michi (taylor's version)

You paused in front of the full-length mirror hanging in the foyer of your sprawling three-story house. A skimpy swimsuit was snug to your body, an expensive pair of sunglasses perched on top of your head, along with a chilled cocktail in your manicured hand to top it all off. 

You adjusted the sheer cover-up knotted loosely at your hip that revealed just enough skin…though never quite enough.

With one quick glance out the window towards your backyard, your breath hitched immediately. 

There he was again—your pool boy, hard at work. 

The usual white tank he wore clung to his chest, already slick with his sweat. His arms flexed with every pull of the pole, muscles tightening beneath his sun-warmed skin, his hair falling into his eyes as his broad back bent and straightened as he moved around. 

The sight alone sent butterflies to your stomach.

You sucked in a sharp breath, smoothing your hair and bringing your sunglasses down the bridge of your nose. Sliding open the glass door, you were welcomed with the hot sun and a slight breeze, bringing with it a faint smell of chlorine. 

“Good morning, Bucky,” you called, your voice cheery with an inviting smile. 

Bucky glanced up from the water, sunglasses reflecting you back at yourself. 

“Morning.” 

Then, a small nod before returning to his work. 

It wasn’t much, but still, your smile didn’t falter. Ever since you hired Bucky to work for you as your designated pool cleaner, you couldn’t help but grow a little… attached.

You were a single woman living in a house big enough to hold a family of ten. Or twenty. Too much money, too much time on your hands, and not enough sex.

So when a strong, quiet, devastatingly attractive man showed up to work under your roof, what was the harm in having a little fun? Watching him became your guilty pleasure, like keeping your own personal eye candy by the pool.

First, it started with harmless admiration.  

You’d catch yourself watching him from the corner of your eye, stealing glances under your sunglasses or through the window when you thought he wouldn’t notice. You’d watch very closely—the way sweat dripped down his neck and in between the crevice of his chest. 

And his arms. 

God, his arms. 

You couldn’t help but imagine how they might feel cinched tight around your waist, or how those rough, calloused hands might look wrapped delicately around your throat. 

Silly thoughts, really. Inappropriate, even. 

He was just the man you paid to clean your pool. You never said anything, of course. Just… quiet looks, very long sips of your drink, and the guilty thrill of knowing you liked the view far more than you should. 

You leaned back into the reclining chair, stretching your legs out before crossing at the ankle, your fingers idly twirling the straw in your cocktail.

“It’s so hot out today,” you said, tilting your head towards him. “But I can’t really complain with a view like this.” 

Bucky didn’t react. He didn’t even look at you either. Just a quiet grunt, his expression unreadable behind the darkness of his sunglasses.

Very typical. 

Second, it became something physical. A physical attraction. 

The mysteriousness of him left too much room for your imagination to run wild. He rarely said anything beyond the occasional “Good morning” or a low grunt, and more times than not, you found yourself aching for just a little more.

“You know, if you ever need a break, my house is always open and well air-conditioned,” you offered lightly, finishing it with a soft laugh to make it sound playful instead of… well.

Predatory.

The truth was, for all its size, your house was lonely. A word, a glance, even the smallest scrap of attention would have been enough—and somehow, the person you wanted it from was the man fishing leaves out of your pool. 

It was no different than coworkers developing crushes just from seeing each other every day—or feelings sparking within a friend group simply from being around one another so often.

So really, it was only natural to feel this way… wasn’t it?

You wanted to feel him. All of him. His muscles, his jawline, his back… 

You wondered how hot his body would be pressed to yours—how his fingers would feel sliding into you, stretching you, filling you, instead of your own. 

You hated to admit it, but you have touched yourself to that thought before. 

Once. 

Twice. 

Maybe more. 

Bucky barely looked up. “I’m okay. Thank you,” he said, voice quiet, rough, and dismissive, before turning back to the pool like the conversation had already ended before it even began. 

Your lips curved up in a sly smirk as you tried again. 

“Are you sure? Do you want anything to drink then? A lemonade? Water? Or maybe a cocktail?” your tone stayed breezy, playful, all as if you weren’t holding your breath for an answer. 

“No, ma’am,” he replied casually, eyes still fixed on the pool. And he still didn’t look up. 

You exhaled slowly, swirling your straw before taking another sip. God, he was infuriating. And yet, the more he ignored you, the more you wanted him. 

And last but not least, it became a game. A challenge. As maddening and one-sided as it seemed, you couldn’t help but crave it.

You were a rich, young and beautiful woman. Realistically, you could have anyone you wanted and you knew it. You were used to being fawned over, used to nobodies tripping over themselves just to ask for your number. But the fact that you couldn’t so much as snag the gaze of your pool boy? 

That ignited something inside you.

For once, you were the one chasing. 

And you didn’t mind it one bit.

“So, do you have any plans after this? I was thinking of making a quick lunch if you would like to join me.” 

Silence. Just the sound of water swooshing gently against the pool’s edge and the light scrape of the skimmer gliding across the surface. He paused, his eyes fixed on something in the distance, near your water pipes. His shoulders straightened like a thought came to mind.

Then, he finally lifted his head to look at you. Your heart thumped faster in your chest. 

Finally. 

“Can you come here for a second?” he asked, his voice straightforward and blunt as he set the skimmer down. 

You couldn’t help the smile creeping on your lips. You rose from your chair, setting your cocktail down on the side table. You smoothed the cover-up around your hips as you made your way over, anticipation already fluttering wildly in your chest. 

The entire time, Bucky’s gaze followed you from behind his shades. You hoped he noticed the way your bikini clung tight to your curves, the subtle sway of your hips as you moved towards him.

You flashed him a charming grin, crossing your arms over your chest—subtly accentuating the way your breasts pushed up against your arms. 

Too bad his sunglasses hid his eyes. You had no way of knowing if he had even noticed.

“Follow me,” he said, curling his fingers to motion you closer. 

“Okay,” you agreed softly, letting him guide you. 

With his back to you, you couldn’t help but admire the view—the width of his shoulders, the way he moved. You were so caught up in the silhouette of him that you hardly noticed where he was leading you until you found yourself at the side of the house, standing before the jumble of water pipes and filters.

He stopped abruptly. “Stand here.”

You moved closer, your heart beating so fast it could leap out of your chest. The way he stood there, watching you, commanding you to come up to him… it all made your skin heat up in a way that had nothing to do with the sun. 

“Closer.” 

Your breath caught in your throat, one large hand brushing against your lower back to guide you into position. The touch was casual, almost incidental, yet it was enough to make your legs feel a little weak.

He held your gaze for a moment, his hand still resting lightly on your lower back. You wanted nothing more than to reach up and remove his sunglasses yourself—just to see his eyes, to know if he was feeling the same spark you were.

Then, finally, he broke his gaze and tilted his head towards the filter. 

“There’s an issue with the filter,” he explained. “It’s clogged worse than I thought. I’ll need to check it a few extra times this week to make sure it’s running properly.”

Oh. 

Your shoulders slump slightly, the thrill of his attention immediately colliding with a pang of disappointment. 

You followed his gaze to the pool and let out a very long and disappointed sigh. “Is that so?” 

He grunted quietly, his hand retreating from your back. “Yeah,” he said flatly. “I’ll start on it. Should take a while to get it fully unclogged.”

You swallowed, trying to force a nonchalant smile. Infuriatingly dry, and yet every word, every glance—or lack thereof—only made the fiery spark inside you burn brighter. 

“How ‘bout you come inside for a second?” you offered quickly. “Cool off a little before getting back to work… I mean, look at you—you’re sweating like crazy.” You added a soft chuckle, letting the words hang teasingly in the air, hoping, praying he’d catch the bait. 

Bucky’s head tilted up, looking past you and up at your three-story house. His expression was frustratingly unreadable, leaving you guessing at what might be running through his mind. After a long pause, he finally looked back at you.

“No, thanks.” 

It was just as you expected. With a soft sigh, you masked your disappointment with a small shrug. 

“Suit yourself,” you murmured as you already turned your back away. 

“But…” 

You paused, glancing over your shoulder. 

“I’ll take a glass of lemonade,” Bucky said, his tone flat like he was granting you a concession. 

Your lips curved slowly up into a grin, that warmth coming back to life in your chest. It wasn’t much—but it was something. And with him, even the smallest thing felt like a victory.

“Lemonade, coming right up,” you said lightly, your tone playful. 

This time, when you turned toward the house, there was a little more pep in your step, the sway of your hips unconsciously enthusiastic. It felt good, being given something to finally work with—even something small.

What you didn’t see was the way Bucky’s eyes followed you, hidden safely behind his sunglasses. You missed how his gaze lingered on the curve of your ass through the sheer cover-up, how his jaw clenched once you finally slipped out of view.

From outside, he could see everything. 

The way you moved around the kitchen with far too much energy for something as simple as lemonade. How you dragged out a step stool to reach the tallest cabinet, just to pick the nicest glass for him. How you filled it with ice, frowned because you put too much, dumped it out, then poured it again until it was perfect. How you even fussed with the lemon slice on the rim like you were serving royalty and not some random pool cleaner. 

And the sight was fascinating. 

He loved watching you—a wealthy girl who could have staff do it for you—going out of your way to make a drink for someone like him.

Of course he knew about your coy smiles, your lingering stares when you think he’s not looking, the way your hips sway when you walk away, the skimpy bikinis you wore despite never once stepping foot into the pool.

He noticed everything. 

He just chose not to bite. 

Because watching you try—watching you put all that effort into getting a reaction out of him—was far more entertaining than giving you what you wanted.

As you leaned into the fridge for the pitcher, your sheer cover-up rode higher over your thighs, the thin fabric stretching to reveal the curve of your ass underneath. You bent forward slightly to grab some more lemons from a lower shelf, and… 

The sight made his throat go dry.

His cock stirred, thickening and rising slowly, an ache pressing against the confines of his work pants. He shifted his stance, trying to will the sensation away, but it was no use. The pressure was unbearable, insistent, and tight. Every movement reminded him of just how badly he needed you.

Bucky glanced toward the kitchen again, making sure you were still occupied. When the coast was clear, his hand slid to his crotch, fingers brushing over the straining fabric as if adjusting himself would ease the discomfort. 

It didn’t.

The brief contact only made his cock twitch in his pants even more. 

“Fuck,” he grunted, his hand palming his bulge through his pants. 

He had to bite back a groan as his cock throbbed, begging for more. It was so risky squeezing himself when you were only a few steps away, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop.

You had no idea what you were doing to him. And the cruelest part was knowing you wanted him too—that fact alone made it harder to keep his control.

Bucky knew he could easily barge in and ruin you, ruin all that polished perfection you surrounded yourself with. 

He’d dirty up your pristine house in an instant. He’d bend you over the arm of your thousand-dollar couch. He’d fuck you across all three glossy floors. He’d bury himself deep in your king-sized bed until you couldn’t bear to go to bed without him. 

His hand pressed harder against the outline of his cock. “Fuck, baby,” he growled to himself as filthy images flooded in his mind. 

He wanted to so badly drag that sad excuse of a cover-up off your body, bunching it around your bare waist and bending you over the kitchen counter that you hardly use to cook for your own. He wanted to take his time and savour you—make you finally crumble and beg for his attention instead of throwing out coy smiles and teasing comments.

His thumb circled the swollen head straining against his pants, the friction was delicious but it was not nearly enough. 

Fuck, did he want to split you open on his cock, watch your spoiled composure shatter as you clawed at him for more with those greedy, manicured hands.

He squeezed himself harder, breathing heavy, eyes locked on the doorway where you could reappear any second. The risk of being caught only made his cock throb harder.

Imagine if you walked out right now, catching him red-handed—

The sound of the door opening snapped him back to reality. He yanked his hand away, standing up straight and turning his back just as you stepped outside with his glass of lemonade with a bright and oblivious smile on your face.

“Here you go,” you said brightly, handing him the glass. 

“Thanks,” he muttered back, his fingers brushing against yours for the briefest second before he took it. 

He tipped the glass back, his Adam's apple bobbing as swallowed, and you found yourself staring at his throat like you were thirsty yourself. He let out a satisfied sigh as he set the glass down on a nearby table. 

He gave you one quick glance under his sunglasses before nodding his head once. “It’s good.” 

Dry.

Flat. Like always. 

And you, of course, didn’t notice the irony that just a mere seconds ago, he had his palm against his cock, groaning your name under his breath. Now here he was, still as stone, acting like you barely existed. 

But for you, that tiny moment, your fingers brushing against his when you passed the lemonade, was enough to send your heart skipping like a schoolgirl’s. 

It was ridiculous, really, how something so brief could make you feel so electric.

You forced a small smile and slipped back into your chair, twirling the straw in your now half-melted cocktail. You tried to play it cool, but your eyes kept dragging back to him again and again.

You were hypnotized with the way his hands toyed at his belt like he was adjusting himself, the movement of his shoulders as he crouched low by the pump system near the pool’s edge—everything about him just made it harder to resist. 

Bucky leaned over the filter housing, twisting the valve to let off the hiss of trapped pressure. You watched as he unlatched the clamps holding the lid in place, muscles hard at work under his sun-warmed skin. 

With a low grunt, he lifted the heavy top free, setting it aside before reaching down into the canister. He worked quietly, pulling free a clogged-up basket stuffed with leaves, stringy muck, and god knows what else. You weren’t really paying that much attention to the filter anyway. 

“Mm,” he muttered, giving it a shake, water splattering onto the pavement. “The filter's jammed up worse than it should be. I’ll need to check on it a couple more times this week, make sure it doesn’t back up the whole system.” 

He tilted his head. “Gonna take a look at the pump’s pressure next.” 

He dropped the basket back into the filter housing and wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. Then, with a low grunt, he hooked his fingers at the hem of his damp white tank and lifted up and over his head. 

You nearly spilled your damn drink. 

His chest stretched out, broad and solid. His muscles shifted as he tugged the fabric free and tossed it aside. Sunlight caught on every line—the ridges of his abs, the sharp cut of his V disappearing beneath the waistband of his low-slung work pants.

“Oh my god,” you breathed, heat flooding in your belly.

Your thighs pressed together, desperate to soothe the ache between them. You wanted to keep watching, but every flex of his back as he crouched over the filter only made it worse. You pictured your hands running down the hard grooves of muscle, his body hovering over yours—

God. It was so indecent, sitting here and openly staring at him. 

You knew you couldn’t take it anymore when he started to grunt as he bent down to check the pipes. The sound was nothing but seemingly innocent, but to your ears, it came out unbearably filthy.

Clearing your throat, you scrambled to your feet, your drink wobbling dangerously in your hand. 

“Well,” you said quickly, voice rising high in pitch. “It’s getting… really hot out here, so I’ll just—” You hiked a thumb over your shoulder. “I’ll be inside if you need anything.”

You didn’t wait for an answer—not that you were going to get one anyway. With your face burning, you hurried back towards the safety of your house, desperate for cool air and four walls protecting you from the sight of his addicting sweat-slicked body.

Bucky glanced up, peering at you through his shades as he watched you scurry off inside, your cover-up lifting around your bare thighs. 

That was cute. For someone whose entire game was trying to catch his attention, you bolted the second you actually got it.

He bent back over the pipes, but his focus was shot to hell. Every few seconds, his gaze followed back to the house, tracking you through those wide, spotless windows until you disappeared past a wall… only to reappear again in your bedroom. 

The blinds were wide open, curtains parted to give him a clean view of your perfect body. You hadn’t even realized—or maybe you did, and this was your invitation for him to watch you. 

From where he stood at the pool’s edge, he had a perfect line of sight—your figure moving across the room as you wiggled out of your flimsy cover-up and tossed it carelessly onto the floor somewhere. He watched as you paced around the room, flustered and restless. 

The sunlight peeking through your windows lit you up like a goddess, a carving that was made to be worshipped by him. 

You looked edible. 

And Bucky wanted a taste. 

Just as he was about to force his gaze away to focus on the filter, you did something that made his throat go completely dry. 

You let out bikini straps slip from your shoulders. The top fell loose and he felt his chest—and his pants—tighten as you stood there, bare and unaware. But what really got him was the sight of you crawling into your bed, removing your bottoms and letting your polished fingertips glide down your bare torso and disappearing in between your smooth thighs. 

“Jesus Christ…” he muttered as his cock began to stir again. 

Watching you make lemonade earlier was one thing. But this—this was just obscene. Standing out here in your yard, shirtless, watching you touch yourself like you were putting on a show for him alone. 

It should’ve felt wrong. He should’ve felt like a creep—like a pervert. But it didn’t stop him.

Because this was exactly what you wanted, wasn’t it? For him to stare at you? After all, you were likely touching yourself to the thought of him anyway, so it was only fair for him to watch you in return. 

Your hair sprawled across white silk pillows, your legs stretching open as you began to work yourself with desperate little touches. Bucky’s cock strained with every twitch of your fingers. He could already imagine it—how wet you’d be for him, how tight. 

If it were his hand between your thighs instead of yours, you’d be clawing at him, begging to keep going—or to go easy. 

Fuck. Watching you earlier had been bad enough, but this? This was pure torture.

He could already imagine it, how wet you would feel against his fingers, how easily you would open up for him if it were his hand between your thighs instead of your own. 

His cock pressed hard against his zipper, begging for just an ounce of relief. Palming himself wasn’t enough, and if he wasn’t going to storm upstairs and fuck you into your mattress, he’d have to settle for his hand instead. 

You had your head tossed back against the pillow, your eyes squeezed shut and your mouth hung open. Bucky couldn’t hear you, but God, he wished he could. 

With a low growl, he unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned his pants, zipping his fly down quickly and desperately. His hand slipped into his waistband, pulled out his cock, already warm and heavy in his palm. The rush of cool air against his swollen tip made him hiss through his teeth, and his fist tightened around the length.

Bucky watched as you rolled your hips against your own fingers, your lips parting to gasp, he couldn’t hear but could damn well imagine. 

His fist worked over his cock, giving himself small and teasing strokes. But the longer he watched you, the harder he pumped himself. His breath hitched right along with yours, even if you couldn’t hear him. 

“Yeah, that’s it, baby,” he rasped under his breath, this thumb sliding over the leaking tip of his cock. “Fuck yourself nice and deep… open up that pretty pussy for me.” 

You gasped again, your head sinking deeper against the pillows, and he groaned, imagining it was because of him, because of the way he would sink his cock into you and split you wide.

“Bet you’d be so fucking tight around me,” he grunted, hips rocking into his hand as he pumped faster. “I’d stretch you out so good, make you scream my name instead of keeping it all quiet like that.”

Every shake of your body, every subtle move of your wrist, only made him harder, needier. His balls were tight and aching, but still he couldn’t stop, couldn’t drag his eyes away.

“Goddamn, look at you,” he muttered, voice strained. “So perfect… so fucking sweet—thinkin’ you’re in control all the time.” His hips bucked into his fist, precum smearing over his knuckles as he stroked harder. “You’ve got no idea, do you? How bad I wanna ruin that pretty little image of yours....”

Your thighs trembled, your lips parting in another voiceless cry, and he groaned deep in his chest, pumping himself faster. You were getting close, he just knew it. 

“I’d fuck you stupid, baby,” he hissed, gaze locked on the way your legs started to shake. “Have you begging, drooling, makin’ a mess all over my cock until you couldn’t even say my name without whimpering.”

He braced one hand against the edge of the filter housing, knuckles going white. 

“You’d be mine. Only mine. I’d keep you tucked away in this big house, fuckin’ you on every damn floor until you forget anyone else even exists,” he growled. “I’ll make sure you have no one else over but me.” 

His hips jerked, strokes getting messier as the image of you whimpering beneath him filled his head. Through your window, your back arched, your eyes squeezing shut as your fingers moved frantically between your legs. 

“Yeah… that’s it, baby,” he hissed quietly. “Cum for me, cum on my cock like I’m right there…” 

Your body trembled, chest rising up and down rapidly. Bucky felt his own release rising hard and fast. The sight of you—silk sheets wrinkling beneath you, hair sprawled out over the pillows—tore a groan clean out of his chest. 

Good thing you couldn’t hear him. 

You turned your head, cheek brushing softly against your tousled hair, looking like a goddamn angel.

Then your eyes fluttered open. 

Straight out the window. 

And Bucky’s stomach dropped. 

Shit. 

He immediately yanked his hand off himself and stuffed his cock back into his pants, turning his body toward the filter like he had been working on it the whole time. His breathing came hard through his nose, heart beating fast as he grabbed the nearest tool and pretended to check the pipes, praying you hadn’t seen him. 

“Fucking hell,” he muttered under his breath. His heart was thudding in his ears, his cock still aching—slick and completely unsatisfied in his pants. 

He sucked in a deep breath as he tried to steady himself, trying to look like he hadn’t just been seconds away from blowing his load all over the pool deck. 

Play it cool. 

Work the pipes. 

Don’t look back up. 

Meanwhile, from above, you lay your back against your pillows as your gaze swept out the window and down to your pool. 

Bucky was still out there, bent over the filter and hard at work. His broad back was gleaming with sweat, and even from here, you could see his chest rising and falling heavily, his breaths coming in sharp.

A faint smile tugged at your lips. Of course he looked wrecked—he had been out there all morning, under the sun, hunched over pipes and skimmers and God knows what else.

He was really, really hard at work. 

Your smile dropped to something… guiltier. Poor guy, out there sweating through his work while you’ve been upstairs, sprawled out in silk pristine sheets, doing… well, not much of anything useful.

And even though he didn’t ask for it, he deserved another lemonade. 

You sat up and threw on a simple shirt and shorts this time. It wasn’t like you were going for a swim with the filters all messed up, and it wasn’t like that bikini had done much to catch his attention anyway.

You stepped outside, the glass of lemonade slick with condensation. The sun hit you right in the face, forcing you to squint as you raised a hand to shield your eyes.

“Round two!” you called, your sandals smacking lightly against the patio. 

Bucky’s shoulders stiffened before he stood up straight and turned to you. He cleared his throat, his fingers brushing over yours for the briefest second before he took the glass.

“Thanks,” he muttered, voice raspy and thick. He looked down at you, sunglasses hiding his eyes. His jaw clenched—like he wanted to say something but couldn’t, or…  more like he didn’t trust himself to speak. 

You were a different sight than before. Your hair was a little mussed, you had on a plain shirt—a few sizes too big—hanging over your body. It was so big that he barely noticed your tiny shorts riding up your thighs. 

No skimpy hundred dollar bikini. No sheer cover-up. And this time, no obvious attempt at allure. 

And still, he wanted you. 

Because even like this—especially like this—he was still hard, still unsatisfied, his cock pressing hot and heavy against his zipper. 

He swallowed hard before tipping the glass back. He downed the lemonade in one long chug, his Adam’s apple bobbing with every swallow until the glass was completely empty. 

You smiled, hands behind your back. “Better than the first time?” 

He exhaled slowly, handing the glass back to you. 

“Yeah.” 

It was another sweltering afternoon, and you were sprawled out on the pool chair with a book in your hands—a book you hadn’t turned a page in for the last fifteen minutes. Your eyes kept straying past the print, landing on Bucky where he knelt by the water pipes.

Today was even hotter than yesterday, and he was out there shirtless, sweat dripping down his skin as he worked. You had on a different swimsuit—still skimpy, still expensive—and the heat was making you sweat right through it.

Honestly, if it weren’t for the view, you would’ve already given up and gone inside to the comfort of your AC.

You set the book down on your lap. “Bucky,” you called, tilting your head towards him. “Are you sure you don’t want to come inside? It’s okay to take a break, it’s so damn hot out here.”

He didn’t even glance up from where crouched. He twisted a wrench, the metal clinking sharp against the pipe. 

“I’m fine,” he muttered. 

But the sun was glaring down on you both mercilessly, beads of sweat sliding down his temple, down his throat and over his chest. You were already burning up just by sitting still—so with him out there working, he seemed anything but fine.

You wiped at your damp forehead with the back of your hand, moving uncomfortably against the recliner with a huff. The heat was unbearable, and the bikini that was supposed to make you feel sexy felt sticky, suffocating, and gross. 

“Bucky,” you tried again with a weary sigh, “come inside. Just for a minute. I’ll crank up the AC and grab you a drink. You’re going to pass out if you stay out here. The filter can wait.” 

He didn’t bite. He never did. Even your own patience felt like it was melting under the sun. 

“Don’t worry about me,” he said roughly, tightening the wrench with another twist. 

He still didn’t look at you.

Normally you would laugh it off, throw out another playful line his way, and try again until you wrung even the smallest reaction out of him. But the heat, the sweat, and the mounting frustration of constantly chasing his attention had you clenching your jaw instead.

“Fine,” you muttered, sharper than you intended, snapping your book shut and rising to your feet. “Suit yourself.” 

Without another word—or even glance—you turned and marched back into the house, letting yourself be greeted by the cool air over your skin as the door clicked shut behind you. 

Bucky froze from where he crouched, wrench going still in his hand as he watched you stalk off and shut the door in a way that clearly indicated you were not coming back. 

What the hell was that about? 

You never just… got up and left.

You usually retreated in the house with a smile on your face, and every single time, you kept coming back, circling him with that playful little persistence of yours. 

His jaw clenched, tossing the wrench aside with a heavy clatter. He dragged a hand down his sweaty face, cursing under his breath. 

He stood up slowly, letting out a little groan at the strain. Sweat was dripping down his temple and soaking through the waistband of his pants. The sun was cooking him alive, and maybe that was why he was starting to feel a little frustrated himself. 

Because the truth was, he wasn’t fine. 

The heat was suffocating, and his head was spinning with an irritation he couldn’t quite put down. It wasn’t just from the sun—it was you. 

The way that bikini clung to your curves, the shine of sweat down your chest, the needy whine in your voice when you begged him to come inside. 

Christ. He was hard again, cock straining against his sweat-damp pants. He hated how quick it happened. He hated how easily wound up he got every time you looked at him, and he hated how you walking away only made it worse.

The pool gurgled behind him, the filter still clearly needing work, but his focus was all over the place. 

All he could picture was you inside, cooling down with that little frown on your lips—disappointed that he wasn’t in there with you. You were probably already stripping out of that bikini. Maybe laying down, legs pressed together, trying to take the edge off the way you had yesterday.

And because of those thoughts—those relentless, stupid thoughts—Bucky lasted all but five minutes. 

Five full minutes of pacing along the pool, knowing the pipes needed his full attention when all he could focus on was the tight ache in his chest and the heavier one pressing against his zipper.

When his gaze inevitably looked up towards the house, there you were through the spotless windows.

Laid out across the couch, your skimpy bikini straps were digging into your skin as you slouched against the cushions—not even caring that you were dirtying up the expensive furniture with your sweat. 

You crossed your legs at the ankle as your eyes fluttered shut, chest rising and falling softly. You weren’t even looking at him.

And fuck—he couldn’t take it anymore. 

He tugged off his work gloves and tossed them by the skimmer, muttering something grumpily under his breath that even he couldn’t catch. His boots stomped heavily against the patio as he made his way to the back door. 

He paused at the door, his eyes glued on your body through the glass. He should knock. Hell, he should turn around and get back to the pipes before he did something stupid. But despite his thoughts, his fingers wrapped tight around the handle anyway.

This was exactly what you wanted, wasn’t it? The way you always lingered near him, flirted shamelessly, always tried to tempt him closer without ever saying it outright. You have been waiting for him to step inside this house for weeks.

In Bucky’s mind, he was finally giving you what you wanted. 

The door slid open with a low scrape, the blast of cold air brushing against his warm body. He stepped in as if he already lived there, heavy boots already dirtying the once-pristine plush rug. 

Your eyes fluttered open at the faint sound of the door closing. 

“Bucky…?” your voice was soft and confused as you took him in. 

A big, broad, sweaty Bucky, standing in your living room for the first time since he’d started working for you. 

“What are you doing in here? Is everything okay—” 

“Almost done with the filter,” he cut you off with a rough voice, his gaze trying to steer away from the tempting lines of your body. “Just needed to use the bathroom.”

You blinked at him, thrown off guard by the excuse but too caught up in the fact that he was finally in your house to even question it. “Oh—yeah, of course. Come on.” 

You scrambled to your feet, suddenly self-conscious in nothing but your swimsuit. When you pictured Bucky entering your home, it wasn’t like this. In your head, you would’ve coaxed him in with a drink, maybe with a teasing smile here and there.  

Not because he needed the bathroom.

So yeah, his unexpected presence threw you off. But still… at the end of the day, it was better than nothing.

“This way,” you said over your shoulder, leading him down the hall.

Your house had never looked better—freshly waxed floors were reflecting under the light, except Bucky’s dirty work boots were now leaving a trail. Your walls were decorated with curated art and frames that were probably worth more than most people’s salaries.

But Bucky didn’t spare a glance at any of them. 

His eyes were locked on you. 

And you could feel his heavy stare weighing down on your nearly bare back. 

The walk to the bathroom was short, yet it felt endless. Because for once, you had nothing to say. You stopped in front of the door, fingers twisting the knob before pushing it open.

You could feel him behind you, close enough that his breath ghosted over the back of your neck. Your pulse quickened, and your mouth went dry. 

If you turned around, if you so much as looked up at him, you weren’t sure you’d be able to keep your composure.

You cleared your throat. “Well… this is it,” you said, flicking the lights on. 

The mirror above the sink lit up instantly, creating a warm glow across the tiled room. And in the reflection, you saw the two of you framed in the doorway.

And then you caught him.

His gaze wasn’t on the bathroom at all—it was on you. 

You saw the way his jaw was clenched tight as his eyes trailed over the slope of your bare shoulders, his gaze lingering on the thin bikini straps pressed against your soft skin. 

You didn’t say a word. And truthfully, you didn’t want to—because if you spoke, you would snap him out of it.

You wanted him to keep staring at you. You wanted to feel his eyes dragging over your body slowly, down your shoulders, over the curve of your waist and hips, to every inch of bare skin your bikini left exposed.

He wasn’t touching you, but his eyes felt like a touch—scorching, intimate. It made your stomach twist and your thighs press together. Through the mirror, you watched as his tongue swiped over his bottom lip, a low groan slipping from his chest like he was fighting something back.

God, did that stare burn so bad. 

You wanted him to touch you—just a light graze of his fingertips, the heat of his palm against your waist. Anything.

For a second, you’re convinced he might actually do it—close that little bit of space between you, press you up against the doorframe, and give you what you’ve been craving. 

But instead, he tore his gaze away. He stepped past you into the bathroom, his shoulder brushing yours. The brief contact had a soft gasp catching in your throat, your body already trembling at something so small.

“Thanks,” he muttered before reaching for the door and shutting it behind him. 

You were left standing in the hall, your pulse thudding loudly in your ears. You felt your skin warm where his shoulder brushed yours—you almost felt feverish. You should’ve gone back to the couch and pretend like nothing happened. 

But instead, you found yourself pacing in the living room, restless and unable to sit still. 

Bucky was in your house. He was actually in your damn house. 

And yet, the worst part was knowing that the second he came back out, he’d go right back to normal—back to his work, back to being dismissive, like none of this had ever happened.

But as the minutes dragged on, your heart couldn’t help but slam harder in your chest with each second he remained behind that closed door. Any normal person would assume that he was… taking a number two. Instead, a dangerous thought crept in—the idea that maybe he was in there because he felt it too. 

Because he couldn’t hold back any more than you could.

That he was in there touching himself. 

Because of you. 

By the time the bathroom door creaked open, your breath was shallow with anticipation and your palms clammy. 

Your head whipped to the hall just as Bucky stepped out, broad shoulders filling the doorway. His hair was damp, and you couldn’t tell if it was because of the sweat, or from splashing water over his face.

“Uh—are you… are you okay?” you asked, your voice softer than you meant it to be.

He dragged a hand over his stubbled jaw, his expression unreadable as his eyes took you in. 

“I’m fine,” he said, dismissive as ever—yet his voice was rougher, like gravel. 

At this point, you expected him to brush past you, head back outside and lose himself in the pipes. That’s what he always did, and that’s what you told yourself to expect. 

But he didn’t move. 

You interlocked your fingers as your hands rested in front of you, looking prim as if he was the owner of the house and you were the one serving him. 

“Um—do you, uh, want something to drink before you head back out?” you offered. “Or you could sit down for a bit, maybe relax for a second? It’s hotter today than yesterday, and—” 

“I want a tour,” he cut you off. 

“A house tour?” you blinked, flustered. “O-okay… let me just change—” 

“No need,” he interrupted calmly, his eyes flickering briefly down to your body before coming back to your face. “It’ll be quick anyway. Gotta fix those pipes.” 

Your cheeks warmed up. A house tour was the last thing you expected out of him, but you weren’t complaining. Maybe this was his version of a break. You straightened your shoulders and tried to play it cool. 

“Alright… well, we’ll start here,” you said, gesturing to the living room couch where you had been lounging earlier. You walked him past the coffee table, and with your back now turned to him, you couldn’t help but if his eyes were lingering on your body the same way it did at the bathroom 

“This couch,” you continued, forcing yourself to sound light and casual, “is where I usually read or watch movies. Very comfortable, and it gets plenty of sunlight.”

Bucky stood close behind you. “Vitamin D,” he said. “Very important.” He glances down at the couch. “Do you mind if I take a seat?” 

If it were any other man, you would’ve been revulsed at the thought—your pristine, expensive couch soaking up sweat from someone who had been working in the sun all day.

But Bucky wasn’t any other man.

“Please,” you reassured, motioning with a smile. “Be my guest.”

He let out a quiet huff as he settled down, the cushions sinking under his weight. His broad shoulders stretched across the backrest, making your large couch look small. One hand slid along the cushion, testing the give of the fabric.

“It’s comfortable,” he said flatly. 

You laughed a little too quickly, the nerves getting at you. “I get only the best. I… spend a lot of time here.” 

Bucky tilted his head slightly, and for a second, you thought that he’d get up and give one of his usual gruff responses. But instead, he patted the empty cushion beside him, inviting you as if the house wasn’t under your name.

“Have a seat.” 

Your breath got stuck in your throat. “Uh—okay,” it was unexpected, but you shrugged and settled down anyway, your bare thigh grazing against his. “Sure.” 

He leaned back into the couch, arms stretched lazily across the top, one long leg crossing over the other. For someone stepping into your living room for the first time, he sure sat there like he owned it.

You perched on the edge of the cushion, hands folded primly in your lap while he looked as though he belonged—like this was his space, not yours. 

“Can I ask you something?” 

You turned, eyes slightly wide at the sudden question. “Anything.” 

He looked around the room with an unreadable expression, taking in the expanse of the clean kitchen, the wide dining area, and the chandelier dangling on the high ceiling. 

“Your house is big,” he said. “Most houses I work for, there’s a family, or people coming and going. But here…” his eyes land back on you. “You’re always by yourself. Why is that?”

You felt yourself going stiff. The bikini you put on to draw him closer suddenly felt like a mistake—because right now, with the way his eyes pinned you, you wished you were wearing anything else.

“I don’t really…” you hesitated, fingers fidgeting in your lap. “I don’t really like having that many people over. It makes it dirty, and I like the solitude sometimes, you know?” 

His head tilted slightly. The silence that followed felt tense, until his mouth quirked up in a faint smirk. “So that’s why your house is so clean?” his voice was rougher, almost teasing. “Would be a shame if someone like me were to come in and dirty it up, wouldn’t it?”

“W-what?” you stuttered, but tried to hide it with a small laugh. 

Spurred on by your flustered reaction, his smirk grew wider as he leaned in closer, his voice coming to a growl. 

“What’s wrong? Thought you always wanted me to come inside your house.” 

The way he said it, voice deep and husky, made your stomach twist and your legs press together. He wasn’t just talking about the house, and you both knew it. 

Bucky’s eyes swept lazily around the room before settling back on you. 

“I want to see the rest of your place,” he said, “but your couch… it’s pretty damn comfortable.” 

You opened your mouth, unsure if you should argue or joke, but the words never made it out. He shuffled, leaning closer, his thick thigh pressing harder against yours. 

“Scoot closer,” he murmured.

You swallowed, suddenly feeling nervous, but you did as he asked and slid closer until the heat of his body filled every inch of space beside you. 

That’s when his hand glided gently on your bare thigh. His fingers were rough. Warm. His thumb moves in slow circles against your skin, testing you. 

“Tell me more about the living room,” he coaxed, his tone deceptively casual.

He looked at you and spoke as though he wasn’t even touching you, as though his hand wasn’t resting heavy and warm on your thigh. His touch was deceptively gentle, but it was enough to make your whole body tremble. 

Enough to leave you aching for more.

“Um… well, I usually… uh—read here… watch movies and sometimes, you know… just nap,” you stammered.

It was insane, really— how confident you were when trying to coax him in. But your words faltered as his head leaned closer, his lips brushing against the curve of your neck. A soft kiss, then another, each one carving into your skin as his hand traveled higher.

“And the rug…” you blurted out, desperate for composure. “It’s one of my favorites—it’s a limited-edition Oushak. Handwoven, cream and pale blue… only ten of them in the world.”

A soft press of his lips, followed by the scrape of his teeth and the slow glide of his tongue over your neck, left your breath caught in your throat. His hand squeezed your thigh, creeping dangerously higher to the thin fabric of your bikini bottoms.

“Where is it from?” he muttered against your skin.

You knew he didn’t care for the answer, yet you gave it to him anyway. “An—ah—it’s, uh… it was imported, um—from… f-from Turkey? Or Persia—somewhere like that—I don’t, I can’t—”

Your words were barely making sense now, every syllable trembling off your tongue. Because it had been so long—so long since anyone touched you like this. And being touched by the man who you secretly sought after made your head spin like crazy. 

His hand slid up higher and wrapped tight around your waist, pulling you close against him. You let out a soft gasp, your body trembling as you pressed into his hard, warm, and muscular frame.

“Bucky…!” you breathed, your hands rising instinctively and brushing against his bicep. 

But before you could go any further, his hand shot out immediately and caught your wrist. His grip on your wrist was gentle, but the movement was rough as he guided your hands back down to your sides with ease.

“Keep your hands at your sides.” 

You sucked in a deep breath, both embarrassment and arousal tingling inside you. The audacity of him—to be so commanding here, in your own damn house. He worked for you. It should’ve been the other way around. And yet, you cursed yourself for nodding because you were just simply too flustered to resist.

He grinned faintly at your obedience.

“Go on,” he said, lips ghosting over your ear as his hand caressed your naked waist. “Tell me more about the house.” 

“Bucky,” you hesitated, blinking up at him. “What are you… what are you trying to do—” 

“C’mon, pretty girl,” he grunted, his nose brushing against your jawline. He pulled away slightly to catch your gaze, his blue eyes dark and desperate, pinning you in place. “Isn’t this what you wanted? For me to come inside?”

“Well… yes, but—” 

“Then go on.” He pressed, leaning closer. “Let’s relax for a bit, yeah? Just lay back…” he looked around the living room slowly, “and tell me more about your beautiful home.” 

His hand slid down your waist and around your back, his touch firm but careful as he guided you back against the couch cushions. He moved with you, settling himself between your legs, his broad shoulders nudging your thighs apart.

“Bucky..” you whispered, your voice shaky even though you made no move to stop him. 

He lowered himself slowly, his stubble grazing against the sensitive inside of your thigh. One kiss, then another—each torturously gentle, each one leaving your body trembling even harder.

“Go on,” he encouraged as he pressed another kiss higher. “Tell me more about your living room.”

Your head fell back against the couch, a soft sigh escaping your lips as you tried to string words together. 

“Um… the… the ceilings are high—so high, and the chandelier… it’s uh, imported crystal. Very… elegant.” 

Bucky’s lips curved up against your thigh, a soft, raspy chuckle vibrating against your skin. His mouth traveled higher until, finally it pressed firmly against the thin fabric of your bikini bottoms. The sudden heat of his lips over your most sensitive spot made you jolt, a sharp gasp escaping your throat as your body shook.

“B-Bucky…” you panted, your hips bucking up instinctively, desperate for more contact. “Please…”

You felt the teasing curl of his smile against you. The thin fabric was already damp with your arousal, and the realization that he could feel it—that he could smell it—sent a hot flush of shame and need up your neck.

“Mmm,” he hummed against you, the vibration shooting straight through your core. 

“You’re soaked, baby. And you smell so fucking sweet,” his tongue flicking over your clothed folds. “What was that you said about your… chandelier? Imported crystal?”

Then, his tongue flicked out, dragging over your wet folds through the fabric, the damp barrier doing nothing to dull the sensation. The light, tormenting trace of him had your hips rutting up shamelessly, chasing more friction, more of him.

“Oh, God—Bucky. I need you—” 

Your thighs quivered around his head as his tongue traced you again, the sticky fabric preventing you from feeling the real thing. He was playing with you, tormenting you, making you unravel with just the smallest movements of his mouth.

“Need me? What could you need from me that you don’t already have, baby?” he taunted, his hand rubbing up and down your thigh. “You’ve already got a fancy rug, a chandelier… so don’t be greedy now, sweetheart.”

Your hands fisted the cushions harder, nails biting into the fabric as your legs quivered around him. “I can’t—I need more, please, I need—”

Before you could finish, he shoved your bottoms to the side, exposing your slick heat to the cool air. A guttural groan escaped him at the sight, his eyes darkening as if he had been starving for this. He didn’t hesitate—didn’t want to waste another second as his mouth dropped back down, tongue flattening against your folds in one long, hungry lick.

“Oh my god!” you cried, your back arching as your hands flew to cover your face, too overwhelmed to do anything else. “Bucky—”

“Mm..” He hummed against you, savoring your taste before dragging his tongue even slower, teasing your sensitive clit. “Tell me more about the house, baby. The floors… they’re waxed, aren’t they?”

God. Here you were—sprawled out and nearly naked on your couch with your pool cleaner’s head in between your legs. This very moment felt like straight out of a dream, but here he was, asking about your wax floors.

“Y-yeah…” you panted. “The… the floors, they’re… w-waxed every—oh, fuck—every week.”

“Every week, huh?” he muttered into you, lips curling before he dove back in, sucking hard on your swollen clit until you cried out. “That why they shine so pretty?”

You have a very good feeling he isn’t just talking about the floors anymore. You could barely answer, choking on your moans, thighs shaking violently around his head. Your grip on the couch cushions grew desperate, clawing at the fabric for any ounce of stability.

Then came his fingers. Two, thick and rough, sliding through your soaked folds, teasing, spreading you open.

“F-fuck…” you gasped, hips twitching uncontrollably. 

Without warning, he shoved them inside deep, curling instantly against your softest spot. Your cry was sharp, needy, your back arching off the couch.

“B-Bucky!”

He didn’t let you adjust—his tongue fucking your clit in rhythm with the hard thrusts of his fingers, pumping into you wet and fast, filling the room with the sounds of your pussy squelching against his hand along with his deep grunts and groans. 

“That’s it, baby,” he grunted. “Cry for me. Fuck—you sound so fuckin’ pretty…”

The sound of his mouth, your wet pussy squelching from his fingers filled the air. Your body was unraveling, every nerve tightening as your stomach knotted hard, the edge of release coming into you with brutal speed. “I—fuck… feels so good. I’m so close, I’m—”

But just as you were about to come undone, he stopped. 

His mouth pulled away. His fingers slipped out with a wet pop as he left you trembling, wet, and aching for more.

A broken whimper left your lips as he casually tugged your bikini bottom back into place, covering the mess he’d just made of you.

“Bucky—why—” your voice cracked as you tried sitting up. 

He smirked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand like it was nothing.

“You’ll get more when I’m ready.” He leaned back, calm as ever, while you trembled beneath him. “Now… are you going to show me the rest of this pretty house?”

You whimpered, legs still trembling. “Bucky… please…”

He pushed himself up slowly, adjusting himself in his work pants, the heavy outline of his cock impossible to miss. His eyes dragged over you—every curve, every shake of your body as you arched unconsciously toward him. His tongue darted out to wet his bottom lip at the delicious sight. Watching you come apart for him was already driving him mad.

When he took a step back from the couch, you moved without thinking.

“Wait…” you scrambled, crawling to the edge of the cushions. Your hands trailed along the thick muscle of his thigh until they found the waistband of his pants. You tugged gently, voice desperate and a quiet whisper. “I… I want to taste too—”

His eyes darkened instantly, locking on yours, and before you could pull him closer, his large hand wrapped around yours. The grip was firm, authoritative, and deliciously commanding.

“No,” he growled. “Tour first.” 

Your brows furrowed, lips parting in disbelief. 

You were frustrated, aroused, and utterly confused. Why was he torturing you like this? Didn’t he know that you needed him so bad? You were so close, and you can still feel your pussy fluttering against the thin fabric of your bikini—aching for him. A frustrated whine left your mouth as your nails dug into his hand, trying to tug him closer anyway.

But Bucky only shook his head, smirking faintly at your desperation. He leaned down until his lips brushed against your ear, his breath making your skin prickle.

“You wanted me inside,” he said quietly.  “Now show me your house.” 

None of this made sense. You couldn’t understand why he was dragging this out, why he wouldn’t just give you what you were begging for. But God, you couldn’t stop yourself from listening. You were already addicted to him enough—the sound of his voice, the warmth of his hand… it could undo you completely. 

So you swallowed hard, nodded, and stood up. Your legs were weak, trembling with every step as you moved ahead of him, leading him towards the staircase. 

“That’s it,” Bucky purred behind you, deep and mocking. “Good girl. Lead the way.” 

Your fingers held onto the banister as you climbed, your thighs brushing with each step, the subtle friction of simply walking making you go mad. The fabric of your bikini felt suffocating and sticky, and you knew he could see it in the way your hips swayed as you walked. 

“You’re shaking,” he taunted softly. “Legs that weak already? And I’ve barely touched you.” 

“Bucky…” you whispered, not sure if you were pleading or warning. 

“Keep going,” his hand brushed against your lower back, steadying you like he owned your body. “Show me more of this big, empty house that you’re so proud of.” 

When you reached the landing, you paused, swallowing hard and desperate to catch your breath. But Bucky was already closing the gap, his chest brushing against your bare shoulder blades. 

“This is… the hallway,” you said quickly, gesturing down the long stretch of polished wood and soft lighting. “I, um… had these sconces imported from Italy. They’re—” 

“Imported,” Bucky cut you off, his tone slightly mocking and amused. “Everything in this house’s imported, huh?” 

Your cheeks burned, and you tried to keep walking, pointing towards a piece of art hanging on the wall. “That’s an original oil painting, early 19th cent—” 

His chest pressed harder against your back, trapping you between him and the wall. Warm breath brushed over the shell of your ear, and then his mouth was on your neck again—soft kisses, then rougher as his hands slid around your waist. 

“B-bucky…” you sighed, “please, can we just—” 

“Keep going,” he murmured. “Don’t stop.” 

His hands gripped your waist tight as he rolled his hips forward, his hard length grinding against your ass through the barrier of his work pants. The friction was maddening as he rutted up against you, hard and slow. 

“Th-that… that painting… it’s, um, early 19th century—ah!” 

Your words broke apart the minute his lips found that sweet spot just under your ear, sucking until you whimpered. 

“You already said that, baby,” he growled. One hand slipped up, cupping your breast through the tiny triangle of your bikini top, thumb flicking over the hardened bud. “C’mon, give me something new.” 

His other hand pressed lower, flattening against your tummy as he rutted against you harder, each thrust of his hips pushing you forward a step. 

“F-fuck…” he hissed through gritted teeth, his breath ragged in your ear. 

His rutting grew rougher, his cock thick and heavy against the curve of your ass through his pants. Your palms splayed flat against the wall, the sconces rattling faintly from the impact. 

You were a shaking, whimpering mess under him. “The—th-the flooring,” you babbled, “mahogany… oh god, imported from Brazil…!” Your words were caught off by a sharp moan as his hands slipped under the bikini, squeezing your breast and pinching your nipple. 

“Imported,” he repeated mockingly, panting as he ground against you. “Fuck, baby, you feel that? You’re makin’ me so fucking hard.” 

“Bucky—please, please,” you whined, shamelessly pushing your hips back into him, grinding against the thick outline of his cock. The friction sent sparks up your spine, your thighs quivering and clit throbbing. 

“Shit,” he cursed, forehead pressing into your shoulder as his hips rutted against you harder, sloppier. His hands roamed and fondled you roughly as he fucked against you through his pants. “Gonna make a mess in my work clothes if you keep wiggling that ass against me.”

You gasped, head tipping back helplessly against his chest. “Then do it—fuck, please—”

“Goddamn, you’re fucking desperate,” his hand circled up around your neck, not choking, but squeezing gently as he held you in place and rutted faster. “Keep talkin’ about the house, pretty girl. Go on. Tell me about your perfect little hallway while I ruin you right here.” 

You nearly collapsed and his hand finally slid under the thin band of your bikini bottoms, his fingers brushing through your slick heat. 

“B-Bucky!” you gasped, hips jerking when the pad of his finger circled your clit. The contrast—his hand working you, his hips grinding rough and needy into your ass, it had your body unraveling in seconds. 

“That’s it,” he rasped against your ear. “Fuckin’ soaked for me. So good, baby.” 

You whimpered and clawed at the wall, your body caught between his rutting cock and those ruthless circles around your clit. “Please—I can’t—I’m gonna—”

“Yeah?” he panted, hips stuttering as his cock pulsed and leaked hard against you, the friction almost unbearable for him too. “Gonna come for me right here in your pretty hallway? Fuck—me too, baby, me too—”

But just as your body tensed, pleasure right there at the edge, he tore his hand away. His hips stilled, chest heaving against your back as his grip on your waist tightened before letting you go. 

The sudden loss felt like ice water in your veins. 

“N-no, no,” you begged, looking over your shoulder with pleading eyes. “Please, not again. Why—” 

He chuckled as he pressed a mocking kiss to your cheek. “Not yet,” his hand caressed down your thigh while the other tugged your swimsuit back into place. “Tour’s not finished.” 

Your body was trembling beneath him. You’re about to turn around, grip onto his shirt and start begging, but his rough voice cut through. 

“Show me your bedroom.” 

You swallowed hard, cheeks burning, every nerve frustrated from being denied. “Bucky…” you whispered in plea, but you didn’t dare to finish your sentence with the dark look he was giving you. 

His fingers came up and brushed your cheek in a teasing stroke, making you jolt. “You gonna keep me waiting? Or do I need to find it myself?”

Your knees nearly buckled, the thought of him striding into your private space—into the most intimate part of your house made your heart beat even faster in your chest. With a shaky breath, you straightened up while still clinging to the wall for support, and nodded.

“This way,” you said, legs trembling as you took small steps down the hallway. 

Behind you, you could hear him exhale a soft laugh, amused at how weak and needy you were from so little. 

Your hand trembled as you turned the knob, pushing the door open to your bedroom. The soft scent of your perfume was floating in the air, laced with fresh linen and the faint sweetness of flowers from the vase on your nightstand.

“This is it,” you said softly, stepping aside so he could see. 

The room looked pristine. Large windows—where you could get the full view of him, of course—with sheer curtains to let in the afternoon light. A perfectly made bed with ivory sheets, not a thing out of place. 

It was your sanctuary. Your most private place.

And now he was in it. 

Bucky leaned against the doorframe, his eyes taking in every inch of the room before landing on you again. 

“Figures,” he said. “Perfect. Clean. Polished. Just like the rest of the house.” 

You fidgeted, your palms brushing nervously over your thighs. “I… I like to keep things neat. It helps me feel—”

“Safe?” he interrupted, his voice almost a growl. He pushed off the frame and stepped closer to you. “Then why’d you invite me in, sweetheart? I’m the messiest thing that could ever happen to this house.” 

Your breath caught, your heart hammering in your chest. “I didn’t let you in,” you whispered. “You… invited yourself in, actually.”

His jaw ticked, a dangerous flash of amusement glinting in his eyes. “Lay down,” he ordered suddenly, his voice rough and demanding. “On the bed. Now.”

Your gaze darted from his still-sweaty and still-dirty work clothes to your untouched, pristine sheets. The contrast made your stomach twist. 

“Uh… I don’t know—”

“Are you kidding me?” he scoffed, crossing his large arms over his broad chest, muscles flexing. “You’ve been eye-fucking me since the day I started working for you, and now that I’m standing here, you’re telling me you don’t want me in your bed?”

“Well,” your eyes flicked from his sweat-stained shirt to your spotless sheets. “I don’t mean to offend, but… you’re dirty—” 

Before you could even finish, his mouth crashed against yours. The kiss was rough, greedy, stealing the rest of the words right off your tongue. His rough stubble scraped against your skin, his lips bruising yours. 

“I was rubbing all over you in your hallway—” another hard kiss, “had my tongue and fingers buried in your pussy—” his hand grabbed your hip, dragging you closer against him as he kissed you harder, “and now you’re worried about cleanliness?” 

Bucky’s mouth left yours, lips stealing kisses down your jaw and down your throat. You were panting, clutching desperately at his shirt. 

“You think I care about these clean sheets?” he muttered against your skin. “You think I don’t notice the way you look at me—every damn day, like you want me to ruin every inch of this perfect house?” 

Your heart was beating so hard it hurt. “Bucky…” 

He leaned back, eyes boring into yours with a hunger you couldn’t quite explain. His thumb brushed over your trembling bottom lip. 

“Fine,” he grunted. “If you’re that worried about the bed, I’ll just have to fuck you on your pretty waxed floors like a slut, then.” 

Before you could respond, his hands wrapped around tight around your waist, lifting you up and gently setting you down on the floor. The cool hardwood hit your bare back, your hair spilling across the glossy wax as he hovered over you. The contrast made your skin prickle—your perfect, polished sanctuary versus the filthy way he was pinning you down in it.

“You like that, don’t you?” he rasped, spreading your thighs wide with one big hand while his other gripped your jaw to keep your eyes on him. “The thought of me ruining all your hard work—dirty boots, sweaty body, cum dripping down your nice clean floors.”

A broken moan tore from you, your back arching under him as your thighs trembled. “Bucky—please…”

“Please what?” he taunted as he ground his hard cock through his work pants against your barely covered pussy. “Please fuck you like the needy little slut you are? Right here, on the floor you polish every damn week?”

He pulled away slightly to pull his shirt over his head. Then his fingers made quick work of his belt, tugging his work pants down until his cock sprang free. Thick, heavy, the flushed head already slick with precum.

A hiss escaped his lips as his fist wrapped around the hot shaft, working himself with a few steady pumps as his hands tugged at your bikini, while his other hand yanked your bikini bottoms down your thighs in a single rough motion. 

You gasped, trembling, your pussy slick and finally bared for him.

“Fuck,” he groaned, running the tip along your warm folds. He tapped against your clit once, making your hips jerk. “Look at you… already dripping.” 

He smirked, leaning over you. “You’ve been trying to get me in this house for so long. Always flirting, always begging. This is what you really wanted, isn’t it?” he nudged himself against your entrance, just enough to make you cry out. “Don’t be shy now, baby. Say it.”

Your hands clawed at his shoulders, your voice turning into high, breathless moans. “Yes—yes, I wanted this, I wanted you—please, Bucky—”

“That’s a good girl,” he cooed as he pressed the head of his cock against your entrance. The stretch was immediate and overwhelming as he pushed in slowly. Your mouth dropped open with a whimper, fingers digging into his broad shoulders. 

“God—you’re so tight,” he grunted, jaw clenching as he eased just an inch deeper. “Relax, baby. I’ll be gentle… just—let me in, fuck…” 

But gentle wasn’t easy with you clenching and fluttering around him like that. You whimpered louder, your back arching off the floor as the thickness of him split you open. “Bucky—too big—I can’t—”

“Yes, you can,” he rasped, his lips brushing your ear. “Just breathe… let me in, baby.”

He tried to push in deeper, inch by careful inch… but every time he pushed forward, the tightness of your body made his breath hitch. The control he promised you was slipping with every squeeze of your body. 

“Too damn tight,” he groaned, forehead pressing to yours as his eyes flutter shut—trying to keep it together, because damn, did he want this just as badly as you did. 

“Could’ve had it on the bed… make it nice and comfortable for you,” another inch, another cry from you. “But no, you didn’t want to dirty it up. So now you’re taking it here, on the floor, like a dirty slut.”

He pushed deeper, almost halfway in before pausing at the tight sensation. He tipped his head back, lips falling to let out a frustrated groan. 

“Fuck—but I’m too big, aren’t I?” he slowly pulled back, then back in, fucking you with what’s already inside your clenching pussy. 

Your walls fluttered around him, your body trembling as it slowly began to adjust to his large size. The initial sting turned into a deep, burning and delicious stretch, each shallow thrust easing him in further. 

“Th-that’s it,” he coaxed sweetly, voice breaking as his hips rolled carefully, testing your limits. “Good girl—taking me so fuckin’ sweet…”

Your nails dug into his shoulders, hips shifting beneath him to meet his slow movements. The pain was melting into pleasure, and every tiny adjustment of your hips let him sink a little deeper. 

You were opening up for him, and he could feel it. 

His jaw clenched, hovering over you with one hand against the floor to balance himself, and the other gripped in your hip. 

“Spread your legs a little higher, baby,” he rasped, voice restrained. 

Before you could move yourself, he caught the back of your thighs and pressed them up, folding you into a desperate and messy version of a mating press. The angle had you gasping, crying out at the sudden, deeper stretch.

“Fuck, that’s it,” he groaned. “Look at you—pretty little thing… takin’ me like this.”

But just as he adjusted his knees on the polished wood, his boot slipped against the waxed and smooth surface. 

He lost his grip for just a second, and the slip forced his hips forward in one hard, uncontrolled thrust. 

Slamming all the way in. 

“Oh my god!”

A helpless cry ripped out of you as your back arched off the floor—hot pleasure and pain shot through your body. Tears blurred at your eyes at the overwhelming stretch, the sudden fullness of him stealing breath from your lungs. 

Bucky’s moan was just as wrecked, his forehead leaning against yours as his body shook. 

“Shit—fuck—baby… I didn’t mean to—oh, goddamn…” he tried to pull back, but your cunt fluttered too tight around him, clamping down so hard he groaned again, shuddering from the sensation.

You clung to him for support. “S-so full—oh my god, Bucky, don’t—don’t move—”

“Fuck… I–I can’t… s’too late, baby. Feels too good now.”

His words were a growl, ripped straight from his chest as he drew his hips back and slammed forward again, burying himself to the hilt. The waxed floors squeaked beneath you with every rough thrust, the sound swallowed by your moans and his ragged grunts. 

“My god… look at you,” he rasped. “All that whining about me being dirty, but here you are—getting ruined on the fucking floor.”

You couldn’t answer or even form a single word—the only thing leaving your lips were strangled moans and broken gasps. The stretch, the fullness of him—it was overwhelming. 

And addictive.

“Bucky—” you sobbed, head falling back against the polished floors as tears spilled. “I—oh my god—”

“Shh,” he hushed, voice mixed with gentleness and possession. “Take it. Take all of me. You wanted me in your house, baby? Then fucking have me.”

His thrusts grew harder and deeper, his cock hitting a spot inside you that made your vision blur. Every slam of his hips resulted in another cry from your throat as your body shook beneath him. 

You were gone. 

Utterly undone. 

You were reduced to a babbling, slutty mess. 

Bucky’s thrusts were relentless as he fucked you deep. His hand clamped down on your jaw, forcing you to look at him. 

“Bet you regret not going on the bed now, huh?” he gritted between shaky groans. “Could’ve had me stretch you out all soft on those pretty sheets… but no—you had to take me right here. On the floor like a dirty little slut.”

Your walls clenched hard around him, and his eyes darkened. His cock twitched deep inside you.

“What do you say, baby?” his voice was rough and possessive as his pace quickened, impatient for an answer. “Want me to breed you while you lay there nice and pretty on your comfy bed?”

You tried to answer, but only broken whimpers and pathetic gasps left from your lips. The words wouldn’t come out, but your body gave you away—your thighs trembling, pussy fluttering desperately around him, already begging without words.

“Uh-uh,” he pinned you down harder, his nose brushing yours as he stared into your eyes. “Don’t just lay there. Tell me.”

But your brain was fried. Completely scrambled by the way he was splitting you open—so you gave the only answer you could. 

You nodded, frantic and whiny, tears brimming as your lips formed a silent plea. 

Bucky groaned in approval, his control snapping. “That’s my good girl.”

He pulled out, and the sudden emptiness left you whining. His hands gripped your waist firmly, lifting you effortlessly off the floor. A startled yelp escaped your lips as your legs curled around him for support, clinging to his broad body.

He set you down gently on the bed, but his hands didn’t stop exploring—grabbing, gripping, teasing every curve. 

He stepped back to the edge of the mattress, and before you could even say anything, he yanked your bikini top off in one rough motion. The straps snapped, falling away to leave your chest bare, nipples already hard and flushed from the heat between you two.

A low growl rumbled from his chest at the sight of you, his tongue darting out to wet his bottom lip. “Fuck,” he groaned, already tugging down the rest of his clothes until he stood completely bare. “So fucking beautiful.” 

Bucky got on the bed and pressed himself against you, the heat of his heavy cock meeting your dripping folds yet again. You let out a soft gasp as he filled you again slowly this time. 

“Think you can take me again, baby?” he groaned, his hands gripping your hips tight, tilting your body up to meet every stroke. Each movement was hard, fast, and unrelenting, making you gasp and whimper with every hit.

“F-fuck… yes, Bucky!” 

Bucky’s eyes rolled back, jaw tight, as he leaned over you, pressing his forehead to yours. He shifted your legs back into the mating press, hands gripping your hips to tilt you up just right. 

“Gonna go even deeper this time, baby,” he panted. “Need you to feel every inch of me.” 

“Oh my god, Bucky—fuck… you feel too good,” you moaned, looking up at him with soft and pleading eyes as he fucked into you. 

“Look at you, all fancy and perfect… and I’m the filthy pool boy inside you,” he growled, voice rough and raspy. “Taking my rich girl… making you mine.”

Your hips jerked instinctively at the words, thighs trembling around him. “P-please…” you whimpered, fingers tight on his shoulders. 

He smirked darkly, teeth grazing your earlobe. “Shut it, baby… you don’t get to talk right now. You just get to feel me—filling you up, making that tight little cunt all mine.”

His hand dug into your hip, pulling you closer as he slammed in deeper. 

“Bet you never thought someone like me would get you this wet… taking your perfect little pussy and using it, huh? Fuck, you love it… don’t you?”

Your back arched, hips rolling with his thrusts, and the heat building tight in your stomach, building fast. With a loud and deep groan, he drove into you harder, faster, every stroke pushing you closer.

“Fuck—cum for me, baby,” he growled. “I can feel you squeezing me so tight… fuck, I’m right there too—”

“Bucky—” you gasped, nails dragging down his bare back as your legs trembled violently around his waist. “I’m gonna cum—please, don’t stop, don’t stop!”

That was all it took for him. 

“Fuck, sweetheart!” 

He slammed into you one last time—hard. Hot streams of his release spilled deep inside you, filling you up while your own orgasm shook you, your body convulsing around him. The wet, messy sound of your cunt milking every drop only drove him further, leaving the both of you trembling, coming undone together in a haze of sweat. 

The two of you collapsed onto the bed, limbs tangled and sweat-slicked, your chests rising and falling as you caught your breath. 

“Good girl,” Bucky’s arm draped possessively across your waist, his hand tracing lazy circles along your hip. “That was so good, sweetheart. You took all of it, baby.” 

You rested your head against his naked chest, the warmth of him calming you down. All the while, he’s pressing soft kisses to your sweaty forehead, fingers treading your hair in a gentle and soothing manner. 

“Have you… really noticed the way I’ve been trying to catch your attention?” you asked softly, your fingers tracing idle patterns along his chest.

Bucky let out a quiet and amused huff, his big palm gliding lazily up and down your spine. 

“Yeah,” he said casually. “It was pretty damn obvious.”

There was a brief pause for a moment, just the sounds of your breathing filling the air. 

Then, a teasing little smirk curved your lips. 

“Well, did you think I didn’t notice you too?” 

He raised a brow and tilted his head down to look at you, confused. “What do you mean, baby?” 

But you didn’t look up at him. 

“When you… stood outside my window. Watching me…” you dragged your nails down his ribs, feeling him tense beneath you. “…jerking off… while I touched myself, thinking about you?”

Bucky froze beneath you, his lips parting but no sound coming out at first. His blue eyes widened and his face flushed in embarrassment. 

“You—fuck, you saw that?” his voice broke, suddenly not so cocky anymore.

“Mhm,” you hummed, grinning as your hand slid down his stomach. His abs twitched under your touch, and before he could even process it, your fingers wrapped around his still-hard sensitive cock.

He gasped, body jolting at the contact. “Shit—baby, wait—”

But you didn’t wait. You stroked him slow and steady, relishing the way his entire body trembled under yours. He was the one in control, taunting and commanding… but now? 

He was a mess, chest heaving, fists clutching the sheets as he tried and failed to keep his composure as you worked him with your hand. 

“You looked so desperate out there,” you teased, leaning down to press your lips against his ear, your voice a sultry whisper. “Stroking your cock while you watched me play with myself. Did it make you crazy? Knowing you couldn’t touch me?”

“Fuck,” his hips jerked up and his legs trembled. He squeezed his eyes shut, head shaking. “Baby—please… I’m too sensitive—oh!” 

His head fell back against the pillows, a strangled moan coming from his throat as your wrist twisted just right, drawing another bead of precum from him. 

He was so sensitive, every stroke making his thighs twitch and his hips buck up helplessly into your hand. “Please, please…” he moaned, “please… my god, it’s too much. Fuck…” 

“Not so smug now, huh?” you purred, giving him a firmer squeeze that made him hiss through clenched teeth. “My poor, dirty pool boy. You’re just as needy for me as I am for you.”

Before he could respond, you straddled him slowly, the head of his cock nudging against your puffy and wet folds as you settled onto his hips. His whole body went taut, a groan ripping from his chest as his hands instinctively gripped your thighs, trying to stop you. 

“Fuck…” he whimpered, eyes glued to where you were teasing him, your wetness smearing over his flushed tip. “Baby, I can’t—shit, I’m still—”

A soft and not-so-innocent giggle left your lips. You leaned down, lips brushing his jaw as your hips rolled just enough to make him twitch beneath you. He sucked in a sharp breath, his cock throbbing helplessly against your drenched heat.

“House tour’s not done, Bucky,” you whispered, your smirk brushing against the corner of his mouth. “We’ve still got a third floor.”

❝ my house was especially built for you! ❞ thank you for reading <3  

The couch had a permanent indent now, shaped to his body like a pathetic monument to his failures. He'd been meaning to flip the cushions. Hadn't. Same way he'd been meaning to call his therapist back. Hadn't. Same way he'd been meaning to do anything other than exist in this hollow space you'd left behind.

His phone buzzed. Sam, probably. Or Raynor. Both had been calling with increasing frequency, leaving voicemails that ranged from concerned to irritated to outright threatening. He let it ring out, watching his reflection in the black screen once it went quiet. He looked like shit. Felt worse.

The mission brief sat unopened on the kitchen counter where he'd thrown it two days ago. Valentina had sent three follow-ups, each more passive-aggressive than the last. He should care. Should worry about his standing with the team, about maintaining his pardon, about all the things that used to matter before you made everything else feel like background noise.

He didn't.

The apartment still smelled like you. Your shampoo lingered in the bathroom. Your coffee mug sat in the dishwasher—the one with the chip on the handle from when he'd knocked it off the counter during a nightmare. You'd laughed it off, said it gave it character. He'd been too raw from the dream to do anything but nod, but you'd seen through him like you always did. Made him tea instead of coffee that morning, kept your voice soft, didn't ask questions.

That was the thing that gutted him most. You'd always known how to navigate his damage without making him feel damaged. Until he'd made you feel like you were drowning right alongside him.

The journal you'd given him lay on the coffee table, still in its wrapping paper. He'd taken it out of the drawer the first night, set it there like placing flowers on a grave. Couldn't bring himself to open it. Couldn't bring himself to put it away either. So it sat there, gathering dust like everything else in his life.

But try for you, not for me.

Your words echoed in the empty space, bouncing off walls that held too many memories. The place where you'd slow danced at 2 AM to no music, just the sound of rain. The kitchen counter where you'd perched while he cooked, stealing bites and making him laugh. The doorframe where you'd stood that last morning, looking so fucking tired he'd wanted to drop to his knees and beg right there.

He should have.

Instead, he'd stood frozen like the coward he was, watching you leave with grief trapped in his throat like shrapnel. Three weeks later, he could still feel it cutting him up from the inside.

His metal arm whirred softly as he flexed the fingers. A recalibration, Shuri called it. Happened when the neural pathways got overwhelmed. Fitting, really. Everything about him needed recalibrating, and he didn't know where to start.

The velvet box hidden in his tactical bag mocked him from across the room. 

He'd bought it two months ago, in a moment of clarity where he thought he could push through his own bullshit long enough to do right by you. The plan had been simple: therapy, real therapy. Talk to Sam about going public. Stop letting fear drive every decision.

But clarity was a funny thing. It tended to evaporate the moment shit got real, and he'd gone right back to his patterns. Pushing you away so slowly you wouldn't notice until you were too far gone to reach.

Mission fucking accomplished.

His phone buzzed again. This time, he looked.

Raynor: Barnes. Answer your phone or I'm listing you as non-compliant. You know what that means.

He knew. Back to prison. Back to cuffs. Back to being the asset everyone was waiting to snap. Maybe that would be easier. At least in a cell, he couldn't hurt anyone else. Couldn't love anyone else into disappearing.

But even as the thought formed, he could hear your voice, sharp with frustration: "Stop. Just stop with the self-pity routine. You're not a weapon, you're a person who makes choices. So make better ones."

You'd said that after the nightmare, when he'd tried to punish himself by sleeping on the floor. Always cutting through his martyrdom complex with surgical precision. 

God, he missed you. Missed you like a physical wound, like something vital had been carved out of his chest and now he was just walking around with a hole where his heart used to be.

The front door opened—Sam, using the spare key you'd insisted on giving him. Because that was the kind of person you were. The kind who thought about safety nets and backup plans and making sure the people you loved were taken care of, even when they didn't deserve it.

"Man, you look worse than the last time I saw you," Sam said, not bothering with pleasantries. "And that's saying something."

Bucky didn't respond. Couldn't find the energy to deflect or defend. Sam's eyes swept the apartment, taking in the unchanged state of everything. The pictures still on the walls—you hadn't taken those. The blanket you'd crocheted still thrown over the couch. Your favorite cereal bowl still in the dishwasher.

"You planning on turning this place into a shrine, or you actually gonna deal with your shit?"

"Leave it, Sam."

"Nah." Sam moved into the kitchen, started making coffee like he owned the place. "See, I promised someone I'd check on you. Made that promise the day she called me crying because the man she loved was treating her like a ghost while she was still right there."

That got Bucky's attention. His head snapped up. "She called you?"

"Three weeks ago. Right after she left. Want to know what she said?"

Bucky's throat felt like sandpaper. "Sam—"

"She said, 'Make sure he's okay. Make sure he eats. Make sure he doesn't do anything stupid.' Even while her heart was breaking, she was worried about you." Sam turned, fixing him with a look that could peel paint. "So I'm here. Making sure. Even though what I really want to do is kick your ass for being the kind of idiot who lets the best thing in his life walk away."

"I didn't let her—" Bucky stopped, the lie dying on his lips. Because that's exactly what he'd done. Pushed and pushed until leaving was her only option. "I couldn't... I was going to hurt her."

"You did hurt her. Just not the way you thought." Sam poured two cups of coffee, set one in front of Bucky with more force than necessary. "You're so scared of the Winter Soldier showing up that you didn't notice Bucky Barnes was the one doing the damage."

The words hit like a physical blow. Bucky gripped the mug, needing something to anchor him. The ceramic was warm against his flesh palm, but he couldn't feel it with the metal one. Never could. Just like he couldn't feel you slipping away until it was too late.

"She's better off—"

"Man, if you finish that sentence, I swear to God." Sam sat across from him, leaning forward. "You want to know what she's doing right now? She's crashing on her sister's couch. Calling in sick to work because she can't stop crying long enough to get through a shift. Jumping every time her phone rings because she thinks it might be you."

Each word was a knife between his ribs. Bucky's hands trembled around the mug.

"But she's safe," he managed. "From me. From what I am."

"What you are," Sam said slowly, like he was talking to a child, "is a man too scared of his own happiness to let himself have it. You think pushing her away kept her safe? All it did was break both your hearts. Congratulations. Mission accomplished."

Bucky flinched. Those were the same words he'd thought earlier, but hearing them out loud made them real in a way that threatened to crack him open.

"I don't know how to fix it," he admitted, the words barely above a whisper.

"Start with therapy. Real therapy, not the bullshit check-ins you've been doing." Sam pulled out his phone, scrolled through his contacts. "I've got a guy. Specializes in PTSD, combat trauma. He's good. Discrete. And he won't let you get away with the stone-cold routine."

"Sam—"

"You said you'd try. She left, and you promised you'd try. So fucking try, Buck. Because I've seen you fight through impossible shit. I've seen you come back from the dead, literally. But you're gonna let fear kill the best relationship you've ever had?"

Bucky stared into his coffee, seeing your face reflected in the dark surface. The way you'd looked that last morning—hollow, exhausted, but still so fucking beautiful it made his chest ache. You'd been disappearing for months, and he'd been too wrapped up in his own damage to notice.

No. That wasn't true. He'd noticed. He'd just been too much of a coward to stop it.

"What if it's too late?" The question came out cracked, vulnerable in a way he hadn't allowed himself to be since that morning. "What if she's done?"

Sam was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was gentler. "Then at least you'll know you tried. Actually tried, not this half-ass self-sabotage you've been pulling. You owe her that. You owe yourself that."

Bucky thought about the ring hidden in his tactical bag. The journal gathering dust on the coffee table. The three weeks of silence that felt like three years. You'd asked him to try for himself, not for you. Because you'd known—god, you'd always known—that he couldn't heal for someone else. It had to be for him.

"The therapist," he said finally. "What's his name?"

Sam's smile was small but real. "Dr. Keene. He's got time Thursday if you're ready."

Thursday. Four days away. Four days to figure out how to walk into an office and crack himself open. Four days to stop running from the man he was so afraid of being.

"Yeah," Bucky said, and the word felt like the first true thing he'd said in weeks. "Yeah, okay."

Sam stayed for another hour, filling the silence with updates about the team, about Sarah and the boys. Normal things. Human things. The kind of life Bucky had told himself he couldn't have, didn't deserve.

After Sam left, Bucky sat in the too-quiet apartment and finally, finally opened the journal.

Your handwriting on the first page made his throat tight:

For all the stories you haven't told yet. You deserve to be more than your worst days. Always.

He picked up a pen, hand shaking slightly, and wrote the first words:

I fell in love with you on a Tuesday.

It wasn't much. It wasn't nearly enough. But it was true, and it was a start.

And maybe, if he could fill enough pages with truth, he'd figure out how to stop running from the only person who'd ever made him want to stay.

~ three weeks prior ~ The transport back to New York had been a special kind of hell.

Not the physical restraints—he'd worn worse, been treated worse. The titanium cuffs were almost gentle compared to HYDRA's methods. No, it was Walker's eyes that made him want to disappear. That mix of pity and disgust, the barely concealed I told you so hovering on his lips. It was Yelena going deadly quiet in the quinjet, which was somehow worse than her usual barbs. It was the way even Val—Val who'd seen every shade of monster there was—looked at him like a liability that needed containing.

Three bodies. Three ex-HYDRA scientists who'd been running a knockoff super soldier program out of a defunct pharmaceutical lab in Warsaw. The mission had been simple: infiltrate, gather intel, extract. No termination protocol. No weapons free. Just get in, get the data, get out.

He'd gotten in just fine.

Then one of them had smiled at him. Just a little quirk of the lips, and said, "Gotovy vypolnit' prikaz?" Ready to comply?

Not the words. Never the words again—Shuri had made sure of that. But something in the pattern, the cadence, the way the Russian rolled off his tongue like he'd been gargling broken glass. Something that bypassed all of Bucky's careful control and went straight to the place where the Soldier lived.

He'd come to with blood on his hands and Walker screaming in his ear.

The containment cell in the Tower's sub-basement was medical-grade, meant for enhanced individuals who posed a threat to themselves or others. White walls, no windows, temperature controlled to keep him comfortable while they figured out what the fuck had happened. He sat on the single bench, still in his tactical gear—they'd been too wary to let him change—and stared at his hands.

Flesh and metal. Both capable of equal damage.

His phone had been confiscated, but he could see it through the observation window, lighting up on the desk. Your ringtone—he'd assigned you something soft, something that wouldn't jar him awake from nightmares. It played three times in the first hour.

"You want me to answer that?" The tech on duty—Hollander, decent guy, three kids—gestured at the phone.

"No."

What was he supposed to say? Hey baby, I'm back in the city but currently in lockdown because I snapped and killed three people with my bare hands. How was your day?

Dr. Cho ran every scan imaginable. Blood work, brain scans, neural mapping. Looking for any trace of external manipulation, any sign that someone had found another way in. The results were horrifyingly clean. No drugs, no tech, no secret programming. Just Bucky Barnes, losing control because someone spoke Russian with the right inflection.

"It's a trauma response," Cho explained, professional but not unkind. "Like a soldier diving for cover when a car backfires. Your neural pathways remember the pattern, even if the trigger itself is gone."

"So I'm not safe." It wasn't a question.

"You're not unsafe," she corrected carefully. "But we should monitor—"

"How long?"

"Forty-eight hours minimum. Protocol."

Two days. Two days in a white box while you thought he was somewhere in Warsaw, doing hero work. Two days of your calls going unanswered because how could he explain this? How could he tell you that after all the work, all the fixing, he was still a weapon waiting to go off?

The door opened on day two. Yelena walked in like she owned the place. She dragged a chair across the floor, the screech of metal on concrete deliberately obnoxious, and sat backwards on it like they were having a casual chat.

"So," she said, examining her nails. "You had fun party in Warsaw."

"Go away, Belova."

"Cannot." She pulled out a bag of chips from her jacket—where the hell had she been hiding those?—and tore it open. "Valentina says I must watch you. Make sure you don't go—how she say—'full murder ‘bot again."

"I didn't—" He stopped. Because he had. Three bodies worth of had.

"You know what I think?" She crunched loudly, deliberately. "I think you are, eh, what is word... drama queen."

Bucky's head snapped up. "Excuse me?"

"You hear Russian, you freak out, you kill people." She waved a chip dismissively. "Is very dramatic. Like soap opera but with more blood."

"That's not—"

"'Oh no, someone spoke language of my tragic past, now I must murder.'" Her accent made the mockery somehow worse. "Is like me killing everyone who mentions Red Room. Would be very exhausting. Also, very messy."

"It's not the same thing."

"No?" She tilted her head, bird-like. "So trauma is competition now? Yours is special flavor?"

He glared at her. She popped another chip in her mouth, unbothered.

"You know what your problem is, Barnes?"

"Go ahead, enlighten me."

"You think you are only one with ghosts." She leaned forward, suddenly serious. "News flash—we all have them. Difference is, some of us learn to live with ghosts instead of letting ghosts live us."

"That's not—"

"Who calls you?" She nodded at his phone, still lighting up periodically. "Every twenty minutes, same ringtone. Soft. Like lullaby. Girlfriend?"

His silence was answer enough.

"Ah." She sat back, crunching thoughtfully. "And she does not know you are here, playing prisoner princess in tower."

"It's not her problem."

"Bozhe moi, you really are American again. Everything is 'not problem,' 'is fine,' 'don't worry about it.'" She switched to a terrible American accent for the last part. "Is exhausting, this pretending."

"I'm not pretending—"

"Your phone rings, and you look like someone is pulling out fingernails." She studied him with those too-sharp eyes. "But sure. Is not her problem."

Another call. The ringtone seemed louder in the silence that followed.

"You know what Natasha told me once?" Yelena's voice had gone softer, which was somehow worse than her mockery. "She said hardest part of having someone is letting them see you. All of you. Even ugly parts. Especially ugly parts."

"Natasha never—"

"Had someone? No. But she wanted to." She stood, leaving the chip bag on the chair. "Is why I think she would be very annoyed with you right now. All this self-pity, very boring. She hated boring."

She moved toward the door, then paused. "Your girlfriend—she is normal person? Not spy, not Avenger?"

He nodded reluctantly.

"Then she chose you knowing what you are, yes? Winter Soldier, metal arm, whole package?" She didn't wait for an answer. "So maybe—just maybe—she is stronger than you think. Maybe she doesn't need protecting. Maybe what she needs is boyfriend who answers fucking phone."

She knocked on the door to be let out, then turned back. "Oh, and Barnes? Next time someone speaks Russian at you and you feel like killing? Try counting to ten first. In English. Is what I do when Walker talks."

The door closed behind her, leaving Bucky alone with her words rattling around in his skull. His phone lit up again. This time, he could see the preview of your text:

Just tell me you're alive. Please.

Twenty-four hours later, when they finally released him past midnight, he had a dozen voicemails he couldn't bring himself to listen to. Not yet. Not when he was standing outside the Tower in yesterday's tactical gear, still smelling like violence and metal and shame.

He took a cab back to the apartment—couldn't call it home, not when you weren't there—and saw the anniversary dinner he'd missed. The gift waiting on the coffee table. The careful way you'd tried to make something special out of another night alone.

Three days. Three days of choosing his shame over your peace of mind. Three days of letting you think he might be dead rather than admit he was exactly what he'd always feared—a killer waiting for the right words to flip the switch.

When you finally called from that bar, drunk and scared and needing him, he'd already been drowning in guilt since Warsaw. The way you'd said you missed him, the texts that got progressively sadder, the mention of some asshole touching you—it had all crashed together into perfect clarity.

He'd been protecting himself. Not you. Never you.

Because protecting you would have meant answering the phone. Would have meant trusting you with the ugly truth. Would have meant believing—really believing—that you were strong enough to handle it.

Maybe she doesn't need protecting. Maybe what she needs is boyfriend who answers fucking phone.

Yelena's words echoed as he drove through empty streets toward you, already knowing he was probably too late. Already knowing that three days of silence had probably cost him everything.

But he went anyway. Because after three days of being a coward, showing up was the least he could do.

Even if it was too little, too late.

~ 2 years later ~

The therapist's office smelled like leather and lemon furniture polish. 

Two years in, and Bucky still noticed it every Thursday at 3 PM, still cataloged exits (two), potential weapons (letter opener, paperweight, his own hands), and the exact number of steps from his chair to the door (seven).

"You're doing it again," Dr. Keene observed, not unkindly.

"Doing what?"

"The risk assessment. You're safe here, James."

James. Two years, and he still wasn't used to anyone but you calling him that. But you hadn't called him anything in 730 days. Not that he was counting.

(He was absolutely counting.)

His metal fingers flexed involuntarily, the plates realigning with soft mechanical whispers. A phantom pain shot through his left shoulder—psychosomatic, Keene had explained. His body remembering trauma that technically belonged to a different arm. The original one, the flesh and bone one, long gone. Sometimes he still felt it, especially on cold mornings. Ghost sensations of fingers that had once known how to hold a rifle steady, play cards, touch a dame's cheek without fearing what came next.

"Hard habit to break," he said, settling deeper into the chair that had molded to his body over countless sessions. The leather creaked, and his spine automatically cataloged the sound—not danger, just furniture. Another lesson in rewriting instinct. "But I'm working on it."

That was the thing about therapy—the real kind, not the court-mandated check-ins he'd half-assed his way through before. It was work. Brutal, exhausting work that left him feeling flayed open and reassembled wrong. Some days he walked out of this office feeling like he'd gone ten rounds with Steve in his prime. Bruised in places that didn't show, aching in ways that had nothing to do with muscle or bone.

"Tell me about this week," Keene prompted. The man had the patience of a saint and the perception of a sniper. Salt-and-pepper beard, kind eyes that missed nothing, hands that never moved suddenly. Bucky had hated him for the first six months. Now he just mostly tolerated him, which was progress.

"Good week. Mostly." The words came out measured, careful. His throat felt tight—always did in this room, like his body was allergic to vulnerability. "Taught a self-defense class at the community center. Helped Sam with a mission in Lagos—clean extraction, no casualties. Didn't have any nightmares until Wednesday."

"What happened Wednesday?"

Your birthday. 

The thought hit him like a punch to the solar plexus, made his ribs feel too tight around his lungs. He'd seen the photos your sister posted—you laughing at some rooftop bar, wearing a red dress that made his mouth go dry even through a phone screen. New friends, new life. A guy's arm around your shoulders in one shot, casual and possessive in a way that made Bucky's metal hand whir anxiously before he caught himself.

"Just a date," he said. "Nothing significant."

Keene hummed, that particular sound that meant he saw right through the deflection but would circle back to it later. The man was like a bloodhound for emotional avoidance.

"How are the anger management exercises working?"

"Haven't punched anyone in eight months." The words tasted bitter, defensive. His jaw clenched hard enough to make his teeth ache. "Though Walker makes it tempting."

"John Walker is still part of your team?"

"Unfortunately." Bucky shifted, the leather protesting beneath him. His body felt too big for the chair suddenly, restless energy crawling under his skin like ants. "But I'm... managing it. The breathing exercises help. The grounding techniques. When he starts his shit, I just—" He paused, forced his shoulders down from where they'd crept up toward his ears. "I count to ten in Romanian now instead of Russian."

That got a small smile. "Why Romanian?"

The question sat heavy in the air. Bucky's chest went tight, that familiar sensation of memories pressing against the inside of his skull, demanding attention. "Because Russian makes me think of..."

Ready to comply.

The words echoed even unspoken, carved into neural pathways that would never fully heal. He could still taste the rubber of the mouth guard, feel the electricity racing through his veins like liquid fire, smell the ozone and burnt flesh and—

"Things I'd rather not think about," he finished, blinking hard to dispel the sense memory. His hands had clenched into fists. He forced them open, finger by finger. "Romanian just reminds me of hiding. Which wasn't great, but it was mine, you know? My choice to hide. My choice to run."

"That's significant progress, James. Reclaiming agency over your associations."

Agency. Everything came back to agency in this room. The agency HYDRA stole with voltage and scalpels and words that rewrote his DNA. The agency he'd surrendered to fear, convinced that distance was the same as protection. The agency he'd taken away from others—from you—in the name of keeping them safe.

"Can we talk about the journal?"

Bucky's entire body locked up, muscles tensing like he was preparing for a blow. The journal you'd given him sat on his desk at home, leather worn soft from two years of handling. Filled with his chicken-scratch handwriting, pages warped from tears he'd never admit to shedding. Letters to you he'd never send. Memories he was trying to preserve before they got lost in the fog of everything else. Apologies that would never be enough.

"What about it?"

"You mentioned last week that you've been writing letters to—"

"I know what I mentioned." Too sharp. He forced his shoulders to relax, unclenched his jaw. The taste of copper in his mouth meant he'd bitten his cheek. Again. "Sorry. I just... those are private."

"I'm not asking you to share them. I'm asking how it feels to write them."

How did it feel? Like performing surgery on himself without anesthesia. Like talking to a ghost that haunted his apartment, his dreams, his every waking moment. Like keeping you alive in the only way he had left—through words you'd never read, apologies you'd never hear, love letters to someone who'd moved on.

"Necessary," he said finally.

Keene waited. The man had turned waiting into an art form, comfortable with silence in a way that made Bucky want to crawl out of his skin.

"I know she's moved on," Bucky continued, the words scraping his throat raw. His metal thumb pressed against his thigh, grinding in small circles that would leave bruises later. "I know it's been two years. I know she's probably—"

Happy. In love. Getting married to someone who didn't need a manual for basic human interaction. Someone who could sleep through the night without waking up screaming. Someone who could touch her without checking for exit wounds.

"But I can't seem to stop. Writing to her, I mean. It's like... if I stop, it makes it final."

"And you're not ready for it to be final?"

"I'm never going to be ready for it to be final." The admission ripped something loose in his chest, left him feeling hollow and too full at the same time. "But that's my problem to deal with. Not hers. Not anymore."

They talked through the rest of the session about his progress. The VA meetings where he sat in circles with other broken soldiers, swapping war stories and coping mechanisms. The kids at the community center who'd gone from flinching at his arm to hanging off it like monkey bars, their fearlessness both heartbreaking and healing. The way he could walk past a flower shop now without feeling like his lungs were collapsing, though the smell of roses still made him nauseous.

"Same time next week?" Keene asked as they wrapped up.

"Yeah." Bucky stood, knees creaking in protest. His body might heal fast, but it still kept score. Old injuries that should have killed him ached in the rain. Phantom pains from wounds that had healed decades ago. The left shoulder, where metal met flesh, a constant reminder of what had been taken and what had been given back wrong.

The walk back to his apartment—new place, Bed-Stuy, far enough from your shared space that he didn't see ghosts on every corner—took him past the farmer's market. He bought plums without having a panic attack, which felt like a victory. The vendor smiled at him, genuine and warm, and he managed to smile back without feeling like a fraud.

Bought flowers too, white tulips that reminded him of nothing in particular. No associations, no memories, just simple beauty that he could practice caring for without the weight of history.

His apartment was sparse but lived-in. Books on the shelves—philosophy, poetry, the science fiction novels you'd gotten him hooked on. Dog-eared and worn, read and reread during sleepless nights when your absence felt like a physical wound. A couch that had never been slept on, because he used the bed now like a real person, even when the mattress felt too soft and his body craved the punishing hardness of the floor. Plants by the window that were miraculously still alive after six months—a small jungle of green that required daily attention, routine, care. The journal on his desk, closed but waiting, like a patient confessor.

He made dinner—actual dinner, not just protein bars and whatever he could eat standing over the sink. Grilled chicken, roasted vegetables, rice. Sat at the table like a functioning adult, used both knife and fork, didn't shovel food into his mouth like someone might take it away. Did the dishes immediately instead of letting them pile up, the warm water soothing on his flesh hand, the metal one impervious as always.

The gym was less crowded in the evenings. He preferred it that way—fewer eyes tracking his movements, fewer people trying not to stare at the arm. He sparred with Sam, who'd gotten better at reading Bucky's moods over the past two years. Knew when to push and when to pull back, when Bucky needed to go hard and when he needed to be reminded that he wasn't fighting for his life anymore.

"You're getting soft," Sam said, panting after Bucky pulled a punch that would've laid him out a year ago. Sweat dripped down his face, soaked through his shirt. Even holding back, Bucky hit like a freight train.

"Maybe." Bucky unwrapped his hands, flexing the metal fingers. Shuri had added new features in the last upgrade—pressure sensors that helped him gauge his grip, temperature regulators that meant he didn't burn or freeze anyone he touched. Small improvements that made him feel less like a weapon and more like a man with a very expensive prosthetic. "Or maybe I'm just getting better at not being an asshole."

"Nah, still an asshole. Just a self-aware one now."

They grabbed beer after, sitting on the roof of Sam's building. The city sprawled below them, lights like stars that had fallen and gotten stuck. Brooklyn glittered in the distance, and Bucky's chest tightened at the sight. Somewhere out there, you were living your life. Maybe in the same apartment, maybe somewhere new. Maybe alone, maybe with—

He cut that thought off at the knees.

"Sarah's asking about Thanksgiving," Sam said carefully. Too carefully.

"I'll be there."

"You said that last year."

"Last year was... complicated."

Last year, he'd been convinced you might show up at Sam's door. That you'd be there laughing with Sarah in the kitchen, flour in your hair and wine staining your lips purple. That he'd have to sit across from you at dinner and pretend his bones weren't trying to crawl out of his skin from wanting to touch you. 

He'd spent Thanksgiving on his fire escape instead, eating Chinese takeout straight from the container and writing letters he'd never send.

I'm thankful for the time we had, he'd written, three beers deep and maudlin. Even if I ruined it. Even if it hurt. Even if I dream about you every night and wake up forgetting you're gone.

"It's been two years, Buck."

"I'm aware." The words came out sharper than intended. His body tensed, ready for a fight that wasn't coming.

"Maybe it's time to—"

"Sam." A warning, low and final. The metal hand clenched around his beer bottle, not enough to shatter but enough to make the glass groan.

"I'm just saying. You've done the work. You're in a good place. Maybe it's time to reach out."

"She's moved on." The words tasted like ash, bitter and choking. "I check— I know she's doing well. That's all that matters."

It was a lie, and they both knew it. He did more than check. He had a Google alert for your name, scrolled through your sister's Instagram with the dedication of a detective working a cold case. Knew you'd gotten a promotion at work, that you'd adopted a cat named Alpine, that you'd taken up pottery classes on Thursdays.

(Thursdays. His therapy day. Like even your hobbies were avoiding him.)

Sam was quiet for a long moment, the kind of quiet that meant he was about to say something Bucky didn't want to hear. "You know she asks about you sometimes. When she calls Sarah."

Everything in Bucky went still. The city noise faded to white static, his heartbeat loud in his ears. "What?"

"Just... how you're doing. If you're okay. If you're happy."

If you're happy. Like happiness was a switch he could flip, a state he could achieve instead of something he glimpsed in peripheral vision before it vanished. He was better. He was functional. He was surviving. 

But happy? 

Happy was your laugh in the morning, coffee brewing while you danced to music only you could hear. Happy was your hand in his, unafraid of the metal and what it meant. Happy was two years gone and not coming back.

"What does Sarah tell her?"

"The truth. That you're doing better. That you're healing. That you—" Sam hesitated, and Bucky's stomach dropped. "That you still love her."

The beer bottle shattered.

Glass and foam exploded everywhere, shards glittering in the low light. The metal hand recalibrated, servo motors whirring as they adjusted to the sudden loss of resistance. Blood welled on his flesh palm where a shard had caught him, the wound already beginning to close.

"Shit. Sorry." He stared at the mess, mind blank. Two years of therapy, of anger management, of learning to control his strength, undone by your name and the word love in the same sentence.

"Yeah, that's about what I figured." Sam handed him a napkin, not even fazed. They'd been through worse. "Look, I'm not saying grand gestures or whatever. I'm just saying... maybe she deserves to know you're better. Maybe you both deserve some closure."

Closure. Like you could close a wound that had become part of your anatomy. Like you could stitch shut something that had fundamentally altered your DNA. His metal hand still tingled with phantom sensations, memories of holding you that the arm itself had never experienced. The flesh remembered, and somehow that was worse.

"I'll think about it," Bucky lied.

But the universe, it seemed, had other plans.

Bucky woke to his secure phone buzzing like an angry hornet. 47 missed calls, texts flooding in faster than he could read them. Sam's name, multiple times. Sharon. Yelena. Valentina. Even Walker, which was never good. His blood went cold, mind immediately cataloging possibilities—compromise, attack, someone hurt, someone dead, you—

"What is it?" he answered Sam's callback, already reaching for his go-bag. His voice came out steady, all business, even as his heart hammered against his ribs. "Who's compromised?"

"Buck..." Sam's voice was strange. Careful in a way that made Bucky's skin crawl. "You need to see the news. But—shit, don't watch it alone, okay? Come to my place. We'll—"

But Bucky was already pulling up news sites, his metal hand gripping the phone too tight. The screen cracked under his thumb as the headline hit him like a sniper round:

LEAKED: CLASSIFIED FOOTAGE SHOWS DECADES OF WINTER SOLDIER TORTURE

The blood in his veins turned to ice water. His vision tunneled, edges going dark. No. No, no, no—

The video was everywhere. Every major news outlet, every social media platform. Forty minutes of pure, unfiltered hell—footage HYDRA had apparently kept as some sick training material. Evidence of their success in breaking him down to base code and rebuilding him wrong.

His thumb hovered over the play button. He didn't want to see. Already knew what it contained, had lived it, bore the scars both visible and not. But there was a sick compulsion, a need to know what the world was seeing. What you were seeing.

The first frame made bile rise in his throat.

There he was, young and screaming. The footage was grainy, black and white at first—old film reels from the early days, when HYDRA still bothered documenting their experiments like proud scientists. Strapped to that chair that still featured in his nightmares, metal restraints cutting into skin that hadn't yet learned to stop feeling. They'd stopped bothering with anesthetic after the first few sessions—the serum healed him too fast, made pain relief pointless. More efficient to let him scream until his throat gave out.

The video quality evolved as it progressed through the decades. Jerky 8mm film giving way to steadier 16mm, black and white bleeding into washed-out color. By the sixties, the footage was clearer, the horror rendered in technicolor precision. Multiple angles capturing every convulsion, every plea. His younger self begging in Russian, then English, then wordless animal sounds as electricity rewrote his neural pathways. The technicians taking notes, adjusting voltage with clinical detachment. One checking his watch, bored.

He watched them attach the metal arm for the first time. No anesthetic for that either. Just a bone saw and cruel efficiency, his screams echoing off concrete walls. The smell—God, he could still smell it. Burnt flesh and ozone, metal cauterizing meat. They'd had to restart his heart twice during that procedure. The video caught that too, his body convulsing on the table, eyes rolled back to show only whites.

Three minutes in, and he was on his knees in his apartment, retching. Nothing came up but bile and the ghost of a sandwich from last night. His body shook, muscles remembering trauma decades old. The metal arm sparked, recalibrating frantically as his nervous system went haywire.

The video kept playing. He couldn't look away.

Year after year compressed into minutes. The chair. The words. The wipes that left him seizing, foam tinged pink with blood frothing from his lips. Training that was just sanctioned torture—bones broken and healed and broken again until he learned to move through pain like it was weather. They made him fight other Winter Soldiers, made him kill them bare-handed to prove his superiority. One had begged. The video caught that too, caught Bucky—no, the Asset—snapping his neck without hesitation.

But the worst parts were the moments between. When the programming cracked just enough to let James Barnes bleed through. Confused, terrified, trying to remember his own name. In one clip, strapped to the chair and waiting for the next session, he'd been reciting something under his breath. The audio picked it up clearly:

"Barnes, James Buchanan. Sergeant. 32557038. Barnes, James Buchanan..."

Over and over, like a prayer. Like a lifeline. Until the technician hit the switch and the electricity burned even that away, left him empty and ready to be filled with purpose.

By the end, the Asset barely looked human. Eyes empty, responding only to commands. They'd point, and he'd kill. They'd speak the words, and he'd comply. No hesitation, no recognition, no trace of the man who'd laughed with Steve in Brooklyn and danced with pretty girls and had a favorite sandwich at the deli on the corner.

The video ended with a mission briefing. December 16, 1991. The Asset nodding, accepting orders to kill Howard and Maria Stark without a flicker of emotion.

Bucky stayed on his knees for a long time after it finished, shaking. His phone rang and rang—Sam, probably, or one of his therapists. He couldn't answer. Couldn't form words past the scream trapped behind his teeth.

This wasn't the sanitized version from his pardon hearings. This wasn't redacted files and clinical language that let people maintain distance. This was the raw footage. This was what had been done to him, to the person he'd been, to the man who'd just wanted to serve his country and come home.

Forty minutes of torture, and that was just what they'd chosen to document. Seventy years of this, and the world was seeing it over morning coffee. Commenting on it. Sharing it. Debating whether he deserved sympathy or a bullet, whether this made him more victim or more monster.

An hour passed. Maybe two. Time went strange when your past was being broadcast to the world. His apartment felt too small, too exposed, like the walls might collapse under the weight of all those watching eyes. He'd turned off his phone eventually, couldn't stand the constant buzzing. Everyone had seen it. Everyone knew exactly what had been done to him, what he'd been reduced to.

The knock at his door was soft. So soft he almost missed it over the sound of his own ragged breathing. He didn't move at first, couldn't seem to make his legs work. The knock came again, barely there, and then—

"Bucky?"

Your voice through the door, small and wrecked.

He was on his feet before conscious thought caught up, body moving on pure instinct.

Two years of staying away, of respecting boundaries, of keeping his distance—all of it evaporated at the sound of you saying his name like that.

He yanked the door open and you were there. Hair wild, face swollen from crying, wearing pajama pants and a sweater that didn't match. Like you'd thrown on whatever was closest and come to him.

Like after two years of silence, you'd seen that video and your first instinct was to come to him.

You looked at him for one suspended moment—taking in his red eyes, the tremor in his hands, the way he was barely holding himself together—and then you were moving.

You crashed into him with enough force to knock the breath from his lungs. Your arms went around his neck and you were sobbing—great, body-shaking sobs that he felt in his bones. He caught you on instinct, metal arm around your waist, flesh hand cradling the back of your head. Your feet left the ground as he held you, held you like he'd wanted to for 731 days.

You were here. In his arms. Shaking apart, but here.

He'd imagined holding you again a thousand times. In those imaginings, it was always different—softer, maybe. Definitely not with you crying so hard you could barely breathe, not with his own eyes burning and chest cracking open. But even like this—especially like this—he hadn't felt this complete since the last time he'd held you. Like the world had finally stopped spinning wrong. Like his lungs remembered how to take in air.

You didn't say anything at first. Couldn't, probably, around the sobs. He just held you, one hand stroking your hair while you shook apart in his arms. You were warm and solid and real, and you still fit against him like you'd been carved from the same stone. He pressed his face into your hair, breathed you in—floral shampoo and something uniquely you that made his knees weak.

"I've got you," he murmured, the words coming out rough. "I've got you, sweetheart. It's okay."

But that just made you cry harder, fingers digging into his shoulders like you were afraid he'd disappear. He maneuvered you both inside, kicking the door shut without letting go. Muscle memory had him moving to the couch, sitting down with you still wrapped around him. You ended up in his lap, face buried in his neck, and he just held on while you fell apart.

Time went liquid. Could have been minutes or hours that you cried, and he just sat there, hand running up and down your spine in the same soothing pattern he'd used to use when you had nightmares. Your tears soaked through his shirt, and he could feel you trying to get closer, like you could crawl inside his chest if you just held on tight enough.

Eventually, the sobs slowed to hiccupping breaths. You pulled back slightly, just enough to look at him, and Christ—your eyes were swollen nearly shut, face blotchy and tear-stained. You looked absolutely wrecked.

"There she is," he murmured, thumb coming up to brush tears from your cheek. His hand moved without permission, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear with the kind of casual intimacy he'd lost the right to two years ago. "Hi, pretty girl."

Fresh tears welled in your eyes. "I couldn't—I tried to watch it all but I—I c-couldn't—" Your voice cracked, broke completely. You had to take several shuddering breaths before trying again. "Twenty minutes. That's all I could—and you lived it, Bucky, you actually—oh god—"

"Hey." He caught your face in his hands, thumbs sweeping away the new tears. "It's okay. It was a long time ago."

"It's not—" A sob cut you off. You pressed the heels of your hands against your eyes, shoulders shaking. "It's not okay! N-nothing about that is okay! I knew—fuck, everyone knows what happened to you, in theory. The trial, the pardons, all of it's p-public record. But seeing it—"

Your breath hitched, caught, turned into another sob. "Actually s-seeing what they—the chair, Bucky. The way you... you screamed. The way you b-begged them to stop and they just—they just—"

"Breathe," he said softly, pulling you back against his chest when your breathing went too shallow, too fast. "Come on, sweetheart. Match me. In and out."

You pressed your ear to his chest, and he breathed slow and steady until you started to match his rhythm. His hand found your hair again, stroking through the tangles. Your whole body trembled against him, little aftershocks of grief.

"Like you weren't even h-human," you whispered against his shirt. "Like you were just... parts to be rearranged. And the early footage, you were so—you were just a kid, basically. Twenty-six and sc-screaming and—"

Another wave of sobs took you. He held you through it, jaw clenched against his own emotions. 

This was why he'd never told you the details. Why he'd kept it vague—'conditioning' and 'programming' sounded so much cleaner than the reality.

"I'm being—" You pulled back suddenly, laughing through your tears but there was no humor in it. "God, I'm being ridiculous. You're the one who—who lived through it and here I am, cr-crying all over you, making you comfort me through your trauma—"

"Stop." His voice came out sharper than intended. He gentled his grip on your face, made sure you were looking at him. "Don't do that. Don't apologize for caring. Don't apologize for being human."

"But I—"

"No." He was firm on this. "You think I'd rather you saw that and felt nothing? You think I'd prefer indifference?"

"I just—" Your face crumpled again. "I asked you. Remember? About the n-nightmares. About what they did. And you said—you said 'standard Hydra shit' and I let it go. I should have pushed. Should have—"

"I wouldn't have told you." Simple truth. "I wasn't ready. Couldn't even say the words out loud in therapy, let alone to you."

"But you were so alone." The words came out broken, wet. "For d-decades, you were alone. They hurt you and broke you and put you back together wrong and you couldn't even—you couldn't even remember who you were supposed to be. And then you c-came back and I—"

You pressed a hand to your mouth, muffling another sob. "I left you alone again. You pushed me away because you were sc-scared and instead of fighting for you, I just—I left. I left you alone."

"You didn't leave me alone." He pulled your hand away from your mouth, laced their fingers together. "You left because I made it impossible to stay. Because I was too much of a coward to let you see all of me."

"You're not a c-coward." Fresh tears tracked down your cheeks. "You survived that. You survived decades of that and you're still—you're still kind. Still good. Still—" A hiccup interrupted you. "Still the best man I've ever known."

"Sweetheart—"

"I missed you," you said, the words tumbling out between sobs. "Every day. Every f-fucking day. Even when I was angry. Even when I tried to date other people. Even when I—" Your breath hitched. "I couldn't get you out of my head. Out of my heart. Like you were carved into my bones and I couldn't—couldn't scrape you out no matter how hard I tried."

"I know." His own voice cracked. He felt raw, exposed. "Me too. Every fucking day."

"I'm sorry." You were crying harder now, barely able to get words out. "I'm s-sorry I didn't fight harder. Sorry I wasn't strong enough to—to stay and make you see that you were worth fighting for."

"Hey, no." He pulled you closer, pressed his forehead to yours. "No apologies. Not for protecting yourself. Not for having boundaries. Never for that."

"But—"

"We both fucked up," he said quietly. He hardly meant it, he never blamed you, but it seemed to be what you needed to hear. "We both could have done better. But we're here now."

"Yeah," you whispered, voice small and wrecked. "We're here now."

You stayed like that for a long moment, breathing each other's air, existing in the same space for the first time in two years. Your body still shook with aftershocks, little tremors and hiccups that broke his heart.

"I should—" You started to pull back. "I should go. This isn't—you don't need me falling apart on your—"

"Stay." The word ripped out of him, desperate and raw. "Please. Just—you can take the bed. I'll take the couch. Not like before. Not—" He swallowed hard. "Just stay. Let me know you're safe. Let me—let me take care of you for once."

You searched his face, and he watched you see it—all the longing, all the fear, all the love he'd never learned how to hide.

"Okay," you whispered, and started crying again. "Okay."

Neither of you moved for a while after that. You stayed curled in his lap, his arms around you, while the city lights painted patterns on the walls. Every so often, a fresh wave of tears would take you, and he'd hold you through it, murmuring nonsense into your hair.

"I watched them put the arm on," you said at one point, voice hoarse. "No anesthetic. You were awake and they just—they just cut—"

"I know," he said when you couldn't finish. "I know, baby. It's over now."

"It's not over. You still dream about it. Still have days where you can't—" Another sob. "I should have been there. Should have helped somehow—"

"You did help." He pressed a kiss to your warm temple, tasted salt. "You helped by being the first person in years to look at me like I was worth saving. Even if I didn't know how to let you."

Later, he'd give you clothes to sleep in—soft things that would smell like him. You'd brush your teeth side by side, and he'd pretend his heart wasn't breaking at how right it felt. He'd make up the bed with fresh sheets while you changed, and when you emerged drowning in his henley, he'd have to look away.

When you paused in the bedroom doorway, looking back at him with swollen eyes and something fragile in your expression, he'd be ready.

"Thank you," you'd say, voice still rough from crying. "For letting me stay. For—for being here."

"Always," he'd reply, and mean it with every atom of his being.

You'd smile then—wobbly and complicated—and close the door. He'd make up the couch and lie there listening to you breathe in the next room, marveling at the miracle of your presence.

But for tonight, you were here. Safe in his space, under his protection, breathing the same air. After 731 days of nothing, it was everything.

It was enough.

For now, it was enough.

The couch was too short for his frame, but after two years of therapy, Bucky had learned to stop punishing himself with discomfort. He'd gotten good at making himself comfortable in spaces that didn't quite fit. Still, sleep came in fragments—twenty minutes here, an hour there. His body kept jerking awake, convinced he'd dreamed the whole thing. That you weren't really in his bed, wearing his clothes, breathing his air.

Around 3 AM, he heard the bedroom door creak open. Soft footsteps on hardwood, hesitant but moving closer. He opened his eyes to find you standing there in the darkness, silhouetted by the city lights filtering through the windows. You'd put his henley back on, and it hung to mid-thigh, making you look smaller than you were.

"Baby?" The endearment slipped out before he could catch it, voice rough with sleep and surprise. He squinted, trying to read your expression in the dark. "You okay? Need something?"

You didn't answer. Just stood there for a moment, arms wrapped around yourself, before moving toward him with purpose. He sat up, ready to give you the couch if you couldn't sleep in the bed, ready to move to the floor if that's what you needed. But you didn't ask him to move.

Instead, you crawled right into his space, onto the couch that was definitely not built for two people. He accepted you immediately, arms opening on instinct as you fitted yourself against him—chest to chest, your face buried in his neck. The couch groaned under the combined weight, but held.

"Hey," he murmured, pulling the blanket up over both of you. His hand found your hair, still messy from sleep. "Bad dream?"

You shook your head against his throat. Your arms went around him, holding on tight, and he could feel the way your breath hitched. Not crying, but close. He understood without explanation—you'd woken up remembering. The video, the torture, the decades of pain compressed into forty minutes of footage. You'd needed to touch him, to feel him solid and whole and here.

"I've got you," he whispered into your hair. "I'm okay. I'm right here."

You made a small sound and pressed closer, like you could protect him retroactively from things that had already happened. One of your hands found the juncture where metal met flesh, fingers tracing the scars there with devastating gentleness. He tensed for a moment—old habit—then forced himself to relax. To let you touch. To let you see.

They stayed like that until dawn crept through the windows, dozing in and out of sleep. Every time he surfaced, you were there, heartbeat against his chest, breath warm on his neck. Real. Present. A miracle he still couldn't quite believe.

When morning came properly, neither of them acknowledged how naturally they'd fitted together in sleep. How your leg had hooked over his hip, how his metal hand had splayed possessively across your lower back. They extracted themselves carefully, both pretending not to notice the reluctance in the separation.

"Coffee?" he offered, voice still gravelly.

"Tea, if you have it." You stretched, his henley riding up to reveal a strip of skin that made his brain short-circuit. "Coffee makes me jittery these days."

These days. Two years of changes, small evolutions he hadn't been there to witness. He turned to the kitchen to hide the way that knowledge sat heavy in his chest.

"Still take it with honey?"

"Yeah." You padded after him, bare feet on hardwood. 

He busied himself with the ritual of morning—filling the kettle, finding the good honey (wildflower, local, from the farmers market you'd always loved), selecting eggs from the fridge. You perched on one of the bar stools at the counter, watching him move through his space with an expression he couldn't quite read.

"You cook now," you observed.

"Turns out eating actual food is part of that whole 'taking care of yourself' thing Keene keeps harping on about." He cracked eggs into a bowl, whisking them with practiced efficiency. "Who knew?"

"Your therapist sounds like a smart man."

"Don't let him hear you say that. His ego's big enough already." He glanced at you, taking in the sleep-rumpled hair, the way his clothes draped over your frame. You looked soft and accessible and untouchable all at once. "I've got some sweatpants that might fit better than the boxers, if you want—"

"These are fine." You tugged at the hem of the henley self-consciously. "If that's... if you don't mind."

"I don't mind." Understatement of the century. Seeing you in his clothes was doing something to his brain that felt both ancient and brand new. "Never minded."

Silence settled between them as he cooked, but it wasn't uncomfortable. You sipped your tea and watched him work, occasionally commenting on the changes in his apartment—the art on the walls, the plants that hadn't died, the general sense that someone actually lived here instead of just existing.

He was plating the omelets when you spotted it. The journal, sitting on the counter where he'd left it last night. Your whole body stilled, mug pausing halfway to your lips.

"Oh," you said quietly. "You use it."

Understatement of the century.

"Yeah." He set your plate in front of you, then leaned back against the opposite counter, giving you space. "Every day, pretty much."

You reached out, fingers hovering over the worn leather cover. "What do you write about?"

"Everything. Nothing." He shrugged, aiming for casual and missing by miles. "Therapy stuff. Memories I want to keep. Things I should have said."

"Letters," you said, not quite a question. "Sam mentioned letters, once."

"Yeah."

You were still staring at the journal like it might bite. Or like it might break your heart.

"You can look, if you want." The words came out steadier than he felt. "It's... a lot of it's to you anyway."

Your eyes snapped to his. "You don't have to—"

"I know. But we're doing honesty now, right? Being real?" He gestured to the journal. "That's about as real as I get."

You hesitated for another moment, then pulled the journal toward you. Your hands shook slightly as you opened it, and he had to look away. Focused on his coffee instead of the way your face changed as you read his messy handwriting, years of thoughts spilled onto paper.

He knew what you were seeing. Pages of apologies, observations, dreams he'd documented so he wouldn't forget them. Lists of things he wanted to tell you—your laugh sounds different in my memory than it did in real life. I bought plums at the market and almost called you. I still can't sleep on the left side of the bed.

The poetry was in there too, terrible attempts at capturing feelings too big for prose. He'd tried to write about the way you used to hum while cooking, how you'd steal his socks and act surprised when he'd find you wearing them. How loving you had felt like drowning and breathing all at once.

You were crying again, silent tears sliding down your cheeks as you read. Occasionally you'd make a small sound—half-laugh, half-sob—at something particularly pathetic he'd written. He wanted to take the journal back, spare you both this vulnerability. Instead, he gripped his mug tighter and waited.

Finally, you looked up. Your eyes were red but clear, seeing him in that way you'd always had. Like you could look past all the armor and see straight to the soft, desperate heart of him.

"Two years," you said softly. "You wrote to me for two years."

"Seven hundred and thirty-one days." He set down his mug, needing his hands free. Needing to move. "I know how it looks. Obsessive. Unhealthy, probably. Keene says it's—"

"Human," you interrupted. "It looks human."

You stood, rounding the counter until you were in his space. Close enough that he could see the flecks of gold in your eyes, count the tears still clinging to your lashes. You reached up slowly, telegraphing your movement, and he realized what you were doing. Giving him time to pull away, to redirect.

He didn't.

Your hand touched his face, and for the first time in two years, he didn't flinch. Didn't turn to offer the other cheek, the flesh side. You cupped his jaw with careful fingers, thumb brushing over stubble, and he let his eyes close. Let himself have this moment of being touched without apology.

"I wrote too," you admitted. "Not in a journal. In my phone. Little notes I'd never send. Anger, mostly, at first. Then just... observations. Things I wanted to tell you. Dreams I had where you were still there when I woke up."

He opened his eyes to find you closer still. Your other hand came up, and now you were holding his face between your palms like something precious. Something worth keeping safe.

"Can I—" you started, then stopped. Took a breath. "I want to kiss you. Is that—would that be okay?"

Instead of answering, he brought his metal hand up to cradle your cheek. Watched your eyes flutter closed as you leaned into the touch, no fear or hesitation. Just trust. Just love, somehow still intact after everything.

"Always," he murmured, and closed the distance.

The first press of lips was careful, tentative. A question asked and answered in the space of a breath. You made a small sound and pressed closer, and suddenly he was seventeen and eighty and every age in between, kissing you for the first time and the thousandth time all at once.

Your lips were chapped from crying, and you tasted like honey tea and salt. He'd never tasted anything better. One of your hands slid into his hair and he groaned, the sound swallowed between your mouths. Two years of missing this, of waking up reaching for you, and here you were. Soft and warm and real.

The kiss deepened, something desperate creeping in at the edges. He walked you backward until you hit the counter, lifted you onto it without breaking contact. You gasped against his mouth and wrapped your legs around his waist, pulling him closer, and his brain went white-static at the feeling.

He'd always loved kissing. Loved the intimacy of it, the way it could feel more vulnerable than sex. Loved how you'd melt against him, how you'd make those little sounds when he found the right angle, the right pressure. He kissed you like he was relearning a language he'd never truly forgotten, muscle memory and discovery all tangled together.

When you pulled back to breathe, he trailed his mouth down your jaw, found that spot below your ear that had always made you shiver. Still did. Your hands tightened in his hair, and he smiled against your throat. Some things didn't change.

"Bucky," you breathed, and he had to kiss you again just for the way you said his name. Like a prayer, like a promise, like coming home.

His hands found your waist, rucking up the henley to find bare skin. You were warm and sleep-soft under his palms, and when he spread his fingers wide, he could span most of your back. The metal hand was gentle, sensors calibrated to exactly the right pressure. No hiding, no hesitation. Just touch.

You shifted against him, and he became suddenly, devastatingly aware that you were wearing his boxers and nothing else under them. His hand slid to your thigh, fingers brushing under the fabric, and you made a sound that short-circuited several major brain functions.

"Wait," you gasped, pulling back slightly. Your lips were swollen, eyes dark, and it took every ounce of control not to dive back in. "Are we—what are we doing here?"

"I don't know," he admitted, resting his forehead against yours. Both of you were breathing hard, bodies lined up in ways that made thinking difficult. "What do you want us to be doing?"

"I want—" You stopped, seemed to gather yourself. Your hands were still in his hair, nails scratching lightly at his scalp in a way that made him want to purr. "I want to do this right this time. I want to be sure we're not just... falling back into old patterns."

"This doesn't feel like old patterns." His thumb stroked along your ribs, feeling the expansion of your breath. "This feels new. Better. Like we might actually know what we're doing this time."

"Do we though?" But you were smiling, small and real. "Because I'm sitting on your kitchen counter at 8 AM, wearing your clothes, and I'm about five seconds from doing something really stupid."

"What kind of stupid?"

"The kind where I drag you back to that couch and show you exactly how much I missed you."

Jesus. He pressed his face into your neck, trying to get his bearings. "That doesn't sound stupid. That sounds—"

"Like we're skipping steps again." Your fingers gentled in his hair, stroking now instead of gripping. "Like we're using physical stuff to avoid talking about the hard stuff."

She was right. Of course she was right. Two years of therapy for both of them, and here they were, ready to fall back into bed without addressing any of the things that had driven them apart.

"Okay," he said, pulling back to look at you. It took effort—every instinct screaming to stay close, to take what you were offering—but he managed it. "Okay. You're right. We should talk."

"Such a responsible adult," you teased, but there was affection in it. Love, even. "Therapy’s really done a number on you."

"You have no idea."

He helped you down from the counter, both of you adjusting clothes and trying to pretend the kitchen wasn't charged with enough sexual tension to power Brooklyn. You settled back at the counter with your rapidly cooling breakfast, and he took the stool next to you this time. Close enough that your knees touched. Small victories.

"So," you said, cutting into your omelet. "Talk. What do we do now?"

It was a good question. The question, really. Two years of growth, of therapy, of learning to be whole people instead of broken halves. They couldn't just slot back together and pretend nothing had happened. But they couldn't pretend they weren't still inevitably drawn to each other either.

"I don't know," he admitted. "But I know I want to try. Real try, not the half-assed thing I was doing before. I want to tell you about the hard stuff. I want to trust you with all of it, not just the parts I think you can handle. I want..." He paused, gathered courage. "I want to be the partner you deserved two years ago. If you'll let me."

You set down your fork, turned to face him fully. "I want that too. But I need—we both need—to be whole people first. Not trying to fix each other or complete each other or whatever codependent shit we were doing before."

"Agreed." He risked reaching out, covering your hand with his metal one. You turned your palm up, interlacing the fingers, and something in his chest eased. "So what does that look like?"

"I think..." You squeezed his hand, thinking. "I think it looks like taking things slow. Like actually dating this time, not just falling into living together because it's easier. Like being honest about the scary stuff, even when our brains are telling us to protect each other."

"Therapy homework," he said with a grimace. "Keene's gonna love this."

"Mine too. She's been saying I need to practice healthy boundaries for months."

"So... boundaries." The word felt foreign in his mouth when it came to you. But necessary. "What do you need?"

You considered this, thumb stroking over his metal knuckles absently. "Time. Space to keep being my own person. Regular check-ins about how we're feeling, even when—especially when—it's uncomfortable. And..." You looked at him directly. "I need you to trust me. Really trust me. With the missions that go bad, with the nightmares, with the days when you can barely get out of bed. All of it."

"That's gonna be hard," he admitted.

"I know."

"But I want to try."

"I know that too."

They sat there for a moment, hands linked, breakfast cooling between them. It wasn't the passionate reconciliation his body wanted. Wasn't the dramatic merger of souls that movies promised. It was quieter than that. More solid. Real in a way that all their previous attempts hadn't been.

"So," he said eventually. "Want to go on a date with me?"

You laughed, bright and surprised. "A date?"

"Yeah. Friday night. I'll pick you up and everything. We can do the whole first date thing properly this time."

"We already slept together on our actual first date."

"Which is why we're doing it better this time." He brought your joined hands to his lips, kissing your knuckles. "What do you say?"

"I say..." You pretended to consider, but your smile gave you away. "Pick me up at seven. And Barnes? Bring flowers."

"Yes ma'am."

You stayed for another hour, talking through logistics and boundaries and all the unsexy parts of rebuilding a relationship. He drove you home on his bike—you still remembered exactly how to move with him through traffic—and walked you to your door like a gentleman.

"Friday," you said, and it sounded like a promise.

"Friday," he agreed.

You went up on your toes and kissed his cheek, soft and brief. Then you were gone, leaving him standing on your stoop with his hand pressed to his face like a teenager.

He made it back to his apartment before the full weight of it hit him. You were back. Not in his bed, not in his life fully, but back in his orbit. They had a date. A real date, with parameters and boundaries and all the things Keene had been telling him he needed.

He picked up his phone, scrolled to his therapist's contact.

"I need an emergency session," he said when Keene answered. "Something happened."

"Are you safe?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm—I'm good. Really good. That's kind of the problem."

A pause. "This is about her, isn't it?"

"How did you—"

"James. We've been working together for two years. I know your 'she's back in my life' voice."

"I have a 'she's back in my life' voice?"

"You have several. Which one is this—the panicked one or the cautiously optimistic one?"

Bucky considered, thinking about your hand in his, the way you'd kissed him like you had all the time in the world.

"Cautiously optimistic," he decided.

"Then I'll see you Thursday at our regular time. And James? Good job on reaching out instead of spiraling."

"Thanks."

"Oh, and James? Flowers. Don't forget flowers."

"Already on it."

He hung up and stared at his journal, still open on the counter where you'd left it. Evidence of two years of missing you, wanting you, learning to be someone who could deserve you.

Time to put all that work to use.

He had a date to plan.

~ six months later ~

The couch had become sacred ground.

Not in the way it used to be—a monument to his cowardice, the place he'd slept to avoid your bed. Now it held different memories. Better ones. The afternoon he'd spent relearning your body. The night he'd finally told you about Warsaw, really told you, while you held his hand and didn't flinch. The morning he'd made love to you slow and quiet while rain streaked the windows.

Tonight, you were draped across his lap, wearing one of his t-shirts and not much else, pretending to watch whatever movie he'd put on. He wasn't paying attention either. Too focused on the way you kept shifting against him, the little sighs you made when his fingers traced patterns on your bare thigh.

"You're not watching," you accused, but your voice was breathy, distracted.

"Neither are you." His metal hand slid higher, fingertips brushing the edge of your underwear. The sensors registered heat, dampness, the way your muscles tensed in anticipation. "Got something more interesting in mind?"

You turned in his lap to face him, straddling his thighs with a flexibility that still made his brain short-circuit. "Maybe."

"Maybe?" He gripped your hips, pulled you flush against him. You were already wet—he could feel it through the thin fabric between you both, and it made his cock twitch with interest. "Gonna need more than maybe, sweetheart."

Instead of answering, you rocked against him, a slow roll of your hips that made you both catch your breath. Your hands braced on his shoulders, fingers digging in just enough to ground you both.

"Missed you today," you said, and it wasn't what he expected. Your voice was soft, honest in that way that still sometimes caught him off guard.

"I was only gone eight hours."

"I know." Another roll of your hips, more deliberate this time. "Still missed you."

Something in his chest went tight and warm. Two years back together, and you still missed him when he was gone. Still wanted him when he came home. Still looked at him like he was something worth keeping.

And in his bedside drawer, hidden beneath old mission reports and spare magazines, sat a small velvet box that had been waiting three years. The one he'd bought drunk on love and convinced he'd found forever. Even through your separation, through all the therapy and growth and pain, he'd never been able to throw it away.

Now it waited for the right moment—not rushing this time, not desperate. Just certain.

"Show me," he said, voice rougher than intended. "Show me how much."

Your eyes went dark at the command. You loved this—when he got demanding, when he stopped treating you like glass. It had taken months to learn your signals, to trust that you'd tell him if something was too much. Now he could read your body like his favorite book, knew exactly when to push and when to ease back.

He slid his metal hand between you both, pressing the heel against you through your underwear. You gasped, hips jerking forward, and he smiled. "That's it. Take what you need."

You ground against his hand with increasing desperation, chasing friction. He watched your face, cataloging every expression—the way your brows drew together when something felt particularly good, how your mouth fell open when he increased the pressure. Beautiful. Fucking perfect.

"Not enough," you whimpered, movements becoming frantic. "Need—"

"I know what you need." He pulled your underwear aside with his flesh hand, metal fingers finding your clit immediately. The temperature difference made you cry out—cool metal against overheated flesh. "Always so wet for me. So ready. Been thinking about this all day too, haven't you?"

You nodded frantically, beyond words as he circled your clit with devastating precision. The upgraded sensors were incredible, letting him feel every twitch, every pulse of need. He could tell you were already close, wound tight from anticipation.

"Want to try something," he said, slowing his movements just enough to make you whine. "Trust me?"

"Always." No hesitation, and that trust still humbled him.

He shifted his hand, two metal fingers sliding through your wetness before pressing inside. You were soaked, taking them easily, and the sound you made went straight to his cock. But that wasn't the best part—the best part was activating the subtle vibration function Shuri had installed for "therapeutic purposes."

"Oh fuck—" Your whole body went rigid, then melted against him. "Bucky, what—"

"Upgrade." He curled his fingers, finding that spot that made you see stars while the vibrations worked you from the inside. "Good?"

You couldn't answer, too lost in sensation as he worked you higher. Your wetness coated his fingers, dripping down to his palm, and he had to grit his teeth against the urge to forget the foreplay and just bury himself inside you.

"Look at you," he murmured, free hand tangling in your hair to keep you facing him. "Taking it so well. So perfect for me. Can feel how close you are—clenching around my fingers, trembling in my lap. You gonna come for me?"

You nodded desperately, movements erratic as you rode his hand. He increased the vibration, pressed his thumb to your clit, and watched you shatter. Your orgasm hit hard, back arching as you cried out. He worked you through it, drawing it out until you were shaking and grabbing his wrist.

"Too much," you gasped, but he didn't stop. Just gentled his movements, eased the vibrations down to a subtle hum.

"You can take it." He kissed your neck, felt your pulse racing under his lips. "Know you can. Always so good for me, aren't you? Can give me one more."

You made a broken sound as he resumed his rhythm, oversensitive and overwhelmed. Your whole body trembled, caught between pulling away and pressing closer. He loved you like this—completely undone, trusting him to take care of you even when it bordered on too much.

"That's my girl," he praised as fresh wetness coated his fingers. "Getting even wetter. Body knows what it needs even when your brain's all fuzzy. Just feel, sweetheart. Let me make you feel good."

The second orgasm built slower, your body fighting it even as it climbed. He could tell the exact moment you gave in, stopped resisting and just let it happen. You went limp against him, only his hand in your hair keeping you upright as you came again, quieter this time but no less intense.

"Beautiful," he breathed, finally easing his fingers out. They were soaked, glistening in the low light. "So fucking beautiful."

You made a small sound when he lifted you, rearranging you both so you were on your back on the couch, him kneeling between your spread thighs. Your underwear was ruined, twisted to the side and soaked through. He pulled them off, tossed them somewhere behind him.

"Look at this pretty cunt," he said, running a finger through your folds. You twitched, sensitive, and he smiled. "All swollen and wet. Can see how hard you came—still clenching around nothing, still dripping for me."

"Please," you whispered, the first word you'd managed in minutes.

"Please what?" He freed his cock, groaning at the relief. He was painfully hard, had been since you first climbed in his lap. "Tell me what you want."

"You." Your hands reached for him, shaky but insistent. "Want you inside me. Need to feel you."

"Yeah?" He rubbed the head of his cock through your wetness, coating himself. You were furnace-hot, slick enough that he had to grit his teeth for control. "Think you can take it? Already came twice, might be too sensitive..."

"I can take it." There was steel under the desperation in your voice. His girl, always stronger than you looked. "Please, Bucky. Need you."

He pushed inside in one smooth thrust, and you both groaned. You were molten around him, cunt fluttering with aftershocks that made him see stars. Perfect. Like you were made for him, shaped by him, existing just for this.

"Fuck," he breathed, having to stay still or risk ending this embarrassingly fast. "Feel so good, baby. So wet and tight and perfect. Can feel you trying to pull me deeper. Greedy little thing, aren't you?"

You clenched around him deliberately, and he had to press his forehead to your shoulder for composure. Two years, and you still affected him like this. Still made him feel desperate and possessive and completely fucking gone for you.

He started to move, slow and deep, watching your face for signs of discomfort. But you just gazed up at him with trust and heat and something that looked a lot like awe. Like he was something worth looking at that way, even after everything.

"Love fucking you like this," he told you, picking up the pace. "Love watching you take my cock. Love how wet you get, how you stretch around me. Could live inside this sweet cunt."

You moaned, arching into him. Your hands clutched at his shoulders, his arms, anywhere you could reach. He caught them, pinned them above your head with his metal hand. The position made you clench around him, and he smiled.

"Like that? Like being held down?" He thrust harder, deeper, watching your tits bounce with the force. "Like knowing you can't move, can't do anything but take what I give you?"

You nodded frantically, and he could feel fresh wetness where you were joined. Perfect. His perfect girl, who trusted him with your pleasure, who let him take control because you knew he'd take care of you.

"Gonna come again," he told you, rhythm getting rougher. "Gonna fill this pretty cunt up. Mark you from the inside, make sure you feel me all day tomorrow. Would you like that? Walking around full of my come, knowing who you belong to?"

"Yes," you gasped, and he could feel you getting close again. "Yes, please, yours—"

"Mine," he agreed, and reached down to rub your clit with his flesh hand. "All mine. This cunt, this body, this perfect fucking girl. Mine to fuck, mine to fill, mine to take care of."

You came with a cry, convulsing around him. The feeling of your cunt gripping him, trying to milk his cock, sent him over the edge. He buried himself deep and came hard, grinding against you as he filled you.

"That's it," he groaned, still pulsing inside you. "Take it all. Such a good girl, taking everything I give you."

You stayed locked together as you caught your breath, both trembling with aftershocks. He released your wrists, smoothing his hands over the marks he'd left. Not bruises—he was always careful about pressure—but evidence of his grip that would fade within the hour.

"Okay?" he asked, pressing kisses to your temple.

You hummed contentment, boneless and sated beneath him. "More than okay. That was..."

"Yeah." He knew what you meant. The intensity, the connection, the way it felt like coming home every single time.

He eased out carefully, both of you hissing at the sensitivity. His come immediately started leaking out of you, and something primal in him loved the sight. Marked. His.

"Stay there," he ordered, heading to the bathroom for a washcloth.

When he returned, you'd curled onto your side, looking soft and fucked out and perfect. He cleaned you gently, carefully, smiling when you twitched at the contact.

"Sensitive?"

"Mmm. Good sensitive." You caught his hand, brought it to your lips. "Love you."

"Love you too." The words came easy now, no hesitation or fear. Just truth.

He gathered you up, carrying you to bed properly. Tomorrow you'd deal with the real world—missions and therapy and all the work that went into building a life together. But tonight, you had this. Each other. A love that had survived separation and learned how to stay.

"Hey," you mumbled against his chest as he settled you both under the covers.

"Yeah?"

"We're really doing this, aren't we? Making it work?"

He pressed a kiss to your hair, pulled you closer. "Yeah, sweetheart. We really are."

And for the first time in your relationship, he thought of that ring in his dresser without a doubt in his mind.

The air smells of memory.

As though someone took the world he knew, put it through a sieve, and rebuilt it with hands that were almost - but not quite - shaking.

Bucky walks slow, even though his boots echo down a corridor that used to be silent. Used to be. In his world, the east wing of the Avenger’s compound is always cold, sterile, mostly unused. Here, the lights are warmer. Someone’s installed those vintage bulbs. They buzz faintly and flicker around.

There is a plant in the hallway. A real one. He steps past it. Looks down. A ceramic pot painted with little sunflowers. A tiny sticker peeling off the side.

This version of the compound is lived-in.

It’s unnerving.

He hates how it makes him breathe more deeply as though he is listening for something it shouldn’t. How everything is just off. The couch in the lounge is turned at a different angle. The vending machine is missing. There is a lavender-scented candle burning on the coffee table.

He doesn’t trust this. He doesn’t trust any of it.

Not the way the ceiling seems too low or how the hallways echo the wrong sound the longer he walks. The floor beneath his boots is almost the same. But almost is what gets people killed. And he’s not in the business of dying again. Not even here. Not even in a world that’s supposed to be some mirror image of his own.

It smells of lemon disinfectant and something faintly floral as though someone sprayed a bottle of room freshener and hoped no one would notice the rot underneath.

He runs his metal fingers along the wall as he walks, lets the vibranium whir quietly against the plaster. Feels the microscopic grooves in the paint.

In his universe, there is a crack near the main stairwell. Sam swears he didn’t do it. Clint insists he did. Here, it’s perfectly smooth. That bothers him more than it should.

He takes in this slightly different world as though maybe this is all some trick of the multiverse, some clever illusion designed to fool the worn-down man with the metal arm and the hundred-year-old ghosts. But the walls are still painted in the same color - off-white, barely warmed by the overheads. The hallway lights flicker golden. As though someone decided the compound shouldn’t feel like a facility. As though someone decided it should feel like home. His breath still fogs faintly in the colder patches of the corridor.

This could still be his universe somehow.

Even though it isn’t.

And even though he doesn’t want it to be.

He never wanted to be part of the mission.

He said no. Loudly. Repeatedly. With many adjectives and lots of glares. It didn’t matter. Fury said he was the only one who could go. That this universe had some piece of tech - some half-mythical Howard Stark prototype that their Stark never got the chance to build.

Something with the potential to rewrite temporal coordinates with precision. To fix anomalies. Maybe even to bring back the ones they lost.

He sat through the debrief like a man sitting on a bomb. Not moving. Not breathing more than he needed to.

And Bucky noticed, the way he always did, that you never ask quite so many questions during debriefing - unless the mission involves him. And this time, it’s only him. So that meant more questions from you. More concern you didn’t even try to mask.

And it made his heart clench.

You asked how they knew this tech even existed in that timeline.

You asked why Tony couldn’t just build it himself to which the man gave you a look.

You asked what would happen if Bucky saw someone he knew. If he saw himself.

You asked what exactly Bucky was going to walk into and what was expected of him.

You asked how much they even knew about this universe.

Steve had exhaled, hands braced against the briefing room table, blue eyes clouded. “We don’t know much,” he admitted. “This universe is close to ours in structure, but details are limited. No major historical deviations. No sign of HYDRA still in power. No active wars. Just small shifts. Choices made differently.”

Bucky had watched your face tighten as if the lack of data itself was a warning.

“SHIELD had a file on it, but nothing concrete,” Steve went on. “Stark’s readings say it’s stable - no time fractures, no reality collapses. Just another version of what we know.”

Bucky had listened, fingers flexing against his metal wrist. Close to theirs, but not the same. And he wonders, not for the first or last time, what choices this other world made for him.

The mission is simple. Locate the prototype. Extract it. Avoid unnecessary contact with variants. And get the hell back before anything breaks - him, the people, the timeline.

Bucky stopped listening entirely after receiving all the information he needed.

He only registered you shifting beside him, and it was the tiniest movement, but he noticed. You always get fidgety when something bothers you. He wanted to say something, reassure you, but he didn’t truly know if he even got this.

He knew you were worried. Knew you were angry. The kind that made your eyes too quiet and your hands too still. The kind that made Bucky feel like he was walking through a house where all the lights had been turned off, but every door was open.

When Dr. Steven Strange opened that portal, you stood in the corner of the room, watching him and giving him that guarded look that said you better come back whole. He couldn’t meet your eyes for too long.

And when the world rippled and bent, and the air shimmered as though it might break, and he stepped forward like a man walking into the sun with his eyes closed, he thought of you.

The stairs groan beneath his boots, familiar but not.

Same wood. Same color. But smoother. As though someone took the time to sand down the scars.

In his universe, the fifth step has a chip where Steve dropped a dumbbell. Everyone tripped on it at least once. Here, it is whole. Perfect. No history at all.

That’s what gets him. The lack of damage. As though this place hasn’t lived the same kind of life.

He reaches the second floor and hesitates.

The hallway is dim. Only the lights overhead are on, flickering just slightly. He hates the buzzing. It’s like something alive and trapped.

He turns left.

Your room is down this hall.

Or - your room in his universe is down this hall. He shouldn’t assume anything. Things are wrong here. Tilted just a few degrees off center. The kind of wrong you don’t see until it’s already unmade you.

But his feet are already moving.

It’s not like he’s planning to go in.

He just wants to look. Maybe see how different this version of you really is. Maybe see how different he is, through your eyes.

He reaches your door at the end of the corridor. It’s cracked open. That’s weird. You usually always have it shut.

Your voice isn’t behind it. You’re not laughing, humming, ranting about something. There is only quiet.

He steps closer.

The doorframe is covered in tiny indentations. Not scratches - these are deliberate. Someone’s been marking height on the trim. Two sets of lines. One lower than the other. Two sets of initials scrawled in black ink. Yours. And his.

He knows it’s yours. Because he knows your height. Like a number carved into his bones.

He’s memorized the space you take up in a room. Not just how tall you are, but the way your presence fills the air.

He knows where your head would rest if you stood beside him. Knows it would reach just beneath his chin. Knows the sound your footsteps make when you enter a room, and how the air shifts when you’re near.

He has painted you in his mind a thousand times before.

Eyes open, eyes closed.

In dreams, in silence.

In the echo of a laugh you left behind on a Tuesday.

He’s mapped you in the kitchen. Measured, in his mind, which cabinets you can stand beneath without hitting your head. Which shelves you can’t reach so he can be there, quietly, to help. So he can hand you that mug you always squint up at, the one you pretend you don’t need.

He knows how your arm swings when you walk.

Knows the rhythm of your stride. Knows your pace.

And sometimes, not often enough to be suspicious, he lets his hand brush yours.

Lets his fingers catch a hint of your warmth.

It’s not an accident.

It never is.

He carries you like a story he hasn’t told yet.

And he is aching, aching, aching to write you down.

Bucky stares at the markings like they might reach out and touch him.

He brushes his fingers against one. The ink smudges slightly under the metal pad of his thumb. Fresh.

He doesn’t understand.

Why would he-?

No. It has to be a coincidence. Just a prank. A weird joke. Someone else with your handwriting, maybe. Another version of him. One who doesn’t carry his past like a loaded gun. Or it’s just some odd inside joke he never got to know about in his own universe.

Bucky moves to step back, but his eyes catch on something else.

To the right of the door, hanging crookedly, is a small, square canvas. Acrylic. Textured.

It’s a painting. He knows it immediately. Your style.

He’s seen you paint a thousand times in silence, your jaw clenched, music too loud in your headphones. You always say you paint when you can’t say something out loud. When the words get stuck in your chest and rot.

This painting is familiar. A half-sky. A steel arm. Fingers open, reaching toward a red string that trails off the edge of the frame.

He knows what it means. He knows you.

But the painting doesn’t belong here. Not like this. It’s intimate. Meant for someone who understands the weight in your throat when you speak through colors.

Someone like him.

His stomach twists.

Maybe it is him.

He doesn’t like that thought. Doesn’t like how it makes his heart trip over itself.

He takes a step into the room because his brain told him to and his body didn’t want to argue. And he stops breathing.

Because you're not there.

But the room is.

The room is here.

And that’s almost worse.

It’s too familiar.

Not identical, not exact, but similar enough to tear him wide open.

The walls are a different color. Now necessarily lights. But just not how he remembers it. The books on the shelf are in new places, different spines, rearranged lives.

But the couch is the same shape, the same worn-out comfort.

The window still drinks in the light the same way - slanted, soft, forgiving.

And there’s a sweater messily folded on your dresser.

A book, face-down on the cushion like someone meant to come back to it.

Like you were just here.

Like maybe, if he stays long enough, you’ll walk back into the frame of this almost-life.

He doesn’t touch anything.

He’s afraid to.

Because this version of the world remembers you.

The shape of your existence lives here - in shadows and coffee rings, in the faint scent of something sweet and floral and you.

He walks the room like an intruder in someone else’s dream, eyes cataloguing the differences, chasing the sameness.

He notices that the cabinet doors hang slightly crooked in the same way.

And for just a moment he swears he hears your voice in the next room.

But it’s only silence, mocking him.

He wants to sit.

He wants to stay.

Wants to believe that if he closes his eyes, you’ll be beside him again.

He knows it isn’t true.

This isn’t his world.

This isn’t his home.

And this isn’t his you.

But the ache doesn’t care about reality.

The ache believes in the melodic sound of your laughter and the empty seat beside him.

There’s a coat draped over the back of a chair.

His coat.

Not one like it.

His.

The leather’s too worn in the same places. The collar stretched where he grips it with his right hand. There’s even the tear near the cuff that you stitched together with dark red thread, muttering that you weren’t a tailor but you’d seen enough war movies to fake it.

He steps inside without meaning to.

The room smells like you.

It’s your scent - soft, unassuming, threaded through with something sweet. Like worn pages and old tea and maybe vanilla.

It’s the same smell that clings to your hoodie when you get closer to each other on cold stakeouts to warm the other. The same one that lingers on your gloves when you pass him something, and he holds them a moment too long just to feel the warmth you left behind.

There’s a mug on the nightstand with faded text that reads I make bad decisions and coffee.

He bought that for you. In his world. As a joke.

You still used it until the handle cracked, and then you glued it back together and kept using it anyway.

He reaches out for it.

Stops.

His hand is shaking.

Bucky turns slowly. And sees the photo.

It’s not framed. Just pinned to a corkboard on the far wall, beneath torn paper scraps and to-do lists written in your handwriting.

It’s the two of you.

He recognizes the background - Coney Island. A bench by the boardwalk. Sunlight in your hair. His arm around your shoulder. His face not looking at the camera, but at you.

You’re laughing. And he looks-

He looks in love.

Like he has everything he ever wanted.

His breath hitches.

He steps back.

Back again.

Like distance might undo the gravity of what he just saw.

His ears are ringing.

None of this makes sense. Not fully.

He is stepping into a space he should not recognize but does.

The walls are a little brighter than in his world. Pale blue. Like the sky on cold days. There’s a candle on the windowsill—burned low and forgotten. Its wax has dripped onto a saucer, hardened into a small, messy sculpture. The bed is half-made. A throw blanket in a tangled heap at the foot of it. He recognizes that blanket. You two fought over it last movie night and then ended up sharing it.

There’s another book lying face-down, this time on the mattress. A knife on the nightstand. A half-written grocery list in your handwriting with his name scrawled at the bottom next to coffee and razor blades and more apples.

He stares at the list too long. At his own name like it sits in the wrong place. Like it’s foreign and familiar all at once.

His heart makes a quiet, traitorous sound in his chest.

He shouldn’t be here.

This isn’t his room. It’s not his place. Not his world. He’s just a shadow slipping through someone else’s life.

The longer he stays, the more it feels like the walls are leaning in.

He has a job.

A mission.

A very, very clear objective and a limited window to complete it in. That’s the only reason he’s here. The only reason he agreed to this whole ridiculous plan.

He doesn’t belong to this life.

He doesn’t belong to you.

Not like this.

Especially not like this.

He steps back. Slow. Controlled. As if the room might lurch and pull him in again, keep him held tight inside the heat of it. The scent of lavender on your pillow. A half-drunk mug of something still faintly warm on the desk. A soft blanket, folded neatly over the back of the couch by the window. Woven wool, pale grey, fraying just at the corners. In his world, that blanket lives in the rec room. He draped it over your slumbering body a few times already after you fell asleep somewhere between the second and third act.

The room creaks as though it knows he’s not supposed to be here.

So he leaves.

Each footfall measured like a soldier retreating from a line of fire. Not because of danger.

Because of what it could mean.

He closes the door behind him. Doesn’t let it latch.

He is leaving your room because he has to.

Because he’s still Bucky Barnes, and he still has something to do with his hands that isn’t letting them hover uselessly over photographs he never shot, or standing in the middle of a space that smells like your skin and wondering how long it would take before he forgot this wasn’t real. Or wasn’t his.

The hallway is still and dim. It breathes around him, too familiar and too wrong all at once. Different lungs, but the same bone structure.

His boots scruff over the same tile. The grooves on the walls are the same, the small imperfections in the paint still visible where someone - Clint, maybe - banged a cart too hard against the corner and then tried to cover it up with exactly the wrong shade of touch-up.

There’s a duffle bag sitting outside the laundry chute with a name tag stitched in crooked red thread: WILSON. Of course. Even this Sam never takes his stuff all the way in.

And there is a vending machine. It stands in the wrong corner, but it too has a post-it note stuck to it - out of order, again, thanks Tony - with a penknife stabbed through it, just like Natasha used to do when the machine ate her protein bar credits.

These things shouldn’t exist here. But they do.

Everything feels so carefully replicated, as though this universe is a reflection cast on rippling water - almost right, except where it wavers.

The picture frames are all straight here. No one’s taped up drawings on the elevator doors. But the dent in the wall by the training room door is still there - Tony left it during a particularly aggressive dodgeball game. And the pillow on the corner of the couch is still upside down. Steve never fixes it.

Someone’s sweatshirt is slung over the railing. Sam’s. Same one he wore for three weeks straight after the Lagos op. It still smells like burned rubber and that weird detergent Sam insists is “eco-friendly but manly.”

The common room has a blanket folded over the arm of the couch.

It’s yours.

You always fold it the same way. Two halves, then thirds, then smoothed flat.

The corners of his mouth twitch. Not a smile. Just muscle memory of one.

He walks slower now. Like he’s afraid he’ll wake something up.

He turns down the south hall, toward the kitchen.

He tells himself it’s for the layout. That he’s retracing steps, building a map in his head, keeping sharp like they trained him to. But really it’s you. It’s always you. He knows you’re here, somewhere, and if he turns the wrong corner too fast he might see you in a way he isn’t ready for. Or worse - see you in a way he’ll never forget.

His hand curls into a fist. Flesh and metal both.

The light changes first.

The kitchen here is bigger. Airier. The windows seem to stretch wider than they should, the frame redone in something softer than steel. Someone left the lights low, warm glimmers buzzing faintly above, full of melancholy chords.

And then he freezes. Everything in him turns to stone.

He stops breathing.

Because there are you.

Standing with your back to him.

You are in fuzzy socks, standing at the counter, shoulders relaxed, a pot simmering on the stove, and a sway in your movements that hit him so hard his throat tightens. You shift your weight slightly, hip against the edge of the counter, your hand rising to tuck your hair behind your ear.

The way the light hits you from behind is exactly the same.

You are moving through a rhythm you don’t know he’s watching.

You’re cooking something - he doesn’t know what, can’t smell it through the barrier of this aching distance - but it all is so heartbreakingly familiar. The tilt of your head as you read the label. The absent little sway in your hips as you stir something in the pan.

It’s domestic.

Effortlessly soft.

The kind of moment he’s never had, but has imagined a thousand times before.

His body goes very still. Maybe if he moves, the moment might shatter.

But it cleaves him open.

Because you move the same.

You move the way you do in his world - as though every room bends slowly toward you. As though you don’t know how much of your soul you leave behind in your trail. As though the air makes space for you because it wants to. Because it has to.

He watches.

Rooted to the floor.

This is doing something brutal to him. Seeing you here like this, in this soft golden kitchen that smells like tomatoes and thyme and something slow-cooked with patience and love, tucked into his shirt as though it doesn’t tear his heart apart.

You’re not just wearing it to steal warmth or tease him, the way you’ve done before in his world - tugging on his hoodie after a long mission, smirking when he raises an eyebrow, pretending it was an accident. You always returned it too quickly. Always laughed too loudly when he was too nonchalant about it. Always looked away too fast.

But here. Here you wear it as though you truly mean to.

Here you stir sauce in his shirt and sway slightly to a song you don’t know you’re humming and taste the spoon as though this is just another Saturday. Here, the shirt is not a stolen thing.

The hem skims your thighs. The collar is stretched slightly. The cotton even moves in your rhythm. His name is ghosted into the shape of you, etched along your silhouette. It’s almost too much. It’s absolutely too much.

Your movements are familiar in the way only time can make a person. And God, you move the same way. The same way. Like the version of you he left behind an hour ago. Fluid. Quiet. Self-contained. You hum under your breath, just barely.

He feels it like a bruise forming under his ribs.

His hand curls at his side. Metal fingers flex.

You don’t see him.

He’s not ready for you to. He knows he shouldn’t let you see him.

Not here. Not like this. Not when you’re standing in a kitchen that looks like the one you always complained was too small, in a shirt that is his - or the other Bucky’s - cooking with your whole body curled in that same subtle tension like you’re thinking about something else entirely.

And for one breathless second, he forgets.

He forgets this isn’t his kitchen.

That this isn’t his world.

That the you standing there isn’t the one who left a hair tie on his wrist last Wednesday.

That you’re not the one who laughed at him for not knowing how to use your espresso machine but then proceeded to teach him with that sweet voice of yours he doesn’t mind drowning in.

But God, he wants to walk across the room. Wants to slide his arms around your waist. Rest his chin on your shoulder. Breathe in your scent and feel your heartbeat under his hands.

Because he’s seen you like this before.

In his own kitchen, in his own universe.

Not often. Just enough to be dangerous.

You, in fuzzy socks. You, humming softly. You, squinting into a pot like it might confess its secrets.
You, looking over your shoulder and catching him staring.

Smirking. Amused. But with a warmth in your eyes.

And now, he just watches.

This version of you doesn’t turn around. Doesn’t feel him standing there, made of want and memory and too much tenderness for a heart that was never meant to carry this much.

He grips the doorframe.

Tries to swallow the pain.

Because this is what he’s always wanted, but it isn’t his.

And it won’t be.

But he can’t stop looking.

He knows he should move. Now.

He’s not supposed to linger.

Not supposed to look.

Not supposed to feel.

He’s a shadow in this world, a breath not meant to be heard. A presence designed to pass unnoticed.

But you-

God.

You are gravity and he is weak against it.

You are the glitch in every rule, the exception in every universe.

And he can’t help it.

He looks.

He stays.

Because there is no version of reality where he walks past you untouched.

You are the only thing in this place that hasn’t changed.

The only thing that feels right.

And that’s the worst part.

Because you feel like home.

And you’re not his.

You might never be.

But he stands there, selfish and still, pretending the silence could make him invisible. Pretending this version of you isn’t real. That your shape, your voice, your hands wouldn’t undo him in ways the war never could.

You reach for the spice rack, standing on your toes just a little, the hem of the oversized shirt lifting slightly. His name is written in the way the fabric hangs off your frame. It’s branded into this whole place.

He watches you like a man watches fire from the other side of glass - warmed, lit, and ruined all at once. You move like morning through him - and he, all dusk and dust, knows he is never meant to touch such light.

You wear that shirt on your shoulders as though it is normal for you. As though you want it to be there.

Bucky watches it stretch across the curves of a body he’s only ever worshiped in dreams.

You still feel like you, he thinks and the thought is so sudden and so violent that he has to step back - just a fraction of an inch, just enough to pretend he didn’t feel it, just enough to pretend it doesn’t mean something.

He doesn’t understand how this version of you still reads like poetry he’s already memorized.

He backs away, so slowly, he wonders if time might forgive him for the moment. For his hesitation to leave.

For the way, he just stands there and watches you as though you are the last good thing in the world.

As though you are the world. His world.

You turn, slow, stirring spoon still in hand. You haven’t seen him yet. You’re focused, brow furrowed just slightly, lower lip caught between your teeth, and he knows he should get the hell away from here.

But he is frozen in place. His muscles aren’t working.

He sees the angle of your cheek, the line of your neck, the quick twitch of your nose as though you’ve caught a scent you know too well.

And then you look up.

You see him.

Bucky’s mind is running on empty cells.

Your whole face changes. Clouds lifting. Sun rising. Your smile is instant. As though seeing him is something your body wants to do.

Everything in you brightens. As though the sun cracked open inside your chest. Your whole body jolts. Just a fraction. In surprise, delight. As though seeing him is something that rearranges the air in your lungs and makes it easier to breathe.

He is not prepared for the way you breathe his name.

“Buck-” your voice is thick with shock and joy and something lighter than either. “You’re back.”

He doesn’t move. Can’t.

The word back rattles in his ears. Echoes. Feels like a lie made of gold. He is not back. He is not yours. Not in this life. Not in this room. Not in the way you somehow seem to think he is.

You don’t give him time to speak. You don’t give him space to even think.

Because you’re already closing the distance between you, fast and sure-footed, and he has just enough sense left in him to realize he should say something, before you launch yourself into his chest, arms flung wide, a soft gasp of excitement still spilling from your mouth.

You collide with him hard and certain and unapologetic, and your arms wind around his neck as though they’ve done this a thousand times. So easy with him. Knowing the shape of him.

He stiffens. Every muscle in his body locks up, heart ricocheting against his ribs. He chokes on his breath.

He’s too overwhelmed with this situation to hug you back. His arms stay frozen at his side. His fingers twitch, trying to reach for you but remembering they shouldn’t.

You’re warm. You’re so warm.

You smell like that candle on your windowsill. Like a version of comfort he hasn’t earned.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were back?” you murmur, voice muffled as you bury yourself into the crook of his neck, full of a joy so honest it makes his entire ribcage squeeze the life out of him. “I thought you were still stuck over there. I was starting to get worried. Were you trying to surprise me? Because you definitely surprised me.”

Bucky can’t speak. He can’t do a single thing and that’s absolutely pathetic. He wants to say something clever or distant or safe, but his mouth is a graveyard and the words are bones. He’s not sure he even remembers how to use them anymore.

Your breath fans across his collarbone, your nose brushing his jaw, and it’s too much.

The feeling of you against him is unbearable. You fit. Of course, you do. His body knows you, even if his brain is screaming that this is wrong, that this is not the life he is living, that this version of you is not his to touch.

But you don’t know that. You don’t hesitate. Your hands slide up his back. One of them tangles in the hair at the nape of his neck. The other rests against the curve of his shoulder. His flesh shoulder.

He feels like glass. Like a single breath could rip him to shreds.

You pull back just enough to look at him.

There is something tender in your eyes. Something known. Something that sees him without flinching. You’re beaming. And he is blinded.

You’re looking at him as though he’s something you loved for years and known down to the marrow.

And then, so quickly, so confidently - you kiss him.

Bucky freezes.

All the air leaves his lungs.

His heart stutters in his chest.

Your lips meet his as though the air between you has gravity, as though you have done this before, soft and sure, knowing how he likes it. You kiss him as though you’ve kissed him a thousand times and a thousand more.

Bucky is a rigid wall, thunderstruck.

But he doesn’t stop you.

He should. He knows he should. The second your hands touched his face, he should have stepped back. Should have told you the truth. Should have warned you that this isn’t him. Not the right one. That the man you think you’re kissing is a ghost wearing someone else’s memories.

But he doesn’t. He lets you. For a heartbreaking moment. Lets his mouth press to yours for the span of a beat and a half. Lets the warmth of you crack the ice he’s been carrying in his chest for too long.

Your lips are warm, soft, sweet, tasting of honey and cinnamon and nostalgia and the imaged version of a dream he’s buried too deep to name, one he’s never dared to reach for but still lingers in his bones. Bucky doesn’t know if he’s breathing or if that became something irrelevant.

He lets you press into him as though the whole world hasn’t changed, as though this you is not a stranger wearing your skin, your voice, your tenderness. And for a second, a small and selfish, shattering second, he melts.

His muscles go slack and his eyes fall closed and the universe falls into place. Your lips on his feel like relief, like the end of war, like something he didn’t earn. He lets himself sink into it, into you.

You kiss him as though you know him. As though you know the hollow places and where they go. As though your body is working off muscle memory forged from love he was never around long enough to deserve.

Your hands are on his face and you’re kissing him as though this means something and he wants to pull away, he does, but not for one split-second. He folds like wax in flames, pliant and helpless under your affection.

His heart stutters - skips, crashes, burns.

Your body is pressing forward as though it’s coming home.

His mouth moves with yours, slow and stunned and melted, like a man learning to breathe in a language he doesn’t speak.

This is what he has imagined. This is what has haunted the spaces behind his eyes when he lets his guard down. He has imagined this. Wondered what your breath would taste like when it caught between your mouths, how your fingers would feel fisted in his hair, how it might feel to be wanted by you - openly, without hesitation, without shame.

But then you whisper against his mouth, soft and breathless and full of joy.

“God, I missed you.”

And everything collapses.

The words strike like ice water down his spine. It’s like being shot. He grows tense again. His eyes snap open. His mind catches up to his heart. The sweetness goes sour in his mouth. The warmth becomes poison under his skin. Because it isn’t real. This isn’t real.

You’re not his.

Not his to kiss. Not his to miss him. Not his to touch him with that bright look in your eyes as though he is part of your story.

You think he’s your Bucky. The one who - as Bucky would imagine - kissed you on every hallway in this place, whenever he could. The one who knows which side of the bed you sleep on. The one who earned your trust, your touch, your history.

And so he breaks the sky.

He pulls away - rips himself out of paradise with shaking hands and a jaw clenched so tight it might snap. The breath that leaves him is ragged, torn.

Every muscle in his body is tight. This is not your kiss. Not yours to give or his to take. Not when you don’t know. Not when you think he’s someone else.

And even though it’s you - your warmth, your voice, your heartbeat fluttering against his chest - it’s not the version of you he’s imagined this with.

And it’s not right.

The guilt punches him all at once, shame and grief and confusion he’s never quite learned to survive. He recoils - not even fully on purpose - but instinct, instinct that tells him he has stolen something you didn’t offer him.

He’s just a stranger behind familiar eyes.

You freeze. Blink at him. Confused. Concerned.

Your smile falters. Disappears.

His chest heaves once, twice, too fast, not able to breathe properly with your taste still caught in his mouth. His hands curl into fists at his side, trying to remember what they are for.

And then he sees it - your worry folding into something smaller, something more ashamed.

And it murders him in slow motion, one heartbeat at a time.

Your hands drop away from his face and flutter against your lips for the smallest second as though maybe you’re the one who crossed a line.

And he watches, helpless, as the light behind your eyes dims.

You take a tiny step back, shoulders inching inwards as though you’re suddenly unsure of yourself.

And then your eyes widen, and the guilt spills out of you now, sharp and immediate.

“Buck, I-” you start, your voice soft and hesitant. “I’m sorry. That was… I shouldn’t have just- I didn’t mean to- God, you probably needed a second to just settle, and I-” you trail off and take another step back as though you think you hurt him.

Your face crumples, not dramatically, not completely. But enough to look a little wounded. Vulnerable in that way you only let him see when no one else is around. Even here. Even in this life that isn’t his.

It’s killing him.

That pain in your eyes. The sheen of doubt and confusion that he put there.

You wrap your arms around yourself, retreating inward, your expression far too close to shame.

His chest caves as though something vital just got torn out, and his body hasn’t caught up yet.

Because even if you are not his - you are you. And hurting you, even by accident, even like this, feels like peeling the skin of his ribs.

He feels it in the hollow beneath his ribs, a wound that won’t stop bleeding.

“No!” he forces out quickly, voice low and rough and all wrong. “Hey- no, no, you didn’t- You weren’t- I’m not-”

But he doesn’t know what to say.

He wants to tell you it’s okay, that you didn’t do anything wrong, that it’s him, it’s all him, it’s always him, it’s never you.

He wants to scream that his bones are made of want, that his blood sings only your name, that he is drowning in everything you don’t know you’ve given him.

But none of this is simple. None of it is clean.

And all he does is stand there.

Breath shaking.

Heart breaking.

Hands curled so tightly to keep from reaching.

Because you didn’t give this kiss to him, not knowing who he was. You gave it to the man you think he is. The man you trust.

And he accepted it anyway. Let it happen. For just a split second, but still, he let himself have it.

He feels sick.

And now you look like you’re folding in on yourself, and all he wants in the world is to pull you close and undo every second of pain.

“I just got excited,” you say timidly, even softer now, eyes dropping to the kitchen counter. “I missed you and I didn’t- I thought you’d- Never mind. I’m sorry.”

You’re already turning away, trying to tuck the moment back into yourself, trying to pretend it didn’t just break the air between you. As though you haven’t just handed him a piece of your heart and watched him flinch from it.

And Bucky feels like the worst kind of monster.

Because it’s not your fault. This version of you, who somehow but clearly loves him, who thought she was greeting the man who has kissed her a thousand times and more. Who thought this was welcome. Who probably counted down the days until he walked through that door.

He knows because he does the same thing although his you and him aren’t even a thing.

Because in his world, you’re his friend. Just that. A friend with soft eyes and sharper wit, someone who argues about popcorn toppings and sings loudly in the kitchen when you know he needs some cheering up. You’ve patched him up after missions. You’ve watched old movies with him in silence, both of you staring too long at the screen and not long enough at each other. You’ve fallen asleep on his shoulder. You’ve tucked his hair behind his ear when it stuck to his cheek after a nightmare. You’ve told him - more than once - that you’re here for him.

But you’ve never kissed him.

You’ve never touched him as though you owned the moment.

You’ve never stood in his clothes and cooked dinner for the version of him who let himself be yours.

And god, he wants to hate this version of himself. This man who found the courage to step forward when he only hovered on the edge. Who earned the right to be held by his dream girl like a homecoming.

And now you are ashamed. Now you are hurt.

Because he couldn’t be the right Bucky.

He steps forward, frantic, needing, desperate to fix it, to say something, anything that would wipe that hurt look off your face.

“No- no, hey,” he rasps, voice frayed. His hands are hovering. He wants to touch you. He wants to hold your face in his palms and make this better. “It’s not your fault. It’s not you. I just… I mean, I didn’t think-” He knows he’s not making this better at all right now.

He sighs, mouth open but language failing him, and he scrubs a hand over his jaw as though he can erase the hesitation you saw there.

You search his face, your eyes too deep.

A trembling nod.

“Okay,” you say. “I just thought- I don’t know what I thought. I was just really happy to see you. But I should’ve given you a moment.”

And there it is.

The softness.

The part of you he has always tried to guard. The one he’d go back to Hydra to protect. The one that makes his chest ache and his hands shake at his sides.

He wants to tell you everything. The truth. The mission. That he’s not the man you think he is.

He almost does.

But his throat is choked up.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, and that only breaks him in a new way.

Because you think you did something wrong.

“No,” he starts again, firmer this time, softer too. “You don’t need to apologize, sweetheart. I-” he hesitates, and you see it. “I missed you, too.”

He screwed up. Completely.

You bite your lip, unsure. Your eyes flick down to your shirt. His shirt. Not really his shirt. But Bucky’s shirt. You tug at the hem as though it suddenly doesn’t belong to you anymore.

And Bucky knows that this moment will haunt him long after he leaves this world. Long after he goes back to the version of you who wears his hoodies just to tease, who touches him only in passing, who is his friend despite him wishing for you to greet him the same way this you greets her Bucky. For the rest of his life.

You look at him as though he’s a wound.

As though he’s something tender and broken and half-open, and not in the way that frightens you but in the way that makes you reach for the first aid kit. As though you’ve seen the blood already, and you are not afraid to get your hands dirty to make him whole again.

Your voice turns softer now. Maybe trying not to shake the walls around him. Like you’ve already seen him flinch once and you’re afraid of making it happen again. He can hear the thread of caution in your throat, stretched thin with concern.

“Buck,” you say, slow, quiet. “Are you okay?” you ask and it’s not just a question. It’s a doorway. A key turned in a lock he hasn’t let anyone touch. You’re peering through the walls he built up as though you have done it before. Maybe you know all his hiding places. Maybe you’ve kissed every scar on his soul and memorized the way his silences mean different things.

But not this version of him.

Not here. Not now.

And it does something sharp to him.

Because he’s not okay. He is a thousand feet below the surface, lungs full of water and salt and regret. He is standing in a version of his life that is too soft for the callouses on his hands, and you are looking at him as if he means something to you, as if he still matters even after he’s flinched from your kiss, after he’s stood there in a borrowed skin, giving nothing in return.

He wants to say yes. Wants to lie because it would be kinder. Because maybe it would make your forehead smooth out and your mouth curl back up and your shoulders drop from where they’ve crept up near your ears. But the words catch in his throat. He can’t swallow them. He can’t spit them out.

You step closer, slowly now, more careful than before, and the guilt rises more than ever.

“Do you need anything?” you ask, as though you’ve asked him this a thousand times before. “Water? Food? A shower? A-” you falter, “- a second to breathe?”

Your eyes are so gentle he could cry. You’re hurting and you’re still soft with him, still reaching across this invisible crack in the earth, still offering care with both hands like it won’t burn you if he doesn’t take it.

He doesn’t deserve this.

He doesn’t deserve you.

Not when he’s not the man who earned the right to walk through that door and be met with your affection like sunlight. Not when you looked at him like a miracle and he gave you nothing back but a statue.

His hands remain in fists. His chest is too tight. Too small. His own skin is too loud.

“I’m fine,” he answers. Too fast. Too clipped. He regrets it instantly.

Your face drops a little, enough for him to feel it all over again. Another weight, another reminder that he is ruining something delicate, something not meant for him.

“Oh,” you murmur, nodding too quickly, stepping back as though your warmth was a mistake. “Okay.”

And there it is.

That thing he can’t stand.

That thing you do - both of you, all versions of you - when you feel shut out. That pull inward, that retreat behind your own ribs, as though maybe you’d overstepped, and now you need to fold yourself small enough not to take up space.

It crushes him.

Because he made you feel that way.

He made you feel as though you’re making it worse by caring.

He swallows hard, sorrow burning down his throat.

He doesn’t deserve your tenderness. He doesn’t deserve your care. He doesn’t deserve the way you’re moving again, back to the counter, shoulders tense. You’re trying to give him space and comfort in the same breath and it hurts to watch.

You stir something in the pan. Wipe your hands off a towel that looks as though it’s been used too many times. Domestic. Familiar. This life is familiar, too much so, and he is standing in the middle of it like a trespasser.

“I’m almost done here,” you note sweetly, glancing back at him with that look - gentle and worried and wounded. “If you do want something.”

You say it as though you’ve fed him before. As though he likes your cooking. As though this is something you fall into easily, the kitchen your common ground, your voice echoing off the same cabinets.

Bucky can feel his heart cave in.

You’re still looking at him like that. As though he’s someone you’d give your last spoonful of soup to. As though he isn’t just standing there like a coward with your kiss still on his mouth and your concern sitting in the hollow of his chest.

Even when he pulled away, even when he didn’t say a damn word, you didn’t get angry. You didn’t accuse him of anything. You just worried. And you’re still here. Still cooking. Still offering pieces of yourself like they’re nothing when they mean everything.

It makes him feel like a thief.

Because he’s not your Bucky. And he doesn’t know what yours did to earn you, but he can’t possibly live up to it.

His guilt is a creature now - gnawing and breathing heavy in his chest, pacing in circles behind his ribs. He feels it crawling through him, scraping at the back of his throat, making it hard to speak, hard to swallow. You are being careful with him, and all he can think about is how he should have stopped the kiss the second you leaned in.

You wouldn’t have kissed him if you knew who he really was.

And still, he wants to say yes.

Wants to sit at the kitchen table as though he belongs. Wants to take the plate you’d hand him and eat every last bite and listen to your stories and pretend just for a moment that this is his.

But it’s not.

It’s yours.

And it’s his job to leave it untouched.

“I’m good,” he lies, voice a gravel-dragged croak.

You pause, spoon in hand, frowning softly.

He hates that look.

That little line between your brows. The tilt of your head. Maybe you know he’s not telling the truth but don’t want to press. Maybe you’d rather hold the silence in your hands than make him bleed more words than he has.

“Okay,” you say again, quiet but still open, still gentle. “Just let me know if that changes.”

And you turn back to your pan, shoulders remaining to stay curled in. Like a window closing just enough to keep the cold out.

And Bucky just stands there.

Mouth dry. Hands shaking. Jaw tight. Chest full of something that feels like grief and guilt and anguish all tangled up in barbed wire.

And you’re cooking for a man who doesn’t exist in your world.

And the worst part - the part that scrapes down the back of his throat - is that he wishes he could deserve you.

He wishes this was real.

He wishes it were him.

He wishes it more than he’s wished for anything in his life since he lost it.

Since he became something else, since he forgot his own name, since his hands were turned against the world, against himself. Since all he’s done is survive.

He watches you like a man starving for sunlight. Terrified it might disappear if he blinks too long.

The way your shoulders move as you stir. The curl of your fingers around the wooden spoon. The tuck of hair behind your ear. The shift of your weight from one foot to the other.

He watches you move like he’s memorizing. As though this is the last time he’ll see you in motion. Like your movements are things he can bottle and carry with him, tucked deep into some pocket where the world can’t steal it. Where time can’t take it. Where even regret has no reach.

Your fingers fuss over something inconsequential now. Adjusting the position of a mug that didn’t need to be moved, opening a drawer, and then closing it again. You’re pretending not to look at him but he sees the way your eyes keep falling over, the way you keep folding and unfolding yourself. You’re waiting. Giving him the space he didn’t ask for and that he doesn’t actually want but knows he should take. Giving him something kinder than he’s ever learned to give himself.

And you are so familiar. You’re the same here. Even in this place that’s slightly sideways and tinted in colors, he doesn’t recognize. You move the same. You speak the same. You care the same way.

Even if your kindness isn’t meant for him.

Even if your kiss was meant for a version of him he doesn’t even understand.

Because this Bucky - the one you seem to love here - he must have done something right. He must have looked at you one day and not looked away. He must have let himself have you. He must have been brave enough to reach for you with both hands and hold on.

Bucky doesn’t know how to be that man.

He wants to be.

But he doesn’t know how.

Not in his own world. Not where he loves you from afar and pretends that’s protection. Where he swallows the way you laugh like it’s medicine and doesn’t let it show on his face. Where he listens to your questions in briefings - always you, always asking the most, as though you know people better than they know themselves - and he lets the sound of your voice guide him through the fog in his head like a rope he can follow back home.

But he never says anything. Never answers unless he has to. Never tells you how often he thinks about you, about your hands and your hair and your smell and the way your eyes find his in a crowd like a lighthouse built just for him.

Because what would he even say?

Hey, I can’t sleep unless I replay the way you laughed when Sam dropped popcorn all over the floor last month. I still have the napkin you folded into a crane at that terrible diner. I know the shape of your handwriting better than my own.

And what would you say to that?

Would you smile?

Would you run?

He doesn’t know. He’ll never know. Because he never asked. Because he never tried.

But this Bucky did.

And now this is the price.

Standing in the compound’s kitchen that smells of roasted garlic and too many things he’s never had. Watching you move around as though this is all so very familiar to you.

He wonders if you’d greet him like this every day if he were yours. If you were his.

If you’d light up like that every time like he was coming come and not just showing up, arms open, voice warm, like there was no place he could be safer than here with you.

If you’d wear his shirts as though they are yours because of what he means to you, not because they are soft or convenient or too clean not to steal.

He aches with the idea of it.

He wants this.

He wants you.

And not just in the sharp pain that lives under his ribs. Not just in the sleepless nights and the imagined conversations. Not just in the way he stares too long when you’re laughing or how he makes excuses to sit beside you on the couch.

He wants this.

You, warm and open and lit up from the inside. You, the way you could be if you saw him like this. If you let yourself. If he ever earned the right for you to let yourself.

But he hasn’t. He knows that.

He’s just your friend. The one you trust with your coffee order and your spare key and the heavy things you don’t want to talk about until 2 am. The one you steal clothes from, but always give them back because they don’t actually belong to you. The one you fall asleep beside during late movies without worrying about what it means because it doesn’t mean anything. Not to you.

Not like it means to him.

And still, he always watches. From doorways. From shadowed corners of rooms that dim the moment you leave them. Not to possess you - but because to look away would be a small death he cannot bear.

You laugh, and he holds the sound like contraband. You glance past him, and he lets it wound him sweetly. He’ll love you like that forever - at a distance, in silence, in awe. A man carved hollow by devotion, wearing his yearning like a prayer no god will answer.

And this version of you belongs to someone.

Even if it’s just a different version of him, it’s not him. Not this one. Not the one still lost in the burden of everything he’s done. The one who still wonders if the blood on his hands will ever wash off. The one who doesn’t know how to be soft.

He doesn’t know what the other Bucky did to deserve this version of you. Doesn’t know how he got so lucky. Doesn’t know what he offered you, what words he spoke when you were doubting yourself, afraid of being too much.

He’s not sure if he even knows this Bucky. It sounds weird as fuck. But maybe he doesn’t. Because it seems impossible to Bucky that this guy actually managed to get his girl. To get you.

Though he sure as hell would start a fight if the other him ever took this for granted. If he ever walked through this kitchen distracted or tired or in a bad mood and missed the way you smile when you think he’s not looking. If he ever left you waiting too long.

Bucky thinks he’d kill to have what that punk has.

And he hates himself for that.

But he can’t help but watch you, and it feels like the axis of something turning. Like time folding in on itself to offer him one brief, borrowed breath of what could have been.

It feels like being kissed by a future he lost, and forgiven by a present he never dared to ask for.

Because he knows that if you knew his thoughts, if you knew what he is feeling right now, you’d feel betrayed. You’d feel wronged. Because this wasn’t yours to give and it wasn’t his to want and now you’re both tangled in something made of shadows and parallel paths that should never have crossed.

But you’re here. And he’s here. And the moment still smells of cinnamon and citrus and something sweet, like safety, like you.

And he can’t stop wanting.

He wants it so badly he feels like a child in his chest. Like a boy in Brooklyn again, heart too big, hands too empty. Wanting something too beautiful for his fingers. Afraid to touch it in case he ruins it.

He wants this kitchen, this quiet, this life. He wants to be the Bucky who you wrap your arms around without thinking. Without hesitation. The one you miss. The one you think about. The one you care about so deeply. The one you kiss without asking because of course he wants you to.

He wants to be the one you light up for.

He wants it so bad it hurts.

But you are too soft for the ruin of his hands. Too bright for the rooms he lives in. You drink from fountains he was never invited to approach, speak in tones that his rusted soul cannot mimic.

And this is gutting him. To know the shape of your intimate kindness, the tilt of your adoring smile, the poetry of your presence - yet remain nothing more than a silent apostle to your orbit.

And maybe that’s why he finally moves. Why he tears himself away, footfalls too loud in the silence, heart thudding wildly in his chest.

He can’t stay here, not with you standing in the soft yellow light looking like everything he’s ever tried not to need.

He clears his throat, tries to make his voice sound normal, even though nothing about him feels human right now.

Your eyes lift to his. Wary. Still warm. Still worried. Still too much.

“I should, uh,” he mutters, nodding toward the hallway. “I’ve gotta take a shower.”

He bites his lip in frustration at himself.

Your lip twitches. Tugs down ever so slightly. It splits him open.

“Okay,” you say, quiet. There is disappointment in your tone, you weren’t able to overshadow. “You’ll tell me if you need anything?”

He nods too fast. Too tight. “Yeah.”

And then he leaves.

Because if he doesn’t, he’s going to do something worse than kiss you back.

He’s going to beg.

And he knows he has already taken too much.

And he needs to turn away.

Because he has something to do.

Because this world isn’t his. And he wasn’t sent here to collect the storyline he’s too afraid to build on his own.

He’s here for a mission.

He wasn’t sent here to linger in your doorway and let his bones dissolve into longing.

He walks away with you still behind him. He feels your gaze on his skin and with every step, it’s like he’s leaving something behind he’ll never quite be able to touch again.

He almost turns around.

Almost says your name.

Almost asks what this Bucky did - how he said it first, how he reached for you, what it took.

But he doesn’t.

Because he doesn’t get to ask.

So he keeps walking, heart in his throat, your taste still on his lips, and the echo of your smile carved into his spine like something sacred he was never meant to keep.

****

“Did you run into anyone while you were there?”

Steve’s question comes as casually as a bomb dropped from the sky.

Voices rise and fall in the conference room - wooden chairs squeaking under shifting weight, pens clicking, someone’s fingers drumming absently on the table.

The room is too bright. The lights overhead white and clinical, burning a little too harshly through his eyes and down into the back of his skull.

The air smells like ozone and burnt coffee. The kind that’s been sitting in the pot too long, scorched at the edges.

Bucky sits at the far end. Back against the chair but not relaxed, never relaxed, spine too straight, jaw too tight, metal fingers tapping once against the glass of his water before he clenches his hand and stills it.

And he knew this was coming.

Knew from the moment Strange opened that cursed slit in the fabric of the universe and Bucky stepped through like he was boarding a train to nowhere. Knew the second he saw your face - your face, but not yours - that this would catch up with him. That this would unravel under fluorescent lights and scrutiny.

Every muscle in his body coiled tighter. A reflex. A learned thing. His mouth is already dry.

The table is crowded with Avengers, coffee cups clinking, files half-open and untouched because no one is really looking at the paper.

The prototype sits in the center of the table, carefully sealed inside one of Tony’s vacuum-shielded cases. A long-forgotten Howard Stark fever dream, something meant to bend energy fields into weaponized gravity. Or something. It doesn’t matter.

They have it. He got it.

But that’s not what anyone is talking about right now.

Not when Sam is already side-eyeing him. Not when Doctor Strange is seated in his dark robes like the warning label on a grenade, fingertips tented, waiting. Not when you’re sitting two chairs down - his version of you - and you’re watching him with that same knitted expression you always wear when something doesn’t sit right.

“Bucky,” Strange says, voice low and still too loud. “I need to know. Did you encounter anyone significant while you were there? Interacting with alternate selves is risky. Prolonged exposure can ripple. If you spoke to someone who knows you-”

“I know the damn rules,” Bucky mutters, sharper than he meant to, and instantly hates the way your brows lift at the sound of it.

He rubs a hand across the back of his neck. Tries to breathe. His body is still holding something that didn’t belong to him. Your smile. Your voice. The feel of your lips, pressed to his like they had every right to be there. Like you knew him.

He can’t stop thinking about you.

He doesn’t want to talk about it.

He dreads talking about it.

“There was someone,” he says, and the room quiets.

You sit a little straighter. Sam leans forward. Even Clint lowers his cup.

He can feel you watching him.

You, his version of you, sitting across the table with your arms crossed and your head tilted just enough to catch the shadows under his eyes. The real you. The only important you. And it’s so difficult to just look at you because he swears there’s a phantom echo still lingering in his chest. Of another you. Of another kitchen full of light.

“Who?” Strange asks.

Bucky exhales slowly, eyes fixed on the table. The grain of it. The scratch just under his knuckle. He imagines digging his fingers into it, splinters biting through skin, anything to ground himself.

“You,” He meets your eyes when he finally says it, and it feels like swallowing gravel. “I saw her.”

You blink.

“You ran into Y/n?” Sam asks, something like a smirk in his voice.

Bucky nods once. It feels like rust grinding his neck.

He can’t look up anymore. Can’t look at you.

He doesn’t need to look to know your breath has caught. He can feel it in the air. The absence of it. Like the moment before thunder.

He pushes through.

“She was there. She saw me.” His jaw clenches, his fists curl under the table.

Bruce exhales, pushing up his glasses. “That’s not ideal.”

Tony makes a sharp noise in his throat.

“Did you talk to her?” Strange inquiries, voice tighter now, more urgent. And Bucky has to refrain himself from wincing.

He sees you shifting in your seat in his peripheral vision.

“Yeah,” he sighs, quieter now. “We, uh- we talked.”

Silence.

Strange’s eyes are boring through him. “How close did you get?”

Sam leans forward. Bucky doesn’t look at him.

You’re staring at him now. Open. Quiet. You haven’t said a word. Your silence feels worse than anything else.

“I don’t think that matters-” Bucky starts, but Strange interrupts.

“It matters exactly. If she saw you, if you talked, if you touched, if anything that could destabilize your emotional tether occurred-”

Bucky laughs, but it’s hollow, breathless. Rotten. “What the hell is an emotional tether?”

“It’s you,” Strange answers simply. “And her. On a metaphysical level. The same person in different timelines can act as anchors. Or explosives.”

“Jesus,” Bucky mumbles, dragging a hand down his face.

His palms won’t stop sweating.

He hasn’t felt this kind of sick since HYDRA used to strap wires to his temples and ask him how many fingers they’d need to break before he forgot his own name.

The conference room is too still. Too sharp. His chair feels wrong under him, too stiff, too narrow. The soft, predictable sound of conversation from earlier has dropped into something tighter. Focused. Hunting.

He doesn’t want to lie. Not about you. Not when you touched him like that. Not when you said his name like that. Not when it almost felt like it could be true.

So he swallows hard and pushes words through his locked jaw.

“She hugged me.”

A pause.

He doesn’t look at anyone. Just the table. That one dent from Steve’s shield. The scratch Clint made with a fork because he talks with his hands. A small, folded paper crane tucked under your fingers. He doesn’t know where you’ve got that from but your fingers are bending the wings back and forth. He doesn’t think you even realize you’re doing it.

“She hugged you?” Sam repeats, brow raised. “Like… greeted you?”

Bucky nods slowly, heart thudding in his ears. “Something like that.” He can feel your gaze like heat pressed against the side of his face and it almost burns to meet it, so he doesn’t.

“What happened before that?” Steve wants to know, eyes narrowing.

“I-” Bucky starts, and then stops, scrubs a hand over his mouth. “I walked into the kitchen. She was cooking something. Then she saw me. She thought I- he- was back. From something. A mission. I don’t know the details.”

“And she hugged you,” Steve adds.

“Yeah,” Bucky sighs.

He doesn’t mean to look at you, but he does. For a second.

And you’re watching him with something unreadable in your eyes. Something still. As though you are trying to understand.

“And you just let her?” Sam presses, not unkind, but relentless in the way only Sam can be. “You didn’t say anything?”

“What do you think I should have said?”

“Well, I don’t know, man-“

“Did I say anything? Or… she?”

It’s your voice.

And it makes his stomach flip.

His eyes snap to you. But you’re not looking at him directly. You look at the edge of his shoulder. The hinge of his jaw. The tension written across his face.

He shifts in his chair. “You- She asked why I hadn’t told her I was coming back. Thought I was surprising her.” His hands are pressed flat against his thighs as though he can keep himself from shaking if he stays grounded.

“And?” Steve asks, too gently.

“She kissed me,” Bucky manages finally, and the room stiffens around him like a held breath. His voice is almost flat now. Hollowed-out. Maybe he’s trying to bleed the memory dry so it stops spreading in his chest.

There is a momentary lapse of silence that feels like someone dropped something delicate and no one wants to be the first to point it out.

Clint exhales slowly, muttering something under it. Sam leans back in his chair, maybe trying to decide if this is funny or devastating. Steve just blinks.

And you go completely still. Not a twitch of movement. Not even your fingers on the paper crane.

“She kissed you?” Natasha says, brows high.

Bucky exhales. Nods.

“What kind of kiss?” Sam blurts, leaning forward again. “A welcome-home kiss? Or a- like a real kiss?”

Steve sighs exasperated.

“No, I mean- we gotta know. This matters.”

His hand is aching. Flesh thumb pressing hard against the knuckle. “It was- not friendly.”

And the room really freezes. Stunned.

Until Sam lets out this sharp, incredulous sort of whistle, and Clint groans, dragging a hand down his face.

You glance down at your lap, jaw clenched, breath held so still it barely moves your chest. And it twists something in Bucky’s stomach, the way you sit there trying to disappear. He’s not sure who it hurts more - you, hearing this, or him, saying it. There is shame curling behind his ears. Shame and something like grief. And it’s all turned inward.

Sam’s eyes narrow. “So she kissed you thinking you were the other Bucky.”

Bucky doesn’t answer. He’s trying to keep still. Trying not to flinch. Trying not to look left. Trying not to look right. Trying not to look at you.

Because he feels the air around you shift like the press of a coming storm. It’s not anger. He knows that heat, and this isn’t it. It’s just quiet and tight and uncomfortable. A subtle withdrawal as though you’ve stepped behind some invisible wall only he can see.

And he hates it.

Bruce clears his throat carefully. “That implies a romantic connection. At least in her mind. Probably in his, too.”

Tony makes a face. “So we’re saying that Barnes and our girl are a thing in that universe.”

“Looks like it,” Natasha muses, eyes sliding toward you.

“Holy shit,” Clint remarks unhelpfully.

They say it so easily. As though this is nothing. As though this doesn’t wreck something fundamental in Bucky’s ribcage.

And suddenly everyone is quiet. Even the noise of the lights seem muted. It’s hot and awkward and strangely intimate.

Bucky stares down at his hands. They look like someone else’s. He can still feel your touch on them. Still feel the heat of your mouth against his. The softness. The way your lips pressed with such intention.

He says nothing.

He feels terrible.

Because a part of him still wants it.

Still aches with it.

Not the kiss. Not the accident.

The life.

That version of himself who gets to love you out loud. Who gets to be yours in daylight, in kitchens, in the moments that don’t demand heroism but just presence. That version of him that doesn’t have to swallow the way your voice makes something flutter in his chest like a broken-winged butterfly. The one who can kiss you because you already know him. Trust him. Want him. Miss him.

He wants that version to exist so badly.

And it makes him feel like a monster.

You’re sitting just far enough to be untouchable, just close enough that he can feel the space between you aching like a wound.

You are you. You are right there. And you don’t even know that in another universe, you loved him so much you ran into his arms without hesitation.

The light from the high windows drips in thin streaks across the long table, catching on Bucky’s knuckles, the tightness of his body.

There’s a long pause.

Then Tony exhales. “Well, that confirms it. Barnes is getting some in another universe.”

“Tony,” Natasha warns lowly.

Tony holds his hands up in mock innocence, but Strange interrupts them, turning to Bucky with a roll of his eyes. His cloak rustles.

“Did you tell her anything?” His voice is edged. “Did she suspect something?”

Bucky doesn’t answer immediately. He shifts in his seat. His back is too straight, and still, and his hands are bracing for something.

“No,” he relents. His voice is raw and rough like gravel pulled from the bottom of a riverbed. “I didn’t tell her anything.”

Strange’s eyes narrow. “Nothing?”

Bucky shakes his head. “Nothing.”

Strange tilts his head slightly. His expression is unreadable. Calculating. “Her behavior. Did she seem disoriented? Odd? Suspicious? I assume you know Y/n well enough to tell if she’s acting off.”

The lump in his throat settles as though it lives there.

“She was hurt,” he admits, and the words punch out of him. “I froze up. She thought she’d done something wrong. But she didn’t suspect anything.”

Across from him, you shift. A small movement. But he feels it in his bones. He looks up. Meets your eyes.

You’re watching him as though you’re trying to learn something about yourself from inside of him.

He swallows hard.

“I didn’t tell her anything,” he says again, and it’s not for Strange this time. It’s for you. “I didn’t compromise anything. I was careful.”

“You were compromised,” Strange says, not unkindly, but without sympathy. “Emotionally. Whether you said something or not.”

Bucky doesn’t argue.

Because yes. He was. He is. He doesn’t even know how to be anything else anymore. His chest still echoes with the memory of your laugh - not your laugh, but close enough to trick him. His arms still remember the shape of your body, the way you buried yourself into him. As though you’d been there a thousand times before and would be a thousand times again.

He wonders what that other you is doing now. If you are still standing in the kitchen, perhaps waiting for him. Still hurt. Still confused. Still so worried.

He wonders what that Bucky is doing now. If he’s back. If he’s home. If you’re in his arms, asking what took him so long. If he knows what he has. If he’s grateful. If he deserves you.

And he wonders too, if you - the you here, right across from him now, quiet and tense and real - will ever look at him that way.

Your eyes are on his and it seems as though you want to say something, as though maybe you’ve been wanting to say something for a while now.

He doesn’t hear the others anymore.

They’re voices in a room, sounds in space, language and logic pressing against the outside of a window he’s no longer looking through.

Because your eyes are on him and they are too open, too careful.

And, unfortunately for him, this is where the hope begins.

Small. Thin. Stupid.

Because there is a version out there who loved him already. Who ran to him as though he was safety and home and joy all wrapped in one reckless heart and it had been so easy for her. Natural, even. Like a reflex. Like a need.

And he has to think that if she could, then maybe you could too.

Maybe - if he just keeps showing up, if he keeps giving you pieces of himself even when it’s terrifying, even when he thinks he has nothing worth offering - maybe you’ll see something in him that you’ll want to keep.

Maybe he’s not beyond that.

Maybe he’s not on the edge of the world after all.

His heart stumbles inside him, a sharp jolt under his ribs, and he realizes too late that his breathing has gone shallow. His palm is sweating. His chest is aching in a way that is not just pain, but hunger, longing, desperate weightless wonder.

Strange is talking. Something about dimensional instability and neural resonance and all that science talk - but Bucky is no longer a soldier at a briefing.

He’s a man staring across a room at the person who has made his worst days survivable, and he’s remembering how it felt to see you in his shirt in a different kitchen, how you stood there with your back to him waiting for him to wrap his arms around you, how your lips tasted like things he should never know but can’t ever forget.

You shift again. Your knee knocks lightly against the leg of the table as you tuck your foot beneath you. And your hair falls forward, soft and a little tangled from the wind that always sneaks through the compound’s side doors. Your lips part, as though maybe you’re going to say something in front of everyone, and he braces for it, all of him going still like a wolf spotting something too delicate to touch.

But you don’t.

You break eye contact and tuck your hair behind your ear as though you caught yourself doing something you shouldn’t.

But Bucky doesn’t stop hoping.

Because he watched you do exactly that in a very different universe. Such a small gesture but it means so much to him.

Because yes, maybe he is not the Bucky she thought she kissed.

He’s not the Bucky who wakes up with you tangled in his sheets.

He’s not the Bucky who lets himself believe he could be loved without earning it first.

But maybe he could become that man.

Maybe if he tries hard enough, he too can get the girl.

Maybe if he works at this more than anything else that matters, you’ll love him too. Not just in some alternate world, but here.

In this one.

In your voice, when you say his name.

In your laugh, when he says something without meaning too.

In your eyes, when you don’t look away.

And he knows he would do anything to earn that.

He would do anything to be enough for you in the only universe that matters.

His fingers twitch. His shoulders square slowly, almost unconsciously, as though some decision has clicked into place without needing permission.

The room is still full. Voices layered over voices like shadows that haven’t realized the sun moved. Chairs creak beneath shifting bodies, Sam’s laughter breaking loose and grating on Bucky’s nerves.

The idiot is grinning, leaning back in his chair as though this whole situation is the best thing to happen this week. “Alternate-universe you is in a relationship, Barnes. What do we think about that, huh?”

“Sounds like he’s living the dream,” Clint mutters, giving Bucky a jab to the arm. “You finally got the girl, Barnes. Took a whole damn reality shift but you got there.”

Someone chuckles. Tony, maybe. Or even Steve. He can’t tell anymore. He can’t hear much over the buzz in his ears, over the sound of his own heart pounding behind his ribs.

“Hell, maybe all our multiverse selves are having better luck,” Sam remarks, amused.

Clint chuckles. “Ah, Barnes just grew a pair.”

“Well, that’s kind of a big deal, isn’t it?” Natasha, calm as ever, lifts one elegant eyebrow.

“Alternate-universe Barnes has game,” Sam says delighted.

“Lucky bastard,” Clint mutters under his breath.

They mean well. They always mean well. This is how they show they care. With ribbing and teeth-bared grins, with shoulders nudged, and things they don’t say louder than the ones they do. It’s how they keep their own wounds in check. How they keep from bleeding all over the carpet.

But Bucky isn’t laughing. He isn’t smiling. His lip twitches but only with frustration at his teammates.

He notices your stillness. The lines around your mouth have gone soft and tight all at once. Your hands are folded too carefully in your lap and your gaze is pinned to the table.

With every mention - every offhand comment, every teasing jab - he can see it.

The way your shoulders stuck in closer to themselves. The way your breath grows quiet and shallow. The way you can’t seem to look at him anymore.

He swallows around it, the sharpness in his throat, but it doesn’t go down.

Everyone else seems to think this is a strange, mildly awkward, maybe slightly endearing detail in a weird mission story.

But Bucky feels sick.

Because he’s seen it on your face. The way the information about the kiss struck you like a misfired bullet. A shadow in your eyes, the small breath that caught in your throat, the way you shifted your legs like you needed to move, to run, to put distance between yourself and what you heard.

God.

He’s such a fool.

A lovesick idiot.

Because he let that brightness curl in his chest. The hope that even though you have every right to feel nothing at all, even though he’s spent so long training himself not to want this, not to wish for things he can’t have - he truly thought that if there was a version of you that looked at him that way, that reached for him without fear, then maybe this version, this you - maybe there was something possible here too.

But now he is watching it close again. Watching you feeling uncomfortable, retreating into yourself, folding inward like the paper crane you left behind. And he knows the fault lines are his. That even his silence can crack things apart.

When the meeting finally breaks - Strange dismissing everyone with a calm nod and a list of inter-dimensional protocols Bucky doesn’t hear - you stand before anyone else. Quiet. Not hurried. Just deliberate.

As though you’ve made a decision.

You don’t look at him. Not once. Just gather your notes and your coffee and the sweater you left draped over the back of the chair.

And you leave.

No goodbye. No glance back. Not even that half-smile you offer when the day has left you tired and the silence between you feels soft instead of loud.

Bucky is on his feet before he realizes it. He ignores Sam calling after him, something about needing to finish signing off the tech. Doesn’t respond to Steve’s “Buck?” Doesn’t glance at Strange, who’s looking at him as though he already knows where this is headed.

All Bucky sees is the hallway.

You, disappearing around the corner, just a whisper of your hair and the sound of your boots against the polished floor. And all he can think is no.

Not like this.

He walks fast, with his pulse in his mouth and panic blooming in his chest.

You’re so graceful even when you’re upset, even when your body is stiff with tension. You carry yourself with that strength that’s always pulled him in, and he hates that he knows it. Hates that he can read you this well, because it means he knows you’re hurting.

He walks fast enough to catch up, to not give himself time to think about it too much. His hands are cold again. The way they get when he’s unsure. When something matters more than he knows how to handle.

“Hey,” he calls out, and his voice comes out too soft. Almost hoarse. “Wait- can you- can we talk?”

You stop. Slow, reluctant. As if the last thing you want to do is this but some piece of you can’t help it.

You don’t turn around at first. You’re breathing hard. He can see your shoulders rise and fall too quickly, your jaw tight, your arms folded across your chest as though you are trying to keep yourself together.

You turn.

And it’s worse than he thought.

Because your eyes are shiny and your expression is made of glass and restraint and you’re biting the inside of your cheek in that way you do when you want to pretend something didn’t bother you.

He hates this. Hates that he did this to you, even accidentally.

But god, you still are beautiful in a way that feels like gravity. Like the ache in his chest could drag the stars down to meet you.

You watch him as though trying not to give too much away.

“Can we talk?” He repeats, breath catching somewhere between hope and despair.

You shrug, not cold, not angry. Just tired. “If you want.”

He steps closer. Not too close. Careful. Always careful with you.

“I know it probably sounded bad in there,” he says, voice rough. “I didn’t want it to come out like that. Like I was… caught up in something.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself, Bucky,” you say quickly, voice too neutral. “You didn’t know. I get it.”

But he wants to explain. Wants to lay it out, piece by bloody piece. Wants you to understand that for a minute there, he forgot how to breathe because of how you looked at him. That he hasn’t stopped thinking about it since.

“I didn’t tell you- I mean, tell her,” he blurts, breathless. “I didn’t tell her who I was. Or where I came from. I didn’t say anything.”

You blink at him. “Okay.”

“She thought I was him. I- I didn’t say anything because I- I wasn’t supposed to engage and I wasn’t planning to. I swear I wasn’t planning to.”

You say nothing. Just stare at him with that sweetly confused expression.

Bucky steps closer. He’s aching, head to toe, something brittle in his chest like cracked glass.

“You kissed me,” he continues, and you bite your lip, looking away, “but I didn’t- I froze. It felt wrong. And when you said you missed me, I panicked. It felt like I was stealing something. From you. From you both.”

He stops. Swallows.

And there it is again. That dangerous spark. That sharp, flickering thing that’s lived inside him ever since he saw that other version of you, ever since your arms wrapped around his neck and your mouth pressed to his and your voice filled his chest with something whole.

He wishes for a version of that hope here, too.

But not if it means breaking you to find it.

You’re watching him with something unreadable in your eyes. He can’t tell if it’s pain or disappointment or confusion or all of it. He just knows it’s tearing him apart.

“I know it wasn’t me she kissed,” he goes on, quiet, every word dragging out of him as if it doesn’t want to be spoken. “And I know it wasn’t you, either. But it made me think that maybe-” He breaks off, exhales. “I know it’s not fair to say it, but-”

“Then don’t.” Your voice is soft when it comes.

And he flinches as though you touched a nerve.

But your face isn’t cruel. It’s sad. Honest. Tired in the way people get when they’re holding too many emotions all at once.

“I’m not her,” you clarify, but there is something fractured in the way you say it, like the words are paper-thin and barely holding shape. “I’m not whatever version of me you saw, whoever she is to you, that’s not me.”

“I know,” he croaks out. Bucky steps closer, just once. Not touching. Not yet. He doesn’t dare.

“No, I don’t think you do.” Your arms unfold slowly, but not in surrender. You gesture at yourself, the smallest movement, but there is steel in it. “She looks like me,” you go on. Your voice is tight. Bitter. It’s not like you. Not how he knows you - the warmth, the patience, the fire and calm and kindness all mixed together. “She sounds like me. But she’s not. She’s not me, Buck.”

And then you turn as if you’re about to go. As though you can’t stand another second of standing still in front of him.

“No- don’t,” he pleads, and before he can stop himself, he reaches. His hand finds your wrist, not tight, not rough, just enough to stop you. “Please.”

You pause again, with an exhale that is sharp and hurt and too loud in the hallway.

He is closer now. Close enough to see how tight you press your mouth together to keep it from trembling. The twitch of pain in your brow, the soft crease between your eyes he knows only shows up when you’re trying really hard not to cry.

Guilt and desperation roll through him, thorough, like a tide pulling everything warm away. It unspools him from the inside.

“What?” There is no weight behind your words. Your voice is worn. Defeated.

Bucks swallows. His voice feels like rust trying to be rain.

“She hugged me. Said she missed me. She kissed me like she’d done it a thousand times before.” His voice is shaking, even if he’s trying not to let it.

“And I didn’t stop her. Not for a second,” he goes on, quiet. “I should’ve. I should’ve pulled away sooner, but I-”

You pull your arm back, but he doesn’t let go.

“Why are you telling me this?” you question him, voice breaking in the middle. “What am I supposed to do with that, Bucky? Be happy for some other version of me?”

There is so much pain in your eyes, so much confusion and hurt and jealousy and heartbreak and it cuts him right through the heart. He feels it bleeding into his organs.

He closes his eyes, forgets how to breathe for a moment.

“I didn’t stop her,” he says lowly, slowly, “because, for a second, it felt like you.”

The silence between you is thick enough to drown in.

Your lips part, but no sound comes out.

“For a second, it felt like something I’ll never have,” he confesses, barely audible now. “And I was selfish. I let it happen. Because it wasn’t just a kiss to me.”

You don’t speak. You don’t move. Your chin trembles.

You look at him as though you want to say something but can’t trust yourself to do it.

“I’ve been trying to bury it,” he admits, voice strained. “This thing in my chest. This want. It’s been there for a long time. And I kept thinking- if I just waited long enough, maybe it would go away. Maybe you’d never have to know. But I saw what it looked like when I had it. When I had you. Even if it wasn’t really you. And I- I didn’t want to come back here and pretend I didn’t feel it anymore.”

You don’t move. Just stand there. Staring at him as if you don’t know what to do with the version of the world he is handing you.

“I’m not asking for anything,” he adds quickly, voice thick and gravelly. “Not expecting anything. I just- I couldn’t let you walk away thinking it didn’t mean anything. Because it did. But not because of that other you.”

Bucky loosens his hold on your wrist the way someone lays a weapon down.

Slowly. Gently. Like an offering. Giving you a choice. A chance to run. A way out, if that’s what you need.

His fingers brush fabric as he lets go, every inch of skin unthreading from yours just another stitch in the fabric holding him together.

He steps back. Not far, but enough. Giving you the room to run if you want to. Because he would never cage you. Not you. Not the girl he’s tried so hard not to need and failed so spectacularly at not loving.

The cold creeps in like a punishment.

He swallows, breath shallow, heart trying to climb out of his chest. He doesn’t look away.

“It meant something,” he breathes, and the words are low but steady, dragged out of some buried part of him where he’s kept the truth folded up too long. “It meant something because I love you.”

The words hang there. Open. Unarmored. His voice doesn’t shake but he feels the quake underneath it. He is already bracing for the ruin of it, for the way your silence might cut him down. It’s too much. He’s too much. Too much and too late and he’s saying it anyway, because what else can he do now, what else is left to do but burn with it.

“I love you. You. Only you,” he repeats, and this time it’s quieter, as if speaking it softer might hurt less if you break him.

He is bracing for your silence. For the recoil. For the slow turning of your back and the slam of a door, he won’t ever be allowed to knock on again.

But you don’t run.

You just stare at him.

Wide glassy eyes, lips parted, your whole face carved out of disbelief. Your chest rises with shallow, trembling breaths, and for a second, it’s like the hallway has no oxygen at all. Just the two of you standing in a vacuum made of shattered timing and aching things laid bare.

You look like someone trying to decide if the ground beneath you is real. If you are dreaming.

And Bucky is not breathing.

Doesn’t know how he will ever take in a breath again.

Then you move.

Fast. Sharp. Certain.

You close the distance between you with a speed that knocks his soul out of him, and before he can even process the intention behind the storm in your eyes, your hands are in his collar and your mouth is on his.

It’s not gentle.

It’s not careful.

You crash into him as though gravity has finally won. As though your body has been held back for too long and now it’s surging forward with years of restraint snapped at the root.

It hits him like an impact. Like a whole damn earthquake disguised as your mouth on his.

He makes a noise - somewhere between shock and surrender - and for the barest second, he is frozen.

He’s still.

Because this is you.

You.

One breathless, startled second he forgets everything - his name, the room, the hallway, the mission, the multiverse - and then he’s moving.

He melts.

His arms are around you in a heartbeat, tight, desperate, finding your waist, your back, the edge of your jaw, greedy and trembling and too careful all at once. He pulls you in, tighter, tighter, one hand threading into your hair, the other locking around your waist.

And then he is kissing you back with everything he has, with everything he’s been holding back, with every version of himself that ever wanted to belong.

He is kissing you back as though he’ll never get the chance again.

His whole body folds into yours, heart slamming into his ribs, mouth pressing against yours, like a question he’s been dying to ask. He kisses you like an apology, like a promise, like he’s been holding his breath for a century and only just remembered how to exhale.

It’s not a careful kiss.

It’s years of aching packed into the space between your lips. It’s soft lips and a metal palm and your nails digging in his jacket and his thumb shaking against your jaw. It’s a kiss that tastes of every unsaid word, every sleepless night, every time he looked at you and wondered what it would feel like to have you.

The second your tongue touches his lower lip, a low and tortured sound rips from somewhere deep in his chest. He answers you with open-mouthed hunger, tilts his head just enough to draw you in deeper, slants his mouth over yours as though he’s living out every dream in which he’s imagined this before.

He feels the warmth of your lips and the way you lean into him, the way you give yourself over completely, and he pulls you even closer, as though he’s trying to kiss every version of you that exists in every universe just to get back to this one. You. Here. Now.

His tongue brushes yours and everything goes tight inside him - his stomach flips, his spine arches ever so slightly, his body not knowing whether to hold steady or fall apart entirely.

Your lips are sweet and urgent and you make a sound - quiet, somewhere between a sigh and a gasp - and it knocks the air in his lungs every which way.

His mouth moves faster when your fingers curl into him tighter and tug him closer, dragging him under. His metal fingers are splayed over the small of your back, and his flesh fingers are tangling at the nape of your neck, holding you still as his tongue licks into your mouth, gentle but full of everything he’s feeling.

He moans softly into you, doesn’t even realize it’s happening until he feels the sound buzz against your lips. His pulse is pounding in his ears. His knees feel untrustworthy. There is heat spreading through his chest, through his limbs, and he wants to live in this moment forever, suspended in the place where you chose him.

When you finally pull back, your lips are swollen, flushed. He presses his forehead to yours just enough to breathe, but not enough to let you go. Never that.

His hands are on your face. His thumbs brush under your eyes. His breath shudders out against your lips.

When he opens his eyes, slowly, he is met with yours. Glistening and wide and so full of feeling it almost floors him.

He stares at you as though he’s seeing the sun rise for the first time.

“I love you too,” you breathe against him.

Bucky shivers.

It lands like a heartbeat he forgot to hope for.

Pleasure surges through his veins, straight to his heart. His eyes fall shut, lost in it.

And something in him tells him he will hear this at least a thousand times, maybe even more, if he’s lucky.

“I loved her not for the way she danced with my angels, but for the way the sound of her name could silence my demons.”

- Christopher Poindexter

“Run,” a low voice grinds. Not a suggestion. A command made of gravel.

Your feet don’t move. Shock roots them. You see hands—two of them, one gloved, the other bare and nicked—pin the attacker to the wall. You catch a flash of a hard jaw, a scar that splits an eyebrow, a skull on a black vest that doesn’t belong in this decade or any sane man’s wardrobe. You don’t see the punch that ends it; you only hear the bone-deep thump and the silence after, the follow-through of violence like the echo of a bell.

The man in the skull turns. His face is not a mask, but it functions like one. There’s blood spatter fine as freckles across his cheekbone. His eyes are winter-dark and unamused.

You straighten, dizzy and stubborn, the words rushing up without permission. “Thank you. I—thank you.”

He shakes his head once. “Don’t.”

“I just want—”

“Listen to me.” He steps closer, and there’s no gentleness in it, but there’s no cruelty either. Just a kind of bleak practicality. “I ain’t a hero. You didn’t see me. Go home. Lock your door.”

You open your mouth, because you’ve always been poor at swallowing your mind. “You saved me.”

His jaw flexes. “I stopped a thing. Don’t make it more than it is.”

Then he’s gone—not like a ghost, not silently. You can hear the weight of him as he moves, the grit under his boots, the cut of his breath. He turns deeper into the alley and is taken by it, and you are left with your pulse in your teeth and the wet whisper of a drip somewhere behind the trash bins, and a smear of someone else’s blood on the seam of your coat sleeve that you won’t notice until you’re under your kitchen light.

You do what he told you. You go home. You lock your door. You press your back to it and stare at nothing for a full minute while the adrenaline shakes you like a bad dream.

You don’t sleep.

—

You’re better in daylight, always have been. You tell yourself New York is a machine of a million moving parts, and one broken cog doesn’t mean the whole thing fails. You tell yourself you were lucky, and luck is a statistical certainty if you live long enough. You tell yourself you should forget the skull and the eyes and the way he said don’t like it hurt him to hear the word thank you.

You don’t forget.

You go to work. You come home. You don’t take alleys.

And yet, three nights later, you take one. Not because you’re foolish—because you’re late and the subway threw a tantrum and your feet are in open rebellion and the shortcut is a half-block bandage that looks harmless under the cold blue security light.

You step into the alley and step into chaos.

Four men this time. Two with chains, one with a knife that glints like a smug little moon, and one with the kind of confidence that comes with not being punched enough as a child. Between them, a red figure whips and pivots, the sound of metal on metal, a stick—no, a baton—singing through air with sickening precision. And at the mouth of the alley, back braced against a dumpster, the skull. He’s there like a bad omen, like the kind of promise that ends in hospital bills.

“Get out,” the red one—Daredevil, your brain supplies, and it feels ridiculous to think his name like it’s a headline—barks, voice strained and steady at once. He doesn’t even look at you, which is somehow comforting.

You shouldn’t stop. You shouldn’t watch. You stop and watch.

You see the skull man—Frank, someone will later call him, and the name will sit strange in your mouth like a word you learned in another language—disarm the knife with an ugly, efficient twist. You see the red one catch a chain mid-swing and yank, snapping a man forward to meet his knee. You see a fist that would break your face sail past your cheek as you stumble back, heartbeat forgetting its choreography completely.

The last man runs. He sees something in them that you have only guessed at.

Silence, broken only by the clatter of the chain settling and the red one’s breath. The skull man—Frank—checks the knife like it’s a loathsome insect and kicks it down the storm drain.

“Hey!” you blurt, too loud in the suddenly empty air, because fear makes you ridiculous and gratitude makes you stubborn. “I was thinking as a thank you—” You are absolutely, undeniably talking to the man who told you not to. You aim anyway. “You let me cook you dinner.”

Daredevil’s head tilts, like he’s listening to the shape of your smile. Frank’s mouth does something that isn’t a smile at all; it’s almost the opposite, a rough twitch of disbelief.

He snorts. “Lady.”

“Just one meal. That’s it. I’m a decent cook. It’s not—” You hear yourself and wince. “It’s not charity. It’s manners.”

Frank turns his face away, set like stone. “Forget it.”

Daredevil exhales, and somehow it’s a laugh without being a laugh. He steps toward you, not too close, and there’s a gentleness in his posture that his fists didn’t have a moment ago. “If you cook at your place,” he says mildly, “I can get him to show up.”

“Hey,” Frank snaps. “Don’t—”

“You won’t,” Daredevil continues, unbothered, “unless I’m there. Consider me the chaperone.”

You blink. “That…wasn’t the word I expected, but—okay?”

“Matt,” the red man says, and there’s your headline name turned human. “Call me Matt. And you are?”

“Y/N.”

“Nice to meet you, Y/N.” He isn’t looking at you, and also he is, keen attention fixed somewhere between your voice and your heartbeat. It should be unsettling. It isn’t. “Tell me the address. Pick a night. I’ll bring him.”

Frank mutters something obscene under his breath, but he doesn’t walk away. You think that might be the closest thing to consent you’ll get from him in any language.

You tell Matt your street. You say, “Tomorrow? Eight?” and don’t let yourself imagine anyone at your table. You don’t let yourself imagine the skull softened by lamp light.

“Tomorrow at eight,” Matt agrees. “We’ll be there.”

Frank gives him a look that could bend steel. Matt ignores it. You go home on legs that remember being someone’s prey and someone’s prize in the same week and try not to burn the chicken while you think about how you’ve invited vigilantism to dinner.

—

You don’t sleep much the night before. You tell yourself it’s because of the shift you pulled, the double back-to-back that stretched so long your spine feels like piano wire. You tell yourself it’s not because you opened your front door at six p.m. to get the smell of onions and garlic moving through your apartment and felt, absurdly, like you were cleaning for your mother.

You put two extra chairs at the table like you’re not sure if one will be used.

You cook what you know—hearty, unfussy food. A pot of something that needs time (stew, thick and glossy, that coats a spoon), bread that you warmed in the oven until the crust spoke when you pressed it, a salad because you refuse to accept that danger doesn’t deserve greens. You put out plates that don’t match and napkins that do.

Seven fifty-five comes and goes. You pace between the stove and the door. Eight ten arrives with rain, dotting your window into a map of tiny rivers.

At eight twenty, there’s a knock—two sharp raps—and when you open the door, Matt Murdock is standing there with rain beads in his hair and a smile that looks like it’s been practiced until it became natural.

“Hi,” he says, smoothing a hand over his jaw like he forgot he still has the mask lines there. “Smells incredible.”

You step aside to let him in. “Hi. You’re—um. You’re not—”

“On time?” he finishes, amused. “I’m early. Frank will be late.”

“Is he…coming?”

“Yes.”

You let your shoulders drop an inch. “Okay.”

Matt slides his cane along your floor with a familiarity that says he’s learned to map other people’s lives in seconds. He touches your bookshelf and doesn’t read the spines. He finds your table like he knew where it was before he entered. “You live alone?”

“Yes.”

He tilts his head. “You set three places.”

“You said you were coming too.”

He smiles, and you’re starting to understand how much of a weapon that smile is. “I did.”

Twenty minutes later, another knock. This one is heavier. You open the door to find Frank Castle the way you feared and expected: big enough to fill the frame without trying, shoulders squared as if he’s waiting to be shot at any second. He looks at you the way a stray dog looks at a hand—like it might hold food, like it might hold a trap.

“Dinner,” you say, because it’s all you have.

He stands there dripping rain onto your mat, expression locked somewhere between suspicion and resignation, then steps inside. The skull on his chest is a faded thing up close, the white dulled from a thousand washes that didn’t wash anything away. There’s a cut at his hairline you can see even in your soft light.

You point. “You’re bleeding.”

“It’s nothin’.”

You gesture at the table. “Sit anyway.”

Matt has already found a chair. He raps his knuckles lightly against the place setting to his right. “Over here.”

Frank’s glare says he doesn’t need direction. His body says he took it anyway. He lowers himself into the chair like it’s a test he intends to pass without liking it.

You serve plates because if you give him the chance to refuse, he will. You put bread in a bowl and watch the steam curl like breath. You sit and fold your napkin and act like this is a normal thing people do; you are a doctor, you can fake calm in blood.

For a while, the only conversation is the sound of cutlery and Matt’s polite questions. He asks about your neighborhood, your work hours, a plant you somehow haven’t killed that sits valiantly on your windowsill. Frank eats like a man who doesn’t want anyone to see him need something.

“You’re good at this,” Matt says after the first quiet minute. “The stew.”

“I learned early. My mother worked nights. If I wanted to eat, I learned.” You take a breath you didn’t mean to. “And then med school taught me how to make a meal out of scraps of time.”

Frank’s fork stops halfway between plate and mouth. His eyes flick to you. “Med school?”

“Yeah.” You swallow, because you didn’t intend to lay that card down tonight, but also—why not? This is exactly the table where it matters. “I’m a doctor.”

“What kind?” Frank asks, and the question is bare curiosity strangled by caution.

“Trauma. ER.” You smile because you know what’s coming, and the only way through it is through. “You can relax. I have no interest in calling anyone about you.”

His jaw works. “Didn’t think you would,” he lies.

Matt’s mouth lifts. “She also just said she could probably stitch you better than you do yourself.”

“I’m sitting right here,” Frank says to him, grit-soft.

“And I’m right,” Matt returns, gentler.

You look at Frank and see him recalibrating—tiny ticks in the line of his shoulders, the angle of his chin. His gaze cuts over your hands—your knuckles, your nails, the faint line of an old suture scar across the base of your thumb. He’s cataloging. He’s deciding what parts of you are threat and what parts are risk and what parts he should ignore to keep breathing the way he knows how.

You break the stare with a shrug as if this isn’t a turning point. “If you ever need patching up,” you say, light, almost flippant, “my door’s open.”

“Don’t need savin’,” he answers automatically.

“I didn’t say saving.” You sip water to hide your hands, which are suddenly too visible to you. “I said stitches.”

Matt’s smile turns into a private thing. “She’s very persuasive.”

“I noticed,” Frank mutters. But he eats the rest of the stew. He even reaches for a second slice of bread. It’s nothing, and it’s something, and by the time he stands to leave—before the coffee you had planned, before the dessert you weren’t sure you’d made right—you have the ridiculous thought that you passed some kind of test you didn’t know you were taking.

At your door, he pauses. The rain has slowed to a steady tap against your fire escape.

“You cook good,” he says, like it pains him to admit it.

“You fight better,” you say, because compliments make some men cowardly and some men sharp, and with him you can’t quite tell yet.

He huffs. It might be a laugh in another life. “I ain’t a hero.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

He leaves with his shoulders still up around his ears. Matt lingers in your doorway, hand on the frame, and says quietly, “Thank you, Y/N.”

“For dinner?”

“For not asking him for anything he can’t give.”

You tilt your head. “Who said I won’t later?”

Matt’s grin is a flash of white, there and gone. “He’ll still come anyway,” he says, and the confidence in it makes your skin go warm. “Good night.”

You lean your head against the door after it shuts. The apartment is small again without them in it. You wash the dishes in a calm that doesn’t belong to this hour, stack them still warm, and go to bed with your lamp on just in case the dark thinks it can make decisions without you.

—

A week passes. You don’t expect a knock; you try very hard not to expect it. You work three nights and one morning that should never have been called a morning. You sleep when you can. You learn, as you always do, the names of people for whom a bad hour turned into a worse forever. You forget them when your brain reaches capacity. You hate yourself for that in the small quiet between caffeine and next.

At two thirty a.m. on a Tuesday, you wake to someone knocking like they’re trying not to knock. Three light taps. A pause. Two more.

You are on your feet before you know you moved. Your heart does something complicated that would embarrass you if you said it out loud. You look through the peephole and see the skull, the broad shadow, the slant of his mouth like he bit the inside of his cheek all the way up your stairs.

You open the door.

Frank Castle is bleeding on your threshold. Not badly—your quick inventory says you’ve seen worse on bar fights and playgrounds—but enough that the cut at his hairline has made a red comma down his temple and the split in his eyebrow keeps weeping like it hasn’t decided to clot. He’s holding his left side like a rib had a disagreement with something unforgiving.

“Stitches,” he says, scarce and plain.

You step back, clear the way with one hand already reaching for the kit you keep for yourself and now, apparently, for this man. “Come in.”

He does, reluctantly, like the apartment is a trap that he’s decided to spring anyway. You point him to the chair that’s nearest the lamp. He sits and watches you with the sharp, bare attention of someone who doesn’t let strangers within arm’s reach and is letting you anyway.

“Shirt,” you say, and he responds by peeling the black long-sleeve up and off with a wince he tries and fails to hide. There are bruises in the process of becoming—new ones purple like the heart of a plum, older ones fading to sickly yellow. There’s a knife graze along his ribs that will scar thin and white if you do it right.

You clean. You suture. You work like a person who has had hands inside of worse situations, because you have. You keep your touch firm and brief and clinical. When he hisses, it isn’t from pain so much as from the memory of it.

“You okay?” you ask, more for the rhythm of it than the answer.

“Peachy.”

“On a scale of one to ten.”

“Everything’s a seven with me.”

You snort. “I was warned you’d be difficult.”

The corner of his mouth quirks. “Matt talk too much.”

“He said just enough.” You tie off a stitch. “Hold still.”

“You’re good,” he says after the silence goes soft, and it sounds like a confession.

“I practice on stubborn men who think they’re fine.”

“Sounds like a full-time job.”

“It is.”

You tape gauze, wash your hands, and then—because you are determined to make this more than a transaction—turn to the stove. “You hungry?”

He hesitates in a way that tells you more than any yes or no could. “I ate.”

“When?”

He stops hesitating. “Yesterday.”

“How brave of you to attempt a lie that bad in my house,” you say lightly, opening the fridge. “You want stew or eggs?”

“Stew,” he admits, and it might as well be I could use kindness if you’re not doing anything else.

You reheat the leftovers from the dinner they came for and didn’t get to finish. The apartment fills with the comfort of your own competence. You set a plate in front of him and sit, ankles crossed, fingers laced around your water glass.

He eats like he has to be convinced that food won’t punish him. He makes it halfway through before he slows. You pretend not to watch.

“Thanks,” he says into the quiet, and the word lands heavy. “For…this.”

“You’re welcome.” You don’t make it big. You let it be a small, true sound in a room that can hold it. After a moment, you add, “You don’t need to be a hero for me to be grateful.”

His gaze lifts, pinning you. “You think I care what you call me?”

“I think you care what you call yourself.”

He looks away, jaw grinding like he’s chewing on a harder truth. “Nothin’ good comes from people thinkin’ I’m somethin’ I ain’t.”

“I think you’re a man who knocked on my door because you knew I’d answer.” You shrug when his eyes cut back. “That seems like something.”

Something flickers across his face—resentment at being seen, relief at being seen anyway. He scrubs a hand over his mouth and changes the subject without changing it. “You always leave your porch light on?”

“I do now.”

He huffs, a sound with no humor in it. “Good.”

He leaves before the sun thinks about it. You stand at the window and watch him become part of the street, and for a ridiculous second you want to tell the city to be kind to him when you can’t be there to be. You go back to bed and don’t sleep because some nights are built with parts that don’t fit together.

—

He comes back. Not on a schedule. Not with notice. He graces your doorstep like weather: sometimes clear, sometimes storm.

The second time, his knuckles are skinned and you soak them while he glares at your dish soap like it insulted his mother. He eats grilled cheese like he’s never had one and lets you talk about nothing—patients whose names you won’t say, the obnoxious neighbor who sings off-key through your vent, the plant that is fighting for its life. He nods and says, “Huh,” like a man learning a foreign alphabet.

The third time, he brings coffee. He holds it out with an expression like penance. “It’s strong.”

“I’m a doctor,” you say, accepting it with both hands like it’s a ritual, “and I’m from Queens. You don’t scare me.”

A ghost of a smile. “Never said I wanted to.”

The fourth time, Matt arrives with him, cheerful and annoying on purpose. He leans against your counter and says, “He’s been eating trail mix,” like it is a crime, and Frank grumbles about rats and rooftops and you quietly put a Tupperware of pasta in his bag like you’re a smuggler.

The fifth time, he doesn’t need stitches. He knocks and says nothing and sits at your table and watches you dice onions like the sound is a balm. When you slide him a bowl, he says, “I don’t deserve this,” like he’s telling you his blood type.

“That’s not how deserving works,” you answer, and he stares at you for a long moment like you’ve held up a mirror to a face he doesn’t recognize.

His presence changes your apartment without you intending to let it. You start leaving a clean towel on the back of the bathroom door. You keep extra gauze in a drawer you label nothing in particular. He fixes your wobbly chair without comment, the screws tight and shining like new teeth when he’s done. You find your front door latch smoother one morning and realize he oiled it sometime between midnight and five a.m., because love languages are strange and yours might be soup and his might be hardware.

He never stays for long. He leaves before dawn like the sun might catch him doing something gentle and call him on it.

You do not mistake any of it for safety. You are too old for fairy tales that start with knives.

—

The night it breaks, it’s raining and you are leaving work too late.

You shouldn’t have walked. You know this in your bones—old training, new fear—but the taxi line was a snake you couldn’t stomach and the bus would have taken you through three neighborhoods with names you only like during daylight. You take the long-lit route and pretend not to feel the prickle of being observed.

You hear a scuffle more than you see it. A trash can knocks over somewhere to your right. A voice says, “Don’t be stupid,” and another voice answers with a fist.

You don’t go toward it. You don’t go away from it. You freeze, because you’re human, and because in the fraction of a second that it takes to decide anything, everything can change.

A shape barrels out of the alley and clips your shoulder. You stumble, bounce off brick, and would have gone down if a hand hadn’t caught you—iron-hard fingers closing around your upper arm, steady and rough.

“Y/N,” a voice says, and you haven’t heard your name in that register before, low and lethal with surprise. “What’re you doin’ out?”

You look up at Frank through rain and streetlight. There’s blood at the corner of his mouth. Behind him, two men are learning new definitions of regret. One of them spits out a tooth like it offended him. Daredevil’s silhouette cuts through the shadows, baton a metronome of violence.

“I was going home,” you manage, and hate how small it sounds.

Frank’s hand tightens, protective without asking permission. “Get inside.”

“I live three blocks away.”

“Get inside,” he repeats, because proximity to his world’s perimeter suddenly equals inside to him.

You pull your arm free because you don’t know how to be owned by a command even if it’s wrapped in care. “I can’t just—”

A man lunges. You flinch instinctively, and Frank is between you and danger like a wall becoming a fist. The dull crack of knuckles on cheek echoes wet in the alley, and for a second you see red that isn’t Matt’s suit. You see rage put on two legs and swear vengeance.

The fight ends in a heap of groaning. Daredevil wipes rain and sweat from his jaw with the back of a bare hand and steps over a man who will be very sorry tomorrow. “You good?” he asks, and the you is plural, landing on Frank first and you second.

“Fine,” Frank says through his teeth.

“Okay,” Matt replies, and then to you, gentler, “You all right?”

You nod. “Yes.”

“Great. Go home. Now.”

Frank rounds on you when Matt moves to cuff a zip tie around a wrist. “Didn’t I tell you to stay the hell outta this?”

Your temper lights like tinder. “I was walking home from work, not auditioning to be your sidekick.”

“You were in the alley,” he growls, gesturing like the word is an accusation. “You—this—” He breaks off, choking on the language. “You can’t keep puttin’ yourself here.”

“I didn’t put myself here. The city did.” You step into his space, anger buzz-sawing your fear into something that looks like courage. “And what exactly is ‘here,’ Frank? The part where you risk your life every night and then come to my table to pretend you don’t like soup? The part where you bang on my door at two thirty in the morning and let me sew you shut and then tell me I shouldn’t want someone like you in my life? I didn’t ask for this either, you know. You brought yourself to me.”

His face does something you haven’t seen it do—opens. Pain cracks it, not physical, an older thing with longer teeth. “I come so I don’t bleed out alone.”

“And I let you in,” you say, softer but not softer enough to be mistaken for surrender. “So you don’t.” You swallow. “You keep saying you’re not a hero. Fine. Then be a man. Stop yelling at me for existing near you.”

He flinches like you hit him. “You don’t know what I am.”

“Then tell me,” you push, reckless with the adrenaline you refused to spend earlier. “Tell me why you keep coming back if you hate it so much.”

Rain hisses in the gutter. Matt goes silent in that pointed way people do when they’re pretending they can’t hear a conversation happening at volume.

Frank looks at you like the answer is a grenade with the pin already gone. “Because,” he says finally, voice torn down to something raw, “I can’t—” He stops, jaw clenched, and then forces it out like it hurts worse to hold it. “I can’t lose anybody else. I let people get close and they die. That’s the math. That’s always the math.”

You breathe. It feels like the first one in hours. “I’m not a variable you control.”

“I know,” he says, and the honesty in it is an airless room. “That’s why this is bad. That’s why this can’t be anythin’ but what it is.”

“What is it?”

He glares, furious not at you but at the problem of you, at the way you’ve solved for x without showing your work. “I knock. You stitch. I eat. I leave.”

“And if I lock the door?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “I go die somewhere else.”

You close your eyes because you can’t look at him and hold the line you drew for yourself at the same time. When you open them, Matt is watching the rain with great interest.

“Go,” you say, and your voice is steady, proud of itself. “Finish whatever this is. Then go home—your home, whatever that means. Sleep. If you want to knock on my door tomorrow, you can. I’m not…your nurse. Or your penance. I’m not your reward for doing violence I didn’t ask you to do. I’m someone who opens the door. That’s it. That’s all.”

He stares like you’ve spoken a dialect he forgot he knew. He nods, once, jagged. He turns away before the word sorry can make it out alive.

Matt gives you a look on his way past that you can’t parse. It has sympathy in it. It has warning. It has what looks suspiciously like hope. “Be careful,” he says.

“You too.”

You go home in the rain and don’t feel clean until the hot water has stopped being mercy and started being a dare. You sleep badly. You wake angry at him and more angry at the part of you that is grateful you know where he is when he’s not in your kitchen.

He doesn’t knock the next night. Or the next. You tell yourself good. You tell yourself peace. You chop vegetables with more precision than necessary and throw out a towel because you don’t like that it smells like his soap.

On the fourth night, there’s a knock you could pick out of a lineup of a million sounds. Two, pause, two. The ritual of restraint. This time when you open the door, he isn’t bleeding.

He stands on your mat like a man at the edge of a cliff. “I shouldn’t’ve yelled,” he says, like he rehearsed it and hated every syllable. “You were in the wrong place. That ain’t your fault. I…” He swallows, and you see his throat work. “I got scared.”

You could say a dozen things and none of them would be wrong. You choose the smallest truth, because small truths are the kind that last. “Me too.”

He nods and doesn’t know what to do with his hands. You solve it by stepping back. “Come in.”

He does. He sits. You cook because your body knows the choreography by now and because moving gives your mind the illusion it can be useful. You don’t fill the space with talk, and he doesn’t either. The quiet isn’t hostile. It’s a soft animal that might bolt if you move too fast.

You put a bowl in front of him and one in front of yourself. You both eat. When the bowls are empty, he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand like he doesn’t trust the napkin. He stares at the table until the grain starts to look like a map.

“It’s been a long time,” he says finally, words thin and careful, “since anybody cared enough to make me dinner.”

“I didn’t keep score,” you say.

He nods like that’s a kindness he doesn’t know how to accept. “I ain’t fixed,” he says into the wood. “I ain’t gonna be. I ain’t askin’ for—”

“I know.” You fold your hands. “I’m not offering a miracle. I’m offering a door.”

He breathes, and something in his chest lets go of an old rope. “That I can do.”

He stays longer than he ever has. He doesn’t talk much, but he listens to your television hum a late-night rerun with the sound low, and his shoulders drop inch by inch. He falls asleep on your couch with his boots off and his hands open. You stand there like an idiot and stare at him for longer than a person should stare at anything, then you put a blanket over him and turn off the lamp.

You wake before dawn and find the couch empty. The blanket is folded. Your chair doesn’t wobble anymore. The latch on your window slides like a secret. On your counter, between the salt and the sugar, is a note in a hand that looks like it learned pen pressure from carving initials into bark.

Thanks. —F

You keep it in the drawer with the gauze. Not because you’re sentimental. Because sometimes proof is useful.

—

Time does what it does best. It passes. He comes when he needs to. He comes when he doesn’t, which is somehow harder and easier at once. You learn to hear him on the stairs and tell the difference between injury and weary by the weight of his step. He leaves a roll of duct tape on your counter one night in a gesture that is as good as saying I thought of you when I wasn’t bleeding. You give him a key you pretend is for emergencies only. He puts it on his ring without comment and you don’t know if that means yes or sorry or both.

When the city is loud, he’s quieter. When the news is a wound, he eats faster. When Matt comes, sometimes he sits and sometimes he pretends your wall art is fascinating, and sometimes he says nothing and that says everything.

You never call Frank a hero. He never calls you a saint. You make dinner anyway. He knocks anyway.

On a too-bright morning after a too-long night, snow threatens through a sky the color of spoiled milk. You are pouring coffee when the knock you know better than your own name comes, two and two. You open the door and Frank Castle stands there with a bruise you haven’t seen form yet and a look on his face like if you told him no, he would do something stupid and permanent.

“Got time for coffee?” he asks, and it might be the bravest question you’ve heard.

You step aside. “Always.”

He passes you and the smell of cold air follows him in. He warms his hands on your mug like he doesn’t remember how to ask for heat any other way. He doesn’t thank you. He doesn’t have to.

You don’t make his violence holy. You don’t pretend your apartment is an altar. You keep the light on. You keep the stew simmering. You keep the thread and needle where you can reach them blind. When he says, later, when he’s leaving and the sky can’t decide whether to snow or not, “I ain’t ever gonna be what you want,” you tell him, “That’s lucky. I only want you to knock.”

He looks at you like he might argue. Then he looks at the door. He nods, once. He leaves.

You lock it behind him and lean your forehead to the wood and don’t feel like you’re keeping anything out. You feel like you’re keeping a promise.

The city exhales. Somewhere, a bus manages to be on time. Somewhere else, a man makes a choice that bends toward mercy. Your plant on the windowsill tips its leaves toward the cruel kind of winter light and decides to try anyway.

You put the kettle back on. You set two clean bowls out on the counter.