21biscuits

🔥 MADARA UCHIHA — annoying him is a marital privilege

Madara may be irritable, but talking itself is rarely the problem. This is a man who will deliver an entire history lecture in the middle of a fight, so he is hardly one to judge you for having six thoughts in quick succession. If the subject interests him, he will happily argue, interrogate and elaborate on it long after a more sociable person would have found an excuse to leave. I said this in my headcanons post for him and I stand by it: arguments and debates can become one of your most intimate forms of communication with him.

He genuinely likes that you say what you think! Again, I've said this before, but Madara has very little use for agreement offered purely for the sake of keeping the peace, and a partner who softens their opinions to avoid displeasing him would frustrate him far more than one who occasionally tests his patience. He wants to know the person beside him, not watch you slowly edit yourself into whoever you think will be easiest for him to love.

Your questions would appeal to both his curiosity and his ego. Ask him about something he knows well and you will receive several generations of context whether you wanted it or not. 😭 If you challenge one of his conclusions, you might just lose the rest of your evening to the resulting debate. He expects you to defend your reasoning, but he is always visibly pleased whenever you introduce an angle or variable he had not considered.

He does have limits, though. Madara has no patience for being interrupted when something requires his full concentration, or for answering a question only for you to ask the same one again immediately because you were not listening to his answer. Reassurance loops can wear him down too; he does not find the underlying insecurity ridiculous, he just does not understand why you asked for his word if you are then going to treat it as meaningless.

What irritates him most is the apology attached to every thought. This is probably stupid. You don't have to answer. Sorry, I'm talking too much. Never mind. Now he has to drag the opinion out of you when you clearly wanted to share it and, worse, it suggests that you believe his decision to keep you close could be overturned by a few inconvenient questions.

When you finally admit that other people have found you exhausting and you are frightened that he secretly feels the same, Madara would look almost offended. "Do you take me for a man who suffers unwanted company?"

His first attempt at comfort is to declare that the opinions of anyone incapable of appreciating you are irrelevant. This is wonderfully invigorating of him and completely useless when you still have to interact with those people again tomorrow. Madara does not immediately understand that his certainty cannot simply become yours through sheer force of proclamation.

Once you explain that you are not asking for him to dismiss everyone else, only for him to be honest when you genuinely cross one of his boundaries, he will give you a much more useful answer: "There are moments when you test my patience, and there are moments when I test yours. Neither means I would prefer your absence."

That reassurance carries far more weight because Madara is ferociously selective. He does not maintain unwanted relationships out of politeness, and he certainly does not repeatedly seek someone out if he merely tolerates them. His irritation may be loud, but so is his interest! He will remember your opinions, expects you to remember his answers and returns to unfinished arguments with the significance of a military campaign.

One evening, you notice how intently he is reading and swallow the observation poised on your tongue. Madara finishes the report, sets it aside and turns towards you.

"You disagreed with what I said earlier."

You tell him it no longer matters.

"That was not my question." His gaze settles on you, patient in that formidable way that feels more like pressure than softness. "Speak."

Madara may occasionally demand quiet, but he will never allow fear to make silence your permanent condition.

🐦‍⬛ ITACHI UCHIHA — remembers the sixth thing you said three tangents ago

Itachi is the least likely to be bothered by how much you talk. He is perfectly comfortable listening without needign to compete for space, and your voice soon becomes part of the soundtrack of the domestic life that he never expected to have. He may only contribute occasionally, but his silence is attentive rather than vacant.

More than talking himself, he values how open you are with him. Itachi has spent most of his life surrounded by people with hidden motives, carefully chosen truths and questions nobody dared to ask. There is something sincerely relieving about a partner who simply tells him what they are thinking instead of expecting him to guess.

He is especially fond of the questions and thought that you consider unimportant, such as the exact colour of a bird you saw that morning, whether a tree growing at an angle feels pain, why somebody chose one expression instead of another. Those small curiosities show him how your mind works when it is not busy protecting itself, and listening to them is one of the ways he learns to know you.

His patience is much more likely to end around intrusion than volume. Repeatedly pushing him to discuss something after he has declined, trying to force an emotional confession or treating every boundary as a puzzle you need to solve will make him withdraw. He also has limits when he is exhausted or unwell, although recognising those limits and actually admitting to them are two very different things.

This is where Itachi can initially makes the situation worse. You notice the slight delay before his answers or the tension around his eyes and ask whether he needs quiet. He insists that you can continue, even when he clearly does not have the energy to follow another winding story. Rather than reassuring you, this makes you monitor every tiny reaction and wonder whether he is only enduring the conversation for your sake.

When you confess that you can never tell whether people genuinely want to hear you or are only being polite until they can escape, Itachi does not immediately dismiss the fear. He asks who taught you to expect that and listens to every example you remember, including the ones that seem too small to justify how deeply they stayed with you. "Some people may find your questions tiring," he admits. "That doesn't mean every person who listens is waiting for you to stop." When you ask what he thinks, his answer is much simpler: "I like knowing what you think."

Itachi will not pretend you have never irritated him. Every person he has ever loved has tested his patience at some point, just as he has tested theirs. Affection that could only survive effortless moments would not be worth very much. However, he does have to learn that honest boundaries are part of loving you. Eventually, he becomes comfortable touching your hand and saying, "I want to hear the rest, but not tonight." More importantly, he returns to the subject himself the following morning, which lets you know that the conversation was postponed, not discarded, and his need for rest did not become your punishment.

Several days later, you are halfway through preparing dinner when Itachi asks what happened to the injured bird your neighbour found. It takes you a moment to understand—you mentioned it briefly two evenings ago, somewhere between complaining about the weather and wondering whether crows recognise individual faces. You had assumed he stopped following the conversation long before then.

"You remembered that?"

"Of course." A faint smile touches his mouth. "You told me."

To Itachi, being trusted with the contents of your mind is not simple background noise, it is intimacy.

🌊 TOBIRAMA SENJU — director of spousal noise compliance

Tobirama does not hate questions; this is the man who devoted his life to understanding how techniques, institutions and people work, so curiosity itself is hardly going to offend him. What irritates him is mental clutter, for instance badly timed interruptions, questions asked without listening to the answer and speculative tangents arriving while he is already managing several more urgent problems.

A precise question, though, can keep him occupied for hours. He likes following the reasoning that led you there, especially if you expose an assumption he had not realised he was making. He may correct your terminology and challenge every weak point in your argument before answering, but that is engagement from him, not dismissal. If he genuinely considers a question worthless, you will know from how quickly the conversation ends.

He is another that appreciates that you usually say what you are thinking. Tobirama has very little patience for emotional tests disguised as silence, and he would much rather hear an imperfectly expressed concern than be punished for failing to infer it. Your running commentary may not charm him quite as much as it does Itachi or Kakashi, but the honesty behind it earns his respect.

Like Madara, his patience ends most sharply when talking interferes with his concentration. If he is calculating something dangerous, reviewing sensitive information or writing an order other people will depend upon, you will receive a firm, “Not now.” He does not intend to be cruel, but his tone can still make it sound as though your voice has become a problem requiring immediate removal.

When you admit that you worry you irritate everyone around you, Tobirama's first instinct is to investigate the claim. Who told you that? What exactly did they say? Does everyone actually mean everyone, or have three negative reactions somehow become a universal law? Were they annoyed by the question, the timing, the repetition or something completely unrelated?

Unfortunately, this sounds a lot like a formal inquiry when what you wanted was comfort from your partner. 💀 He only realises his mistake when you go quiet and admit that you did not come prepared with evidence, you only wanted to know whether he secretly wishes you would speak less. “You do interrupt me occasionally,” he says. “That is a behaviour which can be corrected when necessary. It is not an indictment of your character.”

Tobirama will not promise that nobody finds you irritating, because he cannot possibly know that and suspects it would be untrue. What he can offer is something much more useful: predictability. “If I require quiet, I will tell you. Do not invent my answer and then punish yourself for it.”

It is clinical enough to be unmistakably Tobirama, but the reassurance beneath it is solid. You no longer have to examine every crease between his brows and wonder whether it means he regrets loving you. If there is a problem, he will tell you; if he has said nothing, you are expected to trust that there is nothing to solve.

The two of you eventually develop a system. If he raises two fingers while working, it means he has heard you but cannot safely divide his attention. It does not mean go away, and it does not mean the conversation no longer matters. In return, he agrees to find you once he is free instead of expecting you to preserve an interrupted thought indefinitely.

One afternoon, you appear in the doorway of his study with three questions already competing to escape. Tobirama raises two fingers without looking up and you nod and leave him to finish.

Nearly an hour later, he finds you elsewhere in the house, sits beside you and places the document he was carrying on the table.

"You had questions."

"They weren't important."

"That was not the agreement."

He sets his work completely aside and gives you his full attention. Tobirama cannot offer unlimited access to his concentration, but he can offer the certainty that a boundary will never become abandonment.

📖 KAKASHI HATAKE — that filthy book is not soundproof

Kakashi has spent enough time around Gai and Naruto to know that somebody can be profoundly irritating and profoundly beloved at the same time. Your fear therefore makes perfect sense to him, even if he initially underestimates how much it genuinely hurts you.

Similarly to Itachi, most days, your talking becomes pleasant background noise. Kakashi reads while you move through six barely related subjects, occasionally contributing a hum, a vague question or an answer so suspiciously unhelpful that you know he is entertaining himself. He looks completely absorbed in his book and then casually mentions something you said twenty minutes ago and ruins the performance.

He genuinely enjoys your strangest observations because they allow him to remain connected to you without demanding his full attention, and your habit of explaining what you are thinking means he does not have to guess whether a silence signals comfort, anger or distress. He appreciates a direct question far more than an elaborate attempt to trick honesty out of him.

Kakashi is adaptable, but he is not inexhaustible. After a difficult mission, there are evenings when he has enough energy to listen but not enough to respond properly. He also becomes less patient if you repeatedly ask whether he is annoyed, and questions aimed at parts of his past he has deliberately closed will meet humour first, then deflection and eventually a much firmer boundary.

When you first admit that you worry you talk too much, his instinct is to joke that he has developed an exceptional ability to pretend he is listening. He expects the usual offended noise from you, not for you to freeze. The book closes immediately.

Once Kakashi understands that this is a genuine insecurity, he does not bury you beneath reassurance. He gives you the truth plainly enough that you cannot mistake it for politeness. "You do talk a lot. I like that you talk to me."

Sometimes he needs quiet and sometimes you catch him at a bad moment. Occasionally you irritate him, just as he occasionally irritates you enough to consider hiding every copy of Icha Icha in the village. None of that means he wants a quieter, easier or less curious version of you.

Kakashi's greatest strength is making the distinction between a temporary boundary and a personal rejection feel completely ordinary. If he only has the energy to listen, he tells you. If he needs complete quiet, he asks for it without withdrawing affection, usually by remaining beside you so the silence feels companionable rather than corrective.

He also becomes more careful with his teasing. He will still joke about the number of questions you can produce before breakfast, but never when you are already shrinking beneath the fear of being excessive. If somebody else responds cruelly to your curiosity, he waits until you are alone, asks what you thought of the interaction and helps you decide whether their irritation contained useful feedback or was simply unkind.

One evening, you are explaining something while Kakashi reads beside you. His replies have become increasingly infrequent, and halfway through a sentence, embarrassment catches up with you.

"Never mind. It isn't important."

The top of his book lowers. "You were saying?"

You glance suspiciously at the page. "I thought you were reading."

"I’m very talented."

The book rises again, but his free hand finds yours between the couch cushions. Kakashi may sometimes need quiet, but that does not mean he loves the sound of you any less.

⚡ SASUKE UCHIHA — annoyed, attached, refusing to elaborate

For Sasuke to choose a life with someone at all, they already have to be an exception to nearly every single rule he has about solitude, but that does not make him endlessly patient. Of the five, he is the most genuinely affected by sheer conversational volume, and the most likely to show it through a sigh, a sharp glance or an unmistakable tch.

Sasuke will tell you when you have already asked the same question. If he is tired, you will receive a blunt, "Not now," and anything approaching a subject he does not want to discuss may earn a suspicious, "Why do you need to know?" Sometimes his tone is harsher than the situation deserves, so your fear that you occasionally irritate him is therefore not entirely imaginary, and Sasuke would do neither of you any favours by pretending otherwise.

What he values is directness. He would rather hear an opinion he dislikes than watch you smile while quietly building resentment, and he respects questions asked sincerely. Practical questions are easiest, which he might answer by showing you instead of explaining, but even your stranger, more abstract curiosities gradually become familiar to him.

Sasuke does not enjoy chatter as a general concept, he just becomes attached to yours. Your voice tells him where you are in the house, what happened while he was away and exactly what you are feeling without forcing him to drag it out of you one reluctant sentence at a time. What would exhaust him coming from a stranger becomes part of the private life he repeatedly comes home to.

His patience tends to end around repetition, prying and reassurance loops. If he has answered honestly and you ask again because anxiety made the first answer feel unreliable, frustration quickly enters his voice. You hear the frustration, assume it confirms your fear and ask another question to repair the damage. It is an excellent system for making both of you miserable.

When you finally admit that you suspect he only tolerates your talking because he does not know how to ask you to stop, Sasuke frowns and says, "I never said I wanted you to stop." Which, to him, is a complete answer. To you, it means you have not yet become unbearable enough for him to say it aloud. Trying to explain the difference only irritates him further, which is not especially helpful. Eventually, Sasuke gives you the truth with all the softness of a weapon being dropped onto a table. "Sometimes you annoy me." Your face falls before he adds, "So does everyone, but I still want you here."

Sasuke cannot promise to enjoy every question or never need quiet. What he can do is separate irritation from rejection so you do not have to remain endlessly pleasant to keep your place beside him, and an impatient response does not mean his affection has suddenly disappeared.

Coming from Sasuke, the choice of that itself carries enormous weight. This man does not maintain intimacy out of politeness. Every time he returns, sits beside you and allows your thoughts into the silence he once protected from everyone, he is demonstrating his desire for your company more clearly than any elaborate reassurance could.

Some time later, Sasuke arrives home exhausted from a long journey, and you decide to spare him the usual account of your day. The two of you eat in silence, you continue tidying in silence, and, eventually, his attention begins following you across the room.

"What?"

You look over. "Nothing."

His brow tightens. "You were talking before."

"I thought you wanted quiet."

"I didn't say that."

You wait, but no further explanation comes. This is Sasuke, after all. Though, just as you turn away, he adds, "Finish the story."

He had never liked calling it survival because that would have meant admitting you had both needed to survive in the first place, and your brother preferred any version of the past in which he came out looking noble. He was four years older than you, which had apparently been enough for him to appoint himself tragic patriarch after your parents died. He told people he had raised you. For a while, you let him. Correcting him required explaining too much, and some lies were cheaper than the truth.

Eli had been seventeen when the accident happened, too handsome for his own good and already beginning to understand that grief made people generous. You had been thirteen and practical because one of you had to be. He screamed at insurance agents. You learned where your mother kept the documents. He punched a hole through the kitchen wall. You patched it with cardboard, duct tape, and a framed print from the living room so the landlord would not charge you for damages you could not pay. He disappeared for three days after the funeral and came back smelling like smoke and someone else’s perfume. You cooked pasta with the last of the butter and pretended not to notice his hands shaking around the fork.

That was family, you had thought then. Not forgiveness, exactly. Something more desperate.

By twenty, Eli had become useful to men who did not reward uselessness. He could make paper behave. Fake leases. Clean IDs. Notarized documents with dead men’s signatures. Shell companies that looked respectable if no one cared enough to peel back the first layer. He worked low enough in Brooklyn’s criminal food chain to pretend he was invisible, but useful enough that people kept his number. He was not important. He said that whenever you told him important men did not have to be the ones who got shot.

“You worry too much,” he told you two months before everything came apart. He was in your kitchen, drinking orange juice from the carton because he had never respected a boundary that did not come with a deadbolt. “Nobody’s looking at me.”

“They don’t have to look hard,” you said. “You leave fingerprints everywhere.”

He scoffed. “That’s very dramatic.”

“You used my old address on an incorporation form.”

His expression changed, but only for a second. Eli had always been good at rearranging his face before guilt could fully settle there. “It was dead paper.”

“It was my paper.”

“It was a closed account tied to a closed lease. Nobody uses that name.”

“I use that name,” you said. “Because it’s mine.”

“You’re making this bigger than it is.”

You remembered the way he said it. Easy. Dismissive. A little amused, as if you were a child standing in front of the stove, warning him that the burner was hot.

That was what Eli did when he was scared. He made you feel foolish for noticing.

You kicked him out that night. He came back three days later with flowers stolen from the bucket outside a bodega and an apology that sounded rehearsed. You took the flowers because they were already yours if he had stolen them for you, but you did not let him past the chain.

“I’m your brother,” he said, softer then.

“I know,” you answered. “That’s why you’re still breathing.”

He laughed because he thought you were joking.

People usually did.

🦾🩸🥃 

The night Bucky Barnes found you, rain had turned the city silver.

It was a miserable, needling rain, too cold for late spring and too thin to justify an umbrella. It slicked the pavement outside your apartment building and turned the neon from the liquor store across the street into a red smear in the gutter. You came home with a paper bag of groceries under one arm, your keys already threaded between your fingers, and the distinct feeling that something was wrong crawling up the back of your neck.

The lobby light was out.

That happened often enough that it should not have mattered, but the shadows inside were too still. No music bleeding through from Mrs. Alvarez’s place on the first floor. No stale cigarette smell from the super’s son lurking near the mailboxes. The building had a pulse. You had lived there long enough to know it, and tonight it was holding its breath.

You stepped back before the man behind the door moved.

He was big, but big men were often slow because they trusted their size too much. His hand shot out for your arm. You let him get close enough to commit, dropped the groceries, and drove the heel of your palm up into his nose. Cartilage gave with a wet crunch. He cursed, stumbling backward, and you took the opening, twisting away as another man came out of the stairwell.

“Really?” you snapped, because fear always came easier if you gave it something else to wear. “In this weather?”

The second man had a gun. You saw it in the angle of his shoulder before the weapon cleared his jacket. You kicked the fallen bag hard, sending a can of tomatoes skidding under his foot. He shifted, just enough. You lunged into the space, caught his wrist with both hands, and slammed it against the edge of the mailboxes until his fingers opened. The gun hit the tile. You kicked it beneath the radiator.

The first man recovered enough to grab you from behind.

You drove your elbow back. He grunted but did not let go. He was better than the first impression suggested, or maybe he had learned from the broken nose. His arm locked around your ribs, too high to breathe comfortably. You hooked your foot behind his ankle and dropped your weight. He swore as you both hit the floor. Pain flashed through your hip. You ignored it, slammed your head back into his mouth, and scrambled for the gun beneath the radiator.

A polished black shoe came down on it first.

You froze with your fingers inches from the grip.

Slowly, you looked up.

The man standing over you did not look like hired muscle. That was the first thing you noticed. The men bleeding in your lobby looked like violence that had been paid in cash. This one looked like violence with a tailor. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and blond, his dark wool coat falling open over a suit that probably cost more than three months of your rent. His face was handsome in a way that felt almost insulting under the circumstances, with clean lines, calm blue eyes, and a mouth that did not need to smile to make you wonder what it would look like if he did.

He had a gun in his hand.

He was not pointing it at you.

That bothered you more.

“You must be Steve,” you said.

One of the bleeding men made a confused noise.

The blond man’s expression barely changed, but something sharpened behind his eyes. “And why would you say that?”

“Because if you were Bucky Barnes, they wouldn’t have come in first.”

His gaze flicked over you, quick and assessing. Your position on the floor. Your hand near the gun. The blood on the tile that was not yours. The way you had not made the mistake of moving once he entered the room.

“Get up,” he said.

“Is that a request or are we still pretending this is a kidnapping?”

“It’s an instruction.”

You smiled at him. “That’s less charming.”

The man with the broken nose groaned. Steve did not look away from you.

“Stand up,” he said, gentler this time, which did not make it less dangerous. “Please.”

“See?” you said, pushing yourself slowly to your feet. “Manners cost nothing.”

His mouth twitched. It was small. Almost nothing. It was enough to tell you he had not expected you to be funny, and that was useful.

The man whose wrist you had slammed against the mailboxes reached for your arm. Steve stopped him with a glance.

“Don’t,” Steve said.

The man went still.

Interesting.

Steve picked up the gun with a handkerchief and tucked it away somewhere inside his coat. He did not touch you. That was also interesting, though you doubted it was an act of mercy. Men like him did not need to grab when everyone else did it for them.

“You’re coming with us,” he said.

“My groceries are getting wet.”

“I’ll replace them.”

“That’s presumptuous. I’m particular about tomatoes.”

“You just used them as a weapon.”

“They knew what they signed up for.”

That time, Steve’s almost-smile lasted a fraction longer. Then he looked past you toward the broken-nosed man. “Car.”

The man hesitated, glaring at you through the blood on his face.

Steve’s voice cooled. “Now.”

The man went.

You watched him leave, then looked back at Steve. “Do you always bring men this breakable to an abduction, or did I get the discount package?”

“You were described as low risk.”

“By who?”

Steve did not answer.

He did not have to.

The cold in your chest had nothing to do with the open lobby door.

Eli, you thought.

Your brother’s name settled in your stomach like a swallowed blade, familiar and sharp. It was not surprise. That would have been kinder. It was the ugly, exhausted recognition of a pattern finally reaching its natural end.

You laughed once, quietly.

Steve noticed. Of course he did. “Something funny?”

“No,” you said. “Just realizing I should’ve changed the locks on more than my apartment.”

For the first time, his calm shifted into something close to understanding.

Then he gestured toward the door.

Outside, the rain kept falling.

The car waiting at the curb was black, expensive, and forgettable in the way money could make things forgettable. You slid into the back seat because refusing would have turned the street into a scene, and you were not yet sure how many guns were pointed at you from the dark. Steve sat beside you instead of in front. That was not an accident. He kept enough space between you to be polite and not enough for you to mistake it for freedom.

The doors locked.

You looked at him. “Child safety?”

“Professional habit.”

“That’s bleak.”

“So is breaking a man’s nose in your own lobby.”

“He started it.”

“I saw the end.”

“I’m better in the middle.”

Steve turned his head slightly. His gaze moved over your face with that same careful attention, not lingering anywhere inappropriate, which made the attention worse somehow. He looked like a man who collected facts without asking permission.

“You always talk this much when someone takes you at gunpoint?”

“You’re not pointing it at me.”

“Would that make you quieter?”

You smiled. “Probably not.”

The driver glanced at you in the mirror. Steve did not.

“You know why we’re here,” he said.

“I know who sent you. The why is where it gets tedious.”

“Tell me.”

“Eli did something stupid,” you said. “Eli involved my name. Eli vanished before the consequences arrived. This is a recurring theme in my life, except that usually the consequences are eviction notices, angry girlfriends, or men with neck tattoos who think intimidation is a personality trait. You’re a step up, aesthetically speaking.”

Steve looked out the window for a moment. Rain slid over the glass, breaking the streetlights into gold lines across his face.

“You understand who Bucky Barnes is?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And you’re making jokes?”

“I understand who Bucky Barnes is,” you said. “I also understand that if he wanted me dead, I wouldn’t be in a car with leather seats and a polite blond. So either he needs something, or he wants something. Both mean I have time.”

Steve looked back at you.

There it was again. Not softness. Not approval. Interest, maybe, although he controlled it quickly.

“You’re not what your brother said you were.”

You hated how much that stung. “Let me guess. Sweet? Harmless? A little ditzy but good with people?”

Steve did not answer fast enough.

“God,” you muttered, turning toward the window. “I’m going to kill him before Barnes gets the chance.”

“Bucky might object.”

“Then Bucky can take a number.”

The car turned off the avenue and slid into a part of Brooklyn that pretended money had cleaned the blood from its foundations. Old brick buildings. Private doors. Windows lit warm behind expensive glass. You knew enough about the city to know that respectability was often just crime with better upholstery.

The car stopped behind a restaurant that had no sign on the back entrance and no trash in the alley. That told you more than any name could have. Steve got out first, then offered you his hand.

You looked at it.

“Seriously?”

“I can drag you,” he said. “I’d rather not.”

“That’s your sales pitch?”

“I’ve had better nights too.”

You took his hand because you wanted to feel the calluses.

They were there, across his palm and fingers, hidden beneath the polish of the suit. Not just a man who gave orders, then. A man who could carry them out. His hand closed around yours, warm and steady, and he helped you from the car without pulling.

“You’re prettier when you’re not having people ambush me,” you said.

Steve’s gaze dipped briefly to your mouth before returning to your eyes. “You’re more polite when you’re outnumbered.”

“Am I?”

“No.”

You laughed before you could stop yourself.

That was inconvenient.

Inside, the restaurant was closed and dimly lit, the chairs stacked on tables in the front room, the floor smelling faintly of lemon oil and old wine. It looked respectable from the street, which told you almost everything you needed to know. Respectable places made excellent fronts. Steve guided you through the kitchen, past two silent men by the back hall, and down a narrow staircase into a lower level that had been converted into something between a private lounge, an office, and the kind of room where men learned whether Bucky Barnes was in a generous mood.

Bucky Barnes stood behind a desk at the far end of the room.

You knew him before Steve said anything. Some men carried reputation like a coat. Bucky wore his like a second skin. He was not as tall as Steve, but the room organized itself around him anyway. Dark hair. Dark suit. A face so handsome it looked almost cruel at first glance, all sharp angles and a mouth made for either sin or sentencing. His left arm was metal from below the shoulder, matte black and silver catching faintly under the low lights as he set a file on the desk with deliberate care.

The sound was soft.

Everyone in the room heard it.

Bucky looked at Steve first. Then at the two men behind him, both bloodied in ways they clearly resented. Finally, he looked at you.

His eyes were very blue.

That was irritating.

“This is her?” he asked.

You tilted your head. “That’s a philosophical question.”

Steve moved to stand slightly behind you and to the right. Not blocking the door. Blocking you from seeing the door without turning your head.

“Yes,” Steve said.

Bucky’s gaze dropped to your hands, your coat, the bruise beginning to ache along your hip. “She did that?”

“She did,” Steve said.

One of the men muttered something under his breath.

Bucky’s eyes flicked toward him. “Leave.”

The man shut up.

“No,” Bucky said, colder. “I mean leave the room.”

The men left.

The door closed behind them.

You looked between Bucky and Steve. “Should I be flattered or concerned that you dismissed the audience?”

“Concerned,” Bucky said.

His voice was lower than you expected. Not rough. Controlled. A voice that did not need to rise because too many people had learned to listen the first time.

“Mm,” you said. “Honest. I like that in a kidnapper.”

Bucky studied you for a moment.

Then he laughed.

It was quiet, almost unwilling, and Steve’s attention sharpened as if the sound mattered. Maybe it did. Maybe Bucky Barnes did not laugh often in this room.

“You know why you’re here?” Bucky asked.

“I have theories.”

He tapped the file with the fingers of his right hand. “Your name is on a company that moved four million dollars out of one of my accounts.”

“Rude of me.”

“Your name is also on the lease for a safehouse where two of my men were killed last week.”

You let that settle.

There it was.

Not paperwork. Not a stupid scam that could be smoothed over with enough charm and signatures. Blood.

Your face must have shifted despite your best efforts, because Bucky watched you more closely.

“You didn’t know,” Steve said.

It was not a question.

You glanced over your shoulder at him. “Careful, handsome. If you start sounding reasonable, I might get attached.”

Steve’s jaw flexed.

Bucky opened the file and turned it toward you. “Signature yours?”

You stepped closer to the desk. Steve did not stop you. That told you something about either his confidence or his orders.

The signature on the paper was close enough to make your throat tighten.

Eli had always been better with numbers than with hands. He could copy loops, angles, pressure, but there was a stiffness in the line where your writing usually relaxed. A person who did not know you might believe it. A person who knew paper too well should have asked questions.

“No,” you said.

“You looked for half a second.”

“I’ve seen my name before.”

Bucky’s expression did not change. “Try again.”

You leaned over the desk, turning the page with two fingers. “The slant is wrong. He always overcorrects when he copies women’s handwriting. Thinks we’re all supposed to write like birthday cards. The y is too careful. Mine drops lower when I’m signing fast. Also, this notary stamp expired eight months ago, and the address listed here is a building that had a fire in 2021. The top floor’s been gutted since.”

Silence followed.

You looked up. Bucky was staring at you. Steve had gone very still behind you.

“What?” you said. “Did you expect me to faint?”

Bucky’s metal fingers tapped once against the desk. “I expected you to be less irritating.”

“I get that a lot from men who disappoint me.”

Steve made a sound that might have been a cough.

Bucky’s eyes did not leave yours. “Your brother told us you handled some paperwork for him.”

“My brother also told a girl named Marisa he owned a boat. He gets ambitious when he’s cornered.”

“He said you could explain the company.”

“I can explain it,” you said. “Eli forged my signature because he knows my full legal name, my birthday, my Social Security number, my old addresses, my mother’s maiden name, and the answers to every security question I used before I learned better. He used me because dead parents leave clean grief and clean grief makes good paper. Then whatever he built with it got used by someone stupider or smarter than him, and when you came looking, he gave you my name because he thought I’d talk my way out of it.”

Bucky’s face hardened at the mention of your parents, not with sympathy exactly. More like distaste on your behalf.

Interesting.

“You’re certain,” Steve said.

You turned enough to look at him. “I’ve been cleaning up after Eli since I was thirteen. I know the smell of his messes.”

Bucky closed the file. “Where is he?”

You smiled, and this one had no sweetness in it. “If I knew that, do you think I’d be here?”

“Maybe. If you were protecting him.”

“I’m not.”

“You were once.”

That landed because it was true.

You looked back at Bucky. “Once, I believed family meant dragging someone out of every fire they started, even if they were the one who handed you the match. I’ve matured.”

“You’re saying you’d give him to me.”

“I’m saying I won’t stand between him and what he earned.”

Bucky considered you for a long moment. You let him. Men like him liked silence. They thought it made them powerful. Sometimes it did. Sometimes it gave you time to count exits, weapons, habits.

Bucky carried his weight evenly, but the metal arm changed the line of his left shoulder slightly. Not weakness. Adjustment. The prosthetic was not decorative; the fingers moved with precise control, quiet but not silent. Custom work. Expensive. Built for strength and fine motor function both. You wondered who had taken the original arm from him and whether they had lived long enough to regret it.

“You’re staring,” he said.

“Your arm is beautiful.”

Steve looked at you sharply.

Bucky did not move. “That supposed to flatter me?”

“No,” you said. “If I were flattering you, I’d start with your mouth.”

For the first time, you saw Bucky Barnes caught fully off guard.

It lasted less than a second, but you were close enough to see it. A flicker. A slip in the composed cruelty of his face. Behind you, Steve inhaled once, quiet and controlled.

Then Bucky leaned both hands against the desk.

“You flirt when you’re afraid?”

You held his gaze. “I flirt when men expect fear and I don’t feel like being generous.”

His expression shifted.

There he was, you thought. Not the reputation. Not the room. The man underneath, dangerous and intrigued despite himself.

“You’re in a bad position,” Bucky said.

“I’ve been in worse.”

“Not with me.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Barnes, but men have been warning me about men since I was old enough to understand which doors locked from the inside. You’re not special because you’re dangerous.”

Bucky smiled then.

It was not kind. It was not safe.

It made heat curl low in your stomach anyway, which was deeply inconvenient.

“Steve,” he said.

Steve stepped closer. “Yeah?”

“Put her in the upstairs suite.”

Your head turned. “Excuse me?”

Bucky opened the file again, dismissing you with the kind of casual authority that made you want to climb over the desk and bite him. “Secure room. Guard on the door. Food. No restraints unless she earns them.”

“Do all your business properties come with kidnapping amenities?”

Bucky looked up. “Only the successful ones.”

“How generous,” you said. “Do I get a mint on the pillow?”

Bucky looked up. “If you behave.”

You smiled slowly. “Careful. I might take that as encouragement.”

Steve’s hand touched the space between your shoulder blades, not quite pushing. The heat of it went through your coat.

You looked back at Bucky as Steve guided you toward the door.

Bucky was still watching you.

Good, you thought, and hated how satisfying that felt.

🦾🩸🥃 

The upstairs suite was nicer than your apartment.

That annoyed you more than the guard outside the door.

It was not a bedroom in any personal sense. No photographs. No books. No clothes in the dresser. Just a queen bed with a gray upholstered headboard, a private bathroom stocked with unopened toiletries, a small table by the window, and curtains heavy enough to muffle the rain. The room had been designed for people Bucky Barnes needed alive, comfortable, and unable to leave.

There were no bars on the windows, but they did not open more than four inches. You checked. The door locked from the outside. You checked that too. The guard in the hallway pretended not to hear.

Steve watched from near the dresser as you made your inspection.

“You always this thorough?” he asked.

“You always watch women test their prison cells?”

“It’s not a cell.”

You turned from the window. “Does the door open?”

His expression did not change.

“That’s what I thought.”

Steve exhaled through his nose. Not quite a sigh. “You’re not being kept here as punishment.”

“Comforting. I’m sure the legal distinction will keep me warm.”

He looked tired suddenly. Not weak. Just less polished around the edges. “Two men are dead.”

That sobered you.

“I know.”

“Bucky doesn’t let that go.”

“I wouldn’t respect him if he did.”

Steve’s gaze held yours.

You had surprised him again. You were beginning to enjoy that too much.

“You knew men like us growing up?” he asked.

“Men like you?”

“Criminals.”

You laughed softly. “That’s adorable.”

His eyebrow lifted.

“I grew up in a neighborhood where everybody knew somebody who knew somebody. The difference between criminals and respectable men was usually tailoring, tax strategy, and whether the cops called ahead before raids. So yes, Steve. I knew men like you. I knew boys who wanted to be men like you. I knew girls who loved men like you and boys who got killed trying to impress them. I knew when to look away and when to look helpless. I knew how to shoot before I was old enough to drive because my mother’s friend kept a .38 in a flour tin and thought grief made children vulnerable.”

His face had gone still.

You sat on the edge of the bed and began unlacing your boots. “My brother thinks I’m stupid because I smile too much. That’s his problem.”

Steve leaned back against the dresser. “I don’t think you’re stupid.”

“No,” you said, pulling one boot off. “You think I’m useful.”

“I think you’re dangerous.”

You looked up.

There was no flirtation in his voice. No condescension either.

Something in your chest softened, just enough to be risky.

You covered it with a smile. “Careful, Rogers. Compliments on the first kidnapping?”

“I’m trying to decide if you’re going to make this worse for yourself.”

“Probably.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Because you’re nice?”

His mouth tightened. “No.”

“Because Bucky told you to keep me alive?”

“Partly.”

“And the other part?”

He was silent long enough that the rain filled the room.

Then he said, “Because you were right about the signature.”

You dropped your second boot beside the first. “That bothers you.”

“It bothers me that we missed it.”

“We?”

“Me,” Steve said.

Bucky’s right hand, then. Not just muscle. Not just charm. The man who checked the paper before Bucky put blood behind it.

You leaned back on your hands. “Did you disappoint him?”

Steve’s face closed.

Oh.

That had hit.

You should have stopped. You did not.

“Is that what all this is?” you asked softly. “You brought him bad evidence, and now I’m sitting in a luxury closet until you figure out whether your mistake got men killed?”

Steve crossed the room so fast you barely had time to stand.

He stopped before touching you, but only just. He was close enough that you had to tip your chin up to hold his gaze, close enough to see the tension in his jaw and the gold flecks in his anger.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“No,” you said. “But I know guilt when it walks into a room wearing a nice suit.”

His eyes searched yours.

For a second, neither of you moved.

Then, slowly, the anger drained into something heavier.

“I checked the top layer,” he said. “The company looked clean. Cleaner than it should’ve been, maybe, but Eli had done work for people who knew how to cover their tracks. The safehouse lease had your name and enough matching details to make it plausible. Bucky wanted you brought in alive because something felt wrong.”

“Something?”

Steve’s gaze dipped to your mouth again, then away. “You.”

“You didn’t know me.”

“I knew the file was too neat.”

You smiled faintly. “That’s almost sweet.”

“It’s not.”

“You say that a lot for someone who keeps doing almost sweet things.”

Steve stepped back. The space he left behind felt colder.

“There’s food coming,” he said. “Eat. Sleep if you can. Don’t try the window.”

“You already know I tried the window.”

“I know you’ll try it again.”

You tilted your head. “And if I get out?”

The look he gave you was almost fond, which was dangerous for both of you.

“Then I’ll be impressed,” he said, and left.

You waited until the lock clicked.

Then you smiled.

The guard outside your door was named Peter, though he did not tell you.

You learned it because another man came by at midnight with coffee and said, “Pete, you need anything?” and Peter said, “For this shift to end.”

Peter was young. Too young to be guarding women in locked rooms for Bucky Barnes, though old enough to have chosen it. He stood with his weight on his left leg, favoring the right knee. Injury. Maybe recent. He checked his phone every twelve minutes and tried to hide it. He kept his gun on his right hip, retention strap loose. He was bored by one in the morning and embarrassed by two because you started singing quietly through the door.

“Please stop,” he said.

You paused mid-verse. “Peter, is that any way to speak to a kidnapped woman?”

Silence.

Then, suspiciously, “How do you know my name?”

“You have the energy of a Peter.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Sure it does. Very earnest. Slightly damp. Probably says sorry when someone steps on his foot.”

“I don’t.”

“You just apologized to the wall when your shoulder bumped it.”

A longer silence.

“You saw that?”

“I contain multitudes.”

He did not answer, but you heard him shift.

By three, you had removed the small metal collar stay from the dress shirt Steve had left folded on the chair along with sweatpants and a toothbrush, because apparently Bucky Barnes kidnapped with amenities. By three-fifteen, you had bent it against the bed frame. By three-thirty, you were on the floor by the door, listening to Peter breathe.

Lockpicking a door from the wrong side with a collar stay was neither elegant nor quick, nor wise. Fortunately, you were patient when spite required it.

The lock gave at three-forty-two.

You opened the door half an inch.

Peter was asleep in the chair across the hall, chin tipped toward his chest.

“Peter,” you whispered.

He jerked awake so hard he nearly dropped his phone.

You opened the door the rest of the way and looked at him.

He looked at you.

Then at the lock.

Then back at you.

“Oh, come on,” he said, devastated.

You almost felt bad for him. “I’m not going to tell Steve if you don’t.”

“Mr. Rogers is going to kill me.”

“Probably not. You have such a trustworthy face.”

“Please go back inside.”

“Peter,” you said gently. “No.”

He reached for his gun. You were already moving.

You caught his wrist, stepped in close, and drove your knee into the inside of his thigh hard enough to buckle him without ruining his life. His hand spasmed. You took the gun, dropped the magazine, cleared the chamber, and set the weapon neatly on the hall table behind you.

Peter stared, pale and offended.

“You’re not bad,” you told him. “You’re just too young to be this tired.”

“I’m twenty-five.”

“Emotionally, you’re nineteen.”

“Ms.—”

“Oh, do not start being respectful now. It’ll make me feel worse.”

You left him sitting on the floor and moved down the hall barefoot.

The upper floors of the restaurant were larger than they looked from outside; the original building connected to the one beside it through some interior renovation money had probably made invisible on paper. This was not a home. You knew that almost immediately. Homes had clutter, bad mail, forgotten shoes, a smell that belonged to the people who slept there. This place had polished floors, framed black-and-white photographs of Brooklyn, closed doors, cameras placed too neatly in corners, and the quiet efficiency of a business that expected trouble often enough to plan for it. 

You moved through dark hallways, past framed black-and-white photographs of Brooklyn, closed doors, and a stairwell with a camera in the corner. You did not look at the camera. Looking at cameras made people look guilty. You walked like you belonged there and counted seven possible exits before you reached a door at the end of a hall where light cut thin beneath the frame.

Voices came from inside.

Bucky and Steve.

You should have kept walking.

Instead, you stopped.

“Her brother’s gone to ground,” Steve said. “Nobody’s seen him since yesterday afternoon.”

“Someone’s seen him,” Bucky replied. “They’re lying.”

“Probably.”

A pause.

Then Bucky said, “You believe her.”

“I believe she didn’t sign those documents.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

Steve was quiet.

You leaned closer before you could tell yourself not to.

“I believe Eli used her,” Steve said. “I believe he’s been using her for years.”

Bucky made a soft sound, displeased. “You got all that from one conversation?”

“I got it from the file before I ever saw her. Parents died. Brother starts forging paper within two years. She’s listed as emergency contact on three arrests that never stuck, two hospital visits, one eviction proceeding. Every time he gets close to consequence, her name shows up somewhere nearby. She’s not his partner, Buck. She’s his cleanup.”

Your throat tightened.

It was one thing to know it.

It was another to hear a stranger lay it out in a room where you were not supposed to be.

“And now?” Bucky asked.

“Now she’s done.”

A beat passed.

Bucky’s voice lowered. “You admire her.”

Steve did not answer.

You pressed your lips together, warmth rising where fear should have been.

Then Bucky said, “So do I.”

The admission was so soft you nearly missed it.

Your breath caught.

Behind you, someone cleared his throat.

You turned.

A man stood at the far end of the hall with a gun pointed at your chest.

For one terrible second, you were not fast enough.

Then the office door opened.

The man’s eyes flicked toward it.

You moved.

You threw yourself sideways as the gun went off. The sound cracked through the hallway, deafening in the narrow space. Pain burned across your upper arm. You hit the floor, rolled behind a console table, and kicked the nearest decorative vase hard enough to send ceramic shards exploding across the hall.

The man cursed.

Bucky came out of the office like a storm.

You had seen dangerous men move before. You had seen men fight drunk, desperate, trained, angry. Bucky was something else. Controlled brutality, every movement stripped down to purpose. His metal hand closed around the gunman’s wrist with a sound you felt in your teeth. The man screamed as the weapon clattered to the floor. Steve was there a second later, gun drawn, body angled between you and the far stairwell.

“Down,” Steve ordered.

“I’m already on the floor,” you snapped, clutching your arm.

“Stay there.”

“Bossy.”

Bucky slammed the gunman into the wall hard enough to crack plaster. “Who sent you?”

The man groaned.

Bucky’s metal fingers tightened.

“Wait,” you said.

Bucky did not look at you.

“Wait,” you repeated, sharper. “His shoes.”

Steve glanced at you. “What?”

“His shoes,” you said through your teeth. “Kitchen soles. He came through the back of the restaurant, not the front. He’s staff or came in with staff. Ask who opened the back door.”

Bucky looked down at the man’s shoes.

Then he smiled.

It was not a pleasant smile.

The gunman started talking before Bucky asked again.

It took twenty minutes for the building to settle.

It did not settle quietly. Men moved through the upper floors with guns drawn. Peter, humiliated and pale, kept apologizing until Steve told him to stop talking. Someone found the kitchen porter tied up in the alley behind the restaurant, alive but bleeding. Someone else found the back door lock bypassed by a code that should have been changed last week.

Your arm needed stitches.

You told them it did not.

Steve looked at the blood soaking your sleeve and said, “You’re a terrible liar.”

“I’m an excellent liar. I’m just bleeding.”

Bucky stood across the room, his shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, his metal arm gleaming beneath the office lights. There was blood on his right hand that you did not think was yours. He had not spoken to you since asking if you could stand. You had said yes. He had looked at you as if he did not believe you, then let Steve guide you into the office anyway.

A doctor arrived with a leather bag and the weary expression of a man who had been paid too much to ask questions. He cleaned the wound while you sat on Bucky’s couch, Steve crouched in front of you, one hand braced lightly on your knee as if he expected you to bolt.

You considered it, mostly on principle.

The doctor gave you a local anesthetic and started stitching.

“Hold still,” Steve said.

“I am holding still.”

“You’re glaring.”

“With my face, Steve. Not my arm.”

Bucky huffed a quiet laugh from across the room.

You looked at him immediately.

He was leaning against his desk, arms crossed, gaze fixed on you with an intensity that made your pulse misbehave. You should have been angry. You were angry. You had been kidnapped, shot at, and stitched on a couch by a doctor whose name you had not been given. But Bucky Barnes had laughed because of you, and some reckless part of you wanted to hear it again.

“You did well,” you told him.

The room went still.

The doctor, to his credit, kept stitching.

Bucky’s expression did something complicated. “What?”

“With the gunman,” you said. “Fast. Efficient. Very scary. I’d clap, but I’ve been injured in your custody, so that feels insensitive to me.”

Steve’s hand tightened once on your knee.

Bucky stared at you.

“You’re praising me?” he asked.

“You sound suspicious.”

“I am.”

“I can take it back.”

“Don’t.”

The word came too quickly.

Oh.

You looked at him. Really looked.

Bucky Barnes, who had built a kingdom out of fear and favors, stood in front of you with blood on his hand and something almost boyish buried beneath the danger in his face, as if approval were a language he understood but had not been spoken in too long.

Steve noticed too. You knew he did because his thumb moved once against your knee, a slow, absent stroke that he stopped the moment he realized he was doing it.

The doctor tied off the last stitch. “She’ll live.”

“Good,” Bucky said, eyes still on you.

You smiled. “Were you worried?”

“Yes,” he said.

The answer hit harder because he did not dress it up.

Your smile faltered.

Steve stood, removing his hand from your knee as if he had held it there too long. “I’ll walk the doctor out.”

The doctor looked between the three of you and clearly decided survival lay in pretending he had not noticed anything.

When the door closed behind them, you and Bucky were alone.

Rain tapped lightly against the high window.

“You picked my lock,” Bucky said.

“You locked my door.”

“You disarmed my guard.”

“He was sleepy.”

“You got shot.”

“That part wasn’t in the plan.”

Bucky pushed away from the desk and crossed the room. You held still because you refused to retreat on a couch with stitches in your arm, and because the closer he came, the more you could feel the pull of him. It was not just attraction, though there was enough of that to make poor decisions bloom in the back of your mind. It was gravity. He had it. Steve had it too, different but no less dangerous. Bucky drew attention like a blade in low light. Steve drew it like a hand at your back before you knew you needed steadying.

Bucky stopped in front of you.

“You heard us,” he said.

“Some of it.”

“How much?”

“Enough to know Steve thinks I’m cleanup.”

Bucky’s mouth flattened.

“He’s not wrong,” you said.

“He sounded angry.”

“He should be. I am.”

“At him?”

“At Eli,” you said. “At myself. At the fact that two strangers saw it in a file before I admitted it out loud.”

Bucky sat on the edge of the coffee table, facing you. It was such a strangely human thing to do that you almost forgot who he was. Almost.

“Why protect him for so long?” he asked.

You looked at your bandaged arm. “Because after our parents died, he was the only person who remembered what the house sounded like before it got quiet. He knew which songs my mother played when she cleaned. He knew my father burned eggs every Sunday and pretended we liked them. He knew how my name sounded when someone said it without wanting anything. For a long time, I thought losing Eli would mean losing the last witness.”

Bucky’s gaze softened in a way that looked painful on him.

“And now?” he asked.

“Now I think witnesses can lie.”

The silence between you changed.

Bucky reached out slowly, giving you time to move away. You did not. His metal hand touched the edge of your bandage with astonishing care, fingers cool through the gauze.

“Does it hurt?”

“Yes.”

His jaw tightened.

“It’s not your bullet,” you said.

“You’re in my building.”

“I picked the lock in your building.”

“You shouldn’t have had to.”

That made you look at him.

He did not take it back.

“You’re very confusing,” you said.

“I’m usually not.”

“No, I bet you’re usually very straightforward. Threaten, brood, maim, repeat.”

His mouth curved despite himself. “You think I brood?”

“I think you own several coats designed for brooding.”

“I own several coats designed for not getting blood on my shirts.”

“That’s worse, but I appreciate the practicality.”

Bucky laughed again, quieter this time.

You wanted to put your hands on him.

The realization was so sudden and so inconvenient that you looked away.

Bucky noticed. “You should sleep.”

“You should stop locking doors.”

“I’ll move you to a room with a guard inside instead of outside.”

You gave him a flat look. “Try again.”

“Door unlocked,” he said. “Guard at the hall. Window still doesn’t open.”

“Progress.”

“You’ll stay put.”

“Will I?”

His eyes dropped to your mouth.

Heat slid through you, slow and unwelcome and entirely your fault.

“If you have any sense,” he said.

“I’ve been accused of many things, Barnes. That’s rarely one of them.”

Steve returned before Bucky could answer.

His gaze moved from Bucky’s metal hand near your bandage to your face, and something passed over his expression too quickly to name. Not jealousy, exactly. Awareness. A tightening thread.

“Doctor’s gone,” he said. “Back entrance is secure. The shooter gave us a name.”

Bucky stood, all softness folding away. “Who?”

“Rumlow.”

You knew that name.

Both men saw it.

Steve shut the door behind him. “You’ve heard of him.”

“Brock Rumlow,” you said. “He runs jobs for people who don’t want their names near the work. Eli used him once, maybe twice. I told him Rumlow was too expensive for what he needed, and Eli told me I didn’t understand business.”

Bucky’s expression sharpened. “Rumlow has Eli?”

“Maybe,” you said. “Or Eli has something Rumlow wants.”

“The money?”

“Money, documents, account keys. Something portable. Eli doesn’t run unless he thinks he has a bargaining chip.”

Steve moved closer. “Where would he go?”

You leaned back against the couch, exhaustion pressing suddenly at the edges of your body. Your arm throbbed. Your hip ached from the lobby floor. Your head felt too clear and too heavy at once.

“There’s a print shop in Red Hook,” you said. “Closed officially. Still runs specialty jobs in the back. Eli used it when he needed seals or old-format licenses. The owner has a niece he used to sleep with and a basement he thinks nobody knows about.”

Bucky looked at Steve. “Address?”

You gave it to him.

Steve typed it into his phone.

“I’m coming,” you said.

“No,” both men said at once.

You smiled slowly despite the pain. “Cute.”

Bucky’s gaze cut back to you. “You have stitches.”

“I also have context.”

“You have blood loss.”

“I have had worse periods.”

Steve closed his eyes briefly, as if praying for patience.

Bucky pointed at you. “You’re not coming.”

You stood.

It was not your wisest decision. The room tilted slightly. Steve stepped forward, hands lifting but not touching until you steadied yourself. That restraint did something awful to you.

“I have spent my entire life being left behind by men who thought they knew better,” you said, looking at Bucky. “I am done being the name on the paper and the girl in the room and the problem someone else solves badly. Eli is my brother. He used me. He framed me. He got your men killed, or he helped cover for whoever did. I am coming with you.”

Bucky’s face hardened. “This isn’t a negotiation.”

“Everything is a negotiation. You’re just used to winning early.”

Steve made that almost-cough again.

You did not look away from Bucky.

At last, Bucky smiled.

There was no warmth in it. There was, however, admiration.

“Fine,” he said. “You stay between Steve and me. You do exactly what we say. You don’t carry unless I give you a weapon.”

“You say the sweetest things.”

“If you run, Steve catches you.”

Steve’s mouth curved faintly. “I will.”

You glanced at him. “You sound excited.”

“I’m trying not to be.”

Bucky looked between you, and something possessive moved over his face before he smothered it.

“You two done?” he asked.

You smiled at him. “Do you feel left out?”

His eyes darkened.

Steve looked down at his phone like a man making a heroic effort to survive the conversation.

You had the sudden, dizzying thought that this was going to become a problem.

Then Bucky said, “Get her a coat.”

And just like that, it already had.

🦾🩸🥃 

You had been an Avenger for three days.

Technically, you had been an Avenger for longer than that, if he counted the months of files, interviews, mission assessments, and cautious deliberation that had led Fury to finally put your name on the team roster. You had enhanced reflexes, a combat record that even Natasha raised an eyebrow at, and the kind of public image Stark’s media people had described as “valuable but chaotic.” You were a model, an occasional actress when a director could afford your schedule, a fixture at fashion weeks, charity galas, beach clubs, magazine covers, and gossip columns. You were also a very competent fighter with a worrying talent for making people underestimate you until they were already on the floor.

Bucky did not underestimate you.

That was what he told himself, anyway, watching you open every cabinet in the kitchen like you were personally offended by storage.

“Where do rich people hide mugs?” you asked.

Sam, who had been leaning against the counter with a bowl of cereal and the grim, protective posture of a man guarding the last of the Cinnamon Toast Crunch, looked at you over his spoon. “You mean cabinets?”

“I checked cabinets.”

“You checked one cabinet.”

“It disappointed me.”

“There’s a difference.”

“This kitchen has seven ovens,” you said. “That feels excessive for people who eat protein bars like they’re being punished.”

“That’s because we are,” Sam said.

“You poor thing. Do you want me to call someone?”

“God, you’re worse before coffee.”

You gasped. “I haven’t had coffee?”

“You’re standing in the kitchen.”

“I’ve been betrayed by architecture.”

Bucky had not meant to laugh. It escaped him before he could stop it, barely more than a breath against the rim of his mug, but you heard it. Of course you heard it. Your attention snapped to him with terrifying precision.

Your sunglasses slid down your nose.

“Oh,” you said, with the pleased interest of a cat finding a glass too close to the edge of a table. “You laugh.”

“No,” Bucky said.

Sam snorted into his cereal.

You smiled at Bucky as if he had personally made your morning. “That was definitely a laugh.”

“It was a cough.”

“You should see a doctor about that. It sounded handsome.”

Bucky stared at you.

Sam put his spoon down. “And there it is.”

“There what is?” you asked, all innocence, which made it worse.

“The thing you do.”

“I do many things.”

“Yeah, and most of them are illegal in at least three states.”

You drifted closer to the counter, apparently unconcerned by the fact that Bucky had looked less startled the last time a man had pulled a knife on him in a parking garage. You rested your elbows on the marble and propped your chin in one hand, turning the full force of your attention on him.

“What’s your name again?”

“You know my name.”

“I know lots of names.” You smiled wider. “I wanted to hear you say it.”

Bucky took a sip of coffee. It bought him three seconds and no dignity.

“Barnes,” he said finally.

“Barnes,” you repeated, like you were trying it on. “Cute.”

“No.”

“Strong. Classic. Slightly broody. Very marketable.”

“I’m not marketable.”

“That’s what makes you marketable.” You lifted your sunglasses from your face and pushed them up into your hair. “Don’t worry. I’ll win you over one day.”

Bucky blinked.

Sam closed his eyes as if in prayer.

You said it so easily, so brightly, that for a second Bucky did not know what to do with it. People flirted with him sometimes. Not often, not casually, and never with the delighted confidence of someone announcing tomorrow’s weather. The flirting he noticed usually came wrapped in caution, curiosity, or the strange, hungry attention people gave the Winter Soldier when they had read too much, understood too little, and wanted to see what a ghost looked like up close.

This was different. You were not looking at the Winter Soldier. You were not even looking at Sergeant Barnes, the tragedy, the history lesson, the man out of time. You were looking at Bucky, annoyed and under-caffeinated at the kitchen island, with his hair still damp from the shower and his left hand curled around a mug someone had bought as a joke because it said “I survived another meeting that should have been an email.”

“I’m not something to win,” he said.

Your expression changed only slightly. The smile stayed, but something behind it softened with recognition, like you had heard the line he had not said and decided not to touch it in front of Sam.

Then you leaned across the counter, stole Sam’s coffee, and said, “We’ll workshop the phrasing.”

Sam made a wounded noise. “That was mine.”

“You called me ‘worse before coffee.’ This is justice.”

“I called you worse before your coffee.”

“Details.”

Bucky left the kitchen before you could catch the second laugh.

That was where it started.

It should have ended there, but you treated restraint like a rumor and Bucky’s sanity like a hobby. Within two weeks, you had settled into the compound as if you had been born under Stark-grade security lights. You learned where Tony hid the expensive snacks, which elevators were fastest when FRIDAY was not pretending not to judge you, and which training rooms had the best lighting for the occasional sponsored workout post Pepper pretended not to know about.

You were good at being watched. That was the thing Bucky noticed first, even before the flirting became a problem with a schedule. Cameras loved you. Rooms adjusted around you. People tracked your movements before they knew they were doing it, drawn by the easy glamour of someone who knew exactly how she looked and had decided to make that everyone else’s issue. You could turn your head half an inch and change the temperature of a photograph. You could laugh at a reporter’s question and make it sound like an answer.

Bucky understood performance. He had been made into one. The difference was that yours belonged to you. He respected the precision of it. The public saw sparkle, flirtation, lazy smiles, and a model who sometimes saved the world and somehow emerged from the fight with her eyeliner still intact. The team saw more. They saw the hours in the gym, the quick reads you made in the field, the way you listened when Steve gave instructions and ignored him when you had a better plan. They saw that you could play dumb in four languages and threaten someone in six.

Bucky saw all of that.

He also saw the way you looked for him when you entered a room. That was harder to ignore.

At first, he assumed you did it to everyone. You were friendly with Sam, outrageous with Tony, conspiratorial with Natasha, affectionate with Wanda, and shamelessly dramatic with Thor, who adored you after you once told him his arms looked like a horny Renaissance sculptor had carved them. You flirted like breathing, lightly and often, always with enough humor that nobody had to take it seriously unless they wanted to.

With Bucky, you made it personal. You found him in the gym one morning while he was working through a knife sequence alone. The compound was quiet, still blue with early light, most of the team asleep or pretending to be. He caught your reflection in the mirrored wall and kept moving, blade turning between his fingers as he shifted his weight, stepped, struck, pivoted, and reset.

“Morning, future husband.”

The knife stopped in his hand.

He looked at you through the mirror. “No.”

“You’re right. Too soon.” You set your water bottle on the bench. “Morning, future emotionally unavailable boyfriend.”

Bucky resumed the sequence. “That’s worse.”

“Morning, handsome man who definitely missed me.”

“I didn’t know you were gone.”

“That’s hurtful and untrue. You stared at my empty chair at dinner.”

“I was looking at the door.”

“Because you hoped I would come through it.”

“Because I was considering leaving.”

You pressed a hand to your chest. “God, the passion.”

He turned, knife loose in his hand. “Do you ever get tired?”

“Of you? Never.”

“Of talking.”

“Also no.”

Bucky pointed the knife toward the door. “Some of us are training.”

“Wonderful. I love a man with discipline.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re not training in that.”

You glanced down at yourself, as if surprised to discover you had arrived dressed for exercise. “This is athletic wear.”

“That sweatshirt has no back.”

“It has some back.”

“It has sleeves and ambition.”

You grinned. “You noticed.”

Bucky made the mistake of looking. The sweatshirt dipped low between your shoulders, leaving a long line of bare skin above the band of your sports bra. It was impractical, which probably meant it cost more than some cars. It was also distracting, which was clearly the point.

He looked away too late.

You saw it. You always saw it.

“I knew you liked me,” you said.

“I noticed fabric was missing.”

“You noticed my back.”

“Hard not to when half your shirt surrendered.”

Your laugh came bright and easy. “You’re funny when you’re pretending not to flirt back.”

“I’m not flirting.”

“You’re bantering. That’s flirting with plausible deniability.”

“It’s arguing.”

“With cheekbones like yours? Impossible.”

Bucky exhaled and turned back toward the mirror. “Are you here to train or talk?”

“I can do both.”

“I’m devastated.”

You came onto the mat beside him and held out your hand. “Give me a knife.”

“No.”

“Afraid I’ll impress you?”

“Afraid you’ll stab me to make a point.”

“Only a little.”

He should not have given you one. That was his first mistake. His second was forgetting that beneath the designer nonsense and the sparkling public menace was someone Fury had recruited for a reason.

You moved beautifully. Bucky had seen you fight on missions, but missions were dirty and practical, all impact and adaptation. Here, with nothing exploding and no one yelling in his ear, he could see the shape of your training. You were fast, lighter on your feet than he expected, with a dancer’s control and a vicious sense of timing. You let him push you back twice, then changed rhythm on the third pass and came under his guard, stopping the dull practice blade a breath from his ribs.

You looked up at him through your lashes.

“Oops,” you said.

Bucky’s hand closed around your wrist.

You did not pull away.

For a moment, neither of you moved. Your pulse beat steadily beneath his fingers, quick but controlled. You were warm from sparring, a flush high on your cheeks, and a loose strand of hair caught at the corner of your mouth.

Bucky noticed it. He hated that he noticed it.

Your smile softened into something less theatrical. “You okay?”

The question slipped under his ribs more effectively than the knife would have.

He let go. “Fine.”

You tilted your head. “That means yes, or that means stop asking?”

“It means fine.”

“Mm. We’ll workshop that too.”

“There’s no we.”

“There will be.” You spun the practice knife once and offered it back handle-first. “I’m very persuasive.”

“You’re very annoying.”

“Foreplay.”

Bucky choked on air.

You patted his shoulder as you passed. “Don’t worry, Barnes. I’ll win you over one day.”

He watched you leave because apparently he had lost control of his eyes.

From the doorway, without turning around, you called, “I can feel you staring.”

“I’m checking that you’re leaving.”

“Progress!”

After that, Sam started keeping score.

Every compliment became a point. Every accidental smile became evidence. Every time you blew Bucky a kiss across a briefing room, Sam looked personally blessed by the universe. Bucky threatened to throw him off the roof twice. Sam remained unmoved.

It would have been easier to ignore if you flirted with Bucky the way you flirted with everyone else, bright and careless and harmless enough to laugh off. But you saved him seats. You asked him to watch your back even when you did not need watching. You looked for him when you entered a room, and sometimes, when the joke softened at the edges, Bucky caught the dangerous shape of something honest underneath.

He liked your precision. He liked the moments when the smile slipped sideways into something observant. He liked that when you teased, you watched for the line. He liked that you had never once called his left arm cool, had never asked to touch it, had never stared at the place where metal met skin with anything but the same open appreciation you aimed at the rest of him.

He liked you, and that made the flirting dangerous.

Bucky had spent too long as a weapon in other people’s hands to enjoy becoming anyone’s entertainment. He knew that was not what you were doing. He knew it with the part of him that assessed threats and the quieter part that had begun to understand kindness when it wore teeth. Still, knowing did not make it easy.

You were a public person. You had exes whose names still trended whenever you attended the same event. Actors, athletes, heirs, musicians, one princess whose denial in an interview had been so unconvincing that even Steve had understood it. You had a reputation the tabloids loved because it sold beautifully: glamorous, flirtatious, unserious, impossible to keep, impossible not to want.

Bucky did not care about tabloids. He cared that you laughed when other people flirted with you. He cared that sometimes you touched their arms. He cared that you were generous with your attention in a way that made everyone feel chosen for exactly as long as you wanted them to. He cared that he had no right to care. He cared that the idea of being one more person orbiting you, one more name in a gossip column, made something old and defensive curl beneath his ribs.

So he pretended not to want.

It worked about as well as all his other bad ideas.

The mission in Prague should have helped. It did not.

You handled a weapons broker with old Hydra ties in a red dress and heels, broke his composure with a smile, and nearly broke his foot when he touched you without permission. Bucky watched from surveillance while Sam and Natasha pretended not to notice the exact moment his jaw locked.

By the time the mission went bad, you had already put two men down, stolen a handgun from a third, and greeted Bucky in the hallway with blood on your knuckles and a cheerful, “Hi, handsome.”

He caught your chin to check the graze on your cheek before he could stop himself.

“Careful,” you said softly. “A girl might think you like her.”

“Extraction first,” he said.

“Romance later?”

“Move.”

“Bossy,” you said, and then you moved.

After Prague, the teasing changed.

Not enough for anyone else to notice immediately. You were still shameless at breakfast, still dramatic in the gym, still prone to calling him gorgeous in public just to watch his left eye twitch. But sometimes, when the room was empty or nearly empty, you let the joke soften at the edges.

You brought him tea one night without making a big deal of it, setting the mug beside him on the balcony and leaning against the railing with your own. The city glittered below the tower, restless and alive.

“You’re thinking loudly,” you said.

He looked at you. “Didn’t know that was part of your power set.”

“It’s not. You get a line between your eyebrows.”

“Maybe I’m brooding.”

“You do that too, but this is different.”

He huffed, taking the mug. “You catalog my facial expressions?”

“Only the handsome ones.”

“Sounds time-consuming.”

“It is, but I’m committed.”

The familiar rhythm was there, but gentler. Bucky let it sit between you.

After a while, you asked, “Do you hate it?”

“What?”

“All of this.” You gestured vaguely, meaning the tower, the team, the city, the life none of you had chosen cleanly. “The attention.”

He looked down at the tea. “Some days.”

“Yeah.”

“You?”

You smiled without much humor. “Some days.”

It should have surprised him. It did not.

You turned your mug in both hands, rings catching the light. “People think it’s the cameras that get old, but cameras are easy. They don’t want anything you can’t predict. It’s the people who look at you and decide they know what’s there. The ones who think access and affection are the same thing.”

Bucky was quiet for a moment.

Then he said, “You’re good at making them think they got something.”

“I had to be.” You glanced at him. “It’s easier to choose what they take.”

He understood that too well.

Something in his expression must have shown it, because your voice gentled. “I don’t flirt with you because I think you’re easy to embarrass.”

“I am not easy to embarrass.”

“You once short-circuited because I called you pretty.”

“I didn’t short-circuit.”

“You walked into a chair.”

“It was in the way.”

“It was furniture, baby. That’s where it lived.”

Bucky shook his head, but the laugh came easier this time.

You smiled into your mug. “I flirt with you because I like you.”

The air changed.

You did not look away. Neither did he.

“You like everybody,” he said, because old defenses were familiar and his voice still worked around them.

Your smile stayed, but something in it dimmed.

“I’m nice to everybody,” you said. “That’s different.”

He knew that. He had known it for a while, which made his answer crueler than he meant it to be.

You looked back out over the city. “Anyway. Don’t look so scared. I wasn’t asking you to catch up all at once.”

He should have said something then. He knew that later, with a clarity that annoyed him. He should have told you that he liked you too and had no idea what to do with it because wanting things still felt like reaching across a minefield. He should have done anything except stand there holding the tea you had brought him and watching you retreat behind a smile.

Instead, he said nothing.

You did not punish him for it. That would have been easier. You kept being yourself, kept calling him handsome, kept saving him the seat beside you in briefings and pretending it was because you needed “emotional support eye candy.” But you stopped letting the softer moments linger.

Bucky noticed. Of course he noticed. He noticed everything about you now.

Which was why the gala was a disaster before it even started. The event was one of Tony’s, though Pepper had done the actual work and Tony had mostly provided money, branding, and three separate opinions nobody asked for. Bucky tried to get out of it. Steve said attendance mattered. Sam said Bucky needed to stop treating black tie like a war crime. Natasha said nothing, which was worse because her silence contained judgment.

Then you walked into the common room before the cars arrived, and Bucky forgot every argument he had prepared.

You were wearing gold. Not bright gold, not the kind that shouted for attention because it did not know what else to do. This was deeper, warmer, a liquid shade that caught the light when you moved and made your skin look sunlit. The dress crossed over your chest and left your shoulders bare, fitted through the waist before falling in a long line that split high over one thigh. Your hair was styled away from your face. Your mouth was painted soft and glossy. Diamonds winked at your ears like little threats.

The room went briefly, stupidly quiet.

Tony recovered first. “Okay, great. So we’re all underdressed at our own event.”

“You look beautiful,” Steve said.

Wanda smiled. “Very beautiful.”

Sam whistled. “Damn. Barnes, you breathing?”

Bucky looked at him with murder in his heart.

You turned toward Bucky last, which was deliberate. He knew it was deliberate because he knew you now, knew the rhythm of your performances, the way you built a moment and chose where to land it. Your eyes moved over him in his black suit, slow enough to be rude, warm enough to make his spine tighten.

“Well,” you said. “There goes my ability to behave.”

Tony groaned. “Please don’t start before we’re in public.”

“I make no promises.”

Bucky adjusted his cuff because his hands needed something to do. “You ever behave?”

“For you? I could be convinced.”

“Unlikely.”

“Progress,” you said, pointing one manicured finger at him. “You didn’t say impossible.”

Sam leaned toward Steve. “I give him two hours.”

Steve looked confused. “For what?”

“For whatever emotional constipation this is to resolve.”

“I can hear you,” Bucky said.

“I know.”

You crossed the room and stopped in front of Bucky. Up close, your perfume wrapped around him, warm amber and something floral he could not name. Your smile was bright enough for the room, but your eyes searched his face with a quieter question beneath it.

“You clean up nice, Barnes.”

“So do you.”

For once, the answer came without a fight.

Your expression flickered.

Then Tony clapped his hands. “Wonderful. Compliments exchanged. Sexual tension acknowledged by everyone except the two people causing it. Let’s go raise money.”

Bucky was going to kill him.

The gala was worse than he expected. Not because of the security. That was manageable. Not because of the crowd either, though he disliked being surrounded by people who wanted to shake his hand and pretend they were not checking whether the metal one felt cold.

It was you. It was the way you belonged there.

The second you stepped onto the carpet, the cameras found you. Your whole posture shifted, not into someone false, exactly, but into someone sharpened for public consumption. You became the woman from magazine covers and fragrance campaigns, the one whose face sold fantasies Bucky did not want to examine too closely while standing three feet away from you.

Reporters called your name, and you gave them what they wanted. A smile over your shoulder. A laugh when one of them asked who you were wearing. A teasing answer when another asked whether there was anyone special in your life.

“Oh, I’m working on it,” you said, and somehow your eyes found Bucky past the cameras.

The reporters followed your gaze.

Sam made a sound as if he were choking on joy.

“Is that Sergeant Barnes?” someone called.

You widened your eyes with perfect innocence. “Is it?”

“Are you two here together?”

Bucky braced himself.

You only smiled and said, “We’re teammates.”

It was the right answer. The professional answer. The safe answer.

Bucky hated it.

Then you reached back without looking, caught his sleeve, and tugged him forward.

“Come on, handsome,” you murmured, low enough that only he heard. “You look like you’re about to bite someone.”

“You’d enjoy that too much.”

“Depends where.”

His brain briefly stopped producing language.

You smiled for the cameras.

Bucky stood beside you under the lights and tried not to look like a man thinking about teeth marks on your skin.

Inside, the ballroom was all polished marble, tall windows, white flowers, and wealth pretending to be benevolence. The Avengers were strategically scattered around the room, mingling with donors and keeping a casual watch, but Bucky barely paid attention to any of it.

You disappeared into the crowd like light through water.

He tried not to watch. He failed immediately.

Everywhere you went, people leaned in. Men and women, donors and celebrities, people with expensive watches and practiced laughs. You gave them that glittering public smile, touched a forearm here, accepted a kiss on the cheek there, let someone admire your dress with a grace that made Bucky’s hand curl around his glass until he heard the stem complain.

Sam appeared at his side. “You’re gonna break that.”

Bucky loosened his grip.

“You know,” Sam said, accepting a champagne flute from a passing waiter, “for a guy who’s not interested, you sure look like you’re planning to challenge half the room to ritual combat.”

“I’m watching security.”

“Security is not six foot two, British, and trying to make her laugh by the ice sculpture.”

Bucky’s gaze moved before he could stop it.

Sam hummed. “Interesting.”

“I hate you.”

“That has been established.”

The man beside you was exactly the kind of person Bucky had seen in magazines he pretended not to notice on coffee tables. An actor, probably. Handsome in a polished, expensive way, with dark blond hair, a white dinner jacket, and the lazy confidence of a man used to doors opening before he touched them. He was standing too close. You did not seem bothered. That was part of the problem.

You laughed at something he said.

Bucky hated him.

“Who is he?” Bucky asked.

“Oh, we’re doing that?”

“Wilson.”

Sam took a sip of champagne and looked delighted by the entire situation. “Julian Hale. Actor. British. Very famous cheekbones. Dated a princess once, if the internet is to be believed, which it isn’t, but sometimes it gets lucky.”

Across the room, Julian Hale touched your waist.

It was brief. A guiding hand, barely there, the kind of touch that could be explained away by the crowd, by the noise, by the half step he encouraged you to take so someone could pass behind you. You did not flinch. You did not step away. You kept smiling.

Bucky’s vision narrowed.

Sam’s voice changed. “Hey.”

“I’m fine.”

“You look like you’re about to invent a new international incident.”

“His hand’s on her.”

“Yeah.” Sam’s tone was careful now, without the teasing edge. “And she can remove it if she wants to.”

Bucky knew that. The knowledge landed hard because it was true. You were not helpless. You were not cornered. You had broken a weapons broker’s foot in heels and threatened his hand in Russian. If you wanted Julian Hale away from you, he would be away from you.

The problem was not that Bucky thought you needed saving. The problem was that he wanted to be allowed to care.

That was worse.

You looked up then, as if you felt the weight of him watching. Your eyes met his across the room. For half a second, the public smile slipped. Something else took its place, something private and questioning.

Bucky did nothing.

Julian leaned down to say something near your ear.

You looked away first.

Bucky set his glass on the nearest tray and walked toward the balcony. The night air helped, but not enough.

Outside, the music softened behind the closed doors, reduced to bass and strings through glass. The balcony overlooked the city, all lights and distance, and Bucky gripped the stone railing with both hands until the cold settled into his metal palm and the other hand stopped wanting to hit something.

He was being ridiculous. He knew that. He had no claim on you. He had made sure of it, in fact. Every time you had stepped closer, he had stepped back. Every time you had offered him a joke with honesty folded inside it, he had taken the joke and left the honesty untouched.

Except you had never been holding a knife.

You had been holding out your hand.

The door opened behind him.

Bucky did not turn around. “I’m not in the mood, Wilson.”

“Tragic,” you said. “I wore the good dress and everything.”

His eyes closed briefly. Of course.

You came to stand beside him at the railing, close but not touching. For once, you did not fill the silence immediately. Bucky could see you in the corner of his eye, gold dress shifting in the wind, one hand resting on the stone, the other holding your shoes by their delicate straps.

“You left your own party,” you said after a moment.

“Not my party.”

“You’re on the posters.”

“Against my will.”

“You look very handsome on them.”

He glanced at you despite himself. “That why you came out here? To tell me I photograph well?”

“I came out here because you disappeared.”

“You were busy.”

Your eyebrows rose slightly. “Was I?”

“With Hale.”

Bucky regretted it the second it left his mouth. Not because it was false, but because it sounded exactly like what it was: jealousy dressed badly as observation.

Your mouth curved. “Julian?”

“You on a first-name basis with everybody who puts a hand on you?”

The silence that followed was not loud, not dramatic, but it cut cleanly through the air between you.

Your smile faded.

Bucky’s stomach dropped.

“That came out wrong,” he said.

“Did it?”

“Yes.”

“What part?”

He looked at you then. Really looked. Your posture had changed, the playful ease folding away into something guarded. Not hurt, exactly, or not only hurt. Disappointed. That was worse. He had seen you deflect rudeness from reporters, donors, strangers who thought your smile gave them permission. He had never wanted to be counted among them.

“All of it,” he said.

You studied him for a moment, then looked out over the city. “He’s an actor. We did a campaign together three years ago. He flirts because he likes attention, and I let him because attention is half of this room’s currency.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

Bucky’s jaw worked.

You turned toward him, shoes dangling from two fingers, the city light catching in your earrings. “Because that sounded a little like you think I don’t know when someone is touching me.”

His chest tightened. “I don’t think that.”

“Good.”

“I know you can handle yourself.”

“Great.”

“That’s not what bothered me.”

Your expression shifted.

The admission sat between you, more revealing than he had intended, but Bucky forced himself not to retreat. He was tired of retreating. Tired of watching you offer him chances while he pretended they were traps.

Your voice went softer. “What bothered you?”

He looked down at his hands on the railing. Metal and flesh. Past and present. Both capable of holding too tightly if he was not careful.

“I didn’t like him touching you.”

The honesty was rough, but it was honest.

You inhaled slowly.

Bucky made himself meet your eyes. “I know I don’t have a right to that.”

“No,” you said. “You don’t.”

The answer landed where it should.

Then you stepped closer.

“But you could,” you said.

Bucky stared at you.

The city noise seemed very far away.

You smiled faintly, but there was no performance in it now. No cameras, no audience, no easy escape disguised as a joke. “That’s been on the table for a while, Barnes.”

His heart beat once, hard.

“You flirt with everyone,” he said, because apparently some stubborn, stupid part of him needed to hear you say it again.

“I perform with everyone.” Your gaze dropped briefly to his mouth. “I flirt with you.”

He had no defense against that.

“You told me you liked me,” he said.

“I did.”

“I was an ass.”

“A little.”

“I’m sorry.”

Your expression softened. “I know.”

“I didn’t know what to do with it.”

“I know that too.”

The gentleness nearly undid him. Bucky could handle anger. Anger had edges he understood. He could handle teasing because it gave him somewhere to hide. But you were looking at him like you had seen the frightened thing beneath the jealousy and decided not to make it bleed for your entertainment.

He wanted to kiss you so badly it felt like pain.

You seemed to read that too. Your mouth curved, the menace returning just enough to make his pulse jump.

“Careful,” you said. “You’re looking at me like I’m winning.”

Bucky turned fully toward you. “You always this smug?”

“When I’m right.”

“You think you’re right?”

“I think you’re jealous, annoyed about it, wildly attracted to me, and about three seconds away from doing something reckless.”

He stepped closer. “That so?”

Your eyes brightened. “Two seconds.”

“Still think this is funny?”

“A little.” Your voice dipped. “I also think you should kiss me before I start flirting with someone else just to prove a point.”

His hand caught your waist. You went still, but not with fear. Bucky felt the change in you beneath his palm, the quick breath, the way your body answered before you had time to make a joke of it.

“Don’t,” he said.

Your eyes lifted to his. “Don’t what?”

“Flirt with someone else.”

The words should have embarrassed him. Maybe they would later. Right now, with you this close and the city wind moving around you, he could not make himself care.

Your smile faded into parted lips.

“Bucky,” you said, and it was the first time you had used his name instead of Barnes.

That was what broke him.

He kissed you. For a second, it was almost careful. His mouth found yours with all the restraint he had spent months pretending was indifference, one hand at your waist, the other still braced on the railing because touching you with both felt like admitting too much at once.

Then you made a soft, pleased sound against his mouth and everything careful in him snapped. Bucky pulled you closer. Your shoes dropped to the balcony with a quiet clatter, your hands coming up to grip his jacket as he deepened the kiss. You tasted like champagne and gloss, sweet and warm, and you kissed him like you had been waiting to do it for so long that patience had become offensive. Your fingers slid into his hair. He groaned before he could stop himself.

You smiled against his mouth.

He nipped at your lower lip in warning.

You gasped.

The sound went straight through him.

“Still annoying?” you whispered.

“Yes,” he said, kissing the corner of your mouth.

“Still not interested?”

He kissed your jaw, felt your pulse jump beneath his lips, and tightened his hand at your waist. “Don’t push it.”

“Oh, baby,” you breathed, and the endearment hit differently now, stripped of performance and made intimate by the way your voice trembled. “Pushing it is my best quality.”

Bucky drew back enough to look at you. Your lipstick was smudged. Your eyes were dark. The woman who had smiled for a hundred cameras looked at him like she wanted to be ruined somewhere private and had already decided he was the only man in the building qualified for the job.

His entire body went hot.

“We’re leaving,” he said.

Your brows lifted. “Are we?”

“Yes.”

“Together?”

He gave you a look.

There it was again, that wicked smile. “Just confirming. You’re new to this whole admitting-things process.”

Bucky bent, picked up your shoes, and caught your hand.

You laughed as he pulled you toward the door, bright enough that two people near the bar turned to look when you stepped back inside. Sam spotted you first, his face transforming with open delight.

Bucky glared at him. “No.”

Sam’s mouth opened.

“Wilson.”

Sam closed his mouth with visible effort.

You wiggled your fingers at him as Bucky guided you past. “Goodnight, Sam.”

Sam looked as if Christmas had come early. “Goodnight, future Mrs. Barnes.”

Bucky kept walking.

You nearly tripped over your own laugh. “Future Mrs. Barnes?”

“Don’t encourage him.”

“I don’t know. It has a ring to it.”

Bucky leaned closer as you reached the corridor. “Keep talking, and I’ll throw you over my shoulder.”

The sound you made was small, sharp, and not laughter.

Bucky stopped walking.

Your voice softened. “Promise?”

Something dark and hot moved through him.

“Car,” he said.

“Elevator,” you countered.

“We’re not doing this in an elevator.”

“Cameras?” you guessed.

“Cameras.”

You paused. “Right. Sensible. Deeply disappointing, but sensible.”

The ride back to the tower was torture. The partition stayed up. Your shoes lay abandoned on the floor. Your lipstick was ruined, his tie was crooked, and every time your hand drifted toward his thigh, Bucky caught your wrist before you could make the driver’s job any more uncomfortable.

“You’re very strict for a man who just dragged me out of a gala,” you murmured.

“You were going to behave until we got upstairs.”

“I never agreed to that.”

“No,” he said, pulling you across the seat and into his lap with one arm around your waist. “You didn’t.”

Your breath caught, hands landing on his shoulders as your dress rode higher over your thighs.

Bucky’s hands settled at your hips. “This a problem?”

“No.” Your voice came out softer than before. “Definitely not.”

“You wanted attention.”

“I usually do.”

“You’ve got it.”

Your smile flickered, and for the first time that night, you looked almost overwhelmed.

Bucky stroked his thumbs over your hips. “Still with me?”

“Yeah.” You let out a breath and laughed quietly. “Sorry. It’s just…”

“What?”

“You.”

That did something stupid to his chest.

His hands tightened on your hips.

“Me?” he asked.

You nodded. “I’ve wanted you for a long time, Barnes.”

His body reacted hard to the words, but underneath that, something else opened, uncertain and hungry in a way that had very little to do with sex and everything to do with being wanted by someone who knew he was difficult.

“Bucky,” he said.

Your brow creased. “What?”

“My name.” He swallowed. “When it’s like this, use my name.”

The softness that moved through your expression was almost unbearable.

Then you leaned down and kissed him, slow and deep, your hands gentle at the sides of his face.

“Bucky,” you whispered against his mouth.

He held you tighter.

By the time the car reached the tower, both of you looked bad enough that Natasha stopped in the lobby, took one look at your face, Bucky’s mouth, and the shoes in his hand, and smiled.

“So I see,” she said.

Bucky kept walking. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to.”

“Eventually.”

Clint, who had been crossing the lobby beside her with a pastry in hand, pointed at Bucky. “Steve owes Sam twenty bucks.”

Bucky closed his eyes.

You grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the elevator. “Goodnight!”

Natasha’s voice followed you. “Hydrate.”

The elevator doors closed on your laughter. Bucky hit the button for the residential floors.

You leaned against the wall, still laughing. “Hydrate.”

“Don’t.”

“I like her.”

“Everyone likes her. That’s how she gets away with everything.”

“You like me, and I get away with almost nothing.”

Bucky looked over at you. “You think you get away with nothing?”

“With you? Absolutely not. You’re very mean to me.”

“You’ve been sexually harassing me for months.”

“I have been romantically persistent.”

“You called me a slutty Victorian ghost in front of Fury.”

“You were wearing that coat.”

“It was tactical.”

“It had drama buttons.”

Bucky stepped closer. “You like the coat.”

“I love the coat. I wanted to climb you like a tree in the coat.”

His mouth twitched. “At a debrief?”

“It was a very boring debrief.”

“You’re impossible.”

“And yet.” You hooked one finger into his loosened tie and tugged him closer. “Here you are.”

The elevator rose.

Bucky let himself be pulled. Your smile softened when he came near, and he thought, not for the first time, that the worst thing about you was not the flirting. It was the moments after, when the joke stepped aside and left all that wanting visible.

He cupped your jaw. “You sure?”

You blinked. “About you?”

“About tonight.”

The question sobered you slightly, but not in a bad way. You held his gaze. “Yes.”

“You’ve been drinking.”

“Two glasses of champagne over four hours, one of which I abandoned because Julian started explaining his movie to me.”

“Tragic.”

“Deeply.” Your fingers slid over his wrist. “I’m sure, Bucky.”

His name in your mouth still hit like a touch.

“And if I say something you don’t like?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you.”

“If I do something you don’t like?”

“I’ll tell you.”

“If you want to stop?”

“I’ll tell you.” Your voice softened. “I need you to believe me.”

He nodded once.

You leaned in, brushing your mouth over his. “Do you have any idea how much I want you?”

The elevator doors opened.

Bucky caught your hand and pulled you into the hall.

“Tell me,” he said.

Your steps faltered.

He looked back. “You had plenty to say before.”

Your mouth opened, then closed.

Bucky smiled.

It was not a nice smile.

“Oh,” you said faintly. “You’re going to be awful.”

“You like awful.”

“I like you.”

He nearly lost the thread entirely.

His room was closer than yours. He chose his because it was familiar. Controlled. Sparse, though less than it had been when he first moved in. A few books on the shelf. A jacket over a chair. Clean sheets because Steve had once broken into his room, taken one look at the bed, and muttered something about “bachelor despair.”

Bucky unlocked the door. You stepped inside and went quiet. That, more than anything, made him nervous. He watched you take in the room, the low light, the neatly made bed, the absence of clutter. There was no judgment on your face. Just curiosity, and something like care.

“You can say it,” he said.

You turned back. “Say what?”

“That it looks like nobody lives here.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“But you thought it.”

“A little.” You walked to the bookshelf, trailing one finger along the spines without pulling anything out. “Mostly I thought it smells like you.”

Bucky shut the door. “That a good thing?”

You looked over your shoulder. “Very.”

The lock clicked. The sound changed the room.

He crossed the room slowly. You stayed where you were, one hand still on the shelf, chin lifted like a challenge.

“Last chance,” he said.

Your eyes darkened. “For you or me?”

“For behaving.”

That smile again. “I already told you I’m bad at that.”

Bucky stopped in front of you. “I noticed.”

“Still interested?”

His hand lifted to your face, thumb brushing the ruined edge of your lipstick. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Could be a friendly escort.”

“To my bedroom?”

“You’re old-fashioned.”

His thumb pressed lightly against your lower lip. “Open.”

Your lashes fluttered, and for one perfect second, you did exactly what he told you. Your lips parted beneath his thumb, breath warming his skin.

Then your eyes narrowed with returning mischief. You bit his thumb. Gently.

Bucky stared at you. You smiled around it.

He laughed once, low and disbelieving, and the sound seemed to please you until his metal hand closed around your hip and turned you, backing you into the shelf with careful force. Your breath caught. A few books shifted behind you.

“You think you’re cute?” he asked.

“I know I am.”

His mouth brushed your cheek. “You’ve been poking the monster for months, sweetheart.”

The pet name slipped out before he could stop it. He felt the effect immediately. Your breath stuttered, your hand tightening in his jacket. His gaze sharpened.

“Oh,” he murmured. “You like that.”

You looked irritated, which would have been more convincing if you were not flushed to your chest. “Don’t be so smug.”

“You’ve been smug since March.”

“I was charming.”

“You were a menace.”

“You liked it.”

His hand slid from your hip to your thigh, following the open slit in your dress. Your words caught as his fingers found warm skin.

“I did,” Bucky said.

Your eyes snapped to his.

He held your gaze, hand moving higher by slow degrees. “‘S’that what you wanted to hear?”

For once, you did not have an immediate answer.

He leaned in, his mouth hovering over yours. “You wanted to get under my skin so bad.”

“I did get under your skin.”

“Yeah.” His fingers tightened on your thigh. “You did.”

Your lips parted.

Bucky kissed you before you could fill the silence with something clever. He kissed you deep, pressing you back against the shelf until he felt your body yield beneath his. Your hands gripped his shoulders, then slid under his jacket, pushing it down his arms with impatience.

Your fingers went to his tie next.

Bucky caught both your wrists. You stilled immediately, breathless against his mouth.

His eyes searched yours. “Still okay?”

“Yes.”

“You sure?”

“Bucky,” you said, and the impatience in it soothed him more than any soft reassurance would have. “I swear to God, if you don’t touch me, I’m going to become difficult.”

“You’re already difficult.”

“I can get worse.”

“I know.”

You tugged against his grip. “Then do something about it.”

The last of his restraint went very, very quiet. Bucky released one wrist and guided you back toward the bed. You went willingly, though you tried to keep your smile in place. It slipped when the backs of your thighs hit the mattress. He stood in front of you, close enough that your knees brushed his legs.

For a moment, he just looked at you.

Your chin tipped up. “What?”

“Trying to decide where to start.”

Your breath caught.

Then, because you were you, your smile returned. “I can make suggestions.”

“I bet you can.”

“Several.”

“Generous.”

“I’m a giver.”

Bucky’s hand went to your jaw, not rough, but firm enough to quiet you. “You’re a brat.”

Your eyes lit.

He felt that reaction everywhere.

“And you like that too,” he said.

You swallowed. “Definitely.”

“Better.”

Your thighs pressed together.

Bucky noticed.

He lowered himself slowly, one knee touching the floor between your feet.

Your expression changed at once.

“Oh,” you said, much smaller than before.

Bucky looked up at you, his hands sliding over your calves. “Still got suggestions?”

Your mouth opened.

No sound came out.

He smiled again, slower this time. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

His lips brushed the inside of your knee.

You watched him like you were afraid to blink.

“I had a whole speech prepared,” you said.

His mouth moved higher. “Did you?”

“Very persuasive.”

“I’m sure.”

“I was going to tell you how much you want me.”

He kissed the inside of your thigh, just above the slit of your dress. “I know how much I want you.”

Your breath hitched.

“Do you?” you asked.

Bucky looked up at you. “You want me to prove it?”

The answer left you quickly. “Yes.”

He smiled. “Good.”

His hands slid farther beneath your dress, slow enough to make it deliberate, warm flesh and cool metal moving over your thighs with the same careful pressure.

Your fingers curled into the edge of the mattress. “You’re enjoying this too much.”

“I’ve listened to you run your mouth for months.” His lips brushed higher, close enough that your next breath went uneven. “Let me have my fun.”

“Your fun is very mean.”

His mouth curved against the inside of your thigh. “You want me to stop?”

Your answer came too fast to be dignified. “No.”

Bucky’s smile deepened. His hand slipped higher, thumb tracing the edge of your underwear beneath the dress, and your knees tried to close around his shoulders. He let them. He even turned his head and kissed the inside of one thigh.

“You’re quiet,” he said.

You gave a breathless laugh. “I’m being polite.”

“Liar.”

“I am a delight.”

“You’re soaked.”

Your entire body went hot.

Bucky looked up at you with the unbearable calm of a man who knew exactly what he had found. His thumb pressed again, dragging lightly over damp fabric, and your grip on the mattress tightened hard enough that your knuckles ached.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmured. “All that talking, and this is what you wanted?”

You swallowed. “Among other things.”

“Still making suggestions?”

“I’m trying to decide if I hate you.”

His eyes warmed. “You don’t.”

“I could.”

“You won’t.”

You wanted to argue, mostly on principle, but then he leaned in and kissed you over your underwear, and the argument vanished somewhere between your ribs and your throat. The sound that came out of you was embarrassingly soft. Bucky heard it anyway. His fingers flexed against your thighs, and the next kiss was slower, firmer, open-mouthed enough that your hips lifted before you could stop them.

He made a low sound of approval that went through you like heat.

“That’s it,” he said, the words rougher now. “There you are.”

His fingers hooked into your underwear. He paused there, waiting.

You looked down at him. “Bucky.”

That was all you had to say.

He drew them down your legs, taking his time despite the way his breathing had changed, and tucked them into his pocket with a look that made your pulse jump.

“Really?” you asked.

His hands returned to your thighs. “You want them back?”

Your mouth opened, then closed.

His smile was sharp. “That’s what I thought.”

Then he leaned in.

The first touch of his mouth was enough to knock the air from your lungs. Bucky groaned like he had been the one waiting, like the taste of you had answered some question he had been refusing to ask all night. His hands gripped your thighs and pulled you closer to the edge of the bed, and you fell back onto one elbow, the other hand flying to his hair.

“Fuck,” you breathed.

He hummed against you.

His tongue moved over you again, and your hand tightened in his hair.

“Bucky.”

He groaned at the sound of his name, one hand sliding higher to hold your hips down when they jerked toward his mouth. His mouth was hot and merciless, his stubble scraping the inside of your thighs, his metal hand cool against your hip where the dress had bunched around your waist.

You tried to say something. It came out as a broken little sound.

Bucky pulled back just enough to look at you. His mouth was wet. His eyes were dark enough to make your stomach twist.

“You had a comment?”

“I forgot it.”

“Good.”

“Smug,” you accused, but there was no strength behind it.

He kissed your thigh. “Pretty.”

That was unfair.

You made a sound that was half a laugh and half a whimper. “You can’t call me that when you’re down there.”

“I can call you whatever I want when you’re this wet for me.”

Your head tipped back, eyes closing. “Jesus.”

“That bother you?”

“No.”

“Then take it.”

His mouth returned before you could recover, and this time, two fingers pressed against you, spreading slickness before easing inside. Your body took him greedily, clenching around the slow push of his fingers, and Bucky’s groan vibrated against your clit.

Your hand tightened in his hair again. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

He set a steady rhythm, fingers curling inside you while his mouth worked over you with devastating focus. The room narrowed to the scrape of his stubble, the pressure of his tongue, the stretch of his fingers, the soft obscene sounds of his mouth between your legs. Your thighs began to tremble, and his metal hand shifted from your hip to your stomach, pressing you down when you tried to arch away from how good it felt.

“Don’t run,” he said against you.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m preserving my dignity.”

He laughed softly. “Little late for that.”

You would have cursed at him if he had not chosen that moment to curl his fingers again, hitting the place that made your whole body go tight. His name broke out of you, too loud, too needy, too honest, and Bucky made a sound like that alone could have ruined him.

“That’s it,” he murmured. “Come on, sweetheart. Let me have it.”

The orgasm hit hard enough that the room went white at the edges. You came with his mouth still on you and his fingers buried inside you, thighs shaking around his shoulders while he worked you through it. He softened his mouth, slowed his hand, but kept touching until your breath turned into little broken sounds and you had to tug at his hair.

“Bucky,” you gasped. “Too much.”

He stopped immediately.

For a moment, there was only the sound of your breathing.

Then he kissed the inside of your thigh, gentle now, and stood.

You looked up at him through half-lidded eyes. His hair was a mess from your hands, his tie loose, his shirt still buttoned but wrinkled where you had grabbed him. His mouth was wet from you. He looked wrecked and controlled at the same time, which felt deeply unfair when you were sprawled on his bed with your dress around your waist and your ability to speak in complete sentences somewhere on the floor.

He leaned over you, one hand braced beside your head. “You okay?”

You nodded, then remembered words. “Yeah.”

His gaze searched yours. “Too much?”

“No.” Your hand lifted to his face, thumb brushing his lower lip. “Just enough to make me regret every time I let you leave a room without doing that.”

Bucky’s mouth twitched. “Every time?”

“I’m dramatic, not dishonest.”

He turned his head and kissed your palm.

You caught his tie and pulled. “Come here.”

He came willingly, covering your body with his and kissing you deep. You tasted yourself on his mouth and moaned into it, hips lifting against him. He was hard where he pressed between your thighs, thick and restrained by the fabric of his pants, and the feel of him made you impatient all over again.

Your hands went to his shirt.

This time, he let you.

The buttons were more difficult than they had any right to be, mostly because he kept kissing you and partly because your fingers had not fully recovered. Bucky made a low, amused sound against your mouth when you fumbled with the third one.

“Don’t laugh,” you warned.

“I’m not.”

“You are spiritually laughing.”

“Spiritually?”

“Don’t question me while I’m undressing you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The words were dry, but his breath caught when your hands finally pushed the shirt open. You smoothed your palms over his chest, feeling the heat of him, the hard lines of muscle, the scars where skin changed and history refused to be quiet. He went very still beneath your touch.

You noticed immediately.

Your hands slowed. “Okay?”

His eyes flicked to yours.

For a second, the room held its breath.

Then he nodded. “Yeah.”

“You sure?”

A faint smile pulled at his mouth. “Using my lines on me?”

“They’re good lines.”

His shoulders eased, just a little. “I’m sure.”

You sat up enough to kiss his chest, right over his heart. Bucky’s hand came to the back of your head, not pushing, just holding. You kissed another scar, then another, careful not because you thought he might break, but because you wanted him to know you saw him and wanted him anyway.

When you looked up, his expression had gone quiet in a way that stole some of the teasing from your tongue.

“Still with me?” you asked.

His hand slid along your cheek. “Yeah.”

The word came out rough.

You kissed him again. This time, the kiss was slower. His hands moved over your back, finding the closure of your dress, and you let him turn you enough to work it open. The fabric loosened with a soft whisper. He drew it down carefully, and you lifted your hips so he could pull it away.

Then you were in front of him in nothing but jewelry and the ruined remains of your composure.

Bucky stared.

You gave him half a smile. “Careful. A girl might get shy.”

“No, she won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you.”

The answer landed low in your stomach.

He touched you then, both hands moving from your waist to your ribs, thumbs brushing beneath your breasts before he lowered his mouth to follow. Your head fell back as he kissed and licked and learned you with the same terrible patience he had used between your thighs. When his mouth closed around one nipple and his metal hand held your waist still, you arched hard enough that he had to press you back down.

“Sensitive,” he murmured.

“Observant.”

“Smart mouth.”

“You like my mouth.”

“I do.” His eyes lifted to yours. “I’ve thought about it a lot.”

Heat rushed through you. “Have you?”

“Every time you called me handsome in front of half the team.”

“You poor thing.”

“Every time you blew me a kiss across the gym.”

“I was motivating you.”

“Every time you bent over a briefing table like you didn’t know what you were doing.”

You blinked. “I always know what I’m doing.”

His mouth curved. “I know.”

Then he kissed lower, over your stomach, and the laugh that had been forming turned into a gasp.

You reached for his belt. “Bucky.”

He caught your wrist again, but only to bring your hand to his mouth and kiss your knuckles. “What do you want?”

“You.”

“Specific.”

“You are such an asshole.”

He smiled. “Specific,” he repeated.

You stared at him, breathing hard, pride fighting a losing battle with need.

“I want you inside me,” you said finally.

His expression changed.

“I can do that,” he said.

Your smile came back, softer this time. “Competent?”

His hand went to his belt. “Very.”

He stripped without performance, which somehow made it worse, shirt hitting the floor, belt sliding free, pants pushed down with a controlled impatience that told you he was closer to the edge than he looked. When he finally climbed back over you, bare and warm and heavy between your thighs, your ability to joke deserted you entirely.

He noticed.

“Quiet again,” he said, mouth brushing yours.

“Busy.”

“Doing what?”

“Reconsidering all my life choices.”

His smile softened. “Regrets?”

“Mostly that I didn’t try harder.”

Bucky laughed, but it caught when your hand slid between your bodies and wrapped around him. He was hot and thick in your palm, his hips pressing forward before he could stop himself. His forehead dropped to yours.

“Fuck,” he breathed.

“Not so cocky now, are you?” you whispered.

His eyes opened.

You smiled up at him, thumb stroking over the tip of his cock, and watched his restraint fray in real time.

He caught your wrist after another stroke. “Condom.”

It was not really a question, but you nodded toward the nightstand. “Please tell me Steve’s bachelor despair intervention included supplies.”

Bucky huffed a laugh and reached for the drawer. “He’s thorough.”

“Heroic, really.”

He found one, tore it open, then paused. “You’re sure?”

You looked at him then, at the seriousness under the heat, and something in you softened so quickly it almost hurt.

“I’m sure,” you said. “I want this. I want you.”

His jaw tightened.

You touched his face. “Bucky.”

He kissed you as he rolled the condom on, and the kiss was so intimate that it made the next moment feel even sharper. He settled between your thighs, one hand braced beside your head, the other guiding himself to you. The first press of him stole the air from your lungs.

He stopped immediately. “Okay?”

“Yes.” Your hands gripped his shoulders. “Just go slow.”

His forehead rested against yours. “I’ve got you.”

You believed him.

He pushed in slowly, inch by inch, giving you time to adjust even though his breath was rough against your mouth and his whole body shook with the effort of holding back. The stretch was intense, almost too much, then perfect, then overwhelming all over again. You clung to him, nails pressing into his back, and Bucky whispered praise against your mouth until he was fully inside you and both of you went still.

For a few seconds, neither of you moved.

You had flirted with him for months. You had imagined this, wanted this, teased him because wanting him quietly had started to feel impossible. But imagination had not prepared you for the weight of him, the heat of him, the way his body covered yours like he had finally stopped deciding whether he deserved to be there.

Your throat tightened.

Bucky brushed his nose against yours. “Hey.”

You swallowed. “I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” You managed a smile. “You’re just a lot.”

His mouth curved faintly. “I’ve heard that before.”

You pinched his side.

He laughed under his breath, then groaned when the movement made you clench around him. His eyes dropped closed.

“Oh,” you said, interest returning through the haze. “You like that.”

“Don’t start.”

“I think I should start.”

He drew his hips back slowly and pushed in again.

Your words dissolved.

Bucky’s smile was brief and devastating. “That’s what I thought.”

The pace stayed slow at first, deep enough to make your breath catch every time he filled you. His metal hand slid beneath your hip, lifting you slightly, changing the angle until pleasure sparked bright and sudden through your body. Your head fell back into the pillow.

“Bucky.”

“I know.” His voice was rough. “I know, sweetheart.”

You wrapped your legs around his waist and pulled him closer, needing more of his weight, more of his heat, more of the quiet sounds he made when you clenched around him.

He kissed you through it. Messy, breathless kisses that kept breaking when one of you moaned or when his rhythm faltered because you dragged your nails down his back. He muttered your name against your mouth, then against your throat, then into the curve of your shoulder as the careful pace began to slip.

You liked the moment he lost patience.

You liked it more than you should have.

One second, he was controlled, moving like he could make restraint last all night if he had to. The next, your hips lifted into his at the wrong angle or the right one, and something in him broke. He caught your wrists and pinned them above your head with his metal hand, the cool pressure making your whole body tighten around him.

His eyes snapped to yours. “Okay?”

“Yes,” you gasped. “Yes, don’t stop.”

He did not.

The next thrust drove you higher on the bed, hard enough to pull a cry from your throat. Bucky made a low, wrecked sound and did it again, deeper this time, his body pressing yours into the mattress while his free hand gripped your hip. Every thrust pushed the breath out of you. Every drag back made you desperate for the next one.

“Still got something to say?” he asked.

You tried. You really did.

What came out was not language.

Bucky’s mouth found your neck, teeth scraping just below your jaw. “Mouthy little thing until I get my cock in you.”

The words should have embarrassed you. They did embarrass you, which was unfortunately part of the problem. Heat rushed through you so sharply that you clenched around him, and Bucky swore, hips stuttering before he recovered.

“There it is,” he said. “You like being talked to like that?”

“Yes.”

His hand tightened on your wrists. “You like me jealous?”

Your eyes flew open.

He lifted his head, looking down at you with his hair falling loose around his face and his mouth swollen from kissing you. There was vulnerability beneath the possessiveness, something exposed and honest enough to change the shape of the question.

You pulled against his hold, not to get away, but because you wanted your hands on him. He understood after a second and let go.

You touched his face at once. “I like when you want me enough to stop pretending you don’t.”

His expression shifted.

Then he kissed you, and the kiss was almost too much, too deep and too honest for the frantic movement of his hips. You held onto him as he fucked you harder, his body heavy over yours, your name breaking out of him like a confession. Pleasure built again, faster this time, sharpened by the orgasm he had already given you and the steady drag of him inside you.

“Bucky,” you said, voice breaking. “I’m close.”

His hand slid between your bodies.

You nearly sobbed when his fingers found your clit.

“Come for me,” he said. “Let me feel it.”

You did.

The orgasm tore through you, harder than the first, your whole body locking around him as pleasure crashed hot and bright through your veins. Bucky held you through it, thrusting shallowly while you clenched around him, his mouth at your temple and his voice rough with praise you could barely understand.

“Good girl,” he breathed. “Fuck, that’s it. So pretty like this.”

The praise only made it last longer.

By the time you came back to yourself, Bucky was shaking above you, jaw tight, every muscle in his body pulled taut with restraint.

You wrapped your arms around his neck. “Come on, baby.”

His breath caught.

You kissed the corner of his mouth. “I want it.”

That was enough.

Bucky buried his face against your neck and came with a broken groan, hips pressing deep as his body finally gave in. You held him through it, fingers in his hair, your own body still trembling beneath his. For a long moment, he stayed there, breathing hard against your skin, heavy enough to ground you but not enough to hurt.

The room went quiet around you.

Eventually, his arm shifted, bracing some of his weight. “Am I crushing you?”

“A little,” you said.

He started to move.

You tightened your arms around him. “I didn’t say stop.”

His laugh was exhausted and warm against your shoulder. “Brat.”

“Sweetheart,” you corrected.

He lifted his head.

You smiled up at him, softer than you meant to. “You said it first.”

Something flickered through his face.

Then he kissed you, gentle now. “Sweetheart,” he said, quieter, like he was testing how it felt when nobody was hiding.

You felt embarrassingly close to crying, which was rude of your body after everything else it had already done tonight.

Bucky noticed. His thumb brushed your cheek. “Hey.”

“I’m fine.”

His brow rose.

You huffed. “I am.”

“That means yes, or that means stop asking?”

The echo of your own question from months ago made your chest ache. “It means I’m fine.”

“Mm,” he said. “We’ll workshop that.”

You stared at him.

The smile came slowly.

“Oh, you absolute nightmare.”

He kissed you again before you could say anything worse.

Afterward, Bucky cleaned you up with a gentleness that left you strangely quiet. He disappeared into the bathroom for a minute and came back with a warm washcloth, his boxers pulled on haphazardly, his hair a disaster and his expression too careful. He moved slowly, checking your face more than he needed to, watching for any sign that you had changed your mind now that the wanting had settled.

You caught his wrist when he finished.

“Bucky.”

He looked at you.

“I’m fine.”

His shoulders eased by a fraction. His fingers turned in your grip until he was holding your hand.

“Yeah,” he said.

You tugged lightly. “Come back to bed.”

He did.

The bed dipped under his weight, and you shifted toward him immediately, which seemed to surprise him even after everything. You rested your cheek against his chest, one leg thrown over his, the sheet pulled messily around your waist. His arm hovered for half a second before settling around you.

“You’re thinking loudly again,” you murmured.

His fingers moved once over your back. “You’re going to be unbearable now.”

You smiled against his skin. “I was unbearable before.”

“Worse, then.”

“Probably.” You lifted your head enough to look at him. “You can handle me.”

His gaze moved over your face. “Yeah?”

“You’re very competent.”

That got you a small smile.

You rested your chin on his chest. “Are you okay?”

He was quiet for long enough that you did not think he would answer. Then his hand slid slowly up your back, warm and steady.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he said.

There was no self-pity in it. Just honesty, rough around the edges.

You softened. “Do what?”

“This.” His fingers brushed your shoulder. “Wanting someone. Having it. Keeping it without waiting for it to go bad.”

Your heart hurt.

“I don’t need you to be good at it right away,” you said. “I just need you not to punish both of us because you’re scared.”

His eyes met yours.

You held his gaze. “And I need you to talk to me before you start glaring at actors like you’re deciding where to hide the body.”

His mouth twitched. “He had it coming.”

“Bucky.”

“He touched your waist.”

“You dragged me out of the gala and fucked me in your bed. I promise you won that exchange.”

A laugh broke out of him, surprised and real, and you grinned because you had earned that.

After a moment, he said, “I don’t want to be one more person in the crowd looking at you.”

You went still.

Bucky looked away, as if the confession had cost more than he meant it to. Before he could retreat completely, you touched his jaw and guided him back.

“You’re not,” you said.

His eyes searched yours.

“You were never that,” you continued. “That’s why it was so annoying when you kept acting like you were.”

His brows lifted. “Annoying?”

“Deeply. Tragically.” You tapped his chest. “I was doing excellent work.”

“You were harassing me.”

“I was courting you.”

“You bit my thumb.”

“You liked it.”

He looked at you for a long moment. “I did.”

Your pulse jumped, even now.

Bucky noticed that too, and his expression warmed with a darker kind of satisfaction. “Interesting.”

“Behave,” you warned.

His mouth curved. “That’s my line.”

“You’ll live.”

“I might.”

You were smiling when the next words slipped out, too soft to be a joke and too honest to call back.

“I wanted a boyfriend, you know.”

He froze.

For one terrible second, all the warmth in the room seemed to hold still.

Bucky lifted his head.

You tried for a smile, but it felt shaky at the edges. “Emotionally unavailable boyfriend, technically. I’m flexible.”

His expression softened in a way that made your throat tighten.

“Yeah?” he asked.

You could have backed away. Made it a joke. Given him the escape hatch you had always been so good at pretending you did not need. Instead, you looked up at him and let the truth sit plainly between you.

“Yeah.”

Bucky’s hand came to your face. His thumb brushed over your cheek, so gentle it made the rest of him feel even heavier beside you.

“I can do boyfriend,” he said.

Your heart gave a stupid, hopeful little kick. “Can you?”

“I’ll probably be bad at it.”

“I’ll workshop you.”

He huffed a laugh. “Of course you will.”

“I’m very persuasive.”

“You’re very annoying.”

“Foreplay,” you said.

His mouth curved.

Then he kissed you, and this time, there was nothing frantic in it. It was slow and deep and almost painfully sweet, a kiss that felt less like surrender than arrival. You wrapped yourself around him and let him take his time, because Bucky was warm and solid beside you, because his mouth was soft when he wanted it to be, because the man who had spent months pretending not to want you had finally stopped pretending.

Much later, you woke to pale morning light and the smell of coffee.

For one disoriented second, you thought you were in your own room. Then you shifted and felt the pleasant ache in your thighs, the warmth of a body beside yours, and the weight of Bucky’s arm around your waist.

You opened your eyes.

He was awake, propped on one elbow, looking at you like he had been caught doing something private.

“Hi,” you said, voice rough with sleep.

His expression eased. “Hi.”

“You watched me sleep? Very gothic of you.”

“I woke up two minutes ago.”

“Liar.”

“Maybe ten.”

“You’re obsessed with me.”

His mouth twitched. “Apparently.”

The answer was too easy. Too honest. It warmed you all the way through.

You stretched carefully, then winced.

Bucky’s hand moved at once. “Sore?”

“A little.”

His face changed. “Too much?”

“No.” You turned into him, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. “Exactly enough.”

He looked unconvinced, because he was Bucky.

You sighed. “I will accept pampering, though.”

“That so?”

“Yes. I’m very delicate.”

He looked down at the marks his mouth had left on your neck, then back at your face.

You smiled. “Emotionally.”

That got you a quiet laugh. He leaned in and kissed your forehead, then your mouth, soft enough that you melted into it despite the morning breath concerns you decided not to acknowledge because romance required sacrifice.

A knock sounded at the door.

Both of you froze.

Then Sam’s voice came through from the hall. “I’m not coming in because I value my life, but Steve wants to know if you two are alive, Natasha says hydrate again, and Tony says if the bed is broken, it’s coming out of your paycheck.”

You buried your face in Bucky’s chest.

Bucky closed his eyes. “Go away, Sam.”

“I also brought coffee.”

You lifted your head. “Wait.”

Bucky looked betrayed.

You patted his chest. “Baby, I love whatever brooding domestic morning-after thing you’re doing right now, but I need coffee if I’m going to survive the team knowing you rearranged my insides.”

From the hall, Sam made a delighted choking sound. “Oh my God.”

Bucky threw a pillow at the door.

It hit with a soft thump. Sam laughed all the way down the hall.

You collapsed back against the mattress, laughing too, and after a second, Bucky gave in. His arm tightened around your waist, pulling you closer until your laughter softened into a smile against his skin.

“You’re trouble,” he said.

“You knew that on Tuesday.”

“I knew it before then.”

You tipped your face up. “And yet.”

His eyes moved over you, warm and a little helpless, the way they had looked last night right before everything changed.

“And yet,” he agreed.

You smiled, pleased enough that he narrowed his eyes.

“Don’t,” he warned.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to.”

“I was letting the moment breathe.”

“The moment can suffocate.”

Your smile widened. “You’re so romantic.”

Bucky rolled you beneath him before you could laugh again, his body settling carefully over yours, one hand braced beside your head. His hair fell around his face, soft with sleep, and he looked less like a ghost, less like a weapon, less like the man who had spent months standing at the edge of his own wanting.

He looked like yours.

Or almost yours. Enough to make your chest ache. Enough to make you brave.

“So,” you said, touching his jaw. “Did I win you over?”

Bucky looked at you for a long moment, then bent until his mouth hovered over yours.

“Sweetheart,” he said, voice low and warm, “you have no idea.”

Then he kissed you, and because you were a menace, because he was smiling against your mouth, because you had never known how to leave a victory unannounced, you wrapped your arms around his neck and whispered, “Progress.”