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Chapter Three: Playing God

The ground sweep starts before the mist has fully lifted, six hours after Steve's voice cut through last night's debrief with no room left in it for argument. Today, not this week. You'd expected, somehow, that daylight might soften the order into something more negotiable. It hasn't. If anything the grey, storm-bruised morning makes the whole exercise feel more urgent rather than less, the low cloud pressing close enough to the canopy that the jungle seems to be steaming from the inside.

The team is smaller than yesterday's tour group, and deliberately so, Steve at the front with a thermal scanner slung across his chest, Natasha a step behind him with a sidearm you hadn't seen her carry before today, Bucky beside you, and Sam's voice threading through all of your earpieces from the control room, watching the live feed from a drone hovering somewhere above the canopy you can't see. No Morgan. No Peter. No Wanda. No Pepper. And thankfully No Tony. Nobody said as much out loud, but the absence itself was its own kind of announcement.

You feel it in your teeth first, a low, subsonic pressure that arrives before any sound does, the kind of thing your body registers as wrongness long before your mind can assign it a cause. You're walking the maintenance path that runs parallel to the raptor paddock's outer fence rather than riding the transport track inside it, close enough to the wire that you can watch the current's faint blue shimmer where morning damp beads along the strands. The canopy lowers overhead, branches knitting closer until the grey sky all but disappears. The humidity thickens, pressing damp against your collar. The smell of vegetation sharpens from green, sappy warmth into something metallic and raw, faintly like a struck match, faintly like blood, though you tell yourself that's your imagination doing what it always does in unfamiliar terrain, filling silence with worst cases so you're never caught flat-footed by one.

The birds stop.

Not gradually, the way birdsong fades at the edge of a clearing. All at once, as if someone has thrown a switch, the whole understory going quiet in the same half-second, and the sudden absence is louder than any sound could have been.

Steve raises a fist without breaking stride, the universal signal to hold, and the four of you slow to a careful, deliberate walk, boots finding the driest patches of the path out of habit rather than instruction.

"Grid four's ahead," Steve says, low. "Sam, talk to me."

"Thermal's picking up three signatures clustered near the moat," Sam's voice comes back, thinner through the earpiece than it sounded yesterday over the transport speakers. "Same spot as yesterday's flagged incident. Nothing moving fast. Yet."

The fence line curves ahead of you into what feels less like a valley and more like a bowl carved deliberately into the landscape, rock walls rising on either side high enough to blot out what little grey light the storm clouds have left. Ivy has been allowed to grow wild across the rock face in a way that reads, on reflection, as strategic rather than neglected—foliage dense enough to break up sightlines without fully obscuring the paths the animals actually use, the exact kind of landscaping choice a good zoo makes and a bad one skips because it costs more and shows less.

"They built this like an amphitheater," you murmur, mostly to yourself.

"They built it like a blind," Bucky corrects, quiet. "Amphitheaters are for people who want to be seen doing the watching. This is built so you don't know you're being watched until it's decided you should."

Something in his voice makes Natasha glance sideways at him, the kind of look that says she's filing the observation away rather than dismissing it.

The enclosure beyond the wire is nothing like the valley's open, sun-washed sprawl you toured yesterday. It's built for concealment, rock walls reinforced beneath textured concrete rise like jagged cliffs, fallen logs arranged in a disorder too careful to be accidental, tall grasses obscuring sightlines at knee height in a way that feels less like landscaping and more like architecture designed by someone who understood exactly what an ambush needed. The ground dips subtly toward a shallow moat running along the fence's inner edge, water dark and still, reflecting the grey sky back at itself.

You find yourself cataloguing the terrain the way you'd catalogue a dig site before you ever touched a trowel to it, noting elevation changes, sightline breaks, the places where erosion or design had carved out natural blinds, except here the exercise isn't academic. Here, you understand distantly, the animal on the other side of this fence has almost certainly already run the same inventory, and run it better, because it's had eighteen months of daily practice to your ninety seconds of first impression.

For a long second, nothing moves. And that stillness is worse than motion would have been, the charged quiet of a landscape you've just realized is not empty, even though you can't yet say why you know that.

Then the shadow detaches.

It doesn't leap. It doesn't roar. It steps forward with a controlled, deliberate grace that has more in common with a diplomat entering a room than a predator emerging from cover, Velociraptor, smaller than the giants you saw yesterday, smaller even than some of the mounted skeletons you've stood beneath in museum halls, and yet compact power radiates from it in a way no display case ever prepared you for. Muscle moves visibly beneath hide patterned in fractured greens and ash, the colouring less like an illustration and more like something designed by evolution to disappear into exactly this kind of undergrowth. Its head tilts, angular and curious, and its eye, dark, quick, entirely unlike the slow, ancient patience of the Brachiosaurus's gaze yesterday, locks onto the fence line.

On the four of you standing at it, specifically, or so it feels, though you know enough about animal cognition to distrust that specific a reading.

The gaze isn't dull. It's assessing, the particular quality of attention you associate with something running calculations you can't see the inputs for.

Another raptor slides into view from the left, emerging from behind a boulder with a fluidity that barely disturbs the grass around it, as if it has practiced the exact pressure required to move through undergrowth without announcing itself. A third appears farther back, pausing half-hidden behind a fallen log, watching from a distance the other two don't seem to need.

"Three visible," Natasha says quietly into her comm, and you don't need to tell her not to assume that's three total, she's already scanning the treeline beyond them with the same instinct you're running yourself.

A fourth shape moves at the edge of the boulder field, glimpsed for less than a second before the grass swallows it again, not stepping into view the way the first three did, deliberately, almost performatively, but retreating from it, as if this one had decided, independently, that it preferred not to be counted yet.

"There's a fourth," you say quietly.

"I saw it," Bucky says. "It doesn't want us to know that."

"Why would it care whether we know?" Natasha asks, though her tone suggests she already suspects the answer and simply wants it confirmed aloud.

"Because knowing changes what we do next. It's already factored that in." Bucky doesn't look away from the treeline as he says it. "That's not an animal running on instinct alone. That's an animal running a strategy."

Steve's jaw sets. "Same pattern from the incident report."

"Same pattern from yesterday," Bucky says, and you understand he means the moment on the transport, the fractional dip in the fence hum, the raptor's unhurried retreat afterward. "It's not new behavior. It's the behavior we already flagged, still running."

The nearest raptor shifts its weight, unhurried, and its gaze drifts, not toward any of you directly, but toward the fence line itself, tracking the wire the way you might track a door you were curious whether someone had remembered to lock.

You follow the motion instinctively, your own eyes going where its eyes go.

The electric current hums, steady, and then, for less than a second, so brief you'd almost convince yourself you imagined it if the raptor's posture hadn't confirmed it, falters. Not fully. Just a fractional dip in the vibration you can feel through the fence post beside you, gone almost before you register the absence.

You see it register in the raptor's posture before you fully process it in your own body: a stillness, head angling toward the fence, weight shifting almost imperceptibly onto its back legs. Listening, in a way that has nothing casual in it.

The hum steadies again.

"Sam," Steve says, voice flat. "Timestamp that."

"Timestamped," Sam says, and this time there's no attempt at reassurance in his voice at all.

But the raptor has already stepped back from the fence line, unhurried, without any of the startled retreat you'd expect from an animal that had simply misjudged a boundary. It has learned something, and it has filed the lesson away with the same unbothered efficiency it filed away your own presence a moment ago.

You swallow, throat suddenly dry despite the humidity pressing damp against your skin.

The raptors don't give chase as the four of you continue along the outer path, they pace it instead, unhurried, unthreatened, the pack's attention divided between your group and the fence line in a way that reads, to you, less like curiosity and more like ongoing research. One pauses at the moat to drink, lowering its head with unexpected delicacy, its reflection rippling in the shallow water and doubling the impression of something patient and entirely, uncomfortably intelligent.

You think of Patagonia without meaning to, the night wind pressing against canvas, the way puma tracks had circled your camp for two full nights before the animal ever revealed itself, patient in exactly this way, testing exactly this kind of boundary before committing to anything. You remember Bucky crouched in the snow, fingers brushing frost off a print too fresh to be more than an hour old, his voice low and certain in the particular way it got when he was translating something the wild had told him into language you could use.

They learn first, he'd said then, and you understand, watching the raptor lift its dripping head from the moat, that he meant it as more than an observation about pumas. It was a rule. Apparently it still is.

The path curves, and for a moment the nearest raptor draws parallel with your group close enough that you could count the fine serrations along its jaw if you had the stomach to look that closely, nothing but a single line of chain-link and a few feet of grass separating you now instead of reinforced glass. It doesn't lunge. It doesn't test the fence the way you half expect, half dread. It simply matches your pace for three full seconds, its dark eye tracking your progress with an attention that feels less like curiosity about prey and more like a student auditing a lecture it already suspects it will need the notes from later.

"It's not hunting us," you say, quiet, mostly working the thought out for yourself.

"No," Bucky agrees. "It's studying the route. Probably the schedule too, if it's smart enough to notice ground teams walk this path at roughly the same time every day."

"You think they're that smart?"

"I think," he says, "that every animal I've ever underestimated has eventually made me regret it, and I'd rather regret overestimating this one instead."

The raptor peels away without any visible signal, dropping back to rejoin the other two near the moat, and your group carries on along the path, leaving the three of them behind in a loose, patient formation that doesn't dissolve until a bend in the trail finally blocks them from view entirely.

Steve stops at the junction where the maintenance path splits back toward the compound, exhaling once, sharp, the closest thing to relief his posture allows itself. "That's the whole flagged section. Sam, how's the timestamp log looking against the incident reports?"

"Matches," Sam says. "Every dip we just watched lines up with something already in the data. Nothing new happened out here. We just finally watched it happen instead of reading about it after the fact."

Natasha's expression doesn't change, but something in her shoulders sets more firmly. "Then the problem was never the animals."

"No," Bucky says, low. "It never was."

The birds begin again eventually, not immediately, and not all at once the way they'd stopped, but gradually, tentatively, as if even they need to confirm it's actually safe before committing to the noise.

Lunch is curated spectacle, laid out with the particular precision of people who understand that hospitality is also a kind of argument, the whole group reassembled around the table an hour after the sweep team traded thermal scanners for napkins and rejoined everyone who'd stayed behind. White linen stretches over long polished tables. Crystal glasses refract the muted daylight coming through the wall of glass at the room's far end, where the valley spreads out beyond, Brachiosaurus drifting through mist like slow-moving hills given breath. Suspended botanical installations hang overhead, arranged for aesthetic perfection rather than any ecological truth, ferns and orchids wired into shapes no living plant would organize itself into, beautiful in the specific, hollow way of things built to be photographed rather than understood.

Staff move between the table with the practiced invisibility of people trained never to be the thing a guest notices, refilling water glasses and clearing half-finished courses with a discretion that feels, after this morning, faintly absurd, white gloves and silver trays laid out a quarter mile from an animal that had just watched you the way a predator studies a door it hasn't yet decided to test. You find yourself wondering whether any of the staff know what you saw an hour ago, or whether that knowledge is kept as carefully compartmentalized as everything else on this island seems to be.

A young woman in a pressed uniform sets a plate in front of you with a small, practiced smile, and you find yourself searching her face for some flicker of what she might actually know about the fences she walks past every day, some crack in the composure that would tell you whether the staff here are informed or simply instructed not to ask. You find nothing, which could mean either that there's nothing to find, or that whoever trains the staff here is very, very good at their job.

It is beautiful. It is also, you think, taking your seat, entirely fragile in a way that no amount of crystal can disguise.

Bucky sits across from you this time, not beside you, the space between you narrow but unmistakably deliberate, a distance chosen rather than simply arrived at, and you find yourself wondering, before you can stop the thought, whether he chose it to protect himself or to protect you, and whether there's actually a difference between those two things anymore.

Tony stands at the head of the table, radiant with the particular ownership of a man who built something enormous and still can't quite believe he gets to stand in the middle of it. "To impossible things," he says, lifting his glass, sunlight from the storm-grey window catching the crystal's edge.

"To responsible impossible things," Pepper corrects, her smile steady, though her eyes carry the specific tiredness of someone who has been correcting the same sentence for years and has stopped expecting it to stick.

Crystal touches crystal, the sound small and bright against the low rumble of thunder starting somewhere out over the water.

You let the sound settle before you speak, because you've learned, over a career of presenting difficult findings to people who paid for better ones, that the pause before an answer often matters as much as the answer itself.

"They are extraordinary," you say, when Tony asks for your thoughts, meaning it completely. "The scale. The anatomical fidelity. The behavioral layering, I watched a herd form a protective perimeter around a juvenile with no prompting, no training I could detect. That's not spectacle. That's real."

Tony beams, leaning forward slightly, delighted in the way he gets when praise arrives on schedule.

"And?" he prompts, because he's clearly heard enough of your voice by now to know an and is coming.

You lace your fingers lightly together on the linen, choosing the next sentence the way you'd choose a foothold on wet rock. "And they are organisms extracted from extinction and placed into a curated ecosystem that has existed, in total, for perhaps eighteen months. Extraordinary and untested aren't opposites. They're often the same fact described from two different angles."

Bruce leans forward, coffee cup forgotten at his elbow. "We reconstructed the ecosystem with as much fidelity as the available science allowed. Soil chemistry, plant genetics, even predicted microbial load, as close as anyone's ever gotten."

"Reconstructed," you repeat, letting the word sit on its own for a moment before continuing. "Not restored. Those aren't the same verb, even if they're aiming at the same noun. A reconstruction is a best guess built from fragments. A restoration returns something to a state it once actually held, continuously, without interruption. What you've built here has never held that state. It's an approximation running live, in real time, with real consequences if the approximation is wrong."

"All restoration begins as reconstruction," Bruce replies, a little defensive now, though not unkindly.

"Extinction isn't an accident," you say, keeping your voice level, aware of Bucky watching you across the table with the particular stillness he gets when he's letting someone else carry an argument he agrees with. "It's information. It's the accumulated pressure of an ecosystem finding something it can no longer support, over however many thousands of years it takes to reach that conclusion. When you bring a species back without bringing back the pressures that shaped it, you haven't undone the extinction. You've just delayed the moment when something has to answer for the gap."

Tony leans back slightly in his chair, some of the earlier brightness dimming into something more careful. "So we're meant to just accept loss because it already happened once?"

"No," you say. "We're meant to understand it before we decide we're allowed to reverse it."

Outside the glass, as if offering its own testimony, a Brachiosaurus shifts its massive body, forming a slow, deliberate arc around a smaller juvenile grazing near its legs.

Bucky sees it too, his gaze flicking to the window and back. "Predators and prey co-evolve over time neither of us gets to shortcut," he says, evenly, joining the argument without raising his voice. "Territory, stress response, the specific boundaries a species learns because it watched its parents learn them first. These animals have no memory of any of that. They have instinct, which is real and shouldn't be underestimated, but instinct without inherited memory is a partial system. It'll hold most of the time. Most of the time isn't the same as always."

Bruce folds his hands on the linen, choosing his words more carefully now. "We modeled neural architecture and social hierarchy using avian analogues, the closest living relative we have access to. It's not guesswork. It's extrapolation from the best data available."

"Models aren't memory," Bucky says, quiet, and something in the plainness of it makes the whole table go still for a beat longer than the sentence alone would seem to require.

Tony looks between the two of you, some of his earlier ease giving way to something more genuinely uncertain. "So what would you have us do? Not bring them back at all? Let the whole thing stay a fossil?"

"I'd have you slow down," you say. "Not stop. Slow down. Every ecosystem I've ever studied that survived a major shock survived it because something in the system had time to adapt before the next shock arrived. You've compressed sixty-six million years of adaptation into eighteen months and called the gap an engineering problem. It isn't. It's a debt. Debts come due."

"That's a little dramatic," Tony says, though without much conviction behind it.

"It's not dramatic," Bucky says. "It's just true slower than you'd like it to be."

Peter, who has been quiet through most of the exchange, sets down his fork with the hesitance of someone about to say something he's not sure will land well. "But couldn't you say that about basically every piece of technology? Cars weren't restored versions of horses. Vaccines aren't restored versions of just... getting sick and hoping. At some point every new thing is a reconstruction standing in for something that used to happen naturally."

You consider him for a moment, genuinely, because it's a fair question asked in good faith rather than as a debate tactic. "The difference is that a vaccine doesn't have to coexist with the disease it's replacing. It ends the interaction. What your father has built here doesn't end anything, it reintroduces something that has to actively coexist with a modern world that has no evolutionary memory of it. That's not a new tool. That's a new resident. Residents have needs the tool comparison doesn't cover."

Peter turns that over for a second, visibly recalibrating, and doesn't argue further, which you find, oddly, more encouraging than if he'd conceded outright.

Wanda, who has been mostly quiet through the meal, speaks for the first time since you sat down, her voice low but certain. "The plant side has the same problem, if it helps the point. I've been finding cycads three growing seasons ahead of where they should be for this elevation, outcompeting things that ought to be dominant by now. Nobody planned that. It's just what happens when you introduce something without the checks that would have slowed it down naturally." She looks toward the valley beyond the glass. "Fast isn't the same as healthy. It just looks like it, for a while."

Sam, perhaps sensing the room needs somewhere else to look, gestures toward the ceiling, where a transparent schematic display glows faintly overhead, the park's full layout rendered in luminous green lines, enclosures mapped, generator nodes marked in steady, rhythmic pulses like a heartbeat monitor for the whole island. "The grid's triple-redundant," he says. "Each paddock's got independent fallback. There isn't a cascade scenario built into this system. I checked personally."

As he speaks, you notice Quentin's gaze flick upward, not toward the valley outside, where everyone else's attention keeps drifting, but directly at the grid display, his eyes tracking the perimeter lines with a slow, measured patience that reads less like idle interest and more like a man confirming something he already suspected.

"Elegant redundancy," Quentin says mildly, setting down his glass. "You'd never want a cascade failure."

The word cascade glides from his mouth too easily, too familiar in his tongue for a man whose job description is optics rather than infrastructure.

Lightning flashes beyond the glass, briefly whiting out the valley view. The dining hall's lights flicker once, and the grid display overhead pulses, barely perceptible, a stutter rather than a failure, gone almost before you register it. Quentin's gaze sharpens for the briefest fraction of a second, some calculation passing behind his eyes too quickly to name, and then he smiles again, warm, harmless, a mask returning to its resting position.

Natasha notices. You know she does, because her eyes haven't left him since he spoke.

"You don't trust this," Quentin says, turning toward you conversationally, as if the moment before hadn't happened at all.

"I trust biology," you answer. "I don't trust control. Biology's had sixty-six million years to correct its own mistakes. Control is a decision made by people who won't be here to correct theirs."

"Control adapts too," he replies, easy, unbothered.

"Predators wait," Bucky says quietly, and for a moment the two statements sit across the table from each other like the raptors sat spaced across the paddock, not quite touching, but clearly aware of each other's position.

Thunder rolls closer now, a deep continuous rumble rather than a single crack, and rain begins to streak down the glass in thin silver lines that blur the valley into something softer and less certain than it looked an hour ago.

Morgan leans toward you, voice pitched for just the two of you. "Are you mad?" she whispers.

"No," you murmur, and mean it.

"Because they're here?" She nods toward the valley, the storm, all of it.

"I'm thinking."

She considers this with her usual gravity, then nods, satisfied. "Uncle Buck says thinking is important."

You glance at him. He's watching you, not the debate still murmuring on around the table, not the storm building outside the glass, but you, with an attention that has nothing casual left in it.

Pepper rises from her chair, smoothing her jacket in a single practiced motion. "Run diagnostics again," she says, to no one and everyone at once.

Sam is already on his feet. "Already ahead of you."

Quentin rises as well, unhurried. "I'll assist."

As he passes the corridor entrance, his hand brushes a wall-mounted access panel, the touch lasting a half-second longer than accidental contact would, a touch too casual, a glance too calculated, and then he's gone, disappearing into the control wing without looking back.

Natasha's gaze follows him the entire way. Steve's jaw tightens, the tension of a man adding one more line item to a list he's already keeping.

The storm presses closer, rain hammering harder against the glass, and somewhere beneath the sound of it you think you can still feel that faint, uneven hum in your sternum, the fence's fractional stutter repeating itself somewhere out past the valley, patient, unhurried, exactly the way the raptor waited at the moat.

The dining hall empties gradually. Morgan is guided away by Pepper, still buzzing with dinosaur facts despite the storm, her voice carrying back down the corridor long after she's out of sight. Peter lingers with Bruce a moment longer, tablet already back out, before following at a reluctant trot. Wanda squeezes your hand softly on her way past, a small, wordless gesture that says more than most of the conversation at lunch managed to.

And then it is only you. And Bucky. And the rain.

The sky cracks open fully outside the glass, rain slamming down in heavy sheets that distort the valley into blurred, indistinct movement, the Brachiosaurus herd little more than grey shapes shifting through silver static. The herd tightens formation again, massive bodies turning inward around the juvenile with the same instinctive, wordless coordination you watched this morning, adapting to a threat none of them can see any better than you can from in here.

"They're responding," you say softly, mostly to fill the space between you and the rain.

"They always do," he replies, and something in his voice makes it sound like more than an observation about weather.

Lightning splits the sky, and for a heartbeat the fences beyond the glass glow white before dimming, then steadying.

You feel it again, that uneven hum, fainter through the glass but unmistakable now that you know what you're listening for.

"Did you feel that?" he asks.

"Yes."

"That wasn't wind."

"No," you agree, "it wasn't."

You step out into the covered walkway together, an unspoken decision neither of you announces, and the rain sprays inward in violent gusts the moment you cross the threshold, soaking your shoulders instantly, warm rather than cold, the specific tropical warmth of a storm that hasn't come from anywhere far away. The path to the bungalows is short but exposed, no covering for the last stretch, and you can already see it's going to be a soaking you don't particularly mind.

Halfway down, lightning strikes somewhere inland, close enough that the thunder arrives almost on top of the flash, and the ground trembles faintly beneath your shoes, not the deep, deliberate tremor of a Brachiosaurus footfall, something sharper, more electrical, more mechanical in its violence. The fence hum dips again, longer this time, long enough that you find yourself counting the seconds without meaning to, the way you'd count seconds between lightning and thunder as a child, translating distance into time. Not enough to fail. Enough, unmistakably, to notice.

You both stop at the same moment, rain pouring over you, warm and relentless, plastering your shirt to your shoulders and running in rivulets down the back of your neck. For a moment the world narrows down to nothing but the sound of water and the distant, uneven pulse of electricity fighting to hold itself steady, and you think, absurdly, of every fossil you've ever excavated from a storm-damaged site, the way weather has always been the thing that either buries evidence or exposes it, never anything gentler or more neutral than that.

You think, too, of the last time you stood in weather like this with him, not Patagonia, that had been snow and stillness, but the single violent thunderstorm that had caught you both in Central Park the summer before New York ended, laughing, soaked through, ducking under a bandshell roof with your hands full of groceries you'd been too stubborn to leave behind. You'd kissed him for the first time that night, tasting rain, and some part of you, standing here now with a different storm and a different set of stakes pressing down around you, understands that your body has apparently filed thunderstorms under a category it has never fully reclassified since.

"When this goes wrong," he says quietly, stepping close enough that you can hear him clearly over the storm without him needing to raise his voice, "I need you behind me."

You almost smile despite the rain running into your eyes. "You always say that."

"And you always ignore me."

"I don't ignore you," you reply. "I calculate differently. You're not the only one who reads a room before deciding where to stand in it."

He exhales, something in his chest loosening slightly even as the words that follow carry more weight than any of the argument at lunch did. "I don't want to calculate without you."

The words settle heavily between you, honest and entirely unshielded in a way that neither of you has managed with each other since the helicopter first touched down. Rain streams down his face, darkening his hair to a shade closer to black, tracing the line of his jaw the way you remember tracing it yourself once, a lifetime and a doorway and two suitcases ago.

Lightning flashes again, and for a heartbeat everything around you goes stark white, the whole path and the fence line and his face all thrown into the same harsh, momentary clarity.

And somewhere deep in the island, beneath the thunder, something answers it, a low, resonant vibration that has nothing to do with weather.

You don't pull away when his hand closes around yours. He doesn't hesitate either, his fingers finding yours with the same unthinking certainty you remember from a snowbound tent in Patagonia, when the only warmth available had been whatever you could make between the two of you. It isn't romantic, not exactly, not in this moment, it's instinct. Grounding. The oldest kind of language you ever learned together, the one that doesn't require either of you to decide what anything means before you reach for it.

Then a shout tears through the rain from the direction of the control wing.

"Voltage spike!"

Sam's voice, sharp with an urgency that wasn't in it at lunch.

You release each other at the same moment, professional reflex snapping back into place before either of you has to decide what the handhold was supposed to mean. The storm roars louder around you, indifferent to the interruption. The fences hum unevenly somewhere past the treeline, the sound catching and stuttering in a rhythm that no longer resembles wind interference no matter how many times Sam insists it does.

And somewhere beyond steel and electricity, past the moat and the fractured green-and-ash hide and the fence line it has already learned the shape of, a predator lifts its head.

And waits.

By the time you reach the control wing, soaked through and breathing harder than the short walk should account for, the corridor is already crowded, Steve and Natasha flanking the doorway like they've simply materialized there, Sam hunched over a bank of monitors with his tablet forgotten on the desk beside him, and Tony pacing a tight, restless circuit behind him with his sunglasses finally, uselessly, off.

"Talk to me," Tony says, not for the first time judging by the flatness of Sam's response.

"Voltage spike on the raptor loop. Independent of the main grid, which is, that's good, that means it didn't cascade, the redundancy held." Sam's fingers move fast across the display, pulling up a graph that spikes once, sharply, before flattening back to its baseline. "But it shouldn't have spiked at all. Not from storm interference. Lightning strikes the primary grid, sure, that's built for it. This is the independent loop. It's shielded."

"Shielded from what," Bucky says, not quite a question.

"From weather." Sam doesn't look up. "Not from someone accessing it manually."

The room goes very still, the storm outside suddenly the loudest thing in it.

"You're saying someone touched it," Natasha says, flat, though it isn't really a question either.

"I'm saying the timing's wrong for anything else." Sam pulls up another window, a log of access timestamps scrolling past too fast to read from where you're standing. "I need to cross-reference who had panel access in the last hour."

Steve moves to the second monitor without being asked, pulling up a floor plan of the control wing rendered in the same luminous green as the schematic from lunch, corridors and access points marked in small blinking icons. "Give me every door that panel touches. I want a route, not a guess."

"Working on it," Sam says, fingers already moving.

"While you're at it," Natasha adds, "pull the last hour of camera coverage on this wing. All of it, not just the flagged segments."

Sam's jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. "That's going to take a minute to compile."

"Then start now instead of after you finish complaining about it," Natasha says, not unkindly, and Sam, to his credit, doesn't argue, already splitting his attention across two windows at once.

You think, unbidden, of a hand brushing a wall-mounted panel on the way out of the dining hall, a touch that lasted a half-second longer than it should have.

You glance at Bucky. He's already looking at you, and you understand, without either of you saying it, that you're both thinking of the exact same thing.

"Where's Beck," Steve says, and it isn't phrased as a question either.

Nobody answers right away, and the silence does the work an answer would have.

"He said he was assisting with diagnostics," Pepper says slowly, arriving in the doorway with Morgan's small hand still in hers, the girl unusually quiet, sensing without understanding that the room has shifted into something adults don't explain to children. "He should be right here."

He is not right here.

Sam's fingers pause over the keyboard. "His badge shows him entering the control wing eleven minutes ago." A beat, and something in his voice changes, gone careful in a way it wasn't a moment before. "It doesn't show him leaving."

Tony's jaw works once, the easy showman's confidence from lunch entirely gone, replaced by something tighter, more honest. "Find him."

"On it," Steve says, already moving, Natasha a half-step behind him, and the two of them disappear down the corridor with the economical, unhurried urgency of people who have done this exact kind of search before and know that panic only slows it down.

The room holds its breath in their absence, nothing but the storm outside and the low electronic hum of Sam's monitors filling the space where conversation should be. Pepper has drawn Morgan against her side without seeming to notice she's done it, one hand smoothing absent circles against the girl's rain-damp jacket. Tony has stopped pacing entirely, standing very still in front of the main display like a man watching a stock ticker he already knows is about to turn against him.

Minutes pass. You count them the same way you counted the seconds of the fence's dip on the walkway, translating the wait into something measurable because measurable things are easier to hold than uncertainty.

Steve's voice crackles back over a handheld radio clipped to Sam's monitor bank. "Control wing's clear. Checked every room on this level."

"He's not in the labs either," Natasha adds, a beat behind him. "Bruce's team hasn't seen him since lunch."

Tony exhales, long and slow, some of the tension in his shoulders unwinding by a fraction that doesn't quite reach the rest of him. "So where is he?"

"Working on it," Steve says, and the radio goes quiet again.

Bucky doesn't move to follow them. He stays where he is, close enough that you can still feel the warmth of him through your soaked shirt, his attention divided between the door and the monitor and, you notice, you.

"You okay?" he asks quietly, beneath the noise of Tony and Sam trading terse updates.

"I keep thinking about the fence dip in the raptor paddock," you say. "The one this morning. It learned something from that dip. If Beck's been doing this on purpose, more than once..."

"Then it's had more than one lesson," Bucky finishes, low.

You look at each other, and neither of you says the rest of it out loud, because you don't need to. Somewhere past the storm and the steel and the electricity, something has been quietly, patiently practicing.

Sam's monitor chimes, a new alert scrolling across the top of the screen, and his face, already pale, goes a shade paler.

"What," Tony says.

"The raptor loop's stable now," Sam says slowly, eyes fixed on the readout. "But it wasn't just voltage. There's a gap in the fence log. Six minutes, right in the middle of the spike. No data at all. Like someone paused the recording."

Nobody in the room says Beck's name again. Nobody has to.

Outside, the storm shows no sign of easing, rain hammering the glass in relentless sheets, and somewhere past it, past the fence and the moat and the six minutes no one can account for, you think of the raptor's dark, assessing eye finding yours across a few feet of chain-link that morning, and you understand, with a certainty that has nothing to do with data, that whatever Beck was doing in that gap, the island already knows exactly how to use it.

You don't get back to your bungalow until well past dark, the storm finally thinning to a steady, ordinary rain by the time Steve waves everyone off with instructions to stay indoors and lock the windows against the wind. The walk from the compound is short and soaking and entirely silent, Bucky peeling off toward his own row of bungalows with a look that says he'd rather not, and you understand it, because some part of you would rather not either.

Inside, you strip off your ruined shirt and stand under the shower longer than you need to, letting hot water do what the rain outside couldn't, work the tension out of your shoulders one degree at a time, though it never quite finishes the job. You dress in dry clothes and sit at the desk with your notebook open and your pencil in hand and write nothing for a long time, the page staying blank while your mind runs the same loop it's been running since the dining hall: Beck's hand on the panel, the six missing minutes, the raptor's patient, calculating retreat from the fence line this morning.

You think about writing it all down properly, dates, times, the sequence of who saw what and when, the way you'd document a dig site, methodical and defensible, something you could hand to Pepper without a single soft edge for anyone to argue with. You get as far as the date at the top of the page before your hand stops.

A knock at the door, soft, familiar in a way you recognize before you've even crossed the room.

Bucky, hair still damp, a fresh shirt clinging slightly at the shoulders the way fabric does when someone's dressed too quickly after a shower. He doesn't come in. He stands in the doorway with his hands loose at his sides, the same easy readiness you clocked on him at the helipad two days ago, except now it's aimed at nothing you can see.

"Couldn't sleep," he says, which isn't quite an explanation and isn't meant to be.

"Neither could I."

He glances past you at the notebook open on the desk, the blank page, the date sitting alone at the top of it. "Writing the report?"

"Trying to." You step back to let him in, and he does, closing the door behind him against the rain. "I keep starting the same sentence."

"Which one?"

"The one where I have to write down that we don't actually know what he was doing in there. That's the whole problem. I can document a fence dip. I can document a badge log with a gap in it. I can't document intent, and intent's the only part of this that actually matters."

He's quiet for a moment, considering that with the same weight he gives everything. "Write down what you can prove. Let Steve and Natasha chase the part you can't."

"That's not how I work."

"I know." Something almost fond moves across his face despite the hour, despite everything. "You've never once in your life let someone else finish an argument for you."

"You say that like it's a flaw."

"I say that like it's the reason Pepper called you instead of anyone else." He looks at you for a long moment, rain still ticking faintly against the window behind you, the island outside gone dark and unreadable past the glass. "For what it's worth. I don't think today was the last time that fence dips."

"I don't either."

Neither of you says anything for a while after that, the silence comfortable in the specific way it's only been comfortable a handful of times since you landed, Patagonia-comfortable, tent-comfortable, the kind of quiet that doesn't need filling. Outside, the rain finally starts to ease, the storm moving off toward the water the way storms do here, leaving the island rinsed and dripping and no less watchful than it was an hour ago.

"Get some sleep," he says eventually, stepping back toward the door. "Whatever's actually going on, it'll still be going on tomorrow."

"That's not comforting."

"Wasn't trying to be comforting. Was trying to be honest." The ghost of a smile, tired but real. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Bucky."

The door closes softly behind him, and you sit back down at the desk, the blank page still waiting, the date still sitting alone at the top of it. You pick up the pencil again, and this time, finally, you start to write, short, clipped sentences at first, the kind that would survive a legal review, timestamps and observed behaviors and nothing you couldn't defend under questioning. It's slower going than you'd like, the pencil catching on the page more than once as you second-guess a phrase, cross it out, replace it with something flatter and more certain. By the time you've filled half the page, the rain outside has softened to something almost gentle, and your hand has stopped shaking in a way you hadn't fully noticed until it wasn't anymore.

Outside, past the glass, past the fence, past the six minutes no one has explained yet, the island keeps its own counsel, patient and dark and entirely unbothered by anything you've decided to believe about it.

Your mom would lecture. Your roommate was visiting her boyfriend. Wanda was… somewhere. And going back to the dorm wasn't an option; you'd already gotten written up twice this semester for noise violations, and if the resident advisor found you stumbling in drunk at 2 AM, that was strike three. Which meant a meeting with Residential Life, which meant possibly losing your housing.

Bucky's number sat third on the list, right below the campus library. You stared at it, thumb hovering. He probably had better things to do than deal with drunk undergrads, even if he did tutor you every Tuesday in social theory and sometimes almost smiled when you made him laugh.

But you were out of options, so you pressed call.

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" His voice was rough with sleep. Oh god, you'd waken him up.

"Bucky!" You tried to sound sober and failed spectacularly. "Hi! Hey, it's me!"

There was a pause, and you could almost picture him staring at his phone confused. "I know it's you, are you okay?"

"I'm great! I'm so great, actually. I'm at Murphy's—you know Murphy's? The bar with the good fries?— and I can't find Wanda and my phone is dying and I can't go back to my dorm because Collin's, that's my RA… well she already hates me and if she catches me drunk I'm dead, like actually dead, like expelled from housing dead, and I didn't know who else to call and—"

"Jesus Christ," more rustling, the clink of keys. "Stay inside, I'll be there in ten minutes."

"You're coming?" Your voice went embarrassingly soft. "Really?"

"Stay inside." He hung up.

You clutched your phone to your chest and waited, trying not to think about how much trouble you were in or how Bucky had sounded annoyed or how you'd definitely just ruined everything.

Bucky looked like murder when he pushed through the bar's front door.

His hair was messy, shoved back from his face, and he hadn't bothered with a jacket even though it was October. His jaw was set in that way that meant he was pissed, and when his eyes landed on you,something like relief flickered in his expression, but he masked it immediately with irritation.

"Hey!" You lit up despite his scowl, smiling up at him. "You came! You actually came! I wasn't sure you would because you sounded kind of mad on the phone, but you're here and you look—" You reached up, fingers catching his sleeve. "You look really nice, I mean, you always look nice, but right now you look extra nice even though you're making your grumpy face."

"My grumpy face." His voice was flat.

"Yeah, the one where you do this—" You scrunched your eyebrows together in imitation. "When I get something wrong during tutoring, but I think it's cute so it doesn't really work as intimidation."

"I'm not trying to intimidate you, I'm trying to get you home." He caught your wrist as you reached for his face. "How much did you drink?"

"Not that much!" You held up your fingers, trying to count. "Like… this many?"

"That's seven."

"Is it?" You looked at your hands delighted. "Math!"

He took your elbow, firm and impersonal. "Come on."

"Wait, I should find Wanda—"

"Already texted her roommate, she left an hour ago with some girls from her anthropology class." He was already steering you toward the door, moving with efficiency. "Now walk."

You tried, you really did. But the floor was tilted and your boots were too heavy, and you stumbled into him, grabbing his shirt with both hands.

"Whoa! The ground moved."

"The ground didn't move, you're drunk." His arm went around your waist, steady and sure. "I got you."

"You always got me," you said happily, beaming up at him. "Every Tuesday at three PM, you've got me and social theory and sometimes you bring me coffee even though you pretend it's because you were getting some for yourself anyway."

"Because I was getting some for myself."

"Liar, you don't even drink the fancy vanilla stuff… you think it's too sweet, I heard you tell your roommate it tastes like liquid cookies.

His jaw ticked. "Walk."

Outside, the October air was crisp, and you sighed, turning your face into his shoulder. He was so warm and solid and he smelled like laundry detergent and something woodsy.

"You smell really good," you announced. "Like, really, really good. Is that your shampoo? Or your detergent?"

"It's called basic hygiene."

"No, it's more than that." You nosed against his collar, shameless. "It's like… woodsy. Clean. Really nice."

"I'm not nice. I'm the guy, who makes you rewrite your essays."

"Because you want me to do well." You pulled back up to look at him, which was a mistake because the world tilted again and he caught you, his arm never leaving your waist. "That's nice! You're secretly nice, Bucky. You walk around with your grumpy face and your serious eyes but you're actually—"

"Stop talking."

"—really, really attractive," you finished. "Like, so attractive. Wanda says I have a thing for grumpy guys but I think it's actually just you. Just specifically you."

He made a noise that sounded deeply pained. "You're drunk."

"Doesn't make it not true!" You reached for his free hand, fumbling until your fingers tangled with his. He let you, even though his expression stayed carefully neutral. "I think about you a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Sometimes during Professor Williams' lectures I'll completely zone out because I'm thinking about Tuesday and the way you lean back in your chair and you look so—"

"Stop."

"Why?"

"Because you're going to hate yourself tomorrow."

"I won't," you said earnestly. "I mean every word. You're the smartest person I know and you're so patient with me and sometimes you smile at me like you actually like me and it makes my whole—"

"We're almost there," he said, which wasn't an answer at all.

A couple passed you going the other direction. The guy glanced at Bucky with a smirk. Bucky's expression went ice-cold.

"Fun night?" the guy asked.

"Keep walking." His voice could've stripped paint.

But his hand around yours was so gentle.

"Are you mad at me?" you asked quietly.

"No."

"You seem mad."

"I'm not mad at you." He squeezed your fingers once. "I'm mad at the situation."

"What situation?"

"The one where you're drunk and saying things you don't mean."

"I do mean them," you protested. "I mean all of them. You're smart and hot and nice and your hands are really—"

"We're here." He stopped in front of a building you've never noticed before. "Come on."

You looked up at the brick facade, then back at him. "Where's here?"

"My place."

"Your place?" You felt your whole face light up. "I'm going to your place? Like, your actual apartment?"

"You can't go back to your dorm and I'm not leaving you alone like this." He was already pulling you towards the entrance. "So yeah. My place."

"This is the best night ever," you said enthusiastically.

He muttered something under his breath you couldn't understand, but the drunk haze had taken over your brain at this point for you to care at all.

Everything about Bucky changed the moment his apartment door closed behind you. The hard line of his shoulders dropped, his expression softened, and when he guided you to the couch, his hands were careful on your arms.

"Sit." He crouched in front of you, and you watched him unlace your boots with steady, practiced movements. "Let's get these off."

"You're taking care of me."

"That's the idea." He slipped off one boot, then the other, setting them nearby the door.

"No one really does that." You said it without thinking, and his hands stilled on your ankle.

"Does what?"

"Takes care of me. I'm usually the one taking care of people. Wanda calls me her emotional support golden retriever." You laughed, but it came out sadder than you meant. "But you came to get me and you're taking off my boots and being so nice even though you're pretending not to be."

He looked up at you, but you couldn't read his expression. "I'm not pretending anything. Stay here."

He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a pint glass of water and two ibuprofen. When he sat beside you on the couch, you immediately listed into his side.

"Drink," he said, holding out the glass.

You drank obediently, very aware of how his thigh was pressed against yours, how he smelled even better up close. When you finished half of the glass, he took it from you, setting it on the coffee table.

"Better?"

"Yeah." You turned to face him, tucking your legs under you. "Bucky, I need to tell you something."

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"I'm gonna tell you anyway." You smiled at him. "I have the biggest crush on you. Like, the biggest. It's embarrassing how much I like you."

His throat worked. "You're drunk."

"I know! That's why I can finally say it!" You reached out, tracing the line of his jaw with your fingertips. He went very still. "I've wanted to say it for weeks but you're always so serious and smart."

He didn't pull away. That was the first thing you noticed through the fog of alcohol and exhaustion—Bucky stayed perfectly still as your fingers traced the edge of his jaw, his eyes dark and unreadable in the dim light of his apartment.

"You're going to regret this in the morning," he said quietly, but his voice had lost its edge. It was almost gentle now, the way he spoke to you during tutoring when you were frustrated and on the verge of giving up. "All of it."

"I won't." You were so sure, so absolutely certain, even as the room spun gently around you. "I've never been more sure of anything. You're the best part of my week, Bucky. Every Tuesday. Sometimes I wish I was stupider so I'd need more tutoring sessions."

A sound escaped him—not quite a laugh, but close. "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. And for the record, you're not stupid at all."

"It's true!" You dropped your hand from his face but only so you could grab his hand instead. His fingers were calloused and warm. "You're so smart it's intimidating. And you're so grumpy but you're actually the kindest person I know. And your hands—I think about your hands a lot. Is that weird? That's probably weird."

"It's the alcohol talking."

"It's the alcohol letting me finally say it." You yawned, and Bucky's expression went softer. "M' sorry. I'm not tired. I want to keep telling you how great you are."

"You can tell me in the morning." He stood, and the loss of his warmth made you make a noise of protest. "Come on, you need sleep."

"I don't want to sleep, I want to stay here with you."

"You'll still be here with me." He held out his hand, and when you took it, he pulled you gently to your feet. The world tilted dangerously, and you grabbed his shirt with both hands to steady yourself. "Easy, I've got you."

"You keep saying that."

"Because I mean it."

He guided you down a short hallway to his bedroom, and you were too tired to properly appreciate it—the books stacked on his nightstand, the worn paperback face-down on the bed, the fact tht his sheets were dark blue and looked incredibly soft. He pulled back the covers with one hand while keeping you upright with the other.

"Lie down," he said, and you obliged, sinking into the mattress with a sigh that turned into another yawn. The pillow smelled like him and you pressed your face into it shamelessly.

"Your bed smells like you," you mumbled. "S'nice."

He was quiet for a moment, and then you felt the covers being pulled up to your shoulders. "Sleep."

"Are you going to sleep too?"

"I'll be on the couch."

"No." You reached out blindly, catching the hem of his shirt. "Stay, please?"

He hesitated. You could feel it in the tension of the fabric under your fingers.

"You're drunk," he said finally, gently detaching your hand. "I'm not going to take advantage of that."

"Not taking advantage," you protested, but your eyes were already closing. "Just want you close, you make me feel safe."

There was a long silence, then, so quiet you almost missed it: "You make me feel a lot of things too."

You wanted to ask what he meant, but sleep was pulling you under, heavy and inexorable. The last thing you registered was the brush of his fingers against his forehead, pushing your hair back from your face, and the soft click of the door closing behind him.

Sunlight was a personal attack.

You woke up in stages: first the pounding head, then the dry mouth, then the dawning realization that these were not your sheets, this was not your room and you were absolutely, catastrophically still wearing your clothes from last night.

You sat up too fast that the room spun around you. You groaned and pressed the heels of your hands against your eyes.

Oh god.

Fragments started filtering back: Murphy's, the phone call. Bucky's face when he'd walked through the bar door, his arm around your waist, his hand in yours… The things you said.

I have the biggest crush on you. Like, the biggest.

I think about you a lot. Like, a lot a lot.

Your hands—I think about your hands a lot.

Your stomach dropped straight through the floor.

You were going to die. Actually, literally die of embarrassment. You'd have to transfer to a different school. Move to another country. Change your name. You could never look at Bucky again without wanting to sink into the earth.

The door creaked open, and you flinched.

Bucky stood in the doorway, dressed in a henley and sweatpants, holding glass of water and the ibuprofen bottle. His hair was still messy from sleep, and there was a pillow crease on his cheek, and he looked so unfairly handsome that you wanted to cry.

Or climb him like a tree.

"Morning," he said. His voice was neutral, but his eyes were watching you carefully.

"Hi." Your voice came out as croak. "Um. Good morning, I'm so sorry."

He raised an eyebrow, crossing the room to sit on the edge of the bed. He set the glass and pills on the nightstand. "For what?"

"For… everything?" You couldn't look at him. You stared at your hands instead, twisted in the dark blue sheets. "For calling you at two in the morning and making you come get me. For… whatever I said. I was really drunk. I don't usually—I mean, I shouldn't have—"

"You don't remember what you said?"

"I remember," you admitted quietly. "I remember all of it. And I'm so, so sorry. I didn't mean to make things weird. I know you're my tutor and I'm just some drunk undergrad you had to rescue, and I completely understand if you want me to find someone else for tutoring because this is so unprofessional and—"

The words died on your lips as he closed the distance and kissed you.

One moment you were spiraling into panic, words tumbling out faster than you could control them, and the next his hand was cupping your jaw, tilting your face up and his mouth was on yours soft, but insistent.

"You done apologizing?" His voice was rough, but his eyes were soft. "Because I've been waiting to do that since October, maybe September."

You blinked at him, heart hammering so hard you were sure he could feel it through your ribs. "You—what?"

"I like you too." He said simply, like he was stating a fact. "Have for a while. Thought I was being obvious, honestly."

"Obvious?" Your voice came out squeaky. "You glare at me when I get citations wrong."

"That's me flirting." A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "I'm not very good at it."

You stared at him, cataloging every Tuesday afternoon: the extra coffee he always had waiting, the way he leaned closer than necessary to point at your notes, the fact that he never once looked at his phone during your sessions even though you knew he was busy. Or last night, when he answered your call at two in the morning without hesitation.

"Oh my god," you breathed. "I'm an idiot."

"You're not." He tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. "You're the best part of my week too. Every Tuesday. Sometimes I wish you'd fail more assignments so you'd need extra sessions."

A laugh bubbled out of you, half-hysterical. "That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard."

"Yeah, well… you started it."

You kissed him this time, leaning forward and catching his mouth with yours. It was messier than the first one—you were still groggy and hungover and your aim was terrible—but he made a pleased sound against your lips and his hand slid into your hair, and suddenly the headache and the embarrassment were all worth it.

When you broke apart, he rested his forehead against yours. "I was going to tell you eventually. When you weren't drunk and I didn't feel like a creep."

"When were you planning that?"

"Next Tuesday. I had a whole thing planned, was gonna take you to the coffee shop after tutoring, buy you one of those vanilla monstrosities you like, and tell you I'd very much like to take you on a date."

Your heart did something complicated in your chest. "You definitely hate vanilla lattes."

"I hate seeing you light up when I hand you one even more." He pulled back, and his cheeks were faintly pink. "That came out wrong. I mean—I like seeing you light up. I just hate pretending I don't."

"You're so bad at this," you said, grinning.

"I told you." He shrugged, but his eyes were warm and steady on yours. "I'm not good at flirting. You'll have to be patient with me."

"I can do that." You reached for his hand, threading your fingers through his the way you had last night. "I can be very patient for you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I have a crush on you, remember?"

"I remember." He squeezed your hand. "You told me at least seven times last night. Also that my hands are attractive and I smell good."

"Oh god." You buried your face in his shoulder. "I'm never drinking again."

"You're adorable when you're drunk." He pressed a kiss to the top of your head. "Confusing, but adorable. Now drink your water and take the ibuprofen. We can talk about all of this after you don't look like you're about to pass out."

"Bossy."

"You like it."

You did. You really, really did.

You reached for the glass of water, but didn't let go of his hand. And when he smiled at you, you decided that getting drunk at Murphy's was maybe the best accidental decision you've ever made.

"So," you said, after swallowing the ibuprofen. "Does this mean Tuesday is still happening? The coffee date thing?"

"If you want it to."

"I want it to."

"Okay," he let out a breath you haven't realized he'd been holding. "Okay. Tuesday. But maybe we can also do something before then? Like, I don't know, dinner tonight? If you're feeling better?"

"Are you asking me on a date, Bucky?"

"I'm trying to." His ears were turning red. "Is it working?"

You leaned up and kissed his cheek. "Very much yes."

Dark sunglasses, baseball cap pulled down, a newspaper held up in front of his face as he watched from the front garden as Becca walked slowly, cautiously down the front steps and into a waiting car.

“You might be the only person except the residents in there who actually still reads a physical newspaper,” you chided, taking a seat next to him on the bench.

Bucky held the paper up higher, hiding you from the windows of Becca’s car as it pulled away.

“Hey! I’m undercover here!”

You narrowed your eyes. “How’s that going for you?”

“Pickleball?”

A wide grin crept across your face, reminding him immediately of the rush of butterflies he felt when he’d first met you. “Ohh… You don’t believe her?”

“If Nate said he was playing pickleball would you believe him?"

“Oh definitely not. Poker, yes. Pickleball no. Uncle Nate is more… sedentary.”

“Can you keep a secret?”

You mimed zipping your lips closed. He watched your hand, watched your lips.

“I think she’s got a sweetheart.” Bucky admitted.

“A sweetheart?” you teased lightly.

“Yeah, a beau, y’know?”

“The ol’ forties jive really pops when you visit here. Have you noticed that? You spend too long talking to Uncle Nate and you start to sound like him -”

Bucky laughed loudly. “Forties jive? Now who sounds like Nate?”

You rolled your eyes. “OK, back to Becca’s loverboy. Who you thinking?”

“No idea… but I’m gonna find out. Fancy a stakeout?”

Your eyes lit up. You were mid-sentence when Bucky’s eyes slid over your shoulder at the arriving UPS truck.

“Don’t look -”

Of course you looked.

“Ahh, that’s Holly’s crush, not Becca’s.”

The driver buzzed the intercom and the doors opened with suspicious speed.

“Different driver, no?”

“No? That’s Andy?”

“Thought it was Ross?”

“Who’s Ross?”

“The driver?”

You pinched the bridge of your nose. “Are we finding out who Holly has a crush on, or who’s been going steady with your sister?”

“Both. And we start at the very beginning.” Bucky stood and offered his hand, leading the way to Holly’s reception desk.

****

Bucky looked closely at the UPS driver.

It wasn’t the guy from before, and he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t the guy from the first time…

Whoever it was, Holly twirled a braid around her finger and fluttered her long dark lashes.

“N’aww,” you breathed softly next to him. “She’s so cute! Ooh - cookies!”

Another box of David’s Cookies topped the stack of deliveries.

Bucky used her, and your, distraction to his advantage and pulled the visitor book closer.

Becca had had three visitors since he’d last been.

One of which he recognised.

Ava Starr.

Her haphazard signature a few lines beneath his own.

He filed the information away to grill Ava on later.

The other two, he had no idea.

Suitors? Pickleball coaches? Representatives from David’s Cookies?

“You’re not gonna get it from there, my friend,” a voice said, smiling warmly at you as he moved to stand next to Bucky. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”

The nurse. The one from Becca’s room on his last visit.

“What you’re looking for? It’s what we’ve all been trying to find out -”

You gasped, clapping a hand over your mouth.

“Mrs Proctor’s main squeeze!” you hissed.

Bucky looked at you sharply. “Rein it in, you sound like the dame from The Maltese Falcon.”

“Dame?”

The nurse cleared his throat sharply. “We got a pool going, you guys want in?”

Your hand was in your purse before his could finish speaking.

“You’re betting on my sister?”

Your hand stopped rummaging. “… No… Well. Not until we’ve got more to go on.”

Bucky turned his attention back to the nurse. “Who’s on that list?"

****

A week later, Becca took her usual steady path from the front steps and into a waiting car.

On the bench opposite the door, Bucky peered over his sunglasses, lowering the newspaper a fraction.

Next to him, you did the same.

As soon as the car pulled away slowly down the main driveway, he was up, pulling two helmets from underneath the bench.

“Quick, we can catch ‘em at the end of the drive!”

You scurried onto the back of the bike, arms around his waist.

Just as he had the other two times this had happened, Bucky held his breath until it could be trusted to act naturally.

He peeled off after the car and followed it a few miles heading toward the city. It stopped outside a narrow house.

This was it, he was going to find out.

The door swung open and an arm extended out to help Becca into the building. Bucky leaned out, trying to see.

Then your hand tapped his shoulder. “This isn’t the guy.”

“How do you know?”

Your helmet bobbed toward the sign to the left of the front door.

“She’s getting her tootsies tended.”

Dr. H. Carlton - Podiatrist

“Dammit.”

“C’mon, I’ll buy you a pop,” you consoled him.

The diner was quiet, the in-between of lunch and dinner where there were plenty of booths by the window.

He took the seat opposite you, then wished he hadn’t because your knees were close enough to touch under the table.

Neither of you moved.

“Soooo,” you said, wrapping both hands around your soda. “Maybe her beau has a thing for feet?”

“Don’t.”

“He’s not not on the list? I wonder if he has a mechanical bed in there.”

Bucky tried and failed to not choke on his soda.

“I swear to god -”

“She’s not dead yet, Bucky. Live a little!”

She’s not dead yet.

Neither was he.

Bucky sighed. “You’re right,” he said quietly. He wasn’t sure he’d planned to admit it, and he could tell from the arch in your eyebrow that you were caught off guard, too.

“I just -” he paused, tracing a line of condensation up his glass. “She’s still my baby sister.”

“I know.”

The booth felt smaller, your knees felt closer.

Bucky found himself leaning forward, you took a deep breath which seemed to propel you closer still -

- his eyes flicked down to your mouth, a tiny, delicate soda bubble popped by the tip of your tongue -

Then your phone buzzed across the table, clinking against your glass.

A long exhale sent Bucky back down into his seat.

“Uncle Nate,” you said, holding up the phone to show him without meeting his eyes, “he’s adding the chaplain to the pool.”

“He’s a man of the cloth, he can’t date?”

“Nate says he has hard evidence.”

“Course he does.” Bucky said with a small smile. “Let’s go find out what it is.”

****

Nate was waiting for them in the conservatory, looking shifty.

Bucky gestured for you to take a seat, which you did, placing a gentle kiss on Nate's cheek as you sat next to him.

“You gumshoe's learn anything yet?” he asked, leaning forward conspiratorially.

“Not unless she's sweet on the foot doctor,” you sighed.

“I shoulda put it together sooner,” he lamented, “the chaplain visits her every Tuesday, eleven-fifteen.”

“That's just his rounds, uncle Nate,” you smiled. “I bet he visits Mrs Tartt the next room along at eleven-thirty -”

“He brings flowers.”

That caught Bucky's attention. “Every time?”

Nate frowned. “Sometimes.”

You patted his hand gently. “Put him on the list, I'm sure you'll get a couple of takers”

“Couple of takers for what? Backgammon? Chase the Ace? Don't be starting something you can't finish, young man!”

Bucky froze at the sound of Becca's cheerful voice.

“Maybe later, sis. Where ya been?” he rose to greet her, kissed her on both cheeks, and guided her into the seat he'd vacated.

“Oh, here and there, out and about,” she smiled serenely.

“I had no idea you were such a card-shark Mrs Proctor,” you teased.

Becca's eyes flew from Bucky, to you, and back again, he could already see the mischievous twinkle in her eye.

“Let's not talk about me, my dear, I want to hear all about you -”

“Nate's niece,” Bucky told her firmly.

“Mm hmm, if you say so. Make yourself useful and fetch the box of cookies from Holly, would you? Ask her how Ross is.”

“I thought it was Andy she liked?”

“Andy? Ross? You kids know nothing,” Nate shook his head. “It’s Bobby! Bobby’s the one Holly likes -”

“- Now who’s talking nonsense, Nate Miller?” Becca scowled. “It’s Ross! Plain as day!”

Behind her, Bucky’s eyes widened. He pointed through the sitting room doors at the reception desk, and with a wink, left you stuck between the arguing nonagenarians.

****

Two weeks later, on his usual bench, Bucky peered out over his sunglasses.

On his left, you did the same thing.

On his right… Ava Starr also did the same thing.

He waited until the car door had closed firmly.

“Now what do we do?” Ava asked, still hidden behind the newspaper.

Bucky lowered his. “We follow the car.”

You frowned. “How? Unless you’re planning on putting one of us on the handlebars?”

“Maybe he has a sidecar?”

You laughed at Ava’s suggestion. “Ooh! Maybe he does have a sidecar!”

“I didn’t sign up for this,” Bucky sighed. “I do not have a sidecar, I’m parked round the corner, we need to move.”

Ava sniggered. “Thinks he’s too cool for a sidecar.”

“Why are you even here?”

“You stormed into my room demanding to know why I was visiting your sister,” she shrugged, sliding into the back seat. “Then you mentioned a boyfriend mystery and I was at a loose end.”

In the passenger seat, you turned to look at her. “Why were you visiting Becca?”

“I’m not at liberty to -”

“- She’s taking knitting lessons.”

“Alright, snitch!” Ava fiddled with her fingers, embarrassed. “Fine, I’m taking knitting lessons.”

“Nice! I prefer cross-stitch, I’ve never really gotten the hang of knitting.”

Bucky turned his attention from the road ahead and stared at you. “Jeez, not you, too.”

Ava reached out to swat him around the head. “You should get Becca to give you a lesson,” she suggested.

They drove deeper into the city this time, not in the same neighbourhood as the Podiatrist.

You studied the streets out of the window. “Where are we even -”

“Huh.” Ava hummed thoughtfully, the location becoming familiar.

Bucky frowned. “… No…”

“You know where we are?”

He pulled up opposite a house, a handful of people milling around outside.

“Yeah.” He grimaced. “I know where we are.”

****

The door was opened by a woman who may well have been older than Becca. She looked the three up and down, laughed, and handed over three impossibly small towels.

“What’s this fo -”

“You don’t want to know,” Ava muttered, nudging you down the stairs after Bucky.

Laughter echoed through the narrow corridor, bouncing off dingy tiles, you followed the sound until the room opened out ahead of you.

“Aha! They are here at last!” Yelena grinned. Bucky didn’t return it. “Welcome to my office!”

He looked at the seat next to her, at Becca, steaming water up to her shoulders.

“Following me, Jim? Really?” She asked disapprovingly. “And you brought the cavalry.”

“Why are you here, Bec?”

“Why are you here?”

“Why is everyone still having clothes on?” Yelena flicked her hand across the surface of the water. “Go undress. Then we talk.”

The three hesitated.

Then you shrugged. “Alright, let's get this over with.” You disappeared into one of the tiny changing rooms behind you.

When you emerged a few minutes later, Ava was inexplicably already in the water. Bucky’s elbows crashed against the narrow walls of the cubicle next to yours.

You ducked into the streaming water before he could reappear, and took a seat next to Ava.

“Hello dear, nice to see you again,” Becca smiled before adding, “well, a little more of you this time.”

“Nice office,” you nodded toward Yelena with a tight smile. “Warm.”

“Your pores will thank me,” she said with certainty.

“Hmm, she's right,” Ava agreed with a happy sigh, sinking deeper, “loooove an office day.”

Bucky stepped out of the cubicle, still wearing tight black boxers.

“I will allow this,” Yelena waved a hand in his direction, “because your poor sister, or me, or Ava do not want to see what is going on underneath that. Only reason. Only reason.”

“Got it. Thanks,” he barely made a ripple in the water as he slid in.

Becca patted the surface of the water next to her. “Sit down, James, you'll catch a chill.”

He did exactly as he was told.

“So -”

“So…”

“- So.”

You bit your lower lip to stifle a laugh at Yelena's taunting of the siblings.

“Are either of you going to tell me what's going on?” he asked.

“What would you like to know, Jim?” Becca asked. “Yelena loaned me her office. My knees, you know, the water really helps after a match.”

“See, is a good office. Good for skin, good for muscles, good for -”

“Public nudity?” you offered.

Bucky blinked. “Wait, you're naked?”

Yelena flicked water at him. “Hey! Are you focusing on your sister, or your love life?”

He pushed a wave of water in her direction.

“So your knees?”

“Oh! They ache like a sonofa -”

“From the pickleball?”

“Of course!”

“Nothing else you want to tell me?”

Becca swooshed the water under her fingers. “James, if I wanted you to know something, you'd know it.” She told him patiently.

“Mm hmm,” Yelena agreed.

“Wise woman,” you added.

Bucky frowned. “Who's side are you on?”

You shrugged, “Becca’s, obviously.”

He sighed, admitting defeat for now. “Traitor. Bet you still want a ride back to the home?”

“I'll take you up on that, too, Jimmy. Too long in the water plays havoc with my hair.”

“Eyes down, Barnes,” Ava ordered, swimming alongside Becca to the steps.

You followed them both, helping Becca out of the water, and changed quickly, grateful for the cool air.

****

Bucky was waiting outside on the narrow front steps when you emerged with Becca on your arm.

"Well," you said.

"Well," he agreed.

“Well, I'm getting in the car,” Becca pushed between you both. Bucky just managed to beat her to the car door to open it first.

With Becca safely stowed away, you looked up at him.

He was close enough that you could see the damp curl of hair at his temple.

"Thanks for today -" you started.

"Yeah," he said. "It wasn't so bad."

He reached out, straightening the collar of your jacket. He felt you lean in a little closer, the skin on your throat still warm from the bathhouse.

Then Becca first tapped on the window, then her watch.

“C'mon, Jimmy, they got plum pudding this afternoon and I'm not having Nathaniel stealing my slice!”

His hand dropped to the car door behind you, he waited until you were in the seat before he closed it behind you.

“Sisters, man,” he muttered, making his way around the car. “How's she still so annoying!”

Bucky sighed happily once he had you in his line of sight just as he walked through the door of your shared apartment after a day of work as Congressman.

You tilted your head backwards from where you were sitting on the couch with a book in hand as you smirked at the other man. “Welcome home, Congressman Barnes.”

“Don’t.” Bucky replied tersely with a groan as he made his way to the couch before flopping over it to lay his head down into your lap.

You tutted from above him before tapping the spine of your book onto the other man’s forehead. “I was in the middle of reading.”

“Is that any way to treat your husband?” Bucky pouted before turning his head to hide his face against your stomach.

Bucky let out a happy rumble deep from his chest when he felt your fingers comb through the locks of his hair.

You chuckled. “Was today that bad?”

Bucky took a deep breath in, the stress from the day slowly dissipated from his body once your scent hit his nose and the warmth of your body against his.

“It was manageable,” Bucky murmured, his voice slightly muffled before he pulled back from your stomach to look up at you. “I’m just tired, I’d rather stay at home with you.”

“You literally can, I don’t know why you decided to be part of Congress of all things,” You pointed out to Bucky. “It’s not like they’ve done you any favours.”

Bucky shifted his head to look up at you with a soft smile. “You’re so protective over me.”

“As your husband, I should be. It’s literally the bare minimum,” You rolled your eyes fondly at Bucky. “And you’re one to talk when you literally growled at the guy at the coffeeshop that was talking to me.”

Bucky gaped at you, slightly offended. “That idiot was physically leaning in to every word you were saying, not my fault he didn’t know what personal space was.”

“You’re always so jealous, it’s not healthy you know.” You cocked an eyebrow at Bucky, a challenging smirk settled on your lips.

Bucky huffed. “I’m literally a super soldier, I can lift your whole body up with one arm.”

“Not with the greys in that hair of yours, old man.” You teased, biting down on your lip trying to stifle your laughter.

Bucky squinted at you before he slowly got up from your lap. “I’m leaving now.”

“No, hold on,” You laughed, shifting on the couch and tugging on Bucky’s arm. “I’m sorry, please stay here with me. It’s been pretty boring.”

Bucky gave you an unimpressed look. “Maybe you should get someone younger to entertain you then.”

“Please,” You rolled your eyes with a scoff. “As if anyone else can deal with me.”

Bucky smirked, leaning in. “So you’re saying I’m the only one that’s able to satisfy you.”

Your face immediately turned red, it made Bucky smile knowing that he could still make you blush prettily even after years of being married to one another.

You nudged Bucky’s shoulder with your hand, clearly embarrassed. “Why do you have to say it like that? We’re married.”

“Let this old man show you a good time tonight, doll.” Bucky murmured, letting out a satisfied rumble from deep within his chest when you let out a whimper in response.

“Bucky.” You whimpered again before Bucky practically lunged at you, his lips devoured yours as he pushed you back against the couch so his body was on top of yours.

Bucky chuckled against your lips. “You always drive me insane when you say my name like that.”

“Wait,” You pushed against Bucky’s chest. “Your shirt will get ruined.”

“Don’t care.” Bucky murmured in reply before latching his lips with yours again, slipping his tongue into your mouth as his hands explored your body.

You sighed into his mouth when you felt his hand slip under the shirt you were wearing, that just so happened to be one of Bucky’s baggier shirts.

That realisation made Bucky groan, feeling himself harden in his dress pants, rolling his hips down onto yours.

You gasped, your fingers grasping his shoulders tightly before you threw your arms around his back to pull him closer to you.

Bucky sighed into your mouth this time, feeling the friction lessen the throbbing sensation in his pants. He broke the kiss to then mouth against your jaw before he went to your neck and used his teeth to suck a hickey into your skin.

You hissed in response, feeling the sharp pain of Bucky’s teeth before letting out a sigh when he apologetically soothed it with his tongue.

It wasn’t long till Bucky managed to somehow get you naked while he was still fully clothed.

“Isn’t this a little unfair?” You mused, lazily laying on the couch while Bucky was hovering over you, supporting himself on one knee.

Bucky grinned down at you, pulling down the zipper of his pants so his cock would slip out and breathe.

Bucky noticed your eyes drop to his cock for one second before they flickered back up to meet his hungry ones.

“I thought you liked it when I’m dressed in formal clothing?” Bucky asked you, his voice dropping low.

You gulped. “So what? I’m not allowed to see my own husband naked?”

“Oh I’ll be naked once I’m done with you, sweetheart. Did you think it was going to be just one time tonight?” Bucky chuckled before leaning back down until his face was hovering over your chest.

You let out a whimper when Bucky took one of your nipples into his mouth before switching, the man bit and licked your sensitive nubs until they were raw, wet and red.

Bucky continued his attack on your chest while his fingers slowly slipped into your hole, preening at the sweet sounds that tumbled out of your mouth as he fingered you open.

Bucky raised his eyebrows, unlatching his lips from your chest. “You seem pretty loose doll, were you playing with yourself earlier?”

You gasped, feeling Bucky’s finger push in deeper as he questioned you, your hips twitching when you felt his brush against your prostate.

“Answer me, sweetheart.” Bucky said, pulling his fingers out of you before plunging them back in, watching as you squirmed at the pleasure he was giving you.

Bucky’s cock bounced at the sight of your debauchery accompanied by your little moans and whimpers as he continued to open you up with your fingers.

“Bucky,” You cried out. “Please, fuck me.”

Bucky couldn’t hold his lust back any longer before he readjusted on the couch so he could settle himself between your legs.

With careful attention, Bucky slipped his cock into your hole. A smile tugging on his lips when you threw your head back on the couch with a cry that suspiciously sounded like a yes.

Bucky moaned as he started to thrust into you with precise movements and a newfound rhythm, huffing as he felt his clothes restricting his movements and suddenly he wished he was naked as well.

Instead of wallowing, Bucky turned his focus onto you. He smiled at the way your eyes were closed, your lips slightly parted with tiny pants escaping as you got lost in the pleasure of Bucky’s cock thrusting inside you.

Bucky couldn’t help but to then lean down, licking a stripe up your neck before shoving his tongue down your throat as he quickened the pace of his thrusts.

Your hands found themselves clinging to Bucky’s back, your fingers gripping him tightly as his cock was now hitting your prostate.

“I’m gonna cum.” You whined.

Bucky chuckled, thrusting harder into you before you let out a cry as your cock suddenly spilled out your seed, coating your stomach and the front of Bucky’s dress shirt.

Bucky’s hips start to slow down. “There we go sweetheart.”

He let you take a breather, your chest rising and falling before he slipped his hard cock out of your hole.

You sat up from the couch, squinting at him suspiciously. “You didn’t cum.”

“Guess I’m not an old man after all if I’m still able to keep going.” Bucky teased you before yelping when your hand pushed at his chest so his back hit the back of couch as you went down on him, your mouth sucking him vigorously.

Bucky felt the air punch out of his chest, the feeling of your hot, wet and silky mouth on his cock made him dizzy.

Bucky pursed his lips, letting out a short hiss of pleasure when you took more of him into your mouth, the sound of your choking and gagging as the head of his cock hit the back of your throat was sinful.

“Doll..” Bucky sighed out, his fingers slipping to the back of your head before he felt you stay still so he could fuck up into your throat.

Bucky’s hips stuttered before he came, letting out a guttural moan as he felt you swallow his seed down while his cock was still in your throat.

You pulled off Bucky’s cock with a gasp, coughing slightly as a string of saliva was connected the head of his cock with your lips.

Bucky chuckled at the sight before he gently cradled your face and wiped it away. “You were amazing sweetheart.”

Bucky then peppered kisses all over your face, making you laugh before he slipped his arms under your body and lifted you up from the couch.

You let out a surprised noise as your arms clung to his neck and the back of his shoulders for support.

“We’re not done yet, doll,” Bucky laughed. “I still have so many ways to make you cum. Maybe I’ll use just my tongue this time.”

It was safe to say, you and Bucky spent a very pleasurable night together.

*****

Author’s note:

A pretty short and simple smut for Bucky, especially with it being Seb’s birthday, my mind simply couldn’t resist

You closed your eyes tightly together, as if doing so would make you wake up from this; whatever this was.

This was the worst mistake you had ever made in your entire life. This was something you could never forgive yourself for. This was the line between who you had once been and who you were now. What today meant to you was the beginning of something you never asked for; it took all the morals you'd ever believed in and squished them like a goddamn snake's head.

It wasn't even just because you slept with the enemy. It was much bigger than that.

And for the first time since arriving in this apartment, you start to think about it again.

You were born in a small town, just outside of Buffalo, New York. You had a fairly normal childhood. You had friends in the neighborhood and at school. You weren't popular, but you weren't an outcast either. You were approachable, kind, and sweet. You don't think you changed much since then.

The only thing that ever affected how you approached people, especially as you got older, was how you treated the ones that went against everything you were taught to believe. And hell, you agreed with everything you were taught.

Since you were fifteen, your father had started teaching you about Hydra, ingraining in your brain how you would one day grow up to work on the correct side of the law. The merciful side. You went with him to Hydra bases overseas and you got to see people work, and you fell in love with everything they stood for. Everything you learned became so obvious to you that you couldn't understand how the regular government or the Avengers did the things they did and why they believed in the system they did. It was cruel. It killed innocent people. Whenever there would be fights, no matter where in the world, the collateral damage done by them was unfathomable.

You remembered watching footage with your father one evening. Buildings collapsed. Civilians ran through smoke. Children cried somewhere behind the camera while the television called it collateral damage. Your father had muted the volume before looking at you.

"They'll tell you this is freedom," he'd said quietly. "Tell me how any of those people look free."

You made friends with the other kids in your parents' circle at family barbecues. Liam became your best friend at eighteen. He kept you grounded.

When you told your father you would find a job in a regular office in Washington after moving out, he wasn't too fond of it at first. He wanted you to become an agent, to do the right thing for the country. Sometimes it bothered your conscience, letting your family down, but you wanted to do your own thing. And also, you never felt quite good enough either.

That was, until the day you got the call.

You were nineteen and they wanted you to be their subject for their unclassified project. You remember feeling honored.

At the end of the day, even after leaving them years later after the project went downhill and when your father passed away in an accident, you still firmly believed in everything they stood for, and you detested the people that thought otherwise because it morally made absolutely no sense to you.

That's why ever since your arrival, you have barely spoken a word to any of them. It's why you kept your Hydra training in check. It's why you did everything methodically and watched your own back every second of every day. It wasn't even just a lack of trust; it was quiet disbelief.

They hadn't been people you could trust or be yourself around.

Especially him.

He was the worst. And your shared past, one he clearly didn't even remember, was even more reason you protected yourself from him as best you could.

But deep down, when work wasn't involved, when Hydra or the US Government wasn't part of the equation, in humanity, you were still you. A girl who felt pity, remorse, pain, and empathy. He was the same, and you could tell. It was why, for one hour last night, you had allowed yourself to let that political wall down and mourn your own life that was slowly slipping away. You were dying and you hated that.

You also hated how you were starting to see a side of Barnes you never thought you would see.

When you kissed, for one impossible moment, you simply stopped seeing uniforms, governments, histories, and wars. For one impossible moment, he stopped being an Avenger. You stopped being Hydra.

There had only been another person mourning something he could never get back.

But the harsh reality was, you could never accept someone like that into your life. Despite him being who he was, what he believed in was completely inhumane to you. Because of that, you could never, and would never, stop hating him. No matter what.

You weren't naïve enough to believe last night could simply disappear. Human beings didn't work that way. Sex complicated things. It always had. Whether people wanted it to or not, lines blurred, questions surfaced, and feelings—wanted or otherwise—had a way of finding their place somewhere in the middle.

You still couldn't stand what Barnes represented. You still couldn't respect the system he fought for or the things he'd taken from you. None of that had changed.

But for one hour last night, he'd simply been another grieving human being beside you, and now, against your better judgment, you found yourself wondering what happened now.

What would he say when he walked through that door? Would either of you pretend nothing had happened, or was this finally the morning the silence between you would end?

You sat up slowly, your body moving before your mind could catch up, and the room swam into focus around you. The guest bedroom. His apartment. The place you had been held for weeks now, the place that had become something other than a prison without ever stopping being one. Your clothes were still on the floor.

You reached for them mechanically, pulling on your shirt and your sweats. Your underwear you threw in the hamper. Your fingers were clumsy and cold, and the whole time your mind was somewhere else, circling around the previous night like something too bright to look at directly.

You had let him touch you and you had touched him back.

You stood, your legs unsteady, and moved toward the door. You needed something, anything. Maybe some water.

You needed something ordinary to anchor yourself to before the rest of the day arrived and demanded you make sense of what you had done.

The hallway stretched out before you, dim and quiet, and you were halfway to the kitchen when you saw it: the coffee table in the living room, just visible through the doorway. The photograph. His ring. Asa's face, frozen in a silver frame. Bucky's wedding band, small and gold and impossibly bright against the dark wood. He had taken it off.

Something inside you twisted.

Why had he done that?

You couldn't allow yourself to look at it much longer. Its implication was weighing down on you heavily, making you expect things you hadn't even been hoping for.

The kitchen was cooler. You moved through the motions but this time overthinking every step: water, filter, coffee grounds, and the familiar rhythm of the coffee maker coming to life.

You looked down, surprised. Your hands were shaking.

You pressed them flat against the counter and closed your eyes and tried to breathe, tried to find the version of yourself that had existed yesterday, the one who knew how to hate him cleanly, without complication.

You heard him before you saw him; the soft pad of footsteps in the hallway, the hesitation just outside the kitchen doorway. Your spine went rigid.

The coffee maker hissed and gurgled behind you, filling the silence with something that wasn't quite enough to drown out the sound of your own pulse in your ears.

Bucky didn't say anything when he entered and neither did you.

His hair was still damp from the shower, darker than usual where the water hadn't yet dried. A few strands had already begun falling over his forehead, and the sleeves of the clean gray Henley he'd pulled on were still rolled carelessly to his forearms. He looked exhausted. Not in the ordinary way people looked after a bad night's sleep, but like someone who hadn't rested in weeks. There were shadows beneath his eyes, the faint redness around them refusing to disappear no matter how much cold water he'd splashed across his face.

He moved to the far side of the kitchen, near the window, where the early light cut across the floor in pale geometric shapes. You could feel him there even with your back turned, could feel the weight of his presence like something physical, something that took up more space than his body alone. You kept your eyes on the coffee maker, watching the dark liquid drip into the carafe with an attention that bordered on desperate.

He was thinking about it. You knew he was thinking about it. You could hear it in the way he breathed, slow and deliberate, like he was trying to control something that didn't want to be controlled. You could see it in the rigid set of his shoulders, the way his jaw worked like he was biting back words—or memories.

The images must have been surfacing, you thought, no matter how hard he tried to push them down.

Your skin against his.

The way you'd gasped when he'd gripped your hips.

The heat of your cunt around his cock.

He could probably still feel the ghost of it.

And beneath that, you knew: Asa's face. The ring on the coffee table.

The knowledge that he had just fucked the woman who killed his wife.

The shame must have been so thick he could taste it. You could see it in the way he wouldn't look at you, in the tension radiating from him like heat. He wanted to leave.

Maybe he wanted to put his hands around your throat and ask you why—why Asa, why him, why any of this.

You didn't know which impulse frightened you more. You didn't know which one you wanted him to choose.

The coffee finished brewing. You reached for the cabinet above the counter, your movements careful and controlled, and Bucky moved at the same time, reaching for the same handle without thinking.

Your hands collided.

Your fingers brushed against his knuckles, warm and solid and real, and for a moment neither of you moved. Neither of you pulled away. The cabinet door stayed closed. The morning stayed suspended. Your breath caught, barely audible, and you felt something crack open inside your chest, something you didn't have a name for.

He pulled away like he'd been burned. Bucky opened the cabinet and grabbed his mug.

He poured his coffee and you stood there beside him, close enough that you could smell his soap, and neither of you said another word.

He didn't pour any for you, not that you had been expecting him to.

You drifted back into the living room without deciding to.

Bucky followed a few steps behind, his mug cradled in both hands, and for a moment the apartment felt almost normal.

You watched the morning light stretch across the floor in pale gold rectangles.

Bucky moved to the window, his back to you. His shoulders still carried that tension from the kitchen, but softer now. Less rigid.

You let yourself believe, just for a moment, just for the space of a few breaths, that maybe the silence between you had changed. That maybe it meant something different than it had yesterday.

Then he turned.

And you saw it happen.

His eyes landed on the coffee table. On the photograph. On the fucking ring.

He froze.

It was barely noticeable; a half-second pause, a slight hitch in his breathing. But you felt it like a shift in atmospheric pressure, like the moment before a storm breaks. His face didn't change. His expression stayed carefully blank.

But something behind his eyes went dark, went distant, and you watched him disappear into himself so completely it was like watching someone drown in still water.

He set his mug down on the windowsill. Slowly and deliberately. Then he crossed the room in three strides and picked up the ring.

Your stomach dropped.

You didn't know why and you didn't understand the sudden tightness in your chest, the way your pulse kicked up or the way your hands went cold.

You only knew that something was happening, something you couldn't name, and you were powerless to stop it.

Bucky stared at the ring in his palm for a long moment. His jaw worked. His throat moved like he was swallowing something down. Then, without looking at you (without acknowledging you at all) he slid it back onto his finger.

It was like a punch in your gut.

The gesture was mechanical and forceful. Like he was trying to shove something back into place that had come loose, like he was sealing a crack before it could widen. His hand closed into a fist, then opened again, and he stared down at the gold band like it was the only solid thing left in the world.

You couldn't breathe.

You didn't know why you couldn't breathe.

He still wasn't looking at you.

He turned away, his movements sharp now, purposeful, and began buttoning his shirt.

His fingers moved quickly, efficiently, fastening each button with the kind of precision that suggested he was trying very hard not to think. Not to feel. The fabric pulled taut across his shoulders as he straightened, and you watched him transform in real time, watched him rebuild himself into something harder, something closed off, something you couldn't reach even if you tried.

A wall as deep as undiscovered caverns and as strong as diamonds.

He sat on the arm of the chair and pulled on his boots and laced them tight.

The sound of leather and metal filled the silence, rhythmic and final, and you realized with a sinking certainty that he was leaving. Not just the apartment.

Something else; something you couldn't articulate but could feel slipping away with every deliberate movement.

You wanted to say something. Wanted to ask what had just happened, why the air had changed, why he was suddenly moving like a man preparing for battle. But the words stuck in your throat, heavy and useless, because you could see it now—the way he was holding himself.

The rigid set of his spine. The careful avoidance of your gaze. He wasn't just getting dressed. He was armoring himself. Against you. Against the previous night. Against everything.

He grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair and shrugged it on. Zipped it halfway and checked his pockets. His movements were too controlled, too precise, like he was following a script he'd memorized. Like if he just kept moving, kept doing the next thing and the next thing, he wouldn't have to stop and acknowledge what he was doing, or who he was leaving behind.

He moved toward the door, and you felt something inside you crack—not loudly, not dramatically, just a quiet fracture that you knew wouldn't heal. The false hope you'd been carrying since the kitchen crumbled, and in its place was something cold and sharp and incomprehensible.

You didn't understand what you'd done wrong. Didn't understand why the ring mattered, why the photograph mattered, why any of it mattered more than the fact that he'd touched you last night like you were the only real thing in the world.

But it did matter.

You could see that now.

Whatever you'd thought was happening between you—whatever small, fragile possibility had existed in the space between your hands touching and the coffee brewing—was gone.

He'd put the ring back on and disappeared behind it, and you were left sitting on the couch in the apartment you shared, watching him walk away from something.

He paused at the door, his hand on the knob, and for a moment you thought he might turn around or might say something. But he didn't.

He opened the door and walked through it, and the sound of it closing behind him was the quietest, most final thing you'd ever heard.

You sat there in the silence he left behind, the photograph of Asa still smiling from the coffee table, and tried to understand what had just happened.

You couldn't.

You only knew that something had shifted. Something fundamental. And whatever door had been cracked open between you and Bucky Barnes had just been slammed shut so hard you could still feel the reverberation in your bones.

You stared at the doorknob for so long your vision became blurry. You blinked quickly and cleared your throat. You looked down at your hands and picked at your fingers for a few seconds.

When you finally decided to stand up, you stumbled sideways, enough to catch yourself on the side table where a lamp was.

For one hopeful second you thought it had been enough. You tightened your grip, waiting for the spinning to settle, but instead it only became worse. The walls seemed to breathe around you, stretching farther away before suddenly rushing back again, while tiny black spots crept into the corners of your vision.

You squeezed your eyes shut, swallowing hard as nausea climbed unexpectedly into your throat. Not now. The episodes had been coming more frequently over the last few months, but never this suddenly. Never this violently. You tried slowing your breathing the way you always did, willing your heartbeat to steady itself, convincing yourself that if you simply stood still long enough your body would remember how to cooperate. It didn't.

Your fingers slipped.

The table lurched away beneath your hand, and before you could catch yourself your knees buckled completely. You stumbled sideways, your shoulder clipping the arm of the couch before the side of your forehead slammed hard against the sharp corner of the coffee table with a sickening crack. Pain exploded behind your eyes so suddenly it stole the air from your lungs. The room disappeared into a burst of white light before collapsing into darkness around the edges, leaving you sprawled awkwardly across the hardwood floor.

For several long seconds you couldn't move. The apartment continued spinning lazily above you, refusing to settle no matter how tightly you squeezed your eyes shut. A dull ringing filled your ears, drowning out every other sound, while something warm began tracing a slow path down the side of your temple. You lifted trembling fingers toward the ache and pulled them away again. Even through your blurred vision you recognized the dark smear of blood coating your fingertips.

A quiet laugh escaped you before you could stop it, humorless and exhausted. "Perfect," you whispered to the empty apartment, letting your head fall back against the floor. Your entire body felt impossibly heavy now, every muscle drained of whatever strength had carried you this far. You told yourself you'd get up in another minute. Just one more minute.

But when you tried to move again, nothing in your body seemed interested in listening. Instead, everything went black.

There were only so many places a man could disappear to after convincing himself he'd ruined his own life, and Stark Tower had always been one of them.

It had become a refuge over the years; somewhere loud enough to drown out his own thoughts whenever Brooklyn became too quiet. Somewhere familiar and safe. Somewhere that still reminded him of the man he'd spent years trying to become after Hydra.

This morning, for the first time since he'd started calling it home, he wasn't sure it would recognize him anymore.

The hallway outside his apartment felt strangely foreign as he locked the door behind him. His fingers lingered around the key for a second longer than necessary before he finally slipped it into his pocket.

He forced himself toward the elevator.

Outside, Brooklyn greeted him the same way it always had. Car horns echoed somewhere down the block. Steam drifted lazily from a manhole cover, disappearing into the cool morning air before it could settle. A Boston terrier barked impatiently as its owner struggled to untangle the leash from a fence.

The city had absolutely no interest in the fact that James Buchanan Barnes had completely destroyed his own life twelve hours earlier.

People kept walking and traffic lights changed.

Bucky pulled his jacket tighter around himself and started walking toward the subway.

Every step felt heavier than the one before it.

Every block carried him farther away from the apartment while somehow refusing to take him any farther from what had happened inside it.

He told himself again that it had been grief.

One catastrophic mistake. Nothing more.

He repeated it so often the words began losing their meaning.

It had been grief. It had been loneliness. It had been exhaustion. It had meant nothing.

Then why couldn't he stop thinking about it?

He swore under his breath and shoved both hands deeper into his pockets.

No.

That wasn't the question. The real question was far worse:

What the hell had he done?

The subway platform was already crowded by the time he arrived. A college student balanced flashcards against her backpack while quietly mouthing definitions to herself. An older couple argued over whether they'd missed their stop yesterday or the week before.

Nobody looked at him and nobody recognized him. Nobody knew.

The train screeched into the station, and the crowd surged forward as one. Bucky let them carry him inside, finding an empty seat near the window just before the doors slid shut again. He rested his elbows against his knees, clasping his hands together, staring blankly at the floor while the city blurred past beyond the glass.

It occurred to him then, so suddenly he almost laughed, that if anyone on this train knew what he'd done, they probably wouldn't let him investigate another case for the rest of his career.

His jaw tightened.

He had spent decades rebuilding a reputation Hydra had stolen from him. Years proving to governments, to the Avengers, to Wakanda, to himself—that he could be trusted again. That he was disciplined and reliable. Capable of separating emotion from duty.

Then he'd climbed into bed with the woman accused of murdering Asa.

The thought hit him with fresh violence every single time it returned, never dulling no matter how often his mind replayed it.

He hadn't simply crossed a line. He'd crossed one he would have expected anyone else to lose their badge for.

If Sam had done this, or if Clint had done this. Hell, if Steve had done this, he would've called them reckless. Compromised and professionally irresponsible.

He would've been right.

So why should this be any different?

His fingers drifted unconsciously toward his wedding ring before stopping halfway.

He dropped his hand into his lap instead. The train lurched beneath him.

Across the aisle, two agents wearing SHIELD identification badges laughed quietly over something on a phone screen. One of them glanced in his direction, smiled politely in recognition, and nodded.

"Morning, Sergeant Barnes."

Bucky returned the nod automatically.

The conversation lasted less than two seconds. It stayed with him for the next four subway stops.

Because all he could think was:

If you knew. If you knew where I'd been last night, if you knew who I woke up beside, would you still call me Sergeant Barnes?

Or would you wonder whether I deserved to wear the badge at all?

By the time the train rolled into Midtown, the knot in Bucky's stomach had become something physical. It sat beneath his ribs like a stone, heavy enough that every breath felt slightly shallower than the one before it.

He waited until nearly everyone else had stepped onto the platform before standing himself, falling naturally into the crowd without ever really becoming part of it. Hundreds of people flowed around him with purpose, each one already thinking about meetings, errands, deadlines, lunches, families waiting at home.

He envied them.

Outside the station, Manhattan rose around him in glass and steel, the morning sun reflecting off skyscrapers so brightly it forced him to squint.

He had walked this route hundreds of times over the years. The rhythm of it lived somewhere in his muscles now; the same crosswalks, the same coffee cart on the corner, the same security guard smoking outside the office building across from the Tower despite pretending he had quit every other week.

Nothing had changed and the realization followed him like a shadow.

Nothing had changed, except him.

His boots slowed almost unconsciously as Stark Tower came into view.

For years, the building had meant something to him. Safety, family, and redemption.

It was one of the first places where people had looked at James Buchanan Barnes instead of the Winter Soldier.

The first place he'd been allowed to fail without being abandoned.

Somewhere inside those walls were people who had watched him claw his way back into becoming someone he could almost respect again.

And now he couldn't stop wondering whether he'd undone years of that work in a single night.

He stopped at the crosswalk, hands buried deep inside his jacket pockets while traffic streamed past. The pedestrian light hadn't changed yet, but people crossed anyway, weaving effortlessly between cars with the confidence only New Yorkers seemed to possess.

Bucky didn't move.

His eyes drifted toward the glass façade of the Tower, reflecting the city back at itself so perfectly it was almost impossible to see inside.

He wondered, absurdly, if that was how everyone saw him.

The light changed and he crossed the street.

The lobby greeted him with the same quiet efficiency it always had. Security agents glanced up as he stepped through the revolving doors before immediately recognizing him, offering the kind of polite smiles saved for someone they'd seen nearly every day for years. It was such a routine now.

One young woman behind the reception desk looked up from her computer just long enough to smile.

"Morning, Sergeant Barnes."

Bucky returned the greeting automatically, the words leaving his mouth before he'd even thought about them.

"Morning."

"It's good to see you back."

The comment was so innocent it almost hurt.

Back.

He thanked her with a nod and continued toward the security gates, but the word refused to leave him alone.

It followed him across the polished marble floor, echoed quietly in the back of his mind as he pulled his identification badge from his jacket pocket, and lingered there while the scanner flashed green without hesitation.

Good to see you back.

The thought came uninvited.

Would she still think that if she knew?

If she knew he'd spent the previous night in bed with the woman the FBI, SHIELD, Wakanda, and the Avengers themselves still considered one of the most important people in an active murder investigation (if she knew he'd willingly crossed every professional boundary he'd spent decades demanding others respect) would she still have smiled at him like that? Or would she have quietly picked up the phone before he'd even reached the elevators?

The question was irrational.

He knew it was. Nobody here knew what had happened. Nobody had any reason to suspect him.

His badge had scanned without issue. His access hadn't been revoked. The security guards had greeted him exactly the same way they always had; nothing had changed.

Everything had changed.

By the time the elevator doors slid open, Bucky found himself hesitating for the smallest fraction of a second before stepping inside.

It was such an insignificant pause that nobody else would have noticed it. He noticed it.

Somewhere deep inside, beneath all the shame and exhaustion and self-disgust, a part of him wondered whether he still deserved to walk these halls at all.

The elevator climbed steadily toward the residential floor, stopping every few levels before continuing its quiet ascent through the Tower. Bucky stayed near the back wall with his hands buried deep inside his jacket pockets, staring blankly at the floor numbers illuminating one by one above the doors while employees drifted in and out around him.

Conversations filled the small space without ever really reaching him. Somebody complained about an early meeting. Someone else laughed about burning breakfast. Another voice mentioned paperwork that needed to be finished before lunch.

Normal people living normal lives.

He wondered what it must feel like to wake up without immediately hating yourself.

Two SHIELD agents stepped inside several floors below the Avengers' residence, continuing a conversation they had clearly started before the elevator doors had opened.

"The Bureau's supposed to send another update this afternoon."

"On the Barnes case?"

"Yeah. They're still trying to—"

Bucky stopped hearing the rest.

His stomach tightened so violently it almost stole the breath from his lungs.

The Barnes case.

Asa.

The photograph sitting on the coffee table flashed across his mind before he could stop it. The one taken only days before Mexico. Her smile. The ring on her finger. The woman he'd promised to spend the rest of his life with.

Then you. Rain against the windows.

The guest bedroom.

His eyes slammed shut.

Jesus Christ.

He had slept with the woman who had murdered his wife.

For months he had looked at you and seen nothing except the person responsible for every sleepless night, every panic attack, every photograph he could no longer bare to look at for more than a few seconds. Every time he closed his eyes, he had imagined Asa's final moments and convinced himself you had been standing there when it happened.

Then last night, he had touched you. Kissed you. Fucked you.

The realization spread through him like poison.

He felt sick. Somewhere between grief, exhaustion, and everything that had happened inside that apartment, he'd betrayed the only person who had never once betrayed him.

Asa.

The name alone felt unbearable. His chest tightened until breathing became difficult.

What kind of husband does that?

What kind of man crawls into bed with the woman he has spent months calling his wife's killer?

The answer came immediately.

A weak one.

The thought settled inside him with brutal certainty.

Weak enough to forget. Weak enough to want you. Weak enough to spend one impossible hour looking into your eyes instead of seeing the blood you had left behind in Mexico.

His jaw tightened so hard it ached.

He hated you.

He still hated you. So much.

The elevator continued climbing while the agents resumed talking about evidence, jurisdiction, and paperwork. Bucky never heard another complete sentence.

He only caught fragments drifting across the small space, each one somehow finding a way to sound like an accusation.

No one here knew and no one had any reason to suspect him.

Yet for the first time since Hydra, Bucky found himself standing inside a secure government building feeling as though he was hiding something unforgivable beneath his own skin.

When the elevator finally reached the residential floor, the doors slid open with their usual quiet chime.

He stared at them for a second longer than he should have.

Then forced himself to step out, silently wondering whether every person waiting on the other side would somehow see what he already believed about himself.

That he wasn't the man Asa had married anymore.

The familiar hallway stretched out before him, quiet now after the elevator doors slid shut behind him. Morning sunlight poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows lining one side of the corridor, painting long strips of gold across the hardwood floors.

Somewhere farther down, somebody laughed loudly enough to echo through the apartment before another voice immediately interrupted them. It sounded normal and comfortable. Like every other morning Bucky had spent here over the last several years.

He wasn't prepared for how much it would hurt.

There had been a time when crossing this hallway felt almost automatic.

He would wander in without knocking, steal whatever Sam had made for breakfast, argue with Steve over food that had been sitting on the burner too long, then listen to Steve complain that nobody ever put dishes in the sink.

It had become routine in a way he'd never expected after the war. They weren't just teammates anymore. Somewhere between it all, they'd become something dangerously close to family.

Family. The word caught somewhere deep inside his throat.

How long would it stay that way if they ever found out?

The closer he came to the common room, the louder life became. Cabinets opened and closed somewhere around the corner. Ceramic mugs knocked softly against the kitchen counter.

Someone complained that Sam had finished the orange juice again, followed immediately by Sam loudly insisting he hadn't touched it, his voice carrying the kind of mock offense only family ever seemed capable of getting away with.

It made something inside Bucky ache.

Life had continued here exactly the way it was supposed to. Breakfast was still breakfast. Friends still argued over things that didn't matter. Somewhere inside those walls existed a version of the world untouched by what had happened inside his apartment only a few hours earlier.

Nobody knew.

Nobody knew that, somewhere between grief and exhaustion, he'd quietly shattered every promise he'd ever made to Asa and every expectation he'd ever held for himself.

He stopped just before rounding the corner into the common room.

His hand drifted almost absentmindedly to the front of his jacket, smoothing a wrinkle that didn't exist before brushing invisible lint from one sleeve. It was a meaningless gesture, something to occupy his hands while he tried desperately to gather the pieces of himself back together. He drew in one slow breath, then another, lifting his chin only after he was certain his face had settled into something that resembled composure.

By the time he stepped into the room, the smile waiting for everyone else wasn't his.

It belonged to the man he was about to spend the entire morning pretending to be.

"Well..." Sam looked up from the kitchen island first, an easy grin already beginning to spread across his face before he finally spotted Bucky standing in the doorway. "I'll be damned."

The conversation around the room slowed almost immediately. Steve glanced over from the coffee maker, Tony looked up from the tablet balanced against the counter, Natasha lowered the newspaper she'd been reading just enough to see around it, and Clint paused with a spoon halfway to his mouth.

For the briefest moment, everyone just looked at him.

Sam was the first to cross the room.

Sam wasn't pretending the rooftop had never happened. Without asking, Sam reached him and gave his shoulder a firm squeeze, the gesture lasting barely a second before he let go again. It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't sentimental. It was simply Sam's quiet way of reassuring himself that Bucky was actually standing there. "You look like shit," he said, a crooked smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Bucky huffed out something that almost resembled a laugh.

"Thanks."

"I mean it in the nicest way possible." Another smile, and this one came easier. "I'm serious, though," Sam added, his voice dropping just enough that the others naturally drifted back into their own conversations, "it's good to see you."

"I figured I'd stop hiding eventually," Bucky muttered.

Sam studied him for half a heartbeat before nodding once. "Good."

No mention of rooftops or ledges or the way Bucky had looked two mornings ago. Neither of them needed it. Sam had been there. He'd seen enough to understand that some memories didn't need words attached to them.

Instead, he stepped aside and nodded toward the kitchen.

"C'mon, buddy. Steve's making omelets because apparently none of us know how to work a pan anymore."

Tony snorted.

A few quiet laughs rolled through the room. For the first time all morning, Bucky almost forgot himself.

Then Steve turned around, glass in hand.

Their eyes met. Steve smiled.

It should have been comforting.

Instead, guilt settled even deeper into Bucky's chest. Because every person in this room trusted him without question. And all he could think about was how badly he'd betrayed the woman they were all still mourning.

Steve eventually wandered over, setting it down in front of Bucky before leaning casually against the opposite side of the island. He didn't say anything right away. Instead, he watched Sam unsuccessfully attempt to convince Tony of something mundane.

"You still coming by tomorrow?" Sam asked, tossing a grape into his mouth and looking over at Bucky.

Bucky looked up.

"For what?"

"Training." Steve answered before Sam had the chance.

"Oh."

He'd forgotten.

"You haven't missed a session in almost eight months, Bucky."

"I know." He sighed.

"You don't have to come."

"I said I know." The answer came sharper than he'd intended.

The brief sharpness in Bucky's voice lingered in the air far longer than the words themselves. Conversation elsewhere in the room stumbled almost imperceptibly before quietly finding its rhythm again, everyone instinctively pretending they hadn't heard it. It was such a small thing that another person might have missed it entirely.

Bucky didn't.

He noticed the way Sam's smile faded for only a heartbeat before returning. The way Steve's hand paused around his coffee mug. Even Natasha, who never once looked up from the newspaper spread across her lap, seemed to turn the page just a little slower than before. They were trying to protect him. Giving him an easy way out. Pretending nothing had happened because they all knew exactly how fragile the last few days had been.

The realization filled him with a shame so profound it was almost unbearable.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly after a moment, keeping his eyes fixed on the coffee in his hands. "I—I didn't mean to snap."

Steve dismissed it with a small shake of his head before Bucky had even finished speaking.

"It's alright."

Two simple words. No lecture.

No attempt to reassure him that he hadn't done anything wrong.

It's alright.

For some reason, that hurt more than if Steve had called him out for it. The kindness only reminded him how completely undeserving of it he felt.

Sam leaned one hip against the kitchen island, folding his arms loosely across his chest. There was something careful about the way he looked at Bucky now, not cautious in the sense that he expected him to break, but gentle in the way people became after almost losing someone they loved.

"You don't have to jump back into everything all at once," Steve said. "Nobody's expecting you to."

Sam studied him for another second, his expression softening. "You sure?"

The question wasn't really about training.

Or breakfast. Or whether Bucky had decided to come back to the Tower.

Bucky understood exactly what Sam was asking, and somehow that made answering even harder.

He lowered his eyes back to the orange juice, watching the surface ripple faintly beneath his unsteady grip before forcing out the only response he could manage.

"I'm here, aren't I?"

Neither Steve nor Sam answered right away.

Steve lifted his mug, taking a slow sip while considering him over the rim. When he finally set it back down, he nodded once, the movement almost too small to notice.

The conversation ended there.

The room settled back into its usual rhythm.

Bucky wished his own mind would do the same.

For several minutes they talked about anything except what had happened. Just regular, mundane things. Things he missed hearing, but instead he found himself nodding in places where he hadn't actually been listening, forcing small smiles that disappeared almost as quickly as they appeared.

Every now and then someone would look at him, waiting for a response he'd realized too late he was supposed to give. More than once he had to ask them to repeat themselves. No one complained and no one pointed it out.

Steve eventually broke away from the conversation long enough to refill both of their mugs before leaning casually against the opposite side of the island again.

His posture stayed relaxed, his expression easy, as though the next question carried no greater significance than asking about the weather.

"So," he said, "how's Brooklyn been?"

Bucky shrugged.

"It's fine."

"You settling back in?"

"Yeah."

"The apartment treating you okay?"

"Mhm."

Steve nodded slowly, accepting each answer without challenging it. He let the silence breathe for a moment before taking another sip, his eyes drifting briefly toward the windows overlooking Manhattan.

"You getting any sleep?"

"Some."

It wasn't exactly a lie.

It wasn't the truth either.

Steve didn't argue.

He simply accepted the answer the same way he'd accepted all the others, and for one fleeting moment Bucky allowed himself to believe the conversation was already over.

Then Steve asked, almost as an afterthought,

"And how are things going with you two?"

The words were harmless. Exactly the kind of question anyone would ask after arranging for two people to live under the same roof.

Bucky's fingers tightened so abruptly around the mug that the ceramic creaked softly beneath his grip.

His pulse lurched. Immediately, his mind abandoned the kitchen.

It found you instead.

Standing barefoot only hours earlier with a cup of coffee warming your hands.

Your fingers brushing against his.

Your eyes lifting toward him after he'd slipped the wedding ring back onto his finger, searching his face for something he hadn't been capable of giving you.

He hadn't heard the rest of Steve's sentence.

Only one word.

You.

"Buck?" Steve. Bucky looked up. Steve and Sam were both watching him now, waiting.

"You alright?" Sam asked.

Bucky swallowed.

"Yeah."

The lie sounded hollow even to him.

Steve tilted his head ever so slightly, the way he always did when something refused to add up.

"I asked how things have been going with you." Another silence, but this one stretched just a little too long.

Long enough for Bucky to feel it—long enough for Steve to notice it.

"Fine," he answered at last, the word scraping painfully out of his throat. "Everything's fine."

Steve didn't respond immediately.

He simply watched him for another quiet second, his expression unreadable, while an uncomfortable warmth crept up the back of Bucky's neck.

The kitchen suddenly felt too small.

And for the first time since walking through the front doors of the Tower, all Bucky wanted to do was leave before either of them looked at him long enough to see what he was so desperately trying to hide.

By the time Bucky finally stepped away from the kitchen island, the conversation had already drifted somewhere else entirely. Life went back to exactly as it always had been.

Bucky quietly excused himself, offering little more than a nod before turning toward the hallway. Nobody stopped him.

Sam called after him to let him know they'd see him tomorrow if he felt up to training. Steve simply told him to get home safely. Natasha glanced up from the newspaper for the briefest second before returning to the page.

The elevator doors closed.

Only then did Bucky finally allow himself to breathe.

He rested the back of his head against the polished steel wall and shut his eyes. This was over.

It had to be.

Last night had been his grief. It wasn't the beginning of anything and never would be considered as such.

It was a mistake. One he would spend the rest of his life regretting.

He refused to let one impossible night rewrite weeks of hatred, weeks of grief, or every promise he'd ever made to Asa. Nothing had changed. Nothing could change. You were still the woman he believed had taken everything from him, and by the time he walked back through the apartment door that evening, that was exactly how things would be again.

Whatever humanity he'd allowed himself to see in you, whatever weakness he'd allowed himself to feel, and whatever impossible version of the two of you had existed inside that guest bedroom, he would bury it. For all eternity.

He would bury it so deep that neither of you would ever find it again.

The hallway outside his apartment was unusually quiet.

Bucky fished his keys from his jacket pocket, unlocking the door with the same absent rhythm he'd repeated hundreds of times before. He pushed it open with one shoulder, already preparing himself for another evening of careful silence. Maybe you'd be reading on the couch. Maybe the television would be on. Maybe the apartment would be empty enough that the two of you could avoid one another until tomorrow. Just one more day.

The door hadn't even finished opening before something felt wrong.

It wasn't obvious. Not immediately, at least. But it felt wrong.

The apartment was too quiet. Eerily still.

He frowned, letting the door swing shut behind him.

Nothing.

He stepped farther inside. His eyes swept automatically across the living room before stopping.

The lamp beside the couch had been knocked onto its side. One corner of the coffee table had shifted several inches across the hardwood floor. Tiny shards of broken glass glittered beneath the afternoon sunlight spilling through the windows.

Then he saw it.

Blood.

His entire body reacted before his mind had the chance to. It was reflex integrated into who he was.

"Hey!" The small backpack slipped from his shoulder, hitting the floor with a dull thud as he crossed the room in three quick strides.

You were lying partially against the coffee table, one arm twisted awkwardly beneath you, hair covering most of your face. A thin trail of blood had dried along your temple before disappearing into the floorboards beneath your cheek.

Bucky was already on his knees.

His hand found your shoulder first.

Then your wrist.

Pulse.

There.

Fast.

Thank God.

His other hand slid carefully beneath the back of your neck as he leaned closer, instinct taking over with the kind of precision years of training had burned into his body.

"Hey." No response. He pressed two fingers gently beneath your jaw again. Your breathing was steady. You were alive. The knot that had wrapped itself around his chest loosened just enough for him to breathe. "Come on." His voice came out firmer this time. "Wake up."

He reached toward the cut on your forehead, stopping just before touching it. His eyes scanned the room instead.

The broken lamp and the edge of the coffee table. You'd fallen hard, hard enough to bleed.

Hard enough that, for one terrifying second, all he'd been able to see was another body on another floor.

Asa.

The thought hit him so violently he shoved it away almost immediately.

No. Not again.

Not here.

Not another person.

His jaw tightened.

you don’t know how it’s gotten to this, but you’re not complaining. bucky has been acting off all day, especially when the tower had been busy, and when everyone had disappeared, he’d pounced on you without hesitation.

your hands are in his hair, tugging and pulling in an attempt to ground yourself against the onslaught of sensations sparking through you. your head is tilted back to face the ceiling, your breathing ragged and heavy — the familiar moans and whines he has expressed his love for countless times escaping your swollen lips.

shivers wrack through you at the feeling of bucky’s stubbled cheeks brushing against the insides of your thighs with every move of his head, his hair tickling the skin of your lower abdomen almost teasingly. the coil in your stomach is already tight and you’ve only been doing this for a minute or so, but it’s what bucky does to you, and you know nothing can change that.

“ngh— i’m close..” you breathe out weakly, your hips bucking up against his face to try and find more friction to bring you to your climax faster. bucky lifts his head up from between your legs, propping himself up on his elbows and instead replacing his mouth with his middle finger, slowly easing it into your hole and beginning to pump it at a steady pace.

“yeah? you gonna cum f’me, baby?” he murmurs lowly, a fucked-out smile spread across his lips, which are puffy and covered in your juices. his tongue darts out to clean himself up, though he misses the entirety of his chin, but you don’t have the energy to tell him.

you can only muster a groan in response to his question, your eyes rolling back into your head when he adds a second finger and curls them to hit the spot he knows makes you cum fastest, the cool metal against your pussy lips making your hips stutter in their desperate grinding.

“fuuuuck, you’re so pretty,” he mumbles to himself, his hips beginning to rub his hard cock against the couch beneath him, his eyes glazing over and his movements faltering at the friction before he regains his focus and dips his head back down to press teasing kisses across your stomach.

he feels your walls tighten around his digits as your orgasm builds, smiling against your skin and adding another finger to help you reach your peak. this works without fault, the coil in your stomach snapping and a guttural moan ripping from your throat as you climax, your legs closing around bucky’s neck.

he eases his fingers from out of your weeping hole, pulling back his head to stare down at your cunt for a moment before dropping back down to lap up all of your cum, his fingers rubbing over your clit absentmindedly. he hums in delight as your taste spreads over his tongue, the vibrations coaxing another string of whimpers and curses from you.

after a while, he sits back and admires your tired form beneath him, spread out against the couch with a dazed expression written over your face, his own lips tugging up into a satisfied smile. he lifts up his hand and sucks each of his fingers clean, “so pretty..” he repeats, lowering himself over you and pressing his lips against yours.

you lazily lift your hands up to comb your fingers through his hair as you reciprocate the kiss, your eyes closed and your cheeks flushed. the taste of your own orgasm makes you cringe slightly but you ignore it to focus on the pleasant feeling of his weight pressed against you. the kiss is sloppy and uncoordinated, but neither of you seem to care very much, too spaced out to notice.

when he pulls away for air, bucky grins down at you as rubs his hard-on against your hip, precum having already leaked through his pants. “my turn.” he mutters, his expression smug.

Bucky saw red upon hearing who was behind this. He had been trying to deal with Stark in the best way possible, and yet Stark had you kidnapped. “I want you to find any building with ties to him.” He ordered Scott. “I want her found by morning.” Which was one hell of a task. It was nearly 1am at this point.

A silence settled over the room with only Scott’s typing being heard. “So far he has five properties, but I’m going to keep digging just to be sure.” He spoke up after a bit.

Hearing his phone, Bucky lifted it to see a text from Tony. It was a picture of you. You were sitting at a table eating a taco, clearly annoyed that he was taking a picture. Your hair was loose and a mess, your makeup was smudged, and he wished he could pull you to him through the phone. “Can you track where a text was sent from?” His eyes darted to Scott as Tony typed up a message. 

“I’ve never tried, but I’m sure I could manage it.” He shrugged. Bucky had gotten Scott out of being shipped off to prison five years prior. He’d already had one B&E under his belt and had been having a really hard time finding work. Having Cassie made Scott willing to do whatever he could to provide for her- when her mother let him see her. Tony had actually paid Scott to break into Bucky’s. Bucky caught him, and interrogated him. He gave Scott three options: work for him and be paid well, get arrested, or have his body parts sent to Tony as a threat. It was one of the easiest choices Scott had ever made. Not once had he regretted it. Now he had a nice apartment, got Cassie a few times a month, and was able to help her mom out a lot more. 

“Do it.” He ordered just as Tony’s text came in. Stalking, Barnes, really? Can’t get a girl the old fashioned way? Tsk tsk tsk. Bucky’s jaw clenched at that. She is just the cutest. Maybe I’ll keep her.  

I’m going to fucking kill you. He sent back quickly. “What’s so special about her?” Clint asked, honestly curious. “We’ve never seen you get so worked up over a woman before.” Hell, he couldn’t recall the last relationship Bucky had. 

He sighed. “I can’t even describe it.” He admitted. “She’s an angel who needs protecting. In a sea of dreary as fuck colors she’s a pop of pink, or light blue, or lavender.” 

Steve was relaxing on your couch as Kat made him a cup of coffee. As he looked around he saw various pictures of the two of you. “How long have you known each other?” He asked when she came in with two mugs. 

“It feels like it’s been our whole lives.” She smiled sadly, worried for you. Kat handed him his coffee before sitting down on the chair. “But we met in college and have been roommates for about four years.” 

“We’ll get her back.” He promised gently. “Buck will burn the city down for her.” 

Ket chewed on her lip. “Buck, that’s the guy who’s been sending her stuff?” Now she had a name at least. “We just knew him as ‘B’.” Letting out a sigh she just hoped you came home safe. “What’s he like? Is he a good guy? I mean as good as a guy can be while sending a woman random things. Like that couch.” 

Steve chuckled lightly. “I helped pick this out, actually.” He admitted. “And he’s my best friend. We grew up together. He’s not perfect, no one is, but I think he’s overall a good guy. His heart's in the right place.” While Steve didn’t 100% agree with how his best friend was going about this, he wanted him happy. “I’ll be with him to the end of the line. Whenever that may be.” 

“I heard that,” Pietro said.

“You were supposed to.”

Your mother laughed, one hand still resting near your wrist like she hadn’t entirely stopped needing to confirm you were there. Georges sat beside her, amused and comfortable, occasionally looking between Tony and Bucky with the expression of a man enjoying the universe being ridiculous in ways he had no intention of interrupting.

Steve was across from you, relaxed in a way you hadn’t seen in months. His smile came easier tonight. Not careless, not untouched by everything, but lighter. He kept catching your eye whenever Tony said something particularly outrageous, and every time, the shared look between you felt like a quiet restoration.

Not romance.

Not grief.

Just Steve.

Your Steve.

Your friend.

Bucky sat beside you.

Not too close.

Not too far.

Close enough that his sleeve brushed yours when he reached for his glass. Far enough that you knew he was still being careful.

At first, that carefulness had made you ache.

Then, somewhere between the appetizers and Tony pretending not to interrogate Bucky about his position at Stark Industries, you realized it did not feel like distance anymore.

It felt like respect.

Bucky didn’t try to monopolize you. He didn’t lean into old habits too quickly. He didn’t make the night about him, or about the two of you, or about the wound that still existed beneath everything.

He let the celebration be yours.

That mattered.

More than you had expected.

When Tony asked him what department he worked in, Bucky answered with a strange mix of professionalism and barely contained awe.

“Advanced mechanical systems,” he said, then seemed to realize he was explaining his job to Tony Stark and went slightly pale. “Mostly prototyping support. Some failure analysis. Design implementation when something goes sideways enough that they need someone stubborn.”

Tony’s mouth twitched. “Stubborn is good. Most breakthroughs are just spite with a budget.”

Bucky blinked.

Then laughed.

A real laugh.

Your chest tightened at the sound.

Not because it hurt.

Because you had missed it.

You looked down at your plate, hiding a small smile, and missed absolutely nothing about the way Tony’s eyes flicked toward you.

He saw.

Of course he saw.

Tony had become annoyingly good at seeing you.

Dinner unfolded around you in layers.

Wanda told an exaggerated version of how you’d looked after the committee called you Doctor, complete with dramatic reenactment.

“You just stood there,” she said, pressing both hands to her heart and widening her eyes. “Like someone had handed you a sword and a kingdom.”

“I did not.”

“You absolutely did,” Pietro said. “Very tragic heroine. Very ruins-and-destiny.”

“You both are impossible.”

Steve smiled into his glass. “They’re not wrong.”

You gave him a betrayed look. “Et tu, Rogers?”

Steve lifted both hands. “I’m just saying, there was a moment.”

“There was a moment,” Wanda insisted.

Tony leaned back in his chair, visibly delighted. “I’m hearing there was a moment.”

“There was not a moment.”

Your mother’s eyes shone with quiet pride. “There was a little bit of a moment, sweetheart.”

You groaned while everyone laughed.

Even Bucky.

Especially Bucky, maybe, though his laugh softened when he looked at you afterward.

That was the dangerous thing.

Not the laughter.

The softness.

The way his eyes rested on you now like he was still afraid, yes, still careful, but no longer pretending the feeling wasn’t there. No longer trying to bury it under brother or habit or fear or some doomed attempt at normal.

He looked at you like he loved you.

And for the first time in a very long time, the thought didn’t send you spiraling backward into panic.

It steadied something.

It scared you too, of course. You were not naïve enough to mistake tenderness for safety just because you wanted it. Wanting had hurt you before. Wanting Bucky had hurt you in ways you still carried in your body.

But tonight, watching him exist at this table – with your mother, with Georges, with Steve, with Pietro, with Wanda, with Tony – you began to understand something you hadn’t been able to admit before.

You wanted him in your life.

Not as the boy who used to crawl into your bed after nightmares.

Not as the older brother the world had named for you because it was easier than looking too closely.

Not as the familiar shadow at the edge of your childhood.

Not only as a friend.

You wanted Bucky.

The man sitting beside you with careful hands and tired eyes. The man who had hurt you. The man who was learning, slowly and painfully, how not to make his fear your burden. The man who looked at you now as if you had become something he did not deserve but still loved too much to look away from.

You wanted him.

That truth rose inside you quietly.

No thunder.

No lightning.

Just certainty.

And with it came another truth, just as important.

Wanting him was not enough.

Love was not enough.

History was not enough.

If there was going to be anything between you, anything real, anything that could survive Athens and New York and the old fractures beneath your feet, then you had to talk.

Not around it.

Not through messages softened by distance.

Not in half-sentences and restrained looks.

Together.

Honestly.

About what you wanted. What you feared. What you could not give. What you still needed. What he had done. What you still carried. What forgiveness might mean if it came at all.

Your gaze drifted to his hand resting near his glass.

There was a small scar across one knuckle you remembered from childhood. A fall on concrete. Bucky had insisted he wasn’t hurt and then nearly fainted when your mother cleaned it.

You remembered laughing.

You remembered him glaring.

You remembered loving him before you had any language that could survive what people would have called it.

Bucky turned his head slightly, catching your gaze.

The table was loud around you. Wanda was arguing with Pietro about whether she had cried during the defense. Tony was pretending to be neutral while absolutely taking Wanda’s side. Steve was grinning. Your mother was laughing into her napkin.

But Bucky saw you.

The smile faded from his face.

Not in fear.

In attention.

You held his gaze for a second longer than you had all evening.

Then you looked away.

Only slightly.

Only enough.

But he understood.

You felt the understanding move through him.

His posture changed. A stillness settled over him, deep and quiet. Not panic. Not the sharp, old kind of tension that used to make him lash out or grasp.

Readiness.

He knew you were asking him to stay.

And he did not look away from you for the rest of the meal unless someone spoke directly to him.

After dessert, the evening began to loosen around the edges.

Your mother hugged you again outside the restaurant, coat pulled tight against the night air, even though it wasn’t that cold.

“I still can’t believe it,” she whispered. “Doctor.”

“You have to stop saying it like that.”

“Absolutely not.”

Georges kissed your cheek and told you he expected a signed copy of the thesis, which made Tony immediately insist he wanted one too.

“You have already read it,” you reminded him.

“And I want a signed copy,” Tony said. “Preferably with something emotional and flattering written inside.”

Pietro snorted. “You’re needy.”

“I have recently discovered fatherhood,” Tony replied. “I’m allowed to be dramatic for at least a year.”

“At least?” Wanda echoed.

Tony smiled. “I’m negotiating upward.”

Steve hugged you last among your friends, warm and steady.

“I’ll call you tomorrow?” he asked quietly.

You nodded. “Yeah.”

His eyes flicked briefly toward Bucky, then back to you. There was no warning there. No doubt. Only care.

“Okay,” he said softly.

Pietro, predictably, did not let the moment stay too tender.

“If either of you makes me regret leaving,” he said, looking between you and Bucky, “I will become everyone’s problem.”

Bucky nodded once, serious. “Understood.”

Pietro narrowed his eyes. “Good.”

Wanda hugged you hard enough to nearly knock the air from your lungs, then whispered, “Text me when you’re home.”

“I will.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

Eventually, everyone started to separate into taxis, subway directions, late-night plans, and tired goodbyes.

Everyone except Bucky.

And Tony.

Tony lingered near the curb, hands in the pockets of his coat, watching you with that quiet, assessing look that made it impossible to pretend he didn’t already know.

You turned toward him.

For a second, you felt strangely young.

Not ashamed.

Not small.

Just aware that this was one of those thresholds fathers were supposed to notice.

Tony’s gaze moved from you to Bucky and back again.

He did not ask.

He did not demand.

He simply understood.

“You’ve made a decision,” he said quietly.

Your breath caught.

Bucky went still beside you.

You nodded once. “I think so.”

Tony’s expression softened, but not carelessly. There was worry there. Love. A restraint you knew cost him something.

“Okay,” he said.

Just that.

Okay.

Then he stepped closer and cupped the back of your head with one hand, pressing a kiss to your forehead.

It was gentle.

Paternal.

A blessing without words.

“Good night, kid,” he murmured against your hair.

Your throat tightened. “Good night, Dad.”

His fingers flexed once, emotion flashing across his face before he managed to contain it.

Then he looked at Bucky.

The air changed slightly.

Not hostile.

But clear.

Tony did not have to threaten him.

He had already done that in every silence since they’d met.

Bucky met his gaze and held it.

“I’ll get her home safe,” he said quietly.

Tony’s eyes sharpened. “I know she can get herself home safe.”

Bucky swallowed, then nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

Tony studied him another second.

Then, apparently satisfied by the correction, he gave a brief nod.

“Good night, Barnes.”

“Good night, Mr. Stark.”

Tony’s mouth twitched. “We really have to work on that.”

Bucky looked faintly overwhelmed. “Not tonight.”

Tony huffed, almost amused. “Fair.”

Then he stepped away, lifting a hand once before heading toward the car waiting for him.

You watched him go until he disappeared inside.

Only then did you turn to Bucky.

The city moved around you.

Cars slid past in ribbons of yellow and red light. People spilled out of restaurants laughing too loudly. Somewhere nearby, a siren rose and fell, distant enough to feel like part of the weather.

Bucky stood beside you, hands loose, eyes on your face.

“Walk?” you asked.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

So you began walking toward your apartment.

At first, neither of you said anything.

The silence was not empty. It was dense with all the words you were not ready to say on the sidewalk outside a restaurant, with celebration still warm in your chest and fear coiled quietly underneath it.

Bucky walked beside you the way he had not walked beside you in years.

Not ahead. Not hovering behind. Not positioning himself between you and the world like a wall you had not asked for.

Beside you.

Matching your pace.

Letting the night air do some of the talking.

You tucked your hands into your coat pockets and watched the pavement pass under your feet.

“I’m not sure how to start,” you admitted after a while.

Bucky’s answer came softly, almost immediately.

“We don’t have to start until you’re ready.”

You glanced at him.

He looked forward, jaw tight but voice steady.

“I mean it,” he added. “I know you asked me to stay. I know we’re walking to your place. But if we get there and you change your mind, that’s okay.”

The words landed somewhere tender.

“You’re very careful now,” you said.

His mouth twisted faintly. “Trying to be.”

“I noticed.”

He looked at you then.

There was something almost painful in his expression. Not because you had hurt him, but because being seen trying was its own kind of vulnerability.

“I don’t want to make the same mistakes,” he said.

“I know.”

You walked another block.

The night air was cooler now, brushing against your cheeks, slipping under the edge of your coat. Your apartment wasn’t far. The route was familiar in a way that made memory stir – the months before Miami, the life you’d left, the version of yourself who had walked out and not known if she would ever return.

That version of you felt both distant and close.

Still inside you.

But not all of you anymore.

“I meant what I said earlier,” you said.

Bucky turned his head slightly.

“I don’t want you outside my life.”

His breath caught, so quietly you might have missed it if you didn’t know him.

“But I don’t know what that looks like yet,” you continued. “And I don’t want us to pretend we can just… step over everything because we love each other.”

“No,” he said. “We can’t.”

“I need us to talk about high school.”

His face tightened.

Not defensively.

In pain.

But he nodded. “Okay.”

“And the night after Steve.”

His eyes closed briefly.

When they opened, they were wet.

“Okay,” he whispered.

“And Natasha.”

Another nod.

“And what happens when I leave for Athens.”

This time, the breath he took was shakier.

But he still nodded.

“Okay.”

You stopped walking.

Bucky stopped too, a half step later, turning toward you beneath the amber light of a streetlamp.

You looked at him fully.

“I need you to understand something before we talk,” you said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

His face shifted.

“I know.”

“But I also can’t protect you from the truth anymore.”

Bucky’s throat bobbed.

“You shouldn’t have to,” he said.

You held his gaze.

There it was again.

That new thing.

Not perfect. Not healed. Not enough by itself.

But real.

He was listening.

And maybe that was the first beginning you could trust.

Your apartment building came into view at the end of the block.

The windows glowed softly. Your window was dark, waiting.

You felt your pulse pick up.

Bucky noticed.

“You okay?” he asked.

You breathed in slowly.

Then out.

“No,” you said honestly. “But I’m not scared of you right now.”

His eyes glistened.

He looked away for a second, swallowing hard, then looked back.

“Thank you for telling me.”

You nodded.

Then you started walking again.

This time, after a few steps, Bucky’s hand moved.

Not toward yours.

Not all the way.

Just enough that his fingers brushed the air near you, a question he did not speak aloud.

You looked down.

Your heart hurt.

Your whole body remembered him.

Every version of him.

The boy in your childhood bed.

The teenager who failed you.

The man who had waited.

The man walking beside you now, asking without taking.

Slowly, carefully, you slipped your hand out of your pocket.

You did not take his hand fully.

Not yet.

But you let your fingers brush his.

Once.

Then again.

Bucky went utterly still for half a second before he remembered to keep walking.

He did not close his hand around yours.

He let the contact remain what you had made it.

Small.

Tentative.

Alive.

And together, without rushing, without pretending the road ahead would be simple, you kept walking toward your apartment.

You went upstairs together.

The building felt different with Bucky beside you.

Not wrong.

Not even bad.

Just… awake.

Every stair seemed to remember him. The narrow railing where he had once dragged his hand while complaining about the climb. The second-floor landing where he had once waited for you with coffee because you had texted him that your morning was already trying to kill you. The chipped paint near your door from the time Pietro had moved a bookshelf into your apartment and sworn at it in three languages.

Your life was everywhere here.

And for the first time in months, Bucky was walking back into it with you instead of standing outside it like a wound you weren’t ready to touch.

At your door, you reached for your keys.

Bucky stood a step behind you, silent.

Not hovering. Not crowding.

Waiting.

You unlocked the door and stepped inside first.

The apartment greeted you with its quiet, familiar smell: books, old wood, the faint lemon-cleaner ghost of Steve and Bucky’s careful visits, the warmer scent of your own things slowly settling back into place since you had returned. It no longer felt abandoned. Not lived-in the way it once had, not yet, but no longer frozen in the moment you left.

Paused, maybe.

Waiting for you to decide what came next.

Bucky followed you in and stopped just inside the entryway.

You felt the exact moment he saw it.

The photograph.

It was standing upright again on the console table.

Not back on the wall.

Not in its old place.

But no longer face-down.

It was a small thing, maybe. A frame returned to visibility. A picture allowed to exist again.

You and him, years younger, caught mid-laughter in a way neither of you had noticed at the time. Bucky’s arm around your shoulders, your face turned slightly toward him, eyes bright with a happiness that had once seemed simple because you hadn’t known yet how complicated love could become.

Bucky stared at it.

He didn’t touch it.

Didn’t move closer.

But his throat worked once, and something in his face shifted so quickly that if you hadn’t been watching, you might have missed it.

Pain.

Relief.

Gratitude so sharp it looked almost like grief.

You closed the door softly behind him.

“I didn’t know where to put it yet,” you said.

Bucky’s eyes stayed on the frame for one more second before he looked at you.

“That’s okay,” he answered quietly.

You nodded.

The apartment settled around you.

You took off your coat first, hanging it on the hook by the door with movements that felt too precise. Bucky did the same, slower, as if every ordinary action needed permission. Then your shoes. His shoes. The small, intimate rituals of entering a home.

You walked into the living room.

Bucky followed.

For a second, you both stood beside the couch like you had forgotten how furniture worked.

That almost made you laugh.

Not because anything was funny, exactly.

Because the awkwardness was so human. So unlike the operatic weight that had lived between you for months.

You sat down first, tucking one leg beneath you, leaving space. Bucky sat at the other end of the couch. Not far enough to feel like punishment. Not close enough to assume.

The space between you was deliberate.

Breathable.

You looked at your hands.

Then at him.

Bucky was sitting with his elbows on his knees, fingers loosely clasped, head bowed slightly. He looked older than he had at dinner. Not because of exhaustion, though there was that too. Because this room stripped away performance. There was nowhere to be charming here. Nowhere to be impressive. Nowhere to be the man who worked for Stark Industries or the boy who used to fill a house with noise.

Here, he was just Bucky.

And you were just you.

With everything between you.

“You said we needed to talk about high school,” he said eventually.

His voice was low.

Careful.

You nodded. “Yes.”

Bucky inhaled slowly, then let it out.

“Okay.”

The single word trembled at the edges.

You looked at him for a long moment, trying to decide where to begin. There were too many doors. Too many rooms inside the same house of memory.

So you chose the one that had never stopped echoing.

“The night after Steve broke up with me,” you said.

Bucky went very still.

His eyes dropped to his hands.

“I know,” he whispered.

“No,” you said softly. Not cruelly. Just firmly. “You don’t. Not from my side.”

His face tightened, but he nodded.

“You’re right.”

The apartment hummed quietly around you. The refrigerator. The distant traffic beyond the windows. Someone laughing faintly from the sidewalk below.

You stared at the edge of the coffee table.

“I was devastated,” you said. “And I knew Steve was right. That was the worst part. I couldn’t even turn it into anger properly, because he wasn’t leaving because he stopped loving me. He was leaving because he saw something I didn’t know how to look at directly.”

Bucky’s jaw clenched.

You continued before he could apologize too soon.

“I was crying, and then you came in. And for a moment it felt like being little again. Like you’d heard me, and you came, and the world went quiet because you were there.”

His eyes closed briefly.

“I shouldn’t have–”

“Please don’t start there,” you said.

Bucky stopped immediately.

You swallowed.

“I need to say it without you rushing to condemn yourself. Can you let me say it first?”

He opened his eyes and looked at you.

“Yes.”

You nodded once.

“It wasn’t simple,” you said. “That’s what made it so hard afterward. It wasn’t some clean thing where I could say you hurt me that night, or I didn’t want it, or I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Your voice thinned slightly, but you stayed steady.

“I wanted comfort. I wanted you. I wanted to be held by the person I had wanted for years and never allowed myself to want out loud. And then the line moved.”

Bucky’s breathing had gone shallow.

“I remember,” he said, barely audible.

“So do I.”

His eyes flicked up to yours, wounded by the quiet honesty of it.

You let yourself hold his gaze.

“I don’t regret that I wanted you,” you said.

A tear slipped down Bucky’s cheek before he seemed to realize it was there.

You looked away for a moment, not because you couldn’t bear him, but because you needed to keep speaking.

“What destroyed me was the morning.”

His face crumpled.

This time, he didn’t interrupt.

“You left,” you said. “You woke up and you were already gone, even before you walked out. You wouldn’t look at me. You wouldn’t touch me. You didn’t ask if I was okay.”

Bucky’s hands tightened until his knuckles paled.

“And I was sixteen,” you continued, voice softer now. “I was sad, and confused, and already trained to think that needing too much made me wrong. So when you erased it, I understood it the only way I knew how.”

You breathed in.

“It meant I had done something wrong.”

Bucky made a sound low in his throat.

Not a word.

Something broken.

“I thought I had made you do something,” you said. “Not forced. I knew that wasn’t it. But I thought my sadness had… pulled something out of you that you didn’t want. That I had contaminated something safe. That I had ruined us because I reached for comfort in the wrong way.”

Bucky’s lips parted.

Nothing came out.

You could see him fighting the urge to apologize, to explain, to fill the room with his remorse.

But he stayed quiet.

That mattered.

“I told Pietro,” you said. “Eventually. Not right away. It took days before I could even say your name. And he spent weeks trying to convince me I wasn’t disgusting or monstruous.”

Bucky bowed his head.

His shoulders shook once.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and the words came out scraped raw. “I know you told me to let you talk, but I have to say it once. I’m sorry. I was a coward. I panicked, and I made you carry the shame alone because I couldn’t face my own.”

You looked at him.

He was crying now, quietly, without trying to hide it and without using it to ask anything from you.

“I know,” you said.

He flinched, not from cruelty, but from the simplicity of it.

“I know you were scared,” you added. “That didn’t make it hurt less. But I know.”

Bucky wiped at his face with the heel of his hand and nodded, unsteady.

“I didn’t know what to do with wanting you,” he admitted. “That’s not an excuse. It’s just… the truth. I had spent years telling myself you were my sister because that was the only way I could survive loving you without feeling like there was something wrong with me. And then that night happened, and suddenly I couldn’t pretend the feeling was theoretical anymore.”

His mouth twisted.

“So I did the worst possible thing. I pretended nothing happened.”

“You made me feel alone in it.”

“I know.”

“You made me feel like I had imagined the tenderness.”

He looked at you then, eyes devastated.

“You didn’t,” he whispered. “You didn’t imagine it. I remember every second. I remember holding you. I remember being scared. I remember wanting to kiss you and thinking if I did, everything would change. And then everything did change, and I wasn’t brave enough to stay with you in the aftermath.”

The words settled between you.

Painful.

Necessary.

You let them sit.

Then you asked the next question, the one you’d carried longer than you wanted to admit.

“Why Natasha?”

Bucky closed his eyes again, but this time he didn’t look away when he opened them.

“Because she was good,” he said. “Because she was real, and smart, and strong, and she wanted me in a way that didn’t come with our entire childhood attached to it.”

You swallowed.

He looked ashamed, but he didn’t stop.

“And because being with her made me feel like maybe I could be someone normal. Someone who hadn’t spent half his life loving the girl sleeping down the hall.”

Your chest tightened.

“That’s the part that hurt,” you said quietly. “Before Natasha, you were different with me again.”

He nodded immediately, as if he had been waiting for that blow.

“I was.”

“You looked at me.”

“I know.”

“Not like before. Not like when we were kids. Like you knew exactly what you were doing and still wouldn’t say it.”

Bucky’s jaw flexed.

“I did know,” he said. “Some of the time. Not all of it. Sometimes I’d catch myself halfway through a look and feel like I’d been caught stealing something.”

“You made me hope.”

His face went pale.

You weren’t accusing him loudly. You weren’t raising your voice.

That made it land harder.

“You made me hope,” you repeated. “And I hated myself for it. Because I thought I had gotten past it. I thought after high school, after Steve, after everything, maybe I had learned to survive wanting you. But then you started looking at me like that again. Showing up. Lingering. Being… almost there.”

Bucky covered his mouth with one hand, eyes shining.

“And then Natasha happened,” you said.

His hand dropped slowly.

“I didn’t know,” he whispered.

“I know you didn’t.”

“I should have.”

“You weren’t responsible for my hope,” you said. “Not entirely. I gave myself that. But you fed it without naming it. And then when Natasha appeared, it felt like being stupid all over again.”

Bucky shook his head, a small, pained movement.

“You weren’t stupid.”

“I felt stupid,” you said. “I felt pathetic. Because there she was, beautiful and clever and good for you. And I was supposed to be happy. I was happy, in some way. I wanted you to have something good. But it also felt like watching a door close that I had never admitted I wanted to walk through.”

Your voice wavered for the first time.

“And then I started looking for my origins again because I needed somewhere to put all of it. Somewhere that wasn’t you.”

Bucky stared at you.

The silence stretched.

“I hate that I made your own life feel like an escape route,” he said quietly.

You breathed out slowly.

“You didn’t make all of it. That question was always there. Tony was always out there, whether I knew his name or not. But yes. The timing was because of you.”

Bucky nodded.

No defense.

No flinch away from consequence.

Just acceptance.

“That night at dinner,” he said, voice low, “when I told you I was going to propose to Natasha…”

Your stomach tightened.

Bucky saw it and stopped.

“I’m sorry,” he said, immediately. “We don’t have to–”

“No,” you interrupted. “Say it.”

He swallowed.

“I wanted you to react.”

The sentence landed quietly.

You had known.

Some part of you had known since the moment it happened.

But hearing him say it was different.

Bucky looked sick with himself.

“I told myself I was being honest,” he said. “That you deserved to know. That it was some responsible adult conversation. But that’s not the whole truth. The truth is, I wanted you to show me that it mattered. I wanted proof that you still–”

He stopped.

“That I still loved you,” you finished.

His eyes burned.

“Yes.”

You looked down at your hands.

“And when I laughed.”

“You sounded like it didn’t matter,” he whispered. “Like I had imagined everything. Like I was standing there with my heart in my hands and you thought it was absurd.”

“I was terrified.”

“I know that now.”

“I was blindsided. And hurt. And trying not to fall apart in front of you.”

Bucky nodded, tears slipping again.

“I know.”

“And you punished me for not bleeding in the right language.”

The sentence cracked open something in his face.

For a moment, he looked almost young again. Not innocent. Just young in the way shame could strip a person down to the first version of themselves that had ever been afraid.

“Yes,” he whispered. “I did.”

You both sat with that.

The room felt heavier now, but also clearer. Like opening all the windows after years of stale air.

You shifted slightly on the couch.

Bucky noticed, but didn’t move.

Slowly, you reached across the space between you.

His eyes dropped to your hand.

You saw the exact second he stopped breathing.

You took his hand.

Not because the conversation was finished.

Not because all was forgiven.

Not because tenderness erased harm.

Just because you wanted to.

Because you could.

Because for years, his hand had been a thing you reached for only in emergencies, only through fear, only through circumstances too loud to let the gesture mean what it meant.

Now, in the quiet of your apartment, you took it simply because you wanted to know what it felt like to choose.

Bucky’s fingers trembled in yours.

He did not tighten his grip right away.

He let you decide the pressure.

When you laced your fingers more fully through his, his eyes closed.

A tear slid down his cheek.

You looked at your joined hands.

His palm was warm.

Familiar.

Dangerous only because of how much it mattered.

“I need to ask you something,” you said.

Bucky opened his eyes.

“Anything.”

You traced your thumb once over the side of his hand. His breath caught, but he stayed still.

“When you imagine what happens next,” you said slowly, “I don’t mean what you think you’re allowed to ask for. I don’t mean the careful answer. I don’t mean the one that respects what I want.”

His brow furrowed slightly.

You looked at him.

“I want to know what you want.”

Bucky stared at you.

You could see the reflexive resistance rise in him immediately. The instinct to say it doesn’t matter, whatever you need, I’ll do anything, I don’t want to pressure you.

All the right answers.

All the safe answers.

You squeezed his hand once.

“Not the version where you make yourself small enough to be harmless,” you said. “Just the truth. What would you want, if wanting didn’t cost anything?”

Bucky looked away.

For a long moment, he didn’t speak.

When he finally did, his voice was rough.

“You.”

Your chest tightened.

He looked back at you then, terrified of the word but unwilling to take it back.

“I want you,” he said again. “Not as an idea. Not as this thing I’ve been orbiting for years because I was too scared to land. I want a life with you.”

Your fingers tightened around his.

Bucky swallowed hard.

“I want to date you properly,” he said. “God, that sounds stupid after everything, but I do. I want to ask you out. I want to take you somewhere and sit across from you and not pretend I’m just your brother or your oldest friend or whatever safer word we used because we didn’t know what else to do.”

His mouth trembled.

“I want to hold your hand in public because you let me, not because I’m protecting you from someone. I want to learn what you like now. Not what you liked when we were kids. Not what I assume. Now.”

You watched him, hardly breathing.

“I want to know Athens,” he continued, quieter. “Not as something I’m scared will take you from me, but as the place you’re going because you earned it. I want to visit if you invite me. I want to see you there and have you show me some piece of stone that makes your whole face change because you’re thinking about two thousand years at once.”

A faint, helpless laugh slipped from you.

Bucky’s eyes softened at the sound, but he kept going.

“I want to be proud of you without making your success about my fear. I want to miss you without punishing you for leaving. I want to learn how to love you from a distance if that’s what your life needs.”

His voice broke slightly.

“And if someday you wanted me closer, I’d want that too.”

The room seemed to shrink around the two of you.

Bucky looked down at your hands, as if the sight steadied him and wounded him at the same time.

“I want ordinary things,” he admitted. “That’s the part that kills me. I used to think what I wanted was… impossible because it was too much. Too messy. Too wrong. But when I actually let myself imagine it, it’s not dramatic.”

His thumb moved slightly beneath yours. Not taking over. Just responding.

“I want coffee in your kitchen. I want to argue about whether I’m allowed to touch your books. I want you falling asleep on the couch with some impossible article open on your laptop. I want to complain about your apartment being freezing in winter and then fix the heater because it annoys me that it doesn’t work right.”

Your throat tightened.

“I want to be the person you call when something good happens,” he said. “And not because I need to be first. Just because you want me there.”

The words struck exactly where he meant them to.

Maybe because he had noticed.

Maybe because you had texted him about Athens.

Maybe because some part of him still understood that love was often revealed by the first person you wanted to tell.

Bucky inhaled shakily.

“I want to marry you someday,” he said.

Your whole body went still.

His eyes widened slightly, and he rushed on – not taking it back, but making room around it.

“Not now. Not soon. Not as some demand or promise you have to answer. I just… you asked what I want if I’m not making it smaller to be acceptable. That’s the truth. Someday, if we got there. If we healed enough. If you wanted it too. I’d want that.”

Your eyes burned.

Bucky’s voice dropped.

“I want a home with you that doesn’t feel like a cage. I want a version of us where you never have to wonder if asking for comfort will make me leave. I want to be someone who stays in the morning.”

The last sentence broke something open.

You looked away, blinking hard.

Bucky’s hand remained in yours, warm and shaking.

“I know wanting all that doesn’t mean I get it,” he said. “I know.”

You nodded, unable to speak yet.

He continued anyway, because maybe now that he had started telling the truth, stopping felt worse.

“And I want to be better,” he said. “Not so I can earn you like a reward. Not so you’ll forgive me faster. I want to be better because I don’t want fear to keep deciding who I become.”

You turned back to him.

His face was open now in a way you had rarely seen. No smirk. No armor. No attempt to make the confession less naked with humor.

“I want to stop using love like something I have to control before it destroys me,” he said. “I want to stop confusing being needed with being safe. I want to learn how to let you choose me without trying to make the choice for you first.”

He swallowed.

“And I want you to know that if your answer is no, or not yet, or I don’t know, I’ll still keep doing that work.”

Your chest ached with the force of it.

You looked down at your joined hands again.

For a long time, neither of you spoke.

Then you whispered, “That was a lot.”

A startled, broken laugh escaped him.

“Yeah,” he said. “You asked.”

“I did.”

His mouth twitched faintly, but his eyes stayed wet.

You took a slow breath.

“I don’t know yet,” you said.

“I know.”

“I want some of those things too. Probably most of them actually.”

Bucky’s hand tightened once before he forced it loose again, as if he was terrified of gripping too hard.

You noticed.

And instead of pulling away, you held on.

“But I need slow,” you said. “Slower than you want. Maybe slower than I want too.”

“Okay.”

“I need us to keep talking. Even when it’s ugly.”

“Yes.”

“I need you to keep going to therapy.”

“I will.”

“I need you not to make Athens a test.”

He shook his head immediately. “I won’t.”

“If I go, I need to go freely. Not with the feeling that I’m leaving you behind to suffer.”

Bucky’s face tightened, but he nodded.

“You’re not responsible for managing how much I miss you,” he said.

The words sounded learned.

But not false.

You believed he was trying.

“That’s good,” you whispered.

He gave a small, humorless smile. “I have professional help now.”

You let out a quiet laugh despite yourself.

The sound softened the room.

Bucky looked at you like the laugh was something sacred.

You shook your head faintly. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I did something miraculous.”

His gaze lowered to your hand in his.

“You took my hand,” he said quietly. “That feels pretty miraculous from where I’m sitting.”

The honesty undid you more than any grand confession could have.

You breathed in, unsteady.

Then you shifted closer on the couch.

Not much.

Only a few inches.

But Bucky felt it. You saw him feel it.

His whole body went still again, waiting.

You rested your shoulder lightly against his.

For a second, he didn’t move at all.

Then, very carefully, he leaned into the contact. Not enough to trap. Not enough to claim.

Just enough to answer.

The apartment was quiet around you.

The photograph stood upright in the entryway.

Not on the wall yet.

Not where it used to be.

But visible.

Present.

Waiting.

Like the two of you.

Like something not fixed, not finished, not simple. But no longer turned away.

“Stay tonight,” you finally murmured.

The words were barely louder than breath.

For a moment, Bucky went completely still beside you.

Not frozen in fear this time. Not pulling away. Just… receiving it. Letting the sentence land before he moved around it too quickly.

He didn’t ask if you were sure.

He didn’t make you defend the request.

He didn’t turn it into a trial where your certainty had to be proven before it could be trusted.

He only looked at you, eyes dark and soft and unbearably careful, and said, “Okay.”

One word.

No pressure inside it.

No hunger hidden beneath it.

Just acceptance.

You nodded once, as if confirming something to yourself more than to him, and the room settled again.

For several minutes, neither of you spoke.

The apartment felt suspended around you. The remnants of the evening still clung to both of you – the restaurant, the laughter, the weight of your defense finally over, Tony’s kiss on your forehead, your mother’s pride, Steve’s smile, Wanda’s tears, Pietro’s watchful relief.

And now this.

Bucky’s shoulder was still against yours. His hand still in yours. Warm. Real.

You looked down at your joined fingers, at the way his thumb remained perfectly still against your skin, as if he was afraid even the smallest movement might be interpreted as asking for more.

Something in your chest tightened.

Not painfully.

Decisively.

You shifted.

Bucky’s head turned toward you immediately, attentive without being alarmed. You didn’t say anything. You only released his hand, rose onto your knees, and moved before you could talk yourself out of it.

You climbed onto his lap.

One leg on either side of his.

Bucky stopped breathing.

His hands lifted instinctively, then froze in the air beside you, fingers slightly curled, waiting for permission his body wanted to assume and his mind refused to steal.

You looked at him.

His eyes were wide now, not with fear exactly, but with the force of holding himself back. His whole body was tense beneath you, controlled to the point of pain.

You took his wrists gently.

Placed his hands on your hips.

His fingers settled there like they had found something sacred and dangerous.

Still, he didn’t grip. Not at first.

You could feel the tremor in him.

“Bucky,” you whispered.

His gaze snapped to your face.

You didn’t know what you meant to say after that. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.

So instead, you leaned down and kissed him.

The first kiss was soft.

So soft it almost hurt.

A brush of your mouth against his, hesitant only because the moment was enormous and neither of you knew how to hold it yet. Bucky didn’t surge up to meet you. He let you set the shape of it. His lips moved carefully beneath yours, warm and familiar in a way that made something old inside you ache.

You pulled back half an inch.

His eyes opened slowly.

For a second, you just looked at each other.

Then you kissed him again.

This time, it lasted longer.

Your hands slid to his shoulders, then to the back of his neck, and you felt him exhale against your mouth like he had been waiting years to breathe into you. His fingers tightened slightly at your hips – not claiming, not trapping, just holding on enough that you could feel he was there.

The third kiss was different.

A little braver.

Your mouth parted against his, and Bucky made a small, broken sound low in his throat before he caught himself. His hands flexed once, then stilled again, restraint and want warring so openly beneath your palms that it almost made you dizzy.

You kissed him again.

And again.

The world narrowed to warm breath, quiet sounds, the roughness of his jaw under your fingertips, the way his body responded to every shift of yours and still waited for you to lead.

It wasn’t like the night after Steve.

That thought came suddenly, sharply.

And instead of ruining the moment, it steadied you.

Because this wasn’t grief spilling over into need. This wasn’t confusion in the dark. This wasn’t a line crossed and then erased by morning.

This was chosen.

You had brought him here.

You had taken his hand.

You had climbed into his lap.

You were awake inside every second of it.

Bucky broke the kiss first.

Not by pulling away far. Just enough to breathe. His forehead rested against yours, his eyes closed, his hands still careful on your hips.

“Wait,” he whispered.

Your stomach clenched before you could stop it.

He felt the shift immediately. His eyes opened.

“Not stop,” he said quickly, voice rough but gentle. “Not unless you want to. I just need to say something before I lose the ability to think in full sentences.”

Despite everything, despite the nerves sparking under your skin, a tiny laugh escaped you.

Bucky’s mouth softened at the sound.

Then he grew serious again.

“Whatever you want tonight,” he said quietly, “I’ll follow it.”

You held very still.

He kept his eyes on yours, steady and open.

“If you want me on the couch, I’ll sleep on the couch. If you want me in bed next to you and nothing else, that’s what happens. If you want to kiss me for an hour and then tell me to go make tea, I will make the best damn tea anyone has ever made.”

Your lips twitched.

His did too, faintly, but his voice stayed careful.

“If you want this to stop here, it stops here. If you want more, we go slow. And if you change your mind at any point, even after asking for something, even halfway through, even one second before–” His throat worked. “You say it, and I stop.”

Your chest tightened so hard it almost stole your breath.

He swallowed.

“And I know that sounds like something I should not have to say,” he added, voice lower. “But I want to say it anyway. Because I need you to hear it from me now. I won’t disappear from you in the morning. I won’t pretend this didn’t happen. I won’t make you carry it alone.”

The words hit exactly where they were meant to.

You blinked hard, looking down between you for half a second.

Bucky’s thumbs brushed once, barely there, over the fabric at your hips.

“And,” he added, his mouth curving into something softer, almost shy, “for the record… I am strongly in favor of more kissing.”

A laugh broke out of you against his mouth before you could hold it back.

Small.

Surprised.

Real.

Bucky’s face changed as if the sound had physically touched him.

You kissed him again before he could say anything else.

He responded this time with a little less fear, though the restraint never vanished entirely. His hands moved carefully along your sides, never farther than you allowed, never faster than your body invited. Your fingers found his hair, and when you tugged lightly, he inhaled sharply against you, then laughed under his breath like he couldn’t believe he was allowed to feel joy and ache at the same time.

You stayed like that for several minutes.

Maybe longer.

Time loosened.

Kisses deepened and softened and deepened again. Sometimes you paused just to breathe against each other. Sometimes Bucky’s mouth brushed your cheek, your jaw, the corner of your lips, reverent more than hungry. Sometimes you pressed your forehead to his and simply sat there, feeling the shape of him beneath you, solid and alive and waiting.

Eventually, you pulled back.

Bucky’s eyes opened at once.

His lips were parted. His face was flushed. His hands were still on your hips, but the second you shifted, he loosened them automatically.

You climbed off his lap.

For one sharp second, his expression flickered – fear, old and fast, the fear of having wanted too much.

Then you took his hand.

The fear stopped there.

You stood in front of him, fingers wrapped around his, and pulled gently.

He rose.

Neither of you spoke as you led him down the hallway.

Your apartment felt different in the dark. Softer. More intimate. The familiar walls, the framed prints, the books stacked too high on the shelves, the narrow hall that had once felt like a place you walked through alone – all of it seemed to hold its breath as you brought him toward your bedroom.

At the doorway, you stopped.

Bucky stopped with you.

The room was dim, lit only by the faint glow from the window and the lamp you had left on near your desk. Your bed was made, not perfectly anymore but still neat enough that you could see Steve’s care in it somewhere. The clean sheets. The quiet proof that people had wanted you to come home to softness.

You turned to face Bucky.

His hand was still in yours.

He looked at you like he was trying not to want too loudly.

You drew in a slow breath.

“This doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven everything,” you said.

Bucky’s expression sobered instantly.

“I know.”

“I need you to really know that.”

“I do,” he said, voice quiet. “I don’t want you to give me something tonight because you feel like it settles the debt.”

“It doesn’t.”

“No,” he whispered. “It doesn’t.”

You looked down at your joined hands, then back at him.

“I’m still hurt.”

His jaw tightened, but he didn’t look away.

“I know.”

“And some things are still going to come back,” you said. “Maybe tomorrow. Maybe later. Maybe when I don’t expect it.”

“Then we’ll deal with them when they come back,” he answered. “If you let me. And if you don’t, I’ll still deal with my part.”

Your throat tightened.

That was new.

Not perfect.

Not magically healed.

But new.

You stepped closer.

“I want to make love with you tonight,” you said, voice soft but steady. “If you want that too.”

Bucky’s face changed.

Not with triumph.

Not with relief so selfish it erased the weight of what you’d said.

His expression opened in something more fragile than want. Something stunned and grateful and almost afraid of itself.

He closed his eyes for one second, like he needed to gather enough control not to answer too quickly.

When he opened them again, they were wet.

“I want that,” he said.

The words came out rough.

Then, because he was trying – really trying – he added, “But only if we keep talking. Only if you promise me you’ll tell me if something feels wrong.”

You nodded.

“I promise.”

“And I’ll ask,” he said. “Maybe too much.”

A faint smile touched your mouth. “I think I can survive being asked.”

His breath left him in something close to a laugh.

Then he lifted your hand to his mouth.

Not your lips.

Not yet.

He kissed your knuckles first.

Slowly.

Like a vow he wasn’t saying because vows were too easy to make and harder to live.

You stepped closer and touched his face with your free hand.

The bruises were gone now, but you could picture them. Pietro’s fist. Your mother’s slap. Natasha’s anger. The marks that had followed your absence like consequences made visible.

Your thumb brushed his cheek.

Bucky leaned into the touch with a restraint that made your chest ache.

“I don’t want to be scared of you forever,” you whispered.

His eyes closed.

“I don’t want that either.”

“I’m still scared sometimes.”

“I know.”

“But not right now.”

He opened his eyes.

You looked at him, and this time you let him see the truth there.

The want.

The tenderness.

The wound.

The choice.

“Right now,” you said, “I want you.”

Bucky’s breath trembled.

Then he kissed you.

Slowly at first.

A question.

You answered by stepping into him, by sliding your arms around his neck, by letting your body rest against his without bracing for punishment. His hands came to your waist again, then your back, careful over the places he now knew had held old pain long before he ever added new ones.

When his palm settled between your shoulder blades, you stiffened for the smallest fraction of a second.

He stopped instantly.

“Here?” he whispered.

You breathed.

The old memory flickered – belts, punishment, the reflexive expectation of pain where tenderness now waited.

Then it passed.

You reached back, covered his hand with yours, and pressed it more firmly against you.

“Here,” you said.

Bucky’s eyes shone.

He nodded once.

“Okay.”

There were no perfect movements after that. You both undressed each other clumsily, as if it were the first time.

There was no cinematic smoothness.

Only care.

Only the slow unlearning of fear in real time.

You kissed him until your knees felt weak. He followed when you stepped backward toward the bed. When you sat, he knelt in front of you for a moment, hands resting on your thighs but not moving higher, looking up at you like he needed to memorize the fact that you were still here.

“You okay?” he asked quietly.

You nodded.

Then, because you had promised truth, you added, “Nervous.”

“Me too.”

That made you smile faintly. “You?”

“Terrified,” he admitted. “In a very dignified, masculine way.”

A laugh slipped out of you.

“There it is,” he murmured.

“What?”

His face softened.

“You laughing.”

The tenderness of that nearly undid you.

You leaned down and kissed him again.

His hands slid around your back, drawing you closer as he laid the both of you on the bed.

His lips moved against your neck, breath warm and gentle. His tongue traced the delicate line of your collarbone while his fingers discovered the sensitive skin above your hips, careful and curious.

You made a soft sound without meaning to.

He froze instantly.

“No,” you whispered. “Don’t stop.”

His hesitation lasted only a beat longer, then returned to exploring with a new reverence.

“Does this feel okay?” he murmured against your skin.

“Yes,” you breathed.

“Tell me. Anything that isn't good.”

You nodded again.

He learned the shape of you with hands and lips. Touch became language. Every sigh from you was answered by careful attention from him.

Soon your fingers tangled in his hair, pulling him up for more kisses.

His body pressed against yours, firm and grounded.

You could feel his heart beating as wildly as your own.

“Please,” you said finally, not knowing exactly what you begged for.

Bucky seemed to understand perfectly.

His hand moved between your legs, touch hesitant but determined.

You arched into him, a gasp escaping as waves of pleasure started building within you.

“Okay?” he asked again, voice rough now.

“Yes,” you managed. “God, yes.”

He found a rhythm that made thoughts scatter.

His name became a prayer on your lips.

His breath quickened as he watched your face, pupils dark with desire but also with something deeper – adoration maybe, or the stunned miracle of being here with you like this.

The world narrowed to skin and heat and breath.

To the way he whispered your name when your release washed through you like warm rain.

To the feeling of his strong arms wrapping around you as you came back to yourself trembling.

He held you without speaking for long minutes, hands stroking your back slowly, as if steadying both of you.

When finally you raised your head to look at him, his expression held such tenderness it made your chest ache.

“Hey,” he said softly.

“Hey,” you echoed.

He studied your face, like looking for cracks.

Then, “I love seeing you like this.”

He said you more than this.

He meant your relaxation after tension.

He meant your trust after fear.

You understood suddenly that what he found beautiful wasn't pleasure itself but the permission you gave each other to feel it.

This revelation broke through something in you.

The carefulness.

The caution.

With sudden boldness, you rose and pushed him back onto the bed, straddling his hips.

His surprise quickly melted into acceptance, then eagerness.

His hands settled on your waist, thumbs drawing circles against your skin.

“Now who’s nervous?” you asked playfully.

He grinned.

“You have no idea.”

You leaned down, hair falling like a curtain around your faces.

“Show me,” you whispered against his lips.

He did.

He flipped you gently, never breaking the kiss.

Bodies aligning like puzzle pieces finally finding their match.

Nervousness disappeared between kisses and caresses.

When he finally entered you, it was slow and deliberate, his body trembling with the effort of control.

“You okay?” he asked again, the words almost inaudible against your neck.

You nodded, hands clutching his shoulders.

Then you took a deep breath and let your legs wrap around him, pulling him deeper.

His breath hitched.

You moved together, finding rhythm through trial and hesitation until it became something instinctive, ancient.

His eyes never left yours unless to close in moments of intense feeling.

His hands were everywhere and nowhere – framing your face, clutching your hips, buried in your hair.

The sounds he made – quiet, vulnerable gasps against your skin – told you more than words could about what this meant to him.

Not just sex.

Connection.

A bridge crossed.

He rolled you both, and you straddled him, finding your own pace.

His hands guided your hips as he watched you with those beautiful blue eyes dark with pleasure and wonder.

“You’re…” He started but couldn't finish.

“Yes,” you replied anyway.

He laughed softly, the vibration of it inside you making you shudder.

“I just...” He struggled to explain.

“You what?”

His answer came without thought, raw honesty:

“I keep thinking this is the best I’ll ever feel.”

You slowed, looking down at him truly.

At the sweat gathering on his temples.

At the slight smile that didn't quite form.

At the vulnerable openness of his expression.

You understood with sudden clarity that he wasn't just talking about pleasure.

He meant belonging.

Meaning.

Being wanted not despite the broken parts but perhaps because of them – because they made him who he was, the man you were choosing.

You leaned down, foreheads touching, still joined.

“It gets better,” you promised.

His fingers laced through yours.

“Yeah?” he asked, small hope in that single word.

“Every day,” you assured. “If you stay.”

For the first time, something in your tone reminded you of his earlier bargaining – you'd made a promise without realizing it.

His gaze grew serious.

He understood.

“Okay,” he said simply.

And that was enough.

That was everything.

Your rhythm resumed, deeper now, more intentional.

You moved together with a singular purpose – to get as close as humanly possible, to merge briefly into something whole and unbroken.

His name on your lips became urgent.

When your release found you this time, it came with such intensity that you cried out, surprised by the force of it.

He held you through it, murmuring your name like a mantra, like salvation.

As the waves subsided, you became aware of his control breaking. He moved you, putting you under him, on your back again.

His rhythm faltered.

He buried his face in your neck, breath hot and ragged against your skin.

You held him tight.

“Let go,” you whispered.

And he did.

With your name on his lips, he shuddered violently, his body finding release with something that sounded like relief, like release from decades of something he’d never been able to name.

When it was over, he didn't move immediately, just remained with his head on your chest, your heart beating against his ear.

Your fingers combed through his hair. Neither of you spoke. Words seemed inadequate somehow. Minutes passed before finally he shifted, settling beside you but still maintaining contact, legs intertwined. You turned onto your side to face him. His expression in the dim light was relaxed but deeply attentive, still mapping your face as if worried you might disappear. “What are you thinking?” you asked softly. He took your hand, laced fingers together. His thumb traced over your knuckles. “I didn't know it could feel like this,” he said after a moment. “Not just... this. The quiet after.” You smiled faintly. “I didn't either.” “With me?” he clarified, something vulnerable in the question. You squeezed his hand.

“With anyone.”

A wave of emotion crossed his face too complex to name.

Silence settled between you, comfortable and warm.

Outside, the world continued turning.

In this bed, you found something still and unshakeable – not in the dramatic, passionate moments, but in the quiet aftermath when two people lay tangled together, neither willing or able to let go.

Bucky shifted, bringing the blanket up over both of you.

He kissed your shoulder.

“Okay?” he asked again.

This time, the word carried layers – about the aftermath, about vulnerability, about everything unspoken between you.

You turned in his arms until you faced him completely.

“Yeah.”

His smile was genuine now, reaching his eyes.

“Good.”

And later – much later – when the room had gone still and the city hummed faintly beyond the glass, you lay beneath the sheets with your head near Bucky’s shoulder, your breathing slow, your body tired in a way that felt grounded instead of hollow.

Bucky was awake.

You could tell by the way he held himself. Still careful. Still afraid to assume sleep had granted him rights the waking world had not.

You shifted closer.

His breath caught.

Then, slowly, he wrapped an arm around you. His body curved around yours, arm draped protectively over your waist.

You let him.

For a long while, neither of you spoke.

Then you murmured, half into his skin, “You’re still here.”

Bucky’s arm tightened around you.

Not too much.

Just enough.

“I’m still here,” he whispered.

You closed your eyes.

And this time, when morning waited somewhere beyond the dark, it did not feel like a threat.

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BUCKY taglist: @greatenthusiasttidalwave | @highhopes1008 | @phoenix-in-writing | @mollyherondale | @sassandscribbles | @alyssinwunderland-blog-blog | @pattiemac1 | @buckysdecaflove | @fantasyfootballchampion | @sebbymybaby-21 | @theoryxwaller | @apenny4thots | @mishkatelwarriorgoddess | @allthingswickedpodcast | @vicmc624 | @strangerthing93 | @galaxygoddess30 | @peachiestevie | @evilplansandstuff | @nicobidd | @i-lie-here-charmed | @sebastians-love | @bennyyion

There are exactly three kinds of phone calls that happen after 2:17am.

The first are emergencies. The second are mistakes. The third belong to Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.

Your ears buzz with your ringing phone from beneath the dim blue glow of your apartment television, half-curled on the couch with paperwork balanced over your knees and takeout gone cold on the coffee table. Outside your windows, rain slicks the fire escape silver beneath the streetlights. Inside, your apartment smells faintly like coffee grounds, printer ink, and the lavender candle you forgot to blow out two hours ago. It would almost be peaceful until the screen flashes her name.

Because of course it does.

You let it ring once longer than you should before answering.

“Tell me you’re alive,” Valentina says by way of greeting.

You close your eyes. “Wouldn't answer if I wasn't.”

“Cute. I need Coney Island locked down by Friday.”

Your stomach sinks immediately.

There’s the rustle of papers on her end, heels clicking somewhere distant, voices moving around her like orbiting satellites. Valentina never really exists in silence, she exists in motion, in disruption. In perfectly sharpened smiles and impossible demands delivered like casual suggestions.

You glance toward the calendar taped beside your kitchen, every visible square is already full. Press conference Tuesday. Magazine interview Wednesday. Damage control briefing Thursday. A breakfast segment Friday morning where you'll have to remind John Walker to not call a reporter a communist on live television.

Again.

And somewhere between all of that, you’re supposed to sleep.

“Locked down for what?” you ask carefully, already knowing you won’t like the answer.

“The festival.”

Your face scrunches to yourself as you click the television off.

“The what?”

“The promo event for the New Avengers initiative.” She says it like this has always existed. Like you’ve simply forgotten. “Public morale is still shaky after New York.”

Shaky, that’s one word for it. Another might be catastrophic.

The Void incident had left the city bruised in ways news reports couldn’t fully capture. Broken storefronts, candlelight vigils, protestors outside federal buildings. Viral footage looping endlessly online and every headline asking the same question in different fonts:

Who cleans up the people meant to save everyone else?

Valentina’s answer, apparently, is a carnival.

You press your fingers against your forehead. “You want me to plan a festival in four days.”

“A patriotic community outreach event,” she corrects smoothly. “Family friendly. Charming. Nostalgic Americana. Think hot dogs, ferris wheels, smiling children.”

“You’re describing propaganda.”

“I’m describing public relations. Which is your department.”

Your department. Which, in practice, means every department. You handle schedules, rewrite interviews, stop Alexei from drunkenly live-streaming classified conversations. You remind Walker not to threaten journalists. You once spent six straight hours convincing a publication not to run an article titled THE WINTER SOLDIER: CAN HE FEEL LOVE? You coordinate meetings, smooth scandals, track medication schedules, answer six phones at once, and carry emergency aspirin in every handbag you own because stress headaches have become less of an inconvenience and more of a personality trait.

Sometimes you think your real superpower is surviving on four hours of sleep and shitty vending machine coffee.

“You’ll have the team there,” Valentina continues. “Photo opportunities. Meet-and-greets. Humanize them.”

Humanize them as if they aren’t human already, messy and difficult and exhausted human beings carrying too much aching violence in their bones. You think of Yelena rolling her eyes through interviews while secretly making sure catering staff eat before security does. Bob nervously apologizing every time he takes up space in a room. Ava standing closest to exits without realizing it. Bucky Barnes sitting through press briefings with the expression of a man enduring minor dental surgery.

Your chest tightens a little at the thought of him. Not because you know him well, you don’t, not really. But you know the shape of him around the edges. The quiet way he lingers after meetings to stack abandoned coffee cups when nobody’s looking. The way he always notices when you haven’t eaten lunch. The low rasp of his voice saying your name carefully, like he’s worried about handling it wrong. You know he watches you when Valentina gets especially cruel. You know he hates these events, and now you’re about to force him into another one.

“There’s one more thing,” Valentina says.

Of course there is.

“The board wants something memorable.”

You stare blankly at your dark television screen. “…Define memorable.”

Valentina's laugh is all you get before the call clicks.

By the grace of cold brew and a supercharged energy drink, your own concoction that you only resort to in times of ultimate need, three days later Coney Island looks like someone tried to shove patriotism and Valentine’s Day into a blender.

Workers haul string lights across vendor stalls while event coordinators scream into headsets. Red-and-white banners snap violently in the ocean wind. Somewhere down the boardwalk, someone is testing a carousel organ loud enough to qualify as psychological warfare. Your clipboard is tucked against your chest while three phones vibrate simultaneously in your coat pocket and you haven’t sat down in nine hours. There are very few moments in life where you can physically feel a migraine settle in the back of your mind like a sedimentary rock, but this is definitely one of them. You pinch the bridge of your nose hard enough to see stars while the vendor beside you shifts awkwardly beneath your silence.

Behind you, Bucky's waiting beside a post. You can feel the weight of his stare somewhere between your shoulder blades. Not impatient or angry, just deeply suspicious in the way stray dogs eye thunderstorms.

You turn slowly, daring your approach.

The ocean wind catches strands of his hair as you walk over, dark and unruly from the humidity. He’s dressed down today—henley beneath a leather jacket, gloves tucked into one pocket like he’d debated wearing them and decided against it. The afternoon sun cuts sharp across the tired lines of his face, then his eyes flick past you toward the booth. Toward the giant pink sign with his name on it.

His expression goes completely blank which is somehow worse.

“Okay,” you say carefully. “Before you react—”

“Kissing booth.”

“Technically it’s more of a charity—”

“Kissing booth.”

You inhale slowly through your nose.

“It's a temporary kissing-adjacent promotional… station?”

Bucky stares at you, and you fearfully stare back. Somewhere nearby, Alexei loudly shouts something in Russian followed by what sounds suspiciously like metal bending. The boardwalk rattles with activity around you. Workers finish nailing the last of the stakes while vendors wheel carts into position. Someone tests the speakers again, blasting an aggressively cheerful rendition of Love Shack across Coney Island and you swear for a whole minute the universe is laughing at you.

Bucky gestures vaguely toward the booth like he’s not entirely convinced it’s real yet. “You want me to sit in there.”

“No,” you say quickly. “Well, yes. Kind of. This is just— there was a mix-up with the booth assignments.”

His eyes narrow slightly. “Assignments?”

You pull the clipboard tighter against your chest.

Because, yes, assignments. The assignments you had spent the last forty-two hours fighting to organize while surviving exclusively on caffeine and stress. It had started reasonably enough, Valentina wanted a carnival and you had insisted if the Thunderbolts were going to do public outreach, they needed something interactive instead of forcing traumatized assassins on some stage for another dead-eyed press conference.

So you made booths.

Alexei immediately claimed the strength tester after nearly breaking it during setup. Yelena requested “something dangerous but whimsical,” which somehow became axe throwing and tightrope demonstrations after three separate insurance waivers. Ava chose disappearing tricks because, according to her, “I already vanish, might as well monetize it.” Walker took ring toss with the terrifying intensity of a man preparing for combat. And Bob—sweet, nervous Bob spent two entire nights teaching himself how to make balloon animals from YouTube tutorials because he wanted “kids to have a nice time.”

It should have worked perfectly and it almost had. Until Bucky never handed in his assignment slip. You had reminded him three times, once after a briefing, once outside the elevator and once while he was making coffee at two in the morning in the compound kitchen, sleeves shoved up his forearms while rain hammered the windows.

He’d looked exhausted that night. Distant. You remembered him rubbing a hand over his face and mumbling, “I’ll get it to you tomorrow.” Tomorrow had become three days later, three days later had become now, and now every booth was filled except one.

You clear your throat. “The thing is Mr. Barnes, since I didn’t get your slip back in time, you’re on the last rotation for the—”

“No.” The word comes instantly, flat and immediate.

You blink. “But Mr. Barnes—”

“No.”

The breeze snaps sharply through the velvet curtains behind you. Bucky folds his arms now, jaw tightening beneath the scruff.

“I’m not doing that.”

His voice isn’t harsh, and that’s the problem. If he sounded angry, maybe this would be easier. Instead he just sounds tired, sunken bone-deep tired. Like the very idea of sitting beneath a neon sign while strangers lined up to kiss him feels less embarrassing and more fundamentally cruel.

Guilt twists hot beneath your ribs and you lower your voice instinctively.

“We can figure something else out.”

And you mean it. You’ll rearrange the rotations. Move people around. Take over a booth yourself if you have to. You can fix this. You always fix this. But before another word leaves your mouth, heels click sharply across the boardwalk behind you and every muscle in your spine tightens immediately.

Valentina. Of course.

She appears beside you draped in cream silk and diamonds despite the salt-heavy wind, sunglasses perched elegantly atop perfectly styled hair. She takes one look at the booth, then at Bucky standing there like he’d rather be shot, and smiles.

Not kindly.

“Oh, good,” she says smoothly. “We’re discussing the crowd favorite.”

Bucky’s expression darkens instantly. “I said no.”

Valentina doesn’t even pause. “Put up or shut up, Barnes. You signed a contract.”

Silence drops hard between them, so hard that the nearby laughter buzzes faintly across the wind. The ferris wheel creaks overhead somewhere down the pier, each sound that once felt distant now nearly echoed in the silence.

Bucky stares at her with the particular stillness of someone barely holding himself together.

“You can’t seriously think this is a good idea.”

“I don’t particularly care whether it’s a good idea,” Valentina replies. “I care whether it works.”

“It’s humiliating.”

“It’s publicity.”

“It’s demeaning.”

“It’s one afternoon.”

You watch his jaw flex sharply as he looks away first out toward the ocean, toward gray water crashing endlessly against the pylons beneath the boardwalk and suddenly you remember that article again. THE WINTER SOLDIER: CAN HE FEEL LOVE? You remember ripping it from a reporter’s hands before Bucky could see it, remember staying late to bury the piece before publication, remember the way people look at him sometimes—not like a person, but like something to dissect. A weapon wearing human skin.

Your chest aches unexpectedly.

“Val,” you start quietly, “I can figure something else out, maybe we should just—”

“No,” she says simply.

Then, to Bucky, “You want the public to stop fearing you and seeing you as this weapon of mass destruction? Then give them something else to look at.”

The words land harder than she probably intends, or maybe exactly as intended. Bucky goes still, he's not angry or defensive, just closed off somewhere distant behind his eyes. You hate that expression. Hate how familiar it’s become around the compound. Because every time someone talks about him instead of to him, he gets that same look on his face like he’s already halfway gone from the room.

For a long moment, nobody speaks, then Bucky lets out a quiet humorless laugh and shakes his head once.

“Unbelievable.”

“You’ll survive.”

His eyes flick toward you then and somehow that’s worse. Because he isn’t looking at Valentina trying to asses the best way to dispose of her. He’s looking at you, not accusingly, he doesn't even look upset, really. Just tired. There's the gentle crinkle at the corner of his eyes that if you didn't know any better, looked apologetic, like he knows you’re caught in the middle of this too.

You swallow hard.

“I’m sorry,” you say softly.

Something shifts briefly in his expression at that, something small enough you almost miss it. Then he sighs through his nose and drags a hand back through his hair.

“When do I start.”

Valentina smiles immediately, victorious. "Gates open in ten.”

By eight-thirty, Coney Island is glowing.

Not metaphorically, but literally glowing. Strings of carnival lights burn gold against the dark sky while neon signs flicker to life across the boardwalk. The ferris wheel spins slow and bright beside the ocean, all color and motion reflected against black water. Music drifts through the salt-heavy air—old pop songs, laughter, barkers shouting over games, the distant metallic scream of roller coasters cutting through the evening.

And somehow, it works. You stand near the main stage clutching your three phones and a clipboard while the crowd surges around the booths in thick waves of people. Families, tourists, influencers and reporters. Children running around with cotton candy bigger than their heads. Nobody’s yelling, nobody’s protesting, nobody’s asking who died in New York. For the first time in weeks, the New Avengers aren’t being looked at like loaded weapons. They’re just people. Messy, strange people at a carnival. Alexei becomes an instant favorite with teenage boys after “accidentally” lifting the strength tester clean out of the ground during a demonstration. He spends the next hour flexing for selfies while loudly insisting he could have beaten Steve Rogers in arm wrestling.

Ava disappears mid-conversation often enough to make children shriek with delight. Yelena’s booth develops the longest line after she starts mocking participants while perfectly splitting balloons with throwing axes.

“You throw like frightened raccoon,” she tells one businessman flatly. “But good effort.”

Walker gets weirdly competitive over ring toss and starts coaching children with military precision.

“Follow through, buddy. Commitment. Wrist control.”

And Bob ends up surrounded by kids hanging onto every balloon animal he makes like he’s performing actual magic. You buy a ticket from his booth for good measure after you catch him smiling to himself at one point while a little girl hugs a balloon dinosaur to her chest like treasure.

It’s good, better than good. It’s human.

Your chest loosens slowly throughout the evening in tiny increments you barely notice. Every successful interview, every laugh, every smiling photo opportunity. Every headline you know tomorrow won’t be catastrophic. Maybe this is what relief feels like you think, or maybe it’s just exhaustion finally numbing you properly. Either way, you’ll take it. You weave through the crowd toward the last booth on the pier, heels clicking over old wood planks sticky with spilled soda and ocean mist.

You already know what you’ll find before you get there. Chaos, soft red lipped line chaos. The line for Bucky’s booth stretches nearly halfway down the boardwalk because of course it does. The pink curtains glow warmly beneath hanging fairy lights while the giant KISSING BOOTH sign sways slightly overhead. Ticket stubs litter the counter. Someone has thrown rose petals everywhere for reasons you genuinely cannot begin to understand.

And seated inside like a deeply reluctant beauty pageant winner is Bucky Barnes. Miserable, popular, radiantly handsome and absolutely doomed.

You stop just outside the booth and watch for a moment unnoticed. He’d compromised eventually, after nearly an hour of arguing how the booth was going to run. No actual kissing, that had been the line. People could approach, take pictures, kiss his cheek if they wanted, maybe the corner of his mouth if they were brave enough and respectful about it.

That was it. No lap sitting, no flirting encouraged, no weird requests. And honestly? That restraint somehow makes the whole thing worse. Or better, you’re not entirely sure. Because Bucky sitting there all broad shoulders and reluctant charm while blushing every time someone kisses near his mouth has apparently become the event of the century.

A girl in her twenties leans over the booth counter carefully. “Can I kiss your cheek?”

Bucky sighs like a man moments from death. “Yeah. Sure.”

She kisses just beside his mouth instead and his ears turn immediately pink. The entire group of friends behind her starts screaming and you have to look away before he notices you smiling.

“You enjoying yourself?”

The voice startles you slightly, Bucky’s watching you now from beneath the booth lights, one brow lifted seemingly catching your not-so-slick smile.

You recover quickly. “I’m enjoying that nobody’s been arrested.”

“Still plenty of time.”

Someone shoves another handful of raffle tickets into the jar beside him so much so that the thing is nearly overflowing now.

You eye it suspiciously.

“You realize you’re winning by a concerning margin.”

“I didn’t ask for this.”

“No,” you murmur. “You just accidentally became the main attraction.”

Another woman approaches the booth already clutching her phone for a selfie. Bucky gives you one last tired look before turning back toward the crowd. And maybe it’s the lights, or exhaustion, or the strange warmth of the evening settling around all of you. But something about him looks softer tonight, less guarded. Not happy exactly, just a little lighter maybe, like he’s forgotten to brace for impact for a few hours.

You leave before he catches you staring.

By the end of the night, the carnival's glow grows hazy and golden with exhaustion. Children sleep against parents’ shoulders, the boardwalk smells like sugar and salt and fried dough as workers begin shutting down smaller game stalls while music drifts quieter now beneath crashing waves.

You stand offstage near the raffle table reviewing final attendance numbers when Valentina sweeps past in her silk and diamonds like she personally invented public approval.

“Excellent turnout,” she says smoothly.

You glance at the overflowing crowd gathered before the main stage. “Shockingly.”

“I’m rarely wrong.”

“You’re frequently evil, though.”

She smiles. “Occupational hazard.”

Before you can reply, she steps onto the stage to thunderous applause and immediately slips into performance. God, she’s good at it too. Warm smile, measured pauses, the exact cadence of someone manufacturing sincerity in real time.

“Tonight,” Valentina announces smoothly into the microphone, “was about rebuilding trust. About community. About reminding the world that heroes do not stand above the people—they stand beside them.”

You nearly choke.

Nearby, Yelena mutters, “If I roll my eyes harder they will fall out of skull.”

Applause erupts anyway and Valentina continues effortlessly.

"We thank you humbly for your contribution tonight, all funds will proceed to the Rebuilding Manhattan Foundation along with a hefty donation from yours truly. But enough about our success. It's time to celebrate you!"

Two workers brought out matching clear globes full of tickets.

“And now—our raffle booth winner.”

Oh, you had forgotten about the raffle.

The booth competition had been a last-minute addition. Whichever Avenger earned the most tickets throughout the evening became the grand prize, and whoever held the matching raffle ticket would win “an exclusive evening experience” with them.

You’d assumed Yelena would win. Or maybe Alexei. Certainly not—

“And by overwhelming demand,” Valentina says dramatically, “our winner is Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes.”

The crowd loses its mind, actual screaming and cheering erupts across the pier while spotlights swing wildly toward Bucky near the side stage.

His face goes completely blank.

“No,” he says immediately.

Walker laughs so hard he nearly folds in half. “Oh my God.”

Yelena is openly crying from laughter while Bob claps supportively while somehow also looking apologetic about it.

Bucky gets shoved toward the stage anyway beneath deafening applause. You watch him climb the steps with the expression of a man approaching his own execution as Valentina beams beside him.

“Now,” she says, lifting the massive raffle jar from his booth, “let’s see who our lucky winner is.”

You barely pay attention at first. You’re checking engagement numbers on your phone while she digs dramatically through the tickets, then she reads the number aloud.

And your stomach drops clean through the floor.

No. No, absolutely not.

You know that number because you bought exactly one raffle ticket all night at Bob’s booth. Because he'd looked so proud of himself and that stupid dinosaur balloon. It was just one ticket. Your hand fumbles for the ticket in your pocket, freezing when you feel the paper brush against your fingertips. Around you, silence spreads slowly. People start turning and looking as your blood goes cold and Valentina repeats the number. You stare down at the crumpled pink ticket as you pull it from inside your coat pocket like maybe reality will change itself if you wait long enough.

It doesn’t, unfortunately. Walker notices first, the grin that spreads across his face is instant and catastrophic.

“Oh, this is unbelievable.”

Yelena physically doubles over laughing. Bucky looks confused at first then he sees your expression and realization hits him all at once. His eyes widen slightly.

“Oh no.”

The crowd begins clapping impatiently while you briefly consider faking your own death. Instead, against every survival instinct in your body, you slowly raise the ticket and the screaming somehow gets louder.

“Oh my God,” Bob whispers delightedly.

You want the boardwalk to split open and swallow you whole. Disappointingly it leaves you whole as you climb the stage steps feeling heat crawl violently up your neck while hundreds of people cheer like this is the greatest romance of the century.

Bucky stares at you as you step beside him. He doesn't look upset, he seems more stunned than anything.

“You bought a ticket?” he asks quietly.

“It was for Bob.”

“How does that somehow makes this worse.”

Valentina appears beside you both practically glowing with satisfaction.

“Perfect,” she says even though absolutely nobody agrees with her.

Someone shoves a bouquet into your arms. Another worker places ridiculous little carnival crowns onto both your heads to roaring applause from the crowd below. Then comes the champagne bottle, you stare at it in horror while Bucky looks like he’s dissociating.

"Now how 'bout a kiss? In honor of the booth." Valentina grins, all teeth like a predator closing in on its prey. It may have sounded like a question but there was only one answer allowed.

You dared a look over to Bucky who's eyes have now dropped to the floor, if looks could kill the stage would evaporate beneath you. Clearly charity wasn't enough for Valentina, and what's a successful Da Fontaine affair without a little public humiliation?

Slowly, with a crack of feedback from the mic, she starts up. "Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!"

And like sheep, the crowd follows behind her, a sea of echoing voices overlapping each other in front of you until it all blended into one symphonious torture device. You think you could die right here. There had to be a way to convince your heart to give up, maybe you can feign a drop in blood sugar and faint, though you're sure Valentina would spin it off as you swooning over the—

"Goddamnit."

You don't know how you heard Bucky's voice over the cries of the crowd. You also don't know when he got so close to you. And you definitely don't know what to do with the fact that his lips are on yours. His hand ghosting the side of your forearm, fingers just barely grazing the skin leaving a strange tingle of warmth in their wake.

Just as quickly as you realized what was happening, it was over. He had stepped back to his spot, plastic crown crooked on his head and eyes back to the floor.

“Enjoy your night!” Valentina announces brightly into the microphone, shocking you back to reality.

The crowd cheers again. Pictures flash endlessly from below the stage capturing your smile that feels medically concerning. Then Valentina leans toward you subtly while applause swells around the pier. Still smiling perfectly for cameras, she murmurs from the corner of her mouth,

“Stock and popularity reports on my desk by midnight.”

You blink at her.

“You’re assigning homework during my public humiliation?”

“Adaptability is important.”

Then she steps away smoothly to wave at the crowd while you stand there beside Bucky wearing a plastic crown and holding champagne like the world’s most exhausted newlyweds. For a long moment after you step off stage neither of you speaks. Then Bucky looks over at you, looks at the flowers, the matching crowns, the absolute despair on your face. And to your horror, he laughs. Quiet and dry, the closest thing to boisterous you think he's probably capable of.

The sound hits you strangely hard beneath all the carnival lights.

“You okay there, sweetheart?” he asks softly.

You stare at him flatly, the morbid embarrassment coursing through your body not even allowing you to register the nickname that he slipped out.

“No.”

Bucky only laughs again as he finally steps off the stage.

You stayed behind for a couple hours to make sure the cleanup of the fair went smoothly, watching the vendors roll out and the workers breakdown the booths and rides with practiced ease. There's a strange serenity to it, watching a near dozen people move so fluidly despite all doing different things. And the end result is well worth it, a glittering Coney Island all to yourself. There aren't many perks that come with this jobs as the cons often outweigh the pros but it's in the little moment like these that you find yourself lucky to do what you do.

The tower is quiet by the time you get back, not wholly silent but quiet enough. The New Avengers Tower never really reaches silence anymore—not with old pipes humming through the walls, elevators sighing faintly at odd hours, distant footsteps echoing somewhere several floors away. There’s always movement lingering inside the building like it hasn’t fully decided whether it’s headquarters or home.

But compared to Coney Island, the stillness as you walk in feels deafening. The carnival lights are gone now, no echoing music, no cheering crowds. No champagne bottles shoved into your hands while strangers screamed because apparently public humiliation counts as team bonding. Just fluorescent hallway lights and exhaustion settling heavy into your bones.

The others scattered almost immediately after returning as they usually do. Walker probably disappeared toward the gym swinging some rings around his fingers he took from his booth for "practice purposes only". Yelena likely stole three leftover funnel cakes from catering “for emotional recovery.” Alexei would loudly insist tonight proved he was “man of people" and you have no doubt that Bob carefully carried his remaining balloon supplies back to storage like they’re precious cargo.

And Bucky, you don’t know where Bucky goes. Not that you look when you get there, you head straight toward your office, even if you didn't have paperwork to do it's just second nature to you now. Your arms and legs strangely yearning for the hunch of your desk chair. The room greets you exactly as you left it: dim desk lamp glowing amber over scattered paperwork, abandoned coffee cups lining the windowsill, schedules pinned crookedly across the corkboard beside your desk.

Home sweet home.

You sigh quietly and set the ridiculous bouquet onto your desk and for a second you just stare at it. The pink roses, baby’s breath and tiny glittering ribbons curled around the stems. The thing looks aggressively romantic to the point where you almost throw it away. Yet after a long moment, you find an empty vase near the filing cabinets and fill it carefully from the office sink. The flowers settle into the water slowly, softening the harshness of the room in a way you immediately resent.

Then there’s the crown. Cheap plastic silver with fake rhinestones glued along the front. You turn it over once in your hands and a laugh nearly escapes you remembering the look on Bucky’s face wearing the matching one beneath all those flashing cameras. You should throw this away too. Instead, without entirely meaning to you place it carefully on the shelf beside your desk. Right between the “World’s Best Boss” mug Bob gave you ironically and a stack of outdated press binders. You stare at it for a moment longer than necessary.

Then you sit down and go back to work, because that’s what you do.

Hours blur strangely after midnight.

The tower grows quieter floor by floor while your office remains trapped in artificial daylight from computer screens and desk lamps. You build itineraries, rewrite schedules, confirm hotels. Cross-reference security routes and everything in between for next month’s national press tour. Florida. Louisiana. Texas. Nevada. California. Washington. Every city another performance as another attempt to convince the public the world is safe in the hands of people barely holding themselves together.

Your eyes burn by one-thirty. By two, your shoulders ache, by two-forty-seven in the morning, you’re staring blankly at a spreadsheet without actually reading it.

The knock at your open office door startles you anyway.

You look up too quickly, your eyes needing a moment to adjust to the sudden change in view, and when they focus they go wide in surprise. Bucky leans against the doorway, hands shoved into the pockets of gray sweats, dark t-shirt hanging loose over broad shoulders. His hair is damp like he showered recently, slightly curled at the ends. There’s still a faint crease between his brows like he's been contemplating something for far too long.

For one disorienting second, he looks soft and domestic. Dangerously human in the warm low lighting of your office. Then you notice the plastic crown still balanced crookedly on his head.

You blink.

“…You kept it.”

He reaches up absently, touching the crown like he forgot it was there.

“Yelena tried to superglue it while I was asleep. Waiting on the solvent to set in.”

“That tracks.”

A small smile tugs briefly at his mouth before fading. Then his eyes drift over the room to the stacks of paperwork, your open laptop, the half-finished reports. You watch as his eyes slow over the vase of flowers beside your desk and the matching crown on your shelf. Something unreadable crosses his face.

“You’re still working?”

You glance back toward your screen automatically at the mention of it, your brain shifting back into work mode.

“Unfortunately.”

“It’s almost three.”

“Mhm.”

Bucky stays quiet for a moment. “So.”

“So?” You keep typing.

“Aren’t you gonna collect your reward?”

Your fingers stop over the keyboard as you look up slowly.

He’s watching you carefully now, expression unreadable beneath the soft shadows of the room. The question settles awkwardly between you. He doesn't seem like he's teasing exactly or entirely serious either.

Your stomach twists anyway.

“That’s not…” You clear your throat lightly. “It’s not like that.”

Bucky lifts a brow. “No?”

“No.”

You look back toward the spreadsheet because somehow that feels safer than looking directly at him.

“The raffle thing was just publicity. If it’d been someone else maybe they would’ve wanted the whole grand-prize experience but…” You shrug lightly. “It’s just me. You can ignore it and go about your night.”

Silence.

When you finally glance back up, Bucky is still staring at you. You can't tell if he's offended or relieved or none of the above. He's just studying you with this strange quiet intensity that makes your chest feel suddenly too tight.

“Just you,” he repeats softly.

You immediately regret the wording. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.”

But something about the way he says it makes it clear he’s not entirely convinced. You turn back toward your laptop quickly.

“I still have to finish these reports anyway.”

Bucky steps fully into the office then, slow and quiet against the carpet.

“You work too much, y’know?”

The words are almost too gentle.

You huff faintly. “I don’t think I work enough actually. If it was too much all this would be done by now and I’d be in bed.”

“That’s not how that works.”

“It is in this building.”

He leans against the edge of your desk now, arms folding loosely across his chest. The movement brings him closer, too close, because now you can smell soap and clean cotton and something distinctly him beneath it all. It dizzies you but your mind insists it's the lack of sleep and combined caffeine bombs running through your bloodstream instead.

“Valentina isn’t worth you being here losing sleep,” he says quietly.

The words hit harder than they should, making you stare down at the papers in front of you.

“I’m not here for Valentina.”

A beat passes.

“You’re her personal assistant.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m here for her.”

“Then what are you here for?”

The question should be easy. It isn't. Why isn't it? Your mouth opens automatically but nothing comes out and suddenly the exhaustion hits all at once. Not physically but emotionally, like a crack in the dam finally splintering beneath pressure of the water. You think about the last year, the endless damage control, the constant emergencies. The way your entire life has slowly narrowed into schedules and briefings and fixing problems before anyone notices they exist, how much of yourself you've carved out and sacrificed to the greater good of the team even when there was nothing left to give.

You think about tonight. About how happy everyone looked for a few hours, how they all seemed to just breathe and exist in peace beneath the lights, how Bucky laughed onstage beside you like he’d forgotten how tired he was. And for the first time since God knows when, you realize you genuinely don’t know why you’re still doing any of this.

The silence stretches too long.

Bucky watches you carefully now as concern beginning to soften the edges of his expression. And before you can stop yourself, the truth slips out quietly.

“…I don’t know anymore.”

The sincerity of it horrifies you instantly. You force yourself to recover after that, fast, too fast. Straightening in your chair and looking back toward your computer, rebuilding the walls before he can see through them properly. You gather the reports quickly into a neat stack.

“I’ve gotta go get these copied and fax them over to Washington,” you say lightly, voice suddenly professional again. “So feel free to let yourself out.”

You stand before he can respond.

“Goodnight, Mr. Barnes.”

The formality lands colder than intended, you feel it immediately and so does he. But neither of you says anything about it, you brush past him toward the printer room with papers clutched tightly in your hands while the office door swings softly behind you.

And Bucky stays standing there beside the flowers for a very long time.

The thing about exhaustion is that eventually it stops feeling temporary. It settles into people, becomes them. Bucky's good at noticing these kinds of things. He sees it in you that night when you walked past him out of your office. That slight crease at the corner of your eyes, the gentle downturn of your lips. It's more than just tired. It's the same exact same way he used to be after missions. Not sleepy ,or overworked but worn down from within. There’s a difference.

And unfortunately for him, once he notices something, he can’t seem to stop noticing it.

It starts innocently enough, at least that’s what he tells himself. Two weeks after the carnival, he catches sight of you asleep in one of the conference rooms at six-thirty in the morning. Not properly asleep, but the kind where your cheek rests against folded arms beside an open laptop while a spreadsheet still glows across your face. Your coffee has gone cold beside you. One heel dangles half-off your foot beneath the table.

You wake the second he opens the door on instinct, sitting up as if you were trying to reject the sleep from your skin, like your body no longer trusts rest enough to stay in it.

“Sorry,” he says automatically.

You blink at him once, clearly disoriented, before straightening too fast.

“No, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to—”

“You were asleep.”

“I know.”

“You should probably do that more.”

You laugh quietly at that, not because it’s funny, because you’re too tired to respond properly. Then you grab your laptop and hurry toward another meeting before he can say anything else. And for some reason, that bothers him, more than it should.

And he starts noticing more things.

The way you’re always the first person awake in the tower. The way your office light stays on long after everyone else has gone to bed, the stack of dry-cleaning hanging behind your office door because you haven’t gone home properly in three days. How you survive almost exclusively on vending machine coffee and whatever leftovers the kitchen staff can force into your hands. How every time Valentina calls your phone, something in your shoulders visibly tightens before you answer.

And then there’s that sentence.

I don’t know anymore.

It stays lodged irritatingly somewhere in the back of his head. Because Bucky knows what it sounds like when someone loses sight of themselves. He’s spent years listening to that exact emptiness in his own voice. So one night, after watching you miss dinner again because you were reorganizing a diplomatic security route for the third time, he does something he absolutely should not do.

He starts digging.

Not maliciously, not even deeply, at first. Just enough to satisfy curiosity, that’s what he tells himself anyway. Turns out, you’re surprisingly easy to find once he starts looking. There’s an old university article buried online about graduating journalism students. Your picture sits beside it smiling brightly into the camera, younger and softer somehow, eyes alive in a way he’s never actually seen in person.

The caption beneath it reads: Aspiring investigative journalist hopes to focus on political corruption and humanitarian reporting.

Bucky stares at that sentence longer than necessary. Investigative journalist. Not PR manager, not assistant, not professional crisis cleaner. He keeps reading. There are archived campus articles under your name too. Human-interest pieces with local interviews. A profile on immigrant-owned bookstores in Brooklyn, an article about public housing funding cuts. One opinion piece angry enough to surprise a laugh out of him. Your writing was good, really good. Honest in a way most modern journalism isn’t anymore. There’s warmth in it and curiosity, the clear desperate hope of someone who thought words could still matter.

Bucky leans back slowly in his chair.

Huh.

The next part takes more effort. Internal employee records aren’t exactly public, but neither are most things he can access if he really wants to. The file paints the picture quickly. Originally: summer internship with government media relations, some resume padding. Temporary. Then came the first extension, then the job offer, then Valentina personally requested you transferred under her division after a year.

Four years later, you’re still here.

The timeline unsettles him more than expected. Because somewhere between those records, he can practically see it happening one delayed dream at a time. One promotion, one emergency, one “just until things calm down.” Until suddenly four years are gone and now you sit in fluorescent offices at three in the morning saying things like I don’t know anymore.

Bucky closes the file as agitated energy crawls beneath his skin unexpectedly. He doesn’t like it. Doesn’t like how personal this feels when it shouldn’t. You’re not his responsibility. Hell, you work for Valentina which alone should make him keep his distance. Instead, he starts watching more carefully, not in a creepy way at least he desperately hopes not.

Just observant.

He notices your schedule before you even mention it aloud now. Knows when your meetings run long by the way you rub your temples afterward, knows you skip lunch on Thursdays because that’s when Valentina schedules back-to-back press briefings. Knows you take exactly nine minutes to drink your coffee every morning before the interruptions begin.

And eventually—because apparently he’s lost his mind—he taps into Valentina’s phone. It wasn't hard, not for him. He tells himself it’s because Valentina is secretive and manipulative and generally worth monitoring anyway. The fact that he immediately searches your name in her messages is entirely irrelevant.

Mostly, it’s work. Schedules, orders, and demands. Other texts read like dog commands. Move this meeting. Fix this interview. Get Barnes under control before he kills someone during press week. Bucky snorts quietly at that one, but underneath the logistics, another pattern emerges. Messages sent at absurd hours.

2:14 AM.

5:47 AM.

11:58 PM.

And every single time you answer. Immediately no matter the hour, no matter the request. One message in particular makes something cold settle heavily in his chest.

VALENTINA: Need revised public sympathy projections before morning.

YOU: Working on it now.

Timestamp: 3:11 AM.

Bucky checks the next message.

VALENTINA: Also your article draft for the congressional media package was overwritten. Rewrite before briefing.

Long pause.

Then finally:

YOU: Understood.

No complaint, no argument, nothing. Just understood. Bucky stares at the screen for a long time after that with his jaw tight because suddenly he understands something he hadn’t before. You aren’t staying because you love the work anymore, you’re staying because somewhere along the line, you stopped believing you were allowed to leave it.

And for reasons he absolutely cannot explain, that realization makes him angry.

The week the tour begins feels less like preparing for travel and more like trying to hold back the ocean with your hands. Every completed task reveals three more beneath it, every checked box spawns another checklist. You suppose that's the nature of public relations, nobody notices when things go right only when they go wrong.

So you sit alone in Conference Room Three at six-thirty in the morning surrounded by enough paperwork to qualify as structural support. The city beyond the windows is still waking up, sunlight creeps slowly between skyscrapers, painting the glass in soft gold, traffic hums faintly thirty floors below. Somewhere in the tower, coffee brews. The smell drifts down the hallway and for a moment, it reminds you of college. Early mornings in the journalism building, the campus newspaper office, stacks of articles spread across tables while everyone survived on caffeine and deadlines. Back then, exhaustion felt different, temporary and purposeful. You were tired because you were building something, not maintaining it.

The memory flickers briefly before another email notification drags you back to reality.

You sigh.

Florida. Louisiana. Flight manifests. Texas. Nevada. Security routes. North and South California. Washington. Hotel confirmations. Media schedules. Emergency contingency plans. It all blends together until the words feel foreign.

You move through the checklist automatically now, pen tapping softly against the table as you verify each item. Alexei's dietary accommodations. Bob's interview briefing packets. Yelena's legal waiver forms. Walker, God, Walker. You add another note reminding him not to argue with local reporters. Again.

The conference room door opens quietly but you don't look up.

"If that's another change request, I'm pretending not to speak English."

A pause.

"I don't think that'd work."

Your pen stills. Bucky. Of course.

You glance up briefly. He's dressed casually today—dark henley, jeans, leather jacket slung over one shoulder. His hair's tied back into a low bun at the nape of his neck. He looks rested. You try not to resent him for it.

"Morning."

"Morning."

Neither of you says anything for a moment as Bucky steps further into the room.

You immediately notice he has coffee, and because the universe enjoys cruelty, he notices you noticing. Without a word, he slides the second cup onto the table beside your paperwork. You stare at it, then at him, then back at the coffee.

"...What is this?"

"Coffee."

"I know it's coffee."

"Then we're making progress."

You blink and Bucky looks suspiciously pleased with himself as a laugh almost escapes before you stop it.

"Thank you, Mr. Barnes."

"You're welcome."

You reach for the cup and take a testing sip, it's exactly how you take it. Not too sweet, not too bitter with just enough cream.

Your stomach does something strange. "You remembered."

Bucky shrugs. "You seem to live off this stuff, you always get the same thing every morning."

That shouldn't surprise you that he knows that, but somehow it does because most people only notice your mistakes, not your coffee order. You take another careful sip and warmth settles into your chest. Unfortunately, it also makes you realize how tired you are.

Bucky sits across from you, the chair creaks softly beneath his weight. You immediately know this conversation is about to become dangerous. Not dangerous in the life-threatening sense, dangerous in the personal sense.

The kind you've spent years avoiding.

"So," he says casually.

Your eyes narrow suspiciously.

"So?"

"What'd you do before this?"

There it is. You knew it was coming eventually, ever since that night in your office, ever since I don't know anymore slipped out and you accidentally gave the both you an existential crisis.

You return to your paperwork immediately. "Nothing exciting."

Bucky doesn't move.

"Everybody did something before they got here."

"Not me. I spawned fully formed from a spreadsheet."

His mouth twitches and you refuse to acknowledge it.

"You probably went to college, right? What'd you study?"

"Writing." Technically true, partially, somewhat. True enough for this conversation.

"That's it?"

"Mhm."

"Must've been some real interesting writing."

"Thrilling."

"What kinda stuff d'ya write?"

You look back down at the checklist. Florida press briefing. Check. Louisiana catering. Check. Avoiding conversations about yourself. Hopefully check.

"It's not important."

Bucky studies you for a second.

The problem with him is that he notices things, not loudly, not obviously but thoroughly. Like he's assembling a puzzle nobody else realized existed.

"Seems important."

"It's really not."

"Why not?"

Because once upon a time you wanted things. That's why. And wanting things feels embarrassing now, like showing someone an old diary. There was a time when your future felt bright and specific. You were going to write and travel, report stories that mattered. You were going to chase truth through cities and courtrooms and tiny towns nobody paid attention to.

You were going to make a difference. Instead you're color-coding transportation schedules for superheroes, which sounds cooler than it feels.

You push the thought away quickly. "We need to focus on the tour."

Bucky sighs.

The sound is deeply familiar now, you've learned there are different versions. Annoyed sighs. Amused sighs. This one falls somewhere between concerned and stubborn.

"The tour's done."

"No, it isn't."

"It starts next week."

"Which means it isn't done."

He opens his mouth.

You point your pen at him immediately. "Don't."

"I haven't said anything."

"You were about to."

"Probably."

"Exactly."

Bucky leans back in his chair and for a moment, neither of you speaks. Sunlight stretches further across the conference table, the room grows warmer. Outside the windows, Manhattan continues waking up as your checklist waits patiently.

Eventually Bucky nods toward the stack of folders beside you.

"How many pages is that?"

You glance over. "...Two hundred and twelve. Double sided though."

He stares. "You counted?"

"I printed them."

"That's horrifying."

"Thank you."

"You need help."

"I have help."

"No, you have stress."

You try not to smile. You fail a little. His expression softens immediately when he catches it and the realization makes you look back down at your paperwork far too quickly. A strange silence settles afterward as Bucky watches you work. You pretend not to notice. Every so often he asks another question, small ones, harmless ones completely unrelated to work. Favorite movie. Favorite book. Whether you ever travel anywhere for fun. Each time, you brush them aside gently, deflect, redirect and return to logistics.

Because talking about yourself feels strangely difficult now. As if those pieces of you belong to someone else. Someone far from the person you are now. Someone who still believed she'd become the person she planned to be. Eventually the others begin arriving for the briefing, voices echo down the hallway. Laughter and arguments, Alexei loudly demanding breakfast. The moment breaks and you straighten automatically. Professional again, clipboard in hand, schedules organized, walls rebuilt.

But as Bucky stands to leave, he pauses beside your chair just briefly. Long enough to say quietly,

"I still think it's important."

You glance up. "What is?"

"The stuff before this."

For a second, something in your chest tightens. Then the hallway fills with noise as the team arrives ready to get the start of this tour. And before you can think too hard about the look in his eyes, you're already moving on to the next thing that needs fixing.

The tour starts in New York beneath camera flashes and manufactured optimism.

Valentina brands it NEW AVENGERS TAKE ON AMERICA in massive red-white-and-blue lettering splashed across buses, billboards, and every social media platform imaginable. There are matching jackets, coordinated appearances, sponsorships and press packets thicker than small novels. And at the center of all of it you're running everything behind the scenes, the magic behind the curtain. You’re the first one awake every morning and the last one asleep every night. Coordinating flights and confirming hotel security. Rewriting interview questions at two in the morning because a senator decided “government-sanctioned enhanced individuals” sounded too threatening. You memorize everyone’s schedules better than your own. Alexei hates early flights. Yelena gets carsick if she reads in moving vehicles. Walker refuses sparkling water on principle. Bob forgets meals when he’s nervous. Ava disappears physically and emotionally when overwhelmed. And Bucky quietly starts watching you unravel without you even realizing.

Florida comes first.

Warm ocean air and blinding sunlight. Endless beachside photo ops where reporters practically trip over themselves trying to re-brand the Thunderbolts as approachable. You stand off-camera the entire time holding three phones and an emergency schedule binder while makeup artists swarm the team beneath umbrellas. When a reporter corners Walker with a question about civilian casualties, you intercept the conversation before it can spiral. When Alexei drunkenly wanders toward a jet ski rental booth, you redirect him with the ease of long practice. When Bob panics before a televised interview, you crouch beside him backstage speaking so softly Bucky can’t hear the words from across the room—but he sees Bob visibly steady afterward.

Nobody thanks you, not really. Because by now everyone just expects you to catch disasters before they happen.

Louisiana is worse.

The BBQ festival turns into an overnight public event after attendance doubles unexpectedly. There’s live music, politicians, influencers, too many cameras and too much noise. You spend nearly fourteen straight hours on your feet rerouting security because protestors gather outside the venue. Bucky catches you sitting alone behind the catering tents around midnight afterward eating cold cornbread straight from the tray while typing one-handed on your laptop.

“You know they got tables inside, right?” he says quietly.

You don’t even look up. “Tables inside have senators.”

Fair enough.

Texas somehow becomes the breaking point.

Because apparently somebody thought it would be patriotic to put the New Avengers on a ranch. There are horses, lasso demonstrations and an event coordinator who says “yeehaw initiative” with complete sincerity. You haven’t slept more than four hours in three days. Bucky realizes this because you stop blinking normally sometime around Dallas.

You’re standing near the arena floor fixing Walker’s tie before a press appearance when your knees nearly buckle outright. Not dramatically but just enough, a tiny dangerous sway. Bucky catches it immediately from across the room and nobody else, because nobody else is paying attention to you. Why would they.

“You alright?” he asks later when he corners you briefly beside the equipment trailers.

You’re typing an email while transcribing a call simultaneously. “Mhm.”

“That wasn’t convincing.”

“I’m fine.”

“You almost fell over.”

“I’ve done worse.” You say it casually like it’s normal, like exhaustion is just another logistical inconvenience. And something in Bucky’s chest twists unpleasantly.

Vegas comes next.

Bright lights and champagne, galas filled with rich people pretending they’ve always trusted the team. You spend the entire evening moving through the casino ballroom like a ghost in heels, fixing problems before they fully form. Someone spills wine on Ava’s dress—you replace it. A reporter leaks the wrong attendance numbers—you correct it before publication. Valentina changes an entire speech thirty minutes before showtime and hands you handwritten notes expecting a miracle, and you deliver one anyway.

At one point Bucky finds you standing alone in an empty hallway outside the ballroom just standing there with your eyes closed. Like you forgot where you were for a second.

“You should sit down.”

Your eyes open immediately. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because if I sit down I think I might actually stay there.”

The honesty of it lingers between you, just like that night in your office. And there's that familiar twist in Bucky's chest. Then your phone rings again and you leave before he can answer.

North and South California blur together after that.

Interviews, photoshoots, crowds and handshakes. You become smaller somehow as the trip stretches on, not physically but emotionally. Like pieces of yourself are being traded away for efficiency. Bucky notices you stop laughing entirely around San Francisco, not that you laughed much before, but now even your smiles look scheduled.

Washington is the final stop.

A massive gala followed by a national press conference closing out the tour. Everyone’s exhausted at this point. Everyone except Valentina, who somehow feeds off chaos like a cryptid sustained entirely by public relations. The gala goes perfectly because you made sure it would. Bucky watches you from across the ballroom while senators shake his hand and cameras flash endlessly around him. You stand near the back wall beside the press table, headset crooked slightly over your hair, eyes fixed on three different problems at once. You haven’t touched the champagne in your hand all night, you haven’t sat down once, Bucky's not even sure if you've taken a breath longer than a second. And suddenly Bucky realizes something that settles heavy in his chest, you’re carrying this team in ways nobody notices because if you do your job correctly, nobody ever sees the weight of it.

Including him. Especially him.

That realization follows him all the way back to New York.

Three nights later, your office light is still on at eleven forty-three. Naturally.

Rain taps softly against the tower windows while the city glows gold below Manhattan. Your office smells like paper and coffee and exhaustion again because some things just never change. You’re halfway through next quarter’s budget reports when the office door opens without warning.

You don’t look up immediately.

“If this is another scheduling conflict I’m going to fake my death.”

“I'm sure we could work something out.”

You blink and finally look up. Bucky stands in the doorway wearing a dark suit, not mission tactical gear or his usual jacket and henley. A proper suit. Dark navy, slightly loosened tie, sleeves pushed back just enough to expose metal at his wrist. Hair slicked and styled back.

He looks unfairly good.

Which is irritating because your brain is too tired to handle that information responsibly.

You stare at him blankly. “…What's all this?”

“Come with me.”

You frown slowly.

"What? Where?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Kinda does.” You turn back toward your laptop with a tired sigh. “Listen, I have a lot I need to get done so whatever it is you need just write it down or have Valentina text me.”

Bucky doesn’t move from the doorway. Instead, he leans against it with casual air.

“I’m cashing in your reward.”

Your fingers pause over the keyboard. "My what?”

“Your reward from the carnival.” His mouth twitches slightly. “You won a free night out with the winning booth. That’s me. I’m cashing it in.”

Despite yourself, a laugh escapes quietly. “I don’t think that’s how it was supposed to work, Mr. Barnes.”

“It is now.”

You shake your head immediately. “No, absolutely not.”

“Get your stuff and meet me at the elevators.”

“But I—”

“I can also just shut off the WiFi to the building.”

You stare at him flatly. “You’re bluffing.”

Bucky lifts one shoulder casually.

“Wanna find out?”

Honestly? You’re not entirely sure he is bluffing, which is deeply concerning. You eye him suspiciously for a long moment while rain patters softly against the windows behind him. Then you look back at your screen. Thirty-two unread emails, three unfinished reports, tomorrows itinerary half-completed. Your entire body aches and somewhere beneath all that exhaustion something quieter stirs unexpectedly, something warm and curious. Because Bucky Barnes is standing in your office at midnight trying to drag you away from work like this matters to him for some incomprehensible reason. You don’t understand it and you’re not sure you want to. But after weeks of airports and crowds and fluorescent conference rooms you realize you can’t remember the last time someone asked you to leave work for something that wasn’t another obligation.

You exhale slowly through your nose. “…Fine.”

Victory flashes briefly across his face before disappearing almost immediately.

“You got ten minutes.”

“You know you’re very bossy for someone kidnapping me.”

“You’ll survive.”

You grumble under your breath while shutting your laptop and reaching for your coat.

The elevator ride down is painfully quiet, not awkward exactly, just strange. You can't remember the last time you've left your office before midnight. You stand beside Bucky clutching your coat and purse while fluorescent lights hum softly overhead. Your reflection stares back at you from the mirrored walls—tired eyes, wrinkled work clothes, tension still living stubbornly between your shoulders.

Bucky glances over once, then again.

“You look exhausted.”

You deadpan immediately. “Gee, thanks.”

“That wasn’t an insult.”

“It sounded like one.”

“It was concern.”

The word lands oddly between you as you meet his eyes. Concern, like he’s allowed to have that for you, like that's something that matters to him. You look away first.

The elevator dings softly when it reaches the underground garage. Bucky gestures toward a black town car waiting near the far wall.

Your brows pull together instantly. "Why is there a car?”

“So we can drive places.”

“You’re being weirdly mysterious.”

“You ask too many questions.”

“I literally work in intelligence-adjacent public relations. Questions are my whole thing.”

Bucky opens the back door for you anyway and inside, neatly folded across the leather seat, is a dress box.

You stop and slowly look at him. “What is that.”

“Your outfit.”

“…My what?”

“You can’t wear office clothes where we’re going.”

Suspicion floods you instantly.

“Where are we going?”

“Get in the car.”

“Mr. Barnes—”

“Bucky.”

You narrow your eyes. “Kidnappers have to earn their first-name privileges.”

Something dangerously close to a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.

“Get in the car.”

You should say no. Probably. Normal people would definitely say no to mysterious late-night kidnappings involving unidentified dresses and annoyingly handsome super soldiers. Instead, exhaustion apparently kills survival instincts because you climb into the car anyway. The dress box sits in your lap accusingly as Bucky stands at the door, the divider rises immediately once Bucky gives him the go ahead.

Your suspicion deepens.

“You’re not gonna answer a single question, are you?”

“Nope.”

“This feels illegal.”

“You’ll survive that too.”

You glare at him while opening the box.

Then immediately forget how to breathe for a second. The dress inside is beautiful. Dark satin the color of midnight with soft draping fabric and delicate straps, elegant without being overly formal. Simple in the kind of expensive way that makes your stomach tighten immediately.

You touch the fabric carefully. “…Mr. Barnes.”

“No questions.”

“How did you even—”

“No questions.”

You look up at him slowly as realization hits all at once.

“The tour.”

His silence answers for him. And suddenly you remember all those weeks of fittings and event prep. Designers taking measurements backstage before galas while you balanced schedules against your chest. You hadn’t realized anyone else paid attention.

Your throat feels strangely tight.

“There’s a privacy screen,” he says quietly, nodding toward the divider window. “You can change if you want.”

“If I want?”

“Or I can tell the driver to head home for the night.”

The thing is, you know he means it, that’s what gets you. There’s no pressure in his voice, no expectation. Just an offer.

You look down at the dress again then at your reflection faintly mirrored in the tinted window beside you. You can’t remember the last time you dressed for something that wasn’t work. Can’t remember the last time someone planned an evening for you instead of handing you another responsibility to carry.

“…Fine,” you murmur quietly.

Bucky nods and shuts the door almost immediately after that, giving you privacy without making a show of it. Your chest aches unexpectedly.

The dress fits perfectly, of course. The satin settles smoothly against your skin, cool and soft as water. You let your hair down and try to ruffle some life into it. When you finally sit back down, carefully smoothing the fabric over your knees, you knock on the door and Bucky opens it.

And visibly stills.

The reaction is brief, barely there but you catch it anyway. His eyes flick over you once before settling carefully back on your face and something warm and unreadable flashes there.

“…Okay,” he says quietly.

You blink. “Okay what?”

“You look nice.”

The compliment lands embarrassingly hard after months of being perceived exclusively as overworked office furniture.

You glance down awkwardly. “Thank you.”

Then you notice the roses that somehow magically appeared in his hands, deep red roses tied together with black ribbon.

You stare at them. “Where did you get those?”

He stays quiet, holding the bouquet in his arms.

"Right. No questions."

You laugh softly before you can stop yourself. And for the first time since you're not sure when, Bucky smiles fully, small but warm. Beautiful enough to briefly ruin your ability to think coherently. He slides into the seat next to you and the driver pulls away from the tower.

The jazz lounge sits tucked into the lower streets of Manhattan beneath soft golden lights and old brick. The moment you step inside, warmth wraps around you. Low music hums through the room beneath the soft cry of a trumpet, dim amber lamps glow against polished wood tables. The air smells faintly like whiskey and candle wax and expensive food.

It feels far away from your life somehow, like stepping briefly into somebody else’s memory. Bucky keeps one hand lightly against the small of your back guiding you through the crowded room, the touch burns straight through the thin satin of your dress. You try very hard not to think about it.

Dinner is easy in a way you don’t expect.

That’s the dangerous part. You spend so much time around Bucky professionally that you forgot he can actually be funny when he’s relaxed, that quick but witty dry humor and quiet observations muttered beneath his breath. Stories from the forties so ridiculous you genuinely can’t tell when he’s lying anymore. At one point you laugh hard enough to snort into your drink, it should've been mortifying. Bucky nearly chokes laughing himself afterward.

“You absolutely cannot judge me,” you whisper harshly across the table.

“I’m not judging,” he grins. “I’m enjoying myself.”

And somehow that feels worse.

Hours pass without you noticing, and that alone feels miraculous. After dinner he takes you walking along the boardwalk downtown, city wind curling cold around both of you while music and traffic hum softly below Manhattan lights. You end up at a tiny old photobooth tucked near an arcade.

“Absolutely not,” you say immediately.

Bucky’s already pulling the curtain open.

“You survived the carnival. You can survive this.”

“That carnival psychologically damaged me.”

“C’mon.” You let him drag you inside anyway because apparently this evening has become one long series of terrible decisions.

The booth is tiny, painfully tiny. Your knees bump his immediately once the curtain slides shut, thighs pressed against his as you sit shoulder to shoulder. The flash startles you during the first photo, breaking that first wind of embarrassment as the two of you adjust to being so close. Bucky makes a joke about the booth taking compartmentalizing a step to far as the second flash clicks, the photo catching both of you laughing, a curled wide smile on your face that you haven't felt in years. By the third, the laughing has died down and you’re turned toward each other too closely, breathing the same recycled air, the city noise muffled outside the booth curtain. Bucky’s gaze flicks downward briefly and your stomach flips violently. Then there’s this horrible suspended second where your eyes drop down too and you think, maybe if you lean in just a bit more—

But then the camera flashes again and both of you pull back slightly too fast.

The tension afterward feels thick enough to touch, so naturally you get ice cream. Because apparently that’s how you handle almost kissing your coworker. You sit beside him on a bench outside a tiny twenty-four-hour shop while melting vanilla drips slowly down your hand.

“This is the nicest night I’ve had in years,” you admit quietly before thinking better of it.

Bucky looks over at you softly beneath the city lights. “Yeah?”

“…Yeah.” You nod once.

Something shifts in his expression then, into something gentler, almost relieved.

The drive to your apartment passes too quickly for your liking afterward but you don’t want to acknowledge that realization. Bucky walks you all the way to your building door despite your insistence that he doesn’t need to. The city is quiet this late, streetlights painting everything gold.

You turn toward him at the steps and for a second neither of you speaks.

“Thank you, Mr. Barnes.” You smile softly. “I really did have a good time.”

“Bucky.”

You blink. “What?”

“Call me Bucky. If I've earned it, of course.”

The words settle warm somewhere beneath your ribs. You look down briefly, suddenly shy in a way you haven’t felt in years.

“Oh.” You fully ignore the blush crossing your face, because if you don't acknowledge it then it's not real, right? “Well… thank you, Bucky.”

The smile he gives you afterward feels dangerously intimate. You escape before your brain can fully process it, keys fumbling slightly as you balance them between the flowers, heart beating embarrassingly fast as you step inside your apartment and shut the door carefully behind you.

The second there's a safe enough barrier between you and him you lose it. A ridiculous giggle slips out your lips as you immediately lean against the door with burning cheeks.

Oh no. Oh, this is bad. Because you’re smiling. You touch your face like maybe you can physically stop it. You can’t smile like this. Smiling means thinking and thinking means feeling and feelings… well that just can't be. You try to stifle as much of those feelings as you possibly can, but every time your eyes catch the roses on your table it all bubbles back over the surface again.

And unbeknownst to you outside your apartment door, Bucky hasn’t left yet. He stands there quietly for another moment listening to your footsteps move softly through the apartment beyond the wall. Listening to drawers open, shoes kicked off, the muffled sound of you laughing once under your breath at seemingly nothing.

Then finally the lights click off and only then does he leave.

The ride back to the tower feels strangely quiet afterward, not uncomfortable, just full. Like something settled into place inside his chest without permission.

Bucky stares out the car window at sleeping Manhattan while your bashful smile and blushing cheeks replays endlessly in his head, and somewhere deep down beneath years of grief and exhaustion and carefully guarded distance—something reluctantly warm begins to bloom.

˗ˏˋ ꒰ bonus june note ꒱ ˎˊ˗ ── fun fact! parts of this story are inspired by this kdrama i watched called king the land, and the mmc gu won is SOO bucky coded i actually love it i was watching his grumpy traumatized ass like.... i know where ive seen this before LOL

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