She meant to go to the store. She really did. Just a soda. Or bandages for her hand. Or maybe gum.
She turned left.
Then right.
Then crossed a street she didn't remember approaching.
By the time she reached the next block, she was no longer sure where she'd started.
Her hand hurt.
The sidewalk pulsed with heat mirages.
She thought she saw a street sign melt slightly, the letters running like wet ink.
She blinked.
It looked normal again.
She didn't remember deciding to get on the bus.
But there she wasâclimbing the steps, swiping her card, finding a seat near the back.
The driver didn't greet her.
The AC rattled like bones in a dryer.
She pressed her forehead against the window and watched the city move.
The bus lurched forward with a violent, mechanical sigh.
Alice barely moved with it.
The seat beneath her vibrated constantly, a low, bone-deep trembling that crawled up her spine and nested somewhere behind her ribs. The air-conditioning rattled overhead, coughing out thin streams of recycled chill that smelled faintly of metal and something sour-sweet, like overheated plastic.
She pressed her temple to the window.
The glass was hot.
Outside, Los Angeles smeared itself into motionâsun-bleached storefronts, leaning palms, tangled power lines sagging between poles like exhausted nerves. Everything looked slightly overexposed, colors washed thin by the noon glare.
Too bright.
Like the world had been left out in the sun too long.
Her burned hand throbbed in her lap. A dull, insistent pulse. She flexed her fingers once, testing the sting, grounding herself in the small, reliable fact of pain.
Still real.
Still here.
Probably.
No one spoke.
A woman near the front scrolled furiously on her phone, thumb twitching in agitated jerks. A man across the aisle slept with his mouth open, head knocking softly against the window at every turn. Headphones leaked tinny music from somewhere behind herâbass distorted, vocals ghostlike.
The bus was full, but it felt hollow.
As if everyone were sealed inside their own separate worlds, realities running in parallel but never quite touching.
Alice's reflection hovered faintly in the window glass.
For a moment, she had the uncomfortable sensation that she was watching someone else ride the bus.
"You missed your stop."
The voice was small.
Close.
Alice lifted her head.
The child sitting beside her hadn't been there before.
She was sure of it.
A little girl, maybe seven or eight, legs dangling well above the floor, sneakers swinging idly. Honey-blonde curls stuck damply to her temples. A melting ice pop clutched in one sticky fist, red syrup bleeding down her knuckles.
Alice stared.
The girl stared back with unsettling composure.
Large, unblinking eyes.
Blue.
The exact shade of Alice's own.
"I didn't..." Alice's throat felt dry, words catching. "I didn't have a stop."
The girl tilted her head.
Studying her.
"Yes, you did."
Matter-of-fact. Certain.
Children had that tone sometimesâthe absolute confidence of someone who had not yet learned to doubt their own perception.
Alice swallowed.
"I think you're confusing me with someone else."
The girl smiled.
Not wide.
Not friendly.
Just enough to show small, even teeth.
"No," she said softly. "You're the only one here."
Alice's stomach dropped.
She glanced around the bus.
The sleeping man was still there. The woman with the phone. The distant headphones. All exactly as before. No one looking at them. No one reacting.
No one acknowledging the child.
The girl continued licking the melting ice pop, red streaking her lips, her chin.
"You're not real," the child added casually, as if commenting on the weather.
Alice's pulse slammed hard against her throat.
A sharp, electric jolt of panic.
"I'mâ what?"
The girl sighed.
A tiny, weary sound.
Like Alice was being deliberately obtuse.
"You're the wrong kind of real."
The words slid into Alice's brain sideways, meaning refusing to settle into anything stable.
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Outside, a mural on the side of a building seemed to ripple.
Painted flowers bending as though caught in an invisible current.
Alice blinked hard.
The wall was solid.
Still.
Unmoving.
When she turned backâ
The seat beside her was empty.
No child.
No sticky handprints.
No melting ice pop.
Only the faint indentation in the vinyl cushion that might have been there all along.
Or might not have been.
Alice's breath came too fast now.
Shallow. Uneven.
She pressed her palm flat against the seat, grounding herself in texture, in friction, in the mundane solidity of cracked vinyl and embedded grit.
Okay. Okay. Okay.
The bus roared onward. Unconcerned.
A digital route display flickered overhead.
The letters blurred, sharpened, then blurred again.
DOWNTOWN
shifted into
DOWN TOWN
then into something that made her blood run cold:
DOWN
Alice stared.
The sign snapped back to normal so quickly it was almost insulting.
The city outside had begun to feel... wrong.
Not dramatically.
Not enough for anyone else to scream.
But subtly, nauseatingly off.
Street signs she didn't recognize.
Buildings leaning at angles too steep to be architectural.
A traffic light hanging in midair with no visible wire, swaying gently like something underwater. Alice's fingers dug into her own jeans.
No one else reacted. No one else even looked up.
The bus began to slow. Brakes shrieking softly.
Alice leaned toward the window.
They were pulling up to a stop she didn't recognize. No bench. No shelter. No sign.
Just a long stretch of concrete platform running alongside a wall of tiled white. Too clean.
Too empty. Tooâ
The doors wheezed open. The driver didn't turn around. Didn't speak.
The air beyond the bus looked strangely cool, light dimmer somehow, colors muted as if someone had turned down the saturation of the world.
Alice stood without deciding to. Heart hammering. Skin buzzing. And stepped off the bus.
The doors folded shut behind her with a soft hydraulic gasp.
The bus pulled away immediately.
No hesitation.
No lingering roar of diesel protest.
Just movement â smooth, indifferent â as if she had never been on it at all.
Alice turned instinctively, a small flare of delayed panic sparking in her chest.
"Waitâ"
But the word died uselessly in the air.
The bus was already halfway down the street.
Then at the corner. Then gone. Too fast. Far too fast.
Silence rushed in.
Not true silence â LA never offered that â but something close enough to feel unnatural. The usual city noise seemed... dampened. Muffled. As though wrapped in layers of cotton.
Alice stood very still.
The heat was gone.
That was the first impossible thing.
The oppressive, skin-sticking warmth of midday had vanished the moment her shoes touched the concrete. The air here was cool, dry, carrying the sterile scent of dustless space â like an underground parking garage, or a hospital corridor after hours.
Slowly, she turned.
The "stop" stretched wide and bare beneath a ceiling of humming fluorescent strips. No sky. No sun. No visible street. Only white tile, laid in perfect repeating grids along walls that curved slightly inward.
A subway platform.
But there hadn't been any stairs. No descent. No entrance.
"What the fuck..."
Her voice sounded wrong.
The acoustics deadened every syllable, the sound falling straight to the floor like something too heavy to remain airborne.
Alice took a cautious step forward.
The concrete did not echo.
Even her footsteps felt muted, disconnected from her body.
The platform was impossibly long.
It extended far beyond any reasonable station design, narrowing into a vanishing point that made her eyes ache if she stared too hard. The fluorescent lights above flickered intermittently, brightness stuttering in faint, irregular pulses.
Not random. Rhythmic.
Like they were breathing.
There were no advertisements. No maps. No gum welded into the floor. No trash. No people. No tracks.
That was the second impossible thing.
Where rails should have cut twin silver lines into the platform's edge, there was only smooth concrete sloping gently downward into darkness. Not even the suggestion of steel.
Just a long, black trench.
Alice's pulse began to climb.
A prickling unease crept along her spine, the ancient animal part of her brain whispering that something fundamental was deeply, catastrophically wrong.
She turned sharply.
Behind her, the street was gone.
Where the bus had dropped her off should have been asphalt, sunlight, noise.
Instead: More white tile. More fluorescent lights. More platform.
Stretching endlessly in the opposite direction.
"No."
The word slipped out before she knew she'd formed it.
She spun again, heart kicking violently against her ribs.
The geometry of the space refused to make sense. Distance felt unstable. Depth unreliable. The platform seemed both vast and claustrophobic at once â too open, too enclosed, like a dream that hadn't decided what kind of nightmare it wanted to be.
Then she saw it.
Far down the sloping trench of darkness. A shape. Rectangular. Impossible.
A door.
It stood alone at the bottom of the concrete decline, upright and perfectly ordinary in a way that made Alice's skin crawl.
The door was wooden, paint chipped. It's brass handle dull with age. The doorframe had no wall, no structure. Just a door, embedded in nothing, surrounded by thick, swallowing black.
Alice's mouth went dry.
Every instinct screamed wrong.
Doors did not belong on subway tracks. Doors did not stand by themselves in underground voids.Doors did not wait.
The lights overhead flickered harder.
For a moment, the platform dimmed enough that the darkness below seemed to swell upward, thick as liquid, creeping along the edges of her vision.
Alice's breathing grew shallow, too fast.
She tried to laugh.
It came out thin and fragile.
"Okay. Great. Perfect. Love this."
No echo. No comfort of sound returning to her.
And beneath everything â
Something else.
A sensation more than a sound.
A presence pressing lightly against her awareness, like the feeling of being watched from a blind corner. Or recognized.
Without realizing she had started moving, Alice found herself edging closer to the platform's lip like she was drawn there.
The darkness below did not look like absence of light.
It looked like depth, like space, like somewhere.
The door seemed closer now.
Though she was certain it had not moved.
A faint current of air brushed her face. It was cool.
Carrying the distant, impossible scent of something that absolutely did not belong underground. It smelled like the ground after rain. Tea and was that? something sweet â warm, buttery, almost like...
Cake.
Alice's stomach twisted violently.
Her mind scrabbled for logic, for explanation, for anything that could anchor the moment back to reality.
it was stress, it had to be. Or sleep deprivation. Heat stoke? She was dissociating. Yeah, that made sense.. probably.Â
The lights flickered again, longer this time. Darkness swallowing the platform whole.
For one suspended heartbeat, the world vanished. Then the lights snapped back on.
it was harsh, blinding.Â
And the door stood there.
Alice did not remember deciding to move.
One moment she stood at the platform's edge, fingers curled into her palms, breath shallow and uneven.
The next â
She was stepping forward.
Her shoe met the slope of the concrete trench with a soft, soundless contact.
There was no jolt, no stumble, no vertigo.
Just the strange, nauseating sensation of crossing a boundary that had never been meant for human feet.
The air changed instantly.
Behind her, the fluorescent lights began to shriek. Not buzz. Not hum.
Shriek â a piercing electrical wail that tore through the platform like something wounded. Alice flinched violently, hands flying to her ears as the lights above detonated in rapid succession.
POP.
POP.
POP.
Glass exploding. Darkness flooding downward.
The platform vanished.
Swallowed in black.
But Alice did not fall.
Her body continued forward, momentum divorced from gravity. The concrete beneath her feet dissolved into something that was not surface, not space â something between sliding and sinking.
The moment she stepped forward, the world gave way.
There was no sensation of falling. No rush of air. No impact. Only movement.
Her body slid through the darkness as if gravity had lost interest in her. There was nothing beneath her feet, nothing against her skin, yet something carried her forward with steady, indifferent force.
"Aliceâ"
The word tore from her throat, but it didn't sound like anything. It vanished the instant it left her mouth.
The darkness was complete.
Not shadow. Not absence of light.
Something heavier than that.
It pressed against her eyes, her lungs, the inside of her skull. She could not see her hands. Could not feel the shape of her own body. Even the sense of direction unraveled, leaving her suspended in a space that had no up, no down, no edges.
Then came the awareness. Not touch, but proximity.
The unmistakable feeling that something vast was moving nearby. Shapes without form, sliding through the black with slow, impossible grace. She felt them pass without displacement, like currents in a depthless ocean.
Panic detonated in her chest.
She twisted, trying to orient herself, but her body no longer obeyed familiar rules. There was nothing to push against, nothing to anchor to. Only motion, relentless and soundless.
Pressure built behind her eyes.
A crushing distortion, like her skull was being pulled apart from the inside.
Thenâ
Light.
Blinding. Violent. Absolute.
It tore through the darkness without transition, a white-gold explosion that seared her vision raw.
Reality snapped back into place around her.
But wrong.
Everything wrong.
Color flooded her senses, too bright, too sharp. Greens that burned. Shadows that bled. A sky twisting overhead in slow, nauseating spirals.
The ground slammed into her.
Hard.
Air blasted from her lungs as she hit, palms digging into something soft and damp. Pain flared hot and immediate.
She gasped.
Drew in a ragged breath that tasted of soil and wet leaves. Her fingers curled. Not tile. Not concrete.
Earth.
Dark, rich, unmistakably real.
"What the fuck..."
The words came out hoarse and shaking.
The forest loomed around her, impossibly still. Trees bent at unnatural angles. Leaves trembling though there was no wind. Nothing in the landscape held the quiet neutrality of nature.
The kind of late where the house forgets to breathe. Everythingâs still, heavy. The kind of quiet that makes your skin itch and your thoughts louder than they should be.
You shouldnât be doing this.
Not with him asleep in the guest room down the hall. Not with your vibrator between your legs, the blanket hiked just enough to give your wrist space to move. And definitely not with his name caught behind your teeth, choking in your throat with every roll of your hips.
But you canât stop thinking about him.
Bucky. Your best friend. Always walking around like he doesnât know what heâs doing to you. Like he doesnât see the way your eyes track his hands. Doesnât hear how your voice changes when you say his name.
You grind down, soft and slow, breath caught.
âFuck⊠BuckyâŠâ
And thenâyou freeze.
You heard something.
Footsteps.
The soft creak of the door.
You twist under the blanket, gasping, heart hammering. And there he is. Backlit by the hallway light. Barefoot. T-shirt clinging to his chest, hair messy from sleep.
He squints at you.
âYou okay?â
You scramble, yanking the blanket up to your chin, chest rising too fast.
âGoâBucky, go. Justâgo, Iâm fine.â
He blinks.
Almost turns.
But he doesnât.
âWhat was that sound?â he asks, stepping just inside. âYou say something?â
âNoânothing. Please.â
He tilts his head, gaze narrowing. Then he hears it. The faint, unmistakable buzz beneath the blankets.
His eyes drop. And his expression shifts.
ââŠAre you serious?â
Your face burns.
âGet out.â
âWhy?â he asks, and his voice is too even. âWhyâd you say my name?â
You close your eyes.
This isnât happening.
âPlease,â you whisper.
He steps closer.
âWere you thinking about me?â
You stay silent.
He reaches forward, slow as sin, and peels the blanket back.
Your legs. The soaked edge of your panties. The vibrator glistening and humming against you.
He doesnât look away.
Instead, he picks it up. Clicks it off. Tosses it gently to the floor.
Then he sits at the edge of the bed.
âTell me what I was doing to you.â
You swallow. âBuckyâŠâ
âYou want me to leave?â he asks, voice quieter now. âI will.â
You donât answer.
He waits.
Then, softly: âTell me.â
You speak before you can stop yourself.
âYour fingers,â you whisper. âYou were⊠using your fingers.â
His eyes flick to your thighs. He shifts, one knee on the mattress now, body leaning in close.
âLike this?â he murmurs, his hand sliding between your legs, parting them. Two fingers stroking up the centerâslow, testing.
You gasp. He watches your face.
âYou mean this, baby?â
You nod.
âI was imagining you saying how warm I was. How tightâŠâ
He traces you again, this time pressing just enough to feel the wet.
âMm. You are. Fucking soaked. All for me?â
You nod again, desperate.
âAnd then what?â he asks, fingers still teasing but not giving you enough. âWhat was I doing next?â
You pant. âYou were pushing them in. One first⊠then anotherâŠâ
His fingers press.
You moanâsoft, broken.
âLike this?â
âYes.â
âAnd I was sayingâŠ?â
âThat I was good for you. That I felt perfect.â
He slides in, slow and deep.
âGoddamn right you do,â he growls, breath hot at your ear. âYouâve been hiding this? Touching yourself to me while Iâm down the fucking hall?â
âI didnât meanââ
âYeah, you did,â he cuts in. âYouâve been aching for this. Tell me the rest.â
Your head falls back against the pillow. âYou curled your fingers. You knew exactly how to make meââ
He curls them.
You cry out.
He smiles, wicked and low.
âLike that, baby?â
Youâre close.
So close it hurts.
His fingers are inside you â two, maybe three now, slow and steady and deep, curling just right every time. Youâre writhing beneath him, one leg pulled over his shoulder, the other twitching where heâs pinned it down with his knee. Youâve never felt so exposed. Or so fucking good.
Heâs still calm. In control.
Like heâs been waiting to do this for years.
âYou were thinking about me like this?â he asks, voice thick, low. âStuffing you full with my fingers while you tried to keep quiet?â
You nod, panting. âYes. Yes, just like thisââ
âAnd what did I say to you?â
âThat I was your good girl. That I felt so fucking good.â
He curls again, rougher this time.
Your breath breaks on a sob as you come â hard, clenching around him, your back arching off the bed like your body doesnât know what else to do.
He watches every second.
Doesnât blink.
His fingers donât leave you.
Youâre still trembling when he leans in, lips brushing your ear.
âNow,â he whispers, âwhat would I do next?â
You whimper.
âCâmon, sweetheart,â he croons, fingers easing out of you, dragging slow through you. âYou made it this far. Tell me.â
You blink up at him, dazed, blinking through the haze.
âYouâd⊠youâd go down on me.â
His lips twitch.
âYeah?â
You nod.
âYouâd push my legs open,â you whisper. âAnd say how sweet I tasted.â
He slides down the bed.
You gasp.
He does exactly that.
Grabs both thighs and spreads them wide, settling between them like heâs coming home.
Then he pauses.
Looks up at you.
âSay it.â
âSay⊠what?â
âWhat Iâd do next.â
You hesitate.
Then: âYouâd lick me. Slow at first. Like you want to make it last.â
His mouth descends.
Hot. Wet. Perfect.
You cry out, legs jerking.
But he stops.
Lifts his head.
âNext.â
You shake, hands grabbing at the sheets.
âYouâdâfuckâyouâd press your tongue inside. And say how tight I was even just thereââ
His tongue pushes in.
You moan, loud this time.
He pulls back again, lips shining, his smirk absolutely feral now.
âNext, baby.â
Youâre flushed, breathless, tears in your lashes now from sheer need.
âYouâd suck my clit. Use your tongue and fucking mean it.â
He does.
You break.
Your thighs clamp around his head, hips grinding up into his mouth, hands flying to his hair as he devours you. And through it all, heâs murmuring between licks:
âYeah, thatâs it.â
âTaste so fucking good.â
âYou wanted thisâsay it.â
You do.
Again and again and again.
And when you finally fall back, wrecked, lips parted in a moan too raw to be quiet, he crawls back up over you, mouth still wet, voice still hungry.
âYou really think Iâm stopping after that?â
Youâre still floating when he comes back over you.
Boneless. Warm. Open.
Your body feels like itâs been wrung out and left pliant, every nerve buzzing, every thought reduced to him. You barely react when his fingers brush your hair back, thumb tracing your cheekbone like heâs memorizing you.
âThere she is,â he murmurs. âLook at you.â
You blink up at him, dazed.
âSo pretty when youâre like this,â he continues, quiet and reverent. âAll soft. All open. Letting me see everything.â
Your breath stutters.
His hand drifts down your body slowly, intentionallyânot touching where you need him yet. Just the heat of his palm coasting over your ribs, your waist, your hips.
âYou okay?â he asks, even though he knows the answer.
You nod.
âUse your words.â
âIâm⊠good,â you whisper. âI want you.â
His mouth curves into a soft, dangerous smile.
âI know you do, baby.â
He leans down and kisses youâslow, unhurried, like thereâs nowhere else he needs to be. When he pulls back, his lips trail lower, following the path his hand took until heâs hovering over your chest.
âYou said Iâd suck on these,â he murmurs. âTell me how.â
Your face flushes, heat flooding you.
âSlow,â you breathe. âLike youâre teasing me.â
âLike this?â
His mouth closes around your nippleâwarm and gentle, tongue circling lazily. He hums low in his throat, the sound vibrating through you, sending heat coiling tight and fast in your stomach.
You gasp.
He doesnât rush. Doesnât hurry. Just sucks and releases, over and over, watching your chest rise and fall faster, watching the way your hands curl into the sheets.
âYouâre beautiful,â he says against your skin. âYou know that?â
You shake your head, but then his tongue flicks just right and you whimper.
âMm. Donât lie to me,â he murmurs. âLook at the way your body reacts. Like it knows itâs being touched right.â
He switches sides, teeth grazing lightly before his mouth seals againâharder this time. Your hips roll without meaning to.
âThatâs it,â he praises. âGood girl. Let yourself feel it.â
His hand slides between your thighs.
Just rests there.
Not moving. Not yet.
Youâre already breathing like youâre close, hips twitching with every little pulse of need.
Thenâof courseâhe stops.
Pulls back.
Looks down at you, calm. Patient. Wicked.
âWhat now, baby?â
Your eyes are glassy. âBuckyââ
He smiles softly. âTell me.â
âYouâd⊠youâd touch me again,â you say, voice shaking. âJust⊠slow.â
His fingers drag through your slickâunhurried, barely there. A tease.
âLike this?â he asks, circling your clit once.
You nod, a desperate sound caught in your throat.
He circles again.
Your back arches. A broken sound escapes your lips.
And then he stops.
Your eyes fly open, wet with need.
âOh my god,â you whimper. âPleaseââ
âWhatâs next?â he asks calmly. âYouâre doing so good for me. Tell me.â
âYouâd fuck me,â you blurt out, voice wrecked. âMissionary. Deep.â
His gaze darkens.
He lines himself up slowly, making sure you feel every second. The first push is careful, stretching you openâdeliberate.
He fills you inch by inch.
You cry out, clutching his shoulders.
âYou okay?â he murmurs, forehead pressed against yours. âLook at me.â
You nod frantically, legs wrapping around his waist.
âSo tight,â he whispers. âSo warm. Taking me so well.â
He pulls almost all the way out.
Thrusts back in.
Slow. Deep. Measured.
âYou feel that?â he asks. âThatâs how good youâre doing.â
Your nails dig into his back. Your breathing is already broken, your body winding tight again.
He changes the angle just slightlyâ
You gasp, body jerking beneath him.
âOhâoh godââ
âThat spot?â he murmurs. âYeah. I see you.â
His pace stays controlled. Every thrust designed to bring you to the edge and hold you there. He watches every twitch, every gasp, every time your eyes roll back just a little.
âYouâre gonna come like this, arenât you?â he says softly. âOn my cock. Looking so fucking pretty for me.â
Your body starts to tremble.
Then he stops.
Completely still.
You make a sound thatâs half sob, half please.
âBuckyâpleaseââ
He cups your face, thumbs brushing just beneath your eyes, grounding you.
âHey,â he says gently. âYouâre okay. Iâve got you.â
You nod, tears slipping free anyway.
âWhat now, baby?â he asks again, voice low and steady. âHow do you want me to fuck you next?â
Youâre shaking when you answer.
âFrom behind,â you whisper. âI want to feel you everywhere.â
His jaw tightens.
âGood choice.â
He rolls you over slowly, takes his time positioning youâhands roaming your body, grounding you again, pressing praise into your skin with every touch.
âLook at you,â he murmurs, lining up behind you. âStill with me. Still trusting me.â
He pushes back insideâdeeper this timeâone hand on your hip, the other smoothing up your spine.
âThatâs it,â he groans. âSo fucking good for me.â
He thrusts once.
Twice.
Youâre already coming undone againâ
And then he stops.
You sob, throat raw, body begging.
He leans down, lips brushing your ear.
âAlmost,â he whispers. âBut not yet.â
His hand smooths over your lower back, slow and firm.
âTell me,â he says again. âWhat now?â
You barely realize when he shifts.
One second youâre on your stomach, still shaking, still open and aching â the next heâs easing you back, sitting against the headboard, pulling you with him until youâre straddling his lap.
His hands settle on your hips.
Warm. Steady. Possessive.
âThere,â he murmurs. âThatâs better.â
You blink down at him, breath unsteady. He looks wrecked â hair mussed, jaw tight, eyes dark and blown. Like this has been living in him just as long as itâs been living in you.
âYou wanted to ride me,â he says quietly. âGo on, baby.â
You shift, lining yourself up, sinking down slowly. He groans â a real one â head tipping back for a second before he looks at you again.
âFuck,â he breathes. âYou feel⊠unreal.â
You move, tentative at first. Rolling your hips. Testing the control you think you have.
His hands donât stop you.
At first.
He leans up to kiss you, deep and hungry, mouth claiming yours like heâs been starving. His tongue slides against yours, slow and wet, his thumbs digging into your waist as your pace starts to build.
âThatâs it,â he murmurs against your lips. âYou look so good like this. Taking what you want.â
You whine softly when his mouth leaves yours, dropping to your neck, your collarbone. His teeth scrape gently, just enough to make you shiver.
But thenâ
His hands tighten.
Just a little.
Your movement slows without you meaning to.
âEasy,â he says calmly. âNot yet.â
You look down at him, confused and flushed.
âI thoughtââ
He smirks. âYou did. Thatâs okay.â
He starts guiding you instead â lifting you up just enough, then pulling you back down, setting a rhythm that makes your breath stutter every time.
âLike this,â he says. âFeel it?â
âYes,â you whisper. âOh godâyesââ
His fingers slide up your spine, one hand slipping between your bodies to find your clit, circling slow and deliberate.
You gasp, head falling forward until your forehead rests against his.
âBuckyââ
He kisses you again, softer this time. Almost sweet.
âYouâre doing so good for me,â he murmurs. âSo fucking beautiful when youâre like this.â
Your body starts to tighten. You feel it building again, fast this time, sharp and needy.
Your hips try to speed up.
He stops you.
Completely stills you.
You let out a broken sound, halfway to a sob.
âShh,â he whispers, kissing your cheek. Your jaw. The corner of your mouth. âIâve got you.â
Youâre trembling now, clinging to his shoulders.
âWhat now, sweetheart?â he asks quietly. âTell me.â
You swallow. âMissionary.â
His breath catches â just for a second.
âYeah,â he says.
He shifts you gently, laying you back down, never letting you lose contact with him. He slides back inside you slowly, filling you completely, making you gasp as your legs wrap around his waist.
He braces himself over you, one hand threading through your fingers, holding tight.
âLook at me,â he says.
You do.
His face softens.
âThere you are,â he murmurs.
He starts moving â deep, steady strokes, unhurried but relentless. Every thrust pulls a sound from you, every drag of his hips makes your toes curl.
He leans down, kissing your cheek. Your jaw. Pressing his mouth to your temple.
âSo pretty,â he whispers. âEvery sound you make. Every way you look at me.â
Your body starts to shake again, the tension coiling fast now, uncontrollable.
âYou close?â he asks.
You nod frantically. âYesâyesââ
He squeezes your hand, grounding you.
âThatâs it,â he murmurs. âCome for me.â
His thumb finds your clit, rubbing just right.
âJust like that, sweetheart,â he says softly, kissing you again. âGive me all of it. Youâre safe. Iâve got you.â
Your body breaks.
You cry out, coming hard, clenching around him, your back arching as he keeps moving, keeps holding your hand, keeps whisperingâ
âThatâs my girl.â
âSo beautiful.â
âYeah⊠just like that.â
And he follows you, buried deep, breath ragged against your cheek, holding you there until the shaking finally fades.
Summary: You hit the floor before you see it coming. Panic coils in your chest. Your lungs wonât open. Steveâs there. seeing too much. saying too little. You beg him not to look. He looks anyway. And then he says it:
âyouâre not a burden. youâre mine.â
He doesnât ask you to be okay. He just kisses you like you already are.
The final corridor is quiet.
Dust drifts in lazy motes through beams of flashlight and the flicker of dead emergency lighting. Your boots crunch over broken glass and scraps of paper, and you can feel your heartbeat in your teeth.
âYou good?â Bucky asks from behind you. His voice is low, casualâbut thereâs something underneath. A check-in.
âFine,â you answer. Too fast. Too automatic.
You open the last doorâa storage room. Empty. You step inside anyway. Your flashlight skims rusted shelves, crates full of nothing, the echo of silence thick around you.
âFine,â you repeat, softer this time. Just to yourself.
The missionâs over. No hostiles. No last-minute ambush. You should feel relief. But your chest is tight, your vest suddenly too snug. You tug at the collar, jaw set.
Behind you, Bucky clicks off his comm and leans against the doorway.
âYouâve been breathing weird since we hit sublevel two.â
You donât turn around.
âItâs nothing.â
He doesnât answer. Just watches. You know that lookâheâs not pushing. Not yet. Just waiting for the crack.
You move to the far end of the room, pretending to check a crate. You kneel, pop the lid, and stare at a tangle of old Hydra tech. Your hand shakes as you pull the scanner from your belt.
It nearly slips through your fingers.
You mutter a curse under your breath.
Buckyâs voice floats across the roomâsofter now.
âYou sure youâre alright?â
The metal in your hand feels too cold, suddenly unbearable. You set the scanner down and stand too fast. Vision swims for a second, and you blink hard, willing it away.
âIâm fine, Buck,â you snapânot at him, not really. Just⊠too much.
He straightens, but doesnât move.
âYouâre not fine,â he says evenly. âYouâre just not loud about it.â
You close your eyes.
The room shrinks. The air thickensâhot, stale, recycled. Tastes like sweat.
Your breathing shortens. Shallow. Quick. But youâve practiced hiding itâhell, youâve hidden it from yourself.
âMissionâs over,â you mutter. âLetâs just get back to the quinjet.â
You push past him before he can speak again, shoulder brushing his chest.
He doesnât stop you.
The hallway back to the quinjet feels longer than it did coming in.
Itâs mostly quietâjust the soft hum of emergency lights overhead and the hollow echo of your boots on concrete. Buckyâs footsteps trail behind you, steady and calm, but his attention burns hot against the back of your neck.
You keep your eyes forward. Keep moving.
The corridor forks. You take the leftâtoo sharp, too fast.
âHey,â Bucky calls. Not loud. Just firm.
You stop.
He doesnât close the distance. Not right away. Heâs giving you spaceâbut not the kind you want. The kind you need.
When you turn, his expression is unreadable. Still. Careful.
âYouâre doing that thing,â he says.
Your jaw tightens. âWhat thing.â
He tilts his head. Barely. âThe thing where you pretend youâre fine until your body makes the decision for you.â
God. You hate that heâs right.
You hate that he knows.
You open your mouthâsomething sarcastic, something to bat it awayâbut your throat locks. Mid-breath. Like a cordâs tightening around it.
You blink. Hard.
Bucky steps forward. Slowly. Hands at his sides.
âHey. Look at me.â His voice is low. Steady. âJust look.â
You do. Barely.
His face blurs around the edges, like condensation on glass.
âIâm fine,â you whisper.
It sounds like a lie even to you.
âYour hands are shaking,â he says. âYouâre not fine.â
You glance down. Your fingers twitch in uneven burstsâlike static snapping under your skin.
Itâs like your body hit a wall at full speed and your mind hasnât caught up. The air feels thick. Hot. Pressed against your skin like too many layers.
Your vest feels like a vice.
You tug at the strapsâfumbling, shaking.
âToo much,â you mumble. âItâs too muchâI just need a secondââ
Your knees hit the floor before you realize youâre going down. One hand against the wall. Cold concrete under your palm. Your breathing spikesâshort, fast, useless.
âOkay, heyâhey,â Buckyâs right beside you now. Down on one knee. âYouâre okay. Youâre okay. Iâm here.â
You canât look at him.
You hate this.
You hate him seeing this. Hate that itâs him and notâ
No. You wonât finish that thought.
âDonât,â you manage. âDonât call him.â
Your voice cracks on the edges.
âDonât call Steve.â
Bucky exhales slowly through his nose. You donât have to look at him to know heâs thinking. Calculating. His fingers flex where they rest on his knee.
âIâm fine,â you whisper.
He doesnât answer right away.
Then, finallyâclick.
âI said donâtââ
The words rip out of your throat but disintegrate halfway.
Your hands are numb. Your ribs wonât expand. Youâre not breathingâyouâre gasping, each inhale shallow and useless. Youâre crouched low, forehead nearly touching your knees, like if you make yourself small enough, itâll stop.
But it doesnât.
It only gets louder.
The pounding in your chest. The static in your ears. That sick-hot pressure building between your shoulder blades like somethingâs about to explode outward.
âIâve got you,â Bucky saysâand this time, he touches you. Just his fingertips on your wrist, feather-light. Grounding. âYouâre okay. I promise youâre okay.â
You shake your head.
âNo. No, you donâtâyou canâtââ
Your voice fractures mid-sentence.
Youâre spiraling, and part of you knows it. But the rest of you doesnât care. You feel pathetic and broken and stupid. And the last thing you wantâthe very lastâis for Steve to see you like this.
Not him.
Anyone but him.
âHe canât see me like this,â you whisper, the words barely audible.
Bucky shifts closer, his metal arm pressing lightly against yours, warm through the suit.
âYou think he hasnât been through this?â he murmurs. âYou think he wouldnât want to help you?â
You squeeze your eyes shut.
âHe already does everything,â you rasp. âHe doesnât need me falling apart on top of it.â
Buckyâs voice sharpens. Not loudâbut unshakable.
âYeah? Well, maybe he wants to.â
You open your mouth. Maybe to argue. Maybe to beg. But the panic tightens its grip. Your vision flares white for a breathless second. Your body sways.
Bucky doesnât hesitate.
âNope. Thatâs it.â
He raises his wrist to his mouth. Quiet. Fast.
âCap. Med bay corridor. Now.â
âNoâno, Bucky, I told youââ
âYou didnât leave me in the dirt,â he says, just above a whisper. âSo Iâm not leaving you now. And neither will he.â
You try to moveâcrawl backward, fold yourself into the wallâbut your limbs wonât cooperate. Your chest heaves. Your breath catches. Vision goes glassy again.
âI canâtââ You choke on the words. âI canâtâI canâtââ
âHey,â Bucky says, still holding your wrist, anchoring you. âYou can. Just hold on, okay? Heâs coming.â
And you want him to.
God, you hate that.
But you do.
You want Steve.
And thenâ
Boots.
Heavy. Running. Fast.
And his voice.
Right there.
You flinch at the sound. Curl tighter against the wall like you could fold yourself small enough to disappear.
Then the footsteps stop. âBucky.â Steveâs voice. Breathless. Sharp. âWhat happened?â
âSheâs having a panic attack,â Bucky murmurs. Quiet, steady. âI triedâshe didnât want me to call you.â
Thereâs a beat. Then Steve againâquieter now. Rough around the edges. âJesus.â
You donât lift your head. You canât. But you feel him there. Standing still. Not uncertainâjust⊠shocked. Heâs never seen you like this.
You never let him.
âSheâs been running herself into the ground for weeks,â Bucky adds, softer.
âDidnât say a word.â Steve moves. Kneels.
âHey,â he says, close now. So close. âSweetheart. Itâs me. Iâm here.â
You squeeze your eyes shut, tears threateningânot because of the fear. Because itâs him. Because he wasnât supposed to see this. Not you. Not like this.
âDonât,â you whisper. Your voice cracks. âDonât look at meââ
âHeyâlook at me,â he says, and his tone shiftsâgentler now, but just as sure. âI didnât know. I didnât see it. I shouldâve.â
His hand hovers near your shoulder. Waiting. When you donât flinch, he sets it downâfirm, warm, grounding.
âBreathe with me,â he says. âCâmon. In. Just try.â
You gasp. Itâs not enough. Your chest seizes, misfiring like it forgot how to be a body. He leans in closer. Forehead nearly touching yours.
âGood girl,â he whispers, as soon as you manage one solid inhale. âThatâs it. Thatâs it. Youâre alright.â
Your hands find his suitâgrip it hard, like itâs the only solid thing left.
His arms wrap around you without hesitation, drawing you into him. Cradling you.
âYouâre alright,â he says again. But itâs softer now. Like heâs saying it to himself.
You donât even realize youâre crying until his thumb brushes your cheek.
âI didnât know,â he murmurs. âYou never let me see you hurting.â
You try to respond. All that comes out is a broken, âDidnât want to beââ
âA burden?â he finishes, voice cracking. âJesus, baby. No.â He wraps you up tighter.
One hand against the back of your head, the other curling around your spine. Holding you like heâs afraid youâll vanish if he lets go.
You donât know how long you stay curled against Steveâjust breathing him in. Leather. Sweat. Something warm and clean underneath it all.
Bucky shifts behind you. You feel it before he speaks.
âIâll give you two a minute,â he says, voice low.
You manage to lift your head. Just enough to meet his eyes.
He nodsâsoft, steady. No pity. Just that look that says Iâve got your back. Always.
Then heâs gone.
Steve doesnât speak right away. Not until Buckyâs footsteps fade.
Then, slow and careful, he moves his hand from your back to your wrist. Two fingers press gently over your pulse.
âStill fast,â he murmurs. âBut better.â
You nod. Barely.
He shifts back just far enough to see your face. You donât meet his eyes. He doesnât push.
âYou think you can stand?â
âIâI donât know.â
âThatâs alright,â he says. âIâll help you.â
He moves slowly. No rush. No urgency. Every motion full of intention.
He lifts youânot like youâre broken, but like you matter.
You lean into him as he stands. Your legs tremble under you, but his arm wraps around your waistâsolid, steady, like itâs always been.
âTake your time,â he says. âWeâre not in a hurry.â
You walk the corridor in slow, deliberate steps. No words. Just his body close to yours. Just his presence, holding everything together.
By the time you reach the quinjet, your breathingâs almost normal. Not perfect. But closer.
Steve opens the hatch with one hand, guides you gently inside.
You sit. Your head finds Buckyâs shoulder without thinking. His arm curls around you immediately. The metal resting against your knee.
Grounding. Familiar.
Your breath slows again.
Steve watches for a second.
âYou okay here for a minute?â
You nod. Canât trust your voice yet.
Steve rises. Gives Bucky a lookâquiet, unspokenâand steps away toward the cockpit.
Before he goes, he brushes his hand against your cheek. Just for a moment.
He doesnât say a word.
He doesnât have to.
Youâre asleep within minutes.
When your breath evens outâwhen your hands stop tremblingâBucky waits just a beat longer. Then gently eases your head off his shoulder and onto his folded jacket.
He rises and heads for the cockpit.
Steve glances back as Bucky approaches. His eyes flick down to make sure youâre still out.
âShe asleep?â he asks, voice low.
âYeah,â Bucky murmurs. âOut cold.â
Steveâs hands tighten briefly on the controls.
Silence.
Thenâ
âHow long has this been happening?â
Bucky doesnât answer immediately.
Steve keeps his eyes forward, but his jaw locks. When he speaks again, his voice is quieter. Cracking.
âWhy didnât she tell me?â
Bucky sighs, drops into the co-pilot seat.
âBecause youâre Steve Rogers,â he says simply. âShe didnât wanna put more on your shoulders.â
âIâm notââ Steve starts. Stops. Breathes. âIâm not mad. I just⊠I didnât know. I shouldâve.â
âShe didnât want you to.â
Steve looks over. âBut you knew.â
âYeah,â Bucky says. Not defensive. Just⊠honest. âShe didnât have to pretend around me.â
Steve stares at his hands.
âShe shouldnât have to pretend around me either,â he says softly.
âThen tell her that.â
The cockpit falls quiet again.
Steve doesnât say anything.
The engines hum beneath them. The sky outside shifts, clouds parting.
Bucky leans forward, arms resting on his knees.
âYou remember what it was like when I was trying to piece it all together?â
Steve glances at him. Says nothing.
âI didnât feel worth it,â Bucky says. âYou kept fighting for me, and all I could think wasâwhy?â
Steveâs jaw works. But he lets him speak.
âI saw what it cost you,â Bucky continues. âTony. The Accords. Everything. And still, I couldnât see what you saw in me.â
Steveâs voice is raw when it comes.
âYou were never a burden.â
âDoesnât mean I didnât feel like one.â
That hangs in the air.
Bucky turns to face him fully.
âShe feels the same.â
Steve lowers his gaze.
âShe sees you out there holding everyone together, being the guyâCapâand she doesnât wanna be the one who pulls you under.â
âSheâs not,â Steve says, fast. But his voice wavers.
âI know,â Bucky says. âYou know. She doesnât.â
Steve exhales, slow. Rubs a hand down his face.
âShe shouldâve told me.â
âYeah,â Bucky says. âBut you gotta rememberâsometimes saying you love someone is the easy part.â
He pauses.
âLetting them see the parts you hate about yourself?â
He meets Steveâs eyes.
âThatâs a whole other thing.â
Steve doesnât reply.
Itâs late when you wake up. Everythingâs still.
The quinjetâs quiet. Landed. The low mechanical hum is gone, replaced by silence and soft interior light. Youâre lying on your sideâblanket draped over you, Buckyâs jacket folded under your head like a pillow.
The seat next to you is empty.
You sit up slowly, joints stiff, mind fogged.
But the second you do, you see him.
Steve.
Heâs sitting across from you, elbows on his knees, hands clasped like heâs been waiting the whole time. And maybe he has.
His eyes are tired. Worried. But when he sees you sit up, they soften.
âYou okay?â he asks.
You nod once. âYeah. I think so.â
He doesnât move toward you. Doesnât fill the silence too fast. Just watches youâlike heâs trying to read a language he doesnât know yet but wants to.
You break first.
âI didnât want you to see me like that.â
His mouth pulls tightâmore regret than frustration.
âWhy not?â
You exhale, hands knotted in your lap.
âBecause youâre already doing so much. You carry everyone. I didnât want to be one more thing.â
His voice is barely a whisper. âYouâre not a thing. Youâre mine.â
That hits harder than it should.
âIâve seen what you do for people,â you say softly. âAnd I didnât want you to have to do it for me too.â
Steve leans forward, eyes bright but voice steady.
âDo you think I do it because I have to?â
You look down. âI donât know. Maybe.â
âI donât,â he says. âI do it because I care. And I wouldâve been there sooner if youâd let me.â
You nod, swallowing hard.
âI didnât know how to ask,â you admit. âItâs like⊠something started unraveling and I couldnât stop it. And the more I tried to hold it together, the worse it got.â
Steve nods slowly.
âI know the feeling.â
Your eyes lift.
âYou do?â
He leans back, rubs the back of his neck.
âI get panic attacks too,â he says. âNot often. But when they hit, theyâre brutal. I used to hide âem. Didnât want anyone thinking I wasnât strong enough.â
âSteveââ
âI know,â he cuts in gently. âItâs stupid. But when everyone sees you as the shieldâŠâ
He trails off.
You donât interrupt.
âSometimes I forget Iâm a person underneath it too.â
Silence follows. Full. Honest.
Thenâ
âI love you,â he says. âNot the version of you thatâs bulletproof. Not the one who cracks jokes or never misses a shot. I love you. The whole thing. The mess. The quiet. The scared parts.â
Your breath catches.
He shifts to sit beside you, pulls your hand into his.
âI donât need you to be okay all the time,â he says. âI just need you to let me in when youâre not.â
His head drops for a moment. His shoulders tremble once. Then he looks up, eyes raw.
âIâve been shot. Blown up. Fought things I still donât have names for.â
He meets your gaze.
âBut nothingânothingâscared me like seeing you like that did.â
You canât speak.
So you reach for him.
He meets you halfway.
His arms wrap around you tightâlike he needs you to feel it. Feel him. He doesnât let go. You bury yourself in his chest, and he holds on like he almost lost you.
In that grip, you feel truth.
You are loved.
Not despite the mess.
But because of it.
âI donât want to save you,â he says, voice low. âI want to stand beside you. Even when you fall apart. Especially then.â
You pull back just enough to look at him.
His hand brushes your cheek. Thumb under your chin.
And when he leans inâitâs not urgent. Itâs not dramatic.
The mud was in everything.
His boots. His sleeves. His goddamn molars.
And James Buchanan BarnesâBrooklyn-born, with the best hair in the whole goddamn unitâwas over it.
The 107th had been camped just outside Saint-Ătienne for three days now. It rained through all of them.
Not that the weather was the worst part.
The worst part was waiting.
Waiting to move.
Waiting to get shot at.
Waiting to see who cracked next.
Bucky crouched near a fire that didnât deserve to be called oneâmore smoke than heat, more threat than comfort. His gloves were wet. His socks were worse. And the tin of beans he was poking at with a stick couldâve doubled as cement.
âYou gonna eat that, Sarge?â came a voice to his left.
Roscoe Simmons, nineteen, Alabama drawl, six feet of pure chaos and zero survival instinct, grinned at him through the steam.
Bucky didnât look up. âWhy, you miss the taste of home? This tastes like shit.â
Simmons laughed. âHell, back home weâd mix this with ketchup and call it a delicacy.â
Bucky raised an eyebrow. âBack home, do yâall mix bullets with your morning coffee, too?â
Simmons shrugged. âOnly on Sunday.â
Bucky smirked, finally breaking off a chunk of bean-brick and shoving it in his mouth. It was as bad as he expected. Maybe worse.
Next to him, Carter, the quiet medic with the scar that curved behind his ear, was threading a needle with numb fingers. Antonelli, from Queens, was humming something that mightâve been Sinatraâor a death rattle. It was hard to tell.
And then there was Tomaszek, the baby of the group. Fresh-faced. Pale. Always clutching his helmet like it might float him home if shit hit the fan.
âBarnes,â Tomaszek said suddenly. âYou ever get scared?â
The fire popped.
Everyone went still.
Bucky looked up.
He didnât answer right away. Let it sit.
Let the question hang in the smoke like a ghost.
Then he tilted his head, real slow.
âOnly when Simmons tries to cook.â
That broke the tension. A few snorts. A shoulder nudge. Tomaszek flushed but smiled.
But Bucky didnât look away.
He gave the kid a wink.
Didnât say itâbut it was all in his eyes.
Me too.
Six Months Ago:
Brooklyn. Draft Notice.
He read it three times.
Each time, it felt less real.
His ma cried in the kitchen.
Rebecca stood in the hallway, arms folded, pretending to be proud and not furious.
He kissed their foreheads. Joked about how Paris needed more charm.
Stuffed his guilt into a suitcase along with three folded shirts, a St. Christopher medal, and a photograph of Steve sketching on the stoop.
No one said itâbut they all knew.
There was no âjust a year.â
There was no âback before Christmas.â
There was only the train.
The boots.
The slow unwinding of the boy heâd been.
Now:Â
âBarnes,â Carter said now, tossing a threadbare blanket over his legs. âWhatâre the odds we actually move tomorrow?â
Bucky looked up at the sky. Rain like pins and needles.
âSame odds as Simmons learning to read.â
âHey!â
âRelax,â Bucky grinned. âI said learn. I didnât say how well.â
A round of laughter, thin but real.
It wasnât much.
But it kept them warm.
The rain had thinned to a mist.
Buckyâs boots squelched in the mud with every step, the slick suction of soaked earth pulling at his heels like it wanted him to stay.
Rifle low. Eyes forward. Shoulders hunched.
He walked the outer perimeter, past the smoking remains of dinner, past the line of tents half-collapsed under weather and weight. Half the boys were already asleep. The other half pretended they werenât cold.
He liked patrol.
Liked the quiet.
Even when it got to him.
The moon was a blur behind the clouds.
Somewhere, a bird called outâlow and long like it had regrets.
And Bucky started humming.
He didnât even mean to.
Just one of those habits that came from before.
âIâll be seeing you⊠in all the old familiar placesâŠâ
The words hovered in his chest, half-formed.
Ella Fitzgerald. 1939.
Steve used to play it over and over again on a busted phonograph they found behind a church on Sackett Street.
He used to laugh when Bucky sang alongâsaid he sounded like a drunk cat with charm.
Bucky smiled to himself, just a little.
The mud sucked at his boots again.
Brooklyn never really left him.
Not the sound of the L train rumbling over their block.
Not the distant clang of fire escapes.
Not the way Mrs. DeLuca on the corner used to yell âMaleducato!â every time Steve came home with a black eye.
They were poor. Always had been.
But it was loud.
And warm.
And theirs.
Steve used to sneak up to the roof when he couldnât sleep.
Bucky would follow. Not to talkâjust to be there.
Theyâd lie on the tar paper, staring at stars you could barely see.
One time Steve said, âYou ever think about how small we are?â
Bucky had snorted.
âSpeak for yourself, Rogers. Iâve got biceps to maintain.â
But he knew what he meant.
He knew exactly what he meant.
And nowâhereâboots deep in someone elseâs country, in someone elseâs warâ
He felt tiny.
A twig snapped.
Bucky stilled.
He raised his rifleânot high, not yet. Just ready.
Eyes scanned the dark.
Nothing moved.
His hand flexed on the grip.
Another step. Then another. Quiet. Controlled.
A rustle.
Just a rabbit. Small. Brown. Darting into brush.
Bucky exhaled.
Let his arms drop.
âJesus, Buck,â he muttered to himself. âGet it together.â
He crouched near a tree, checked his perimeter again.
Nothing.
He leaned back against the bark, letting it hold him for a second. Just a second.
The rain whispered through the branches above.
And somewhere deep in his chest, he felt it againâthat ache.
Not just homesickness.
But something else.
Something nameless.
Like a thread tugging on his ribs.
Like he was being watchedâ but not by the enemy.
By something...familiar.
He didnât move.
Didnât speak.
Just sat in it.
That pull.
Like memory.
Like deja vu.
Like someone, somewhere, knew his name.
Somewhere in France
March, 1943
Rain. Always rain.
Dearâ
You know what? I donât even know who Iâm writing to anymore.
Maybe thatâs the point.
Maybe this oneâs just for me.
Itâs 2, maybe 3 a.m.
My socks are wet. My spine feels like itâs trying to fold itself in half. Simmons is snoring like he swallowed a harmonica, and the guy three tents down keeps whimpering in his sleep, but no one says anything.
I donât know what day it is.
Sometimes I think the real war isnât the fightingâitâs the waiting. The stretch of time between moments when something actually happens. Those are the parts that kill you.
I can handle the gun. The dirt. Even the fear.
Itâs the nothing that gets in your blood.
You start forgetting stuff. How coffee smells in the morning. What it feels like to lie on your back in clean sheets. How loud Brooklyn is.
I keep trying to remember my motherâs voice. And sometimes I can. But itâs always the wrong tone. Too loud. Too soft. Like a radio station that wonât tune in all the way.
I miss home.
I miss me, I think.
Sometimes I catch my reflection in puddles and donât recognize it.
I look like somebody else.
Somebody older.
Somebody meaner.
But thenâthereâs this other thing.
This... feeling.
Like Iâm not alone.
Like someoneâs watching, but not in a bad way.
Like Iâm being remembered.
It sounds nuts, I know.
Maybe it is.
Maybe I just want someone to know I was here.
That Iâm trying.
That I donât want to lose who I was before this started.
I used to take care of people.
I used to make my sister laugh so hard she snorted.
I used to sing in the shower like a jackass.
I used to flirt with every waitress in Brooklyn, just to make them smile.
I used to believe Iâd come back whole.
I donât know if I do anymore.
But if anyone ever finds thisâ
I hope you know I meant well.
That I tried.
That I loved hard, even when it hurt.
That I saw everything.
Even when I pretended I didnât.âJames Buchanan Barnes
107th Infantry
Somewhere in the mud
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