summary. most girls dream under the covers when the house goes quiet. you’re waiting for the soft scrape of boots on the fire escape, because the boy you’ve loved forever is climbing through your window, and this time he isn’t leaving before dawn.
word count. 6.5k
warnings. soft smut, 18+, MDNI, virginity loss (both reader and bucky), tit play, oral (f receiving), unprotected pnv, usage of nicknames (doll, sweetheart), no usage of y/n.
notes. kinda got stuck on the last part of babydoll, so please have this in the meanwhile. the images in moodboard do not depict the reader. there are no descriptions of the reader in this fic. both reader and bucky are above 18, but reader is portrayed as kind of innocent owing to the lack of sex education in that time period.
the window creaks just a little when bucky hauls himself through it. one boot catches on the sill so he has to hop awkwardly to keep himself from face-planting onto your rug.
moonlight stripes the room in silver and shadow, catching on the faded flower wallpaper your mama picked out when you were ten.
straightening up, he brushes dust off his jacket, and grins that crooked grin that always makes your stomach flip.
“thought your old man was gonna spot me climbin’,” he whispers, voice going low in a way it gets when he’s trying not to laugh. “nearly took a header into the rose bushes.”
you’re already tucked under the covers, heart going a mile a minute.
your parents left for bridge night an hour ago. they just said they’d be back late. and the house feels huge and quiet without them.
you pat the mattress beside you. “ma and pa left an hour ago. get in here before someone calls the cops on you.”
he shrugs out of his jacket, and slides in next to you like he’s done it a hundred times, even though this is only the third time he’s managed to sneak over.
the bed’s narrow. it's your childhood bed with the iron headboard that squeaks if you move too fast. and he has to curl around you so you both fit comfortably. well, comfort might be a bigger word.
he smells like the cold night air and the gel he uses to keep his hair slicked back, and something that’s just him.
his hair’s all messed up from the climb, cheeks pink from the cold.
“hi, doll,” he whispers, voice soft so the floorboards don’t give him away, and then he’s right there in front of you, hands finding your waist like they belong there.
you’re in your nightgown, the off-white one with the tiny roses your ma sewed on last summer, with the covers pulled up to your chin like some nervous kid. which you kind of are, tonight.
when you tip your face up, he meets you halfway.
you’ve kissed plenty. behind the bleachers after ball games, in the dark of the movie theater when the newsreels were on, pressed against the alley wall behind the diner when he walked you home from your shift the day before.
but tonight there’s no curfew ticking in the back of your head and no worry about headlights sweeping the street.
tonight the house is yours. and so is he. his mouth moves slowly, lazily almost, like he’s got all the time in the world to taste you.
you fall back onto the pillows together, the mattress springs groaning just enough to make you both freeze and listen for footsteps that definitely aren’t coming.
when it stays quiet, bucky huffs a laugh against your mouth. “think we’re safe now, sweetheart.”
“you always say that,” you whisper back, “and then mrs. gallagher’s dog starts barking.”
“mrs. gallagher’s dog can go jump in the east river.”
his mouth opens against yours again, tongue sliding in carefully like he’s asking permission even though you’ve done this countless number of times. you make that little sound you always make when he does it right, and his hands tighten on your waist.
sliding up your side, his thumb brushes the edge of your breast through the thin cotton, and you make a small surprised sound against his lips.
he pulls back just enough to look at you, eyes dark in the dim light. “that okay?” his voice is hushed.
you nod. “yeah. just… tickles a little.”
he smiles. a small one, a shy one. and kisses you again, much deeper this time.
his fingers keep exploring, tracing the neckline of your gown, slipping under the fabric to find skin. your breath catches when his palm cups your breast.
you can feel that he’s trembling a little and that makes you feel less alone in how your own hands are shaking.
“you’re so soft,” he murmurs against your mouth, like he’s surprised by it every time. his thumb brushes over your nipple and it stiffens instantly, sending a spark straight down between your legs. you arch without meaning to, and press closer to him.
you’ve never let him touch you like this before. you’ve thought about it— lord, have you thought about it. lying in this same bed you've had your hand pressed between your thighs, not knowing why you like it, but wondering what his hands would feel like.
but thinking and doing are entirely two different things, and now that it’s happening you feel heat crawling up your neck.
“jamie,” you whisper, not sure if it’s fast or too slow to your liking.
searching your face, he asks,“too much?”
you shake your head quickly. “no. just… feels funny… good funny.”
his grin comes back softer. “good funny’s the best kind.” he kisses the corner of your mouth, then your jaw, then the spot under your ear that makes your toes curl.
his hand keeps moving, gentle circles that make your nipple ache in a way you’ve never felt before. you didn’t know it could feel like this. like every touch is lighting little fires under your skin.
the buttons down the front of your gown are small and fiddly, and he fumbles with them, muttering “darn things” under his breath when the third one sticks.
a giggle slips past you as you reach down to help. together you get them open, and cool air hits your chest. he pushes the fabric aside slowly, like he’s unwrapping something precious, and when he sees you bare his breath stutters.
“you’re shaking,” you tease, even though your own hands aren’t much better.
“yeah, well, you’re beautiful,” he mutters, like that explains everything. his eyes are wide like he’s trying to memorize you. “jesus, doll.”
“don’t take the lord’s name in vain in my bedroom, james buchanan barnes,” you whisper, prim as sister mary margaret, and he snorts.
“sorry, sister.” but his hands are gentle when he pushes the gown off your shoulders, down your arms, until it’s bunched at your waist. you’re bare from the waist up now, and the shyness hits you.
“jeez. you’re… you’re so pretty.”
you want to hide, instinct making you cross your arms, but he catches your wrists and presses them to the pillow beside your head. “don’t. please. lemme look.”
there's a vulnerability in his voice even though you're the one who's undressed now. so you let him.
his gaze feels like a touch all its own. he lowers his head and kisses the slope of one breast, then the other. open-mouthed and soft kisses decorate your skin.
when his lips close around your nipple you gasp loud enough you’re glad the neighbors’ houses are far apart.
a tentative lick is what he starts with, then he gets bolder when you clutch at his hair. your nipple tightens under his touch, and he pulls back just enough to look.
“they do that,” he says, wonder in his voice, like he’s discovering something brand new. “in the magazines, the girls— well, they get 'em hard like this.”
“you and your dirty magazines,” you mumble, but you’re arching into his hand without meaning to.
“they’re educational,” he grins, but the grin fades when he lowers his head again and takes your nipple into his mouth again.
wet heat, gentle suction, and you make a sound you didn’t know you could make. his tongue flicks experimentally, and you feel it everywhere. your fingers thread through his hair, holding him there because stopping feels impossible.
he switches to the other breast, hand kneading the one his mouth just left, rolling the wet nipple between his fingers carefully like he’s afraid he’ll hurt you.
it doesn’t hurt. it feels like the fourth of july in your chest, sparks running down your spine. you’re squirming under him now, thighs pressing together, trying to ease the ache that’s building.
“jamie,” you breathe, not sure what you’re asking for.
he lifts his head, and his lips are shiny. “yeah? you okay?”
you nod fast. “more than okay. just—don’t stop.”
he groans like you’ve said something filthy and kisses down your stomach, pushing the nightgown lower as he goes. you lift your hips to help, and suddenly you’re naked except for your panties. those simple white cotton one with a little lace trim your ma bought you for your eighteenth birthday.
bucky sits back on his heels, just looking, taking you all in, and you want to die of embarrassment and also never want him to stop looking.
your hips shift restlessly against the mattress. there’s a throb starting low in your belly, an emptiness you don’t have words for. you’ve felt something like it before, alone in the dark with your own fingers. but never this sharp. and never this urgent.
bucky’s breathing hard now. his forehead ispressed to your sternum, “tell me if i do somethin’ wrong,” his voice stays muffled. “i only know what i read in those magazines.”
you should tell him to stop bringing up the magazines every single sentence because you cannot fathom him looking at other girls who aren't you, even in paper. but you're way too breathless for that.
“it's mostly just ladies in their undies. but sometimes there’s… diagrams.” his ears go pink. “fellas doin’ things with their mouths.”
your eyes widen. “their mouths?”
he nods, but there's a look on his face that tells you even he's a little unsure. “yeah. down… down there.” he gestures vaguely toward your lap and then looks like he wants the bed to swallow him. “i thought maybe… if you wanted… i could try.”
you stare at him. the idea is so shocking your brain stalls out for a second. “you wanna put your mouth on my… my…”
“privates,” he supplies helpfully, then winces. “geez, that sounds awful. your pussy, i mean.” he says the word like he’s testing it, and you can clearly see his cheeks flaming.
you’ve never heard him say that before. you’ve barely heard anyone say it. heat floods your face and other places. “jamie, that’s… that’s scandalous.”
“i know,” he says quickly. “we don’t have to. i just thought— the magazines say ladies like it a whole lot. and i wanna make you feel good. more than just kissin’ and touchin’ up here.” he cups your breast again gently. “but only if you want.”
you bite your lip. part of you— the part raised on sunday school —wants to say no, that’s too much. but the bigger part, the part that loves bucky barnes so fierce it hurts, wants to know what it feels like.
because you’re scandalized and curious in equal measure and nobody has ever told you about anything like this. your ma’s big talk was “keep your knees together till your wedding night” and that was that.
but this is jamie. your jamie, who’s been walking you home since fifth grade, who punched tommy hanagan for stealing your lunch in seventh, who held your hand the night your granddad died.
you trust him with everything else. why not this?
“okay,” you whisper finally. “but i’m… i’m nervous.”
“me too,” he admits, like he's relieved you said it first. “i never done this either. we’ll figure it out together, yeah?”
when you nod, he kisses you again. this one's sweeter, like he’s thanking you.
then he’s moving down the bed, pushing the covers aside. the white cotton stares back at him, but he looks at them like they’re silk.
his fingers hook in the waistband. “can i?”
you lift your hips in answer, and he slides them down your legs carefully, like he’s afraid you’ll change your mind any second. cool air kisses the curls between your thighs and you squeeze your eyes shut, mortified at him seeing a part of you, even you haven't properly seen before.
you kick your panties off when they get tangled at your ankles, and then you’re completely bare under him.
you squeeze your thighs together on instinct.
“hey,” his hands are on your knees. “open up for me, doll? just a little?”
“jamie—” your voice comes out squeaky.
“hey,” he says softly. “look at me.”
you open your eyes. he’s settled between your legs, propped on his elbows, gazing up at you with so much tenderness it makes your chest ache.
“you’re perfect,” he says. “every inch.”
then he lowers his head and presses a kiss to the inside of your thigh. another higher up. your legs want to close but he nudges them apart gently.
he’s staring again, closer now, and you feel yourself getting wetter under his gaze which is again — mortifying.
“it’s—pretty,” he says, awed. “all swollen and—god, look at you.” his thumbs part you, spreading you open, and you almost hide your face in the pillow.
“jamie!”
“sorry, sorry—just never seen one up close.” he sounds like a kid who just got a new bike for christmas. “this part here—” his thumb brushes something that makes your hips jerk—“that’s the part that feels best, right?”
“i don’t know!” you squeak. “nobody tells girls anything!”
“well i’m tellin’ you now,” he says. “gonna figure it out together.”
he leans in and you feel his breath first, warm against sensitive skin. then the flat of his tongue, one long slow lick from bottom to top, and your whole body lights up.
“oh my god.”
“tastes good,” he mumbles like he's embarrassed and proud all at once. “sweet.”
you’d laugh if you had breath. instead you just clutch the sheets, hips rocking without your permission.
pleased with himself, he does it again. and again. learning by the way you twitch, the sounds you make. when he circles that little bud at the top you nearly levitate off the bed.
“there,” you gasp. “right—right there, jamie—”
he focuses there, licking soft at first then firmer, figuring out the rhythm that makes your thighs shake. his hands slide under your hips, lifting you closer to his mouth like he can’t get enough.
he’s messy about it, truly inexperienced, getting your taste all over his chin, but the enthusiasm more than makes up for technique.
it feels… indescribable. like every nerve in your body just woke up and decided to sing at once. you’re wet. you can feel it. and he must too because he groans quietly, the vibration making you twitch.
you feel the pressure building, unfamiliar and scary-good. your legs try to close around his head and he holds them open gently but also somehow firm.
“james—something’s—i think i’m gonna—”
“yeah?” he pulls off just long enough to talk, voice muffled against you. “that’s it, doll. let it happen. wanna feel you cum on my mouth.”
you have no idea what that means exactly but your body does. long nights with your hands between your thighs never felt this good, never hit this high.
the wave crests suddenly, pleasure crashing over you so hard you cry out his name into the pillow to muffle it. your hips rock against his face, riding it out while he keeps licking soft through the aftershocks until you’re boneless and whimpering from overstimulation.
he crawls back up your body slowly, kissing your hip, your belly, between your breasts, until he’s hovering over you again. his mouth is shiny with you and his eyes are wild.
“was that okay?” he asks, doubt laced questions. “did i do it right?”
you pull him down into a kiss, tasting yourself on his tongue, and wrap your arms around his neck.
“you did more than okay,” you mumble. “i didn’t know it could feel like that.”
he wraps his arms around you, pressing kisses to your hair. “me neither. magazines didn’t say anything about how pretty you sound when you cum.”
you swat his chest weakly. “jamie!” but he pulls you closer, pressing soft kisses to your temple, then your jaw.
you’re still catching your breath, chest rising and falling quick over the rumpled sheets, when the curiosity hits you like a sudden itch.
you shift a little, legs still tangled with his, and poke him in the side like you used to when you were kids fighting over the last eclairs.
“hey,” you whisper, voice scratchy from all the noises you just made. “you said you saw pictures of girls doing… that. have you seen pictures of boys too? like, all of ‘em?”
bucky lifts his head and blinks slowly as if he's processing it, and then starts laughing. it's quiet at first, then louder until he has to bury his face in the pillow so he doesn’t wake the whole block.
you feel his ribs moving against yours and you start giggling too, because it’s such a dumb question but also not. definitely not tonight.
“doll, i got the equipment,” his voice is so fond. “i see it every day when i take a shower. ain’t exactly a mystery to me.”
you swat his chest, but you’re laughing harder now, the kind of laugh that hurts your stomach in the best way. “shut up, barnes. you know what i mean. like… close up. like you just did to me.”
he turns his head on the pillow, looking at you with that half-smile that’s been getting you in trouble since sophomore year. “yeah, i seen some. not as many. the fellas pass around the ones with dames mostly. but yeah, there’s pictures.”
you bite your lip, feeling bold and shy at the same time, the way you felt when you asked him to the sophomore dance even though everybody said girls weren’t supposed to ask boys.
“well,” you tryto sound casual and fail, “i ain’t seen any. and you just got an eyeful of me, so… fair’s fair, jamie.”
his eyebrows shoot up. he wasn’t expecting that. you can tell because his mouth opens and closes once like a fish, and his ears go pink. “you wanna see me?” he asks, like it's unbelievable what just came out your mouth.
“yeah,” you nod quickly before you lose your nerve. “i mean, i’ve only ever felt you through your slacks when you got hard like some kinda pervert when i kissed you. i wanna see what all the fuss is about.”
he laughs again. “pervert, huh? that’s rich coming from the girl who just came on my tongue.”
“james buchanan!” you hiss, but you’re grinning so wide your cheeks hurt.
he shrugs out of his shirt first, fingers fumbling the buttons because he’s watching your face instead of what he’s doing.
the shirt lands on the floor next to your nightgown, and you get your first real look at his chest without a undershirt in the way and between four walls.
there’s a faint line of hair running down the middle, and his shoulders are broader than you remember from swimming at the beach last summer.
you reach out without thinking to trace the scar on his ribs from when he fell off his bike delivering papers in eighth grade.
“still there,” you murmur, thumb brushing it gently.
“yep. you kissed it better back then, remember? told me i was gonna have a cool story.”
“you cried,” you remind him.
“i did not cry. i had something in my eye.”
“both eyes?”
he tackles you back onto the pillows, kissing you quietly, and you’re both laughing into each other’s mouths again.
when he pulls back his eyes are serious even though his mouth’s still smiling. “you sure?” he asks. “i ain’t exactly clark gable.”
“you’re better,” you say, and mean it. “you’re mine.”
you see in the way his throat moves, that it gets him.
standing up, his buckle clinks loud in the quiet room. and you sit up too, pulling the sheet to your chest even though he’s already seen everything.
he shoves his slacks down, steps out of them awkwardly when one foot gets caught, and then he’s just in his boxers. it's the white cotton gone a little gray at the waistband from too many washes.
there’s a bulge there that’s been pressing against your thigh all night, and now you can see the shape of him clearly. your mouth nearly goes dry.
“go on,” you say, voice barely above a whisper. “all of it.”
bucky hooks his thumbs in the waistband and hesitates. “you’re starin’ like i’m about to do a striptease at the club.”
“maybe i want a private show,” you tease, but your hands are twisting the sheets.
he pushes the boxers down slowly, and his cock springs free, curving up towards his stomach.
you’ve felt it before, grinding against you in the back of movie theaters, but seeing it is different.
it’s thicker than you pictured, flushed dark, with a bead of wet at the tip. the hair at the base is darker than on his head, and to be honest, a bit curly.
bucky kicks the boxers away and stands there, hands on his sides like he doesn’t know what to do with them. “well?” he tries for cocky and misses by a mile. “this what you were expectin’?”
you shake your head. it's not exactly no, but not an yes either. you're just overwhelmed. “it’s… bigger than i thought.”
he groans. “jesus, doll, you tryin’ to kill me?”
“no!” you say quickly. “it’s good bigger. i think. i don’t know, i’ve never—” you gesture helplessly. “can i touch it?”
he just nods. “yeah. please. i mean—if you want.”
you scoot to the edge of the bed, sheet still clutched to your chest with one hand, and reach out with the other. your fingers brush the length of him, and he jerks like you shocked him.
the skin’s hot, softer than you expected. when you wrap your hand around him, he makes a low sound.
“like this?” you ask, stroking him the way you’ve imagined when you’re alone in this same bed thinking about him.
“yeah—god, yeah—just like that.” his hands hover at his sides, then settle on your shoulders. “little tighter if you want. or not. whatever feels—ah—feels right.”
you experiment, thumb swiping over the head to spread the wetness there. “that part’s real sensitive,” he hisses. “like your—uh—the little button i found earlier.”
you keep stroking, watching his face, the way his eyes flutter half-closed. it’s power and love all mixed up, knowing you’re doing this to him. knowing he trusts you this much.
“does it always stick up like this?” you ask.
“only when i’m thinkin’ about you,” he says, and then winces. “that sounded cheesier out loud than in my head.”
you laugh and lean in to kiss his stomach just above where your hand’s working. “i liked it.”
he threads fingers through your hair. “you can—explore all you want, doll. i ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
you trace the vein along the underside, and feel the weight of his balls when you cup them. he jolts and mutters your name.
you lean closer, nose brushing the hair there to breath him in. he smells like soap and sweat and something sharper, and you want to memorize it.
“tastes salty,” you say after one brave lick at the tip.
bucky’s knees almost buckle. “christ, give a guy some warning.”
“sorry,” you say, not sorry at all, and do it again just to hear that exact sound he makes.
he pulls you upafter a minute, hands under your arms like you weigh nothing, and kisses you deeply, tasting himself on your tongue probably.
“your turn to lie down,” he says against your mouth. “i wanna look at you some more while you touch me. fair’s fair, remember?”
you let the sheet fall, nerves buzzing again because now you’re both completely naked in the lamplight. there's no more hiding.
pulling you close so your front’s pressed to his side, one of his legs slides between yours. his cock’s trapped between your bellies, hot and twitching every time you move.
bolder now, you reach down again, and he mirrors you, hand sliding between your thighs to pet you, still slick from earlier. you’re both shaking a little, breathing the same air.
“we’re really doin’ this,” you whisper, like saying it louder might jinx it.
“yeah,” he whispers back. “been waitin’ forever for you.”
“me too,” you kiss him while your hand keeps moving on him, learning every inch, every sound he makes when you do something he likes. his fingers circle that spot again, and you rock into his touch because it still feels like magic.
you realise he's not touching you to get you off, but just touching because he cannot seem to stop.
you shift your hips a little bit, feeling him against your thigh, and the question that’s been bouncing around your head since he climbed through the window finally tumbles out. “jamie,” your voice is small in the quiet, “is this… is this what people do on their wedding night? all the touching and the—the mouth stuff?”
hair falls in his eyes as he lifts his head, and gives you that look he’s had since you were kids. like you just asked if the sky’s really blue. “this is part of it,” his fingers still moving, touching you there. “but there’s more. the big part.”
you blink up at him, brain fuzzy from everything he’s already done. “more? like what?”
embarrassed and turned on all at once, his cheeks go red again. “you know. when the guy… puts it in.”
your eyes go wide. you knew that much. well, sort of. whispers from older girls at school, your ma’s tight-lipped warnings about “marital duties”
but nobody ever said how or what it felt like or anything useful. “oh,” you breathe. “that.”
“yeah, that.” he kisses your forehead, then your nose, like he’s trying to gentle the idea into you. “the magazines show it. and the fellas talk. but i ain’t never—obviously.”
“me neither,” you chime in quickly, like he might’ve forgotten. “so how do we even…?”
his shoulder bumps yours teasingly. “i guess we figure it out. like everything else tonight.” his hand leaves you to trail up your belly, and he rolls half on top of you again.
his cock nudges your thigh, leaving a wet streak, and you feel that ache start up again in your stomach. like your body already knows what it wants even if your head’s still catching up.
“you want to?” he is serious now. “we don’t have to. we could just keep doing what we been doin'. i liked that plenty.”
you think about it for a second because this feels big, bigger than sneaking out or stealing kisses behind the gym.
but again it's james, who told you he loved you first under the stars at coney island on the fourth of july.
“i want to,” you say, and it comes out steadier than you feel. “with you. tonight.”
his whole face softens when he kisses you, you understand it's just thank you without words. when he pulls back his eyes are shiny. “okay. but you tell me if it hurts or if you wanna stop, alright? i ain’t gonna be mad.”
“same goes for you,” you tease, poking his chest. “if i’m too much for you, james barnes, you just say the word.”
“doll, you’ve been too much for me since we were twelve. ain’t stoppin’ now.”
you both laugh and he reaches down between you, hand wrapping around himself to line up.
you feel the blunt head nudge against you, sliding through the wet heat, and you suck in a breath. it’s hotter than you expected, and bigger feeling than looking.
“little bit at a time,” he mutters, mostly to himself.
just the tip breaches you when he pushes forward slowly, and you both freeze at the stretch.
“oh,” you gasp, fingers digging into his shoulders.
it doesn’t hurt exactly. it just feels full.
“you okay?” his voice is tight, like he’s holding back hard.
“yeah. just… a lot.”
“tell me about it,” he mutters and his laugh is breathy. “you’re so—tight. jesus.”
when you wiggle a little to try and adjust to him, he groans out loud. “don’t do that yet, doll, or this’ll be over before it starts.”
“sorry,” you whisper, but you’re smiling because he looks wrecked already, with his eyes squeezed shut.
he rocks forward another inch and you feel yourself open around him, the burn starting now. your legs spread wider on instinct, knees hitching up to go right around around his hips.
“more?” his voice cracks.
“yeah. keep going.”
he slowly slides forward, pulling back a tiny bit each time to ease the way, until he’s halfway in and you’re both sweating. you can feel every throb of him inside you, the way he twitches when you clench without meaning to.
“god, you feel—” he starts, then stops, shaking his head like his words are failing him.
“you too,” you manage. “like—like you belong there.”
surging forward, he buries the rest of him in one smooth push, and you both moan at the same time. he’s all the way in now, hips flush to yours, and you feel so full you could cry.
he stills, while panting against your neck. “tell me when,” he whispers. “i ain’t movin’ till you say.”
you take a minute to just breath deep, letting your body get used to him. you can feel the burn fading, turning into something else. it's a sort of pressure that feels good when you shift your hips experimentally.
“okay,” you say finally. “move. please.”
he pulls out damn slowly, almost all the way, then slides back in to the hilt. the drag feels incredible in every way, making you arch up into him.
“like that?” he asks, like he's seeking reassurance.
“yeah—again.”
he finds a rhythm, shallow at first, rocking more than thrusting, watching your face like it’s the only thing in the world. your heels dig into his back, urging him deeper.
“harder?” he asks after a few minutes, when your moans get louder.
you nod fast and whisper. “yeah. i won’t break, jamie.”
kissing you deep like he never wants to leave, he snaps his hips sharper. the bed creaks under you both, headboard tapping the wall, and you hope the neighbors are heavy sleepers.
you’re climbing again, that same feeling from his mouth but deeper now, wound tight around where he’s moving inside you.
your hands roam his back, nails scratching whatever slope of muscle you can find, earning a shudder from him.
“i love you,” he mutters against your lips, over and over like he can’t stop. “love you so damn much.”
“i love you too,” you gasp into his mouth, letting him eat your words right off your tongue. “always—always have.”
shifting his angle a little, he grinds against that spot inside you that makes you see stars. your whole body tightens around him, clenching so tight you don't know where you end and he begins.
“there—right there—don’t stop—”
he hammers that spot relentlessly, one hand snaking between you to rub messy circles over your clit. the pleasure coils brutal, tighter and tighter until you’re sobbing his name into his mouth.
“bucky—i’m—”
“yeah,” he pants. “me too—god, you’re squeezin’ me—”
you come hard, clenching around him in waves, crying out into his shoulder to muffle it. he follows right after you, burying deep and spilling hot inside you with a broken groan of your name.
you think maybe this is what all the songs are about, the ones on the radio that make your ma sigh and your pa roll his eyes. this shaky, perfect thing between you and your jamie, built on years of shared candy and secrets and now this. your bodies learning each other in your childhood bedroom.
he collapses half on top of you, careful not to crush you even as he comes down from his high. both of you are breathing like you ran from brooklyn to queens.
and that's when you feel him pulse, still inside you where he belongs..
when he's finally caught his breath, he lifts his head with hair plastered to his forehead. a goofy grin greets you. “so that’s the more, huh?”
swatting his arm yet agaun, “yeah. think i like the more.”
it was nothing like the first time he kissed you, but also everything like that at the same time.
he kisses you again lazily, tasting salt and you, and stays inside, softening slow, neither of you willing to break the join just yet.
the steady thump of his heart against yours lulls you, but you fight the pull of sleep because you don’t want this night to end, not ever. and right then, with him still buried deep and your legs tangled tight, the world outside the window feels a million miles away.
“so,” you say after a bit, staring at the ceiling where the streetlight paints stripes through the blinds. “that was… the real thing. not just fooling around in steve’s car with the windows fogged up.”
“yeah,” he breathes, fingers drawing lazy circles on your hip. “the real thing.” he pauses wondering whether to say or not, then adds, “better than any magazine ever made it look.”
you feel your face heat up again, even after everything. “you’re comparing me to those girls?”
he props himself up on an elbow. his eyes are wide and serious, like he's deciding whether to defend himself or apologise. “no! god, no. those girls ain’t got nothing on you. they’re just— paper. they're posed and fake. this—” he gestures between you, hand waving vague at your naked bodies under the sheets—“this was us. it's us being messy, loud and perfect.”
you smile at that, reaching up to wipe the sweat off his forehead. “you weren’t so quiet yourself, jamie. thought for sure you were gonna wake the whole neighborhood when you—”
“shut up,” he groans, flopping back down and hiding his face against your neck. but he’s laughing too, you can tell by the way his shoulders are shaking. “i couldn’ help it. you were squeezin’ me like—christ, i don’t even know.”
“like a lemon?” you tease.
"sweetheart, there's so many things you coulda said and you went with lemon?" he snorts.
heat crawls up to your neck, the way he's teasing you back, reminding you of how much you love him and want him. "oh no, jamie! now i wan' the lemonade they sell in coney island."
blue eyes stare back at you in earnest, "i'll get it first thing tomorrow morning, what do ya say?"
"yes," you let the enthusiasm get to you as you pepper kisses over his jaw.
he mimics your antics, then finds your lips like that's what he was destined for and pulls you in for a slower, hungrier, deeper kiss.
you tilt your head up, nose brushing his jaw. “now now, what's that for, barnes?”
he huffs this soft laugh that shakes his chest. “tryin’ to figure out how i got this lucky,” he says. “and also wonderin’ if i hurt you more than you’re lettin’ on.”
"you didn’t,” you quickly say, pressing your palm over his heart to feel it thump steadily under your hand. “i mean, it stung at first, yeah, but then it was… i don’t even have words, james. it was you inside me. that’s all i could think. not pain. just you.”
his eyes go soft, that blue you’ve known since you were six and he shared his popsicle with you on the stoop even though it was cherry and he loved cherry.
he leans down and kisses presses a lingering kiss to your forehead. “kept thinkin’ i was gonna wake up,” he admits quiet. “like this was one of those dreams i have where we’re older and married and i wake up reachin’ for you and you ain’t there yet.”
your throat gets tight. you hate those dreams for him. hate that he’s had them since he was sixteen and his pa started talking about the war like it was coming whether they wanted it or not.
“i’m here now,” you whisper. “not goin’ anywhere.”
he nods against your hair, but you feel the worry still clinging to him. bucky’s always carried tomorrow on his back. you figure tonight just added a few more. what if you get pregnant? what if he ships out? what if this was the only time you get?
you push the thoughts awaybecause they’re yours too and you don’t want them ruining this.
instead you think about how safe you felt even when it hurt a little, how his arms shook but he held himself so carefully over you. you think about the way he looked at you when he came inside. like you gave him something huge and sacred and he knows it.
“you’re thinkin’ loud,” he murmurs, lips against your temple.
“am not.”
“are too. i can hear the gears turnin’.” he pulls back enough to see your face, thumb brushing your cheek. “tell me.”
you hesitate, then let it out in a rush. “i keep thinkin’ about how much i love you it hurts sometimes. like right now my chest feels too small for it. and i’m scared that’s gonna make me cry and then you’ll think you did somethin’ wrong.”
his face does this thing. it goes soft and fierce at once. “cry if you want,” his voice goes rough. “i love you so much it hurts me too. been hurtin’ since we were kids and i didn’t know what to do with it except walk you home every day and carry your books.”
you feel the tears prick and blink fast to wish them away, but one slips out anyway. he catches it with his thumb, kisses the wet trail.
“happy tears?” he asks, like he's uncertain.
“the happiest,” you mean it when you say.
he settles back down, tucking you closer, and you listen to his heartbeat.
your own thoughts drift softer now. how his shoulders felt under your hands, the little sounds he made when he was close, the way he kept checking your face like your pleasure mattered more than his. you think about how clumsy you both were and how perfect it still felt.
you think maybe love isn’t just the big moments like this. maybe it’s the quiet after, when he’s tracing your spine and you’re counting his freckles and neither of you needs to say anything because you already know.
“jamie?” you whisper after a while.
“hm?”
“when we get married someday… can our bed be bigger than this one? my hip’s kinda hangin’ off the edge.”
he laughs, this big rumbling sound that shakes you both, and rolls so you’re on top of him instead. his hands settle on your back.
“deal,” he says. “biggest bed in brooklyn. and no creaky springs.”
“and no mrs. gallagher’s dog barking,” he adds.
you smile into his neck, listening to him make plans like tomorrow’s promised, and for tonight you let yourself believe it is.
after all, you will always have the perfect night with the love of your life. and nothing's more perfect than all your firsts belonging to him.
my masterlist!
extras. i just googled ‘attractive actor of the 1940s’ and got clark gable’s name, so i have no idea who he is 😭 also, in my head, the war never comes and these two babies live forever. 40s bucky is such a sweetheart, i love writing him sm 🥹
congressman!bucky x wife!diplomat!reader
⤷ matt murdock x reader
⸝⸝ SUMMARY — ❝ one week. that's what you agree to. one week for bucky barnes to prove that your marriage can still work. it should be simple. it never is.
because bucky starts taking up space in your life like he never left, and matt murdock never quite takes up enough. you already know how this should end. the divorce papers have been sitting in your drawer for two months, waiting. but you kept his side of the closet clear. you never put anything on his nightstand. and that, more than anything, is what gives you away. ❞ ⧽ 28.8k
！SMUT, p in v, semi-public sex, fingering, praise kink, oral sex (f receiving), manhandling, multiple orgasms, overstimulation, spit kink, pussy pronouns, dacryphilia, soft dom!bucky, bucky and reader are privately separated but publicly still married, love triangle (no cheating), second chance romance, idiots in love, avoidant!matt, possessive!bucky, bucky being an emotionally repressed idiot, he's also kind of manipulative at one point but reader chews him out for it, divorce babes, bucky grovelling til his knees are shredded, mutual pining, angst, alpine mention, bucky actually works on himself, a man who yearns is a man who earns, eventual happy ending, 18+ MDNI
⤷ from maddie: hello and welcome back to yappers anonymous (i mean it, there's so much dialogue in here). anyway, i'm really sorry for taking so long on this. but it's finally here, and i hope the word count makes up for the delay. i have really struggled with writers block while writing this, and i lowkey kind of hate it. but i really really hope you guys don't <3 » MASTERLIST » SERIES MASTERPOST ⟡˙⋆
The last guest leaves at half past midnight, and then there are no more excuses.
For the past two hours since leaving your office and slipping back into the ballroom like you hadn't just comprehensively undermined eight months of careful separation, you'd had the party. The party, with its noise and its obligations and its endless, mercifully absorbing requirement that you be on. All of it demanding just enough of your attention to make thinking about anything else logistically impossible. It had been, if nothing else, somewhere to put your face.
But now the guests are gone, the house has exhaled down to its bones, and the silence left behind is the kind that doesn't stay empty for long. You can already feel the thoughts beginning to squirm back in at the edges, insistently, like they've been waiting all evening with a numbered ticket and now it's finally their turn.
The whole room is still dressed and gleaming for an evening that was, by every external measure, a resounding success. But you are currently conducting a very focused internal audit of every decision you have made since approximately nine o'clock this evening.
The audit is not going well.
Returning to the party with your husband—ex-husband—Bucky, on your arm like you hadn't just left a significant proportion of your dignity scattered on your desk had been one thing. The way the evening had gone after was quite another.
Bucky had been insufferable, obviously. Warm in the particular way that reads as devoted husband from twelve feet away but as I have won something and we both know it in closer proximity. His arm became a fixed and immovable constant around your waist, metal hand pressing at the small of your back with the patient, territorial certainty of a man who has decided something and seen no reason to discuss it.
Matt had gone. You'd felt his absence around ten minutes in. The particular negative space of someone who has quietly removed themselves without making it anyone's problem. The only remnant of his presence was his champagne flute left half-finished on a windowsill you'd passed on the way to the speeches. You'd stared at it for a moment longer than you should have.
Bucky had noticed your mind drifting, of course. His thumb smoothed over your back - just a small, deliberate pressure that meant I see exactly where you're looking, and I'm still here. Stay. And you had, because the alternative was making a scene at your own event. And also because—well.
Because somewhere between the dinner and the second round of speeches, something had started happening that you hadn't authorised and couldn't entirely stop. You'd caught Bucky's eye over a comment from the Belgian ambassador and he gave you that faint, private smile in return - the shared language you developed years ago.
At one point he’d dipped his head to your ear to murmur something dry about one of the ministers, and you’d had to bite your cheek to keep from laughing. Bucky had looked down at you with those soft eyes he does when he's not thinking carefully enough about his own expression, and you'd looked away first. You were even finishing each other's sentences again without realising.
And by the time the last round of handshakes came, you'd stopped noticing the weight of his hand on your back and started noticing the absence of it when it left. If you clutched at straws, maybe you could convince yourself that this was just eight months of having nobody to lean into. That, and the fact your body had always been significantly stupider than your brain where Bucky Barnes was concerned. But truth of it was quieter and more inconvenient than any rationalisation you could construct: it had felt, humiliatingly, like home.
The audit is really not going well.
“Madam Ambassador.”
Thomas, your chief of staff, materialises at the foot of the stairs. Silent, eternal, and entirely too perceptive. A man who has worked in diplomatic residences long enough to have seen everything and professionally forgotten most of it.
“The last of the staff will be finished within the hour,” he offers. “Will there be anything else tonight?”
You open your mouth.
“That'll be all, Thomas, thank you.”
Bucky's voice comes from somewhere behind your left shoulder, easy and warm in the way of a man who has slipped right back into the domestic machinery of your shared life.
Thomas nods, unperturbed. “Very good, Congressman Barnes. Wonderful to have you back, sir. I've had your things brought up.”
Of course he has.
Because why wouldn't he? Congressman Barnes is visiting his wife, and that is a thing that happens, and the residence's household operates on the reasonable assumptions, none of which were consulted past you.
“Great, thanks Thomas.” You reply, and your voice comes out perfectly steady, which feels like a small miracle. “Goodnight.”
Thomas retreats. And then it is just the two of you, on the landing, in this enormous, beautiful house, at the end of the most profoundly strange evening of what has already been a profoundly strange year. Neither of you speaks for just a beat too long.
“Right,” Bucky says finally.
“Right,” you agree.
You head upstairs, and he follows, and the house closes around you both like it was always going to.
── ⟢ ₊ ☁️ ˚・🖋️ ⊹
The master bedroom is on the first floor, east wing, overlooking the gardens.
It's your favourite room in the house; twelve foot ceilings, original cornicing, sash windows that rattle faintly when the wind comes off the park. It even has an original, working fireplace and enough space that the four poster doesn't overwhelm it, which is saying something.
You have not, in the past eight months, shared it with anyone
The door closes behind you both with a soft, decisive click.
You set your clutch down on the dressing table. He's already shrugging off his jacket, moving through the room with the ease of a man whose muscle memory never got the memo that he left.
Like a man who has lived here. Like the months of absence were a minor administrative detail rather than anything worth adjusting for. Like a man who has decided - and this is the thing about Bucky, this has always been the thing - that simply resuming works better than discussing. That if he just continues, the awkward conversation about feelings never has to be raised.
He reaches up to loosen his tie, that automatic gesture you have watched a thousand times, and then just… stops.
The pause is small. Almost nothing. His hands still at his collar and there's the briefest flicker of something in his expression that looks almost like recalibration. Like a man who has been operating on instinct for the last several hours and has only just now checked in with his frontal lobe to ask if instinct is advisable right now.
You watch him start to process the situation in real time. The room. The two sides of the turned down bed. His coat already laid on his chair. His suitcase placed next to his left side of the bed, because your chief of staff doesn't forget anything, ever, including what side of the bed the Congressman sleeps on.
Bucky’s tongue drags briefly over his teeth. Then he looks up and meets your eyes in the mirror, and the silence that follows has the particular quality of two people clearly thinking about the same three or four things and not willing to be the first to name any of them.
“I can take the couch,” he offers carefully. Gesturing vaguely at the small sofa by the fireplace that is, objectively, six inches shorter than he is.
“Don't be ridiculous, you'll be folded in half,” you object. “I'll take it.”
“You won't fit either,” he points out.
“At least I'm smaller than you.”
“Well,” Bucky sighs flatly, “I'm not letting my wife sleep on a fucking loveseat.”
There it is again. Wife. The word he keeps wielding like a claim, like it still means what it used to. And it still lands the same. You hate that it does.
You hate the warm, stupid, entirely unwelcome thing it does somewhere behind your sternum. Because he's being impossible - he's been impossible all evening - and yet here he is, immovable on the subject of your comfort even while being the singular architect of your discomfort.
“Separated wife,” you correct, sharper than you intend, but one of you has to keep score here and it's clearly not going to be him.
He tilts his head, slow and deliberate, his eyes doing that thing where they get very still and very blue and very focused on your face.
“Didn't seem very separated a few hours ago when you were coming on my—”
“Don't.” You hold up a hand. “Do not finish that sentence in my bedroom.”
“Our bedroom,” he replies, and the audacity of it nearly makes you laugh.
“You haven't lived here in eight months,” you scoff.
“Yeah, well.” He looks around the room with something that might be fondness or might be smugness or might be both. “Doesn't seem to have changed much.”
And that's the problem, isn't it? Because he's right. You haven't changed anything. His nightstand is bare but still his; you've never put anything on it, never colonized that space. Even the closet still has the section you'd never quite gotten around to re-purposing, like some part of you had been keeping it warm. Keeping it ready.
The thought makes you feel pathetic and furious in equal measure.
“Well it's my bedroom now, and I'm telling you not to—” You stop yourself, jaw tight, because getting into this right now, at nearly one in the morning with him half-undressed, is absolutely not happening. “You know what? Fine. We're both adults. We can share a bed again without making it a thing.”
“I wasn't making it a thing.”
“You were absolutely making it a thing.”
“I was making an observation—”
“You were being an ass.”
His mouth twitches. Almost a smile. “Yeah, well. You married an ass.”
“Separated from an ass,” you correct sharply, moving toward your dresser with more force than necessary.
The muscle in his jaw strains. Pops, like he's physically holding something back, biting down on whatever else he was about to say.
“Fine.” He reaches up, resuming the work on his tie, fingers pulling the silk loose with deliberate, practised movements. “We'll be adults about it.”
“Fine,” you echo.
You yank open your pyjama drawer with more violence than it deserves, pulling out the silk set you'd bought months ago in a fit of reclamation. Expensive, modest, and nothing like the worn t-shirts you used to steal from him.
“Great.” The tie slides free. He starts on the top button of his shirt, then the next, movements slow and methodical. You catch yourself watching his fingers work the buttons with that same deft precision they had a few hours ago when they were working you open instead. Christ.
“Fine.” And the second it leaves your mouth you know you've made a tactical error, because—
“You already said fine.”
There it is.
“Well I'm saying it again.” You turn toward the bathroom. “Because we're being adults about this. Mature, reasonable adults who can share a sleeping space without any complications,” you finish firmly.
“Right. No complications.” His voice is dry, but not quite enough to hide the edge underneath. Something that sounds dangerously close to hurt. “We're real good at uncomplicated, you and me.”
You don't bother with a response. Just gather your things and head for the bathroom with all the dignity of a woman who is, essentially, fleeing. There's no other word for it. You're running away from your own husband in your own bedroom, and you both know it.
“I'm taking the bathroom first before I smother you with a pillow,” you announce.
“See, that doesn't sound very adu—”
You slam the bathroom door before he can finish that sentence, and the lock clicks with a satisfaction that's entirely petty and entirely warranted. Behind the door, you hear him huff a laugh. Something that might be fondness disguised as frustration and that particular stubborn amusement he gets when you're both being impossible.
He always claims not to get off on your verbal sparring. You know he's always lying.
Leaning back against the door, you finally let yourself breathe. Your reflection stares back from the mirror, still perfect from three hours of performance.
Except it's not really, is it? Because underneath the dress, you're still wearing the evidence of what you let him do. What you begged him to do.
You reach behind yourself for the zipper, fingers searching low on your back for the tab. The dress is one of those gorgeous, backless nightmares designed by someone who clearly never considered that women might need to undress themselves. Your fingers catch the zip and you pull, but it only moves an inch before jamming.
“Come on,” you mutter, twisting your arm lower. Your shoulder protests. The zip grudges down another half-inch before catching completely on some invisible fold of silk.
You try the other arm. Same failure, different angle.
“Fuck.”
You stare at your reflection. At the reality of your options, which is that you have exactly one and it's terrible.
“Bucky?” You call, quieter than intended, opening the door just enough to suggest he's being granted entry, however reluctantly.
A pause, and for a moment you're not sure he heard you. “Yeah?”
“I need help with my zip. It's stuck.”
You hear him cross the bedroom before the door opens the rest of the way, but he doesn’t step in immediately. There’s a pause, like he’s giving you the chance to change your mind, and then he crosses the threshold.
“Turn around.” It’s not quite an order, but your body responds to it anyway before your brain has the chance to argue. You pivot, presenting your back to him, fingers braced lightly against the edge of the counter.
You feel him step in behind you, close enough that the heat of him registers before anything else does. Your breath stutters, traitorous, and you fix your eyes on your reflection. His hands come into view in the mirror a second later. One settles lightly at your waist, just enough to still the fabric, the other finding the zipper with careful fingers.
His breath grazes the back of your neck as the zip finally gives and slides down, and every nerve ending along your spine lights up. His hands still for just a moment, a beat that lasts slightly longer than it should, and the bathroom is very quiet. For a second, it feels dangerously like the easiest thing in the world to lean back that last inch. To close the distance without naming it. To let instinct run the show again, just for a moment.
But then his fingers flex, and he lets go. He steps back, and the air between you is breathable again.
“Got it.” He clears his throat.
“Thank you.”
“Yeah, of course.” he replies, slightly unsteady, and then he's gone.
You stare at the closed bathroom door for a moment longer before finally forcing yourself to move.
The shower is too cold once you turn it on and step beneath it. But you linger under the spray anyway, letting it work down your shoulders, washing the evidence of the evening - of him - away until the water runs clear. At least your IUD means this is the extent of the cleanup. But sooner than you'd like what little heat there is fades, the old pipes protesting. Damn old house.
You towel off. Perform your entire nighttime routine with robotic habit, because anything else means thinking, and thinking is dangerous right now. Toner. Serum. Moisturiser. You find a loose thread on your sleeve and fiddle with it. You reorganise nothing on the counter and call it tidying.
Eventually, you run out of tasks.
The bedroom is waiting on the other side of the door.
Bucky's sitting on his side of the bed - when did you start thinking of it as his side again? - in nothing but his boxer briefs, scrolling through his phone with the blank expression of a man who is absolutely not reading anything.
He's kept himself in shape. Of course he has. Super soldier serum aside, Bucky's always been disciplined about training.But there’s more weight on him than last time you saw him - broader through the shoulders, softer in some areas. It suits him unfairly well. Fills him out in a way that makes him look less like a weapon and more like a man who’s taking care of himself.
The thought makes something warm bloom in your chest, and your gaze lingers long enough to catch on the scars at his left shoulder, where metal meets flesh. The scars there are unchanged, a familiar map you’d once known by touch rather than sight.
He looks up when you emerge, and his gaze tracks over you with an intensity that makes your skin prickle.
“Bathroom's yours,” you manage.
He slips into the bathroom without another word. You climb into bed, trying to stay as far to your side as physically possible. You shift. Adjust the pillow. Shift again. Can't find the position you normally sleep in, and you’re still awake when Bucky reemerges.
The mattress dips under his weight. You do your best impression of a woman who is already asleep, which would be more convincing if he hadn’t spent the better part of three years sleeping next to you. If he didn't know exactly how your breathing changes when sleep actually takes you. He doesn't call you on it. Just settles back against the pillows with a soft exhale that says he knows exactly what you're doing.
The residence settles around you both. The old Georgian silence, where the radiators tick, the pipes groan, and the old timber relaxes.
You can hear him breathing. Feel the heat radiating off his body across the sheets, your whole right side hyper-aware of it. The bed that felt cavernously large when you slept alone suddenly feels impossibly small. Every nerve insisting on registering his presence with an enthusiasm you find deeply unhelpful.
“We should probably talk,” he states, though there’s not real conviction behind it.
“I'm tired, Bucky.”
A pause. You can practically hear him deciding whether to push.
“Yeah,” he concedes, something resigned in his voice. “Me too.”
He reaches over and turns off his bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness. The bed shifts as he settles onto his side, facing away from you. And then it's just the sound of his breathing, evening out into an easy slumber.
Which is something. Because for a long time, sleep was a thing Bucky Barnes did badly. You’d learnt that slowly, through observation, the way you did most things about him in the early months. Through the careful cataloguing of details he wouldn't offer freely. The nightmares. The insomnia. The tense stillness that only came from someone forcing themselves to lie motionless, hoping you wouldn’t notice. Which you always did, and pretended you hadn’t.
Because pressing would've sent him retreating behind walls you were only just beginning to see past. So you'd just held him tighter and let him figure out you weren't going anywhere.
Over time his body learnt yours. Your warmth. Your weight beside him. The rhythm of your heartbeat. Something in him that had been braced for decades finally started to let go. He'd started reaching for you in his sleep without waking. Started sleeping past five a.m., then six. Once, memorably, past nine, and he'd surfaced so bewildered by his own rested state that he’d just stared at you like you’d performed some kind of miracle.
It's particularly memorable, your heart unhelpfully supplies, because it’s the exact moment you knew you were in love with him.
He used to say you were the only place he didn't have to be on guard.
Used to.
You'd worried about that, those first few months after you separated. Whether he was sleeping at all in that sterile DC apartment. Whether the nightmares had crept back in without you there. Whether he lay awake at three a.m, every muscle held just a little too tight, waiting for something that never quite came. You'd tried not to feel guilty about it. Failed, mostly.
Beside you, Bucky makes a small sound and shifts.
It's drowsy, unconscious, seeking you out in a way his waking self wouldn’t authorize. His body curves toward yours, closing the distance between you with the same inevitability as a plant tipping toward sunlight. It’s like his nervous system runs through a quick inventory - familiar warmth, familiar scent, familiar body - and just defaults back to you like coming home.
Which is deeply inconvenient knowledge to possess while you're actively trying to remember all the very good reasons you separated in the first place.
His face has even softened in that devastating way where it sheds the mask and just looks like Bucky. The real one. The version that doesn’t belong to the Congressman, or the ex-assassin. The one that you’ve probably spent more time with than anyone else alive.
You are absolutely not thinking about how much you've missed that face. You are not.
Instead, you think about Matt.
The thing is, you don't know exactly what you owe Matt, which is in itself a fairly damning summary of where you'd arrived. Two months. Easy, fun, uncomplicated in the way that things are when neither person is asking too much or offering too much and the arrangement suits them both. You'd liked him. You do like him. He's brilliant and funny and present, in the straightforward way that had felt so startling after months of press releases and assistant-mediated contact.
But he hadn't committed. Neither had you. That had been the point, or at least the operating premise.
So, the question of guilt.
Do you owe Matt anything that would make tonight a transgression? You'd not made promises. The terms, such as they were, had been deliberately unspecified, which had felt like freedom at the time and feels significantly more complicated now.
And, of course, there’s no way he hadn’t heard everything.
That is the part you keep arriving at and then shying away from like a horse refusing a jump, because there is no version of that in which you come off well. Matt Murdock, who can hear a heartbeat from across a room, absolutely heard every single thing that happened in your office tonight. Every word. Every sound. Every moment of two people who were supposed to be separated doing a fairly comprehensive impression of the opposite.
He'd left without saying anything. You don't know whether that makes it better or worse. You suspect worse.
You're going to have to talk to him. You're going to have to talk to him, and you're going to have to figure out what tonight was, and what the past eight months of separation actually mean in practice versus on paper.
You're going to have to stand in front of Matt and have some version of a conversation you cannot currently outline because every time you try to construct the opening sentence your brain just goes quiet and offers you nothing except a replay of Bucky's mouth hot against your throat, and the rough edge of his voice when he called you his pretty wife.
Next to you, Bucky’s forehead comes to rest against your shoulder - tucked against you like something that simply found its way back to where it was always going to end up. Your chest does something you'd really rather it didn't.
You look at the ceiling for a long time, listening to your husband breathe, and try not to think about how natural this feels.
How terrifying that is. How much you've missed it. How angry you are that you've missed it.
Eventually, because the ceiling has offered no solutions and your body has been quietly conspiring with Bucky's for the past twenty minutes, you drift off next to him.
── ⟢ ₊ ☁️ ˚・🖋️ ⊹
You reach for him before you're properly awake.
Your hand finds cold sheets, and the humiliation of that is enough to finish the job of waking you up completely.
For a moment you just lie there, staring at the indent in his pillow, at the covers thrown back on his side. Processing the faint sense of abandonment that has absolutely no right to exist given that you spent half the night wishing he'd spontaneously relocate to a different continent.
The shower in the en-suite isn't running. The dressing room is quiet. He's not here. You lie there for a moment, taking stock of the specific variety of idiot you are. Then you get up.
Twenty minutes later you're dressed and heading downstairs with the grim determination of a woman about to reclaim her life and her sanity. The sound of voices reach you before you make it to the breakfast room. Two of them - your aide's quick, efficient register, and underneath it, lower, Bucky's.
You stop in the doorway.
Bucky's sitting at the table looking unfairly well-rested, already dressed in one of his perfectly tailored suits. Your aide - Caroline - sits across from him, laptop open, notepad beside it, wearing the expression of someone who has been efficiently charmed into full co-operation and hasn't quite noticed yet. Papers are open between them. His handwriting is on some of them.
When you walk into the room, they both look up. Caroline smiles, bright and professional. Bucky's smile is slower, warmer, with an edge of something that makes your spine stiffen on instinct.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” he greets, and you immediately don’t trust his tone. “Sleep well?”
You manage a smile that doesn't reach your eyes. “Fine, thank you.”
“Morning,” your aide adds brightly, already turning the laptop toward you. “Perfect timing actuall—”
“What is all this?” you interject, a little sharper than you intend, crossing to the coffee pot because you need something to do with your hands.
“Just some press co-ordination,” Bucky shrugs, like it’s obvious. Like obviously your time belongs to him whenever he's in town. “We thought it made sense, while I'm here. The Times have been wanting a piece for a while, and with the summit coverage still running there's a window to get some good visibility.”
Your aide nods with the enthusiasm of someone utterly oblivious to the tension crystallizing in the air. “It's perfect actually, I've already reached out to a few contacts. We've got the charity reception Friday, a lunch Thursday that Lord Johnson’s been requesting for months, then the Atlantic Council meeting on Wednesday - that'll be good for photos if you both attend together - then tomorrow—.”
“Wait.” You set your cup down carefully. “Wednesdays I meet with our legal counsel.”
There's a small pause. Your aide's fingers hover over the keyboard.
“Mr. Murdock?” Caroline glances at her notes. “That’s been pushed back,” she says, slightly carefully.
You look at her. “To when?”
“These press things have tight windows,” Bucky interjects smoothly, with an expression of such reasonable, considered sympathy that you could scream. “Visibility with the right people, good for both our offices. You know how it is.” The faintest tilt of his head. “I'm sure Murdock will understand that these things take priority.”
There is a very specific register that Bucky uses when he has already made a decision and is presenting it as a collaborative discussion, and this is unmistakably it.
“Especially,” he continues, and you have to bite your cheek so you don’t say something you’ll regret, “given the transatlantic tensions recently. It's important we present a unified front. As husband and wife.”
The words land exactly how he means them to. A reminder. A claim. You know exactly what he’s doing because he’s not even trying to be subtle.
He's monopolised your entire week, filled every available slot with joint appearances. Between your existing obligations and everything he's just loaded into your schedule, there isn't a single free hour left for the meeting with Matt that you both know isn't really about legal counsel.
“And tomorrow,” Caroline ploughs on, bless her completely oblivious soul, “you'd originally blocked out for paperwork, but the round-table is invitation-only and they specifically requested both of you, so—”
“So you've just... rewritten my entire week.” You hear yourself say. Your smile is so tight it might shatter.
“Optimized.” Bucky corrects gently.
His eyes meet yours across the table, and the look in them is pure, undiluted victory. And the worst part? He's not even wrong. These are important events. You should attend them together. From any objective standpoint, his logic is flawless. Any attempt at protesting would make you look like you're prioritizing the wrong things.
Which is exactly what makes it so infuriating.
“Will there be anything else?” you ask, voice perfectly professional. “I have a meeting I’m already running late for.”
“I think that covers it,” Caroline says brightly. “Oh, the German Ambassador's office called about scheduling a—”
“Send me the details,” you interrupt. “I'll review them later.”
You pick up a croissant from the breakfast spread. Turn to leave.
“Sweetheart?”
You stop. Take deep breath. Don't turn around. “Yes?”
“I was thinking we could have lunch later. Just the two of us. Prep ourselves for the busy week ahead.”
The audacity. The sheer, breathtaking audacity.
You turn back, smile still in place. “Sounds perfect, why don’t you come by my office later?”
“Absolutely.” His smile widens. “It's a date.”
You leave the residence before you turn your private separation into a very public spectacle involving thrown pastries, taking your fury with you to the embassy where it promptly gets buried under the weight of your actual job.
The morning is a blur of meetings that run long and emails that multiply faster than you can answer them. Trade briefings that should take thirty minutes stretch to fifty. Security updates that require your signature on six different documents. A conference call with State that goes in circles for forty minutes before anyone agrees on anything. Your assistant has brought you coffee twice, and both cups have gone cold on your desk untouched.
You're mid-sentence in a response to the German Ambassador's office when there's a knock at your door.
“Come in,” you call, not looking up, assuming it's another briefing packet or someone from the communications team.
The door opens. You register the footsteps, the soft tap of a cane, before the voice.
“Busy morning?”
Your head snaps up so fast you nearly give yourself whiplash.
Matt's standing in the doorway, one hand on his cane, the other tucked into his pocket. His expression is pleasant and unreadable in that way he does when he's being very deliberate about not showing what he's actually thinking.
Fuck.
This would've been significantly easier with some advance notice. A text, or an email, or a calendar invite titled “Discuss Why You Disappeared Into Your Office With Your Supposed Ex-Husband”. Anything that would've given you more than zero seconds to figure out what the hell you're supposed to say right now.
You've walked into treaty negotiations with less anxiety. Those at least came with agendas. Preparation time. The basic courtesy of knowing they were happening before you were actively in them.
“Matt.” Your brain scrambles for words, or literally anything useful. “Hi. I didn't—I wasn't expecting—”
“Noticed your calendar got significantly fuller since yesterday,” he observes mildly, tilting his head. There's no accusation in his tone, but you hear the question underneath it anyway. “Lot of joint appearances suddenly.”
Heat crawls up your neck. You're aware, abruptly, of how you must look - harried, distracted, still half-focused on the email you were writing. “Yes,” you manage. “I'm sorry. I wanted to—I meant to call, I just haven't had a second to—”
“It's fine.” He steps into the office properly, and your heart kicks harder in your chest, whether it’s dread or want, you’re not entirely sure. “It's your lunch break now though, isn't it? We could grab something. Talk about last night.”
Oh god. Suddenly the conference call that went in circles for forty minutes seems appealing by comparison.
“Matt,” you start, but you don't even know where that sentence is going. Because what can you even say? My husband is systematically cutting you out of my life and I'm clearly too much of a coward to stop him?
“I'm not—” He stops, and there's a light sigh before his lips press together in that particular way he does when he's choosing his words carefully. “I'm not trying to make this difficult. I just think we should probably talk about where things stand. Clear the air.”
You scramble find words that don't make this exponentially worse. “It's complicated.”
“Is it?” There's an edge to his voice now, however faint. “Or is it actually pretty straightforward and we're both just avoiding saying it out loud?”
You're trying to formulate something that resembles an answer when you hear the distinct cadence of footsteps you’d recognise anywhere, coming down the hall towards your office.
“There you are, sweetheart.”
Your stomach drops straight through the floor and keeps going.
Bucky appears in the doorway, looking between you and Matt with an expression of polite surprise that would be convincing if you didn't know him well enough to see the calculation behind it.
“Oh, Murdock,” he greets, as though he's only just noticed Matt standing there. “Didn't realise you were stopping by.”
“Congressman Barnes,” Matt turns slightly, angling toward Bucky's voice. “Just thought I'd see if the Ambassador was free for lunch, because it seems like her schedule's quite full.”
“Yeah, it's a busy week,” Bucky agrees easily, stepping into the office properly now. Not quite crowding, but definitely occupying space between you both. “We've got lunch plans actually. Lots to catch up on - isn't that right, doll?”
You're still sitting at your desk, frozen, watching this happen like you're observing it from outside your own body. The air in the office has gone thick and uncomfortable, the silence stretching just a beat too long.
Matt's expression hasn't changed, but you can see the slight tension in his jaw. The way his hand tightens fractionally on his cane; he knows exactly what's happening here
“Right,” you manage finally. “Yes. We're—it’s a working lunch. Coordinating the rest of the week.”
“A working lunch,” Matt repeats, and you can't tell if there's an edge to it or if your guilt is adding subtext that isn’t there.
“You know how it is,” Bucky adds. “Just making sure we're aligned before all the joint appearances. Tedious stuff, really.”
Bucky’s still smiling. Matt's still standing there. You're still trying to remember how to breathe normally.
“Of course,” Matt says after a moment. “I should let you both get to it then.”
“We could reschedule,” you start, but the words feel hollow even as you're saying them. “Later this week, maybe—”
“Your calendar looked pretty full,” Matt interrupts. “But sure. Have your people call my people.”
The formality of it stings more than it should. Like he's already pulling back, already creating space between you that wasn't there before.
“Matt—”
“It's fine.” he assures, though it doesn’t sound fine. It sounds like a door closing. Or maybe you're imagining that too - there's nothing in his voice you can parse clearly. “Really, enjoy your lunch.”
You want to say something else. Want to explain, or apologise, or do literally anything to make this less excruciating. But the words stick in your throat, and Matt's already shifting toward the door into the hallway, and Bucky's just standing there, absolutely not trying to hide his satisfaction.
“Ready to go?” Bucky asks.
“I just need to freshen up,” you reply. “Give me two minutes. I'll meet you downstairs.”
It's a transparent excuse and you both know it. But you need air. You need thirty seconds where you're not feeling like you’re being pulled apart at the seams. You grab your bag and slip out after Matt, turning the opposite direction toward the bathrooms, leaving Bucky alone in your office. Which is possibly the worst decision you could have made, you realise, but you can't exactly turn around now.
Behind you, Bucky watches you disappear around the corner. Waits patiently until your heels clicking fades down the corridor. Then he moves.
Matt's halfway down the corridor when Bucky catches up.
“Murdock.”
Matt stops mid-stride. There's a fractional hesitation where his shoulders stiffen before he turns. His expression has shed whatever careful pleasantness he'd been wearing in your office. What's left is cooler. Bucky stops a respectful distance away, hands loose at his sides. Everything about his posture says this is just two professionals having a friendly discussion.
“I think we should talk,” he begins. “Briefly.”
Matt's expression doesn't change. “About?”
“About boundaries.” Bucky asserts, though his tone is reasonable - almost apologetic, even. Like this is an awkward position he’s been forced into rather than something he’s orchestrating. “Look, I'm going to be direct here. My wife and I are working through things. Trying to figure out what we want going forward. And I think—Well, I think it would be easier if we had some space to do that without other complications.”
Matt tilts his head slightly, and there's something almost amused in the gesture. “And by complications you mean me.”
“I’m not trying to be a dick about this, I'm just asking you to back off for a while. Let us have the space we need as we get back to where we were.” It comes out steady, but Bucky’s heart rate betrays him. That telltale spike that means he’s not being entirely truthful. Matt catalogues the lie for what it is. “It's been a difficult few months, but we're in a good place now.”
“And she's aware of this? The working things out?”
Bucky's jaw tightens. “We're on the same page about what matters.”
“Wow,” Matt scoffs softly, a disbelieving smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “That’s what you’re telling yourself?”
Bucky goes still, but Matt hears the minute hitch in his breathing anyway. The slight shift in his heartbeat as he re-calibrates, trying to decide whether Matt actually knows something or if he’s bluffing.
When Bucky speaks again, there’s bite to his tone, the pleasantness veneer starting to crack around the edges.
“My relationship with my wife isn't really your concern.”
“It is when I’ve been sleeping with her the past two months.”
Bucky’s mouth pulls into something mean immediately, his expression hardening as the last scraps of diplomacy finally burn off. Any pretence of this being a civil conversation is entirely gone.
“And yet those two months didn’t seem to mean much last night, did they? I hadn’t even been back three hours, that must sting a little.”
The barb lands. Matt's jaw tightens, but he doesn't take the bait.
“You know, if push her into something she doesn't actually want—”
“I know my wife.”
“Do you?” Matt asks, and there's just enough lift in it to make it a real question but not quite enough warmth to make it a polite one. “Because despite what you think, two months ago she didn't seem like someone who was waiting around for you to come back.”
Bucky's hands flex. “Meaning?”
“Meaning she built a life here without you in it,” Matt states, matter of fact. “And sleeping with her and monopolising her calendar doesn’t undo that, no matter how much you want it to.”
That lands differently. Bucky's mouth presses into a thin line as he tries to find his footing again. Tries to figure out how to wrestle the conversation back under his control. But Matt's already turning away, done with whatever this was.
“Next time you want to have a conversation about boundaries, Congressman,” he tosses back over his shoulder, “maybe try having it with her first.”
Then he's gone, footsteps receding down the hallway, leaving Bucky standing alone with the distinct feeling that he didn't win that exchange nearly as cleanly as he'd intended.
He stands there for a moment, trying to sort through what just happened. Matt's parting shot sits uncomfortably in his chest, because that’s what he’s trying to fix, isn’t it? Except maybe Murdock has a point about the method.
He straightens his jacket. Rolls his shoulders back. Whatever. He has lunch with his wife, and Matt Murdock can go back to whatever law firm he crawled out of.
Bucky makes it down to the entrance hall,checking his phone more out of habit than any real interest in the messages accumulating there. When he hears your footsteps on the stairs, he looks up, and something in his chest loosens slightly. At least he has this. This week. That has to count for something.
He straightens as you approach, and there's something careful in the way his eyes track over your face, like he's bracing for whatever mood you're bringing down those stairs with you.
“Ready?” He asks, aiming for casual but it doesn't quite land.
“Do I have a choice?” The question comes with a raised brow. You don’t slow down as you reach him, just brush past toward the door.
“You always have a choice.” He falls into step beside you, hands sliding into his pockets.
“Funny,” you return, pushing through the door without waiting for him to open it. “Doesn't feel like it this week.”
Wisely, he chooses not to argue. Instead, he follows you out into the grey London afternoon, the kind of day where the sky can't decide if it wants to commit to rain or just make everyone miserable with the threat of it.
The walk is silent - not the comfortable kind. Bucky keeps his hands in his pockets because if he doesn't, they'll instinctively search for your waist or the small of your back or some other familiar place they've been gravitating toward for years. And that Velcro instinct to maintain contact feels entirely unhelpful given the current temperature between you.
The restaurant Bucky chose is one of those discreet places where ministers go to have conversations they'd rather not have overheard. The kind with enough distance from other diners that you could have an argument without making it everyone's business. Not that you're planning to argue. You're planning to get through this lunch, get through this week, and then figure out what the hell your life is supposed to look like when your ex-husband stops playing whatever game this is.
You both settle into your seats. Pick up menus you don't really look at. You order a salad you won't finish, and he gets something with chicken. The waiter retreats, and you're left with the silence again, which is starting to feel like a third presence in your relationship. Bucky's doing that thing where he looks like he's about to say something, then doesn't, his jaw working slightly like he's testing out sentences in his head before committing to them out loud.
“Just say it,” you offer eventually, unfolding your napkin with more attention than the action requires.
His eyes snap up, sheepish. “Say what?”
“Whatever it is you've been composing since we sat down.”
He huffs a breath that might be amusement. Looks down at his water glass, turning it slightly on the table, before looking back up at you through his lashes with that rare, almost boyish uncertainty. When he speaks, his voice is quieter than you're expecting.
“I know you're pissed about the calendar.”
“Observant.” The word comes out flat, edged with sarcasm. “What gave it away? The part where I barely spoke to you on the walk over, or the part where I'm sitting here looking like I'd rather be anywhere else?”
His mouth twitches, but he doesn't smile. “I should've asked first.”
“Yes. You should’ve.”
“I didn't think you'd say yes if I asked.”
The honesty of it catches you off guard. You look up, and he's watching you with an expression you can't quite parse. Like he's trying to gauge how much damage control he needs to do, but it's coming off more hesitant than calculated.
“Would you have?” he presses.
“We'll never know now, will we?”
The waiter arrives with water. You both fall silent until he leaves. Bucky exhales through his nose. His fingers drum once against the table before going still, like he's physically stopping himself from fidgeting.
“Look, I know I've been—” He stops. Starts again. “The past year has been shit. And I know that's on me.”
You weren't expecting that. You were expecting deflection, or charm, or strategic redirection. Not this.
“I let the distance grow,” he continues, not quite meeting your eyes. “Got buried in DC and the constant fucking politics of it all. And somewhere in there I stopped picking up the phone. Stopped making time. Started letting my assistant filter everything because it was easier than dealing with how far apart we'd gotten.”
“You suggested the separation,” you point out, voice flat. “You're the one who said no strings, no hard feelings.”
“I know.”
“You made it impossible for me to reach you and then acted like the distance was mutual.”
“I know,” he repeats, and there's something tighter in his voice now. “And I'm not saying that was fair. It wasn't. It was cowardly. But I'm here now.”
“For a week.” You lean back in your chair, arms crossing. “And you got here by hijacking my calendar instead of just asking me to talk.”
“We're talking now.”
You sigh, or maybe it's closer to an exhale of pure exasperation. Your gaze lifts to the ceiling for a brief moment like you're asking for divine patience.
“Bucky—”
“Okay,” he concedes, hands lifting briefly in surrender before he shifts forward, elbows coming to rest on the table. “I know monopolizing your schedule was a shit way to go about it, but I miss you.” He looks down at his hands, then back up at you. “I miss us. I miss you being the first person I want to tell things to. And I want to prove that we can still do this. That I can be here, when it matters.”
The words settle in the space between you, complicated and messy and not nearly enough to fix everything that's broken. It's nowhere near enough.
You want to stay angry. Want to hold onto the fury that's been building since this morning, or since last night, or over the past year, really. But there's something in his voice that sounds like actual regret, and you're so tired of being angry all the time. It's more than he's said in months, and that matters more than it should.
“So this is what, exactly?” you ask, trying to stay firm. “An audition? A demonstration?”
“It's me trying.” It’s a simple confession, like he’s run out of polished answers, and this is all he has left.
The food arrives. You both go quiet while the waiter sets down plates and refills water and does all the small choreographed movements of service. Once he's gone, you pick up your fork without any real intention of eating.
“You hijacked my week, Bucky. You coordinated with my staff behind my back and filled my schedule so I couldn't—” You stop yourself before you finish that sentence, but he finishes it anyway.
“So you couldn't see Murdock.”
“So I couldn't make my own choices,” you correct sharply.
He has the grace to look slightly abashed. Slightly. “Fair enough.”
“Is it? Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like the same pattern. You can't just show up and expect—”
“It’s not—“ He stops, looking for the right words. “Okay. Maybe. But just let me show you I can be present. That we still work as a team.” His voice is steady now, certain. “The rest of it, we can figure that out. Just give me this week, please.”
You should say no. You should tell him that orchestrating your life without your consent isn't how you rebuild trust. That half-apologies that don’t actually contain an apology don't undo eight months of distance. That you can't just paper over everything with joint appearances and pretty words.
But he's looking at you so earnestly that it makes you hesitate. And the treacherous truth is that you're tired. Tired of being angry, tired of navigating this alone, tired of lying in that too-big bed and pretending you don't notice the empty space beside you.
And it would be so much easier to just... let this be easy.
“One week,” you hear yourself say.
Something in his face softens. His posture shifts, only slightly, but you catch it. Relief, maybe. Or victory. Hard to tell which. “Yeah?”
“One week of actually showing up. And then we talk. Really talk. About all of it.” You hold his gaze. “And I mean everything, Bucky. The separation, the distance, why we're even doing this. No more avoiding the hard conversations.”
“Deal.”
The silence that follows is different. Still weighted, but less hostile. More like you're both feeling your way toward something that used to be natural and isn't anymore.
“So,” Bucky says, moving food around his plate. “How bad is Lord Johnson actually going to be on Thursday?”
Despite yourself, you almost laugh. “Unbearable. He's going to lecture you about trade policy superiority while asking for concessions.”
“So exactly like last time.”
“Mhm,” you agree, finally taking a bite of your salad. “Except now he's also upset about the tariffs, so add that to his list of grievances. Plus he's developed this tendency to touch people when he talks. Very hands-on.”
Bucky's eyebrow raises, fork pausing halfway to his mouth. “Should I be worried?”
“About Lord Johnson making a move?” You can't quite keep the smirk off your face. “I think your virtue's safe.”
“I meant about him pawing at you for two hours.”
There's an edge of possession in his tone that should irritate you. Instead it does something warm and stupid in your chest. You take another bite, buying yourself a moment. “I can handle Lord Johnson.”
“I know you can.” He pauses. “Doesn't mean you should have to.”
You shrug. “If he tries it with me, I'm elbowing him in the ribs.”
“I'll back you up. You sneezed, he was unfortunately in the blast radius, these things happen.”
You take a sip of water to cover the fact that you're almost smiling. This is the problem. This is exactly the problem. Two minutes of actual honesty and you're already slipping back into familiar patterns, already falling back into the easy rhythm of banter and knowing looks.
“Morrison might be at the Atlantic Council thing tomorrow,” you mention, trying to redirect to safer ground.
Bucky groans. “He's going to corner me about the infrastructure bill again.”
“Probably. He's been insufferable about it since the committee hearing.”
“Well, I've gotten very good at the diplomatic non-answer.” His mouth curves slightly. “Take it under advisement, appreciate the input, look forward to continued dialogue—”
“You learnt that from me.” You point your fork at him accusingly, though there's no real heat in it.
“I learnt most of the useful stuff from you.” He says it like it's simple fact, but something in his expression has gone softer.
The admission sits there between you, heavier than it should be. You look down at your plate, suddenly very focused on rearranging lettuce.
“You really think this will work?” you ask quietly, not looking up. “This week?”
“I think when we're together, we're still good at this. The partnership part. That has to count for something.”
It's not an answer to the bigger question. But maybe it's the only answer either of you has right now.
You eat in silence for a moment, but it's different now. Less hostile. Almost comfortable. Your phone buzzes. You glance down, it’s another email from Caroline about tomorrow's schedule. When you look back up, Bucky's watching you with an expression you can't quite read.
You eye him suspiciously. “What?”
“Nothing. Just...” He shakes his head slightly, but he's almost smiling. “I missed this.”
“Yeah,” you admit, quieter than you mean to. “Me too.”
And you have, you realise. Not just him - though that's there too, complicated and inconvenient as it is - but this. The ease of being with someone who knows you well enough that you don't have to explain every reference or thought. Who can read your expressions without words. Who makes you laugh even when you're furious with them.
It doesn't fix anything. Doesn't undo the eight months or the separation or the fact that you still haven't actually addressed any of the reasons you split in the first place. But for right now, sitting across from your husband in a quiet corner of a restaurant where nobody's watching, it feels like maybe, just maybe, you can remember why you married him in the first place.
Even if that's exactly the problem.
── ⟢ ₊ ☁️ ˚・🖋️ ⊹
The week unfolds with a momentum you can't quite control, each day bleeding into the next in a blur of meetings that run too smoothly, dinners where the conversations flow too easily, and nights where he sleeps in your bed like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
By Wednesday you're laughing at his jokes again without the bitter edge. By Thursday his hand at your waist feels less like a claim and more like an anchor. The Times runs their profile on your relationship - ‘A Political Partnership That Works’ - pulling photos from the week's events. You're flipping through them absently when the pattern registers. Different events, different rooms, different contexts. But in every frame, Bucky’s eyes are always fixed on you.
Oh.
You save the photos to your phone, which is its own kind of problem.
Matt's name sits in your contacts with no new messages. Of course, you're not keeping score of his silence against Bucky's constant presence. That would imply there’s a competition between them. Which there definitely isn’t.
To be fair, Caroline did mention his office called about rescheduling. You said you'd handle it. You didn’t.
Matt hadn’t chased the issue after that. Which is, objectively, the respectful thing to do. Matt never demands more than you freely offer him, which had once felt refreshingly uncomplicated. Lately, though, you’re starting to wonder if there’s a difference between being understanding and simply never fighting for a place in someone’s life.
Maybe Matt only knows how to want you in situations where wanting you remains easy.
By Friday morning you're walking back from the Canadian delegation breakfast, Bucky's telling some story that has you laughing hard enough that your sides hurt, and for a dangerous moment you forget about the separation. About the ocean's width of distance - literal and otherwise - that usually sits between you. That Sunday he leaves and you have to figure out what any of this actually meant.
But that's fine. You're exceptional at compartmentalizing. You've had years of practice at keeping different parts of your life in separate boxes that never touch. The fact that the boxes are getting harder to keep closed is something you'll worry about later.
Or at least, it should be, because right now you have a meeting that got squeezed into your calendar this morning that you need to prep for. But you can't seem to focus on the sparse notes that Caroline left you because your brain keeps drifting back to the way Bucky’s hand found yours under the table this morning and you let it stay there.
A knock at the door pulls you from the spiral.
“Come in,” you call, straightening slightly in your chair, trying to look like you've been doing something productive instead of staring at the same paragraph for ten minutes.
The door opens, and the distinctive tap of a cane against tile makes your stomach twist before you even look up.
Matt's standing in your doorway. Again. Appearing when you’re utterly unprepared to see him. Again. And you’re going to have to push him away. Again.
If the universe is trying to teach you something by replaying this week until you stop making catastrophically bad decisions, the lesson is lost on you.
“Matt.” You're already half-standing, the words tumbling out before you can stop them. “I'm so sorry, I have a meeting in—” you glance at your screen, at the calendar slot that's starting right now, “—I can't, I have to—”
“I know,” he interrupts, and there's something almost amused in his expression as he steps into the office properly. “I'm your meeting.”
Your eyebrow raises slowly. “You faked a meeting to see me?”
“Well, since your husband's been so thorough about cutting me out of your calendar all week,” he returns smoothly, closing the door behind him with a quiet click, “it seemed like the only way in.”
There's a joke there, light and easy, but underneath it there's definitely an edge. A deserved one, maybe. The guilt that's been sitting low in your stomach all week flares hot and immediate. “Matt, I should have called. I meant to, I just—the week got away from me, and I didn’t mean to disappear—”
“You didn't disappear,” Matt corrects mildly. “You've been very visible, actually. Hard to miss when you're in three different political newsletters looking very much like the devoted political wife.”
The observation lands with enough weight that you have to look away. Matt moves closer, leaning against the edge of your desk with his arms crossed loosely, head tilted in that particular way that means he's cataloguing everything you’re not saying. Your elevated heart rate. The shallow breathing you can't quite control. The tension wound so tight in your shoulders you might snap.
“I know I should've—”
“Should've what?” He interrupts again, but his voices stays gentle. “Called the man you've been sleeping with while your husband's in town making sure everyone knows you're still married?” His mouth quirks slightly. “Can't imagine why that would feel awkward.”
The last part comes with just enough wry humour to take some of the sting out of it. An acknowledgement that yes, this situation is absurd, and yes, you're both aware of it.
“You didn't call either,” you point out, and it comes out more wounded than you intend.
“No, I didn't,” he admits easily. “Didn't want to crowd you when Bucky's been taking up so much real estate in your schedule. Thought maybe you needed space to figure things out.” His mouth curves, voice going warmer. “Besides, seemed only fair to give him a shot, sweetheart. I had you to myself for two months.”
It should feel mature, the way he keeps placing the choice back in your hands. But standing here now, watching him deliberately leave the distance between you intact, you can’t quite ignore the small, ugly part of yourself that wants someone to fight a little harder for you than that.
So you close the distance yourself, drawn by the same gravitational pull that's been there since the first time he walked into your office three months ago. Once again doing the reaching. The pattern recognition occurring here is frankly humiliating.
Your hands find his chest, feel the steady thrum of his heartbeat under his shirt.
“I haven't figured anything out,” you admit quietly, because you suppose he deserves the honesty. “About what this week means, or what I want, or any of it.”
“No?” There's something almost teasing in the question. “The Times seemed pretty convinced you and Barnes are a political power couple for the ages.”
“The Times doesn't know we're separated.”
“Clearly.” His hand comes up, fingers finding your jaw with unerring accuracy, thumb brushing along your cheekbone in a touch that's devastatingly familiar. “Though after this week, I'm starting to wonder if you remember that either.”
The words should sting. Maybe they do. But mostly what you're aware of is his proximity, the heat of his palm against your face, the way your body has started leaning into him without conscious permission.
“Matt—”
“Sorry, I’m not trying to make you feel guilty.” His thumb traces lower, following the line of your jaw. “That’s not what this is.”
“Then what is this?”
“This,” he murmurs, leaning in until his forehead nearly touches yours, “is me reminding you that you have options.”
“I've missed you,” you whisper against his lips.
His free hand comes up to your waist, thumb brushing the curve of your hip through your dress. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
You should stop this. Should step back and have the actual conversation about this week and where you stand and all the things you've been avoiding. Should deal with the compartments that are failing to stay separate instead of making everything more complicated.
But his mouth is right there.
You kiss him before you can think better of it, before the guilt can claw its way up your throat and ruin the moment. He makes a soft sound against your mouth, surprise giving way to hunger as he kisses you back.
It's different than kissing Bucky. Where Bucky takes, Matt asks - the tilt of his head a question, the press of his tongue a request. You grant it. Grant all of it. Pour five days of frustration and confusion into the kiss until you're both breathing hard.
“Missed this too,” you gasp between kisses, and he laughs against your mouth.
“Just this?”
“Missed you being a smartass,” you correct, tugging him closer by his tie. “Missed your hands on me—god, I just missed—”
He lifts you then, strong hands gripping your thighs as he spins you both and sets you on the edge of your desk. Papers scatter. You don't care. Your legs open, allowing him to step into the space between your thighs.
“Missed having a conversation that didn't involve diplomatic immunity,” you continue, breathless, as his mouth trails down your neck. “Missed not being scheduled within an inch of my life.”
His teeth graze your pulse point. “Sounds exhausting.”
“It is.” Your head tips back, fingers threading through his hair. “It's—fuck, Matt—”
His hands slide up your thighs, pushing the hem of your skirt higher. The drag of his palms against your stockings makes you shiver.
Your hands find his lapels, pulling him desperately closer. The kiss deepens, his tongue sliding against yours, and for a moment you forget about Bucky and the separation and every complicated thing you've been avoiding.
“You should've booked a longer meeting,” you manage, and it comes out almost playful despite the heat pooling low in your belly.
Matt's smile is absolutely wicked. “Please,” he murmurs against your mouth. “I don't need long to make you come, sweetheart. Just need your legs open and the door locked.”
Heat floods through you at the promise in his voice, your thighs clenching involuntarily. Before you can even respond, his hands are sliding under your ass, lifting you in one smooth motion. Your legs wrap around his waist automatically, gasping into his mouth as he turns and walks you backward.
You don't break the kiss. Can't. Your fingers are in his hair, tugging probably too hard, and he makes this gorgeous rough sound against your mouth that vibrates straight through you. His mouth is hot and demanding against yours, tongue sliding past your lips to taste you properly, and you make a sound into his mouth that's embarrassingly needy.
Your back hits the door hard enough to knock the breath from your lungs, the solid wood catching you with enough force that you gasp into his mouth. Matt pins you there immediately, hips rolling forward, and you can feel how hard he is already, the thick length of him pressing right where you're aching. Your hand scrabbles blindly behind you for the lock, fingers clumsy with want, and when it finally clicks he groans like the sound itself did something to him.
“Fuck yes,” he breathes against your mouth, and his hand slides up your thigh, pushing your skirt higher. When his fingers brush the inside of your thigh you shudder, hips canting forward, seeking more contact. “Been thinking about this all week. Thinking about getting you alone, getting my hands on you—”
His fingers find the edge of your underwear, slipping just beneath the lace to trace along the seam where it meets your thigh. The touch is light, almost lazy, like he has all the time in the world and knows it's driving you insane. You gasp, hips grinding forward, trying to direct his hand where you actually need it, and your head drops back against the door. He laughs softly against your throat.
“God, you're impatient,” he teases, teeth grazing your pulse point. “Already trying to fuck yourself on my hand.”
“Shut up,” you whine, but there's no heat in it, just desperate need.
“Why?” His mouth trails to your jaw, leave wet kisses behind. “I like knowing you want me. Like hearing your pulse race when I touch you here—” His finger traces up the centre of your underwear, dragging slowly through the damp fabric from your entrance all the way up to your clit. The pressure is perfect and not nearly enough, and you can feel how wet you are, how the lace clings to you. “—and feeling you stop breathing when I—”
His fingers finally slip beneath the lace, and the second he actually touches you, feels how wet and slick you are, he makes this broken sound against your mouth that's half-groan, half-curse. Then he's kissing you again, mouth crashing back to yours. Tongue pushing past your lips deeper, harder, needier. Losing that earlier control. His fingers slide through the mess you've made and your hips jerk forward into his hand.
“Fuck,” he breathes against your lips, fingers parting your folds and sliding through the wetness, spreading it deliberately before finding your clit. He circles it with your own slick, and you can feel how soaked you are, how easily his fingers move, and the wet sound of it makes your face flush hot. “You're fucking soaked for me.”
He's not wrong. You are soaked, aching, need clawing under your skin with an urgency that borders on painful. Whether it's because of him or because you've spent five days with Bucky's hand at your waist and his body in your bed, that constant simmering tension winding you tighter and tighter with nowhere for it to go, you genuinely don't know.
Don't want to know.
Your hips roll forward, trying to get more pressure, more friction, more anything. “Then stop teasing and do something about it.”
He laughs, the sound rough and a little desperate. “Yes ma'am.”
His fingers slide lower, one pressing inside you with a slow, deliberate stretch that makes your head thunk back against the door. You bite down on your lip hard, trying to keep quiet, hyper-aware that you're in your office in the middle of the day with your staff just outside.
“Matt—” His name escapes your lips anyway, louder than you intend.
“Shh,” he breathes against your lips, but he's smiling, adding another finger and curling them just right. “Sweetheart, you're gonna get us caught.”
“Your fault,” you gasp, barely above a whisper, hips rocking to meet the thrust of his fingers.
“Fair point.” His forehead presses to yours, breathing ragged. “But you still need to be quiet for me. Can you do that?”
Nodding, you try to stop the moan building in your throat as his fingers work deeper, finding that spot that makes your thighs shake. Your nails dig into his shoulders through his shirt, breath coming in shallow, restrained gasps. But then he curls them again, harder, and the sound that escapes you is too loud, too obvious. His mouth is on yours immediately, swallowing the moan before it can carry.
He kisses you deep and filthy, tongue sliding against yours as his fingers work faster, his thumb finding your clit. The dual sensation is overwhelming, pleasure building fast and sharp. You're making these small, desperate noises into his mouth that you can't control, and he seems determined to catch every single one, kissing you harder each time his fingers make you gasp.
“Matt—please—I need—” you whisper between kisses, the words breaking apart.
“I know,” he murmurs back, and there's something soft in it even as his fingers work you closer to the edge. “Need to come. Need to stop thinking for five minutes.” His thumb circles your clit with perfect pressure and you gasp into his mouth. “Need it to be easy for once, yeah? Just this. Just us. Nothing complicated.”
Yes. God, yes. That's exactly what you need. To not think. To just feel something that isn't guilt or confusion or the weight of every choice you've made this week.
“More,” you gasp.
“So greedy sweetheart.” His thumb finds your clit, circling in rhythm with the thrust of his fingers. “What am I gonna do with you?”
“Fuck me would be a good start.”
He groans, forehead dropping to your shoulder. “Love when you get bossy.”
His fingers slide out of you and the whimper that escapes you is pathetic, your hips moving forward involuntarily, trying to chase what you just lost.But your hands are already moving, shaking as they reach for his belt. You yank at it, fingers fumbling with the buckle in your desperation to get him undone.
You need him inside you, need it with an urgency that's making your hands clumsy and your breathing erratic.
“Condom?” you gasp out, finally getting his belt undone and working on the button of his slacks.
“Wallet, back pocket.”
A breath of relief punches out of you. “Fuck—good boy,” you tease, pulling him into a kiss.
Matt makes this wrecked sound into your mouth, somewhere between a moan and a growl, and his hand cracks down on your ass hard enough to make you gasp against his lips.
“Careful,” he warns, but there's no heat in it, just desperate want. “Keep talking like that and this is gonna be over way too fast.”
You reach around, palm sliding over his ass as you fish out his wallet. The leather is warm from his body heat, and your fingers are still trembling as you flip it open and grab the condom. You tear the foil packet open with your teeth, spitting the scrap of wrapper aside, and then your hand is wrapping around his cock. He's thick and hard in your palm, already leaking, and the groan that tears out of him is absolutely obscene.
“Can't have that,” you murmur, rolling the latex down his length slowly despite how badly you're shaking. You stroke him once, twice, feeling every thick inch, and your thumb swipes over the head. He shudders, fingers digging into your thighs hard enough to bruise.
“Sweetheart,” he grits out, and it sounds like a plea. His hips buck forward into your grip. “Please.”
“Please what?” You're being mean now, hand still working him while he's trying to hold himself together.
“Please let me fuck you before I lose my fucking mind.”
You guide the swollen head of his cock to your entrance and you both go still for half a second, just breathing against each other's mouths. Then he's pushing inside you in one long, smooth slide and the stretch steals every thought from your head. It's almost too much, the thick press of him, and you're making these small desperate sounds you can't control.
“Fuck,” Matt breathes, the words vibrating against your throat where his mouth has landed. You can feel him shaking with the effort of holding still as he lets you adjust to the stretch of him. “You feel—god, you're so wet I can feel it dripping down my—”
You cut him off with a kiss, messy and graceless, and start rolling your hips experimentally. His cock drags against that spot inside you that makes your vision blur. The angle is perfect like this, him pinning you to the door, and each roll of your hips takes him deeper. He meets your rhythm, hands gripping your ass to hold you steady as he thrusts up into you, and you have to bite down on his shoulder to muffle the moan that tears out of you.
Your legs tighten around his waist, heels digging into his ass, trying to pull him impossibly closer.
“That's it,” he groans, setting a rhythm that's slow but deep, each thrust deliberate and devastating. “Take what you need, sweetheart.”
You can barely form words, too focused on the stretch of him filling you, the way your needy cunt is already clenching around him, desperate to pull him deeper. The wet, obscene sounds of him fucking you fill your quiet office as you both pant into each other's mouths, drowning in the sensation of each other. The thick drag of his cock inside you, the press of his body against yours, the heat of your skin under his hands.
Your hand slides between your bodies, seeking more. When your fingers find your clit, it's swollen and sensitive, and just that first brush of contact makes you mewl into his mouth. You're so worked up, so desperate, that even your own touch feels like too much and not enough at the same time. You circle it carefully at first, testing, but the spike of pleasure that shoots through you makes your hips jerk and your walls clench around his cock.
“You sound so pretty like this,” Matt pants against your neck, hips snapping forward. “So fucking pretty when you stop overthinking and just let go.”
Your response is incoherent, something between a moan and his name. The pleasure is building fast, coiling tighter with each thrust, each drag of his cock inside you. Your cunt clenches around him, greedy, desperate, chasing the release that's right there.
“That's it, sweetheart,” he encourages, rhythm getting rougher. “Can feel you getting close. Feel you squeezing my cock. You gonna come for me? Gonna let me feel it?”
You're circling your clit in time with his thrusts and it's almost too much sensation, pleasure coiling tighter in your belly. He shifts slightly and the new angle makes you see stars, a whimper escaping before you can bite it back.
“Yes—fuck—Matt—”
“There?” he asks breathlessly, doing it again, and when you nod frantically he keeps hitting that exact spot. Every thrust drives him deeper and pushes your hand harder against yourself, and you're whimpering with each roll of your hips.
“I can hear it,” Matt groans into your mouth. “Can hear how close you are—your heart's racing, your breathing, you're right there—please, sweetheart, need to feel you—”
It crashes over you sudden and overwhelming, pleasure ripping through you in waves. You come with a broken cry that Matt catches with his mouth, your cunt clamping down on his cock so hard you're practically strangling it. Your whole body locks up, thighs shaking as the pleasure tears through you in brutal waves. Your fingers are still on your clit, working yourself through it, and you're making these high desperate sounds into his mouth that you can't control.
“Fuck—oh fuck—” Matt groans, fucking you through it, prolonging it until you're gasping and oversensitive. “So fucking perfect—”
He buries himself deep with a final hard thrust and comes with a groan of your name, cock pulsing as he spills into the condom. You can feel every throb, every twitch as he empties himself, and it sends another aftershock through you that makes you clench around him all over again.
For a moment you just breathe together, foreheads pressed close, hearts racing in tandem. Your legs are trembling so badly around his waist that you're not sure they'll hold you when he pulls out. When he does, you both make these raw sounds at the loss of contact.
Slowly, carefully, he lowers you to the floor. Your knees wobble slightly as your feet hit the ground, and Matt immediately steadies you.
“Okay?” he asks softly, thumb stroking your hip.
“Yeah,” you manage, because that's about all your brain can produce right now.
He kisses you again, but when he pulls back there's something careful in it. Almost like he’s making sure it stays just the right side of casual. His hand cups your face briefly - thumb brushing rogue strands of hair from your face.
“Told you I didn't need long,” he murmurs, and you can hear the smile in his voice.
“Smug bastard.”
But even as you say it your brain is already pulling away, cataloguing everything that needs to happen in the next ten minutes. Fix your hair. Cover that mark on your neck. Make yourself look like a composed diplomat instead of a woman who just fucked her boyfriend—situationship? god, you refuse to be a grown woman with a situationship—against her office door while her husband is probably working back home.
What the fuck are you doing?
Your heart kicks up, anxiety spiking sharp and sudden. Matt's thumb stills against your cheek, and you realise he can probably hear it. The way your body betrays every thought before you can even process it yourself.
“Hey,” he says, and there's a question in it. “Where'd you go?”
You open your mouth. Then immediately close it. You don't actually have an answer that won't make this worse.
His head tilts slightly, that listening posture you know so well, and his mouth curves into something small and resigned. Like he's already heard the answer in your pulse, in the shift of your breathing, in all the things your body is telling him that you won't say out loud.
So he steps back, creating space between you, and starts dealing with the condom without another word. He ties it off, wraps it in tissue from your desk, buries it under the papers in your trash bin so it's not the first thing anyone sees. The movements are quick and practised, and somehow that makes it worse.
“I should probably let you get back to it,” he offers, straightening out his clothes. “I'm sure you've got seventeen meetings stacked up this afternoon.”
You stare dumbly, watching him button his shirt, tuck it back in, re-buckle his belt. Everything going back into place like this was just a pleasant interlude in the workday and now it's back to business. He runs a hand through his hair to fix what your fingers messed up, and within two minutes he looks perfectly put together, as though nothing happened.
You catch sight of your reflection in the dark window and you definitely don't look like nothing happened. Your hair is a mess, your lips are swollen, and there's a faint mark on your neck that you're going to have to cover with makeup before your next meeting.
Matt turns away, adjusts his jacket, and something about the ease of it all makes your stomach twist. He's leaving. Of course he's leaving.
He picks up his cane, testing his weight on it, and the gesture is so familiar it hurts. How many times have you watched him do exactly that? Watched him prepare to leave after a late night working at your dining table, after drinks that turned into dinner that turned into more. Always the same smooth transition from intimacy back to separate lives.
He leans in, presses a kiss to your temple that lands somewhere between affectionate and perfunctory. “Don't let Bucky monopolize your entire weekend.”
It's said warmly. Casually, even. Like he's not bothered. Like this is all very uncomplicated and he's very okay with however this plays out.
“Matt—”
“I'll see you later,” he says easily, hand already on the door.
The casualness of it catches you wrong. Hooks into something raw that’s been building this whole week. And that’s what snaps you out of your own head and back into the moment.
“That's it?” The words come out sharper than you intend. “You'll see me later?”
He pauses, hand on the doorknob, shoulders stiffing as he tries to read the edge in your voice. “Are you—is something wrong?”
It’s remarkable, really. The man can hear your pulse spike from three rooms away, can detect the slightest shift in your body chemistry, can read more from your heartbeat than most people get from a full conversation. And yet here he is, still remarkably incapable of reading the room. Superhuman senses, same oblivious male brain.
“You know what, no, nothing's wrong.” You scoff, yanking your skirt down with more force than necessary, already moving towards your desk, trying to put yourself back together. “You're right, I do have a busy afternoon. Thanks for stopping by.”
“Okay, what's actually going on right now?” He asks slowly, like he's genuinely trying to figure this out. “You’re clearly upset.”
“I'm not upset.”
“Your heart rate says differently.”
God, you hate that he can do that. Hate that your body betrays you before your mouth can even form the lie. And if he's going to use those stupidly accurate senses to call you out, fine. You might as well just say it.
“When am I going to see you again?”
The question hangs in the air. Matt's quiet for a moment, and you can see him processing, trying to read the subtext.
“I don't know.” The answer comes after a beat, careful. “When do you want to see me again?”
It's a reasonable question. A fair question. So why does it make you want to scream?
“That's really how you're going to leave this?” You turn to face him, and you know you're being unfair but you can't seem to stop yourself. “I don't know, you tell me, we'll figure it out later?”
His expression shifts, the muscles tightening around his lips even as his posture stays relaxed. “I was trying to make it easy for you.”
“Easy for me or easy for yourself?”
“Both, probably,” he admits, and the ease of his honesty genuinely makes you pause. “You've got a lot going on. Your husband's here, clearly trying to…” The sentence trails off, unfinished, like he doesn’t want to say something he shouldn’t. “I'm trying not to put more pressure on you when Bucky's already doing that.”
“So you're just backing off? Not even going to—” You stop, because fight for me sounds insane and desperate and you're not sure you even want him to fight for you, but the fact that he won't makes you furious anyway.
“What do you want from me here?” Matt asks, and there's the first edge of frustration creeping into his voice. “You want me to demand your time? Tell you to pick me over him? Make this harder for you?”
You open your mouth but nothing comes out, because you don't know. You don't know what you want from him. You don't know what you want from Bucky. You don't know what you want from any of this mess you've created.
“Maybe I just want you to care! ”The words burst out louder than you meant them, and you have to forcibly lower your voice, aware again of where you are, who might hear. “I want you to act like this actually matters instead of just being whatever's convenient when I have a free hour.”
The silence that follows is sharp enough to cut.
“That's not fair,” he says quietly.
“Isn't it? You won't make plans more than a day out. You've never even asked me to stay over.”
“Because I don't know what we are!” His voice spikes, exasperated, and you both freeze for a second, listening for footsteps in the hall. When none come, he continues, quieter but no less intense. “You're still married. He's clearly trying to get you back. You're asking me to push when you've made it pretty clear you don't know what you want, and I'm not going to compete with your husband.”
“There's a difference between not being pushy and not fighting for anything at all!”Your voice cracks slightly on the last word and you hate yourself for it, the vulnerability bleeding through when you're trying to stay angry. You swallow hard, trying to pull it back together. “There's a difference between giving someone space and just letting go without even trying.”
“I'm trying,” he begins, and there's something rawer in his voice now, “to give you space to figure your shit out without making you feel like you owe me something.”
“Maybe I want to owe you something!” You're pacing now, heels clicking sharp against the floor. “Maybe I want you to act like you actually give a damn whether I pick him or not!”
“Of course I give a damn!” It's the closest he's come to raising his voice. “But I'm not going to manipulate you or monopolize your calendar or show up and—” He stops himself. “I'm not him. I'm not going to do what he does.”
“At least he's doing something!”
The words land like a slap. You see it in the way his expression shutters, in the way his hand tightens on his cane.
“Right.” His voice is flat. “Well. At least we know where we stand, then.” He's already turning toward the door. “Clearly I’m not what you need.”
“Matt, I didn’t mean—” You press your palms against your eyes because you can feel the sting of tears starting and you really don’t want to cry right now. “You’re right, I don't know what I need.” Your voice cracks again and you hate it, hate the tears that are threatening, hate how small you sound. “But why does it have to be all or nothing with both of you? He smothers me and you won't even—”
You stop, pressing your hand to your mouth, trying to hold it together. But the tears are coming anyway, hot and frustrated and exhausted, because you've been holding everything in all week and it's too much. It's all too much.
The tap of his cane stops.
For a moment there's just silence, broken only by the humiliating wet sound of you trying not to sob.
“I'm fine.” But your voice does that horrible shaky thing that makes it very clear you are the opposite of fine.
“You're not fine.” He's already moving toward you, and then his hands are on your arms. Warm and solid and gentle in a way that makes your chest hurt worse. “You're crying in your office.”
“Don't—” You try to turn away, humiliation burning hot in your chest because this is mortifying. “I just need a minute. I'm fine, really,” you try again, but it comes out as barely more than a whisper.
“Stop saying that.” His voice has gone impossibly soft, thumb stroking along your forearm. “Come here, please.
You let him pull you in, let yourself press your face against his chest while the tears come properly now. His arms come around you, solid and sure, one hand coming up to cup the back of your head. He doesn't say anything. Just holds you while you shake apart against him, while you soak the front of his shirt with tears that won't stop coming.
“I'm sorry,” you gasp out between sobs. “I'm sorry, I don't—I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I want. This whole week has been so fucked up and I can't think straight and I don't—“ Another sob cuts you off.
“Shh. I know.” His hand moves in slow circles on your back, the pressure steady and grounding. “It's okay, just breathe”
“It's not okay.” The words come out muffled against his chest. “This whole week has been—” Your breath hitches. “He's everywhere and you're—and I can't think straight and I keep making everything worse—”
His hand stills on your back for just a moment. “What do you need?”
You pull back slightly, just enough to breathe, and his hands shift to your arms. Steadying but not restraining. His face is tilted toward you with that particular focus he gets when he's listening to everything - your heartbeat, your breathing, the catch in your voice.
“I don't know.” You pull back slightly, wiping at your face with shaking hands. “Maybe I just need a break. From this. From both of you.”
You try to read his reaction, but he doesn’t give anything away. Just keeps stroking your back in those same soothing motions.
“Bucky's going back to DC on Sunday anyway,” you continue, and your voice sounds raw even to your own ears. “Maybe I just need some time. To figure myself out. Figure out what I actually want instead of just—” You gesture helplessly at the general disaster that is currently your life. “This.”
You expect him to argue. To push back. To do something other than what he does, which is nod slowly.
“Okay,” he says quietly, and his thumb comes up to brush away a tear from your cheek. “Yeah. We can do that. You need time, I'll give you time.”
The agreement should feel like relief but instead it just makes you want to cry harder. Because of course he's not fighting this either. Of course he's just agreeing, just stepping back, just giving you exactly what you asked for in a way that somehow feels like losing anyway.
“But—” He hesitates, and something in his tone shifts. Gets more careful. “You might need to explain this all to Bucky too. Since, you know. He thinks you're working things out.”
Your head snaps up, tears still wet on your cheeks. “What?”
Matt's lips purse slightly, like he’s trying to figure out how to phrase it. “He asked me to back off. Said you two were working through things. That you needed space to figure out your marriage without complications.” His mouth twists slightly on the last word. “Meaning me.”
The humiliation of thirty seconds ago transmutes instantly into something else. The tears stop. Everything stops. For a moment you just stare at Matt, trying to process what he's telling you, and then the rage hits like a freight train. “He told you we were getting back together?”
“Not in those exact words, but yes,” he confirms quietly. “He tried to make it seem like he knew where things stood between you. Made it pretty clear he considered me a temporary blip in your relationship.”
“That fucking—” You can't even finish the sentence, fury choking the words in your throat. Your hands are shaking again, but this time with anger.
“We had one lunch,” you say, and your voice has gone cold. “One. Where he apologised for being absent and I agreed to give him one week to prove he could actually show up. That's it. We never—I never said we were working things out.”
Matt's very quiet.
“He told you we were reconciling.” You're not asking. You're clarifying. Making sure you understand the full scope of what Bucky's done. “He told you to back off because we were fixing our marriage.”
“Yeah.”
“And then he filled my entire calendar. And slept in my bed. And touched me like I belonged to him in front of half of diplomatic London.” The pieces are clicking together with horrible clarity. “He decided. Again. He just fucking decided without me that we're working things out and told my—told you to back off like he gets to make those calls for me.”
You're already moving, grabbing your bag, your phone, not even sure what you're doing but you need to move, need to do something with this rage before it burns you alive from the inside.
“Where are you going?” Matt asks carefully.
“Home.” The word comes out sharp and final. “I'm going home and I'm ending this shit right now.”
── ⟢ ₊ ☁️ ˚・🖋️ ⊹
The click of your heels echoes through the residence, each step a punctuation mark to the fury coiling tighter in your chest. You stride through the hallway, past Thomas who takes one look at your face and wisely says nothing, and straight to the study where you know Bucky's working.
He's at the desk - your desk, because apparently he's just moved back into every corner of your life without asking - looking at some papers with a confused scrunch of his nose that would be endearing if you weren't currently fantasizing about throwing something heavy at his head.
The papers hit the mahogany with a slap that makes him jolt upright. For half a second there's just confusion - eyebrows raised, mouth slightly parted on a question that hasn’t formed yet - and then his eyes drop to what you’ve thrown down. ‘Petition for Dissolution of Marriage’ printed across the top in black and white. You watch his face change as he reads the header. Watch the colour drain slightly. Watch his throat work as he swallows.
“What—” He starts to speak, stops to compose himself, and when the words finally come they’re careful, like he already knows the answer and is hoping he's wrong “What’s this?”
“Take a wild fucking guess, Congressman.”
His hand moves slowly toward the papers like they might burn him, fingers hovering before he finally touches them. He flips through, and you know the exact moment he finds the signature page because his whole body goes rigid.
Your finger jabs down at the signature line. “Sign them.”
“What?” He's standing now, the chair scraping back, and there's something raw starting to crack through the careful composure on his face. Something that looks like panic and grief all at once. “Baby—”
“Don't.” You hold up a hand and he actually freezes mid-step. “Don't 'baby' me. Don't use that voice. Don't act like you can smooth this over if you just find the right words.”
“That's not—I'm not—” His hands spread wide in a helpless gesture. “Please, just talk to me. What happened? This morning we were fine, we were—”
“We were what, exactly?” You cut him off, arms crossing over your chest. “Working things out? Getting back together? Reconciling our marriage?”
Bucky's quiet for a moment, and you can practically see him running through possibilities, trying to figure out which particular mine he's stepped on. And then the guilt stats to flicker across his face.
“Oh good,” you say flatly. “You know exactly what I'm talking about.”
His whole posture changes, that familiar stubborn set coming into his jaw that tells you he's not going to back down easy. “If this is about Matt—”
“If this is about Matt?” You actually laugh, and it sounds wrong even to your own ears. “This is about you, Bucky! The fact that you lied and said we were working things out. That you said to back off because apparently we needed space to fix our marriage.”
He's quiet. Won't meet your eyes.
“When exactly were you planning to mention that to me?” Fury makes your voice shake despite your best efforts to keep it steady. “Before or after you finished orchestrating my entire fucking life?”
“I was trying to—”
“I don't care what you were trying to do!” It comes out too loud, echoing off the study walls. “You know, I've had these papers for two months. Two months of looking at them in my drawer, too much of a coward to sign them, because some pathetic part of me still hoped we could fix this.”
Your voice cracks and you have to stop, have to breathe through the anger and hurt tangling in your throat.
“But we can't. Because you don't know how to be in a partnership. You only know how to run operations and make strategic decisions and manipulate variables, and I'm so fucking tired of being a variable in your life instead of your fucking wife.”
“That's not what you are to me! I swear, please—” He runs a hand through his hair, and he’s scrambling, trying to find the words that will fix this. His gaze drifts back to the papers like they might rearrange themselves into something different if he looks hard enough. “Wait, you drew these up two months ago?”
You watch him do the maths. Watch the realization settle across his features, his jaw going tight.
“When you started seeing him.” It's not a question.
“Stop making this about Matt! Stop deflecting. Stop trying to make this about jealousy when this is about you making decisions about my life without me!”
You're pacing before you realise it, unable to stand still. Three steps to the window and back.
“It seems very much to be about him though, doesn't it?” Bucky's voice has gone rough at the edges. He pushes off the desk, takes a step toward you. “You draw up divorce papers the second you start sleeping with him, this whole week goes perfectly fine until you see him again, and now you're in here ready to end our marriage—”
“This week was a lie!” You shout, beyond caring who might hear. “This week was you orchestrating my entire life, filling my calendar, telling people we were reconciling without ever actually asking me if that's what I wanted! Don't you dare act like things were fine when the whole thing was built on you manipulating—”
“—I wasn’t manipulating—”
“—our marriage, making a decision about my relationships without saying word to me!” Your voice rises to stay above his. “I actually had those papers drawn up two months ago because I’d spent the previous six months unable to have a single fucking conversation with my own husband!”
The words are coming faster now, angrier, everything you've been holding in for 8 months spilling out. “Every time I called I got 'he's in a meeting' or 'he'll call you back' and he never, ever did. Because somewhere along the line I stopped being your wife and became an item on your assistant's to-do list that never made it to the top of the pile!”
His head comes up. His eyes are wet with unshed tears when they find yours, jaw locked so tight you can see the muscle jumping. He's trying desperately to hold it together but you watch him start to lose the fight in the way his face crumples, in the painful swallow working down his throat. His hand lifts toward you before he seems to remember himself and lets it drop uselessly back to his side.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, I know I fucked up, I know I wasn't there, and I'm trying to fix it now—”
“By doing the same thing! By making decisions without me!” Your nails dig into your palms hard enough to hurt, arms rigid at your sides. “Do you not see that? You’re still doing it, Bucky, you're still shutting me out and deciding what's best for us without ever asking me what I want!”
“So what do you want from me?” His desperation bleeds through every word, but it’s far too little, and far too late. “Tell me what you want and I'll do it.”
For a moment you just stand there, looking at him across the desk that's covered in his work, in this life he built without consulting you. You should feel something. Guilt, maybe. Regret. Some echo of the love that used to live in your chest when you looked at him like this. But you just feel exhausted.
When you finally speak, the answer comes out quieter than anything else you've said tonight.
“I want you to sign the papers.”
Your words seem to suck the air out of the room, leaving nothing but the thundering of your own heartbeat in your ears.
“No.” He's shaking his head slowly at first, then faster, like he can physically deny what's happening if he just refuses hard enough. “No, I'm not—I can't—”
“You don't get to say no.”
“Just talk to me!” He begs. “Just talk to me instead of throwing divorce papers on my desk and expecting me to—”
“Talk to you?” You can hear the bitter edge bleeding through your voice, feel it scraping against your throat. “Wow, okay. Like you talked to me before telling Matt to back off? Like you talked to me before orchestrating my entire week? Like you talked to me every time I called and got your pretty little assistant instead?”
“I told you I didn’t sleep with her.”
“Oh my fucking god, congratulations!” Your arms fly up in exasperation. “You want a medal for not fucking your assistant? You want me to applaud your restraint? Let’s not act like you were alone, pining away for me this whole time.”
“At least I didn't parade it in front of you!” The accusation explodes out of him like it's been festering, his face flushing with pain and frustration mixing together.
“We were separated! That was the whole fucking point of the agreement!” Even though your throat is becoming raw from shouting, you can’t seem to stop, months of resentment pouring out of you. “Married in public, free to see other people privately - that’s what we agreed to. Except clearly, neither of us can act normally about it!”
Your voice cracks.
“We're just destroying each other. And I can't do it anymore.”
Your words hang in the air between you. You're both breathing hard, and the study feels simultaneously too small and too vast, like the space can't quite contain what's happening. Then something shifts in his expression as he seems to finally hear what he’s been saying, how he sounds. His shoulders sag inward. The voice that comes out next is barely recognisable.
“I'm sorry.” He drags a hand over his face. “You're right. I'm making this worse. I'm making everything worse. But please, don’t do this, just give me a chance too—”
“I've been giving you chances for eight months. I gave you a chance when you became Congressman without talking to me about it. I gave you a chance this week when you showed up and I let you back in even though you were already making decisions for me. And every time you fucked it up!”
Bucky just stands there, breathing hard, staring at you like you’ve gutted him. His eyes are still wet, tears clinging to his lashes but refusing to fall.
“I love you,” he whispers. “And I know you might not have felt it, and i know it’s not enough, but I have loved you through every stupid mistake I've made, including running for Congress.”
He lets out a breath that sounds like it's been trapped in his chest for months.
“I thought… I thought if I could be someone important, someone legitimate, maybe I'd finally be worthy of you. You've spent your whole career saving lives, negotiating peace, actually helping people. And I'm just—” His voice cracks. “I'm still just the Winter Soldier trying to prove I'm more than that. So I ran for Congress because I thought it might fix me, might fill the hole where my humanity used to be. But instead I just broke us and I’m still as damaged as before. And now I can't—”
His voice fractures completely.
“I can't lose you.”
The confession lands entirely wrong, because this is what you've wanted to hear for months - years, maybe. This vulnerability, this honesty, this real version of Bucky you’ve only ever glimpsed in stolen moments. And it’s too late. Your throat tightens. You have to look away from him because seeing him like this, broken open and bleeding out in front of you, makes something in you want to take it all back. Want to cross the room and hold him and tell him he's not damaged, that he's never been unworthy, that you've loved him through every version of himself he hasn’t.
But loving him has never been the problem.
“You already did, Bucky.” The words hurt coming out. “You can't put that on me - your sense of self-worth, your identity, fixing yourself. That was never my job. I loved you. I loved you exactly as you were, and you never believed me. And now you're telling me you destroyed our marriage trying to become someone you thought I wanted, when all I ever wanted was you.”
Somehow his face crumples further. You have to look away again. When you speak next, your voice is barely above a whisper. Tired and sad and so heavy you can barely get the words out.
“So yes, you're right. You did break us. But not because you weren't good enough, Bucky. Because you never let me love the person you actually are.”
For a moment he just stands there, and you watch all the fight drain out of him like someone pulled a plug. His eyes go distant, almost glassy, and his breathing deepens, like he's shutting something down inside himself. The desperation from moments ago has been replaced by something far more terrifying: quiet resignation. He's finally stopped trying to hold on.
He picks up the pen. His hand trembles badly enough that you wonder if he'll even be able to write, but he manages to grip it, staring down at the signature line for what feels like an eternity. When the pen finally touches paper, the scratch of it against the silence is deafening.
He signs his name. Dates it. Slides the papers across the desk toward you without meeting your eyes.
“There.” His voice is completely destroyed. “If that's what you need.”
You pick up the papers with numb fingers. Stare at his signature like you can't quite believe it's real.
“I'm sorry.” He hasn't moved. Just stands there with wet cheeks and empty hands. “I'm so sorry. For every way I failed you. For not being what you needed.”
“Thank you.” It comes out barely audible. “For the apology. For signing.”
You fold the papers slowly, creasing each edge with deliberate precision because if you think about the mechanics of folding paper you don't have to think about what you're holding.
“I want you to catch the next flight back to DC. Tonight, if you can. I'll have Thomas help you pack.”
“Okay.” He looks lost standing there, like he doesn't know what to do with his hands, with his body, with any of this. “Okay, yeah.”
“And Bucky—” Your voice is steadier now, or at least you're doing a better job of faking it. “Don't call. Don't text. Don't send flowers or letters or try to fix anything. We're done. Let it be done.”
He nods, even though it looks like it's killing him. “Okay.”
There should be something else to say. Some final words that would make this less awful, less final. But you can't think of anything that won't make it worse. So you just turn and walk toward the door, papers pressed against your chest like you need the reminder of why you’re doing this.
“For what it's worth,” His voice stops you at the threshold, and it comes out quiet and defeated. “You're the best thing that ever happened to me. The best thing I've ever had and the worst thing I've ever lost, and I know that's my fault. I know I did that.” The silence hangs for a moment. “I'm sorry. For all of it.”
You don't turn around, can't let him see your face right now.
“Goodbye, Bucky.”
Then you walk out, leaving your husband standing alone in the study, and you don't look back.
── ⟢ ₊ ☁️ ˚・🖋️ ⊹
The wind off the Potomac is sharp enough to sting, cutting through your coat. March in Washington hasn't gotten any more pleasant since you left - still grey, still biting, still full of men in expensive suits having conversations that matter to nobody outside this ten-block radius.
You've been back for two days. Meetings, briefings, a reception last night where you smiled until your face hurt and deflected questions about London with the practised ease of someone who's done this too many times to count. It's fine. Exhausting, but fine. You can do this job in your sleep at this point.
What you can't do, apparently, is stop yourself from scanning every room you enter for a familiar face. Your heart has been doing this annoying thing ever since you landed at Dulles where it kicks up at unexpected moments - half anticipation, half dread. Walking past a coffee shop that he used to go to. Hearing someone laugh in a way that's almost but not quite his register. Seeing a tall, dark-haired man in a suit who makes your stupid heart stutter before you realise it's not him.
You're not looking for him. You're absolutely not looking for him. You're just aware. Hyper-aware, maybe. Of the absence. Of the space where he should be and isn't.
Because Bucky's on Foreign Relations. He should have been at yesterday's hearing. Definitely should have been at the NATO briefing this morning where you spent two hours making small talk with people who absolutely knew you were divorced and were definitely trying not to bring it up.
But he's not here. And the unease that started yesterday has metastasized into something closer to worry, which is absurd because you're divorced and it's none of your business anymore where he is or what he's doing or why he's apparently missing every major political event this week.
Except now it's your last day in DC and you're walking out of your final meeting, and you still haven't seen him. Which is good. That's good. That's what you wanted - to get through this trip without the inevitable awkward encounter, without having to figure out what you're supposed to say to your ex-husband in a professional setting.
He's probably just busy. He's always busy. That's the whole problem, isn't it? Was. Was the whole problem.
You tell yourself it's none of your business. You tell yourself he’s probably had scheduling conflicts, or dozen other reasonable explanations that have nothing to do with you. You tell yourself to get in the car waiting to take you to the hotel and get a good nights sleep before your flight tomorrow morning.
Instead, you hear yourself giving the driver a different address.
You watch DC slide past the window. Familiar streets, familiar monuments, a city you used to know as well as London but feels foreign now. It's been three months since you signed those papers. Six weeks since the divorce was finalised. And he gave you the silence that you asked for, that you needed, that was supposed to make this easier.
It did make some things easier, in a way. You can think about him now without that sharp twist of anger in your chest. Can acknowledge the good parts of your marriage without immediately cataloguing all the ways it fell apart. You've stopped checking your phone obsessively, stopped writing texts you never sent, stopped having imaginary arguments with him at two in the morning.
You've started sleeping through the night again. Started saying “my ex-husband” without your voice catching. Started believing that maybe you could actually do this - be divorced, be separate, be okay.
But you still can't be in this city without needing to know he's alright. Because Bucky Barnes gets under your skin and doesn’t leave. Not really. Not even after divorce papers and three months of silence and all the ways you've tried to extract him from your chest. He's just there, permanent as a scar, and you've apparently made peace with the fact that he always will be.
His apartment is close enough to the Capitol that he could walk if he wanted to, far enough that it didn't feel like living at the office. You'd picked it out together four years ago, back when you thought his Congressional run was temporary and you'd be back in New York within a term. The doorman doesn't recognise you, but he calls up anyway when you give him your name.
The elevator ride to the eighth floor feels longer than the entire flight from London. Your heart is doing that kicking thing again but worse now, harder, because this is stupid and inappropriate and you have no right to be here. But what if something's wrong? Or maybe nothing's wrong and you're being ridiculous. Both options feel equally terrible.
You walk down the hallway on muscle memory, and before you can overthink it anymore, you’re standing in from of 8F. The door opens before your knuckles even make contact with the wood.
Bucky's standing there in jeans and a Henley that's seen better days, hair slightly too long and falling into his eyes. The permanent tension he used to carry in his shoulders has eased, and there's no tie strangling him, no suit jacket making him look like a politician action figure. He looks comfortable in a way you've never seen him look in DC.
He also looks completely shocked to see you.
His eyes go wide, lips parting on what might be your name but doesn't quite make it out.
“Hi,” you manage.
For a second he just stares at you like you might be a hallucination, hand still on the doorframe, body frozen mid-breath. “Hi.”
And then silence. Awful, stretching silence where you're both just looking at each other and you're realizing with creeping horror that you came all the way here without any plan for what you were actually going to say. Now you're just standing here like an idiot while he stares at you and oh god you need to say something, anything—
“I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't just show up, I was in town for meetings and I wasn't going to bother you—” And suddenly you're talking too fast, words tumbling over each other in a way that would be mortifying if you could stop long enough to be mortified. “But you weren't at the Foreign Relations hearing yesterday—which isn't my business, obviously, you don't owe me your schedule…”
Your hand comes up to your neck, fingers pressing against the tension there like that might somehow stop the word vomit. “But then you also weren't at the NATO briefing this morning and I know you're always at those because it's your thing, and I know I have no right to just show up here, and this is probably completely inappropriate—”
Shit, you're babbling. You're fully babbling at your ex-husband who you haven't spoken to in three months while he stands there looking increasingly bewildered. Stop talking. Stop talking right now.
“—but I was getting in the car to go to my hotel and I just kept thinking about how you weren't there and what if something was wrong, and I know I asked for space and this is definitely not space, this is the opposite of space, this is me showing up at your apartment like a complete—”
“I left Congress.”
The words cut through your spiral, stopping you mid-sentence with your mouth still open. Your brain completely flat-lines for a moment and then reboots, and for a second you just stare at him while the information tries to process.
“What?”
“Congress. I left.” He says it simply, like he's commenting on the weather. “About three weeks ago.”
“Oh.”
The word comes out flat and stupid. You blink at him. Process his words. Try to figure out what expression your face is making and whether it's appropriate.
“Oh,” you repeat dumbly, because apparently that's all your brain can produce. “I didn't—I didn't know.”
The silence that follows is excruciating. And you're suddenly extremely aware that you're standing in his hallway, that he's looking at you with an expression you can't parse, and how you've just made a complete fool of yourself by showing up here based on incorrect assumptions about his schedule.
This was a mistake. This was such a mistake.
“Right. Of course.” You take a step back toward the elevator, face hot with embarrassment. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—this was inappropriate, I'll just—”
“Do you want to come in?” The question comes out slightly strangled, like it surprised him as much as it surprises you.
It stops you mid-retreat. You look at him and he's watching you with something that might be hope or might be caution or might be both.
“I don't want to intrude…”
“You're not.” He steps back from the doorway, making space. “I mean, you're already here. And I'd like to talk to you, if that's okay.”
You should say no. Should absolutely say no. Should get back in that car and go to your hotel and let this remain a awkward three-minute interaction you can both pretend never happened.
“Okay,” you hear yourself say instead.
You step inside and it hits you how familiar everything still is. Same layout you could navigate blind, same view of the street you used to watch on sleepless nights, same couch you both used to fall asleep on after long nights reading political documents.
But the congressional briefings that used to bleed across every flat surface are gone. In their place are books on the side table - actual books that look read, spines creased, pages dog-eared. The kitchen looks like someone's actually been using it instead of just microwaving leftovers at midnight. It's still the same apartment, but it feels different. Like someone actually exists here instead of just sleeping between eighteen-hour days.
You're standing there trying to process it when you realise Bucky's closed the door and now you're both just awkwardly existing in the same space, six feet apart, neither of you sure what to do with your hands.
But damn, he looks good. That's the thing you keep getting stuck on. The permanent furrow between his brows has smoothed out. His shoulders sit easier. Even the way he's standing is looser, less like a man braced for impact. And he's looking at you like he's trying very hard to be normal about this and failing completely. Like you're something he's not allowed to want anymore but can't quite help it.
You clear your throat, grasping for something to say that isn't we got divorced and you look good and I don't know what to do with that.
“So… Not Congressman Barnes anymore.”
He actually cringes, then huffs out a surprised laugh. “Yeah. Thank god.”
“What happened?” You're trying to keep your voice neutral, conversational, but it definitely comes out more loaded than you intended. “I mean, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to, I don't have a right to—”
“You have a right,” he interrupts quietly, then seems to reconsider. “Or, I don't know if you have a right, but I want to tell you anyway.”
You nod, not trusting your voice.
He runs a hand through his hair, and you watch him gather his thoughts. That little exhale he does when he's trying to figure out how to be honest about something difficult.
“After the divorce—” He stops on the word, like it physically hurts to say. He swallows, tries again. “I did a lot of thinking. About why I ran for Congress in the first place, what I was trying to prove. And I realised I hated it. Hated the politics, the performance, the constant posturing. I was terrible at it, you know I was terrible at it. The only reason I didn't completely implode was because you were there coaching me through it, and once you weren't...” He trails off, shaking his head. “I kept going anyway because I thought that's what I was supposed to do. That quitting would mean I'd failed, or that I was giving up.”
He's looking at his hands now, the flesh one fidgeting against the metal one.
“But you were right. I was doing it for all the wrong reasons. Trying to be someone I thought deserved you instead of figuring out who I actually am.” He lets out a breath. “Not for you, not to prove anything to anyone. Just for me. I'd never done that before.”
He shifts his weight, suddenly looking uncomfortable with how honest that came out, and you have to swallow past the tightness in your throat because that might be the most vulnerable thing he's ever admitted to you.
“So I quit.” He shrugs like it's no big deal, trying to play it off. “And then I started thinking about what I actually wanted to do if I wasn't trying to prove I was more than what Hydra made me.”
He glances up at you then, and there's something almost hesitant in it, like he's trying to gauge your reaction. Like he can’t help that some part of him still wants you to be proud of him even though he's doing this for himself. “Sam's been building something with the Avengers. A new team—”
And he must catch the concern that flickers across your face because he quickly adds, “I'm not fighting; I'm done with that. But I’m going to help with training programs, support systems, trying to make sure the next generation doesn't get chewed up the way we did. Sam suggested it. And for the first time in years something just... clicked.”
You're staring at him, trying to process all of it. The growth. The self-awareness. The fact that he actually heard you, actually sat with it, actually made changes not to win you back but because he needed to be better for himself.
“That's—” Your voice comes out rough and you have to clear your throat. “That's really good, Bucky. I'm happy for you.”
And you are. You are genuinely happy for him. But there's something bittersweet lodged behind your ribs too, something that tastes like why now and why couldn't you have done this when we were still trying and this is exactly what I wanted from you.
“I'm sorry I didn't tell you,” he adds quietly. “I wasn't sure if it was my place anymore, or if you'd want to know. You asked for silence and I was trying to respect that, trying to give you the peace you deserved after everything I put you through.”
God. He's doing exactly what you asked him to do. Respecting your boundaries, not inserting himself into your life, letting you move on. And apparently getting what you want feels a lot like getting punched in the chest, which seems cosmically unfair.
“You're allowed to tell me things,” you manage. “Just because we're divorced doesn't mean I don't care about what happens to you.”
He nods slowly, but doesn't say anything, and the quiet that settles between you is thick with all the things neither of you knows how to say.
You're both still just standing there and you have no idea what you're supposed to do now. No idea what the protocol is for this situation. No idea how to be around him when he looks this good and this different and this much like what you'd needed him to be.
That's when you hear it. A small, inquiring “mrrp” from somewhere behind the couch. A white cat emerges, one blue eye and one green, tail high and confident as she saunters into the middle of the room and sits down to observe you both with feline judgment.
“You got a cat,” you remark, grateful for a distraction.
“Yeah.” Bucky says, and there's something almost embarrassed in his voice. “Her name's Alpine. I got her about a month after the divorce. The apartment was too quiet and I—” He trails off, one hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. “She was at a shelter and she looked at me like she knew I needed someone around and I guess I did.”
The apartment was too quiet because you weren't in it anymore, is the thing he doesn't say. But it hangs there anyway.
Alpine pads over to you with the confidence of a cat who knows she's in charge, and you crouch down automatically, extending your hand for her to sniff.
“Hi there, sweet girl,” you murmur, and she immediately butts her head against your palm, purring like a small motor. Within seconds she's winding between your legs, tail curling around your calf with clear ownership.
“Well, that's it then,” Bucky teases, small smile tugging at his lips. “She's decided you're hers. Good luck leaving, she's very persistent when she wants something.”
The words hang in the air for a second, and you watch his expression shift as he seems to hear what he just said. Like he's just remembered that you leaving is exactly what's supposed to happen. That you have a life that doesn't include him or his cat.
“So, how are things with....” He clears his throat, and you can practically feel him trying to make his voice sound casual and normal. It doesn't work. “How's the boyfriend?”
Your hand stills on Alpine's fur. You look up to find him studiously examining a spot on the wall like it's the most fascinating piece of architecture he's ever seen.
“Matt moved back to New York a few months ago.” You straighten up slowly, Alpine protesting the loss of attention with a small trill. “We ended things. Wanted different things from the relationship.”
“Oh.” Bucky's eyes finally land on you, and there's something complicated happening in his expression. “I'm sorry.”
“No you're not.”
It comes out before you can stop it, and for a second you think you've made it weird again, but then Bucky laughs. It's surprised out of him, genuine and a little helpless, and god you've missed that sound.
“No,” he admits, smile going crooked. “I'm really not.”
The honesty of it sits between you for a moment. Then something changes in his face, the amusement fading into something more vulnerable.
“But I should be sorry,” he continues quietly. “It shouldn't matter what I think. You deserve to move on, to be happy with someone who—” He cuts himself off, looking down at his hands. “Someone who can actually be what you need. And I'll deal with that eventually. I will. I'm just—” Another pause. “I'm sorry that I played a part in screwing that up for you, with Matt. And I’m sorry if the divorce or the complications or just... me... if any of that made it harder for you to have something good.”
The sincerity in his voice makes your throat tight. Here he is, your ex-husband, apologising for potentially ruining your other relationship while also admitting he's not sorry it ended, and somehow it's the most honest you've been with each other in months.
“It wasn't you,” you hear yourself say. “Not directly, anyway. Matt and I… we wanted different things. He wanted easy and uncomplicated, and I'm apparently incapable of either of those things.”
“That's not true—”
“Bucky.” You raise a brow. “I showed up at my ex-husband's apartment unannounced because I got worried when he didn't show up to committee meetings. I think we can agree that 'easy and uncomplicated' is not really my strong suit.”
His mouth twitches. “Fair point.”
“But,” he adds, “you deserve someone who doesn't want easy. Someone who wants all of it - the complicated, the messy, the hard parts. Someone who wants you exactly as you are. Because you show up. Even when you shouldn't, even when it's inconvenient, even when you have every reason not to. You came here today because you were worried about me, because that's just who you are. You care so completely, so deeply, even when it costs you. And you deserve someone who loves you enough to show up for you the way you've always shown up for everyone else.”
The words land like a physical blow, stealing the air from your lungs. Your eyes start to sting and you have to look away, blinking hard against the sudden heat behind them because you're not going to cry in his apartment, you're not.
Except apparently you are, because your vision's already blurring and there's a tightness in your chest that won't ease and when you try to speak nothing comes out but a slightly choked sound that you immediately wish you could take back.
“Hey,” Bucky moves toward you immediately, concern flooding his face. “Shit, no, I didn't mean to upset you.”
You try and recover the situation, aiming for light, but it cracks halfway through. “No, I’m fine, that’s a very—that's nice, that's a really nice thing to say, thank you for the—”
You stop because you're not making sense, because the whole thing is so mortifying you want to sink through the floor.
“Sweetheart, what’s happening?” His hand comes up immediately, thumb brushing across your cheek with a gentleness that makes it worse. He’s so close now that you can see the flecks of grey starting to thread through his hair at his temples. Close enough that you catch the scent of his cologne - the same one you bought him three years ago for his birthday. Close enough that your body remembers what it feels like to fit against his before your brain can stop it.
And god, he still feels like home. Still looks at you like you're something precious. And it's too much, all of it is too much, and the tears that have been threatening finally spill over.
“Don't call me that,” you choke out, but there's no heat in it. “And don't—you can't just—”
The words are getting tangled up with the crying, which is humiliating, but now that you've started you can't seem to stop.
“You don't get to do this,” you manage, and it comes out accusatory and broken at the same time. “You don't get to make all these changes and become this better version of yourself after we're divorced. You don't get to quit the job you hated and figure out what you actually want and get a cat and look at me like that when we're not—”
You stop, pressing your palms against your eyes because maybe if you can't see him this will be easier.
“You're doing everything right and it's too late. And god, I'm here being pathetic, showing up at your apartment because I couldn't handle not seeing you at a meeting. You've moved on, you're this whole new person, and I'm still—”
“You think I could ever move on from you?”
The question stops you mid-sentence. You lower your hands and look up at him, and his face has gone soft and raw and heartbroken in a way that makes your chest cave in.
“I haven't moved on.” His voice drops to barely more than a whisper. “I couldn't move on from you if I tried. You think I got a cat because I moved on? I got a cat because I was so fucking lonely and every time I tried to date, I couldn’t. I couldn’t let anyone else in here. Couldn't stand the thought of someone in this space who wasn’t you.”
He takes a breath that shudders slightly on the exhale, and you can see him fighting to hold himself together.
“I'm not a better person because I moved on. I'm a better person because losing you destroyed me and I had to either figure out who I actually was without you or let it kill me. So I figured it out, because I owed it to myself to be more than just the wreckage of our marriage.”
His thumb continues to trace slow paths across your cheekbone, catching each tear as it falls. The space between you has shrunk to almost nothing. You don't remember either of you moving but suddenly you can count his eyelashes, can see his eyes are wet too.
Your eyes drop to his mouth. His lips are slightly parted, close enough that you can feel the warmth of his breath ghosting across your skin, and you watch him notice where you're looking. Watch the way his pupils blow wider, the way his grip on your face tightens just slightly.
“But god, I’m sorry,” he continues, and his forehead drops to rest against yours. “I'm so fucking sorry for all of it. For running for Congress without talking to you first. For shutting you out instead of letting you help me. For making you feel like you weren't enough when you were always everything.”
“Bucky—”
“I'm sorry for manipulating your calendar and lying to Matt and thinking I could orchestrate our marriage back together instead of just talking to you like a fucking adult.” His other hand comes up to cup your face, both palms cradling you as his thumb brushes your bottom lip “I'm sorry for taking you for granted and not fighting for us until it was too late. I'm sorry—”
You kiss him.
You can't help it. Can't wait another second, can't stand anymore distance between you when he's been standing there saying everything you'd needed to hear for months and he's finally, finally letting you all the way in and you need him closer. Need his mouth on yours more than you need air right now.
He makes this startled sound against your lips, like he didn't dare let himself believe this was actually happening. But then his hands tighten on your face and he's kissing you back, desperate and messy, your face still wet with tears.
“Keep going,” you gasp against his lips between kisses. “Don't stop.”
“I'm sorry for every time I chose my pride over our marriage.” The words tumble out between kisses as he walks you backward, one hand now gripping your waist, the other sliding up to cup the back of your head. “For every time I made you feel small or unimportant or like you were the problem when it was always me.”
You hit the wall with a soft thud, his palm deliberately taking the impact for your head, and his mouth finds your throat immediately, hot and desperate, teeth grazing your pulse point before his lips soothe over it.
“I'm sorry for wasting so much time,” he breathes against your neck, hands finding the hem of your shirt and pulling back just enough to drag it over your head. “For not appreciating every second I had with you. For not telling you every single day that you were the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Bucky—” You plead, fingers tugging his hair hard enough to make him groan against your skin.
He pulls back just enough to look up at you, chest heaving, lips swollen, eyes blown completely dark, and the desperation on his face mirrors everything coiling tight in your stomach.
“Let me make it up to you,” he pants, mouth already trailing lower, kissing down your throat, your collarbone, your sternum. “Please. Let me get on my knees and show you exactly how sorry I am, sweetheart.”
“Fuck—please, Bucky. Yes!”
His mouth keeps moving lower as he sinks down, lips pressing hot and wet over your stomach. When he reaches the waistband of your skirt his hands slide around to find the zip, tugging it down over your hips.
He peels it down slowly, mouth following the same path, pressing open kisses down your hip, the outside of your thigh, your knee, helping you step out of it carefully but making absolutely no move to take your heels off. For a moment he just stays there, looking up at you from the floor with blown dark eyes.
The sight of him down there looking at you like that makes your breath come out shaky.
“Missed you so fucking much,” he breathes against your inner thigh, lips dragging higher again. “Missed this.” His fingers find the waistband of your panties, peeling them down slowly, and when they're gone his right hand lingers on your calf, squeezing.
“Missed the way you sound when I do this—” He presses his mouth to your clit, barely anything, just enough to make you whine and your hips jerk forward chasing more. “Missed the way you taste. Been so fucking long, sweetheart, I'm gonna make sure you feel every single apology.”
Then he hooks your leg over his shoulder, spreading you wider, the stiletto of your heel digging into his back. He groans against you like he's been waiting months for exactly this, tongue dragging through your folds, tasting every inch of you, before his mouth closes around your clit and sucks.
You're already soaked, embarrassingly so, slick and swollen and desperate, and the obscene sounds he's making against you make your face flush hot. Like he's enjoying this more than you are, which makes the heat pooling in your stomach coil tighter and more urgent.
Your fingers bury themselves in his hair, gripping hard, and the moan that rumbles out of him against your folds is immediate, hips shifting like he can't help it. You tug again, twisting tighter, and he groans louder, like he'd let you pull as hard as you wanted as long as you kept him right there.
His tongue curls and your back arches off the wall with a broken, high little sound, thighs trembling against his shoulders. The heel of your stiletto presses harder into his back as your leg tightens around him.
He teases you mercilessly, knows exactly how to make you chase it. Tongue circling your clit until your hips roll forward without shame, grinding against his face, chasing friction with a desperation that would be humiliating if you had any capacity left to feel embarrassed. Every time you get close he pulls back, mouthing at your inner thigh or the crease of your hip, until you whine with frustration.
“Please—” It comes out wrecked, barely recognisable as your own voice. “Bucky, please—”
He makes this low, pleased chuckle against your folds that you feel everywhere, clearly delighted with himself, and the vibration of it makes you desperately clench around nothing and moan so shamelessly that he does it again on purpose.
His tongue fucks into you and the world goes soft at the edges, thoughts dissolving one by one until there's nothing left but the wet heat of his mouth and the needy little moans you can’t seem to stop making. His nose bumps your clit with every movement, pressure building so deep and overwhelming that you've stopped being capable of anything as complex as forming words.
Just fingers buried in his hair, back arched, existing entirely at the mercy of his mouth.
Then his left hand closes around your standing thigh, metal fingers wrapping around soft flesh. He pulls his mouth away just far enough to speak, his breath hot and damp against your soaked, swollen folds.
“Up,” he rumbles directly into your cunt, and you hear it somewhere distant and unimportant.
Your legs aren't really receiving instructions anymore - you're not capable of much of anything right now, every nerve ending in your body shorting out under his mouth. Too far gone already to manage something as complicated as lifting a leg.
The crack of his metal hand against your ass brings the world back in one sharp snap.
“Up, pretty girl. C'mon.” His voice is rough, amused, unbearably fond. “Can't have gone dumb on my tongue already, sweetheart. I’ve barely even started.”
“Fuck,” you manage.
“There we go,” he murmurs, the deep warmth in his voice is devastatingly attractive. “Good girl. Up.”
His hand guides you this time, helping you move your other leg up and over his shoulder so both thighs bracket his head. Before you can process what’s happening, he rises, straightening to his full height with an ease that makes it obvious how little you weigh to him. How effortless this is. How completely in control he is of the situation. And it makes your stomach swoop.
Your fingers yank his hair on instinct, panic and want tangled together, and the moan that drags out of him reverberates directly against your pussy in a way that makes your whole body shudder.
The wall catches your back. His hands lock around the backs of your thighs, one warm, one cool metal, fingers pressing into your flesh as he pins you exactly where he wants you. His face is buried between your legs and there's nothing below you but six feet of immovable super soldier who has absolutely no intention of letting you go anywhere. The realization of how thoroughly he has you, how completely helpless you are right now, sends a fresh rush of arousal flooding against his mouth that makes him moan his encouragement.
“Fuck— please—Bucky.”
The answering groan he makes against you says he heard it just fine. And then he gets greedy.
His tongue finds your clit and doesn't leave, licking and sucking with a focused relentlessness that has you sobbing. You're soaked, dripping down his chin. Every careful, deliberate stroke of his tongue pulls another helpless mewl from your throat while his hands keep you pinned exactly where he wants you, going nowhere, taking everything he decides to give you.
He learns you all over again like he has all the time in the world. Finds every spot that makes your thighs clench around his head and returns to them, again and again, cataloguing your reactions with the focused intensity of someone who has missed this more than they can articulate and intends to make up for every lost month tonight.
“Taste so fucking good,” he groans into you, the words vibrating against your clit, hips grinding forward against nothing. “Missed this pussy so much. Missed how wet she gets for me. Could eat her all night and never get enough.”
The knowledge that he's this worked up just from going down on you makes another rush of arousal flood against his tongue. Heat spreads through you in waves, the orgasm building each time he seals his lips around your clit and sucks, each time he groans against your folds like he's the one being taken apart. Your thighs are shaking around his head, his name spilling out of you in a broken, continuous stream that you can't stop.
“That's my girl,” he rasps into you, fingers digging into your thighs. “Feel her getting close. Gonna give me what I want.”
You come with a wail, clenching so hard around his tongue that he groans like it's the best thing he's ever felt. His hands remain steady around your thighs as he licks you through every shuddering wave, greedy for every last pulse of it, not pulling back until you're twitching and whimpering and completely wrecked above him.
He pulls back with one last filthy, open mouthed kiss to your cunt that makes you mewl, and then his hands shift, sliding you down his body until your legs wrap around his waist. You can feel how hard he is through his jeans, thick and insistent against where you're still throbbing, and your hips roll forward instinctively.
“Look at you,” he murmurs against your throat, hands gripping your ass, holding you up effortlessly. “So pretty when you cum for me. Did so good.”
You make some soft, wrecked sound against his neck that might be his name.
Then one hand comes up to grip your jaw, tilting your face up to his. His chin is slick with you, lips swollen and pink and kissable. His thumb presses against your bottom lip, dragging it down. “Open that pretty mouth.”
Dazed and pliant, you open your mouth without thinking, too gone to do anything but comply. He leans in and lets a slow string of spit drop onto your tongue, mixed with the slick mess of you.
“Atta girl,” he rumbles, watching your face with a primal satisfaction. “You taste so fucking good, sweetheart - had to let you have some.”
You swallow and he groans his approval, crashing his mouth back to yours before you can breathe. The taste of yourself on his tongue makes you dizzy, fingers twisting in his Henley. Your brain several steps behind your body as he starts moving, carrying you through the dark hallway without breaking the kiss, navigating entirely on muscle memory.
The bedroom is dark. He lays you out across his bed, stepping back to look at you. Spread across his sheets still in nothing but your heels and bra, chest heaving, thighs slick, eyes blown completely dumb. The look on his face makes your stomach flip all over again.
“Been dreaming about seeing you in this bed again,” he says, crawling over you, caging you in with those unfairly big biceps. “Not done with you yet, pretty girl. Not even close.”
Your hands find the hem of his top immediately, fisting the fabric, and he helps you drag it over his head. His dog tags fall forward as the shirt comes off, swinging between you both as he dips back down to your mouth.
Already your fingers are at his belt, clumsy and impatient, fumbling with the buckle while he kisses down your jaw and unhooks your bra before tossing it aside. His mouth finds your nipple immediately, greedy,tongue curling around it, and your hands stutter.
“Bucky—” You're swearing under your breath, hands shaking as you try and fail to get the buckle undone. “Come on, fuck, come on!”
He grazes his teeth against your nipple and your fingers slip entirely.
“Shit, please,” you whine, utterly shameless.
Bucky just laughs against your tits, warm and low, not even slightly helpful. Finally, though, the belt gives, button pops, zip drags down, and you're shoving everything down his hips in one desperate motion as his cock springs free. Thick and hard and heavy between his legs, and your mouth goes dry.
It’s been almost a year since you’ve seen him like this and your eyes drag down his body with a hunger you can't even pretend to hide. You reach for him immediately, needing to touch, needing to feel the weight of him in your hand, but he catches both wrists before you get there, pinning them above your head against the pillow.
“Patience, pretty girl,” he murmurs, hips settling between your thighs, cock heavy against your folds but not where you need him. “We've got time. Not rushing this.”
You whimper, hips lifting, trying to find friction, finding nothing.
He slides his cock through your folds, dragging through how obscenely wet you are, and the feeling of it pulls a broken noise from both of you simultaneously. Slow and deliberate, he teases the swollen head through your slick, catching your clit on the way, and your whole body jerks underneath him.
“Bucky,” you mewl. Your wrists flex against his grip, not really trying to get free, just needing somewhere to put the desperation flooding through you. He drags his cock back through your heat while you clench desperately around nothing, watching your face fall apart with an expression of filthy satisfaction.
“There it is. Look at that pretty little cunt begging for it.” Another slow roll of his hips, cock dragging through the mess of you. “Gonna give it to you. Just want you to ask nice price.”
“Please,” you manage, and it comes out so small and wrecked and needy that his hips stutter. “Please, Bucky, I need—I can't—please—”
He releases your wrists and your hands fly to his shoulders instantly, nails digging in hard, needing to touch him, needing to anchor yourself to something solid while his cock nudges your entrance, barely breaching, just enough to make you clench desperately around nothing.
“Shh,” he coos, hands gripping your hips hard enough to bruise, holding you exactly where he wants you even as your hips try to roll forward chasing more. “I've got you, baby.” The head of his cock presses a little deeper, teasing, and your nails drag down his shoulders as your back arches off the bed. “Always gonna take care of you. You know that.”
He pushes in slowly, and the stretch of him makes your whole body go rigid, nails carving lines down his shoulders that make him hiss as you take him inch by inch. Your walls flutter around him, clenching, trying to pull him deeper even as your body relearns the thickness of him, the weight, the specific fullness that you'd spent three months trying to forget and never quite managed.
“Fuck,” he grits out, hips stilling when he's buried completely, forehead dropping to yours, breathing ragged. “Always so fucking tight. Feel that? Feel how well this pretty cunt fits me?” His hips roll, just slightly, and you cry out. “Feel so perfect around my cock, pretty girl.”
You can't form words. Can only moan and dig your nails deeper into his back and breathe through it, through the overwhelming stretch and heat and the fact that it's him, it's Bucky, it's finally Bucky again after everything.
Then he starts to move.
Long, deep strokes that drag against every sensitive place inside you, his cock splitting you open over and over until you can't remember what it felt like to be empty. The cold metal of his dog tags brushes your chest with every thrust. His hand slides between your bodies, thumb finding your clit, and the dual sensation pulls a needy little wail from you, toes curling in your heels
“That's it,” he breathes against your lips. “That's my girl. Take all of it.”
You drag him back down into the kiss, desperate, one hand tangling in his hair and the other still clawing down his back, needing more of him, needing every part of him pressed against every part of you. He gives it to you, kissing you filthy and deep, hips rolling into a rhythm that's making coherent thought impossible.
“Missed you,” you gasp between kisses, and once it starts coming out you can't stop it. “Missed you so much, I missed you every single day, I tried not to but I couldn't stop, I missed you, I missed you—”
“I know.” His voice breaks on it. “Missed you too, baby. I'm here. I've got you.”
“Don't stop,” you sob against his mouth. “Please don't stop.”
“Not stopping.” His thumb keeps circling your clit and his hips snap forward harder, the wet obscene sounds of him fucking into you filling the dark bedroom. “Not going anywhere ever again.”
The pleasure and the grief and the overwhelming relief of having him back crash into each other all at once and the tears come again without warning, spilling hot down your cheeks. You're coming and crying at the same time, clenching so hard around him that he groans like it's the best thing he's ever felt.
Instinctively you hide your face against his neck with a mewling, broken little sound, as the waves keep crashing through you. His hand finds your jaw immediately, fingers gentle but certain, tilting your face back to his.
When he sees you - eyes wet and glassy, tears tracking freely down your cheeks, kiss-bitten bottom lip caught between your teeth - his expression cracks wide open. His thumb drags slowly through the wetness on your cheek, just looking at you, chest heaving, cock still buried deep inside you.
“Fuck,” he rasps, hips driving deeper, mouth dragging across your wet cheeks, licking away the tears. “Don’t hide from me. Not this. So beautiful when you cry for me like this.”
Another deep thrust punctuates his words and your sob breaks against his throat. The orgasm is almost too much, pleasure cresting so sharp and overwhelming that you're squirming beneath him, trying to get away from it and chase it at the same time. Your hips buck uselessly as his thumb keeps bullying your swollen clit , wringing every last shuddering wave out of you whether your oversensitive body can handle it or not.
“Made you cry too many times for the wrong reasons.” His mouth moves to your other cheek, kissing the wetness away gently even as his hips keep pounding into you. “Never fucking again. Only time you cry because of me now is when I've got you so full of cock you can't fucking think straight.”
Then he pulls back to look at you, pupils blown, taking in your wet lashes, your ruined expression. “That's the only reason I ever put tears on this pretty face again. On my fucking life.”
You're trying to say his name but it keeps breaking apart every time his hips drive forward, dissolving into breathless, helpless sounds against his mouth. But you can’t stop them, can’t control it, can’t do anything other than moan because he just keeps fucking you through every shuddering wave of your orgasm until you’re trembling under him.
You whimper, oversensitive and shaking, hips trying to shy away from his thumb even as your walls keep fluttering around him.
“Can feel her gripping me,” Bucky murmurs, almost to himself, hips still rolling slow and deep. “Feel that? Still so greedy even when you're all fucked out.” His thumb lifts and you exhale in relief, but his cock is still thick and heavy inside you, every slight movement magnified by how sensitive you are. “Got one more in there for me, baby. I know you do.”
Turning your face into his neck, you make a sound that's half-protest, half-desperate agreement.
“C’mon pretty girl,” His voice drops to something low and coaxing, lips brushing your ear. “You gonna give it to me?”
You nod weakly, barely managing it, pliant and soft and entirely his to do whatever he wants with. You'd agree to anything right now. Give him anything. You just want whatever he'll give you, want to stay exactly like this forever, warm and full and completely undone.
The rumble that comes out of him is deep and satisfied. “Good fucking girl.”
The words land low in your stomach even before his hands are moving, even before he pulls out with a groan that you both feel everywhere, even before the cool air hits the slick mess between your thighs. The empty whine that escapes you is involuntary and embarrassing and he hears every second of it.
His hands find your hips, turning you with that easy, devastating strength, flipping you over like you weigh nothing. Your face finds the mattress, and before you can process the change in position his palm is pressing warm between your shoulder blades, urging you down while his other hand slides under your hips, pulling them up to meet him.
You go pliant without resistance, body soft and utterly compliant beneath his hands, brain several steps behind everything. Your cheek presses into his sheets and you can smell him on the fabric, sending a fresh pulse of want through you.
He leans over you, his chest warm against your back for just a moment, and then his hand slides into your hair. Gathers it gently, sweeping it away from your face with a tenderness that's completely at odds with how thoroughly he just fucked you apart. His fingers are careful, unhurried, and you turn your face slightly into his palm like a cat.
“There you are,” he murmurs, low and warm, and you can feel the smile in it. His lips press to the nape of your neck, the top of your spine, each vertebra down between your shoulder blades.
He stays there for a moment, just looking at you. Taking in the slack, cock-drunk softness of your expression. The way your eyes have gone heavy and distant, lashes still wet, lips parted and swollen.
Then the blunt head of his cock presses against your entrance again and you keen into the sheets.
He pushes in slowly, achingly slowly, and the stretch of him at this angle is deeper, fuller, hitting every nerve ending at once. You're so wet and so oversensitive that every inch of him dragging inside you pulls sounds from your throat that you couldn't muffle if you tried.
“Fuck,” he gasps, hands locked around your hips, pulling you back onto him as his last inch disappears inside you. “Look at that. Taking every fucking inch. Good girl.”
He starts to move and your eyes roll back.
It's different like this. Harder, deeper, each thrust rocking you forward into the mattress, his hips snapping against your ass with a sound that fills the dark room, punctuated by his own rough exhales. One hand is splayed across your lower back to keep your hips tilted exactly where he wants them, the other gripping the curve of your hip hard enough you'll have fingerprints tomorrow.
You fist the sheets. It's all you can do. Knuckles white, face pressed into his pillow, breathing in desperate gasps because he keeps knocking the air out of your lungs with every thrust.
“Fuck, baby. Listen to how pretty you are like this.” His voice has gone rough, stripped of everything except want. His cock drags out slow and thrusts back hard, knocking another moan from you. “Hear that?”
You hear it. The wet, filthy sounds of him fucking into you, the slap of skin, the helpless little mewls you can't stop making. His dog tags swing forward with every thrust, cold metal grazing your back. Your face burns hot in the dark.
“C’mon, use your words,” he murmurs, hand smoothing up your spine. “You hear how good this pussy sounds taking me?”
“Yes,” You moan agreement, barely recognizing as your own voice. “Yes, fuck, yes”
His hand snakes around your throat, pulling you back against his chest in one smooth motion like you weigh nothing at all. And god, to him you don't. You’re so light in his hands that he barely has to think about it, and the ease of it sends a sharp pulse through you. You gasp as your back hits his chest, Bucky’s free arm secure around you, while his cock keeps driving up into you, the new angle hitting deeper.
He groans softly against your ear when you clenches hard around him. “Fuck. Knew you’d like that.”
You can’t respond. All that comes out is another needy little sound while your hands scramble desperately for purchase, one gripping his forearm where it rests against your throat, the other reaching back blindly for him. Bucky catches your hand immediately and presses it flat against his lower stomach, holding it there so you can feel every thrust, every flex of muscle as he fucks into you.
“That’s it, good girl. Hold on,” he murmurs approvingly, feeling you squeeze around him again. “Feel what you do to me?”
Then his hand moves from yours and slides down your stomach, over the curve of your hip, fingers finding your clit once more. You jolt at his touch, a high broken sound tearing out of you, hips lurching forward despite yourself.
“Shh.” His lips brush your ear. “I've got you. Stay still for me.”
You try. You genuinely try. But he's fucking up into you and rubbing your swollen clit simultaneously and the combination is devastating, pleasure crashing through you in waves that make it impossible to do anything except squirm against him and make sounds you'll be embarrassed about later. Your fingers dig into his forearm, nails pressing crescents into his skin, and his breath hitches against your neck.
“Fuck, good girl,” he hisses. “Scratch me up, sweetheart. Let me feel it.”
His fingers work faster and your head drops back against his shoulder, completely gone. Everything is his hands, his cock, his voice in your ear saying things that dissolve into heat before you can parse the words. You're making these desperate mewling sounds with every thrust, fingers scrabbling at his arm, his hip, any part of him you can reach, just needing to touch him, needing to feel him everywhere at once.
“Feel how wet she is,” he murmurs, fingers slipping through the absolute mess between your thighs. “Dripping down my hand. Making a mess of me.” His cock drives deeper and you sob. “So fucking perfect.”
His hand shifts from your throat to your jaw, turning your face toward his, and then he's kissing you.
It’s messy and overwhelming, his tongue sliding against yours while he keeps fucking you hard enough to make you moan helplessly into his mouth. Bucky swallows every needy little sound you make, kissing you deeper every time you squirm against him.
You can barely keep up with it. Head fuzzy, heavy with pleasure, especially with the way he’s still rubbing your clit in relentless slow circles that make your whole body shake harder every second.
“Come for me,” he breathes against your lips. “Want to feel that pretty pussy squeeze my cock again, baby. Can you do that for me?”
“Yes, Bucky, please.”
“So fucking good for me.” The hand at your jaw slides back to your throat, tilting your head back against his shoulder, baring your neck. His mouth finds your pulse point immediately. “Best thing I've ever had. Best thing I've ever touched.” His teeth graze your throat and you whimper, thighs shaking. “The only thing I ever want.”
His fingers press harder against your clit, hips rolling forward in a way that make you tremble in his grip, knees threatening to buckle, the only thing keeping you upright the arm locked around you.
“Fuck—I love you,” he grits out against the back of your neck, and it sounds like it's been tearing at him from the inside for months. “I love you. I love you.” Each repetition punctuated by a thrust that makes you cry out. “Loved you every single day I was without you. Never stopped for a second.”
The words hit somewhere deeper than anything else. Deeper than his hands or his mouth or any of it. Something cracks open in your chest, warm and enormous, and you’re coming again. Harder than before, your whole body seizing as you clench around him so completely that your knees do give out entirely. Just ragdoll weight caught entirely in his arms.
“Bucky,” you cry name in a needy a sob. “I love you too—fuck—I love you so much.”
The confession tears out of you and follows you over with a groan that shakes through his whole body. He buries himself to the hilt, cock pulsing in deep, spilling inside you with your name on his lips.
You’re both breathing in ragged pulls, and if it weren’t for his arms still locked around you, you’d have collapsed onto the bed. His chest heaves against your back, lips pressed somewhere near your temple, and neither of you speaks for a moment.
Eventually, carefully, he lowers you both down to the mattress, turning you over and pulling you against his chest. You lay boneless against him as his hand strokes slowly up your side, over and over, like he can't stop touching you now that he's allowed to again.
“I've got you,” he murmurs into your hair. “I've got you. You're okay. I've got you.”
And for the first time in almost a year, you actually believe it.
You stay like that for a while, neither of you moving, his hand still stroking slowly up your side. The room has gone quiet and warm around you, just his heartbeat under your ear and the city humming distantly outside.
But eventually he shifts, pressing a kiss to your temple. “Stay there.”
A weak sound of protest escapes you when he moves but he's already up, disappearing into the en-suite. You hear water running. When he comes back he sits beside you on the bed, warm cloth in hand.
“I can—” you start.
“I know you can,” he agrees simply, but he does it anyway, cleaning you up with gentle, unhurried hands. Then his free hand strokes down your leg, gently tugging one heel off, then the other, puts them both on the floor.
When he's done he disappears briefly, and then the mattress dips and he's pulling you into him, tucking you against his chest. The duvet settles warm around you both, and his hand starts moving slowly through your hair in soothing strokes.
“Sleep,” he murmurs against your temple, lips barely moving. “I've got you.”
You don't have much choice. Your body is already pulling you under, warm and safe and held in a way you'd spent months trying to convince yourself you didn't miss. His heartbeat is slow and steady under your ear, his chest rising and falling with a deep, even calm that pulls you further under with every breath.
His hand keeps moving through your hair, and the city outside feels very far away, and sleep takes you before you even feel it coming.
── ⟢ ₊ ☁️ ˚・🖋️ ⊹
The blaring of you alarm pulls you up from the deepest sleep you've had in months, and for one blissful, unthinking moment you're just warm. Bucky’s chest rises and falls slowly beneath your cheek. Reality hovers at the edges of your consciousness, waiting to be let in, and you squeeze your eyes shut against it, burrowing deeper into the duvet like that might keep it at bay.
Alpine is curled heavy and purring against the backs of your knees, warm and certain, like she's been there all night. Like you belong here. The thought sits in your chest, complicated and tender.
But your phone doesn’t stop shrilling from the nightstand.
You reach over and fumble for it, managing to silence before Bucky stirs. His arm tightens around you, pulling you back into him with a sleepy, wordless sound of protest, lips pressing somewhere near your hair. But then he goes still.
“…Was that your alarm for your flight?” His voice is rough with sleep, and underneath the grogginess you can here the carefulness.
“Yes,” you reply quietly, but make no effort to move.
The city hums distantly outside the window. Somewhere below, DC is already going about its morning. Up here, in the warm dark of his bedroom, time feels suspended, neither of you quite willing to be the one to break it.
You turn over. His eyes scan your face with an intensity that's so nakedly desperate it makes your chest ache. Like he's trying to memorize your face in case this is the last time he's allowed to be this close. Like he hasn't yet let himself believe last night was real.
“Stay.” The word comes out before he can stop it, blurted and slightly wrecked. His jaw tightens immediately afterwards, like he's bracing for it to land wrong. “Could you stay? I want you to stay. Just—a little longer, or—I know we haven't talked about anything properly yet, I just—” He exhales, slightly pained. “Please stay.”
You look at him for a moment. Let him sit with it a moment longer than necessary, watching the soft, desperate hope on his face exist exist without rushing to meet it, because you find you want to keep looking at him like this for just another few seconds. This new version of him that doesn't hide behind composure when something matters.
It's devastating and wonderful in equal measure, and you want to hold onto the sight of it for a second before you say anything.
“I suppose,” you begin slowly, watching his expression flicker, “I could probably stay a little longer. Get to know this version of you that coaches Avengers and has a cat and apparently owns cookbooks he's actually used.”
The exhale that comes out of him is enormous. Pure relief, pure joy, and the smile that follows it - wide and unguarded and slightly incredulous - is the most beautiful thing you've seen in a very long time. He pulls you in and presses his lips to your forehead, warm and certain.
You let him. Then you pull back gently, hand finding his jaw, tilting his face down to yours.
“But slowly,” you add, and mean it. “We do this slowly. No grand gestures, no orchestrating, no deciding things on my behalf. We actually talk. We work through all of it - the things we broke and the reasons we broke them. We make real effort this time, not just falling back into old patterns because it's easy and it feels good short term.”
He nods. Immediately, earnestly, like every word is being carefully filed away. “Slowly,” he repeats. “Yeah. I can do slowly.”
You raise a brow.
He has the grace to look slightly sheepish. “I can learn slowly.”
You're both quiet for a moment, considering this. You are not, historically, two people who do anything slowly. Your entire relationship has been characterized by intensity and momentum and grand gestures and catastrophic miscommunications. The idea of slow is almost comically foreign to you both.
“I'll come to London more,” he offers after a moment. “My schedule is flexible. I can make it work—I want to make it work. And I know the distance is real, and I know it won't always be easy, but I'd rather figure it out than spend another year without you.”
“And I'll come here too,” you add quietly. “I should've done that more. Made the effort in both directions instead of letting the Atlantic become an excuse.”
“Okay,” he says. “We start there.”
“We start there,” you agree.
And maybe it’s foolish. Maybe you'll look back on this morning and recognise it as just another impulsive decision in a marriage that's always run on chemistry and stubbornness and the particular madness of two people who can't seem to leave each other alone. Maybe the distance will be hard and the conversations will be harder and somewhere down the line you'll hit another wall neither of you knows how to climb.
But when he looks at you like that - open and unhidden in a way he spent years not knowing how to be - it doesn't feel like a mistake. It feels like something you've been working toward through every wrong turn and bad decision and midnight argument. Like the mess of the last year was just the long way round to something you were always going to find your way back to.
“Come here,” he murmurs, and you let him turn you back over, let him pull you into his chest where you fit so perfectly.
The relief of not having a flight to catch settles over you like the duvet itself.
His lips find the curve of your neck, lazy and warm, just the occasional soft press of his mouth against your skin. Just enjoying the fact that he can. That you're here and not leaving and there's nowhere either of you need to be.
Your eyes drift closed, hovering in that soft place between sleep and waking again. Alpine purrs against your feet. You feel more at peace than you have in longer than you can remember. And then, through your sleepy haze, you gradually become aware of his hand.
It's moved without him seeming to notice, fingers drifting down your arm, over your wrist, settling at your left hand. His thumb brushes absently over your ring finger, back and forth, over the bare skin where your ring used to sit. Slow and absent, like he doesn't even know he's doing it.
Your right hand moves to cover his, and he still immediately. A slight tension moving through his chest, like he's been caught at something, like he's about to pull back.
“Ask me again someday,” you murmur into the pillow, half-conscious. “When we're ready.”
The tension bleeds out of him all at once, his whole body exhaling like he's been holding that breath for months. His arms tighten around you and his mouth presses to the back of your neck again.
“I will,” he affirms quietly, against your skin. “I promise you, one day, I will.”
His thumb resumes its slow path over your ring finger, gentle and deliberate now. A quiet promise being made in the dark.
“I love you,” he murmurs into your hair, lips barely moving. “Missed saying that. Missed you hearing it. I love you so much.”
You sink deeper into his arms, into the warmth of him, into the love in his voice, into the particular peace of being somewhere you belong after a very long time of being without it.
You fall back asleep before you can answer. But that's okay, you have time now.
more mads: that's all folks! i really, really hope you enjoyed, like seriously. this fic has both been the bane of my existence and a precious little baby because i do really love these idiots. i hope i gave them a satisfactory ending and that it was worth the wait, and i would absolutely love to know your thoughts via any comments or reblogs! thank you so much for reading :)
p.s. i realise the first part was set in december but i couldn't physically write about christmas in april/may so imagine that part one was set in early december and that's why there's no mention of christmas lol
taglist: @juniebjonesin @heldbybarnes @love-stucky @badbitchsincebirth05 @phoenix-in-writing @tw1sters @blowingbarnes @sassandscribbles @alpinebarnesworld @sheriff-bodecker @buckybsdoll @gilwm @venigrantrogers @mrsevans90 @rainyapricotcreatorparty @midnightramyeoncravings @catchmeupimgettingoutofhere @krisstyu @itsalltaken - if you would like to join my taglist, please send me an inbox or leave a comment here!
⸝⸝ SUMMARY — ❝ you’d both agreed it was for the best. publicly still married, but privately not. it works - mostly. until bucky shows up unannounced to your embassy christmas party, finding you getting a little too cosy with your lawyer. and it turns out bucky barnes doesn't share what's his. ❞ ⧽ 12.5k
！SMUT, oral sex (f receiving), p in v, unprotected sex, creampie, breeding kink, possessive!jealous!bucky, (slight?) soft dom!bucky, semi-public sex, praise kink, private separation but still together for public/PR (no cheating), overstimulation, marking/biting, come play, dirty talk, angst with a smut chaser (if 4k is considered a chaser), ft. matt murdock, use of pet names (baby, sweetheart, doll, pretty girl, good girl), 18+ MDNI!
⤷ from maddie: happy christmas eve! the idea for this came from watching the latest season of the diplomat on netflix. i got super inspired by one of the episodes and thus this fic was made! congressman bucky was the perfect fit, and since it's december i made it a lil festive too. will stop yapping now. also if you are wondering what matt murdock is doing in london, so am i. » MASTERLIST » SERIES MASTERPOST ⟡˙⋆
London’s winter presses like a damp second skin against the embassy windows, the kind of petty drizzle that refuses to become snow no matter how many Christmas cards pretend otherwise.
But no matter, because inside the embassy, it’s practically snowing glitter.
Embassy garlands shimmer red and gold. The ballroom lighting is warm without being indulgent. The guests are arriving in sparkling waves of government-issue Christmas cheer. And the string quartet has already begun the first set, their notes floating gentle and evergreen through the foyer.
Polished oak floors, imported pine garlands, crystal chandeliers dressed in frostlight. All of it pretty and polished and perfect, sparkling with the kind of manicured holiday charm that makes ministers nod and dignitaries relax.
Just like you.
Tonight’s dress is dark green silk, backless, and perfectly inappropriate for the London chill that never seems to leave your bones anymore, even inside. Your hair is pinned up in an updo so deliberate it’s meant to look effortless, all arranged to bare the elegant slope of your back like a threat.
A few strands have been strategically allowed to fall loose, of course, just so your perfect polish doesn’t come across as unapproachable.
Enough edge to say I’m young enough to still care, and enough statement to say I’m powerful enough that I don’t have to. Or at least that’s what your stylist said.
You’re already on your second glass of champagne before the canapés have come out. Not because you’re having fun. God no, but because it gives your hand something to do, and your mouth something to occupy so it can’t twist into something impolite the next time someone leans in with a concern-lilted inflection (read: thinly veiled curiosity barely dressed as sympathy) and asks, “Will your husband be joining us this evening?”
You’ve fielded three of those in the first hour. Possibly four. At least one from someone who absolutely knew the answer before they asked, which somehow makes it worse.
But you laugh gracefully the way you’re supposed to, like none of this touches you, as you make his excuses, each one rehearsed until the syllables shine. ‘He couldn’t make the trip across the pond this time’, or ‘he’s buried under committee meetings back in D.C.’ or ‘he sends his warmest regards and deepest regrets’. Just the right blend of fond and disappointed, like a woman who’s used to being loved from afar.
Because this is the shape of your life now: standing in a ballroom decked to the halls, mingling with perfect poise whilst you field questions about the ghost of Christmas past you still wear a ring for.
You realise you're rubbing said ring - the band sits there, warm and familiar. You'd tried taking it off once, two weeks ago, just in private. Got as far as twisting it halfway before your chest went tight and you shoved it back on.
Optics, you’d told yourself. Optics.
That’s what it means to be married to a congressman. Or not married. Or somewhere in between, depending on the version of yourself the situation calls for. Tonight, apparently, you’re playing the loyal half of a perfectly functional power couple.
People come to you for proximity to him. Not your work. Not your office. Not your accomplishments, which have included several strategically defused trade disputes, four successful summits, and a quietly brilliant manoeuvre that kept a NATO rift from turning into an international crisis. None of that matters anymore, not since Bucky became congressman.
Now you’re just greeted as the glossy envelope for a message they actually want delivered elsewhere.
Which is almost funny, albeit in that bitterly ironic way, because you, of all people, can’t even get him to pick up the damn phone.
You don’t even remember the last time he told you anything first. Then again, you're not sure you've told him much either. When did you stop calling? When did the texts become logistics instead of love?
More often than not these days, you find out about most things in his life the same way everyone else does - via press release. Which, you suppose, is fitting. After all, isn’t that what your marriage is now, too?
And on the rare occasion that you do get a heads-up, it doesn’t come from him. It comes from his assistant. That bright-eyed, overly efficient, little blonde who answers his phone like she’s guarding national security secrets and always calls you Mrs. Barnes with a certain kind of pointed sweetness that makes it clear it’s a job title she’s planning to be promoted into.
And no, you are not wondering if he’s fucking her. You’re not. You are not.
It’s none of your business anymore. That was the agreement. Publicly together, privately separated. It was mutual, rational, and clean. Or at least that’s how you both pitched it: two adults, two careers, two calendars so catastrophically misaligned that marriage started to feel more like a diplomatic effort than a romantic one.
But divorce was out of the question, of course. His PR team thinks it’s better for his approval ratings if he’s still seen as the devoted husband. And yours thinks the word divorce reads as crack in the polished surface they’ve spent years selling to the world. Apparently, your marriage is the American dream.
Which tracks, really, because no one actually lives it, and it falls apart the second you stop performing.
So you both play the part. Smile for the cameras. Stay in step when the flag is watching. And when it’s not? He can do who what he wants. You certainly are.
Which means you’re definitely above petty jealousies and quiet suspicions and the deep, crawling irritation that rises in your throat every time her name appears in your inbox with a subject line like Congressman Barnes regrettably will not be attending…
That was this morning’s smug little gem. She can’t even bring herself to write your husband. Or even Bucky. It’s always Congressman Barnes, like she’s writing to a stranger and he’s just another man in a suit. Like love was never part of it. Like you haven’t kissed that mouth goodnight a thousand times. Like you haven’t memorised the weight of his body curled into yours on nights when the Hydra ghosts came knocking and all you could do was hold him until morning forgot them.
You wonder if anyone holds him now. If he even lets them.
But none of that matters right now. Because by every metric, be it press, presence, or political timing, you’re hosting the social event of the season. Months of planning. Countless moving pieces, negotiated to the inch. And it shows. Yes, everything is perfect. It has to be.
So why won’t your pulse stop tripping?
“Your heart is racing. I could hear it from across the room.”
The breath of Matt’s voice at your side is low, warm, and intimate. He doesn’t announce himself. He never does. He just materialises, quiet and effortless, slipping through the cracks in your composure like he was always meant to be there.
It’s a skill he's perfected since he flew in 3 months ago for what should’ve been a routine case: American grad student, wrongful detention, violated rights. Except it wasn't routine. It was a nightmare. And Matt Murdock had walked into your office, brilliant and relentless, and fixed it in seventy-two hours.
The embassy had him on retainer the following week. You had him in your bed a month after that.
Matt is careful at events like this. Always is. He ghosts in from the side, lets his shoulder hover close to yours like he’s just another guest drifting through the conversation, entirely harmless.
You don’t look at him right away. You don’t need to. You know that voice like you know the soft give of his mouth against your neck. You know the heat of him beside you. The weight of him when he presses in. The way his suits are always far too pristine for what he does to you in them.
“Are you spying on me, Counsellor?” you murmur without turning, keeping your eyes trained on the sea of glittering conversation ahead. As though you don’t already feel your pulse changing shape at the scent of his cologne when he leans in just enough to brush your ear with his hushed voice.
“Just keeping an ear out,” he replies, warm and maddeningly innocent. The same kind of innocent as the hand that finds the small of your back mid-sentence, warm, steadying, and just slightly lower than is professionally advisable. “It’s hard to ignore a distress call.”
“I am not distressed,” you counter, not yet glancing his way, though you subtly lean into the pressure of his hand, aching for more.
The game is half in the glances withheld. But when you do turn, it’s with the barest tilt of your head, an upturned corner of mouth. The practiced sort of acknowledgment that reads friendly at a distance and something far more dangerous up close. He’s wearing a black suit with the silk tie you picked last week.
“You are… composed under duress,” he says at last, his smile curving slow, a touch crooked, edged with that particular brand of trouble that always sounds like charm when he wears it. “Which is very sexy, by the way. If deeply inadvisable for long-term blood pressure.”
You purse your lips like you’re holding back a retort, but your mouth betrays you at the corners - traitorous, flickering with the ghost of something softer. His hand is still there. Warm against your bare skin. Just above the low dipped back of your dress, strategically, yet infuriatingly still.
Except for his pinky. That traitorous thing begins to move in a subtle back and forth, just at the hem of propriety, tracing slow, idle lines. Lower than he should. Like he can’t help himself. Like he’s not really thinking about it. Like his body is betraying him in the way yours already has, heat blooming beneath his touch in that unbearable space between too public and far too intimate.
“Mm, thank you, Dr. Murdock,” you hum lightly, taking a sip of champagne, like you’re not acutely aware of every nerve ending along your spine. “Remind me what I’m paying you for again? Because it’s certainly not health advice.”
He doesn’t miss a beat. “Legal counsel. Keeping Americans out of foreign prisons. The occasional corporate sabotage. Managing your rapidly escalating sexual frustration.”
The last part lands lower, his voice dipping into something rich and pointed. You let your gaze flick to his lips for the briefest second, drawn by memory more than choice. The press of his lips against your throat last night surfaces uninvited, threading heat through your body in slow, deliberate coils. The kind of heat you have absolutely no business carrying right now.
“Your retainer doesn’t cover the last one,” you flatly retort, trying to hold on to the seams of your composure.
“Oh,” he laughs, entirely too pleased. His smile turns razor sharp, a contrast to the velvet of his voice, which remains smooth as sin and just as indulgent. “I do that part pro bono.”
His hand drifts lower, no longer pretending at subtlety. You inhale, sharp and involuntary, and your pulse stumbles in your throat. You know he can hear it. Your whole body prickles with awareness, strung too tight beneath the weight of restraint.
“Matt,” you hiss, quiet, dangerously close to breathless.
“Madam Ambassador,” he returns, mockingly reverent.
“People are going to notice,” you manage, aiming for cool and missing entirely. Instead, it lands somewhere just above a whisper, too thin to carry any weight.
“No, they won’t,” he murmurs, dipping his head just enough to make it feel intimate, almost conspiratorial. “They don’t see you the way I do.
“You look incredible tonight by the way,” Matt adds, offhand, like it’s just a fact.
You turn toward him, brow arched, lips already parted to ask how exactly he knows that - but he’s quicker. Of course he is.
“I counted nine heartbeats spike the second you walked in, four shallow breathers, and one guy even stopped talking mid-sentence,” he murmurs, head tilted, mouth curving into that slow, knowing smile. “That usually means you’re wearing something dangerous.”
You look away. “Don’t start.”
“Don’t worry,” he says, and his voice is a breath too close. “I’m not starting anything.” An intentional pause. “Yet.”
Oh fuck. You know that tone. And you know how easily it undoes you. Your hand grips the stem of your champagne flute with too much pressure.
“That’s for later,” Matt continues, still smiling, still playing innocent, still entirely unbothered about the molten situation he’s creating beneath your thighs. “When we’re locked in your office, and you’re bent over the desk—” It’s humiliating, how quickly he short-circuits you. Especially here. Especially now. Surrounded by diplomats and donors and enough political firepower to start a polite war. “—this dress pushed up to your hips, hands flat, legs shaking. Trying so hard not to make a sound while I—”
“Madam Ambassador!”
You nearly drop your glass.
Your head spins to the source of the sound as your aid appears at your side like she’s been launched from a cannon, all breathless urgency and faintly flushed cheeks, clearly trying not to run while absolutely running. The intimate bubble created between you and Matt bursts in a flash. You blink, once, twice, trying to remember how to put your professional mask back on.
She leans in closer, lowering her voice in the practiced way of someone attempting to make a scene look like not a scene.
“I’ve just got word that your husband is—“
But whatever seconds of warning you were about to get arrive too late. The doors don’t slam open with drama. They part neatly, elegantly, like every other perfectly choreographed detail of the night, just another entrance in a long parade of them.
Except, somehow, you know better.
So you turn. And there he is. Congressman Barnes. Bucky. Your husband.
Or rather: the six foot tall coal in your diplomatic stocking.
He stands in the open mouth of the ballroom, all broad shoulders and presence, like the media trained version of the man who once touched you like he was afraid you’d disappear. The rain’s left it’s fingerprints across the upturned collar of his coat, which he shrugs off, politely handing it to the doorman waiting. One dark strand of hair falls forward as he does, damp from the chill. He doesn’t bother brushing it back; he’s too busy scanning the room.
Steel blue eyes track the crowd with practiced efficiency. Old habits, older instincts. The assassin’s gaze never really left him, just learned to wear nicer suits.
But he’s not looking at the buzz of people, he’s looking through them, searching, until finally, they find their home.
His gaze finds yours like it always does, like there’s some old wire between you still conducting power, even now. And something in his expression goes soft. Fractional. Sharp edges dulled for one split second, like the look he used to give you across your kitchen island before the day’s chaos took him back to D.C. and left you with your coffee going cold. For a moment, the room shrinks to the two of you.
But then, inevitable, his gaze drops, precise and burning. And you remember, in the same second he sees it, that Matt’s hand is still resting against the small of your back.
And for the first time all night, your thoughts empty, like someone yanked the power from the control panel in your brain and left you blinking through static.
Instead, you’re just very suddenly aware: the low scoop of your dress, the heat of Matt’s fingers against your skin, the exact angle of Bucky’s jaw as he processes what he’s seeing, and the absolutely godawful presence of your aide standing next to you, still chattering on, blissfully oblivious to the way you’re internally appealing to every higher power on record, including a man in a red suit with a sleigh, to grant your Christmas wish and make the floor open up.
Bucky doesn’t react - at least not outwardly. His face is still carefully arranged, cloaking the real him. But it doesn’t reach his eyes. Oh no, they’re doing something else entirely. Calculating. Reading. Remembering.
Your spine locks. Your lungs forget how to do the one thing they were designed for. And before you can think, before you can help yourself, you step forward. Out of Matt’s touch. Like you’re guilty of something, even though this is exactly what you’d both agreed to.
Matt’s doesn’t protest. But his head tilts slightly, and his mouth flickers with the ghost of something less assured than earlier.
“Were you expecting him?” he murmurs, voice barely above a breath, pitched only for you.
You might answer. 'No'. You think you say it. But you’re not sure. Because your pulse is a snare drum in your ears and your dress is suddenly too tight and Matt is still behind you and before you can recalibrate, Bucky’s crossing the room. Big, purposeful strides, no detours, like gravity’s involved. Like the shortest distance between him and you is an inevitability. And maybe you blink. Maybe your fingers twitch. Maybe Matt says your name and you don’t hear it.
And then you feel it. Bucky’s arm curling around your waist, pulling you close and sliding into place like it never left. Like it belongs there. His fingers press into the curve of your hip, twitching slightly, like he’s reacquainting himself with the feeling of you.
“Sorry I’m late, sweetheart,” he drawls, pressing a kiss to your cheek that’s more claim than greeting. “Did I miss anything important?”
You smile before you even register the impulse, before your brain catches up with your face. It’s even not performative - it’s worse. It’s reflex, that old, honey-warm reaction buried somewhere in the marrow of you, where all the bad decisions live.
Of course his presence short-circuits your better judgment and rewires your body like a fucking Pavlovian trigger.
"Bucky," you breathe, and it comes out softer than you mean. Laced with something warm and involuntary and utterly stupid. Almost relieved. Which is objectively ridiculous, because he wasn’t supposed to be here, and you certainly weren’t waiting for him. ”You made it."
“Couldn’t let you do this alone,” he murmurs, and he leans in just enough to make it feel tender. And then you catch it, the lingering scent of his cologne - warm, spiced, sinfully familiar. It still curls under your skin, bypasses logic, and goes straight to that inconvenient place between your legs like your body hasn’t been thoroughly updated on the terms of your separation.
His mouth brushes the line of your cheek with a deliberate softness. “You look gorgeous tonight, baby.”
Baby.
Oh, fuck you, actually. That word is a landmine, and you step on it hard. It detonates in your chest, all heat and memory and involuntary muscle reaction.
Your breath catches in the space between your collarbone and your pride. You can’t move. Can’t speak. Can’t do anything except stand frozen, wondering how the hell you ended up here, in a ballroom full of politic’s most powerful, between your husband and your lover, and a not nearly enough alcohol in your system to deal with whatever chapter of your memoir this will eventually be filed under.
And you’re suddenly violently aware of how absurdly close and entirely too perceptive Matt is. Of how his hand has only just left the bare skin at the base of your spine. Of how the air between the three of you has tightened into something sharp and charged and idiotically male.
Bucky smiles at Matt. Or rather, Bucky does the thing he does instead of smiling, that faint curve at the corners, that almost-polite flicker of civility that’s more like a veiled assessment than an actual expression of warmth.
"Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?” He asks, just barbed enough to jolt you straight out of the spiralling mess in your brain.
You open your mouth. Something resembling a noise emerges, high pitched and useless. You opt to close it again. Then you flick a glance toward Matt, who still hasn’t moved, though the slight tension in his jaw says enough. You are, by every measure, out of protocol, out of champagne, and rapidly running out of coherent thoughts.
You laugh. It’s automatic. Bright, brittle, entirely unconvincing. The kind of laugh that would get flagged in a hostage video.
“Yes—of course,” you say, in a voice less convincing than the one you used to persuade a room full of foreign dignitaries that a rogue drone strike was merely an ‘unfortunate timing issue’. You turn to Matt, hand gesturing somewhere vaguely between them both. “This is, uhh…”
And that’s when your brain decides to eject itself from the conversation entirely. Instead, the Rolodex of introductions spins uselessly behind your eyes:
This is Matt—no, too casual—This is Mr. Murdock—who is he, your high school principal?—This is the embassy’s legal counsel—sure, fine, if you’ve never met the guy before—This is the man currently fucking your wi—Jesus Christ.
Your mouth opens. Something half-shaped and unapproved begins to form. Abort. Abort. Abor—
“Matt Murdock, legal counsel for the embassy,” Matt introduces smoothly, mercifully stepping in before your mouth does something catastrophic. He extends his hand toward your husband like he wasn’t just whispering filth against your ear five minutes ago, his smile a masterclass in lawyerly charm.
Bucky doesn’t take it right away. Just stares at him. That quiet, unreadable thing he does, the one that always made other politicians uneasy and your staffers nervous, the one that means he’s doing more than thinking. He’s judging, asessing, cataloguing, slotting information into place like a sniper sighting his target, only this time the ammunition is social and the terrain is your fucking embassy Christmas party.
After leaving it almost a second longer than what’s polite, Bucky takes Matt’s hand. Firm, and a fraction too tight. But Matt holds his ground, doesn’t flinch once.
“Bucky Barnes,” he returns at last. “I’ve heard your name come up a few times.”
Matt, ever composed and gracious, nods easily. “All good things, I hope.”
Bucky’s mouth twitches - technically a smile, if you’re being generous. “That remains to be seen.”
You shift just enough to face Bucky, one hand ghosting across his shirt like you’re smoothing out his tie. “James.” You warn under you breath, into his chest, just loud enough for him.
His eyes, those ridiculous, impossible blue eyes, cut down to you. “What?” He replies, pretending innocence.
You give him that polished, razor-thin smile you’ve perfected over a decade of high-stakes diplomacy and rooms where the only language permitted was subtext.
“Don’t,” you hiss through it, lips frozen in place, pressing the words through your clenched jaw like a trick of ventriloquism. “Not here.”
“Don’t what?” he shrugs with maddening innocence, like he’s never once in his life started a conflict he didn’t fully intend to finish. “I’m just talking, doll. Just acquainting myself with the man who, in my absence, has so gallantly been entertaining my wife.”
And there it is. My wife.
It lands like a slap from silk gloves. Yet it was slipped into the sentence like it belongs there, and, you suppose, technically it still does. Especially with how your body reacts.
Because it’s not just a word. Not from him. And you hate that it still works on you. Hate that it makes your throat tighten, makes your skin heat where his arm sits so casually around your waist. Hate the ache that curls low in your belly, sharp as it ever was, your body still tuned to his frequency like no time has passed at all.
You try to breathe. Try to smile. Try not to picture him saying it under different circumstances - rougher, close to your ear, with your name caught between his teeth and your nails dragging lines down his back. Try, desperately, not to picture the version of him that still lives somewhere under your skin.
Instead, you so bravely try and do what any self-respecting woman with two degrees, three diplomatic awards, and several glasses of champagne in her system does. You try to salvage the conversation with dignity.
Except you don’t get the chance. Because James Buchanan “my wife” Barnes opens his stupid mouth again.
“I’m sure I’m not the only one curious,” he adds, that casual little lilt in his voice. “Not with the way he’s hanging around you like a lost puppy.”
Your smile collapses. Even Matt’s practiced charm falters. And that’s when your hand lands flat against Bucky’s chest.
A perfectly innocent motion, of course. If someone took a photo right now, it would look like a poised, affectionate gesture - and not the silent threat it absolutely is - as you steer him away from Matt before the night can get any worse.
“Okay,” you smile so sweetly it could rot teeth quicker than Christmas candy, ‘I think the Congressman and I are just going to take a little moment, have a bit of a, you know, marital catch up,” you keep talking to Matt over your shoulder, “I’ll find you later, Matt.”
And then you’re gone, dragging Bucky through the crowd, pulling him by the hand now. Not laced fingers, oh no, just your palm wrapped around his wrist like a diplomatic escort and not, say, a woman seconds from finding the nearest unoccupied corridor and verbally eviscerating her husband behind a ficus.
His gait is maddeningly casual. Because of course it is. Of course he follows half a step behind, letting you lead him through the crowd, letting you fume and fluster and curse, while he’s all composed amusement like he’s exactly where he wants to be. Like he hasn’t just detonated a perfectly groomed social event with one laced remark and a single possessive noun.
“You cannot do that,” you snap, breath sharp through your teeth, as you throw a glare over your shoulder. “You do not get to show up late and piss all over the conversation like a jealous husband.”
And just like that, he stops walking.
Which means, by default, you’re suddenly yanked to a graceless halt mid-stride, tipping you off balance and straight back into him.
The full inertia of your forward momentum meets the immovable object of one emotionally constipated super-soldier, and your composure unravels in the three seconds it takes for your body to register proximity. Your palms slap flat against the wall of his chest to steady yourself.
And Christ, he’s still so solid. Stupidly, impossibly solid. Your treacherous fingers hesitate a beat too long against the fabric of his shirt, caught in the gravity of muscle memory, like they’re trying to map old territory. You tell yourself it’s balance. Not the slow, aching part of you that still wants to hold on.
Eventually, eventually, you peel yourself off him and step forward again, spine straightening with diplomatic precision.
That’s when he crosses his arms. And the way the fabric of his suit strains across the thick lines of his biceps nearly short-circuits whatever righteous indignation you’d been clinging to. Your brain stutters. Your pulse jumps. Because that body - your husband’s body - still knows how to shut your thoughts off like a flipped switch.
You swallow hard. Try to remember what it was you were furious about, and hang onto that like a lifeline.
“Didn’t know I had to RSVP to my own wife’s events,” he quips, voice all smug indifference and no apology. Like the words just slipped out of his mouth by accident, and he’s not choosing this fight on purpose. “Just in case she’s plus-oneing with her boyfriend.”
Truly, a flawless demonstration of how neither of you are good at detachment, despite insisting otherwise when you agreed to privately end your marriage and that seeing other people was allowed.
And it hits harder than it should. Unfair and sore. Not just a jab, but a full, winding punch to the ribs.
You don’t let your face flinch, still holding his steely gaze, but the fury tightens in your throat, and the taste of champagne goes bitter in your mouth, making it hard to swallow past the taste of every unspoken thing between you.
And maybe something in your silence hits him harder than your words ever could. Maybe Bucky realises he’s pushed it too far. Maybe he even starts to feel a little guilty. Because that telltale little crease that starts to pull between his brows - the one that always used to show up when he hurt your feelings.
He looks away. Just for a second. Slides his hands into the pockets of that immaculate suit like he needs something to do with them besides reach for you.
“I should’ve called,” he admits.
“You should’ve done a lot of things,” you counter, but it comes out quieter than you expect. Not soft, nor gentle, just tired. Worn at the edges in the way you only ever are around him.
And maybe, god, maybe this is the moment. The liminal, flickering heartbeat between fury and something vulnerable. Maybe you’re both on the edge of something real. Maybe—
“Oh, there’s my favourite couple!”
God forbid you finish a thought this evening. Never in your life have you wanted a Christmas carol to come true quite so desperately as you want Silent Night to live up to its goddamn promise.
You don’t even get a moment to brace before both your hands are swept up in a pair of perfectly manicured claws belonging to a retired ambassador. Generous with her compliments, sparing with her actual opinions, and somehow always convinced you and Bucky are the very picture of domestic bliss.
“Oh, just look at you two,” she coos, with the kind of warm familiarity that only comes from never actually having a real conversation with either of you. “It’s been far too long since I’ve seen you in a room together, but aren’t you just luminous. Gorgeously luminous.”
Her gaze darts between you like a bloodhound on the scent of high-society gossip, pupils practically dilating at the sight of you and Bucky together. “James, dear, you must be keeping her happy with the way she’s glowing.”
You smother your scoff in a polite little cough. But Bucky, damn him, doesn’t miss a beat.
He smiles, a little crooked, and reaches instinctively for your waist like he’s done it every day of his life, and will do every day after this. “Trying my best, ma’am.”
“Of course you are,” she says, patting his arm in that way older women do when they’ve decided you’re a particularly well-trained husband. Then her attention swivels back to you,
“My husband says your James speaks about you all the time, you know.” Her smile grows indulgent, like she’s letting you in on some private, precious detail. “He’s all ‘my wife says’ this, ‘my wife thinks’ that. Quite devoted, for a man drowning in committee meetings.”
And just like that, the air thins.
Your chest folds in on itself, and you’re not entirely sure if it’s your lungs or your sense of reality collapsing first. Because you hadn’t considered that. Not once. Not in all the months of press releases and dodged calls. That he might still talk about you. In present tense. In rooms you weren’t in. Casually. Like you mattered. Like you still belonged to him in some way that wasn’t just tactical optics and expertly coordinated photo ops.
Something urgent and ugly coils tight beneath your ribs. The sharp ache of hope’s ghost. Like everything you told yourself you’d stopped wanting was still curled up somewhere inside you, only playing dead.
Your gaze lifts before you can stop it, peering up through your lashes, drawn to him like a tide to the moon you never really escaped. Your eyes search him, scrambling for something, soft in a way you hate. Even your lips part uselessly as though the questions lodged in your throat might spill out if they knew how to take shape.
But Bucky’s frozen.
Not visibly. Not in any way that would register unless you knew him like you do. You feel it in the way his hand tightens infinitesimally against your waist, in the way his jaw is tight, in the way his eyes remain pinned somewhere past the woman’s shoulder. Like he can pretend you didn’t just hear that.
But you don’t get to sit with any of it. Of course you don’t. Because she barrels onward, entirely unaware of the existential grenade she’s just lobbed into the centre of your fake marriage.
“And when,” she adds, all conspiratorial mischief as she clasps your hands again, “can we expect a baby from you two, hmm? We can’t let these genes go to waste - your children would be beautiful. Just imagine, a little diplomatic darling running around. What a legacy!”
Your smile calcifies, and your eyes strain so wide that your soul starts clawing for an exit through your sockets. You laugh, something brittle and not at all human.
“Oh, wouldn’t that be something,” you reply, and you really do mean it, just not in the way she’ll take it. “But you’ll have to excuse us, because my husband and I need to compare notes before the speeches start.”
You don’t wait for a response. You’re already turning. Already seizing Bucky’s wrist, which is annoyingly warm and comforting in a way that only makes everything feel worse. Your fingers curl around it in a firm grip that makes your intentions painfully clear and doesn’t leave room for interpretation.
You drag him, again, through the crowd, but this time there’s no half-hearted attempt at a pasted on smile.
He follows again, of course. But this time with the sheepish obedience of a man who knows he’s two seconds from being flayed with nothing but words. His steps lengthen to match yours, just brushing close enough to trip every circuit in your body that hasn’t already shorted out.
This time, you don’t make the mistake of heading for the first empty corridor. No. This time, it’s your office. Four walls, a lock, and a door you can slam.
‧͙⋆•̩̩͙˚❅*̩̩͙•̩̩͙⋆‧͙*̩̩͙❆ ͙͛⋆˚❅•̩̩͙⋆‧͙
The second the door clicks shut, it’s like the whole room inhales with you. You twist the lock with a flick that borders on violent and turn just in time for him to speak.
“Now, to be fair, I think—”
“No, absolutely not,” you cut in, voice already high and tight, finger coming up like a weapon. “You do not get to ‘now to be fair’ me right now, Bucky.”
He blinks. Holds his hands up, palms splayed like that’s going to stop the hurricane already building in your chest. “Okay—”
“No. Not okay. You don’t get to waltz into my event, late, might I add, and unannounced, and then start growling at my colleagues like you’re marking territory you haven’t touched in months.”
“Oh, I’m the problem?” he says, and there it is, that goddamn smirk that only comes out when he knows he’s getting under your skin. “Sorry, sweetheart, didn’t realise my wife would be so protective over her boyfriend.”
Oh, you are one inch from throttling him.
“Jesus Christ!” You seethe, glaring at the impossibly stupid man before you. You’re pacing now, slow and sharp like a predator in heels. “Can we drop the jealous bullshit? You agreed to this, Bucky. Remember? Your suggestion, actually. We keep the optics, we drop the intimacy. I believe your exact words were ‘no strings, no hard feelings.’”
Bucky’s jaw tightens, the smirk wobbling just enough to show the real teeth behind it. He crosses his arms, that stupid tailored jacket pulling tight across his biceps again, and it pisses you off even more.
“I’m not jealous,” he shoots back, too quick and too defensive for a man supposedly unbothered. You scoff in utter disbelief. “I’m not.” He insists, and you’re not sure who believes it less - you or him. “But you and your boyfriend weren’t exactly subtle, and that’s not what we agreed to.”
The space between you shrinks without either of you meaning to close it, the argument pulling you inward like gravity instead of pushing you apart, heat collecting in the narrow strip of air between your bodies until it feels charged, unstable, one wrong movement away from ignition.
“We agreed to discretion,” you snap back, heat flaring. “Not fucking invisibility. And for your information, I’ve been seeing him for two months and nobody’s noticed a thing.”
His jaw tightens. A muscle feathers just under the skin and his eyes darken a fraction, blue sharpening into something raw and furious and hurt. But it’s gone as fast as it came, smoothed over by the cold anger he wears when he’s protecting something more vulnerable.
His voice, when it comes, is lower. More dangerous.
“I noticed,” he states. “Immediately.”
Your stomach lurches with butterflies, but you just roll your eyes, because it’s easier than admitting the way that makes your pulse trip.
“Congratulations, you want a medal?” You bite back, sarcasm thick enough to wade through, “You noticed because you’re a freakish cyborg with a surveillance complex and abandonment iss—”
“Because he looked like he wanted to eat you alive!” Bucky argues, eyes flaring as he steps in, voice louder now, more petulant.
His words hit like punches but land like confessions. And he’s close. Too close. The way only Bucky can be oppressive and intoxicating at once.
“Well, he wasn’t the only one in that room tonight with that look! Your wife is quite the catch, you’d know if you were ever actually around,” you fire back, loud and mean, the words leaving your mouth before you can stop them.
That lands. Hard. His nostrils flare, his posture shifts. Silence slams down between you, thick and volatile. You’re breathing hard now. So is he. The air feels too small, the walls too close.
“You never call,” you continue, stepping closer now, daring him to move first. “You never check in. I find out what city you’re in from CNN half the time, and the rest of the time? I get a neatly worded email from that pretty little blonde assistant of yours.”
“It’s her job to manage my calendar!” Bucky exclaims, exasperated.
“Is it also her job to make it nearly impossible for me to speak to my own husband?” The words slip out before you can stop them, sharp and bitter. “Or is that just a perk?”
He stares at you now, brows drawn together, openly incredulous. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
You shrug, brittle and furious, barely hiding your hurt. “Don’t you think she’s a little young for you?”
The line is bait. He knows it. You know it is. And you also know it’s below the belt, unfair and loaded and seething with all the things you’re refusing to admit. It sits in the air like a lit match.
For a second, he looks genuinely startled. Then, infuriatingly, his mouth curves, not soft, not amused in any kind way, but sharp with recognition. Like he’s just spotted your tell. “Jesus Christ. You’re jealous.”
“I am not jealous,” you snap, too fast. “I’m pointing out your hypocrisy.”
“Bullshit.”
“You’re the one who walked in and picked a fight like you still get a say—”
“I am your husband.”
You don’t even remember how you got this close, or how you ended up with your back to the wall. But there’s no space between your bodies now. Just heat.
“Oh, now you remember? Because from where I’m standing, it looks a lot like you left me to rot across an ocean and then got offended when I didn’t wait quietly for you to come back.”
“I didn’t leave you,” he snaps, the control cracking just enough to let the heat show. “You knew what this job was. You knew what Congress would mean.”
“And I knew what I meant to you,” you fire back, sharper now, because something in your chest is starting to feel too tight, too close to splitting. “Or at least I did once. Before it got inconvenient.”
His jaw works. You can see the muscle jumping there, feel the tension rolling off him in waves. “You’re the one who took the London post! You think it didn’t feel like you chose your career over me?”
“Because you told me to.”
“I told you to take the opportunity,” he corrects, voice rising now despite himself. “I didn’t tell you to move your entire life three thousand miles away and replace me with the first man who pays you attention.”
That one lands. Harder than the rest.
Your chest tightens, sharp and sudden, like he’s punched straight through the ribs instead of around them. “Don’t you dare reduce Matt to a placeholder,” you say, voice shaking despite your best efforts. “He showed up when you didn’t.”
“Oh, he showed up, alright,” Bucky says, dark amusement curling around the edges of his voice. “Real hero. Must’ve been tough for him, swooping in while the husband’s away, busy doing the job he was elected to do.”
“There it is,” you whisper. You glare up at him, furious and full of something you refuse to name. He’s so close now your lips graze when you breathe. “That’s the one you keep coming back to. Like your job absolves you of everything else.”
“It explains it.”
“No,” you snap, anger flaring bright enough to burn through the hurt. “It excuses it. To you. Not to me.”
You’re so close now that you can feel the heat of him, the way his presence fills the room and presses against you, the familiar weight of him triggering memories your body is not equipped to handle right now. His hands flex at his sides like he’s resisting the urge to reach out or maybe to shove you away. You’re not sure which would be worse.
"You think I wanted this? You think I like being Congressman Barnes?”
Your heart is a snare drum, pulsing so loud you can barely hear your own thoughts over the thunder in your chest.
"You chose it.”
"I chose it for us. To build a life where I wasn't just the Winter Soldier. To be someone you could be proud of," he pauses a moment, and when he speaks again, it's quieter than before, almost like he's embarrassed. "To be someone who deserved you.”
Your heart lurches.
Skips once, hard and ungraceful, like it’s trying to crash its way out of your chest. You hate him for saying it. You hate the weight of it, the honesty in it, the you in it. The part of you that’s still too soft for him stumbles on it, almost falters. Almost breaks. Almost
But you’re angry, and you’re proud, and he still hasn’t earnt the softness. So you weaponise the one thing you shouldn’t. You push deeper. Twist the blade just to feel the sting.
“Yeah?” you say, voice quieter now, sweeter too, but edged with a cruel bite. “Then maybe you should’ve thought about that before suggesting we separate just so you could screw your assistant the second it got difficult.”
His reaction is immediate.
Bucky’s eyes flash, and for a second you can see the moment the fury slams into him, banks hard against his ribs, and claws for purchase behind his teeth.
“I’m not sleeping with her,” he spits. “Jesus Christ.”
You blink surprised, not by the denial, but by how wounded it sounds coming out of his mouth.
“I’ve never touched her,” he bites out again, louder now, breath hot against your cheek, his body pressing in so firmly now there’s nowhere for the anger to go but straight through you. “Not once. If you want her fired, I'll have her gone tomorrow.”
Your gaze flicks, traitorously, involuntarily, to his lips, pulled taut in anger but still so impossibly inviting. You hate yourself for it.
“Oh, how gallant of you,” you sneer, though your voice is starting to betray you, coming out thinner than you want.
Neither of you moves. Neither of you backs down. You’re breathing the same air now, chest brushing chest, the heat of him unmistakable, unavoidable, a memory your body never quite forgot how to respond to.
“Stop being a brat,” he warns, eyes burning as they rake over your face, your mouth, your throat. “Stop using her as a shield because you don’t like what you’re feeling right now.”
His chest brushes yours with every inhale. You can feel the heat of him through the silk of your dress. His gaze drops again, to your lips this time, and stays there just long enough to be dangerous.
“What I’m feeling?” you bite back, breath shallow, your back flat to the wall, his presence swallowing every inch of air between you. “You don’t know what I’m feeling.”
Your breath mingles, sharp and uneven, hot from the argument and the hum of tension coiled between two mouths that know exactly how the other tastes.
“I know what you’re feeling,” he replies, low, slow, and devastatingly calm. “Because it’s the same way I felt when I walked into that room and saw another man touching what’s still mine.”
His pupils are blown wide, ringed with a storm-dark blue, locked on your mouth like he can hear the lies forming before you speak them.
But it’s all too much - his heat, his scent, the familiar weight of him against you, and when you open your mouth to argue, to snap, to say something, all that punches out of your lungs is a quiet, needy little whimper.
And that’s all it takes.
Bucky’s on you before you can even process it, crashing forward like a moth to flame, dragging your mouth to his like he’s starving for you, and swallowing the sound like it’s his to claim,.
His metal arm wraps around your waist with bruising surety, yanking you flush to him like he’s taking back what was always his.
Your bodies collide like punishment, or proof even, like maybe this is the only way either of you still knows how to communicate anymore, with heat and ache and the frantic drag of bodies trying to rewrite something they agreed to erase.
His other hand fists in your hair, gripping the updo your stylist spent far too long perfecting, fingers sinking in until strands slip free, soft and ruined already, just like you. He uses the hold to tilt your head back, guiding you into the kiss the way he wants it - deeper, harder, a kind of possession dressed up as need.
Your hands clutch at his lapels, desperate for purchase, pulling him impossibly closer even though there’s nothing left to close. You moan into his mouth, helpless and high pitched, and Bucky takes it like an invitation, tongue sliding past your lips with a groan of satisfaction that vibrates straight through you, hungry and all-consuming.
He kisses you like he’s still angry. Like he’s trying to prove a point you didn’t let him make.
Because the argument doesn’t stop. Not really. It just changes shape, becomes the rhythm of his body against yours, the way your nails dig into his shoulders, the broken little sound in the back of your throat when he mouths at the hinge of your jaw like he’s furious it still fits so perfectly there.
Bucky groans against your neck, low and guttural, like the sound is being torn straight from his chest, like the taste of you does something to him he can’t reason with. His teeth scrape your skin, not yet hard enough to mark, but enough to make you keen and arch into him, craving more.
“Fuck, I missed this,” he mutters against your throat between kisses, panting, like he’s not even trying to pretend it’s controlled anymore. “Missed you.”
He drags his mouth back up to your lips, tasting you again, all wet heat and tongue and desperation. It’s messy now, slick and breathless, spit-slicked lips and the hot rasp of groans exchanged like promises you don’t trust either of you to keep.
Your stomach tightens as his hands start to roam lower, trailing greedily down your sides like he’s trying to remap territory he’s been exiled from.
The cool metal of his left hand is a stark contrast to the heat in your skin, and it slides lower with a possessive kind of precision, fingers spreading over your thigh through the split in your dress, gripping hard enough to bruise. He lifts your leg around his hips, dragging you closer until your hips are flush to his.
You gasp into his mouth as you feel the strain of his thick cock against his slacks, blunt pressure hot and insistent against where you’re already soaked for him.
Your head tips back against the wall with a quiet, broken moan, your mouth falling open as your hips roll instinctively against him, because your body remembers exactly what that cock feels like inside you. The stretch, the pressure, the delicious, devastating fullness.
And it’s already begging for it again.
You’re soaked already. Embarrassingly so. Your panties cling damp between your thighs, useless, and your clit throbs with every tiny shift of his hips.
You try to hike your other leg up around him, desperate now, frantic for more - more friction, more contact, more of him grinding against the place that’s throbbing for him. But the length of your dress restricts the movement of that leg, trapping you, keeping from what you need.
“Shit—” you whine, frustrated, nails digging into his shoulders as you pant against his mouth. “Bucky—”
He just groans, deep and low in his throat, utterly pleased at your reaction, then drags his mouth to your jaw, your throat, kissing you like it’s an addiction he’s relapsing into.
“S’okay, baby,” he murmurs against your skin, voice heavy with unbearable fondness. “I’ve got you. I know what you need.”
And then he’s moving, shifting his grip with that maddening, unthinking super soldier ease. One hand firm around your thigh, the other gripping your hip, turning you, then walking you backward without breaking the kiss.
Your ass hits the edge of your desk, scattering the carefully arranged stack of briefing notes and security clearances like they never mattered. And before you can catch your breath, he’s on you again, crowding out every thought but the press of his body and the iron heat of his grip as he pushes your back flat to the polished wood with a kind of desperation that says this has been clawing at him for far too long.
Then his hands are already working the silk of your dress up your thighs with a force that doesn’t care about the designer label or the tailor’s handiwork. He shoves it high around your hips until the air hits your thighs and your panties are all that’s left between him and what he wants.
They’re practically translucent from how worked up you are already, clinging to your pussy like a second skin. You feel the rumble of his groan before you hear it, low and visceral and punched from his chest like he’s the one being touched.
“Fuck me,” he mutters, more breath than word, hands spreading wide over your hips, palms rough and hungry, splaying across your thighs like he’s trying to brand himself into the curve of you. “Look at you.”
You writhe under his grip, your hips canting forward without conscious thought, chasing his cock, his mouth, his hands, anything. “Bucky—please—”
He doesn’t need to be told twice. Never has. Not when it comes to you.
He drops to his knees, fingers hooking into the waistband of your panties and he peels them down slow, slow enough to tease, fast enough to keep you begging, slick strands clinging and breaking as he pulls them down. He barely tosses them aside before he’s pushing your thighs wider, nudging you open like a gift he’s about to unwrap with his mouth.
Then he's dragging your legs over his impossibly broad shoulders, spreading you wide with the strength of someone who could split you in half if he wanted.
His mouth is maddeningly close. His breath fans over your soaked folds, and it’s fucking torture, the heat of it, the knowledge of what’s coming, the way he’s just staring like he hasn’t seen you like this a hundred times before.
“You have no fucking idea,” he growls, eyes dark and locked on the mess between your thighs, “how long I’ve been thinking about this pussy. How many fucking nights I’ve jerked off in that goddamn DC apartment, fist around my cock, thinkin’ about my wife’s pussy. Wet. Open. Dripping for me.”
Your fingers claw uselessly at the desk underneath you, your back arching, nerves on fire from the heat of his breath alone. He kisses along the inside of your thigh, open-mouthed drags of lips and teeth and tongue that make your hips twitch, his every movement deliberately slow just to enjoy watching you squirm.
“God—” It comes out ruined, breathy, pathetic, all broken pride and pent-up hunger. You buck your hips toward him, shameless now. “Bucky—just, please!”
He smirks then, dark and satisfied, looking up at you from between your legs, “Well,” he drawls, “since you asked so nicely, sweetheart.”
And then there’s no thought left at all. Just his tongue parting you, licking into you with a kind of single-minded worship that borders on obscene. Wet, filthy sounds echo off your office walls as he devours you like a man starved, moaning into your cunt like he’s missed the taste more than he would air.
His tongue curls against your clit with maddening precision, the angle perfect, the rhythm devastating. He knows your body too well. Every moan. Every twitch. Every sweet, aching spot that makes you fall apart.
“Always so fuckin’ sweet for me,” he rumbles, the words pressed directly to your soaked pussy, more vibration than voice, and you gasp at the way it hits. “Knew you’d still taste the same. Knew this pretty little cunt would remember me.”
His mouth is relentless, tongue dragging slow, firm circles until your thighs tremble against his broad shoulders and your hips try to chase the rhythm, greedy for more.
Your hands find his hair, fingers sinking deep into the brunet strands. You tug, hard, like you want to punish him for how good it feels. His groan is immediate, wrecked and needy, and it vibrates against your clit in a way that nearly breaks you.
“Shit—Bucky—fuck—”
You’re barely coherent, hips rocking helplessly, fisting his hair tighter, grounding yourself in the slick mess he’s making of you. He groans again, louder this time, grinding his face deeper between your legs like he’s trying to bury himself inside you with his tongue alone.
Each pass of his mouth pulls another high, broken moan from your throat. Each curl of his tongue sends your nails raking across his scalp, hips bucking, thighs clenching, the heat building so fast you’re already spiralling, too close, too fast.
The pleasure tips past sharp into overwhelming, every nerve ending screaming as his mouth refuses to ease up, tongue relentless, precise, cruel in how well it knows you. Your hips jerk, then stutter, then try to pull away, but his grip tightens instantly, strong hands locking around your thighs, anchoring you in place, keeping you spread and open and right where he wants you.
The sounds that come out of you aren’t dignified. They’re messy, breathless, broken little noises you can’t seem to stop, each one punched loose by another flick of his tongue, another hum of satisfaction against your clit.
“Bucky—” you whine, voice thin and wrecked, already shaking. “Please—it’s—I—”
You don’t even know what you’re asking for. Less. More. Mercy. Ruin.
“Oh, you poor thing,” he purrs, voice hot against your folds. “Your boyfriend not takin’ care of you right? Leavin’ my wife all wet and aching like this?” His tongue presses firm and slow, possessive, making you gasp. “She’s weeping for me, baby. Guess I gotta do everything myself.”
Your whole body arches, trembling, legs wrapped around his neck like you’re trying to pull him inside you. Your thighs shake. Your pulse is a drumbeat in your cunt. Your moans are broken things. Your release coils tauter and tauter.
Bucky feels it the second your thighs start to tremble, the way your body tightens, oversensitive and desperate, and he makes a pleased little sound low in his chest
“Be a good girl for me,” he whispers, licking your clit in tight, insistent circles, his voice dripping filth and possession. “Let your husband have what’s his.”
Your orgasm hits like a snapped wire.
You shatter with a strangled sob, “Bucky—oh my god—”, the orgasm hitting like it’s been waiting months to rip its claws through you, every muscle seizing, your hands white-knuckled in his hair.
Your cunt clenches around nothing, pulsing, spasming, slick pouring down his mouth as you come undone on his tongue, your whole body shuddering like it’s too much, too bright, too intense to survive.
His tongue keeps moving, slower now but heavier, pressing and licking through your oversensitivity with a cruel patience that makes your thighs shake even harder, makes your breath stutter into sharp little gasps you can’t control.
His mouth eventually drags off you with a wet, obscene sound, as he exhales hot across your cunt one last time. You can’t even speak. You’re just gasping, fucked-out and twitching and wrecked.
You barely register the movement until he’s rising, towering over you, the heat of his body swallowing everything. Your slick coats his mouth, his chin, his stubble darkened and wet, and the sight of it makes your stomach flip all over again.
His mouth catches yours in a kiss that’s filthy, tongue sliding against yours so you can taste yourself on him. It’s needy and deep, and you groan into it, dizzy, swallowing the filthy remnants of your own cunt off his tongue.
His hands cradle your jaw, tilting your face up, holding you steady like he’s trying to anchor you back into him, into this, into now.
He presses in between your thighs, and you can feel how hard he is, still trapped under his slacks, thick and pushing against your oversensitive pussy. You cry out into his mouth, legs reflexively trying to close, but his hands are there, firm on your hips, keeping you open like he owns the right.
“Easy,” he murmurs against your lips, but there’s nothing gentle about the way he grinds into you, slow and torturous, letting you feel exactly how hard he is, how badly he wants this. “Stay open for me, pretty girl. Just like that. That’s my girl.”
You’re whining again, desperate, keening, need crawling back into your skin. The heat is molten, sending your pulse racing, overstimulation and desire crashing into each other in a dizzy blur.
Your hips roll against him without permission, chasing the hard press of him, the wet heat of your cunt aching to be filled by his cock again, after so long, despite the tremble in your thighs.
“Fuck,” you whimper, breathless. “Fuck, Bucky—please—”
His eyes flash with need, the black of his pupils swallowing the blue entirely. And then your world flips.
His hands clamp down, and he spins you with effortless force, twisting your body and pushing you forward in one fluid motion until your chest hits the desk with a heavy thud.
“Bucky—!” you gasp, palms catching against the polished wood. More papers scatter. Something glass rolls and shatters on the floor. You don’t care.
He crowds behind you immediately, one hand pressed between your shoulder blades to keep you bent, the other yanking your dress up higher, baring your ass, exposing your soaked cunt completely to the cool air and his greedy stare.
“Fuckin’ Christ,” he mutters behind you, rough and ruined. “Look at this pussy. Still dripping for me.”
You whimper, high and wrecked, pushing your ass back against him, greedy for pressure, for friction, for him.
Behind you, there’s the unmistakable zip of his trousers undoing. Your breath stutters, a needy little gasp punching out of you as you feel him free himself, hot and thick and close.
But he doesn’t sink into you.
Instead, he presses in just enough to let you feel him. The thick, heavy length of his cock slides slow and deliberate between your slick folds, catching your clit with the head, dragging through you without breaching the place you’re begging him to fill. The friction alone makes your knees wobble, a broken sound tearing out of you as your hips jerk back on instinct.
“Uh‑uh,” he murmurs immediately, one hand snapping to your hip, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise as he stills you. “Easy.”
You whine, long and pitiful, the sound vibrating through your chest as your palms press harder into the desk, knuckles whitening. Your body feels too open, too exposed, every nerve lit up and screaming for him.
“Goddamn,” he breathes, “You miss this cock that bad, baby?”
You choke on a sound, hips pushing back helplessly, chasing him, begging without words. His cock nudges your entrance, fat and hard, and your walls clench uselessly around nothing.
But he keeps teasing, that thick, perfect head catching, dragging, pressing, never breaching. “Need your husband’s cock, huh? Your pretty lawyer not fillin’ you up right?”
Your answer comes out as a wrecked, wordless moan, your head dropping, your body rocking back against him like it’s the only thing keeping you upright. You can’t even form a denial, can’t gather the pieces of your pride off the floor.
He taps the head of his cock against your puffy clit twice, still swollen from his mouth, just sharp enough to make you cry out and bring your focus back to him.
“Come on, pretty girl” he murmurs, possessive and coaxing all at once, thumb digging into your hip. “If my wife wants her husband’s cock, then she can ask for it.”
You sob, the frustration sharp and humiliating. “Bucky—please—please—I need your cock. I need my husband—please—”
The growl he lets out behind you is raw and unfiltered. The kind of sound that shakes down your spine and settles somewhere in the hollow between your legs, and then he’s moving, cock in hand, pressing in with a slow, punishing thrust that steals the breath from your lungs.
The thick head finally breaches you, stretching you wide, your walls clenching, trying to pull him in faster. Greedy and soaking and helpless against the thick, brutal stretch of him.
“Oh—fuck—” you gasp, voice strangled and high, hands slipping against the polished desk as your hips push back, instinctively trying to take more, take all of him.
“Jesus Christ,” he grits through his teeth, watching himself disappear into you. “You’re still so fucking tight baby—fuck—this pussy missed me, huh?”
And then hips snap forward, the last few inches slamming in until he’s buried to the fucking hilt, his pelvis flush to your ass with a sharp smack that echoes off the walls.
You scream, high and wrecked and wanton, your legs nearly giving out under the feel of him, the stretch, the heat, the fullness. Your cunt clenches around him again, fluttering helplessly like your body’s trying to pull him deeper even when there’s nowhere left for him to go.
“Listen to you,” he hisses, tone dark and filthy, thrusting just once, shallow and firm, enough to make you jolt. “You hear that, sweetheart? That’s my girl. My pretty wife. Cryin’ for her husband’s cock.”
Then he pulls back and fucks into you, hard and deep, no warning, no preamble, just a ruthless snap of hips that sends your body jolting forward over the desk, a ragged cry spilling from your lips.
The desk creaks under the force of his continued thrusts, your skin slapping loud against his, each drag of his cock in you knocking the air from your lungs, stealing the words from your throat. All you can do is moan, wrecked, your walls gripping him like they never learned how to let him go.
And god, you’re gone. Helpless. Shaking. Crying out his name like it’s the only thing you know anymore, the world narrowed to the pounding weight of him inside you. Your pussy pulses around him, your orgasm already building again, sharp and fast and unbearable.
You turn your head, cheek dragging across the polished desk, because it’s not enough just to feel him. You need to see him, your husband, the man whose cock is currently buried so deep in you that you swear he’s knocking the breath from your lungs.
Your vision is already blurring, glassy, lashes wet with unshed tears, but you can just catch him in the corner of your eye.
Cheeks flushed, his head tipped back, strands of hair out of its careful styling and sticking damp to his brow, bottom lip caught between his teeth as he fucks you with a single-minded focus that’s almost worship.
God, he’s beautiful. You could cry just looking at him. You might, if you weren't already.
It’s obscene, how much you need to touch him, to claw your way back into his arms, to have his mouth on yours and his hands everywhere at once. You reach back, needy, desperate for any part of him you can grab, but you’re too far gone, fingers scrabbling against empty air like that’ll be enough to bridge the chasm between you.
“Bucky…” It’s a pathetic whine, the only word you can manage. Your hand still claws at nothing, pleading for contact, for reassurance, for him.
His gaze snaps to yours instantly, pupils blown and mouth curling into a pleased, wicked smile as he takes in the sight of you, cheek smushed into the desk, tears on your cheeks, still trying to reach for him even when you can barely breathe.
“Yeah, baby, I know,” he coos, voice somehow both rough and syrup-sweet, and he lets one hand slip from your hip to find your outstretched hand, holding tight through every brutal, perfect thrust.
“You're perfect, sweetheart,” he murmurs, voice thick with praise. “My pretty wife, all fucked-out and still wantin’ more.”
You can only nod, breathless and wrecked, tears still spilling down your cheeks, and the sound you make is nothing short of ruined.
He presses his forehead to your shoulder blade, breath hot on your skin as he pounds into you. One arm braces beside your head, the other stays gripping your hand, holding you like an anchor while his hips keep driving into you, every thrust dragging another sound out of you that you don’t recognise as language anymore.
He mouths along your throat, teeth catching first, a sharp nip that makes you cry out, then another, and another, claiming skin with greedy little bites that leave your breath shattering apart.
He kisses over each mark immediately after, slow and deliberate, tongue hot and wet as he soothes the sting away.
“God,” he breathes against your neck, the sound vibrating straight into your bones. “Feel you squeezin’ me. You’re right there, baby. I can feel it.”
Your whole body shudders at the words, cunt clenching tight around him like it understands before your brain ever could. You whimper, arching your neck, exposing more of your throat to him as his mouth keeps moving, marking, kissing.
“Can’t—can’t think,” you manage, the words falling apart as soon as they leave your mouth. “Oh my god—Bucky, please—I can’t think—just wanna—wanna—”
“Wanna what?” he rasps, slowing his thrusts just enough to make it unbearable, grinding deep and holding there so you feel every inch of him buried inside you. His mouth hovers by your ear, lips brushing your skin as he speaks. “Say it, sweetheart. Use that pretty little voice.”
Your words tumble out in a broken rush, babbled and needy, breath catching on every syllable. “Wanna come—wanna feel you come inside me—need it—need it so bad—need you—”
He laughs, deep and pleased, the sound ripped from his chest as he rolls his hips again. “Yeah?” he murmurs. “You want me to fill this tight little pussy up? Let it all leak out so everyone sees what I did to you?”
You’re nodding frantically now, 'yes' tumbling out of you in gasps and whines, 'please please please' the only prayer you know how to say. Your body is shaking, legs barely holding you up. Your cunt is fluttering and clenching around him like it’s begging just as hard as you are.
“Shit, baby,” he groans, thrusts picking up again, deeper, harder, bruising in the way that makes your vision go white at the edges. “Maybe I should put a baby in you like that ambassador said, huh?”
Your breath catches sharply, a needy little sob ripping out of you as his words sink in.
“‘Cause you wear that diamond so fuckin’ pretty, sweetheart,” he continues, voice filthy and reverent all at once, mouth pressed to your ear. “But it’s not enough. I’m should fill you up right now. Fuck a baby into you. Make damn sure they all know who you belong to.”
Your response is incoherent. Barely a stream of whines and broken sounds, hips pushing back desperately to meet his thrusts, to take everything he’s giving you and more.
“That’s right,” he groans, snapping his hips into you hard now, claiming, punishing, every thrust landing deep enough to knock the breath from your lungs. “Should’ve done this months ago. Fuckin’ knocked you up and had you round and swollen at this party.”
Your orgasm is clawing up your spine now. Every nerve screaming, your walls clenching so tight around him it makes him curse under his breath.
“You gonna take it all for me?” he growls, voice breaking as his own control starts to fracture. “Gonna keep it inside like a good little wife, let it take, let me mark you from the inside out?”
You gasp, voice cracking completely as the edge hits you. “Yours—m’yours, Bucky—”
That’s all it takes.
He slams into you one last time, a raw, broken sound tearing from his throat as he buries himself as deep as he can go and comes hard, spilling into you with a groan of your name. You come with him, shattered and blinding. Your body locks up as pleasure rips through you, milking every last pulse from his cock.
Your breath comes in little hiccuping gasps, lips parted, eyes glassy with come-drunk bliss, lashes sticky with tears.
And all you can feel is the throb between your legs and Bucky’s cock softening inside you, still twitching.
Behind you, Bucky’s chest presses warm and broad against your back, his breath ragged against the hollow of your throat. He kisses your cheek. Your jaw. Your shoulder. Soft now, whispering things you barely process. You feel the cadence of praise more than the words themselves, sweet nothings soaked in filth and affection.
“Good girl…” he murmurs, his lips brushing your ear like a secret. “Took me so well. So fuckin’ good for me. Such a perfect little wife.”
You whimper, barely more than breath, and his hand slides slow over your belly, holding you there like you’ll float away otherwise.
You can't move. Can't think past the hot weight of his come cooling inside you, the ache in your thighs, the taste of him still on your tongue. Somewhere beyond this office, Matt is still at your party, waiting.
And for a moment, guilt starts to creep into your thoughts.
Then Bucky pulls out with a sharp hiss, and your body snaps back to him. A small, wrecked, little cry punches from your lungs at the loss of him. Your cunt clenches, fluttering open and aching empty.
“Shhh, sweet girl,” he soothes immediately, cooing as he drops to his knees behind you, large hands guiding your thighs open wider, one of them cold and sure where it braces your quivering body. “I know, baby. You didn’t want to let me go, huh?”
Your only answer is a shuddering moan as his warm breath ghosts across your bare, messy cunt. You twitch, whimpering again, as you feel Bucky’s come sliding slow between your thighs in wet little trails.
He hums, pleased, like a man admiring his masterpiece.
“Look at that,” he murmurs, voice far too soft for the words he's saying. “Fuckin’ wasting it. All that come, and you’re leaking already…”
You feel his thumb graze your thigh, catching a thick, slick trail as it drags slow and molten down your skin. His thumb slides through the mess, smearing it, lazy and indulgent, and you jolt when it nudges your entrance again.
“Bucky—” you gasp as his thumb presses firm, spreading you open again.
“Easy,” he coos, guiding his spend back into you, thumb rubbing slow, coaxing, pushing it deep while your hips try and shy away, your cunt overstimulated and twitching with every touch. “I know, sweetheart, I know. It’s alright. Gotta keep it where it belongs, yeah? That’s it. Good girl.”
Your fingers curl on the desk, lower lip trembling as your thighs clench with every slow, squelching drag of his thumb.
“Hope your lawyer likes his pussy sloppy,” Bucky murmurs after a moment as his thumb slips free, his hand dragging one last slow stroke up your inner thigh. “Because if he wants you tonight, he’s gonna have to settle for leftovers.”
You mewl helplessly, and that just earns you a kiss to the back of your thigh before he reaches down and plucks your panties off the floor. He slides them back up your legs, snapping the waistband into place with a little flick, sealing his come inside you.
His hand lingers, lazy, giving your ass a fond squeeze, fingers sinking deep into your flesh, followed by a sharp slap that makes you yelp and clench around the come he’d left behind. His palm stays there, rubbing soft over the sting, possessive as ever.
“D'you think he’ll thank me for the appetiser, baby?” He teases, amusement curling around every word. “My good little wife. Serving up seconds.”
more mads: i make no apologies for the utter filth the last quarter ended up being.
thank you for reading! if you enjoyed, please like & especially reblog/comment, as i would be super grateful for feedback <3
touch starved pre cacw bucky and you’re dry humping on the couch until he comes in his pants and he’s embarrassed but his stamina makes him be half hard already almost immediately when you start telling him it’s okay and you’re like “buck… you know how much fun we can have when you feel that good and you can just.. keep going?”
✶ ― SYNOPSIS. fleeing from a messy situationship, you embark on a journey to travel across the globe and discover the hidden beauties earth has to offer. you find the rarest beauty of all in him, bucky barnes. honey eyed, smooth-talking, and capable of working just about every job under the sun. as you continue to crash into him with every country you travel through, a chilling thought starts to take hold of your heart: is fate pushing you together, or is something darker chasing you? this fic is part of the bwat summer collab !
warnings .ᐟ mdni! no use of y/n, vacation/backpacking au, romcom au but make it a thriller too, stalker!bucky, strangers to unethically sourced lovers, smut (dubcon, sex via coercion/manipulation, piv, dacryphilia, blowjob, cum eating, spit swallowing, mirror sex, pussy slapping, tummy bulge, recording sexual acts, implied panty stealing, creampie), stalking, creepy behaviour masked as romantic, bucky is a major loser he just hides it well, harassment (from a character that isn't bucky), descriptions of scars and an anxiety attack. the reader in this fic is pretty much dense and trusts a man too blindly. if you don't enjoy reading that, no worries, this fic just isn't for you. see you in the next one <3
ᯓ★ hyde's input. this entire fic is a joke that went too far. thank you to the amazing @barnesonly & @iamthatonefangirl for organising this collab ily both so dearly <3 brat dividers by @/barnesonly
disclaimer. instead of possessing a bionic arm in this au, bucky is a survivor of a burn injury along his left arm. i have tried to handle the subject as respectfully as possible, sincerest apologies if i did not succeed at that.
follow @houseofjekyll + turn on notifications to know when i post a new fic!
TRAVEL&co kiosk, between gates 31/32 & gates 33/34.
An overwhelm of options can paralyse choice.
Bursting from the metal confines of the display stand, a rainbow of pamphlets cry out for your attention, each more desperate than the last to be picked off the shelf and purchased. Titles in bold, italics, underlined; every old trick in the book, intended to capture the eye, stands before you.
Top 20 Tourist Stops in East Asia.
DOs & DONTs of Hostel Living.
HIDDEN GEMS: a Guide to Rural Sight-Seeing.
Trust your gut, you can practically hear your mother’s voice in your head, guiding you to put your faith in something arbitrary. While her motherly advice is typically welcome, this time the thought leaves an acidic taste in your mouth that lingers, souring your expression and becoming the root of your furrowing brows.
Your gut has unfortunately been a source of misery as of late, leading you down the regretful path of trusting a man, putting all your patience and hope in his ability to change, eventually, for you. What a selfishly naive belief, to think you could change fate, scrub the mould off a man’s heart and bring him back to the land of the feeling. No affection that requires you to humiliate yourself is ever worth it, and god have you learn it the ugly way: tears dripping onto the carpet beneath your knees, chest heaving for breaths, and his lame-ass excuses, I’m just not ready for commitment, baby.
More the fool you for believing a man pushing thirty, incapable of holding down a job, and still riding the high of his days as the high school quarterback could ever face something as challenging as putting a label on the months of ‘messing around’ you both had been partaking in. Now here you stand, suitcase checked in and a one-way boarding pass in hand, frozen before the overwhelming display of travel books one of the airport’s many kiosks has to offer, and hellbent on placing as much distance as possible between you and that man.
A last minute decision, filling the neglected well of spontaneity in your life. Your parents had thought you mad, your friends had insisted on keeping you company. With both groups of protesting figures in your life, you put your foot down and demanded the solitude you craved. After all, you can’t exactly embark on a solo-trip around the planet with someone by your side — even if that someone is your mother or closest friend.
But maybe loneliness is not all it’s cut-out to be. You’d give up everything just about now to have someone to help pluck out the right pamphlet, something sure to serve you not just your first stop but for the entirety of your travels.
“You’re looking at stand like it owes you a debt.”
At first, you think you’re hearing things, brain so desperate for validation it’s taken to imagining company. Then something moves in your peripheral and you’re struck with a sight that feels like something the universe has sent directly to mock your battered and bruised heart: a man.
Not just any run-of-the-mill man, but a man made of blue eyes, sharp cheeks, and a smile so pearly-white you feel you’re staring into the mouth of a predator, inches away from sinking it’s canines into your delicate skin and devouring you whole… But no beast looks like this, enchanting and handsome in a manner that has you questioning where this stranger has been hiding from you all along — until, of course, you remember you’re in an airport and it’s likely this man is merely passing through your city, a temporary stop on his journey to who-knows-where.
Is it too late to change your flight?
“And now it seems the debt is mine,” the stranger lets out a chuckle at his words, wolfish smile stretching wider along his cheeks and making you painfully aware of the creases that mark the skin around his eyes — evidence of a life well-lived, the wrinkles of happiness. They only serve to make him all the more enticing to stare at, a deer caught in the glow of a very beautiful headlight. “Any chance I can pay it off with a little advice?”
Why has it taken you so long to realise the man is talking to you?
A scramble for breath, for words, for something that won’t deepen the embarrassment already scorching your cheeks, you muster a sophisticated, “Huh?”
… and instantly wish the linoleum flooring would spontaneously drop to reveal a sinkhole big enough to swallow you.
“Here, let’s go with,” the man drags out his word, bending at the waist as he leans forward, arm reaching down to pluck something from the stand. You barely have time to admire the way he fills out his trousers, jeans clad skin tight against the swell of his ass, before his spine has straightened and he’s waving a booklet in your face. “This sounds pretty useful, don’cha agree?”
The tiniest twang of an accent kisses your eardrum, scratching an itch you hadn’t even been aware of until now. You almost feign mishearing, just for a chance to hear the stranger repeat himself. But your eyes are drawn downwards, towards the title in his palm, and all hope of feigning ignorance flies out the door.
The Wise Traveller: navigating safety as a solo-travelling woman.
Hackles rise, an old reflex from the days you payed your gut any mind. Your mouth dries, and your eyes widen slightly, and you’re suddenly reminded of the fact this stranger is a man, mankind’s greatest predator.
“How do you know I’m travelling alone?” The question is a bite, one you deliver before sense can tell you better.
By the way the man’s smile falters, a minuscule tremble in the corners of his mouth, your hostility was unexpected. Nevertheless, the man makes no attempt to impose his presence on you, shoulders slouching in on themselves and dampening the height he holds over you.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” his words are sheepish, almost, a twinge of embarrassment painting a rosy streak over his cheeks. A hand winds its way up to the back of his neck, a self-soothing method you know far too well, fingers rubbing over skin. “You just… have the look. I’m really sorry miss, I didn’t mean to make you uncomforta-”
“It’s fine,” a mixture of shame and guilt has you cutting him off, eyes shooting back to the display and making a hasty decision to pick up the first guide they land on. “Thanks for the advice, but I’m all caught up on safety. This is what I was looking for.”
An Idiot’s Guide to Germany. It sits pretty in your hold, thin enough to read before the plane descends back onto solid ground, and completely useless to you.
But the man in front of you doesn’t need to know Germany is far from your destination.
So you scurry off, ready to put the embarrassing interaction in your rear-view mirror and re-vowing to yourself to put an end to interactions with men that make you want to claw out your skin — whether the fault be theirs or your own — and shoot off in search of the till. But something halts you on your way, turning on your ankle to face the beautiful stranger once more. He’s watching you with an endearment in his eye that makes your guts tangle in knots, sickly butterflies flying the nest and spreading through your body.
Men can be so unfairly pretty sometimes, especially when built like the model-esque figure before your eyes.
“Have a safe flight!” And with this final and only attempt at politeness, a last-ditch effort to salvage a conversation your own paranoia has already butchered, you shoot off to pay for a travel guide that will soon make a home for itself at the bottom of your bag, never to be kissed by the light of day again.
Paying for your unwanted good and stuffing it into your purse, your pursuit of escaping as swiftly as possible is hindered by the sudden tap of a finger on your shoulder, coaxing you to glance over your shoulder and find the same beautiful stranger, smile still plastered across his million-dollar face and sporting a plastic bag in his grasp, extended out to you and awaiting your acceptance.
“Please,” the blue-eyed man presses, plastic rustling in his grasp. “I’m sure you’re a smart girl, and that you’re more than capable of keeping yourself safe. But I have a little sister and- Well, it just wouldn’t sit right on my conscience to not do my part in keeping a woman safe.”
You accept his offering, fingers looping through the holes of the bag, because it feels cruel to deny him, to send him off with his tail tucked between his legs and his well intentions stomped all over the floor.
The man excuses himself, rushing off who knows where as you begin your own journey towards your assigned departure gate. Only as you settle in to the exhausted queue of antsy passengers, desperate to start their holidays or return to their families at last, do you take a peak into the plastic bag.
There it sits, just as you expect, The Wise Traveller.
Before you can think better of accidentally advertising to your fellow travellers your vulnerable state of solitude, the booklets is in your grasp and you’re flicking through the opening pages. Blue ink, smudged by the press of pages, catches your eye; an inscription from your handsome stranger.
There’s no such thing as being too careful.
Stay safe, be wise, & enjoy your trip.
- Bucky
Dragon Crest Mountain, Thailand.
The view from the top of the world is beautifully depressing.
Beautiful because the horizon stretches below you, curves and edges of green treetops and mountainous terrain. An infinite expanse of mother nature’s art painted shamelessly over the canvas of the Earth, unmarred by the hands of man nor the wheels of machines.
Depressing because, despite the view, your mind is elsewhere; enthralled by visions of tangled sheets, and bruising touches, and tear-filled tissues.
With the fellow hikers that surround you moved to silence by the ethereal view, no chattering mouths can muffle your ears from the buzz coming from your bag. A familiar pattern of three, buzz buzz buzz, you can easily picture the screen lighting up with his name, treacherously innocent for a man who masks the Devil behind his shy smile and his careful caresses.
You groan, louder than intended, and surrender with an apologetic smile towards the group of elderly women shooting daggers in your direction. Your frustration cannot be helped, really. It is utterly and entirely justifiable, given the texts staring back at you from the screen in your hand, freshly fished out your bag and clasped within your sweat-dampened grip.
DONT REPLY!! (tony) — 10:48 you'll never guess who i ran into today, honey.
DONT REPLY!! (tony) — 10:48your mother, she said your flight landed safely!
DONT REPLY!! (tony) — 10:49 i'm glad but i can’t help wishing you were here. my bed isn’t the same without you.
Psychological warfare.
That is what this is, the manipulative moves of a man who knows all the right words to say at the worst of times. How can he speak of missing you, when he couldn’t even appreciate you when you were right in front of him, nothing short of begging him to need you as much as you needed him?
Still, your ex-situationship’s messages worm themselves into your mind, planting seeds of doubt into your dignity and sanity. Your thumb swipes up on the screen before you can think better of it, the lingering muscle memory of a lovesick fool who at last has felt the exhilarating rush of hearing from the man who makes your usually rock solid heart feel like it is made out of glass.
It wouldn’t hurt to reply, surely. It would be the polite thing to do. After all, you and him are friends. Good friends, with years of history outside of the sultry looks exchanged atop mattresses. And he just wants to know you’re okay, right? A perfectly human reaction to having the person you spend nearly every day beside suddenly up and leave, bags packed with a one-way ticket and a declaration that you are going to see what else the world has to offer, both the good and bad.
Just as you type the opening letters to a calculatedly casual reply, another message enters the chat, lighting a fire in your chest and flooding your mouth with the bitter taste of anger.
DONT REPLY!! (tony) — 10:53 but it’s okay. take your time. i’d rather you work through your little hissy fit first.
Scoffing before you can help it, you hastily switch off the phone and shove it back into your bag, eyes rolling and mouth curling with a snarl as you mutter, “Rich coming from a man who cries every time his shitty team loses.”
The remedy to the ugly feelings swirling up a storm in your chest lays ahead, dragging your eyes back out to the view of the world at your feet, a vastness that manages to make yourself, and consequently your troubles, feel minuscule and unimportant. You can cry a thousand times about a man who will never change his ways nor mature beyond the mindset of a frat-boy, and the Sun will still do her job regardless of your pain: rising, falling, and blessing the lands with her warmth.
And so, ultimately, no matter the heartbreak locked behind your phone screen, you are truly a girl who is going to be okay. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, or in any recent days that follow. But at some point, as you jet from country to country, checking off box after box on your bucket list, and nourishing your well of experience, you will feel your phone buzz with a notification and the last thing on your mind will be the hopeful dread of it being from Tony.
Something flashes in the corner of your eye.
Startled, your shoulders jump as you turn, just in time to be blinded by the obnoxious flash of a camera, shutter snapping shut as the camera’s owner takes a picture. Sight still blurred by the blinding white light, you faintly make out the shape of a dark haired man, camera still raised at shoulder height.
“Oh, sorry,” you stumble over the apology, too busy trying to shuffle out of the lens’ way. “Let me just- I can move, so you can get the full-”
The cameraman chuckles and the sound runs right through you, a visceral reaction stirring within as you feel the hairs on the back of your neck rise and your palms grow sweaty. It’s like you know that laugh, the deep chortle that has an uptick in pitch at the end, itching at a particular spot in your ear.
“No, no, it’s fine- Don’t move!” The man, amidst his laughing, exclaims with a panic that manages to freeze your fleeing feet. Camera back to his face, he points it unmistakably at you and clicks capture, flash firing in your eyes again. “Sorry, sorry! It’s just- Wow.”
Doing your best to not show your confusion — though a part of you is painfully aware of the awe in the stranger’s tone, and the Tour Guide name tag dangling from his lanyard, and the curious American twang voice — you settle on a tightlipped smile, polite enough to gift a stranger yet not void of the utter confusion coursing through your veins.
“Sorry, gosh… You must think I’m some kind of creep,” the man continues his spew of apologies, shaking his head as he lowers the camera and let’s it drop, strap tightening around his neck and halting the device from crashing to the floor. “I normally ask before I, you know, take pictures of the tour guests. But the sunset was hitting you perfectly, and you looked so candidly peaceful, and I didn’t want to ruin the picture by making you… Aware. People get awkward when they know a camera is watching them.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s-” whatever words awaited at the end of your sentence are lost to space and time, as the cloudiness finally drifts, no longer obstructing your line of sight, and you find yourself face to face with eyes so blue, you would have to be an idiot to forget them. “Bucky!?”
Taking on the role of confused bystander, the blue-eyed man is now the one shooting you a tightlipped smile, a questioning gaze skimming over the length of you. You swear you can almost see the cogs turning in his brain, like he is actively trying to replay any memory that features your face.
When it hits him, it is a visible recollection, one that sends his mouth stretching into a full-blown smile and has you embarrassingly aware of how white his teeth are, canines glinting under the shine of a lowering sun.
“Hey, I remember you!” Connection established, he takes a step closer to you, lowering his voice in an attempt to not interfere with the quiet solace the rest of the hikers are seeking. The dampening of volume is not enough to deafen the excited recollection in his voice. “Kiosk Girl! Wow, this is- How was Germany?”
“What?” Mouth moving quicker than mind, you let your confusion rule over your sense before you are struck over the head with the rest of the scene that unfolded at the kiosk stand. The staring at pamphlets, the interruption of a handsome stranger, the offer of a survival guide. Your defensive denial, the awkward reach for a booklet all about a country you weren’t even travelling to, the gift of the survival guide, inscribed with the handsome stranger’s name. “Germany, right. Yeah, uh, it was great. Bit cold but-”
“Cold, in June? Strange,” Bucky, now even closer than moments before, is staring down at the camera, back in his hands and flicking through a series of photos. Photos of you, bated in hues of orange and purple, staring out to a blanket of greenery, sundress trapped in motion by the rustling of a warm breeze. “I always heard the weather was good there this time of year.”
Like a glass of cold water splashing over your face, the man’s words are enough to leave you shaken, the ice-cold embarrassment that soon melts into the shame of lying — and lying badly, of all things — to someone with a smile as earnest as his.
Too deep now to back out, you nod and commit to your deceit, praying you live long enough to someday forget this interaction ever happened, “Yeah, they- Well, the locals said it was a fluke. Global-warming, you know, changing the natural order of the world.”
If there is a higher being watching over your interactions, it is made of cruelty and spite, for only a creature made of all things not-nice would thrust you into a position where you embarrass yourself in front of a beautiful stranger not once, but twice — the same stranger, too. Incidents weeks apart, yet the burning sensation of bile biting at the back of your throat is just the same as the one you felt in the airport, rushing away to pay for the neglected German guide you had shamefully abandoned on the plane.
Bucky, the stranger who has unknowingly become the agent behind your most embarrassing moments in recent times, is none-the-wiser to your internal panic, nodding in acceptance of your explanation and shifting focus over to the camera in his hand.
“I’m sorry, again, for taking this without asking. I didn’t mean to scare you,” is it fair for a man to look so effortlessly good, one hand reaching up to push a set of overgrown brown curls from his forehead, hooking one particular long strand behind his ear? Rarely a fan of long locks on a man, there is something about the way he wears his head of hair, dishevelled yet, strangely, not a hair seems out of place, falling perfectly in a way that frames his sharp features. His voice fills your ears again, pulling focus down to his rosebud lips. “But, uh… If you don’t hate the pictures, I can pass them along to you.”
“If I don’t like them? Are you kidding?” Overcompensating for your frazzled nerves, your enthusiastic display as you glance down at the photograph burnt into the camera’s screen is hopefully enough to atone for your earlier sin of lying. “These are- Wow! I mean, are you a professional photographer? You should be photographing models, not working here as a tour guide-”
And now you are just overdoing it.
Because, truth be told, the picture is not even that good. You are barely in focus, the background is more pixelated than one would hope, and there is an intruding figure in the corner, the sandal-clad foot of a man who had been standing off to the side.
“You really think so?” Bucky drinks in your praise, cheeks glowing a rosy hue as he basks in your eager praise. Men really are so simple at their core, happy to believe they are overqualified in a skill they barely have at the slightest of celebration. “I was just messing with the lens, didn’t think I’d even do that good… Oh, but, actually-”
He pauses, hesitation on his face as he mulls over a thought.
You encourage him to speak his mind, eyebrows furrowing as you question him with your gaze.
“It’s just, I completely forgot, we’d have to exchange phone numbers if you’re wanting me to pass the photos on. Which I totally understand if you’re not comfortable with! I mean, I’m a man, and I’m a stranger, and-” Like he is aware of his own mouth racing off ahead of him, Bucky draws his tongue back in and tries to settle a little composure into himself, straightening his shoulder and clearing his throat. “Or we could meet somewhere in a few days, if you want a printed copy of it. Would Wednesday work for you?”
The shake of your head comes swiftly, shooting his offer down, “Sorry, I leave for Tokyo on Tuesday. But I don’t mind! Exchanging numbers, I mean.”
To the outside, you must sound like a pair of mumbling, stumbling fools. Sentences barely cohesive and rarely uninterrupted by a hum or a haw, thoughts actively unravelling as you both speak them into existence.
But a part of you can’t help feeling a certain wave of charm roll over you, an endearment that clutches at your heart and has you wondering how a man with a face like that could ever sound unsure of himself.
“Oh, in that case…” and Bucky has already taken to digging through his back-pocket, slipping a black phone into his grasp. You watch him press the power button, only to be met with the familiar sign of a dead battery: black screen, white charger symbol. “Shit, sorry. Do you mind if I type my number into your phone? Mine’s dead as a dodo right now.”
It would be rude to say no. And, really, what other choice do you have? Other than, of course, to suddenly change your mind and decide you don’t want the mediocre picture, but then that would require you to be rude. Besides, it’s not like you weren’t going to end up having his number anyway, what difference does it make if he types it in?
Your hands are scouring through your bag, searching for the familiar green of phone case well-past its sell-by date — with more bumps and scratches along its surface than a reckless teen’s first car — when you feel the violation of his stare wandering into the contents of your bag.
It doesn’t take long for you to both zero in on a familiar booklet, tucked neatly into an inner-pocket and seemingly sporting a few dog-ears.
“You kept it,” he notes, gaze still glued to The Wise Traveller, and the comment almost makes you hurl — because it’s like he knows you abandoned the other guide you purchased that day.
“Uh, yeah,” your reply comes a little more breathless than you would like, as you try not to think too hard about the engraving along the inside of the pages, the very place you had first learnt his name. “Figured you were right, back in the airport. Can’t be too careful these days.”
Then it hits you.
You’ve not even told this stranger- Bucky your name.
Here you are, a fool fumbling over words at the sight of his pretty face, freely handing over your phone for him to pluck into his own grasp and begin swiping over the screen, and you’ve yet to once offer him the appropriate politeness of sharing your name.
Only, as you finally give it up and introduce yourself, you’re met with a reply that from any man less attractive would have had you running for the hills: “Oh, I know!”
As though he can feel your wide eyes, watching him with a measured caution, Bucky is quick to fire into a chuckle and shake your phone in your direction, screen opened on your contacts and brandishing your name along the top.
“It says it right here. Cute name, by the way. Makes sense for a pretty girl like you,” thumbs swipe across your phone, numbers punched into a new contact. Meanwhile, Bucky continues to make small talk, with a smile on his face you have quickly decided comes far too easily to him — surely no one is that happy, all the time? You’re almost certain if you peel back the complex layers of reasoning behind his grin, you’d find customer service at the root of it all. “Is it any good?”
Too focused on studying his more-than-good looks, it takes you a moment and one too many slow blinks to realise he’s back on the topic of the safety guide, “Oh, uh, Yeah. It’s great. Very… safe, you know?”
Here you go again, lying for the sake avoiding the awkward conversation where you tell the very stranger — very kind stranger, mind you, who has extended you nothing but a show of good faith, a man so used to playing the role of big brother that he could not stop himself from instilling some level of safety into a lonesome woman — that you had not opened the book he had gifted you beyond that pages of his footnote. All those apparent dog-ears? Wrinkles in the book’s corners, a result of shoving the poor thing and crushing it amongst the other contents of your bag.
“Can’t be that good, surely,” guilt coats the back of your throat. You swallow it down and keep your focus on Bucky, who has finished inserting his contact details and now balances your phone between two fingers, awaiting your eventual acceptance of it back into your grasp. “Pretty sure you just broke rule number one.”
“I- What rule?”
Like a wind-up toy, Bucky clears his throat and recites with practised ease, “Never tell a stranger your travel plans.”
Your whole world goes still.
A heart that no longer beats. Lungs that no longer inflate. Hands that run cold with a nervous sweat.
Birds chirp in the distance, the noise louder than ever before. Voices, muffled as though you are submerged in water, swirl around you in an unidentifiable cluster — men, women, children; every one more monotone than the last.
It’s his laugh that pierces through the threatening haze of quiet, throaty and inviting, tickling at your own humour despite the fact you can’t seem to pinpoint what exactly is so funny about this situation.
Maybe this Bucky guy is just a little awkward, the type to fall back on laughter when he feels stifled by silence.
You don’t get the chance to investigate your sudden theory any further, for the duties of a tour guide seem to catch up to him at last. The flock of older women have swarmed him like vultures, each trying to get him to help them focus the binoculars that dangle from their necks. Before they can fully sweep him away, the handsome stranger offers you one last grin and some parting words.
“Have fun in Tokyo!”
Bondi Beach, Australia.
Like any true, modern day feminist, the last thing you enjoy doing is agreeing with a man… But Anakin Skywalker certainly made some good points against sand.
It is coarse, it is rough, it is irritating, and it does get everywhere.
Right now, it’s wedged between your hallux and index toe, irritating the skin with each step you take, grinding against the toe post of a sandal and driving the bothersome granules deeper into you. So, it’s safe to say you dive at the first sight of respite, just about throwing yourself into an empty bar stool.
Pearl Waves Beach Club is certainly a sight to behold.
A beacon of white, with floor to ceiling length windows that look out towards golden sun and aqua waters, and an overwhelming aura of wealth and excess that makes you feel less than adequate, wandering through the air-conned space clad in a burgundy two-piece bathing suit, a hastily tied shawl around your waist, and shoes that announce your every move with a harsh slap against marble flooring that echoes out into the tranquility of the beach club.
None of that matters now that you’re nestled in a seat, the lingering dampness from the ocean that still clings to your bikini bottoms now wetting the dark leather beneath it. The sticky residue of suncream has mixed with your sweat, creating an uncomfortable film atop your body, and salt has embedded itself into your scalp, doing its best into coercing you to scratch at and relieve the pinch in your skin. Despite all that, you feel nothing short of blessed, covered in the tell-tale stains of someone who has spent the better half of their day strewn upon a sandy beach and basking in the sun’s radiance, like if you lay there long enough, you will eventually evolve and gain the skill of photosynthesis.
“Well, well, look what the cat dragged in.”
Barely believing the vision unravelling before your very eyes, you blink twice before making a show out of rubbing your knuckles against closed eyelids. Sight readjusting to the brightness of the beach club, you find your eyes have far from deceived you: there, making his way up the length of the bar, with a dishtowel tossed over one shoulder and a pearly-white grin plastered along a clean-shaven face, is none other than your handsome stranger.
“Oh my-” Cutting yourself off before you can fully form the words, you gape at him in shock, pointer finger aimed at his direction as though you are accusing him of something — like the crime of running into you for a third time on your trip around the globe, or the more unforgivable sin of daring to look better with each run-in. Even now, the luscious locks you had admired back in Thailand chopped and traded in for a far shorter, more polished slick of dark hair, held in place by a lick of hair gel, he looks better than ever. There’s only one issue- “James?”
That is what sits engraved into his golden name tag, clipped to a black button up that sits stretched a little too tightly around his forearms.
Following your line of sight, chin near pressed to his sternum as he looks down at his chest, Bucky — or James, or whatever his name is — is flooded with a wave of red, embarrassment burning at the apples of his cheeks and the tips of his ears.
“Afraid my name’s not actually as cool as something like Bucky,” his hands plant themselves on the bar, as the man positions himself directly across from you over the counter top.
Try as you might, you can’t resist the invisible magnet that draws your attention down to his arms, bare in a way they never have been before. While you want to follow the trail of veins that dance up the length of each forearm, you instead find yourself staring where politeness says you shouldn’t.
Because where you expect to find skin as golden as the one along his right arm, you find a story of pain instead. Splotches of pink paint the otherwise white skin with colour, with a shine that does not match the typical look of flesh. Where some spots appear unnaturally smooth, other flecks of tissue appear sunken in, visual marks of trauma along his left arm.
Catching yourself as you blatantly stare, regret making impact with your chest, you force yourself to meet those aqua eyes of his, watching you with the patience of someone who is beyond used to the rude — even if well intentioned— stares.
“I don’t know if cool is the right word for Bucky,” opting for diffusing with humour, you tease your handsome stranger. Though, really, maybe he is no longer a stranger. With how often fate seems to be driving you together, maybe it’s time you consider him an acquaintance. “Sounds like the stage name for one of those horses, you know? Make some noise, folks, for Bucky the Bucking Bronco!”
Mouth contradicts hand, as James struggles to contain his amusement, pouring out of him in melodies of laughter. All the while he grasps at something dramatic with his palm, colliding over where his heart sits beneath layers of cotton and flesh and bone, clutching as though you have freshly driven a dagger into him.
“Harsh! Call me a loser next time, why don’cha?” There it is again, that lilt of an accent, curving over the man’s words as he feigns offence. Palms up in defeat, Bucky shakes a chuckle out himself before pinning you under his intense stare, “Go on, tell old Loser McGee over here wha’cha want, before they kick you out for harassing an innocent bartender.”
A familiar overwhelm befalls you, leaving your stomach feeling like a led balloon as you fix your attention on the boards behind Bucky, where options upon options, upon options lay scribbled in chalk. Brands of liquor, strains of beer, every cocktail under the sun; they all sit compiled in a list so overflowing with choice, it paralyses you once again.
“I,” you drag out the sound, mouth paused and agape while you try to pick something, anything to drink… Before ultimately confessing, “Have no idea. There’s too much to choose from.”
“You’ve got a real problem making decisions, you know that?” You are almost taken aback by Bucky’s brash declaration. No matter how true it may be, you never expected the man made up of bashful smiles and shaky words to just come right out and say it like that, no tact in his choice of words that could soften the blow of reality. “Between here and that kiosk, I’m starting to worry about how you’ve been getting by without me on the rest of your trip.”
While you might have tuned your gut out nearly two months ago, she has a nasty habit of screaming her way back into the forefront of your mind. And right now, she’s screaming a tale of seduction, one where she is trying her best to convince your sharper senses that there is a flirtatious undertone behind the way Bucky cocks his head and tilts one side of his mouth up into a smirk, just waiting on your response to his teasing.
A bad habit that doesn’t die at all, apparently, you give in to the noise of your gut and try reach a place of equal footing, arms crossing over your chest and subtly squeezing your nylon clad breasts closer together, deepening the line of your cleavage.
“You don’t have to worry, James,” elbows kiss the cold of the bar counter as you shuffle closer and lean against it, ignoring the bolt of electric heat that shoots down your spine as you notice blue eyes lower from your face and fall right into your cross-armed trap. “The world’s full of handsome strangers eager to help a girl like me decide.”
“Is that so?” There’s a tick in his jaw, which you swear you witness him clench, only for him to distract you with the sight of his back muscles, straining as he turns and begins reaching for various colourful bottles you barely recognise. “Then let me be the one to decide for you today, hmm?”
An unmeasured amount of time pases with his back turned on you and your eyes attempting to peak over his shoulders, catching glimpses of how he chops at fruits, and measures liquids, and grabs at ice. Everything culminates in a grand finale of his hands grasping at two metal cups, one jammed into the other as he begins to shake, and shake, and shake.
Bucky is nothing short of peacocking, dazzling you with easy flips and twirls of the shaker, each toss more riskier than the last. Braced for breath, you half expect him to fail any moment now, make a fool of himself and send the contents of the cups spilling all down the front of him.
Surprisingly, this does not end up being the case.
Instead, you watch him turn with a smug, satisfied grin and lay a colourful concoction in front of you, decorated with a handful of fruit and a sprinkle of mint leaves.
“What’s this?”
“Don’t ask, just drink,” Bucky encourages you, two fingers pinched around the neck of the straw and guiding it to your waiting mouth. Just as you wrap your lips around the plastic, an angry yell breaks out from the opposite end of the bar, where you spot a red-faced, uniform-clad man glaring daggers at your handsome stranger- No, acquaintance's* direction. “Oh, shoot… I’ve gotta go, that’s my manager. Enjoy!”
Before disappointment at the sight of him racing off down the bar can solidify itself in your chest, you feel a rush of relief as you witness him come face-to-face with his manager — who you almost swear you witness rip Bucky’s name tag clean off his shirt — for the moment you take a sip of his cocktail, something in your stomach turns…
It might just be the most disgusting thing you’ve ever tasted.
Therme București, Romania.
“I have a new nickname for you,” your declaration is half-slurred, on account of your face being nose deep in the headrest of a massage table. “Buck-Of-All-Trades.”
A laugh you’ve grown too familiar with echoes over the zen playlist that has been filtering out of a speaker for the past thirty minutes. Incense burns in one corner, while a glass door that has long ago steamed up with the heat of the room sits on the opposite side. Melting into PVC leather, you are naked with nothing but a thin, pristine white towel to cover your most delicate areas. And, with knees that squeeze into your waist with every smooth roll of his hands along your oil-slicked back, is your handsome acquaintance.
Weeks and miles away from the events upon the Australian beach, you had walked into your much anticipated massage with one thing in mind, an apology given by a staff member after a forty minute wait: “The original masseuse you booked with has fallen sick, so we have matched you up with one of our newer experts. Thank you for your patience!”
Had you admittedly been a little frustrated? Well, yes!
Had that very same frustration evaporated the moment you watched Bucky step into the room, hair a little fluffier than before and sporting a five o’clock shadow? Well… Yes!
“Hmm, how so?” Like he is trying to torture you, there is a certain strain of exertion in James’ voice, a sound that pairs with the relaxing roll of his palms up the length of your back as perfectly as red wine goes with steak.
“Because,” half the word collapses into a breathy sigh as you feel the tips of his fingers press into a knot. One third of the way down your spine, burrowed beneath the point of your right shoulder blade, he sniffs it out like a police dog sent to find drugs. “Every time I see you, you have a new job.”
You leave out the part where this is the first one you’ve witnessed him be good at.
In a way, you’ve grown fond of that less-than-perfect photograph he captured of you on Dragon Crest. With a view so ethereal, it would be selfish to think anything as cheap and measly as a camera could dare capture it in all it’s glory.
And his cocktail, though far from drinkable, had certainly looked beautiful, brandished all over your Instagram story and paired with the perfect caption: Custom cocktail from a handsome bartender <3
Tony definitely had not reacted well.
You happily left his messages on read, his demands for your return abandoned to the void of your chat.
“That’s not a very nice nicknames though, doll,” a tut comes from behind you, and it takes just about every inch of will you own inside your body to not raise your head and glance back. The fear of not surviving the sight of Bucky, thick thighs spread and arm muscles rippling under his repeated touching along your naked back, is what really holds you in place. “Ain’t the rest of that sayin’ meant to imply I have no real skills? Master of none?”
With a dismissive wave of your hand and a relaxed shh, you sink deeper — if that is even possible — into the massage table, swallowing back a pleasured moan as his thumbs begin working at the knot.
“You men are all the same,” you mumble before you can think better of it, sighing as you close your eyes and visualise a montage of Tony and all his nagging words. “Can’t just take a damn compliment, always gotta turn it into an argument.”
“‘S that so?”
“Yes, that is so.”
Like he feels your breath hitch at a particular pressure, he reinforces it, thumb pressing right where you need him to, “You’re speaking from experience, I take it.”
A groan fires out of you, half because you are frustrated under the reminders of Tony that swirl around in your mind and half because there is an embarrassing rush of blood shooting straight for your core with every roll of his fingers, a slow pulse making itself known between your legs that practically begs you to grind down into the hardened leather. But you don’t, because you can’t.
Because that would be wrong.
Because that would violate Bucky’s trust and safety as a professional.
Because he would feel it the moment you even dare try, his own groin all but resting against your lower half.
“Too much experience,” you manage a response, finally. “My ex-boyfriend… Actually, I can’t even call him that. But anyway, he was the worst.”
“Oh yeah?” He passively replies with the very words you want to chant as his fingers skim and find another knot to undo, unknowingly undoing other parts of you too.
“Y-yeah,” you sigh, shoulders rolling back as you squirm and try to get comfortable, despite the slick forming between your thighs. “He used to argue with me, all the time. And he wasn’t afraid to get mean with it.”
“What a jerk.”
“Yeah, he is a jerk,” much like your body needed the physical therapy of steady hands loosening all your muscles, your mind is basking in the healing nature of finally trashing a man who had made you feel so inadequate, you had to run halfway across the earth just to escape your scorned heart. “Do you know-” a rhetorical question, for poor Bucky has absolutely no idea who you are talking about, “He couldn’t even drive 10 minutes to come pick me up once? My clutch broke and I had no way to get to work, and he complained when I asked him for a favour. He literally works down the street from me!”
“Jesus, darling,” he follows it up with a low whistle, just in time to cover up the faintest huff of a moan pushed from your mouth. “No wonder you’re so tense, dealin’ with boys like that.”
As good as the validation feels, to have a voice outside of your head paying testament to your woes and sympathising with your troubles, you are still plighted by the cruel torture of thinking too much about Tony at once. And, so, you cut the conversation short, drag it someplace else.
“What’s your story, then?”
Hands pause along your back, mapping over the skin like Bucky is searching for the next tweak to undo in your spine. Finding one quicker than you expect, he sinks his touch back into you and matches your question with his own, “Who says I have a story?”
“Oh, come on,” the effect the massage is having on you grows harder to suppress with each passing moment. “You don’t travel the world, working every job under the sun, and not have a story!”
Mask slipping a little too far, a moan crawls its way from out your chest. It is nothing dramatic, a simple hum of affirmation, a noise that says yes, keep going without you needing to part your lips.
“Okay, okay, I’ll give you my story,” Bucky is likely paying you some kindness, refusing to acknowledge the noise that just left you.
Never have you been more relieved to be in his presence. Then again, the more you think about it, his presence tends to be accompanied by relief: saving you from choosing at the kiosk, sparing you from the silence of the mountain, rescuing you from the threat of dehydration at the bar.
You catch the next hum before it can make too much noise, a subtle squeeze of your thighs relieving the burn between your thighs if only for a moment.
“I was a smart kid but I never really had any direction in life. No big burning passion, you know?” You nod into the headrest, then nearly laugh as you imagine what you must look like from his point of view right now. “So when my friend Steve showed up one day and told me he was enlisting in the military, it was like the universe handed me a task. I mean, when I say this kid was scrawny, I mean he looked one gust of wind away from being swept away to the land of Oz.”
Laughing is a mistake that only leads to a broken moan, his thumbs once again pressing just right.
“Stop that,” Bucky scolds softly, reinforcing the pressure behind his touch like he is trying to coax you into letting the noise fully form, let your pleasure perforate the calm room. “‘S just you, me, and the incense in here. I promise no one’s gonna judge you, so sing your little heart out. Let’s me know I’m doing a good job.”
Latch unlocked, permission granted; it’s embarrassing how quick you are to obey. Hypnotised by his words, you find your lips parting with permanence, throat relenting and becoming a vehicle for your pleasure, the zen playlist quickly becoming a backing track to your gentle moans.
“There we go. Isn’t that nice? Lettin’ loose, letting yourself feel good?” When had his hands reached so low, fingertips dancing along the hem of the white towel strewn along your lower back? “I quickly learned I liked the military. I was good at it. The routine, the demanding physicality, the yes, sir, yes and all the other stupid things they make you chant.”
It damn near gives you whiplash how easily James slips back into relaying his story to you, voice void of a previous layer of sultriness and now coated by something more careful, something practised. The monotony of a story told one too many times and perfected to hit all the right story beats to keep his listener engaged.
“But then there was an accident,” for the first time since he planted himself atop your back, the hitch in your breath is caused by something other than his tender touch. Memories of his left arm, scar tissues wrapped around him like vine, suddenly hits you. “I pissed some guys off, got one too many push ups handed to them by pointing out their misdemeanours to our superiors. I don’t remember how the prank was actually meant to play out but, next thing I know, I’m waking up to my bed sheets on fire and the feeling of death clawing up my arm. And that was that. A month in hospital, many more months in physical therapy. I quit the military, so did Steve.”
It feels selfish to moan right then, but Bucky only seems to light up at the sound, massaging deeper into the tissue of your back, relishing in your vocal praises.
“Then,” his pause is for dramatic effect. “I just sat and felt sorry for myself. For months. It was more excruciating than the pain, that boredom. It felt like I lost my life, even though I was still alive and fully intact, save for the scars left behind by the fire. And… I don’t know. There’s really only so long you can do that before you have to get up and go. Do something again. I just decided to do everything. Everywhere I want to go, I go. Every job I want to try, I apply. What’s the worst thing that can happen? I get rejected? I guarantee that’s less pain that what’s going on in my arm.”
Though your reasons are far smaller, far less visible, the scarring along your heart feels seen by Bucky’s words.
The massage finishes far sooner than you would like.
Bucky at last gets a chance to dismiss himself from you without some outside source dragging him away, giving you just enough time to suspect there’s hesitation in his voice, as he draws out his goodbye before exiting the massage room and leaving you to re-dress.
Bones turned to jelly, heart a little lighter too, you’re too blissed out to care that your underwear has gone missing, no longer stuffed neatly into the pocket of your trousers.
Nonno Gio’s Cooking Class, Italy.
You realise too little too late that you’ve fallen for a tourist trap.
Because Nonno Gio, who you expect to embody the essence of Italy, turns out to be a middle-aged American man who seemingly has watched one too many episodes of The Sopranos. A golden chunk of chain sits clasped around his bright red neck, and his accent is plucked right out of New Jersey.
It’s a little too hard to lament the loss of a few hundred euros, however, while watching your cooking partner whisk away at a selection of dry and wet ingredients… Particularly because the cooking partner in question is your handsome friend — yes, he has received an upgrade in titles — Bucky.
“We seriously need to stop meeting like this,” had been his version of a greeting, shoulders shaking and mouth laughing with disbelief as he watched you saunter up to the very cooking station he had been assigned. “It’s starting to get creepy.”
“Creepy?” You echoed, throwing an apron over your head, at last standing by his side. “If me stalking you all across the globe is creepy then, sure James, I’m creepy!”
Taking charge, Bucky leaves you to laugh at your own silly joke while his hands grasp at the strings of your apron. Pulling the fabric flush against your front, guarding the pretty pale yellow of your sundress from any dusting of flour or splashes of liquid, he threads the strings into a tight bow and punctuates the action by smoothing his hands over your hips, undoing a ruffle that has formed along your waist.
The entire class is a practice in patience, a way to prove to yourself just how good your ability to endure has become.
Because Bucky is an example of visual torture.
Floppy hair that falls over his eyes as he concentrates on chopping onions, a single tear slipping down his cheek. You take a deep breath and force your hands to focus on your own task, instead of brushing the locks from his face.
Muscles that ripple beneath the confines of a white shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and light cotton sitting loose around his bicep, just see-through enough to grant you the view how toned they are. He kneads at the pizza dough, meanwhile you need three stabilising breaths to calm your less than kitchen-friendly thoughts.
Sharp cheekbones, one side sporting the delicate swipe of flour staining his tanned skin, right where he foolishly wiped away an invisible bit of lint without fully washing his hands. You want to laugh at the sight, or to lick the pad of your thumb and swipe the powder away, but you are too busy reeling from those same flour-covered fingers grasping at your chin, tilting your eyes up to meet his blue ones, and smudging your own cheek with flour.
“There,” he mutters, cool as a cucumber and nowhere near as affected as you. “We’re matching, Now we look like a real team.”
It’s after you both ship off your pizza into the specialised oven, with Bucky insisting you both grasp at the peel and feed your wonky masterpiece, possessing a shape closer to a square than a circle, in together, that you finally feel yourself lose the ability to trap your tongue, mouth flying off to speak your thoughts before you can swallow the words back down.
“This might sound insane, so feel free to call me crazy,” is always a promising, stable way of starting a sentence. It is truly a miracle the handsome man entertains your wording with an endeared smile. “But I feel like there is a reason behind why we keep running into each other. Like… Like the universe is pushing me in your direction, you know? I mean, what are the chances?”
Silence.
The other members of the cooking class chatter around you both, but you don’t hear them, too focused on the fragile bubble that surrounds you and Bucky.
“You’re crazy,” straight to the point, monotone voice and deadpanned stare. It’s safe to say James does not give you the answer you were expecting… At least not immediately. But then the tension on the surface of his face cracks and he breaks out into an easy smile, something similar to relief swimming in the pools of his eyes. “But I’m glad you said it, ‘cause I’ve been thinking the same thing. For a while now.”
Despite the hazard lights flashing from within your gut, screaming warnings at you to not repeat previous mistakes, to not hand a man the ability to make a fool out of you, you take a leap of faith and pray this time you don’t wind up weeping with your knees pressed into the floor — there’s not even a carpet to soften the blow this time.
“I leave for France tomorrow,” this time, you share your plans knowing full well it is the number one rule in The Wise Traveller not to. You justify this violation of safety with the fact Bucky is no longer a stranger. He is your friend, right? “I’ll be in Bordeaux. You know, in case you’re struggling to pick where you’re going next. I wouldn’t mind the company.”
Thankfully, Bucky is better at cooking than he is at mixology, and when the pair of you tuck into your less-than-authentic Italian pizza, you’re suddenly thankful you fell for Nonno Gio’s tourist trap.
How else would you have (possibly, maybe) scored a friendly date in Bordeaux?
Super-Bass Club, Greece.
The nightclub’s name is far from an exaggeration: you can feel the bass infiltrating your heartbeat.
Or maybe it’s not the bass, but adrenaline; kicking in and raising your heart rate.
The straps of your heels dig painfully into the skin around your ankles, rubbing them raw and no doubt drawing blood to the blistered surface. Every hurried step forces you to tug down the hem of your dress, riding up under the force of your strides. Sweat stings at your eyes and bodies swarm all around you, swaying out of tune to a DJ who loves his job a little too much, despite the fact he can barely succeed at a simple cross-fade into the next track.
At the very least, you suppose, the DJ is playing the club classics, the records that never fail to get a crowd screaming out the lyrics at the top of their lungs. It’s his only saving grace.
Safety lays ahead, a beacon of light shinning from where the exit to the club sits, new bodies spilling into the venue while all you want to do is escape.
A hand around your wrist halts you, drags you back with a squeal before you can dive out the doors.
You don’t have to turn to know it’s him, the very same stranger who has been harassing you for the past half hour, unwilling to take the hint of your side-eyes and disapproving glares as he attempted, time and time again, to grind up against you on the dance floor. While at first you had tried to flee subtly, it quickly became obvious that rejection was not something the bull-headed man took well.
The moment your footsteps had sped up across the floor, he began pursuing after you.
And now he’s caught you, a wriggling fish trapped in the painful hook of his hand. He wastes no time, another set of fingers reaching to roughly grab at your face, tilt your face up to his, and-
A scuffle ensues, one that you seem to be trapped in the middle of; a tug of war where one hand is dragging you towards your pursuer and another two, more careful, are prying you backwards.
Two trumps one, without a doubt, but not without the aid of a third set of hands, this time clamping down around the assailant’s wrist in a painful grip and ripping the unwanted hand off of you, arm twisting unnaturally as your third defender pins the stranger’s hand behind his back. Through the shock of it all, you barely register the other four hands dropping their grasp from you, nor the pair of security that grapple with the man responsible for your shaky hands and jackhammer heart.
You manage to concentrate enough to notice him, however, relinquishing his hold of the stranger to his fellow bouncers and approaching you with the caution of a scared lamb, blue eyes wider than ever before as they frantically search over your body for signs of injury.
“Are you okay? Does anywhere hurt?” Bucky — like every time before — looks better than the last time you saw him. Beard fuller, hair softer, worried face a reflection for the swirling neon lights around you both. Dressed from head to toe in black, a splash of white sits across his chest in the bold shape of SECURITY. “See, doll? This is why you need to be more careful, hmm. Where’s that guide I bought you?”
Tuning out the condescension, filtering it through a part of your brain that registers his words as only the worried rambling of someone concerned about their friend, you take to answering his first questions instead.
“I’m fine,” your voice sounds miles away to you, lost in the crowd along with the rest of the drunken fools. The buzz of alcohol has long simmered away within you, nothing but a static flatline remaining that leaves you tasting bile and wanting your bed — not the bed in your hostel, your bed, back home, where the sheets still smell like Tony. “Just my wrist hurts.”
That is enough to kick Bucky into gear, and the next thing you know, you’re sat outside the club atop a plastic chair, ice pack pressed to your skin, a jacket wrapped around your shoulders, and Bucky crouching by your feet.
A soft crack rings out into the Grecian night as he twists the lid off a bottle of water, offering it up to your lips and gifting an approving nod as he watches your throat bob, swallowing down a few sips.
“Your taxi should be here in ten minutes,” Bucky keeps his voice to barely a whisper, afraid to startle you. If you weren’t still so shaken, or stewing in a frustration towards him you thought you had got over weeks ago, you would laugh and point out the still very audible thump of Greece’s shittiest DJ entertaining the masses back inside the club. “I’m sorry… About that man. He’s been- Dealt with. Banned for life, no doubt, that’s what usually happens with-”
“Why didn’t you come?” Your question seems to hurt him more than the pain in your wrist, eyebrows furrowing and gentle smile slipping into an almost pout. “I waited. I thought I would hear from you. But you never came, and I explored Bordeaux alone.”
Knees kissing the dirtied ground, Bucky leans closer and perches his hands on your naked thighs, inches from where your dress rests around your legs, “Did you want me to come?”
“I told you I would be there.”
“That’s not the same as asking me to go,” he kisses those pearly teeth with a hiss, adjusting his grip on your legs and glancing over his shoulder, like he’s waiting for a taxi to finally pull up to the club’s entrance. Is he that desperate to see you leave? “I know you’re used to snapping your fingers and getting what you want, but I’m not that easy. Gotta use your words, baby. I can’t read minds, can only do as much as you ask of me.”
Intoxicated by his cologne, by the alcohol in your veins, by the sudden waft of cigarette smoke blown your way from bystanders to the left, there is suddenly only one question on your mind for Bucky… What a shame you speak it out loud.
“Would you kiss me?”
No further questioning is needed.
Bucky moves lazily, hand reaching up to grasp at your cheek. A thumb swipes over the swell of it, before steady fingers press your head to tilt it down to give him easier access to your mouth, pushing up from the ground to take possession of you.
His lips are soft, pressing carefully against your own. Bucky lets you take the lead, moving at whatever pace you set. At first slow, tentative, memorising the shape of his mouth against yours. And then desperate, lips widening with each smack and tongues reaching to taste each other.
Car horns blare, strangers chatter, and the bass continues to thump obnoxiously under the command of the DJ, but none of that matters right now. All that matters is Bucky, kissing you with equal fervour, groaning into your mouth as you sigh against him. The taste of mint hits your tongue, remnants of gum he had long ago chewed.
Your own wandering hands ruin the fun, gliding down the stretch of his black top and hooking two fingers beneath his belt, dragging him closer as you mutter, “There’s a spare bed back at my hostel.”
Disappointed does not even begin to cover what you are feeling when Bucky pulls back, head shaking and hands grasping at your wrists, prying your touch from off of him. Before you can feel the shame of rejection, though, he’s pressing a gentle kiss to your cheek and offering you an apology.
“I’m not the kind of guy who sleeps with a girl in your state, doll,” his hands take to tightening his jacket around your shoulders, a sudden gust of wind filling the night with a chill that runs right through you. You shiver for a whole other reason, however, when Bucky’s breath hits the shell of your ear as he mumbles into it, “Besides, I want you remembering every second of our first night together, not some drunken blur.”
Your taxi arrives quicker than you would like.
Bucky walks you over to it, holding the door open for you all the while he spills out directions in Greek to the driver. Only as he goes to slam the door shut do you remember the weight of his jacket around your shoulders, hand shooting out to pause the door.
“Wait! Here, your jacket,” you drunkenly exclaim, trying to unwind yourself from the warmth of him around you.
But Bucky is already shaking his head, hands insisting on tightening the fabric back around you, “Where are you going next, after Greece?”
You answer without hesitation, because Bucky is not a stranger.
He’s not even a friend.
He’s a man you almost just dragged to bed.
“Portugal.”
“Okay then. Give it back to me in Portugal,” with a slap of his hand atop the roof of the car, Bucky throws you one last grin before shutting the door on you, a single promise kissing your eardrums and setting your heart aflame the rest of the drive back to your hostel: “I’ll call you!”
Prisioneiro do Mar Hotel, Portugal
Bucky keeps his promise.
Calls you the next morning, arranges to meet with you in Portugal, wishes you a safe flight and even tells you that you looked beautiful the night before, even if deep-down you know you looked a mess after your run-in with the handsy stranger.
It is you who messes up this time.
“Bucky, I’m so, so sorry,” your apologies are almost as frantic as your hands, riffling through another suitcase and dumping piles upon piles of your clothing onto the hotel room floor.
The entire room is a mess, clothes strewn across just about every surface imaginable and every cupboard has been pried apart — even the safe lays with it’s door wide open, showing off your collection of jewellery to any wandering eyes.
How fortunate that the only other eyes in the room are Bucky’s, who stands by the foot of the bed and is trying his best to soothe your panic.
He’s not doing a very good job.
“I swear to you, I packed it. I remember packing it!” You, admittedly, are not the most sound of mind in this moment. A weight sits on your chest, heavy heart making every breath feel harder. Sweat gathers at the base of your neck, dampening the licks of hair at the back of your head. And, no matter how hard you try not to think about, memories of Tony are running on repeat in your mind. “God! I’m such a fucking idiot- I… How do you even lose a jacket?!”
Tearing through another bag, you’re none the wiser to Bucky as he inches closer to you, weaving his boot clad feet through empty spaces in the floor that don’t possess your clothing, unwilling to stain your pretty dresses with his footprint.
Your cheeks are overrun by tears in the blink of an eye. Angry, rotten little things that track rivers down your skin and drip all over the open bag you are kneeling over. Soft hands meet your shoulders, cradling them just as they begin to shake under the violent sobs that rack through your chest.
More than anything, you are embarrassed to be causing such a scene, especially when Bucky seems so unaffected by the loss of his jacket.
“Hey, hey,” his voice is practically a gentle coo, while his hands are dragging your body upright off the floor and forcing you to face him. “No need to cry, doll.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” this apology comes with a fresh wave of tears. At the very least you’re able to laugh, even if only a little, at your mess of a state, painfully aware that your understanding of his words does not pair well with the tears tracking down your cheeks. “I just- I can’t help it- Can’t stop them from falling. Think it’s some- Trauma response, or something.”
Breathing becomes a struggle as your chest pulls tight, lungs squeezing out every drop of air you attempt to feed them with. All the while, Bucky watches you with caring eyes, a pout nearly overcoming his pretty lips while he tries help you syncopate your breathing with his, hand pressing your own to his chest and forcing you to feel every strong inhale and easy exhale he makes.
“It’s just Tony. I remember it, this one time,” you speak in fragments, stretches of sentences huffed out with each breath, a little less shaky than the last under Bucky’s guidance. “I lost one of his shirts… Or he left it at someone else’s apartment, one of his other fuck buddies. Anyway, he didn’t react well. He was screaming at me, for hours, calling me useless, and stupid, and- God. Sorry, this just-”
“Stop apologising,” Bucky wipes away a tear before it can even fall, lets it stain his finger while he continues to soothe it over your cheek, big blue eyes commanding you to relax under their stare. Far away from Tony, he wants you to remember where you are: in a hotel room, in Portugal, with him. “Don’t have to worry, doll. ‘M not gonna yell at you.”
You thank him softly, let yourself lean forward and collapse into his arms, emotional exhaustion taking grip of your soul as your forehead meets his shoulder.
Bucky holds you like you are made of porcelain, hands barely daring to fully cup at your body as you press yourself against him.
When he hums, you feel it run right through you.
“‘Cause I know you’ll make it up to me, won’t you? I can trust you to make it right, can’t I?”
Nodding a little too frantically, nervous energy still coursing through your veins, you pull back just enough to look him in his darkening eyes, “Of course! There’s a mall not far from here, we can go and find a replacement for the jacket.”
But you’re not even finished talking when Bucky starts to shake his head, one hand flattening itself atop your shoulder and applying pressure. You’re already halfway to the floor when you realise the man is guiding you onto your knees, heartbeat beginning to pick up for a whole other reason than some stupid, misplaced jacket.
“That jacket was one of a kind, baby,” his statement confuses you. You could have sworn it carried a label from H&M on the inside. Or had you misread it, mistaken a luxury brand for something a little more familiar to you? “You don’t seriously think some small town mall’s gonna have anything worth apologising with, do you?” You shake your head without even realising, too busy watching the way his spare hand has fallen over his belt. “No, exactly. ‘S better you put your money where your mouth is instead, give me a proper apology.”
The entire act of his fingers undoing his belt, while the others slip from your shoulder and travel up to flatten themselves atop your scalp, bitten fingernails scrapping over the roots of your hair, it feels like the antithesis to everything you’ve ever enjoyed before.
With Tony, things were fast-paced yet fairly vanilla. He never wanted to draw out the experience, make his movements linger until you find yourself on the very precipice of needy, mouth watering at just the sight of a happy trail.
Which is exactly the state you’re in now, watching with anticipation as the man towering over you unthreads his belt and loosens the button of his jeans. The sound of a zip being undone fills the hotel room, reverberating off the walls of your skull and having a Pavlovian effect over you, thighs involuntarily squeezing in search of friction at the thought of what Bucky hides beneath his quickly-disappearing layers.
As it turns out, he’s hiding a lot. More than you expect.
You’re no expert in size, guesstimating that he’s definitely an inch or two over what most men possess. The tip of his cock is an angry red, crowned by a bead of pre-cum dripping from the slit and slipping over the curve of a mushroomed head. While you’ve never been a great aficionado of the male genitalia, something in you feels entranced, suddenly more than willing to sit here all day and just study the shape of Bucky.
Unfortunately, you are barely granted a few seconds to admire before the hand on your head is pulling you forward, closer, until you have no choice but to part your lips and make space for him.
“There we go,” Bucky, eyes more overblown by pupil than the pretty blue you have grown accustomed to, sighs out with guttural relief, head falling back as his hips give the smallest of juts forward into your mouth, feeding himself deeper. “God, don’t you just look gorgeous, huh? Pretty lips stretched round my cock, shit. Gonna need to relax your jaw.”
Caught under his spell, you’re left with no autonomy to stop yourself from obeying his every command, jaw falling lax and tongue flattening itself beneath the weight of his dick as he gives another roll of his hips, this one a little deeper and teasing at your gag reflex. This seems to delight the man, eyes lighting up momentarily as you choke on the beginning of a gag.
“Now, you want to make it up to me, don’t you?” Your attempt to nod just makes him laugh, biting back a groan as he feels your tongue drag over the underside of his length. “Then what I need you to for me is just sit there, keep your mouth open, and let me use your throat. Can you do that for me, doll?”
This time, you don’t try to nod. Instead, you hum affirmatively around his tip, relishing in the slight wave of power you feel as his eyes roll back and he instinctively thrusts into your mouth.
He starts with careful movements, barely-there rolls and ruts that press his cock a little heavier against your tongue with every one he makes. Tears still drying into your skin, it’s hard to tell if the slight salty tang invading your tongue is from you or him, precum mixing in with your excess of saliva.
The wetter your mouth grows under the invasion of him, your cunt rushes to match, slick turning your panties sticky and uncomfortable as you shift weight from one thigh to the other. A friction that Bucky cruelly cuts off, a disapproving tut coming moments before he nudges one foot between your legs and forces them apart, leaving nothing but the cool air of the hotel room to kiss your soaked underwear, a feeling so uncomfortable, it has you wishing you could peel them off.
“Uh-uh, no,” Bucky protests at the way your eyes squeeze shut, a pleasured pain shooting through your throat as he slowly begins to fuck deeper into your mouth. With deeper, faster is always soon to follow, until barely a moment or two seems to pass between the gargled sounds of his head hitting the back of your throat, forcing spit to slip past the corners of your lips and to drip down your chin, spilling all over the pretty colours of your blouse. “Want you watching me, doll. Want those pretty eyes on me when I fill this-ngh. This fucking tight throat.”
Bucky does as Bucky says, hot ropes of salty, thick cum spurting out to coat the back of your throat, tainting your mouth in a pearly whiteness that mixes with your spit, a messy string of fluids connecting your lips to his cock even as he pulls it free from your lips.
Before you can think too long, notice how he’s not even softened after spilling his seed all over your tongue, you’re busy being pulled back onto your feet and forced to welcome Bucky back into your mouth, this time his own tongue meeting yours. He hums in approval, swallowing back the flavour of himself all over your mouth, physical evidence of how easily he has claimed you as his.
So easily, you’ve barely even realised.
“Keep your mouth open,” Bucky mutters, thumb swiping over your lower lip and invading your mouth, pressing down on your tongue as you watch Bucky feed a string of his own spit onto your taste buds. Thumb retreating and pushing up against your chin, forcing your teeth to knock together, his instruction is simple, “Swallow.”
How you get from the messy floor to the messy bed, you’re not sure.
You’re even less sure how you wind up naked in the blink of an eye, panties tugged off by Bucky with an almost disapproving look, like the sight of them offended him.
Planted directly across from the bed stands a full length mirror, angled perfectly for you to watch as Bucky, his large frame engulfing you from behind, guides your thighs to part and puts your soaked cunt on display both of you to watch in the reflective glass, chest heaving so hard your breasts bounce with each breath.
Never have you felt so desperate, so warm, so in need of someone to put you out of your misery and give you the satisfaction of their touch. And Bucky seems to be aware of this, for he is torturing you, dragging lazy fingers down the stretch of your thighs and laughing in a way that is nothing short of mocking as a shiver runs through you and you squirm.
“Knew you’d be like this,” he’s talking more to himself than you, thumb ghosting over your clit and quickly evading as you attempt to grind down on the feeling. “Such a needy, desperate little thing. Perfect for me, aren’t you?”
You’re mid-nod when you’re forced into a pathetic yelp of, “Yes!” as Bucky’s palm slaps down against your cunt, nerve-tingling pain than soon melts into pleasure.
“When I ask, you answer, okay?” Three fingers rub at the raw skin of your cunt, two more slaps having preceded his warning. “Verbally, properly. You understand?”
You almost nod, until you think better of it, “Yes, Bucky.”
“Good girl,” his simple praise should not send your heart into arrest. But then maybe there is a lot about this situation that should not be playing out the way it is. “Now, eyes on the mirror, doll. Want you watch as I spread you open on my cock.”
Eyesight trained forward, you see the brief flash of his fingers lining his dick up against your wet hole, before he thrusts right in to the hilt and steals the air right out your lungs. One hand by your hips, the other wraps around the front to grasp at one of your tits, large hand staking claim over the entire swell of it and giving a teasing squeeze. It is hardly comfortable, pressing against the breast tissue, yet you find yourself enjoying it all the same, back arching into his touch.
Between your legs, visual sin is on display, a repeated back-and-forth motion of Bucky dragging his cock out of you a little further each time, light catching on the way your arousal clings to him in a wet sheen, before he buries himself back inside. At the base of your abdomen, right where your untrustworthy gut should sit, a shadow lingers beneath your skin, the faintest shape of him pushing up against your flesh.
“Look at us, doll,” ditching your breast, his hand grasps at your chin, stabilising your attention back on the mirror after you let yourself tilt your head back against his shoulder. “Do you like what you see? I’m everywhere, taking over you. Aww that’s it, cry all pretty for me again.”
Tears are slipping down your cheeks, overwhelm overcoming you at his words, his touch, his stare. Bucky really is everywhere, consuming you and grounding you all at once, a steady figure at your back that the universe sent you, no doubt an apology for whatever the hell Tony was.
“Bucky,” his name has never sounded so pathetic, falling from your lips in the shape of a whine, toes curling against his calves as he deepens the angle of his thrusts. Once again, the deeper it goes, the faster it grows, the soft echo of skin slapping against skin beginning to play out in the room.
“I know, baby, I know. We look so pretty, don’t we? Here,” you almost whine when one of his hands abandons you, but he silences you with the other diving between your legs, thumb effortlessly finding your clit and gifting it some much needed attention. “Take some pictures, doll. Told you I want our first time to be memorable, so go on and give us something to look back on.”
Your first thought isn’t that his phone is no longer black like you remember, this one red and sporting scratches along the back.
People change phones all the time, right?
Besides, who has time to notice silly details, when Bucky is back to touching you all over, both hands claiming parts of your skin?
Screen already unlocked, you try your best to steady your shaky thumb, guiding it up to the Recent Apps tab and attempting to press the camera icon… But Bucky just so happens to deliver a particularly spine-arching thrust, tip budging right against the spongy spot inside you that has you seeing stars, and your thumb presses on a familiar purple square before you can stop it.
And then your heart stops.
Bucky stops too, physically coming to a halt as he registers what exactly you’re staring at on his phone screen, “Well, shit.”
There, on his screen, sit two profile icons hovering over the same spot on a Life360 map: your picture, and Bucky’s.
And, try as you might to convince yourself, you know you never granted him permission to your location, never even got a notification of him attempting to befriend you on the app.
Bile stings at your throat. Your stomach drops to your knees. And, much to your own disappointment, your cunt pulses around his stilled member, buried inside you.
“There, that’s the solo-traveller look you asked me about,” Bucky somehow seems unshaken by your discovery, chuckling with near satisfaction as he watches your eyes focus back on the mirror ahead of you, stare wide and mouth paralysed with… “Fear, like you don’t know what to do with yourself.”
“James, what the hell is-”
“Shh,” he hushes you with both his mouth and his hips, grinding the head of his cock against you. Despite the situation at hand, you cannot deny the way your body physically reacts to him, walls squeezing around his cock and a moan slipping through the cracks of your frowning lips. “Thought we weren’t going to yell at each other, doll.”
“That was before I found out you’ve been stalking me!”
“Stalking is a little harsh. Watching over you sounds nicer, don’t you think?” He asks, like the wording drastically changes the result of his actions. Both hands are on your hips now, tilting them as he continues earlier ministrations, a slow roll of his own that are meant to distract you from the gut-wrenching revelation. “You were so eager to hand over your phone in Thailand, remember? You were practically begging me to add you on Life360. Bet you just wanted that comfort of knowing someone responsible was watching over you, huh?”
Did you beg? Had you mentioned the app to him at any point?
Months past, so many things happening between then and now, you are struggling to remember. Maybe Bucky is telling a version of the truth you’ve simply forgotten.
“We both know how bad you are at asking for what you want, baby. Was it so wrong of me to help you?” Warmth pooling in your spine, you barely even register the way you begin to wind back against him, bodies moving in perfect, effortless harmony as he begins fucking you properly again. “Could see it, how badly you wanted me but you just wouldn’t dare ask. Was it so wrong of me to give us a little man-made fate?”
That word almost pulls you out his trance, memories of how vulnerable you had felt confessing it back to him Italy flooding back in. And all along it had just been him, not the universe, following in your footsteps and manipulating your encounters.
Like he can feel the shadow of doubt creeping back over you, Bucky reinforces his sweet talking, mouth momentarily latching onto your earlobe and delivering a gentle scrape of teeth that forces you to listen.
“I mean, think of everything I’ve done just to have you, doll. Think of how far I was willing to travel, just for the chance to see you,” the worst thing is, it’s working. You can feel your resolve slipping, will giving into him the closer you’re moved towards the crescendo of your orgasm. “Meanwhile, Tony couldn’t even drive 10 minutes down the street for you. Is that what you think you deserve, baby? Someone who puts no effort into being yours?”
You give a nod, or a shake, or a something of your head, teeth clamping down on your lower lip as finally the first waves of your orgasm roll over you. Thighs shaking, yet he holds you steady against him.
Could you be steady, with him? Is that something Bucky can bring you?
No more crying on carpeted flooring, no more questioning where you stand in someone’s life, no more waking up to find your late night companion already gone.
“When I ask, I expect answers.”
You swallow back the ball in your throat, force away the doubt and the fear and the panic, and give into the warmth of his hands.
The same hands that orchestrated your fate, placed you in one another’s path. Isn’t that what you had been waiting for all along, to be chosen by someone?
“No,” the moment the two letter word leaves you, you feel him spill into your womb, groaning loud and proud into your ear. “I think I deserve you, Bucky.”
Bodies move languidly, collapsing into one another atop the bed, clothing strewn all around you from your earlier worries.
Your head meets Bucky’s chest, where a heart beats rapidly beneath the confines of flesh and bone.
His left arm curls around your naked body, dragging you impossibly closer. You cringe ever so slightly as you feel his cum spill out onto your inner thigh, all the while Bucky’s hand soothes the top of your head, lulling you to let yourself relax into him and let your eyes slip shut, accepting the way he cages you in.
“You do, baby. Deserve all of me. And you can have that, if you let me have all of you.”
+ extra hyde!
· guys i'm being so fr, do not do anything the reader did in this fic. y'all are too precious to wind up being the subject of a netflix documentary.
· and before anyone comments that the reader has no self respect... well, yes! that is the plot. subject is very much aware <3
· no but why did any of my friends encourage me to write this silly fic??
