but i'm going down swinging

Three housedresses, folded with military precision. Your mother's hairbrush, silver backing tarnished but bristles still good. Undergarments that made heat crawl up your neck at the thought of Bucky Barnes handling your worn cotton slips and mended stockings. Your good shoes, the ones you'd saved six months to buy, wrapped carefully in yesterday's newspaper. A bar of Ivory soap. Your father's shaving kit, though why he'd grabbed that, you couldn't fathom.

Each item pulled from the box felt like archaeology. Excavating the remains of a life that already felt ancient. A little over two weeks since your father's death. It might as well have been two years.

At the bottom, half-hidden beneath a winter slip, your fingers found worn leather.

The prayer book was small enough to fit in a coat pocket, edges soft from years of handling. The binding had started to separate from the spine, held together now by habit more than glue. Your father's prayer book, though calling it that felt like a lie. He'd attended church exactly twice a year: Easter and Christmas, and only then because your mother had insisted while she was alive.

But he'd written in this book nearly every day.

You opened it with careful fingers, throat already tight. His handwriting sprawled across the margins. Cramped, slanted, sometimes in pencil when ink ran out. Not prayers but observations. Thoughts. Sometimes just lists: Eggs, milk, thread for her coat. Other times, fragments of memory, small pieces of your mother: She wore yellow on our wedding day. Not white. Said white was for rich girls with nothing to hide.

Halfway through, the entries shifted. Became letters addressed to you, though he'd never mentioned them while alive.

My girl—Watched you at the factory gates today. Proud of you. Scared for you too. This world eats soft things.

You look like her when you sleep. Same way of curling up, like you're protecting something precious in your chest.

I'm sorry for the debt. Sorry for the mess. Sorry I couldn't be the father you deserved.

The last entry was dated three days before he died:

If you're reading this, I'm gone. The men I owe won't forget. But you're stronger than you know. Your mother always said you had steel in your spine. Don't let them break it.

"Planning to pray for your soul?"

Your head snapped up. Bucky leaned in the doorway, shoulder pressed to the frame, watching you with an expression smooth as still water. He'd appeared silently, a skill that made your skin crawl. He was already dressed for the day: charcoal trousers, white shirt with sleeves rolled to his elbows, suspenders hanging loose at his hips. His hair was damp from a bath, slicked back but not yet locked into place with pomade.

You tucked the prayer book behind you, pointless though it was. You swallowed thickly. "How long have you been standing there?"

"Long enough." He pushed off from the doorframe, movements liquid. Everything about him was like that: controlled, economical. Even his violence had precision to it. "I'm heading out. Business."

"What kind of business?" The question came out before you could stop it.

His mouth curved, not quite a smile. "The kind that pays your debt, dollface. You want details? Want to know whose legs I'm breaking, whose thumbs get crushed? Would that make you feel better about your situation?"

You looked away, stomach turning. Through the window, you could see the street coming to life. Milk trucks rattling past, women in housedresses sweeping stoops, normal people living normal lives. "What am I supposed to do all day?"

"Whatever you want." He shrugged, the gesture too casual. "Read a book. Take a bath. Count the flowers on the wallpaper. I don't give a shit."

"Can I leave?"

"No." The word came out flat, final. He moved toward the door, then paused. "There's food in the icebox. Don't answer the door. Don't go into the basement. Don't touch anything in my room."

The list of prohibitions made something hot and defiant rise in your throat. "So I'm a prisoner."

"You're collateral." He glanced back, and for a moment something flickered across his face, gone too fast to read. "There's a difference."

"What's the difference?"

"Prisoners know their sentence."

The front door closed behind him with a soft click that echoed through the empty house. You sat there, still clutching the prayer book, listening to the brownstone settle around you. Somewhere, pipes groaned. The radiator hissed. The sounds of a building breathing, alive in its own way.

You thought about crying. About screaming. About throwing yourself against the door until your fists bled. Instead, you stood on unsteady legs and got dressed in one of your retrieved housedresses. Gray with small blue flowers, mended at the hem where you'd caught it on a factory nail. The fabric smelled wrong. Like his house. Like leather and tobacco instead of the lavender sachet you kept in your drawer at home.

Home. As if that place existed anymore.

The first three days passed in a haze of careful routine.

You woke when you heard him moving around, usually before dawn. The floorboards above your head would creak in a specific pattern: bathroom, bedroom, stairs. By the time you dressed and made your way down, he'd have coffee brewing, the smell sharp enough to cut through morning fog.

He'd acknowledge you with a nod, nothing more. You'd sit across from him at the kitchen table, nursing your cup while he read the paper, the silence between you thick as wet wool.

He never looked at you directly. His gaze would skip over you like you were furniture, something to navigate around but not worth focusing on. It should have been a relief after that first night, after the things he'd said against your door. Instead, it made your skin prickle with awareness.

You caught yourself cataloguing details: how he held his cup with his left hand while turning pages with his right. The way his jaw worked when he read something that displeased him. How those hands that had broken Marcus's thumb could be so careful with newsprint.

After breakfast, he'd leave. Sometimes for hours, sometimes for the entire day. You'd drift to the window and watch him go, noting how the street seemed to part for him. Even in daylight, even doing something as mundane as buying cigarettes from the corner store, he moved like a man expecting violence.

Alone, you mapped the boundaries of your cage.

The brownstone revealed itself in layers. Surface first: dark wood, leather furniture worn soft in specific places, minimal decoration. But underneath, if you looked, there were tells.

A photograph tucked behind books on a shelf showed two young men in Army uniforms, one clearly Bucky before whatever happened to carve those lines around his mouth. The other unfamiliar but grinning wide, arm slung around Bucky's shoulders.

Sheet music on the piano bench in the parlor, Chopin nocturnes with fingering marked in careful pencil. A woman's handkerchief forgotten in a kitchen drawer, lipstick stain on the corner faded but visible.

You shouldn't have been building a picture of him from these fragments. But boredom was its own kind of torture, and your mind needed something to chew on besides the weight of your situation.

By the fourth day, you'd started cleaning.

Not because he'd asked. He hadn't asked anything of you since that first night. But idle hands made your thoughts spiral, made you feel like your skin might split from the pressure building inside.

So you organized his books by author, then by subject when that wasn't satisfying enough. You scrubbed the kitchen until surfaces reflected light. You even stood outside his bedroom door for five full minutes, hand on the knob, before remembering his warning. The flatness in his voice when he'd marked it off limits.

He never commented on your tidying, but you noticed things. How his fingers would pause on the newly polished table. The way he'd stand in front of the reorganized shelves, head tilted like he was reading something written in the spines. Once, you'd left his mail stacked neatly by the door, and his mouth had twitched. Almost a smile before his expression shuttered like a slammed door.

The fifth night, he didn't come home at all.

You lay in the narrow bed, counting heartbeats. Every sound became footsteps. Every distant door became his. By three AM, the pillow was damp with sweat and something else you wouldn't name. He could be dead somewhere, bullet in his brain or knife between his ribs. Could have finally pushed the wrong person, taken one risk too many.

The thought should have brought relief. Freedom from this limbo, from the weight of his presence and absence both.

Instead, your chest went tight. Breathing became work.

When grey dawn finally crept through the window, you gave up pretending to sleep. Made your way downstairs on unsteady legs, started coffee with hands that shook only slightly. You set out two cups without thinking. Only realized what you'd done when you saw them side by side on the counter: one poured, one waiting.

He found you like that, staring at the empty cup like it held answers.

"Expecting someone?"

You jerked, coffee sloshing dangerously close to the rim. He stood in the doorway, looking like he'd fought his way through hell and lost. Shirt untucked, jacket torn at the shoulder. A bruise bloomed along his jaw, purple-green like rotting fruit.

Heat crawled up your neck. You wrapped your fingers tighter around your mug, ceramic warm against palms gone suddenly cold. "Wasn't sure you'd be back."

The words came out carefully neutral, but something must have shown on your face. His eyes sharpened, fatigue momentarily forgotten.

"Worried about me, dollface?"

The suggestion made your stomach flip with indignation and something softer you refused to examine. Your spine straightened, clicking into place like armor.

"Worried about my debt. If you die, what happens to me?"

"Smart question." He moved to pour coffee, movements slightly unsteady. Exhaustion or injury, impossible to tell. "The old man would collect. Probably put you to work in one of his establishments. You know what kind of work that would be?"

The words conjured images you didn't want: perfumed rooms and strange hands and your mother's voice warning about girls who fell too far. Your silence was answer enough.

"So yeah," he continued, dropping into his chair with less grace than usual. "You should probably hope I stay alive."

The bruise drew your attention like a magnet. In the morning light, you could see the individual fingerprints where someone had gripped his face. Violence made intimate. Without thinking, you reached across the table, fingers hovering near but not quite touching the discoloration.

"You should put ice on that."

The air between you went electric. His eyes tracked your extended hand like it was a weapon.

"Should I?" His voice had dropped, gone soft in the way that meant danger.

You pulled back, face burning. Busied yourself with your coffee to avoid seeing whatever was in his eyes. "It'll heal faster."

"Concerned about my pretty face?"

The teasing edge made something defensive rise in your throat. You pressed your lips together, tasting bitter coffee and bitterer words.

"Concerned about you looking disreputable. Doesn't that reflect badly on me? As your..." The word wouldn't come. Prisoner felt dramatic. Guest was laughable. Property was too close to truth. "...whatever I am?"

"My whatever." His laugh was hollow as old bones. "That's one way to put it."

He stood abruptly, chair scraping against floor loud enough to make you flinch. "I need a bath. Try not to reorganize the entire house while I'm gone."

So he had noticed.

The admission hung in the air after he left, settling over you like dust. You sat at the table, studying the empty cup you'd set out for him.

Upstairs, pipes groaned as water started. You imagined him peeling off clothes stiff with dried blood, cataloguing new damages. Did he think about the violence while he washed it away? Or was it just another morning routine, like reading the paper?

You poured the waiting coffee down the sink and tried not to think about why you'd expected him to come home at all.

By the end of the first week, you'd developed a routine that felt almost like living.

Wake, breakfast, watch him leave. Clean something that didn't need cleaning. Read from his extensive library (mostly history, some philosophy, a surprising amount of poetry tucked behind other books like he was hiding it). Lunch alone. Afternoon spent at the window, watching the neighborhood rhythm. Dinner, sometimes with him, sometimes alone.

Sleep, eventually, though it came harder here than it ever had at home.

You were going slightly mad with it.

"I could work," you tested one morning, apropos of nothing. He was reading the paper, you were pushing eggs around your plate. "At the factory. I could keep working, pay you back faster."

"No."

The word landed flat between you. Your fork scraped against ceramic, a sound that made your teeth ache.

"Why not?"

He lowered the paper enough to look at you directly. Rare these days. His eyes were the color of winter mornings, cold and clear. "Because I said no."

Heat prickled along your spine, indignation rising like mercury in a thermometer. Your fingers tightened on the fork until your knuckles went white.

"That's not a reason."

"It's the only fuckin' reason you need."

The casualness of his authority made something snap inside you, sharp and sudden as breaking bone.

"So I'm just supposed to sit here? For how long? Months? Years?"

"For as long as I say."

You stood so fast your chair tipped backward, caught it before it could fall. The sudden movement made your head swim, pulse hammering in your throat like a trapped bird. You felt a hysterical laugh bubbling up in your chest. "You can just kill me, you know. Instead of wasting both our times."

He studied you for a long moment, and you saw something shift in his expression. A crack in that careful blankness. The corner of his mouth lifted, revealing teeth. He smiled then, all sharp edges, the predator showing through.

"What a fucking waste that would be."

The words hit low in your belly, made heat pool there despite yourself. Your thighs pressed together involuntarily, seeking pressure, seeking relief from the sudden ache.

Some days you could forget what he'd said that first night, the promises he'd made against your door.

Then he'd look at you like this—like he was remembering exactly how you'd sounded, breathless and confused—and your body would betray you all over again.

"I need something to do." Your voice came out steadier than you felt, though your hands trembled slightly as you gripped the back of the chair. "I'm going crazy in this house."

"Join the club." He went back to his paper, but you caught the tension in his shoulders, the way his jaw worked like he was chewing on words. The muscle there jumped once, twice. A tell you'd learned meant he was holding something back. After a moment, he spoke again, not looking up. "There's a bookshelf in the basement. More poetry, if you're interested. Since you seem to like going through my things."

It was the closest thing to kindness he'd offered in days. You took it for what it was: a bone thrown to a restless dog.

The second week passed faster.

You started cooking elaborate meals just for something to do. He'd come home to find pot roast with vegetables carved into perfect spheres, or a cake decorated with careful precision. He never commented, but he ate everything you put in front of him.

Sometimes he'd stay in after dinner, reading in his study while you did dishes. The domesticity of it sat strange on your shoulders, like wearing someone else's coat. You'd catch yourself humming while you worked, then stop, guilty at finding even a moment's contentment in this situation.

One night, you found him asleep in his chair, book open on his chest. In sleep, the hard lines of his face softened. He looked younger, less like a weapon and more like a man. You'd stood there too long, studying the vulnerable curve of his mouth, the way his lashes fanned against his cheeks.

He'd woken suddenly, hand going to the gun you hadn't even known he carried. The metal caught lamplight as his fingers found the grip, body coiled and ready before his eyes had fully opened. For a moment, you'd stared at each other, both caught in something you couldn't name. Your heartbeat thundered in your ears. His chest rose and fell with controlled breaths that seemed too measured for someone just waking.

"Go to bed," he'd said roughly, voice still thick with sleep.

You'd fled on unsteady legs, feeling his gaze follow you all the way to the stairs.

Two weeks to the day since you'd moved in, he came home earlier than usual. You were in the kitchen, making a simple dinner, when you heard his key in the lock. But instead of his usual path—straight to his study or upstairs to change—he came to find you.

"Here." He tossed something at you. Fabric, dark blue, expensive by the feel. "Put it on. We're going out tonight."

Your hands shook slightly as you unfolded it. A dress, nothing like the conservative things he'd retrieved from your apartment. This had clean lines, a neckline that would show your collarbones, fabric that would cling rather than hide.

"Where are we going?"

"Does it matter?" He was already heading upstairs. "Be ready in an hour."

You stood there holding the dress, heart hammering. Two weeks of careful routine, of pretending this was something survivable, and now what? What did he need you for that required a dress like this?

The fabric was soft against your fingers, whispering against itself when you moved it. It probably cost more than you made in a month at the factory. More than your father had owed, maybe.

You climbed the stairs to your room, each step feeling like a decision you weren't ready to make. The dress lay across your bed like a question, like a test, like a door you weren't sure you wanted to open.

Outside your window, Brooklyn was settling into evening. Golden light going purple at the edges, the sound of families calling children inside for dinner. Normal life happening just beyond these walls, close enough to see but too far to touch.

You had an hour to decide who you were going to be tonight. The girl who cowered and hoped to survive? Or something else, something harder, something that might actually endure what was coming?

Your reflection in the mirror had no answers. Just a woman in a shabby housedress, holding something that might transform her or might just be another kind of cage.

Somewhere in the house, you could hear Bucky moving around, getting ready. The sound of water running, a door closing, footsteps that had become familiar in their rhythm. He was humming something. Low, almost inaudible, but there.

It was the first time you'd heard him make any sound that wasn't words or violence.

You touched the prayer book on your nightstand, your father's handwriting a talisman against whatever came next. Then you started getting ready, fingers steady despite the tremor in your chest.

The dress slithered over your skin like water made fabric, each inch of navy silk a confession against flesh that had never known anything finer than cotton.

Your fingers trembled as they smoothed the material over your hips, feeling how it clung to curves you'd spent years hiding under shapeless work dresses. The neckline exposed the delicate architecture of your collarbones, that vulnerable hollow where your pulse fluttered like something caged and desperate to escape. Without your usual slip—it would have shown through the delicate fabric, creating lines where there should be only smooth flesh)—you felt naked despite being clothed. Each breath made the silk whisper against your skin, a constant reminder of how exposed you were.

The mirror threw back a stranger. Someone who belonged in those moving pictures at the Rialto, not standing in a borrowed room with fear sitting like stones in her stomach. Your mother's pearls lay cold against your throat, each bead a small weight that made swallowing difficult. The clasps fumbled under your shaking fingers, metal warming slowly against your nape where baby hairs already escaped the careful pins.

Your hands moved without conscious thought. Each pin slid home with mechanical precision while your mind spun like a penny on edge. The exposed curve of your neck made you feel peeled, vulnerable, like something soft-bellied turned over to show its weakest parts. Wisps of hair immediately rebelled, framing your face in a way that looked almost intentional if you didn't think about it too hard.

No lipstick. It felt like a small defiance. But you caught your bottom lip between your teeth, bit down until blood rushed to the surface.

The small pain grounded you, pulled you back from the edge of panic that threatened to spill over. In the mirror, your mouth looked bee-stung, flushed. Like you'd been thoroughly kissed, though no one had touched you in...

"Two minutes."

His voice carried through the door like smoke, seeping into every corner. Your stomach clenched, a fist of anxiety and something else, something that made heat pool low and insistent between your thighs. You pressed them together, feeling the silk of your last good stockings catch and release against skin that felt too sensitive, like you'd been flayed open and rebuilt wrong.

The shoes—your good ones, the ones you'd saved six months to buy—slipped on like armor that wasn't enough. The single inch of heel changed your posture, made you aware of the length of your legs, how much of them showed beneath the dress's hem. Everything about this costume made you hyperaware of your body as a body, as something that could be looked at, wanted, taken.

Your fingers found the prayer book one last time, pads barely grazing worn leather. Your father's words inside, his cramped handwriting that got worse as his eyes failed. You're stronger than you know.

But standing there, dressed like something you weren't, about to walk into God knew what? You felt about as strong as wet paper.

The doorknob was cold under your palm. You turned it slow, like maybe if you took long enough, the night would pass without you having to live through it.

Bucky waited at the bottom of the stairs.

The sight of him hit you like a physical blow, making your diaphragm spasm and forget its job.

He'd transformed himself into something from those gangster pictures, except this was real, close enough to smell, to touch if you were stupid enough to try. The black suit had been cut by someone who understood that clothes could be weapons, every line designed to emphasize the controlled violence of his body. His hair, slicked back with pomade that caught the light, exposed the brutal architecture of his face. Sharp enough to cut yourself on if you weren't careful.

He looked up at your approach, and his eyes...

"Stop." The command froze you three steps from the bottom. His gaze traveled down your body with deliberate slowness, lingering on the exposed curve of your throat, the way silk clung to your breasts, the nervous flutter of your hands against your thighs. "Turn around."

Your face burned, but something in his tone made refusal impossible. You turned slowly, hyperaware of his eyes on you, of how the dress moved against your skin with each small movement. The back was cut lower than you'd realized when you'd put it on, exposing the delicate ladder of your spine.

"Again. Slower."

The words sent heat pooling between your thighs, shameful and immediate. You turned again, even slower this time, feeling like a prize horse being evaluated. Or prey being circled. When you faced him again, his expression was unreadable, but there was something dark in his eyes that made your breath catch.

"Come here."

You descended the remaining steps on unsteady legs. The second to last step caught your heel, and you stumbled.

His hand shot out, catching your elbow before you could fall, fingers wrapping around bare skin. The contact was electric, sending sparks racing up your arm and down your spine, pooling hot and liquid in your belly. He steadied you, but didn't let go immediately. Instead, he pulled you closer, until you stood on the bottom step, eye level with him for once.

"Careful." The word rumbled from somewhere deep in his chest. "Can't have you damaging the merchandise before I show you off."

The casual cruelty of it made you flinch, but his thumb was pressing against the sensitive inside of your elbow, feeling your pulse hammer against thin skin, and the contrast made your head spin.

This close, you could see the fresh shave that revealed the cleft in his chin, could count individual lashes that threw shadows on his cheekbones. Could smell his cologne: bergamot and cedar and something darker, muskier, that made your hindbrain recognize predator and male in equal measure. Your body's reaction was confused, caught between flee and something else, something that made you want to tilt your head and offer your throat.

"You clean up better than expected." His voice had gone rough, gravel over velvet. "Almost look like you belong in that dress."

The backhanded compliment might have stun, if his eyes were cruel. Instead, they tracked over you with weight, with intent, cataloging every inch of exposed skin like he was memorizing it for later. They lingered on the curve where your neck met shoulder, the delicate wings of your collarbones, the way the dress clung to your breasts, your waist, the flare of your hips.

You felt that gaze like hands, possessive and appraising.

"The dress is beautiful." Your voice came out breathier than intended, like you'd been running.

"The dress is expensive." He released your elbow only to trail his fingers down your arm, barely touching, raising goosebumps in his wake. "You're what makes it worth looking at."

The honesty of it hung between you like a blade. His jaw worked, muscle jumping beneath skin, and you watched him rebuild his walls in real time. When he spoke again, his tone had shifted to something harder.

"Let's go. We're already late because you took forever getting ready."

You hadn't—he'd only given you an hour—but protesting would mean admitting you'd been ready early, been waiting for him. He offered his arm, but when you reached for it, he pulled back slightly.

"Ask nicely."

Heat flooded your face. "I... what?"

"You want my arm? Ask for it." His eyes glinted with something that might have been amusement or cruelty. "Say 'please, Bucky, may I take your arm?'"

Your throat felt like sandpaper. Around you, the house felt too quiet, like even the walls were waiting to see what you'd do. Pride warred with pragmatism. You needed his protection tonight, needed to play whatever game this was.

"Please, Bucky." The words came out barely above a whisper. "May I take your arm?"

"Better." He finally let you take it, and your fingers curled around his bicep, feeling the coiled strength through expensive wool. "But next time, look me in the eyes when you beg."

His words sent liquid heat straight to your core, making you clench around nothing. The heat of him soaked through fabric, making you aware of every point of contact, every breath that brought you infinitesimally closer.

The car waited outside, engine purring. The night had turned cold while you'd been dressing, October showing its teeth. Wind cut through the silk dress like it wasn't there, raising goosebumps along every exposed inch. Your nipples tightened painfully against the delicate fabric, clearly visible through the thin silk, and you crossed your arms, trying to hide your body's betrayal.

"Don't." He caught your wrists, pulling your arms back down. "You're dressed like that for a reason. Let them look."

"Bucky..."

"Did I ask for your opinion?" He helped you into the car, his hand at the small of your back, but the touch was anything but gentlemanly. His palm pressed flat against silk, fingers splaying wide, thumb stroking one deliberate line up your spine that made you arch involuntarily. "No? Then keep quiet."

You expected him to take the front seat, to put distance between you.

Instead, he slid in beside you, crowding you against the door.

The bench seat shrank to nothing. His thigh pressed against yours from hip to knee, solid muscle that radiated heat like a furnace. When you tried to shift away, to put even an inch between your bodies, his hand landed on your thigh, keeping you in place.

"Sit still." The command was quiet but absolute. "You move every time I touch you. Makes you look skittish. Weak."

You clenched your teeth. "I'm not."

"You are." His hand slid higher, fingers curving around the inside of your thigh, tips pressing into soft flesh through silk. "You're soft. Sheltered. Everything about you screams victim."

A burning sensation pricked at your eyes, but beneath the hurt, something else stirred. Something dark that liked the weight of his hand, the cruel truth in his words.

"Where are we going?" You kept your eyes fixed on the driver's headrest, afraid of what your face might reveal if you looked at him.

"The Stork Club."

Your stomach dropped through the floor of the car.

Everyone knew about the Stork Club. It was in the society pages your coworkers read aloud during lunch breaks. Where celebrities went to be seen, where deals that shaped the city were made over champagne that cost more than you made in a month.

"I'm not... I don't know how to..." The words tangled on your tongue, panic making you frustrated and inarticulate.

"You don't need to know anything."

His hand was still on your thigh, thumb moving in slow, deliberate circles that made thinking impossible. The heat of his skin seared through silk stocking, making every nerve ending from knee to hip spark to life.

"Just smile pretty and keep your mouth shut unless someone asks you a direct question. Can you do that?"

There should have been rebellion in you. Some spark of pride that railed against being ordered around like a child. Instead, his thumb pressed harder, finding the sensitive inner thigh, and your thoughts scattered like startled birds. You pressed your thighs together instinctively, trying to ease the sudden ache, but that only trapped his hand more firmly between them.

"I asked you a question." His fingers tightened, not quite painful but close. "Can you do that?"

"Yes." The word came out steady. Too steady.

"Yes, what?" His voice had dropped an octave, velvet over gravel.

Your throat clicked as you swallowed. "Yes, I can do that."

"Good girl." The praise was mocking, but your body didn't care. It hit you like a shot of bourbon, warm and dizzying. Your nipples tightened further, visible through the silk, and you knew he could see it, could see exactly what his words did to you. "At least you can follow simple instructions. More than most can manage, these days."

The city blurred past in streams of light. His cigarette smoke filled the car, mixing with cologne and leather into something that made you dizzy. His hand stayed on your thigh, possession and threat in equal measure, fingers occasionally flexing like he was testing how much pressure you could take.

"There'll be other families there." His fingers walked higher, stopping just before indecency. "The Lombardis, definitely. Maybe the Rileys. Some legitimate businessmen who like to play at being dangerous."

You nodded, not trusting your voice. The heat between your legs had become an ache, insistent and shameful.

"They're going to look at you and know exactly what you are. A factory girl playing dress up. Debt payment dressed in silk." His hand slid back down to your knee, the loss of contact making you bite your lip to keep from whimpering. "Let them think that."

"Why?" The question slipped out despite your better judgment.

"Because the truth would be worse." He turned to look at you then, and his eyes in the passing streetlights were dark as the river. "The truth is you're starting to like this. The danger. The way I touch you. The way your body responds even when your mind says no."

You open your mouth to protest, but he interrupts.

"Don't lie." His hand lifted from your knee entirely, leaving cold silk in its wake. "I can see it all over you. The way you're pressing your thighs together. The way your breath catches every time I move my hand. How badly you want me to put it back on your thigh. Higher this time."

You turned your face to the window, cheeks burning with shame at your own thoughts, at how accurately he'd read you. In the reflection, you could see him watching you, a cruel smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

"Don't worry, dollface." His voice was mockingly gentle. "Your secret's safe with me. Though by the end of tonight, everyone's going to know anyway. The way you look at me gives it all away."

The Stork Club materialized from the Manhattan night like something from a fever dream. Art deco and neon, beautiful people in beautiful clothes, doormen who looked like they could kill you with their white gloves still on. The crowd parted for Bucky's car without question, velvet ropes might as well have not existed.

"Mr. Barnes, welcome back."

"Always a pleasure, Mr. Barnes."

"Your usual table, Mr. Barnes?"

They spoke to him with careful deference, the kind reserved for people who could end you with a phone call. Bucky emerged from the car first, then turned back for you. His hand engulfed yours, calluses rough against your palm—working hands despite the expensive suit. You tried to exit gracefully, hyperaware of the dress riding up, of all the eyes tracking your movement.

Someone in the crowd whistled, low and appreciative.

Bucky's hand moved to your waist faster than your eyes could track, fingers splaying possessively across silk. He pulled you against his side, hard enough that you stumbled, catching yourself against his chest. His other hand came up to steady you, but it was deliberate—palm flat against your lower back, pressing you flush against him from hip to sternum. You could feel every line of his body through the thin dress, the barely contained violence radiating from him like heat from a forge.

He held you there for a heartbeat longer than necessary, letting everyone see. Letting them understand. His jaw muscle ticked, eyes scanning the crowd with predatory focus until whoever had whistled melted back into anonymity.

The crowd went silent.

When he finally let you step back—just an inch, his hand still iron on your waist—the message had been received. The doormen looked anywhere but at you. The crowd found other things infinitely more interesting than the woman on Bucky Barnes's arm.

Inside was all golden light and cigarette smoke, jazz that seemed to come from the walls themselves. Crystal and velvet and perfume so thick it made your eyes water. Beautiful people arranged themselves artfully at tables, each one performing for everyone else in an elaborate dance you didn't know the steps to.

Heads turned as Bucky guided you through the room. You caught fragments of whispers, each one landing like a small cut:

"Barnes's new girl—"

"—won't last the month—"

"—pretty enough, but did you see those shoes? Department store—"

"—must be somethin' special in bed if he's bringing her here—"

Your face burned, but Bucky's hand on your waist kept you moving forward. His thumb stroked one small circle against your ribs, and somehow that tiny gesture gave you enough strength to keep your chin up.

The corner booth held court like a throne. George Barnes sat at its center, those flat eyes tracking your approach with measured interest. The other men around him deferred without seeming to, letting him hold the center of gravity.

"James." He didn't rise, didn't smile. Just watched with that calculating stare that made your spine straighten involuntarily. "Didn't expect to see you tonight."

"Change of plans." Bucky's tone was carefully casual.

George's gaze shifted to you, taking in the dress, the pearls, the careful positioning of Bucky's hand. "The girl from dinner. Interesting choice, bringing her here."

The words were neutral but the undertone wasn't. Your hands clenched at your sides, nails biting into palms.

"She's with me," Bucky said simply.

"So I see." George lit a cigarette with deliberate movements. "Sit. Both of you."

Bucky guided you into the booth, the horseshoe shape trapping you between him and the wall.

"Business has been good this week," George said, eyes still on you. "Though I heard there was some trouble at Marcus's table earlier."

This was news to you. You recall the first warning to Bucky's brother-in-law. The broken thumb at dinner, the threat of something worse.

Bucky's hand squeezes your thigh.

"Misunderstanding," Bucky replied. "It's handled."

"It better be. Can't have people thinking we've gone soft." George's attention shifted to his son. "Or distracted."

The implication was clear. Your presence was a distraction, a liability.

"I know what I'm doing, Pop."

"Do you?" An older man across the table leaned forward—Italian, well-dressed, with the kind of quiet authority that didn't need to announce itself. "Because from where I sit, looks like you're making statements. Statements have consequences."

"Everything has consequences, Lombardi." Bucky's thigh pressed against yours under the table, a silent message to stay quiet. "Question is whether they're worth it."

Lombardi smiled, thin and knowing. "That's always the question, isn't it? What something's worth. What someone's willing to pay."

A waiter appeared with champagne. The crystal flute was pressed into your hand before you could refuse.

"To business," George said, raising his glass. "And knowing the price of things."

"Drink." Bucky's voice was low, meant only for you. "Slowly. Don't drain it, but don't ignore it either."

You took a small sip, letting the champagne fizz on your tongue. It tasted like wealth: complicated and golden and nothing like the beer your father sometimes brought home. The crystal felt foreign in your grip, too delicate, like it might shatter if you held it wrong.

Conversation flowed around you in currents you couldn't follow. Talk of shipments and territories, percentages and protection, all in code that barely masked the violence underneath. Bucky's hand found your thigh under the table, just resting there, weight and warmth through silk. Not moving, but impossible to ignore.

You tried to make yourself invisible, to become part of the booth's velvet backdrop. But you could feel eyes on you: assessing, calculating, determining exactly what you were worth. Some looked at you with desire, some with contempt, some with the kind of interest that made your skin crawl.

"Your boy hit our numbers hard last week," Lombardi said to George, tone deceptively casual. "Three of our runners taken out."

"Your runners were skimming." George sounded bored. "We did you a favor."

"Some favor. Cost me two grand in lost product."

Under the table, Bucky's hand shifted slightly on your thigh. His pinky finger pressed harder, a silent signal to stay still, stay quiet. You pressed back into the booth, trying to become smaller.

"Cost you nothing. We delivered the full take to your people, minus our handling fee."

"Handling fee." Lombardi's voice went cold as winter stone. "That what we're calling theft now?"

The tension ratcheted up so fast you could taste it, metallic on your tongue. Every muscle in Bucky's body coiled tight, ready for violence. His hand on your thigh became a brand, holding you in place when every instinct screamed run.

They stared at each other across the table. Two apex predators deciding if territory was worth bloodshed. The silence stretched like taffy, sticky and suffocating.

Finally, Lombardi laughed. The sound was like glass breaking in reverse, sharp pieces coming together wrong.

"You always were a ballsy fuck, George." He raised his glass. "To Brooklyn."

They toasted, crystal chiming like funeral bells. The tension eased but didn't disappear. It never fully disappeared here, you realized. Just waited, coiled and ready, for the next provocation.

A hand touched your shoulder.

Not Bucky's.

You flinched so hard champagne sloshed in your glass. A young man leaned over the booth, all slicked hair and hungry eyes that traveled down your body like he was unwrapping a present.

"Wanna dance, sweetheart?"

Bucky's hand tightened on your thigh hard enough to bruise. The pain made you gasp, quiet enough that only he heard. "No, she doesn't."

"I wasn't asking you, Barnes." The man's smile was all teeth, no warmth. "Lady looks bored. Thought I'd show her a good time."

"Tommy." Lombardi's voice carried warning. "Don't be stupid."

But Tommy was drunk on youth and bravado and whatever else was coursing through his bloodstream. His hand slid down your bare arm, fingers trailing over skin like he had every right to touch. The contact made bile rise in your throat, made your skin try to crawl away from your bones.

"Come on, doll. One dance. What's the har—"

The world exploded into motion.

Bucky moved faster than your eyes could track. One moment he was beside you, the next Tommy was pinned against a marble pillar with Bucky's forearm across his throat. The entire club stopped. Conversations died mid-word, the band faltered into scattered notes, even the cigarette smoke seemed to freeze in the air.

"Touch her again," Bucky said very quietly, voice carrying despite its softness, "and I'll mail pieces of you to your mother over the course of a year. A finger here, an ear there. Let her collect you like trading cards."

Tommy's face was turning purple, eyes bulging as he clawed at Bucky's arm. The muscles in Bucky's forearm stood out like iron cables, not giving an inch.

"Bucky." Your voice came out as barely a whisper, throat tight with fear.

His head turned slightly. Not enough to look at you, just enough to acknowledge he'd heard.

"Ask nicely." The command was soft but absolute.

Your face burned with humiliation.

Everyone was watching, waiting, eager to see you perform. You could feel their eyes like hands, grabbing, assessing, determining exactly how much degradation you'd accept.

"Please." The word tasted like copper pennies.

"Please what?" He pressed harder against Tommy's throat, making him wheeze.

The power dynamic was so clear it might as well have been written in neon above your heads. You swallowed your pride like broken glass, feeling it tear all the way down.

"Please let him go."

For a moment, you thought he wouldn't. His arm tensed further, and Tommy made a sound like air leaving a punctured tire. Then Bucky stepped back, letting him drop to the floor in a gasping heap.

"Apologize to the lady."

Tommy massaged his throat, eyes watering, face still purple-red. "S-sorry," he wheezed.

"Sorry what?"

"Sorry for touching you." The words came out strangled. "Won't happen again."

"No," Bucky agreed, straightening his cuffs with deliberate calm. "It fucking won't."

He turned back to the booth, offering you his hand. You took it without thinking, letting him pull you to your feet. Your legs felt like water, knees threatening to buckle.

"We're leaving." He announced it to the table at large.

George watched with those flat eyes, expression unreadable. "Night's young."

"Not for us."

Bucky's arm went around your waist, and this time the possession in it was blatant, a clear warning to anyone thinking of approaching. He guided you through the club, past the staring faces and whispered speculations. You could feel the weight of their judgment (whore, property, thing, toy) but underneath it, something else.

Fear. They looked at you and saw Bucky Barnes's willingness to commit violence, and they were afraid.

The night air hit like a slap, cold and sharp after the club's smoky warmth. You gulped it gratefully, trying to steady your racing heart. Your skin still crawled where Tommy had touched you, phantom fingers leaving invisible stains.

"That was—"

"Get in the fucking car."

The order was flat, emotionless, but you could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands clenched and unclenched like he was imagining them around someone's throat. You slid into the backseat, expecting him to give the driver an address.

Instead, he got in beside you and pulled you roughly against him.

His hands moved over your arms, checking for damage with clinical efficiency. When he found none, his touch gentled but didn't stop. Fingers traced the path Tommy had taken, as if trying to erase the unwanted contact with his own.

"Did he hurt you?" The question came out rough.

The question stopped you in your tracks. "No, I'm—"

"Don't lie to me." His hand came up to cup your jaw, forcing you to meet his eyes. In the dim light, they looked almost black.

"I'm not hurt." You caught his wrist, feeling his pulse race under your fingers. "I'm fine."

He stared at you for a long moment, something raw flickering across his face. Possession, maybe, or something deeper, more dangerous. His thumb traced your cheekbone, the touch so gentle it made your chest ache.

"You should be terrified right now." His voice was barely above a whisper.

"I am."

"No." His thumb moved to your bottom lip, pressing slightly. "Not of the right thing."

You swallowed audibly. "What should I be afraid of?"

"Me." The word came out like a confession. "What I wanted to do to him. What I want to..."

He cut himself off, jaw clenching hard enough that you could hear his teeth grind. This close, you could smell him: cigarettes and violence and that cologne that made your head swim. Could feel the barely leashed control in every line of his body.

"Driver," he called out, never looking away from your face. "2847 Fulton Street."

Your father's address. He was taking you home. Relief flooded through you so fast it made you dizzy.

His hand moved from your jaw to your throat, not squeezing, just resting there. Feeling your pulse flutter against his palm like a trapped moth. "You did well tonight," he said, voice strange. Almost surprised. "Didn't rise to the bait. Didn't make a scene."

"I'm getting good at being degraded in public." The words came out sharper than intended.

His thumb pressed against your pulse point, and you felt him smile more than saw it. "That mouth is going to get you in trouble."

The car slowed. Too soon. You looked out the window to see an unfamiliar street, industrial buildings looming like broken teeth. The driver was turned around, speaking urgently to Bucky in Italian. Your stomach clenched.

"What's happening?"

"Shut up." But his hand tightened on your throat, protective rather than threatening. He leaned forward, listening to the driver, and his entire body went rigid. "Fuck. Fuck."

"Bucky—"

"Someone's at your place. Three cars." His jaw worked, mind calculating. "They knew I'd take you home. They're waiting."

Your blood turned to slush, cold and thick in your veins. "Who?"

"Does it matter?" He was already redirecting the driver, barking an address. "Pier 47. Now."

"The docks?" Panic crawled up your throat. "Why—"

His hand moved from your throat to the back of your neck, fingers tangling in the hair at your nape. He pulled, firm enough to make you look at him. "Listen to me very carefully. We're about to walk into something bad. You stay behind me. You do exactly what I say, when I say it. No questions, no hesitation. Understood?"

Your mouth had gone dry as sand. "What kind of bad?"

"The kind where people die." His grip tightened, and you felt the tremor in his hand that he was trying to hide. "I didn't plan this. Didn't want you anywhere near this. But we're out of options."

The drive took forever and no time at all. Manhattan dissolved into industrial wasteland, all rust and shadow and the smell of the Hudson creeping through the windows. Bucky's hand had moved to your thigh, higher than before, fingers pressed into the soft inner flesh hard enough to bruise. Every time the car hit a bump, his grip tightened, and heat shot straight to your core despite the terror.

"You're shaking," he murmured, thumb stroking the inside of your thigh through silk.

"I'm scared," you croaked. It felt like the understatement of the century.

"Good. Terror keeps you alive." His hand slid higher, fingertips brushing the edge of your underwear. "When we get there, you stay close enough that I can feel you breathing. Someone approaches you, you scream. Someone touches you..." His fingers flexed, and you bit back a whimper. "You fight like your life depends on it. Because it will."

The warehouse materialized from the darkness like something from a fever dream. No lights except weak moonlight filtering through broken windows. Your heels sounded like gunshots against the concrete as Bucky pulled you from the car, his hand immediately going to your waist, fingers splaying wide enough to span from ribs to hip.

"I don't like this," you whispered.

"Neither do I." He pulled you tighter against his side, and you could feel the gun tucked into his waistband pressing against your hip. "But Gallo's here. Has to be dealt with tonight."

"Who's Gallo?"

"Someone who should've stayed in fucking Chicago."

The inside was a cavern of shadows and echoes. Your eyes couldn't adjust fast enough, dark shapes moving in peripheral vision that might have been men or machinery or nothing at all. Bucky's hand on your waist was the only solid thing in a world suddenly made of smoke.

Then lights blazed on, harsh and blinding.

"Barnes!" The voice boomed from somewhere above. "Right on time."

You blinked repeatedly, vision swimming back into focus. Five men stood in a loose semicircle, all armed, all staring.

At you. Only at you.

"Gallo." Bucky's voice was perfectly neutral, but his fingers dug into your waist hard enough that you knew there'd be marks tomorrow. "Thought we were meeting alone."

"Plans change." Gallo stepped into better light. Scarred face like a topographical map of violence, dead eyes that reminded you of Bucky's father, smile that didn't reach past his teeth. "Well, well. Didn't know you were bringin' party favors."

His gaze traveled down your body, slow and deliberate. You could feel it like hands, like a violation. Your skin tried to crawl off your bones. Bucky shifted, putting himself partially in front of you, but Gallo just laughed.

"What's the matter, Barnes? Worried we'll damage your toy?" He took a step closer. "Pretty thing like that, all dolled up... Lombardi sends his regards, by the way. Says you owe him for the disrespect tonight. Says maybe the girl could be part of the payment."

The trap snapped into focus. You'd been bait without knowing it. The dress, the club, all of it leading here. Your knees went liquid.

"Lombardi can—"

The first gunshot was impossibly loud, sound that felt like a physical blow.

Bucky moved faster than thought, his body slamming into yours, driving you behind a concrete pillar. Your knees hit concrete with a crack that sent lightning up your thighs. Your palms skidded across rough ground, skin peeling away like tissue paper. Wetness bloomed across your knees, hot and immediate.

More gunshots, so many they became one continuous roar. Concrete exploded inches from your face, sharp fragments cutting across your cheek like tiny razors. You pressed yourself against the pillar, trying to become part of it, trying to disappear.

Then, sudden silence that was somehow worse.

"You okay?" Bucky's voice, close and rough.

You opened eyes you didn't remember closing. He was crouched in front of you, gun in hand, his other hand running over your body, checking for holes. A cut on his cheek leaked steadily, blood running down his jaw to drip on your silk dress.

"I—" Your voice wouldn't work properly. "I think—"

"Office. Now."

He hauled you up, and your legs barely held. The room spun. You could hear shouting, footsteps running, getting closer. Bucky half-dragged you toward a door, your heels catching on debris, ankles turning. The office door slammed behind you, and immediately Bucky was shoving furniture against it. Desk, filing cabinet, another desk.

"Barnes!" Gallo's voice, muffled but too close. "Send out the girl and we'll call it even."

"Fuck you," Bucky snarled, checking his ammunition. You watched his hands move, efficient and steady despite the blood now soaking his sleeve.

"Come on, be smart. She's nobody. Just some factory cunt you're slumming with. Worth what, a few nights of fun? I'll give you five grand for her."

Your stomach heaved.

Being sold. Priced. Reduced to meat.

"Ten," another voice called out. "Ten grand and we all walk away. You can find another piece of ass tomorrow."

Bucky looked at you then, and for one horrible second, you saw him calculating. Saw him weighing your life against whatever this was. Then he crossed to you in two strides, caging you against the wall with his body.

"Stay down," he said against your ear, his breath hot on your neck. "No matter what happens, you don't move. You don't make a sound." His hand came up to cup your jaw, thumb pressing against your lips. "If I die, you play dead. Understood?"

You nodded, unable to speak past the pressure of his thumb.

"Good girl." The praise was grim. "Such a good girl."

He started toward the door—

The window exploded in a shower of glass.

A man swung through, young and wild-eyed, gun already tracking toward you. Your body moved without permission, hand finding the letter opener on the desk, driving it into his calf before conscious thought caught up. The blade slid in with horrifying ease, catching on something that might have been bone.

His scream was high, animal. The gun swung toward your face, and you could see your death in the black eye of the barrel—

Bucky's fist connected with the man's jaw with a sound like wet concrete breaking. The man crumpled, but more were coming. Two, three, climbing through the shattered window.

Something silver flashed in Bucky's hand. When had he pulled a knife? He moved like liquid mercury, the blade becoming part of him. An artery opened in a graceful arc, blood hitting the wall, hitting you. Hot drops across your face, in your mouth. The taste of copper and salt.

You should have screamed. Should have vomited. Instead, your hand found the dropped gun, fingers curling around the grip like you'd done this before.

"Safety's on the side," Bucky barked out without looking, currently using someone's tie to strangle them. "Red means dead."

Your thumb found the safety. The gun was heavier than expected, cold and solid.

The door exploded inward despite the barricade. More men, too many—

"Down!"

You flattened yourself as Bucky spun, firing over your head. The sound was deafening, made your ears ring. Bodies fell, but one shot caught Bucky in the shoulder, spinning him back. Blood sprayed across your dress, across your face, hot and thick.

"No!" The word ripped from your throat.

He grimaced, switched the gun to his left hand, kept firing. But you could see him slowing, could see the blood soaking his shirt, could see death walking into the room wearing familiar faces—

The man in the doorway was different. Calm in the chaos, suit somehow clean despite stepping over corpses. Dark skin, easy gait, professional eyes that catalogued the scene in an instant.

"Barnes," he said conversationally. "You look like shit."

"Wilson." Bucky's smile was all teeth and blood. "Took your fucking time."

Wilson raised his gun and shot two men trying to flank Bucky without looking at them. "Traffic was a bitch. That her?"

"Yeah."

Wilson's gaze found you: huddled against overturned furniture, gun clutched in shaking hands, blood that wasn't yours painting you red.

"Huh. Thought she'd be taller."

They moved together then with practiced synchronization. You stayed frozen, watching them work with terrible efficiency. When Gallo tried to run, Wilson caught him at the door like it was choreographed.

"Leaving so soon?"

"This wasn't the deal," Gallo gasped. "Lombardi said—"

"Lombardi says a lot of things." Bucky approached slowly, favoring his wounded shoulder. The blood had soaked through his jacket now, dripping steadily onto concrete. "Here's what's going to happen. You're going to deliver a message for me."

The knife appeared again. Then it was in Gallo's shoulder, buried to the hilt. The scream echoed off the walls, off the ceiling, seeming to go on forever.

"The message," Bucky continued, twisting the blade slowly, "is that my girl is under my protection. Anyone who touches her, looks at her wrong, even thinks about her too hard—" Another twist, and Gallo sobbed. "—they'll end up like your friends here. But it'll take days. We clear?"

"Y-yes! Clear!"

Bucky yanked the knife free. Gallo crumpled, clutching his shoulder.

"Run," Bucky said softly. "Before I change my mind."

Gallo scrambled out, leaving blood smeared across the floor like a child's finger painting.

Wilson surveyed the carnage. Six bodies. Walls painted with arterial spray. You, still frozen, gun still clutched in white-knuckled hands.

"Jesus," he muttered. "You really know how to show a girl a good time."

"Shut up, Sam."

"I'm just saying, most people do dinner and a movie."

"Most people aren't me."

"Thank Christ for that." Sam approached you slowly, hands visible. "Hey there. You can put the gun down now."

You looked at the weapon like it was foreign. Your fingers had locked around it, knuckles gone white. They wouldn't let go.

"It's okay," Sam said gently. "You're safe. It's over."

Bucky crossed to you, gently prying the gun from your grip. His fingers were so warm against yours, steady despite everything. You could feel his pulse through his palm, too fast but strong.

"That's it, sweetheart" he said quietly, just for you. "You did good. The letter opener was smart. Quick thinking."

"There's blood on my dress." Your voice sounded strange to your own ears, distant.

"Shame, that. I'll buy you a new one."

"It's your blood."

Something shifted in his expression. "Yeah. Some of it is."

"You're hurt." Your hands reached for his shoulder without permission.

He caught your wrists, gentle but firm. "I've had worse."

"That's not reassuring."

Sam snorted. "Tell her about Budapest."

"Shut up, Wilson."

"Or Prague. Prague was a shitshow."

"I said shut up."

The banter washed over you, surreal after the violence. Bodies on the floor. Blood pooling black in moonlight. They'd been alive five minutes ago. Now they were nothing.

"We need to clean this up," Sam said, already pulling out a lighter. "You got accelerant in here?"

"Storage closet." Bucky hadn't looked away from your face, studying you with an intensity that made your skin prickle. "Give us five minutes."

"Make it three. Cops have been paid to be scarce, but fire department's harder to buy."

Bucky guided you out, past the bodies, through blood that made your shoes stick to the floor with each step. Outside, the night air hit like cold water. You gasped, gulping it down, but couldn't get the taste of copper out of your mouth.

"Your car's fucked," Sam called out. "Gallo's boys shot it to hell."

"Fucking hell. Fine, we'll take the sedan around back," Bucky replied, already steering you toward it. "Red Hook safehouse?"

"You've got it, boss."

The drive to Red Hook passed in a blur of streetlights and silence. You sat between them, trying to stop shaking. Every breath tasted like copper. Every blink brought back the image of that man's throat opening, the surprised look on his face like he couldn't believe his body had betrayed him. Your dress was starting to stiffen where the blood had soaked through, silk turning to cardboard against your skin.

"She's in shock," Sam said, clinical but not unkind.

"I know."

"She needs—"

"I know what she needs, Wilson."

Bucky's hand found yours on the seat between you. Not holding, just covering it with his own. The weight of it was grounding, something solid in a world that had gone liquid at the edges.

The safehouse materialized from the darkness: a narrow brownstone that looked abandoned from the outside. Peeling paint, dark windows, the kind of place the city forgot on purpose. Sam helped you both inside, Bucky's good arm heavy around your waist.

"Three hours," Sam said from the doorway. "Then I'm checking in."

"Four."

"Three." Sam's eyes found yours in the dim light. "You did good tonight. Most people freeze their first time. You didn't freeze."

First time.

The words followed you up the narrow stairs, Bucky's hand at your back, guiding you through the darkness. The safehouse smelled like dust and old smoke, like a place where people came to hide from their mistakes.

He pushed open a door to reveal a bedroom that had seen better decades. A bed with military corners, a dresser missing half its handles, streetlight filtering through yellowed curtains.

"Sit," he said, guiding you to the edge of the bed.

You sat, hands still trembling in your lap. He knelt in front of you, started unlacing your shoes with careful fingers. The domesticity of it made your chest tight. When he looked up at you, his eyes were dark in the half-light.

"We need to get you cleaned up," he said softly. "Get the blood off."

"I can still taste it." The words came out small, broken.

Something shifted in his expression. He rose, cupped your face in his hands. His thumbs stroked your cheekbones, and you realized he was wiping away tears you hadn't known were falling.

"Listen to me," he said, voice low and steady. "What happened tonight changes things. Changes you. And we're going to deal with that. But right now, you need to let me take care of you. Can you do that?"

You nodded, not trusting your voice.

"Good girl." The praise was gentle this time, lacking its usual edge. "That's my good girl."

He helped you stand, turned you toward the bathroom. "Shower. Hot as you can stand it. I'll find you something clean to wear."

At the bathroom door, you paused. "Bucky?"

"Yeah?"

"After. Will you..." You couldn't finish the sentence, couldn't articulate what you needed.

But he understood. He always understood.

"I'll be right here," he said. "Not going anywhere."

You closed the door behind you, started peeling off the blood-stiffened dress with shaking fingers. Through the thin walls, you could hear him moving around. The creak of drawers opening. The soft curse when his shoulder caught wrong. These ordinary sounds in extraordinary circumstances.

As hot water finally hit your skin, washing pink spirals down the drain, you thought about what he'd said. Changes you.

You could feel it already—something fundamental shifted, some innocence you'd never get back. You'd stabbed a man tonight. Watched others die. Felt relief instead of horror when they stopped moving.

But underneath the shock and trauma, something else stirred. Something that recognized the predator in Bucky Barnes and wanted to learn how to show teeth too. Something that had picked up that letter opener not in panic, but with intent.

Tomorrow, you'd have to reckon with what you'd become.

Tonight, you just had to wash the blood off and trust that the man in the next room—dangerous, complicated, morally gray Bucky Barnes—would keep you from falling apart completely.

Through the wall, you heard him pour bourbon. Heard the soft hiss of pain as he tried to deal with his shoulder one-handed.

"I'll be right here," he'd said.

For tonight, that had to be enough.

The SHIELD medical bay at 2:47 AM is meant to be empty—just you, a dislocated shoulder from a mission gone sideways in Prague, and the ice pack you're too stubborn to ask someone else to help you position. But there he is, Captain America himself, hunched forward in the uncomfortable plastic chair beside bed seven with his face in his hands, shoulders shaking in that particular way that says everything hurts and I'm trying to be quiet about it.

You freeze in the doorway, good arm holding your bad arm, heart suddenly hammering against your ribs like it's trying to break free. The fluorescent lights hum overhead, too bright, making everything look sharp-edged and surreal. Your mouth goes dry. There's a metallic taste on your tongue—adrenaline, maybe, or just the copper-tang of exhaustion that's been following you since your transport touched down six hours ago.

He's still in his tactical gear—dirt-streaked and blood-spattered from wherever he's been. You'd heard whispers in the hallways. A Hydra facility. The Winter Soldier, recovered. Captain Rogers, who never fails, who never breaks, bringing his best friend home after seventy years. You'd seen him from a distance when they'd brought Barnes in, shield on his back like it weighed a thousand pounds, and thought what you always think: beautiful and untouchable as a monument.

Now, though. Now he's just a man in a room that smells like antiseptic and grief, crying over—

The bed. There's someone in the bed.

Barnes. James Barnes. The Winter Soldier. Bucky. Whatever name he's wearing today. This is your first time seeing him up close, seeing him as something other than a ghost story whispered in SHIELD corridors. He looks smaller than the legends suggest, more human than weapon.

He's unconscious, or close to it, hooked to machines that beep in rhythms that must mean something to someone who isn't you. But what catches your attention—what makes your stomach twist and drop like you've missed a step going downstairs—is the woman curled against his side.

You don't know her, have never seen her before, but you know what she is. It's in the way she fits against him, like two pieces of something broken made whole. The way even unconscious, his body angles toward hers, his metal arm—and God, that's the arm that's killed presidents—draped protectively across her waist. The way her hand rests over his heart, monitoring his breathing even in sleep.

His soulmate. The Winter Soldier has a soulmate.

And Steve Rogers is crying over them.

Your shoulder throbs, sending white-hot spikes down your arm, and you bite the inside of your cheek hard enough to taste blood. You should leave. This is private, sacred, none of your business. But when you try to shift backward, your shoulder screams—a sharp, electric agony that races down your spine and makes your vision go spotty at the edges. The small sound that escapes your throat—half-gasp, half-whimper—cuts through the quiet like a gunshot.

Steve's head snaps up.

His eyes are red-rimmed, devastated, the blue of them turned dark and stormy with an emotion so raw it feels like looking directly at an exposed nerve. There are tear tracks on his cheeks, catching the harsh fluorescent light, and his lips are parted like he's forgotten how to breathe properly. For a second, neither of you moves. You're caught in the doorway like a deer in headlights, your pulse thundering in your ears, and he's frozen mid-grief, and the moment stretches taut as wire between you.

The air feels charged, like the moment before lightning strikes. Your skin prickles with it, every hair on your arms standing at attention.

Then his face closes off. All that naked emotion disappears behind the Captain America mask, so fast you'd think you imagined it if your heart wasn't still trying to claw its way out of your chest from the impact of seeing it.

"You need help?" His voice comes out rough, scraped raw, gravel and exhaustion and something else threaded through it. He clears his throat, stands, and suddenly the room feels smaller, the walls pressing in. He's always so much—six feet of genetically enhanced perfection that makes your body confused about whether it wants to fight or flee or something else entirely that you refuse to examine.

"I—" Your voice catches, sticks in your throat like you've swallowed glass. You force yourself to look at your shoulder instead of his face, but that means looking at the way his hands flex at his sides, the way his weight shifts like he's fighting the urge to move toward you. "Dislocated. From Prague. I can manage."

"You can't." Matter-of-fact, not unkind, but there's something underneath it—a tension that makes your stomach flip. He crosses the room in three strides, and you have that thought again—monument—but monuments don't usually smell like gunpowder and sweat and something cedar-sharp that makes your hindbrain light up with interest you absolutely cannot afford.

He stops just short of you, close enough that you can feel the heat radiating off him, close enough that you have to tilt your head back to meet his eyes. The movement makes your shoulder scream, and you can't quite suppress the way your breath hitches.

"Really, I'm—"

"Stubborn?" There's something almost like amusement flickering across his face, just a twitch at the corner of his mouth, but it makes your chest go tight and warm. "I know. You once tried to extract yourself from a building collapse with three broken ribs and a concussion."

You blink, stomach doing something complicated and uncomfortable. He knows that? He noticed that? Your skin feels too tight, like your body's trying to contain something that won't fit.

"Sit." He gestures to one of the beds, and when you don't move immediately—frozen by the way he's looking at you, intent and focused like you're a problem he needs to solve—his head tilts slightly. "That's an order, agent."

"You're not my CO," you point out, but you're already moving, because arguing with Steve Rogers while your shoulder feels like it's full of ground glass and your body is betraying you with all these inconvenient reactions seems like a losing proposition.

He follows, and you're hyperaware of him in that way you always are—the space he takes up, the way air seems to bend around him, the way your skin prickles with awareness even though he hasn't touched you. When you sit on the bed's edge, the paper crinkles beneath you, too loud in the quiet. He stands in front of you, and you have to focus on the SHIELD logo on his chest because looking at his face feels dangerous right now, like staring directly into the sun.

"This is going to hurt," he says, and his voice is lower now, closer. You can feel it rumble through the space between you.

"I know." Your good hand is gripping the edge of the bed so hard your knuckles have gone white. Your heart is doing something irregular and concerning in your chest.

"I mean it's going to—"

"Captain Rogers." You finally look up at him, find him watching you with an expression you can't parse—something intense and careful and guarded all at once. The fluorescent light catches in his hair, turns it more gold than blonde. There's a smudge of dirt on his jaw. "I've been in the field for six years. I know what a shoulder reduction feels like."

Something shifts in his jaw, that little muscle tick you've catalogued along with a hundred other Steve Rogers tells. Your breathing has gone shallow, and you don't know if it's from the pain or the way he's looking at you—like you're something he needs to be careful with.

Finally, he reaches for your arm.

He's wearing tactical gloves.

Of course he is. Steve Rogers always wears gloves on missions, black leather that make his already large hands look even more capable. You've never thought about it before—lots of agents wear gloves. Protection, grip, a hundred practical reasons.

But now, with him this close, with his hands carefully bracketing your injured arm, you notice the deliberateness of it. The way the leather covers every inch of skin from fingertip to wrist. The way he's careful, even now, not to let any exposed skin above the glove brush against you. There's a gap, barely an inch, where his sleeve has ridden up, revealing a strip of pale skin. You stare at it, pulse jumping in your throat for reasons you don't understand.

"On three," he says, and his voice is closer now, quieter. You can feel the heat of him, the solid presence that makes your good hand want to reach out and—

Your fingers twitch on the bed. The paper crinkles.

"One."

He adjusts his grip, and even through the leather, even through your tactical shirt, your nerve endings light up like a circuit board. Your breath catches, stops, starts again too fast.

"Two."

You're watching his face because you have to look somewhere, and that's when you see it—a flicker of something that looks like resignation. Like loss. Like he's steeling himself for something that's going to hurt. The tendons in his neck are taut, and there's a bead of sweat trailing down from his temple despite the cool air.

"Three."

The world whites out. Pain floods your system, sharp and immediate, and your vision goes sparkly at the edges. Your good hand flies up instinctively, searching for something to anchor you, and finds—

His vest. Your fingers curl into the tactical fabric, knuckles brushing against the solid wall of his chest beneath. You're falling forward, or maybe he's moving closer, and suddenly your forehead is almost touching his chest, and his hands have shifted to your shoulders—careful, still gloved, but holding you steady.

"Breathe," he says, and maybe it's the pain, but his voice sounds different. Softer. Rougher. His thumb moves in a small circle against your shoulder, probably meant to be soothing, but it sends electricity racing down your spine. "You're okay. Just breathe."

You realize you're making small, hurt sounds into his vest, and his body has curved around you slightly, protective, blocking you from the rest of the room. Your working hand has somehow fisted completely in his tactical vest, and you can feel the rise and fall of his breathing, too controlled to be natural. His heart beats against your knuckles, faster than you'd expect for someone with enhanced everything.

"I'm good," you manage, though your voice comes out embarrassingly breathy, wrecked. "I'm—thank you."

You pull back, look up, and freeze.

He's so close. Close enough that you can see the flecks of green in his blue eyes, the way his pupils have dilated slightly. Close enough to count individual eyelashes, to see the faint scar on his lower lip. Close enough that when his lips part slightly, you feel his exhale ghost across your face.

His eyes drop to where your hand grips his vest, and there's something almost stricken in his expression. His throat works as he swallows, and you track the movement helplessly.

Then his gaze snaps to your face, and for a second—just a second—his eyes drop to your mouth.

The air between you goes electric.

His hand on your shoulder tightens infinitesimally, leather creaking, and you're suddenly aware that your bodies are still curved toward each other, that if you just leaned forward an inch—

He jerks back. Takes three full steps back, actually, like he needs the distance. Like proximity to you is somehow dangerous. His breathing is slightly uneven, and there's a flush high on his cheeks that wasn't there before.

"You should get that x-rayed," he says, and his voice is too loud in the quiet room, just slightly unsteady. He's Captain America again, professional and distant, but his hands are clenched at his sides and he won't quite meet your eyes. "And ice. Twenty minutes on, twenty off."

"I know the drill." Your voice sounds strange to your own ears, throaty and affected. Your good hand is still raised slightly, fingers tingling from where they'd gripped his vest.

He nods, sharp and efficient. Turns to go back to his vigil beside Barnes's bed. But something makes you speak, words tumbling out before your brain can catch up with your mouth.

"He's lucky."

Steve stops. His shoulders go rigid, the line of his spine straightening like someone's put electricity through it.

"Barnes," you clarify, though you shouldn't. Your tongue feels thick in your mouth, clumsy. "To have someone who—to have her. His soulmate. They're both lucky."

When he turns to look at you, there's something hollow in his eyes, something that makes your chest ache with recognition you don't want to examine. The muscle in his jaw is working again, and his gloved hands clench and unclench at his sides.

"Yeah," he says quietly, and the word comes out like it's been dragged over broken glass. "Lucky."

He says it like the word tastes like ash, like something burned and bitter on his tongue.

"Steve—" You don't know what you're going to say, don't know why his name feels like something precious in your mouth, why your body is still leaning toward him like a plant toward sunlight.

"You should rest." He cuts you off, gentle but firm, and there's something almost desperate in the way he's not looking at you. "That shoulder needs—"

An alarm goes off. Not the gentle chime of a normal medical alert, but the sharp, angry wail that means something's wrong. Steve's already moving, heading for Barnes's bed where machines are screaming and the woman—his soulmate—is sitting up, hands pressed to her temples, saying "Something's wrong, something's—"

Barnes jackknifes upright with a sound that isn't quite human, metal arm swinging blindly, and his soulmate catches his hand without flinching. The moment their skin connects, some of the wildness bleeds out of his eyes.

"Bucky." Her voice is steady despite the chaos. "You're in medical. You're safe. I'm here."

You should leave. This is definitely not for you to witness. But you're frozen, watching how Barnes's entire being reorganizes itself around her touch, how his breathing slows to match hers, how the machines gradually stop their shrieking as his vitals stabilize. The way she runs her fingers through his hair, and he melts into it, face pressing into her palm like he's trying to absorb her through skin contact alone.

And you watch Steve watch them, standing two feet away but somehow miles distant, his gloved hands clenched so tight at his sides that the leather creaks.

You've never wanted a soulmate. The odds are astronomical, the chance of finding them slim to none, and you've seen what happens to people who lose them—the hollow-eyed grief that never quite fades. Better to never have one than to lose them. Better to be whole on your own than broken in half of a pair.

But watching Barnes fold into his soulmate's arms like coming home, watching her hold him together with nothing but touch and presence and fierce, protective love—

Your chest aches with want so sharp it steals your breath. Your skin feels too tight, too hot, like your body is trying to tell you something your mind won't acknowledge.

When you look at Steve, he's already looking at you. For just a second, you see your own longing reflected in his eyes, the same hollow ache of watching others have what you'll never possess. His gaze drops to your hand—the one that had gripped his vest—and something flickers across his face, too fast to read.

Then he looks away, jaw tight, and the moment breaks, and you're just an injured agent who needs to stop projecting feelings onto a superior officer who barely knows you exist.

"Get some rest," he says without looking at you, voice carefully controlled. "That's an order."

This time, you don't argue. You leave him to his vigil, to his grief, to whatever it is that makes Captain America cry in hospital chairs over other people's happy endings.

Your shoulder throbs in time with your heartbeat as you walk away, and you tell yourself that's the only reason your chest hurts. That's the only reason your skin feels like it's burning where he almost touched you. That's the only reason you can still feel the ghost of his vest under your fingers, the phantom heat of him curved around you.

You're very good at lying to yourself at 3 AM.

But your traitorous body remembers the way he'd jerked back from you, the way his eyes had gone wide with something that looked like fear when he'd realized how close you were.

Whatever Steve Rogers is afraid of, you're starting to think it might be you.

The next time you see him is three days later, and your body knows he's in the room before your brain catches up.

You're bent over a terminal in the east wing surveillance room, trying to make sense of intel that feels like it's been encrypted in ancient Sumerian, when every hair on the back of your neck stands at attention. Your spine straightens involuntarily, muscles tensing like an animal sensing a predator—or worse, like iron filings responding to a magnet.

"Agent."

Just that. Just your title in his Captain America voice, all professional distance and careful neutrality. But your treacherous body reacts like he's whispered something filthy in your ear—pulse jumping, skin flushing hot, stomach doing that uncomfortable flip that's becoming alarmingly familiar.

You don't turn around. Can't. Not when you know what you look like right now—haven't slept in thirty-six hours, hair in a messy bun that's listing severely to the left, yesterday's coffee staining your SHIELD-issued crewneck. Not when you can feel him taking up all the oxygen in the room just by existing in it.

"Captain Rogers." You're proud of how steady your voice comes out, even as your fingers have gone white-knuckled on the edge of the desk. "Something I can help you with?"

Silence. Long enough that you almost turn, almost give in to the gravitational pull of him. Then: footsteps. Measured, deliberate. He's moving closer, and your body tracks his approach like sonar, every nerve ending pinging with proximity alerts.

He stops just outside your peripheral vision—close enough that you can smell him (soap, leather, that cedar-sharp scent that makes your hindbrain whimper), far enough that there's no chance of accidental contact. You notice he does that a lot. Maintains exact distances like he's calculated the precise minimum safe zone between bodies.

"The Brussels intel." A pause. You hear him shift, leather jacket creaking. "Fury wants us to run point together."

Your hands still on the keyboard.

Us. 

Together. 

Run point.

"Us," you repeat, carefully neutral, still not turning around because if you look at him right now your face will do something stupid. Something that reveals how your stomach just dropped through the floor at the prospect of working closely with him. Of being in proximity to Steve Rogers for an extended period when just standing in the same room makes you feel like you're about to vibrate out of your skin.

"Is that a problem?"

There's something in his voice—a challenge maybe, or a test. Like he's waiting for you to admit what you both know: that whatever this thick, electric tension between you is, it's becoming harder to ignore.

"No, sir." You turn then, because not looking is starting to feel more obvious than looking, and immediately regret it.

He's in civilian clothes—dark jeans that shouldn't be legal on someone with his thighs, a navy shirt that clings to his chest in ways that make your mouth go dry. The leather jacket that does things to his shoulders that ought to be classified. But it's his face that kills you—that careful, composed expression that doesn't quite hide the way his eyes darken when they meet yours, the way his jaw ticks when you unconsciously wet your lips.

"Good." He steps closer—just half a step, but your body reacts like he's pressed you against the wall. Your breathing goes shallow, chest rising and falling too fast, and his eyes track the movement before snapping back to your face. "Briefing's at 0800."

"I'll be there."

He should leave. The conversation's over, message delivered. But he doesn't move. Just stands there, looking at you with an expression you can't read, and the air between you feels like it's getting thicker, harder to breathe. Your skin prickles with heat despite the aggressive air conditioning, and you can feel your pulse in your throat, your wrists, between your legs—

"Your shoulder." The words come out rough, like he's had to drag them from somewhere deep. "How is it?"

"Fine." Your voice sounds breathy, affected. You clear your throat, try again. "Good. It's good. Thanks to you."

Something flickers across his face at that—almost pained, like you've said something that hurts. His hand comes up, and for a heart-stopping second you think he's going to touch you. Your whole body goes still, waiting, wanting, every cell screaming yes, finally, please—

But he just runs it through his hair, a gesture that's so uncharacteristically unguarded it makes your chest ache.

"Steve—"

"I should go." He cuts you off, already stepping back, and the loss of proximity feels like someone's turned off the sun. "Early morning."

He's halfway to the door when you speak, words tumbling out without permission.

"Why do you do that?"

He stops. Doesn't turn. "Do what?"

"Pull back." Your heart is hammering so hard you're sure he can hear it with his enhanced everything. "You get close, and then you just—" You make a frustrated gesture he can't see. "It's like you're afraid of me."

His shoulders tense, and when he turns to look at you, there's something raw in his eyes for just a second before he shutters it away.

"I'm not afraid of you."

"Then what—"

"I'm afraid of what I want from you."

The words hang in the air between you like a grenade with the pin pulled. Your breath catches, stops entirely. Your body goes hot and cold at once, skin too tight, like you're having an allergic reaction to honesty.

He looks as surprised as you feel, like the admission escaped without his permission. His hands clench at his sides—you notice he's not wearing gloves, and for some reason that feels significant. Dangerous. His fingers are long, elegant despite their strength, and you have the sudden, visceral thought of what they'd feel like on your skin.

"Captain—"

"Steve." His voice is rough, wrecked. "Just... when it's just us, call me Steve."

Your throat feels like you've swallowed glass. "Steve."

He makes a sound—small, strangled—and takes a step toward you before catching himself. The muscle in his jaw is working overtime, and his hands—Jesus, his hands are actually trembling.

"This isn't—" He stops. Tries again. "I can't—"

"Can't what?" You stand, and your legs feel like water but you need to be closer to him, need to understand what's happening in the space between his words. "Steve, what—"

"0800," he says, and it sounds like surrender. "Don't be late."

He's gone before you can respond, leaving you alone in a room that feels too cold without him in it. Your skin feels raw, oversensitized, like you've been flayed open and exposed to the elements. You sink back into your chair, legs finally giving out, and press your palms against your burning cheeks.

I'm afraid of what I want from you.

Your body is still humming, vibrating at some frequency that feels like it's going to shake you apart. You can still smell him in the air—leather and soap and something unmistakably Steve that makes your hindbrain want to follow him down the hall, pin him against a wall, and find out exactly what he wants from you.

But you don't. You sit in your chair, stare at intel you can't process, and try to convince yourself that whatever's happening between you and Steve Rogers is just chemistry. Just proximity and adrenaline and two people spending too much time dancing around each other in small spaces.

You're getting better at lying to yourself.

But your body remembers the way his eyes had gone dark when he watched you breathe. The way his hands had trembled. The way he'd said your name like it was being torn out of him.

0800 can't come fast enough.

The briefing room is too small.

That's your first thought when you walk in at 0755, coffee clutched like a lifeline, to find Steve already there. He's studying a holographic map of Brussels, one hand braced on the table, the other holding a tablet. The morning light from the floor-to-ceiling windows turns his hair gold and throws his profile into sharp relief, and your step falters in the doorway because he looks like something out of a Renaissance painting—all strong lines and perfect angles and terrible beauty.

He doesn't look up, but his shoulders tense slightly. He knows you're there.

"Morning," you manage, proud when your voice doesn't crack.

"Agent." Back to titles, then. Back to distance. But when he glances up, his eyes catch yours and hold for a beat too long, and you see him swallow.

You take your seat—across from him, with the whole width of the table between you like a demilitarized zone. But it's not enough. The room's too small, the air too thin. You can see the rise and fall of his chest, the way his thumb taps against the tablet in a rhythm that matches your elevated pulse.

"The target's a bioweapon," he says without preamble, swiping something on his tablet that makes the hologram shift and expand. "Hydra remnants, we think. They're moving it through Brussels tomorrow night."

You force yourself to focus on the intel, not on the way his hands move when he talks, precise and economical. Not on the fact that his sleeves are rolled up, revealing forearms that make your mouth water—all corded muscle and prominent veins and a dusting of hair that catches the light.

"Extraction point?"

"Here." He rounds the table to point at a specific building, and suddenly he's beside you, close enough that you can feel the heat radiating off him. Close enough that when you breathe in, you get a lungful of his scent that makes your head spin. "Warehouse district. Minimal civilian presence after dark."

You turn your head to look at the map, but that's a mistake because now his face is inches from yours. You can see the barely-there freckles across his nose, the way his lips part slightly when he breathes. His eyes drop to your mouth for a fraction of a second before he jerks back, stepping away so fast you feel the displacement of air.

"We'll go in quiet," he says, voice rougher than before. His hand comes up to rub the back of his neck, a gesture you're starting to recognize as his tell for when he's affected. "Two-person infiltration. Quick and clean."

"Just the two of us?" The words come out more breathless than you intended.

He nods, still not looking at you. "Fury wants it kept small. Discreet."

Discreet. Right. You can be discreet. You can be professional. You can absolutely handle being alone with Steve Rogers on a mission without doing something stupid like wondering what his hands would feel like in your hair, or how his voice would sound saying your actual name in the dark, or—

"Questions?"

You realize you've been staring at him, and your face goes hot. "No. No questions."

"Good." He's already moving toward the door, eager to escape, but he pauses at the threshold. When he looks back, there's something almost vulnerable in his expression. "We leave at 1400. Quinjet bay three."

"I'll be there."

He nods, starts to go, then stops again. His hand tightens on the doorframe, knuckles going white.

"You should wear tactical gear," he says without turning around. "Full coverage. It's going to be cold."

There's something about the way he says it—careful, deliberate—that makes you think he's not really talking about the temperature. But before you can respond, he's gone, leaving you alone in a room that still smells like him.

You spend the rest of the morning trying to focus on mission prep, but your mind keeps circling back to the way he'd looked at your mouth. The way he'd jerked back like you'd burned him. The way he'd specified full coverage like he was trying to minimize the chance of—what? Of skin contact? Of touching?

By 1400, you're wound so tight you feel like you might snap. The tactical gear feels heavy, constrictive, like it's pressing all your sensitivity inward. Every brush of fabric against skin feels amplified, every movement hyperaware.

You find him in the quinjet, running preflight checks with the kind of focus that suggests he's trying very hard not to think about something. He's in his Captain America suit—the deep blue that somehow makes his shoulders look even broader, red and white accents catching the cabin lights. No skin visible except his face and that thin strip at his neck where the cowl doesn't quite meet the collar, every inch of him covered like armor against something more than physical threats.

"Ready?" He doesn't look at you when he asks.

"Always."

The flight to Brussels takes six hours. Six hours of sitting across from each other in a quinjet that suddenly feels impossibly small. Six hours of trying not to stare at the way his hands move over the controls, sure and competent. Six hours of him studiously avoiding your gaze while the tension ratchets higher with every passing minute.

Halfway through, you shift in your seat, and your knee brushes his under the table. It's barely contact—layers of fabric between you—but you both freeze. His hands still on the tablet he's holding. Your breath catches in your throat. For a moment, neither of you moves, like you're both waiting to see what the other will do.

He pulls his leg back.

You curl your hands into fists and stare out the window at clouds that look soft enough to touch, trying to ignore the way your knee burns where it brushed his, trying to ignore the way he's breathing just a little too carefully across from you.

"You should get some rest," he says finally, voice neutral. "It's going to be a long night."

You don't tell him there's no way you could sleep, not when every cell in your body is hyperaware of his presence. Not when you can feel the weight of his carefully maintained distance like a physical thing.

Instead, you close your eyes and pretend, counting your breaths, trying to ignore the way your body hums with proximity to him. Trying to ignore the fact that in a few hours, you'll be alone with him in the dark, dependent on each other in the way that missions make necessary.

Trying to ignore the way your skin already aches for something you've never had.

When you fake-wake an hour later, he's watching you.

The look on his face—unguarded, soft, almost pained—makes your chest tight. But the second he realizes you're awake, his expression shutters, locks down, becomes Captain America again.

"Descending in twenty," he says, all business.

You nod, start checking your gear, and pretend you didn't see the way he was looking at you like you're something he wants but can't have. Pretend your heart isn't racing from that single, stolen moment of his true face.

Twenty minutes to Brussels.

Twenty minutes until you're alone with him in the dark.

Twenty minutes until whatever this is either snaps or shatters.

Your hands shake as you load your weapons, and you tell yourself it's just pre-mission adrenaline.

You're getting worse at lying to yourself.

The warehouse district in Brussels looks like every other warehouse district you've ever infiltrated—all concrete and shadows and too many places for things to go wrong. Your breath mists in the December air, visible for half a second before disappearing, and you're hyperaware of Steve beside you, the way his body heat seems to radiate even from three feet away.

Three feet. Always three feet.

You've been in position for forty minutes, watching the target building through night vision, and the tension between you has ratcheted so high you can practically taste it—metallic, electric, like the air before lightning strikes.

"Two guards, northwest corner," you murmur into comms, watching them through your scope. Your finger rests against the trigger guard, steady despite the way your whole body feels attuned to Steve's presence. "Rotation in approximately ninety seconds."

"Copy." His voice in your ear makes your stomach flip, low and authoritative. Through your peripheral vision, you catch him adjusting his shield, the movement precise, controlled. Everything about him is controlled. Has been since you touched down three hours ago. Maybe since before that. Maybe since that moment in the briefing room when he'd told you to wear full tactical gear like he was trying to armor you against something more than bullets.

The silence stretches, fills with things unsaid. Your skin prickles beneath the kevlar, every nerve ending hyperalert. Not from danger—not yet—but from proximity to him that feels more intimate than touch. You can hear him breathe, steady and measured. Can smell that cedar-sharp scent that cuts through the industrial stink of the district. Can feel the weight of his attention even when he's not looking at you.

"You know," you say quietly, because the silence is becoming unbearable, "for a stealth mission, you're thinking very loudly."

A pause. Then: "I'm not thinking anything."

"Liar." The word slips out before you can stop it, soft and knowing, and you feel him go still beside you.

"Agent—"

"You said when it's just us, I could—" You swallow, throat suddenly dry. "We're alone, Steve. You can use my name."

Another pause, longer this time. When he speaks, his voice is rougher. "The guards are moving."

He's right. You track them through your scope, watching them disappear around the corner, and try to ignore the way your name apparently burns in his throat, the way he can't seem to say it even when you've given him permission.

"Window's open," you confirm. "Ninety seconds, like clockwork."

"Let's move."

You're up and moving before the words finish forming, bodies falling into perfect synchronization. He goes high, you go low, covering angles with the kind of wordless communication that feels like dancing, like inevitability. Your breath syncs with his as you cross the open ground, and you tell yourself it's just tactical breathing, just professional compatibility.

You're getting worse at lying to yourself.

The side entrance is exactly where intel said it would be. Steve makes quick work of the lock while you cover him, and the domestic intimacy of it—you protecting his back while he works—makes something twist in your chest.

"Got it." The lock clicks open, and he pulls the door wide, weapon raised.

You follow him into darkness.

The warehouse is a maze of shipping containers and scaffolding, all deep shadows and blind corners. Your night vision paints everything in shades of green, turning Steve into something otherworldly as he moves ahead of you, all lethal grace and coiled power. You've seen him fight before, but there's something different about moving with him like this, just the two of you in the dark. Something that makes your body hyperaware of every gesture, every signal.

He holds up a fist—stop. You freeze instantly, trusting him implicitly. He tilts his head, listening to something you can't hear, and you watch the line of his throat, the way his pulse beats steady and strong beneath the skin.

Then you hear it too—footsteps, multiple sets, coming from the east corridor.

Steve looks back at you, and even through the night vision, you can see something pass across his face. He points to himself, then forward. Points to you, then to a stack of crates that would provide cover.

You shake your head. You're not letting him go alone.

His jaw ticks—that tell you've catalogued along with all his others. But there's no time to argue. The footsteps are getting closer.

You move together, silent as shadows, until the first hostile rounds the corner.

Steve takes him down in one fluid motion, shield connecting with a dull thud that the man doesn't get up from. But there are more—so many more—and suddenly the warehouse explodes into chaos.

"Contact!" you shout into comms that suddenly fill with static, jamming signals flooding the frequency. "Multiple hostiles—"

A muzzle flash in your peripheral. You pivot, fire twice, watch the figure drop. Steve's shield sings through the air, ricocheting off three targets in quick succession before returning to his hand. You move back to back without thinking, covering each other's blind spots, and the contact—even through layers of tactical gear—makes your skin burn.

"We need to move!" Steve shouts over the gunfire. "The bioweapon—"

"I know!" You drop two more hostiles, reload with practiced efficiency. "Northwest stairs, we can—"

The explosion knocks you sideways.

Your shoulder hits concrete hard, night vision flickering, ears ringing. Through the smoke, you see Steve fighting like something out of legend—shield and fists and absolutely ruthless efficiency. But there are too many. They keep coming, and you're separated now, a wall of hostiles between you.

"Steve!" You fight toward him, muscle memory and desperation driving you forward.

"Get to the weapon!" His voice cuts through the chaos. "I'll hold them—"

"Like hell!"

But more fighters flood in, and you're forced back, forced to watch him disappear behind a wall of bodies. Your chest goes tight with something that's not quite panic but close—the thought of losing sight of him, of something happening while you're not there to cover his six.

You fight harder, brutal and efficient, trying to close the distance. Your body moves on autopilot while your mind tracks him through glimpses—the flash of his shield, the sound of his voice calling out positions.

Then you hear it. His sharp intake of breath, pained.

"Steve?"

"I'm fine." But his voice is strained, and you catch sight of him favoring his left side, blood dark on his tactical suit. "The weapon—"

"Fuck the weapon." You slam a new magazine home, determination crystallizing into something sharp and desperate. "I'm coming to you."

"No!" The authority in his voice stops you short. "That's an order—get the bioweapon. I'll meet you at extraction."

Every instinct screams against leaving him, but he's right. The mission. Always the mission.

You run.

The stairs are clear—too clear. Your instincts scream trap, but there's no time. You take them three at a time, hip protesting from the earlier fall, listening to the sounds of fighting below. Steve's still engaged, still fighting, and you track his progress through the warehouse by sound alone.

The lab is exactly where intel indicated—third floor, northeast corner. Also exactly as unguarded as you'd feared.

Trap. Definitely a trap.

But the bioweapon is there, contained in a small metal briefcase that seems too innocuous for something that could kill thousands. You grab it, already turning back toward the stairs when you hear Steve's voice crackle through the static.

Not "Agent." Your name, sharp and desperate, and the sound of it makes your blood freeze. "Get out. Now. They're—"

The static cuts him off.

"Steve? Steve!"

Nothing.

You're already running, taking the stairs so fast you nearly fall, the briefcase clutched tight against your chest. The warehouse has gone quiet—too quiet. No more gunfire. No more fighting.

Just silence.

You round the corner into the main warehouse floor and see him.

He's surrounded, on his knees, blood running from a cut above his eye. Six hostiles have weapons trained on him, and his shield is nowhere to be seen. But what makes your blood turn to ice is the seventh figure—a man in tactical gear holding something that looks like—

"No!" The word tears from your throat as you recognize the device. Sonic disruptor, strong enough to disorient even a super soldier.

The man's finger depresses the trigger.

Steve convulses, hands going to his ears, and the sound he makes—

You're moving before conscious thought catches up, pure instinct driving you forward. The briefcase clatters to the ground as you raise your weapon, laying down cover fire that sends three hostiles scrambling. But you're exposed now, in the open, no cover between you and—

The first shot catches you in the vest.

The impact slams you backward, driving all the air from your lungs in a whoosh that whites out your vision. Your body armor holds—SHIELD makes good gear—but the force spins you sideways, and before you can recover, before you can breathe—

The second shot finds the gap.

Right where your vest meets your hip, that vulnerable slice of space where mobility trumps protection. The bullet tears through tactical fabric and skin and muscle like tissue paper, and the pain—

The pain is exquisite.

White-hot agony blooms from your hip, spreading like wildfire through your nervous system until every cell is screaming. You hear yourself make a sound—sharp, breathless, more surprise than scream—and then your legs are failing, and you're falling, and the concrete rises up to meet you like an old friend.

Your name rips from Steve's throat like something being torn from his chest cavity.

Through blurring vision, you see him move.

The sonic disruptor doesn't matter. The six weapons trained on him don't matter. He erupts from his knees with a sound that's barely human, pure rage and desperation, and bodies go flying. He fights like something mythical, like something out of the stories they tell about Captain America, except there's nothing heroic about this. 

This is brutality. Devastation.

Your hands shake as they try to find the wound, fingers slipping on something warm and wet that's spreading way too fast. The pain is enormous, eating at the edges of your consciousness, white-hot and pulsing with each heartbeat. Your tactical pants are already soaked, the fabric clinging to your skin, and when you lift your hand it's painted crimson in the warehouse's emergency lighting.

That's... that's too much blood. Way too much.

Your body starts to shake—shock, probably, or blood loss, or just the simple animal recognition that you're badly hurt. Your teeth start chattering, and you can't make them stop, jaw clenched so tight you taste blood from where you've bitten your tongue.

"No, no, no, no—"

Steve crashes to his knees beside you so hard the concrete cracks. His hands—his bare hands, when did he lose his gloves?—hover over you for a fraction of a second before pressing against the wound. The pressure makes you scream, body trying to curl away from the pain, but he holds you down, holds you still.

"Hey, hey, look at me." His voice cracks completely, nothing like Captain America's steady authority. This is just Steve, terrified and desperate. "Look at me. Stay with me."

You try to focus on his face, but it keeps fracturing, splitting into doubles and triples before reforming. Your eyes won't track right, keep sliding away like they're too heavy. His face is covered in blood—from the cut above his eye, from other wounds you can't catalog—and there's something wild in his expression, something that makes your chest tight for reasons that have nothing to do with the bullet.

"Steve—" Your voice comes out wrong, too wet, copper flooding your mouth. When you cough, something warm splatters across your lips.

"Don't talk, don't—just stay still. I've got you." He's pressing so hard against the wound that new pain blooms, sharp and bright, making your vision white out at the edges. But his hands—his hands are shaking where they press against you, and that seems wrong somehow. Steve Rogers's hands don't shake. "Med evac's coming. Two minutes. Just two minutes, you have to—"

His voice breaks completely, and you realize he's crying. Captain America is crying over you, tears cutting clean tracks through the blood and dirt on his face.

"'S okay," you slur, though it's not, though nothing is okay. Your tongue feels thick, clumsy. "'M okay."

"You're not okay." It comes out harsh, angry, but his hands on your wound are so careful, desperately trying to hold you together. "There's so much blood. Why is there so much—"

That's when you see it. His bare hands are pressed against your wound, skin to skin where your tactical gear has been torn away, and you wait for something—for warmth, for electricity, for whatever cosmic sign is supposed to indicate a soul bond. But there's just the cold creeping up your limbs and Steve's devastated face above you.

"Please," he's saying, over and over, like a prayer or a plea. "Please, just hold on. Just—"

He reaches for your face with one blood-slicked hand, maybe to check your pupils, maybe to keep you conscious, and that's when it happens.

His palm cups your cheek, and the world explodes.

Not with pain this time, but with something else entirely. Something that races through your dying body like lightning finding ground, like coming home, like every cell suddenly remembering what they're made for. The bond slams into place with the force of a freight train, decades of waiting condensed into a single moment of contact that rewrites everything you thought you knew about existence.

The warmth that floods through you has nothing to do with healing and everything to do with recognition. With rightness. With the soul bond that's singing in your bones, drowning out even the pain, making everything else fade to background noise. You can feel him—not just his hand on your face but him, his emotions crashing into yours like a tidal wave. Fear and longing and desperate denial and—

He rips his hand away like you've burned him.

"No." The word comes out strangled, broken. He's staring at his hand like it's betrayed him, then at your face with something that looks like pure horror. "No, not—not like this. Not now—"

The loss of his touch hits worse than the bullet did. Your body convulses, a sob ripping from your throat that you can't control, can't stop. The bond—new and raw and screaming—feels like someone's reached into your chest and started pulling things out. Every nerve ending is firing wrong, confused, desperate for the contact that just got ripped away.

"Steve." Your voice breaks on his name, barely human. The world is going fuzzy at the edges but this—this burning absence where his hand was—this is crystalline. "Steve, please—you're—we're—"

"Don't." He's pressing against the wound with just fabric between you now, using torn pieces of his uniform to maintain pressure without skin contact. His whole body is shaking, violent tremors that make his hands unsteady. "This can't—I can't—"

"Please." The word comes out slurred, desperate, all your walls crumbling with your blood pressure. Your body moves without permission, trying to arch toward him, and the movement sends agony through your hip but you don't care, can't care, not when every cell is screaming for him. "Need—need you t'touch me. Please. Hurts—hurts so much without—"

A whimper escapes, high and broken, and you're crying now—real tears mixing with blood from where you've bitten through your lip trying not to beg.

"I can't." He's sobbing openly, pressing harder against the wound as your blood soaks through the fabric barriers he's maintaining. His face is wrecked, destroyed, tears cutting tracks through dirt and blood. "I can't do this to you. I can't—everyone I touch—everyone I—"

"'M dying." It's matter-of-fact, clear even through the growing fog. Your body knows it, feels it in the way everything's going cold and distant.

Your hand lifts, trembling so hard it's more spasm than movement, reaching for his face. He catches your wrist with fabric-covered fingers, holding you back, and the sound you make—wounded, animal, barely human—seems to physically hurt him.

"You're not dying." Fierce, desperate, a lie that cracks in his throat. "You're not. Med evac's thirty seconds out. You're going to be fine, you're going to—"

"Hurts." The word is pure anguish. Not just the wound but the rejection, the bond screaming, tearing, dying in your chest. Your body's shutting down but somehow the ache of his denial cuts deeper. "Steve, please—am I—did I do something wrong? Am I not—not what you wanted—?"

"No." The word rips from him with enough force to echo off the warehouse walls. He's shaking so hard the fabric between you vibrates with it. "No, you're perfect. You're everything. You're—Christ, you're everything I never let myself want. That's why I can't—"

"Don' understand." Your vision is tunneling fast now, darkness eating the edges. Your body won't stop shaking, violent tremors that make your teeth chatter. "'S supposed to—soulmates supposed to—to help. To make it better. Why won't you—why won't you just—"

Another sob tears from your chest, weaker this time. Your reaching hand falls, fingers still twitching toward him.

"Because I'll destroy you." Raw, bleeding, the words torn from somewhere deep and wounded. "Because everyone I've ever—because I'm not meant for this. For you. You deserve someone who—someone whole. Someone who isn't—"

"Jus' wanted—" Your voice is fading, each word a monumental effort. Your body feels like it's floating and sinking at once. "Jus' wanted to know what it felt like. To be yours. Steve—'m so cold—”

Your eyes are sliding shut, but you force them open one more time, finding his face. He looks shattered. Broken. Like watching you die is killing him too.

"'M sorry," you whisper, and you don't know what you're apologizing for. For dying? For being his soulmate? For not being enough to make him want to hold you? "Sorry I'm not—not worth—"

"Stop." His voice breaks completely. "You're worth everything. You're worth—"

But you're already going under, the last sensation being the phantom burn of where his palm touched your cheek for those thirty-seven seconds. The bond screams and screams and screams, and then—

The med evac arrives in a thunder of sound and motion, but you can't process it anymore. Hands are moving you, lifting you, but all you can focus on is Steve's face, the way he's looking at you like you're taking his soul with you.

"I'm sorry," he's saying, over and over, his voice following you into the darkness. "I'm so fucking sorry. You deserve better. You deserve everything."

The last thing you see is him standing there, your blood painting his bare hands red, looking like a man who's just given up the one thing he wanted most in the world.

The last thing you feel is the phantom burn where his palm touched your cheek, the bond screaming for a connection that's been severed, your body trying to reach for something that's already gone.

The last thing you think, with the last conscious part of your mind, is that you would have been good to him. You would have been so good to him, if he'd let you.

But maybe that's why he pulled away.

Maybe he knows something you don't—that good things don't last, that soulmates are just another pretty lie the universe tells to make the dying easier.

Your hand falls limp, still reaching for him, and the darkness takes you under.

The medbay ceiling has exactly 247 tiles. You know because you've counted them approximately forty-three times since waking up, which was—what? Two weeks ago? Three? Time moves differently when your body is trying to rebuild itself from the inside out and your soul is trying to tear itself apart looking for someone who won't come.

The gunshot wound is healing. Slowly, methodically, with the kind of grinding precision that modern medicine excels at. They'd had to do surgery twice—once to stop the bleeding, once to repair the mess the bullet made of your intestines. The scar will be ugly, they tell you with professional sympathy, as if that's what you're worried about. As if the external scarring could possibly compare to whatever the fuck is happening inside your chest where the bond lives.

Or dies. You're not really sure which anymore.

Your nights follow a pattern now, predictable as clockwork. At 10 PM, the ward goes quiet, lights dimming to that particular hospital twilight that never quite achieves darkness. At 11:47 PM—always 11:47, like he's calculated the exact time the night nurse finishes rounds—you hear it.

Footsteps in the hallway. Careful, measured, but with that particular weight that only belongs to him. Your body recognizes them before your mind does, skin prickling with awareness, the bond flaring to life like struck kindling.

The first night, you'd opened your eyes.

He'd frozen in the doorway, silhouetted by hallway fluorescents, and for thirteen seconds (you counted), you just stared at each other. His face was—God, his face was something you'd never seen before. Raw. Destroyed. Like someone had reached inside him and rearranged everything until it no longer fit right.

"I—" he'd started.

You'd waited, heart hammering so hard the monitors had started alarming, bringing nurses running.

By the time they'd cleared out, satisfied you weren't dying, he was gone.

Now you know better. You keep your eyes closed, breathing deep and even, and let him have whatever this is. Whatever he needs.

He sits in the chair by the window—always the same chair, the one that creaks slightly when he shifts his weight. For the first ten minutes, he just sits there, breathing. You match your inhales to his, careful to keep them sleep-slow even though your heart is racing, even though every cell in your body is screaming to reach for him.

Sometimes he talks.

"They're releasing you tomorrow," he says tonight, voice barely above a whisper. "Fury told me. Said you're healing well. That you'll be able to—that you'll be fine."

Fine. The word sits between you like a lie neither of you believes.

"I know you're awake."

Your breath doesn't catch. You've gotten very good at this game.

"I know you're awake," he repeats, softer. "Your heartbeat changes when I'm here. Just a little, but—" A pause. The chair creaks. "I memorized it. Before. The sound of your heartbeat. Didn't mean to, it just—happened. Enhanced hearing and all."

You want to open your eyes so badly it's physical pain, but you don't. Can't. Because if you do, he'll leave, and even this—this careful distance, this monitored proximity—is better than nothing.

"I'm being reassigned."

Now your breath does catch, just slightly. You hear him shift forward.

"Fury thinks it's best. For both of us. Different divisions, different missions. Clean break." His voice cracks on 'clean' like the word itself is cutting him. "It's better this way. You can—you can find someone else. Someone who isn't—"

Broken, you want to finish. Scared. Frozen in a past that no longer exists.

But you keep your eyes closed, keep your breathing even, keep pretending that your chest isn't caving in with every word.

"I watched Bucky with his soulmate," he continues, and you've never heard him sound like this. Lost. "Watched how easy it was for them. How she touched him and suddenly he was whole again, was himself again. How the bond just—fixed things. Made sense of them."

The chair creaks again. Closer now. You can feel the heat of him, smell that cedar-sharp scent that makes your body ache with want.

"I thought—" He stops. Starts again. "I thought if I didn't have a soulmate, I could pretend I didn't belong here. Could keep one foot in the past, you know? Keep waiting to go home to a time that doesn't exist anymore. But then you—"

Silence. Long enough that you almost open your eyes, almost give up the pretense.

"You make me want to stay," he whispers, and it sounds like a confession. Like something torn from him against his will. "You make me want to belong here. In this century. In this life. And that fucking terrifies me."

Your eyes burn behind closed lids. Your throat aches with words you can't say.

"So I'm leaving. Because you deserve someone who isn't terrified of wanting you. Someone who can touch you without feeling like the universe is ending. Someone who—" His voice breaks completely. "Someone who didn't let you bleed out rather than accept a bond."

You hear him stand, the chair scraping slightly against linoleum. Feel him hesitate, that particular stillness that means he's fighting himself.

Then warmth. Just for a second. The ghost of fingers near your hand where it rests on the blanket, not quite touching but close enough that you can feel the heat of his skin, the way the air shifts between you.

"I'm sorry," he breathes. "I'm so fucking sorry."

Then he's gone, and you finally let yourself cry—silent, body-shaking sobs that you muffle in the pillow so the night nurse won't come. The bond aches like a severed limb, phantom pain for something you had for exactly thirty-seven seconds in a warehouse in Brussels.

Tomorrow, they release you.

Tomorrow, you go back to a life where Steve Rogers is just someone you pass in hallways, someone who looks through you like you're a ghost, someone who touched your face once while you were dying and then decided you weren't worth the risk.

Tonight, though. Tonight you lie in a hospital bed and count ceiling tiles and pretend you don't know that he stands outside your door for another twenty-three minutes before he finally makes himself leave.

Your apartment feels like a crime scene you're returning to.

Everything is exactly as you left it three weeks ago—coffee mug still in the sink, laptop still open on the counter, the ghost of your normal life preserved in amber. Except you're different now. Hollowed out and reconstructed wrong, like someone took you apart and lost a few crucial pieces in the reassembly.

The first night is the worst.

You'd thought the hospital was bad, with its antiseptic smell and endless fluorescent twilight. But at least there, you could pretend Steve might appear. Could lie to yourself that the footsteps in the hallway might be his.

Here, in your own space, there's no such illusion.

The bond aches constantly. Not the sharp, immediate pain of the first few days, but a bone-deep throb that makes everything feel wrong. Food tastes like ash. Sleep comes in fragments, always interrupted by dreams of warehouse floors and the phantom warmth of a palm against your cheek. Your skin feels too tight, like your body is rejecting itself in the absence of touch it's only had once.

You try to go back to work after a week.

Fury takes one look at you—hollow eyes, hands that won't stop shaking, the way you flinch when anyone gets too close—and sends you home.

"Medical leave," he says, not unkindly. "Take the time you need."

You want to tell him that time won't fix this. That you could take a year, a decade, and you'd still be searching every room for a ghost who won't appear. But you just nod, gather your things, and pretend you don't see the pity in his eye.

The second week is when the anger arrives.

It starts small—irritation at the barista who makes your coffee wrong, frustration with the TV remote that won't work properly. But it builds, feeds on itself, until you're standing in your kitchen at 2 AM, hurling the mug Steve never saw you drink from against the wall, watching it shatter into pieces that still somehow hold more cohesion than you do.

How dare he.

How fucking dare he.

To touch you, to activate a bond you didn't even know existed, and then rip himself away like you're something toxic. To visit you every night but never when you're awake to actually see him. To make decisions about your life, your future, your soul without even asking what you want.

You track his missions through the internal SHIELD networks you're not supposed to have access to anymore. London. Moscow. Cairo. Always moving, always running, like distance could somehow break what's already broken. Your clearance hasn't been revoked yet—an oversight, probably—so you read his reports, clinical and detached descriptions of operations that tell you nothing about whether he's eating. Whether he's sleeping. Whether his soul feels as flayed as yours.

Probably not. He chose this, after all.

The third week is when you see him.

You're not prepared. How could you be? You're just buying groceries, standing in the cereal aisle like a normal person pretending to care about fiber content, when you feel it—that familiar prickle of awareness, the bond flaring to life like muscle memory.

You turn, and there he is at the end of the aisle. Frozen, like he's been caught. He looks—

He looks like shit.

Hollow eyes, sharp cheekbones like he hasn't been eating, a carefulness to his movements that speaks of bone-deep exhaustion. His hands are shoved in his pockets, probably to stop himself from reaching for you. Or maybe just to hide how they're shaking.

For a moment, you both just stand there, two people separated by twenty feet of fluorescent lighting and an unbridgeable chasm of his making.

You watch his mouth form your name. Not quite speaking it, just shaping it, like even that much is more than he's allowed himself.

Your body moves without permission, taking one step toward him, and he takes a step back.

Right.

The message is clear. Crystal fucking clear.

You turn around, leave your half-full cart in the middle of the aisle, and walk out of the store with as much dignity as you can muster. Make it all the way to your car before the shaking starts, before you have to grip the steering wheel just to keep yourself anchored.

Twenty feet.

He couldn't even stand to be within twenty feet of you.

That night, you draft seven different resignation letters. Because fuck this. Fuck playing this game where you pretend you're okay, where you pretend that seeing him doesn't make you want to scream or cry or claw your own skin off just to escape the constant ache of the bond.

You don't send any of them.

But you keep them, just in case.

Week four is when Natasha shows up at your door.

"You look like hell," she says without preamble, pushing past you into your apartment.

"Thanks. Great pep talk. You can go now."

She ignores you, taking in the disaster you've let your living space become—dishes piled in the sink, curtains drawn against the afternoon sun, the general apocalyptic ambiance of someone who's given up.

"He's not doing any better, you know."

You laugh, bitter and sharp. "Good."

"He sits outside your building sometimes." She says it casually, like it's nothing, like it doesn't make your heart stutter and race. "At night. When he thinks no one will notice. Just sits in his car and stares up at your window like a fucking Victorian ghost."

"He made his choice."

"He made a stupid choice," she corrects. "Because he's a stupid, self-sacrificing idiot who thinks he's protecting you."

"From what?" The words explode out of you, months of frustration and hurt finally finding voice. "From having a soulmate? From being loved? From fucking touching another human being?"

"From him." Her voice goes soft, which is somehow worse than when she's being cutting. "From what he thinks he is. What he thinks he'll do to you."

"That's not his choice to make."

"No," she agrees. "It's not."

She leaves after that, but not before placing a small piece of paper on your counter. An address. A time. Tomorrow, 3 PM.

"He won't be there," she says. "But you should go anyway."

You stare at the paper for a long time after she's gone, memorizing numbers you'll probably never use.

But when tomorrow comes, you go anyway.

Because maybe you're just as much of a self-sacrificing idiot as he is.

Or maybe you're just tired of being angry.

Maybe you're just tired, period.

The address leads to a small gym in Brooklyn, the kind that smells like old leather and determination. You expect it to be empty—Natasha said he wouldn't be there—but there's someone in the ring.

Barnes.

He's working the heavy bag with mechanical precision, each punch measured and brutal. The sound echoes in the empty space—thud, thud, thud—rhythmic as a heartbeat. He doesn't look up when you enter, but his shoulders tense slightly, that particular stillness of someone who's hyperaware of their surroundings but pretending not to be.

Your stomach does something complicated. You've seen him around the Tower these past couple months since Steve brought him in, but always at a distance. Always with her—his soulmate, the one who somehow reached through seven decades of programming to find the man underneath. The one who touches him like it's breathing, casual and constant and necessary.

"Natasha send you?" His voice is flat, careful.

"Yeah."

He stops punching, turns to face you. Takes you in with those winter-gray eyes that see too much, catalog too much. There's still something unfinished about him, like he's a sketch someone's only halfway through shading. Two months of freedom haven't quite erased seventy years of being someone else's weapon.

"You look like shit," he says, which isn't what you expected.

"Thanks. Everyone keeps telling me that."

His mouth twitches—not quite a smile, but close. "Steve looks worse, if it helps."

"It does, actually."

This time he does almost smile, just a flash before his face settles back into its usual brooding. He unwraps his hands slowly, methodically, like he's buying time to figure out what to say. The motion is practiced, automatic—muscle memory that belongs to James Barnes, not the Winter Soldier. You wonder how many things like that he's had to relearn. How many small, human gestures he's had to excavate from under decades of conditioning.

"This is..." He stops. Runs a hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up at odd angles. The gesture is so remarkably normal it makes your chest tight. "I don't usually do this. The talking thing. That's more—" A pause, like he's trying to remember who handles these things now, in this new life where he has friends instead of handlers. "That's not really my thing."

"Then why—"

"Because Steve's an idiot," he says bluntly. "And someone needs to explain why he's being an idiot, and apparently that someone is me." He tosses you a pair of wraps. "You know how to use these?"

"I'm on medical leave."

"Not asking you to fight. Just asking if you know how to wrap your hands. Gives you something to do while I..." He makes a vague gesture that somehow encompasses the awkwardness of the entire situation.

You do know how to wrap your hands. The familiar ritual of it—loop around the wrist, between the fingers, across the knuckles—gives your body something to focus on besides the constant ache under your ribs where the bond lives. He watches you do it, noting the slight tremor in your fingers that hasn't gone away since Brussels. 

"He ever tell you about Peggy?" Barnes asks suddenly, like ripping off a bandaid.

You pause, stomach twisting into something complicated. "No."

"Course not." He leans against the ropes, and for a moment looks older than whatever age he's supposed to be. "From what I remember—and my memory's not exactly..." He taps his temple with his metal finger, the soft whir of recalibrating plates filling the silence. "But from what I remember, and what I've been able to piece together since, he loved her. Real love, not just wartime desperation. Had her picture in his compass, carried it everywhere. Used to moon over her like she hung the goddamn stars."

Your chest tightens, ribs suddenly too small for your lungs. You focus on wrapping your hands, but the fabric keeps slipping because your palms have gone sweaty.

"But he knew they weren’t soulmates."

"Yeah. And it didn't matter to him. He chose her anyway." Barnes's jaw ticks, and you can see him working through memories that might be his or might be stories he's been told—the confusion of it flickers across his face. "I was already gone when he went into the ice. But from what I've learned, when he woke up, she'd lived a whole life without him. Found her actual soulmate. Got married. Had kids. The whole American dream he thought he was fighting for."

The words land like stones in your chest, each one heavier than the last. 

Steve chose Peggy. Chose her without destiny, without the universe's intervention, without biological imperatives. Just looked at her and decided she was worth defying fate for.

And you?

You're just what the universe assigned him. The consolation prize. The participation trophy for surviving into a century he never wanted to see.

Your hands still on the wraps. "That's not—she couldn't have known he'd survive—"

"Doesn't matter. Logic doesn't factor into it." His metal hand flexes, a nervous tic you've noticed before. "I think—and look, this is just my theory, thrown together from bits and pieces—but I think Steve maybe saw it as proof. That the universe was right all along. That choosing her was just him being stubborn, going against what was meant to be."

The words settle heavy in your stomach like you've swallowed cement. "So when he found out I was his soulmate..."

"Proof he's supposed to be here. In this century he's never felt like he belongs in." Barnes's voice goes quiet, almost careful. You can see him choosing his words, this man who's spent two months relearning how to have opinions. "Look, I've only been... back... for a couple months. I'm still figuring out who Steve is now versus who he was then. Half my memories of him are probably more fantasy than fact at this point. But from what I can see, if he accepts you, then he has to accept that this is where he's meant to be. That this is home."

"And he doesn't want that."

"He wants it so much it terrifies him."

Barnes moves to the speed bag, starts a rhythm that's almost meditative. His metal arm moves differently than the flesh one—more precise, less natural, like he's still learning to inhabit it.

"When they brought me in, when I was still more Winter Soldier than anything else, my soulmate—she didn't give me a choice." The rhythm falters for a moment. "Just kept showing up. Kept touching me even when I tried to—" He stops. Restarts. The sound fills the gym like a heartbeat. "Even when I was dangerous. Even when I couldn't remember her name five minutes after she said it."

You know this story, or pieces of it. Everyone at SHIELD does. But the way he tells it—halting, like he's still surprised by it—makes it feel different. Raw. Like he still can't quite believe someone chose to love him through the worst of it.

"I could have killed her. Almost did, more than once those first few weeks. But she kept coming back." The speed bag stills. His hands drop to his sides, and for a moment he looks lost, like he's forgotten what to do with them when they're not fighting. "I didn't get to push her away. Didn't get to decide I was too broken or too dangerous. She made that choice for both of us."

"And it worked out."

"Yeah." His voice does something strange here—goes soft in a way you didn't think it could. Like even after decades of violence, there's still something in him capable of gentleness. "Yeah, it did. But Steve—Steve's got this idea that he's protecting you. From disappointment. From loss. From him."

"That's not his choice to make."

"No. It's not." Barnes looks at you directly, and there's something almost sympathetic in his expression. "But he's gonna make it anyway unless someone stops him. And I'm too fucked up myself to be giving relationship advice, but—"

The gym door opens, cutting him off, and Barnes's entire demeanor changes instantly. It's like watching winter thaw in fast-forward—his shoulders drop, his face loses that careful blankness, even his breathing seems to ease. You turn to see a young woman entering, all bright eyes and gentle energy that seems to fill the space with warmth.

"Hey," she says, and Barnes is already moving toward her like she's got her own gravitational pull, like his body just naturally orbits hers. "You ready to go?"

"Yeah, doll. Just—" He gestures vaguely at you, and she turns that warm attention your way.

"Oh! You must be the one Nat mentioned." She extends her hand, and her smile is so genuine it makes your chest hurt. There's something knowing in her eyes, something that says she understands what it's like to love someone who thinks they're unlovable. "I've heard about you."

"Hopefully not all bad."

"Never." She squeezes your hand gently before releasing it. "How are you holding up?"

The question is so earnest, so carefully kind, that you almost start crying right there in the gym. Your throat goes tight, eyes burning with tears you refuse to shed.

"I'm—" You stop, unable to lie to this person who radiates the kind of empathy that makes dishonesty impossible. "Managing."

She nods like she understands, and somehow you think she does. Then she turns back to Barnes, and it's like watching a completely different person emerge. He leans into her space without seeming to realize it, his hand finding the small of her back with the kind of casual intimacy that speaks of constant touch, constant contact. The metal hand, you notice. The one that's caused so much damage. She doesn't flinch from it.

"You eat today?" she asks him quietly, reaching up to brush his hair back from his face. The gesture is so tender it makes your chest ache.

"Yeah, sweetheart." His voice is impossibly soft, private.

"What did you eat?"

A pause. His mouth quirks slightly—a ghost of whoever James Barnes was before the war, before the fall, before everything. "You."

She smacks his chest. "That doesn't count as food, James."

"Seemed pretty filling to me."

"Oh my god." She turns to you, cheeks pink but biting back a smile. "Six decades as an international assassin and he thinks he's a comedian now."

"I'm hilarious," Barnes says, completely deadpan, but his hand is rubbing small circles on her back, and the look she gives him—fond and exasperated and completely besotted—makes something crack in your chest.

Because this is what choosing looks like. This is what wanting looks like when it's not forced by biology or destiny or the universe's sick sense of humor.

Steve chose Peggy like this. Without destiny. Without force. Just looked at her and knew she was worth everything.

And you? You're just the assignment. The universe's way of telling him he can't go home. The anchor keeping him in a century he never asked for.

Your hands curl into fists inside the wraps, nails digging into your palms hard enough to hurt.

"We're gonna grab dinner," Barnes's soulmate says to you, still tucked against his side like she belongs there. "Real food," she adds with a pointed look at him. "You should come."

"I—no, thank you. I should—" You gesture vaguely at nothing, at the door, at escape.

"Think about what I said," Barnes interjects, not unkindly. His eyes are serious, understanding in a way that makes you want to run. "And..." He pauses, seems to wrestle with something. "Steve's an idiot. But he's an idiot who's been looking at you like you hung the moon since before Brussels. That's not the bond. That's just him."

They leave together, her hand in his, talking quietly about dinner plans and everyday things. You watch them go, Barnes letting her guide him toward something as simple as a meal, and the comparison burns in your throat like acid.

He never pushed her away. Even when he was dangerous, even when he was broken, even when he couldn't remember her name. He let her choose him.

But Steve? Steve took one look at the bond between you and ran.

Because with Peggy, he had a choice. He chose to love her.

With you, he doesn't. You're just what he's stuck with.

Your phone buzzes. A text from an unknown number.

He has a mission briefing tomorrow at 0900. Conference room C. Just saying.

You delete the text, but the information burns in your brain.

Maybe it's time to stop letting Steve Rogers make all the choices.

Even if you're just the consolation prize.

Even if you'll never be Peggy Carter.

Maybe especially then.

Conference Room C is empty.

You stand in the doorway like an idiot, staring at the polished table and empty chairs, at the blank whiteboard that mocks you with its pristine surface. The digital clock on the wall reads 09:07. You've been lurking in the hallway since 08:45, watching people filter in and out of different rooms, none of them Steve.

Of course.

Of course Natasha's intel was wrong, or maybe it was right and he changed locations when he realized you might—

Fuck this.

Fuck all of this.

The anger that's been simmering for weeks boils over, hot and sudden. 

You're done. 

Done waiting, done hoping, done letting Steve Rogers dictate the terms of your existence with his absence. Your hands shake as you turn to leave, the bond aching with fresh disappointment, and you're so focused on not crying that you don't hear the footsteps until—

A hand wraps around your elbow.

Even through the fabric of your shirt, you know it's him. Your body recognizes his touch like a key in a lock, every nerve ending suddenly alive, suddenly screaming. You're yanked sideways—not roughly, but with desperate efficiency—into a supply closet that smells like printer toner and industrial cleaner.

The door clicks shut, and you're plunged into darkness cut only by the thin strip of light under the door.

Your eyes adjust slowly, and when they do—

Jesus Christ.

Steve looks destroyed. 

No, destroyed doesn't cover it. 

He looks like someone reached inside him and hollowed him out with a rusted spoon. His uniform is torn—actually torn, with what looks suspiciously like blood staining the blue fabric black. There's a cut on his cheekbone that's already healing, but slowly, like even his enhanced body is too exhausted to properly function. His hair is matted with ash and something darker. His eyes are wild, pupils blown wide in the darkness, and he's breathing like he can't get enough air, like his lungs have forgotten how to work properly.

"Steve?" Your voice comes out tentative, barely a whisper.

He makes a sound—broken, animal, completely unintelligible. His hand is still on your elbow, grip tight enough that it should hurt but doesn't, and you can feel him trembling. Not just his hand. All of him. Vibrating with something that looks like shock but feels like barely contained devastation.

For a moment, you just stare at each other in the dim light. His chest heaves with each breath, and you can smell the mission on him—gunpowder and smoke and something else, something that makes your stomach turn. Death. He smells like death.

"Steve, what—"

He breaks.

With a deep, shuddering breath that sounds like it's being torn from the very center of him, Steve pulls you against him. It's not gentle. It's desperate, consuming, like a drowning man finding solid ground. One hand tangles in your hair, fingers twisting in the strands hard enough to make your scalp sing with that perfect edge of pain-pleasure. The other arm bands around your waist, and then—

His hand slides up under your shirt, fingers splaying wide against the bare skin of your back, and you both gasp.

The bond roars to life.

It's not the gentle warmth you'd imagined soulbonds to feel like. It's a flood, a tidal wave, every point of contact sending liquid heat through your veins like you're mainlining pure sensation. Your knees buckle, but he's got you, holding you up with desperate strength as he buries his face in the crook of your shoulder.

The noise he makes then—God, you'll hear it forever. Half sob, half relief, muffled against your neck as he breathes you in like you're the only thing keeping him tethered to earth. His body curves around yours, too tall, too broad, trying to eliminate every millimeter of space between you.

"Had to—" His voice is wrecked, barely recognizable, words pressed hot against your throat. "Had to find you. Couldn't—fuck, I couldn't breathe—"

His hand on your back moves restlessly, seeking more skin, and when his fingertips brush the edge of your bra, you shiver so hard he groans. The sound vibrates through your chest where you're pressed together, and you can feel his control fracturing, feel the way his hands shake with the effort of not taking more.

But he does take more.

His hand in your hair tightens, tilts your head back to expose your throat, and his mouth presses to your pulse point—not kissing, just resting there, feeling your heartbeat against his lips. The hand under your shirt spreads wider, slides higher, until his thumb brushes your ribs and you make a sound you've never made before.

"The mission," he says against your skin, and you feel more than hear it. "There was—Christ, there was this couple. Shopping for groceries when the building came down."

His whole body shudders, and he presses closer, pins you against the door with his weight like he needs the contact to stay upright. You can feel every line of him through the torn uniform—the hard planes of his chest, the way his stomach muscles clench with each ragged breath, the thick press of his thighs against yours.

"She died instantly." The words come out broken, wet. "But he—he lived long enough to feel the bond break. Have you ever—" His voice cracks. "I've never heard anyone scream like that. Like his soul was being ripped out through his chest."

"Steve—"

"All I could think about was you." His confession comes with another full-body shudder, and suddenly his mouth is moving against your throat, not kissing but talking, like he needs the contact to get the words out. "What it would feel like if—if I lost you before I ever—"

He pulls back just enough to look at you, and his eyes are wet, devastated, completely without walls. "I can't lose you. I can't. I'll die. I'll actually fucking die."

"You won't lose me," you breathe, but he's already shaking his head, already pulling you impossibly closer.

"You don't understand." His hand slides from your hair to cup your jaw, thumb brushing across your cheekbone with reverent desperation. "The bond—it's not—for normal people it's intense, but for me—" He makes a sound like he's in physical pain. "The serum amplifies everything. Every sensation, every emotion, every—"

He cuts himself off by pressing his forehead to yours, and you can feel him trembling with the effort of holding back.

"Steve."

"I need—" His hand at your back shifts, slides around to span your ribs, thumb brushing the underside of your breast through your bra, and you both freeze. The touch is electric, sends sparks racing down your spine, pooling low in your belly. "Fuck, I need to touch you. Need to—please. Please, just let me—"

"Yeah." The word comes out embarrassingly breathy, but you don't care because his hands are already moving, already taking.

He spins you suddenly, presses your back against the door, and then his hands are everywhere. One slides up to cradle your throat—not squeezing, just holding, feeling your pulse flutter against his palm. The other pushes your shirt up, fingertips tracing your ribs like he's memorizing you through touch alone.

"So soft," he murmurs, and it sounds like prayer. "How are you so fucking soft?"

His thumb finds the hollow of your throat, presses gently, and your head falls back against the door. He makes a sound like you've killed him, and then his mouth is on your neck, open and hot and desperate. Still not kissing exactly—more like tasting, like he needs to experience you with every sense.

Your hands come up to clutch at his shoulders, and he crowds closer, presses you harder against the door. His thigh slides between yours, and the pressure makes you gasp, makes your hips cant forward involuntarily.

"That's it," he breathes against your throat. "Let me feel you. Let me—"

His hand at your throat slides down, palms the curve of your breast through your bra, and the sound you make is embarrassing and needy and you don't care because he echoes it, his hips pressing forward to pin you completely.

"Been dying," he confesses against your collarbone, words muffled by skin and want. "Every day, dying by inches. Watching you walk past, smelling your shampoo in the hallways, hearing your laugh and knowing I couldn't—"

"You could have." Your hands find his hair, tangle in the sweat-damp strands, and he groans. "This whole time, you could have—"

"No." He pulls back to look at you, and his pupils are blown so wide there's barely any blue left. "Would've destroyed you. Consumed you. The bond, the way I need you—it's not normal. It's not healthy."

"I don't care."

"You should." But even as he says it, his hand is sliding up your ribs again, fingertips tracing patterns that make you shiver. "You should be terrified of how much I want you. How much I need to—"

He cuts himself off, jaw clenching, but his body betrays him. His hips press forward, and you can feel him hard against your hip, can feel the way he's shaking with want.

"Show me," you breathe, and he makes a sound like you've shot him.

"You don't know what you're asking."

"Then show me."

His control snaps like a rubber band stretched past its limit.

His mouth finds yours with the kind of desperation that makes your knees buckle, and it's nothing like you imagined during those long, empty nights. Nothing soft or careful or sweet. This is drowning. This is Steve Rogers trying to climb inside your skin through your mouth, one hand fisted in your hair to angle your head exactly how he needs it, the other pressed flat between your shoulder blades like he's trying to fuse your chest to his.

His tongue slides against yours, hot and demanding, and you taste copper—blood from where he's bitten his lip raw—mixed with something that's just fundamentally him. Something that makes your brain short-circuit, makes you grab at his shoulders just to stay upright. The bond roars to life under your skin, weeks of rejection suddenly reversed, and the whimper that escapes you would be embarrassing if you could think past the electricity racing through your veins.

"Fuck," he breathes against your mouth, not really pulling back, just speaking the word into you like he needs you to swallow it. His teeth catch your bottom lip, tug just hard enough to make you gasp, and he uses the opportunity to lick deeper into your mouth, thorough and filthy and completely at odds with Captain America's public persona.

Your back hits the door harder as he presses closer, and you can feel how affected he is—the way his chest heaves against yours, the tremor in his hands, the hard length of him pressed against your hip. It's overwhelming and not enough, too much and not nearly—

"Perfect," he growls, breaking away just long enough to trail his mouth down your jaw, teeth scraping in a way that's definitely going to leave marks. "You're so fucking perfect. Do you have any idea—" His hand slides under your shirt, fingertips tracing your ribs like he's mapping you for memory, "—what you do to me? How many meetings I've had to leave because you walked by and I could smell you?"

"Steve." Your voice comes out wrecked, barely recognizable. Your hands are in his hair now, tugging probably too hard, but he groans like you've given him a gift.

"I know, sweetheart. I know." His mouth finds your pulse point and sucks, and your vision whites out for a second. "I've got you. Let me—just let me—"

His hands shift with purpose now, one sliding down to grip your hip hard enough to bruise, the other pushing your shirt up, up, until cool air hits your stomach. And then—Jesus Christ—he's dropping to his knees with a fluidity that shouldn't be possible for someone his size, pressing his mouth to the skin above your waistband like communion.

You look down and nearly combust. Captain America—Steve—on his knees in a supply closet, eyes closed like he's praying, pressing open-mouthed kisses to your stomach that are somehow both worshipful and obscene. His tongue traces the line where your pants sit low on your hips, and your hands fly to his shoulders because your legs have forgotten how to work.

"Should've been doing this for months," he murmurs against your hipbone, and you feel the words more than hear them, vibrating through skin and muscle and straight to your core. "Should've been worshipping you. Should've—" His voice cracks, and suddenly his arms are banded around your waist, his forehead pressed to your stomach like he's hiding. "That man today, when his bond broke—the sound he made—"

"Steve." You card your fingers through his hair, gentle this time, trying to soothe whatever demon is riding him. He shudders against you, full-body, and presses closer.

"I can't lose you." The words come out muffled by your skin, but the desperation in them is crystal clear. "I can't. I won't survive it."

"You won't lose me."

It's probably a lie. You're both in a dangerous line of work. People die. Bonds break. But right now, with him on his knees looking like you're the answer to every prayer he's never let himself voice, you'd promise him anything.

"Promise." His hands tighten on your waist, and when he looks up at you, his eyes are wild, desperate, nothing like the composed soldier the world knows. "Promise me."

"I promise."

He surges up and kisses you again, different this time. Still desperate but searching, like he's trying to memorize you—the shape of your mouth, the sound you make when his tongue slides against yours, the way you shake when his thumb brushes the underside of your breast through your bra. It's overwhelming in a different way, intensity without hurry, and you're dizzy with it, drunk on the sensation of being wanted this badly by someone who's spent months pretending you don't exist.

When he finally pulls back, you're both wrecked. His lips are swollen, slick, and his pupils are blown so wide there's barely any blue left. You probably look worse—you can feel your hair sticking to your face with sweat, your mouth tender and used.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, thumbs stroking your cheekbones with a gentleness that makes your chest ache. "For Brussels. For after. For being such a fucking coward."

"I know." You do. It doesn't fix anything, not yet, but you know.

"I'll make it up to you." His thumb traces your lower lip, and you can't help the way your tongue darts out to taste it, salt and skin and Steve. His breath hitches. "However long it takes."

"You can start now." It comes out more breathless than the sultry suggestion you were aiming for, but something about your desperation makes his eyes go dark again.

He laughs, rough and ruined, and presses one more kiss to your mouth—this one soft, almost chaste, if not for the way his hand tightens possessively in your hair.

"Tonight," he says, and it sounds like a prayer. "Let me—let me shower, change, become human again. And then dinner. Real dinner. Where I pick you up and we go somewhere and I don't run when the bond makes me feel everything."

"And if you run?" You're trying for threatening but it comes out vulnerable, scared. Because he's run before. He's so good at running.

His hand slides to your throat, not squeezing, just holding, thumb pressed to where your pulse hammers against your skin. "You have my full permission to hunt me down and make my life hell."

"I will." And you mean it. You're done being the one left behind, the one reaching for someone who's already gone.

"I'm counting on it."

He steps back, and the loss of contact hits like cold water. Your skin feels too tight, too sensitive, nerve endings firing confused signals—where is he, why isn't he touching us, bring him back. You can see him feeling it too, the way his hands clench and unclench at his sides, the way his body sways toward you like you've got your own gravitational pull.

"Tonight. Eight o'clock."

"Steve?"

"Yeah?"

"Next time you have a bad mission, come find me. Don't wait. Don't hide. Just—come find me."

Something in his expression cracks open, vulnerable and raw and so un-Captain America it makes your heart skip. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He kisses you one more time—quick, fierce, a brand, a promise—and then he's gone, leaving you slumped against the door on legs that feel like jello. Your mouth is swollen, your skin still burning everywhere he touched, and you're pretty sure you've soaked through your underwear, but the bond...

For the first time in months, the bond doesn't ache.

It purrs.

It fucking purrs.

Tonight. Eight o'clock.

You're going to need a very long shower. And possibly a new pair of pants.

And maybe—just maybe—you're going to get what the universe has been trying to give you all along.

Even if you're not Peggy Carter. Even if you're just the consolation prize.

Right now, with the taste of him still on your tongue and bruises already forming on your hips in the shape of his fingers, you can't bring yourself to care.

"Tell me about Peggy," you say, and it comes out embarrassingly breathy because Steve's just shifted his hips in a way that makes stars explode behind your eyelids.

"Fuck." His hands tighten on your hips, fingers digging into soft flesh with bruising intensity. The pressure sends heat pooling low in your belly, makes your inner muscles flutter around him. "Can we... not?"

It's not the most unreasonable request in the world. He's inside you, after all, thick and perfect and stretching you in ways that make coherent thought impossible. You're straddling him on the couch, and he's maneuvering you exactly how he wants—one hand gripping your hip hard enough to leave fingerprints, the other splayed possessively across your lower back, controlling your rhythm with casual strength that makes you dizzy. Like you weigh nothing. Like you're his to position and please and wreck completely.

"Bucky says—"

A growl rumbles through his chest at the name, vibrating through your body where you're joined. His hand slides from your back to your throat in one fluid motion. Just resting there, feeling your pulse race beneath his palm. A reminder. A warning.

"Another man's name?" His voice is dark, edged with something primal that makes your stomach flip. "While I'm inside you?"

You gasp as he lifts you slightly, changes the angle, and your thighs shake with the effort of holding yourself up. "S-says she's the reason you stopped believing in soulmates."

Steve goes still. Not completely—he's still buried deep, still hard, still breathing like he's barely holding onto control—but his hands stop their restless movement, and his eyes snap to yours with something like exasperation mixed with disbelief.

"Are we really doing this?" His thumb presses against your pulse point, and you feel your heartbeat stutter. "You want to talk about someone else while I'm trying to fuck you through this couch?"

"I just—oh god—" Your train of thought derails as he rolls his hips up, deliberate and punishing, hitting that spot that makes your vision white out.

"What you need," he says, voice dropping to that Captain-giving-orders tone that should not work in this context but absolutely does, "is to stop overthinking and let me take care of you."

One hand slides up your spine to tangle in your hair, tugging just hard enough to make your neck arch, exposing your throat to his mouth. The other grips your hip, holding you still as he rolls his hips again, controlled and devastating.

"She wasn't my soulmate." The words are pressed hot against your throat between open-mouthed kisses that feel more like claims. "Loved her, yes. A long time ago. Thought I'd marry her if I survived the war. But she wasn't mine."

His teeth graze your collarbone, and your whole body shudders, nerve endings singing. The bond between you pulses with each heartbeat, amplifying every sensation until you can't tell if the pleasure is yours or his or some perfect fusion of both.

"Not the way you are." His hand in your hair tightens, forces you to meet his eyes. They're blown dark, barely any blue remaining. "Not even close to the way you are."

"But—"

"Sweetheart." He stops moving entirely, and you make a sound of protest that would mortify you if you could think past the need coiling tight in your belly. "Listen very carefully, because I'm only saying this once."

His hand leaves your throat to frame your face, thumb stroking across your cheekbone with gentleness that contrasts sharply with the possessive grip in your hair.

"She chose someone else. Her actual soulmate. And yeah, it messed me up. Made me think the universe was laughing at me." His hips flex slightly, involuntarily, and you both gasp. "But you know what I realized?"

"What?" The word comes out wrecked, barely audible.

"The universe wasn't wrong. I was." He releases your hair only to grip the back of your neck, holding you steady as he starts to move again, slow and deep and deliberate and exquisite. "I wasn't meant for that time. If she'd been my soulmate, I'd have stayed in the forties. Lived a quiet life. Had the house and the kids and the picket fence."

"That sounds—"

"Like everything I thought I wanted," he agrees, punctuating the words with a particularly deep thrust that has you seeing stars. "Until I woke up here. Until you walked into that briefing room two years ago, looking so goddamn competent and untouchable, and my body knew you were mine before my brain could catch up."

Your nails dig into his shoulders as he picks up the pace, and you feel his pleasure spike through the bond, mixing with yours until you can't separate them.

"I fought belonging here for so long," he continues, voice getting rougher, more breathless. "But you—Christ, you make me want to stay. Make me grateful the ice gave me you instead of her."

"Steve—"

"That’s it, sweetheart. No more names but mine," he commands, and then he's kissing you, deep and claiming and filthy. His tongue slides against yours, and you taste desperation and possession and something that feels dangerously close to devotion. When he pulls back, you're both panting. "And I want to keep hearing it. Preferably screamed."

You nod, words beyond you, and something dark and satisfied flashes across his face.

"Good girl."

The praise shoots straight through you, makes your cunt clench around him. He groans, forehead dropping to your shoulder, and his control finally, blessedly shatters.

He fucks up into you with purpose now, each thrust deliberate and devastating. His hands are everywhere—gripping your hips, sliding up your ribs, palming your breasts with possessive familiarity. Every touch feels magnified, the soul bond amplifying sensation until you're drowning in it. You can feel his pleasure mixing with yours, feeding back on itself in an endless loop that has you both gasping, clutching at each other like you might dissolve without the anchor of skin on skin.

"This is what I think about," he confesses against your throat, words punctuated by the snap of his hips. "Not the past. Not her. You. Always you. How you feel around me, how you taste, the sounds you make when you're close."

Your nails rake down his back hard enough to leave marks, and he hisses, the pain-pleasure bleeding through the bond making you both groan.

"The serum," he pants, rhythm getting erratic. "Fuck, the goddamn serum makes everything more intense. Every touch, every—I can feel you everywhere. In my blood, in my bones. Under my skin where I couldn't get you out even if I wanted to."

"Don't want you to," you manage, chasing your release, that coil in your belly wound so tight you might shatter.

"Never." It's a vow pressed into your skin with teeth and tongue. "Never letting you go. Mine. My soulmate, my—fuck, I'm close—"

His hand slides between your bodies, thumb finding your clit with unerring accuracy, and you're gone. The orgasm crashes over you like a tidal wave, pleasure so intense it borders on transcendent. You do scream his name, just like he wanted, and he follows you over, your name on his lips like a prayer, his hands holding you against him like you might evaporate if he loosens his grip.

You collapse against his chest, both of you panting, sweat-slick and trembling. The bond hums between you, satisfied and warm, and for the first time in months, you feel whole.

"So," you say once you can form words again, unable to help yourself, "just to be clear—"

He flips you suddenly, pressing your back into the couch cushions, and the predatory look in his eyes makes your breath catch. He's still hard, still inside you, and when he rolls his hips experimentally, you both groan.

"You want clarity?" His voice is dark, promising. He hitches your leg higher around his waist, slides deeper, and your head falls back. "Let me be very, very clear."

He pulls almost all the way out, then slides back in with devastating slowness, making you feel every inch.

"You are the only person I think about," he says, setting a rhythm that's slow and deep and intentional. "The only person I want. The only person who's ever made me grateful to be exactly where I am, when I am."

His hand slides up your thigh, grips behind your knee to open you wider, and the new angle has you gasping, clutching at his shoulders.

"The past is the past," he continues, voice steady despite the way his control is visibly fraying, tendons standing out in his neck. "And I plan to spend my future making up for lost time. Starting now."

"Steve—"

"That's it," he praises when you say his name, and rewards you with a particularly deep thrust that has your back arching off the couch. "Just like that. Let me show you exactly how not hung up on the past I am."

And he does.

Thoroughly.

By the time he's finally satisfied you understand, you've forgotten not just her name, but your own. The only thing that exists is him, the bond between you singing with contentment, and the absolute certainty that the universe knew exactly what it was doing.

Even if it took Steve Rogers seven decades to appreciate the gift.

Bucky had volunteered before Sam could even finish inhaling to make what would've undoubtedly been a joke about your hard head.

"I'll do it."

Three words. Gravel-rough. Final. The kind of tone that made everyone else in the room shift their weight, suddenly finding other places to be.

Now he was sprawled in the chair beside your bed, one boot propped on the rail, and you were trying real hard not to notice how his tactical pants pulled across his thighs. How his metal fingers drummed against his knee. Tap tap tap. Like he was counting seconds. Or fighting something. The rhythm was hypnotic, steady, and you found yourself breathing in time with it without meaning to.

Your skin felt too tight, prickling with awareness every time he shifted. The chair creaked under his weight, old plastic and metal protesting, and each sound sent little sparks down your spine. You could map his presence without looking: the space he took up, the way the air felt heavier on your left side where he sat, the heat that seemed to radiate from him despite the three inches between his knee and your hip.

The curtain around your bed was a joke. Tissue-paper privacy. You could hear everything. Nat two beds over telling Clint he was an idiot, machines beeping their electronic heartbeats, someone's sneakers squeaking against linoleum. Could probably hear you breathing too heavy, too aware of how Bucky kept looking at you sideways, pupils blown dark in the harsh medical lighting.

"Stop staring at the ceiling."

You hadn't realized your eyes were drifting shut until his voice cut through the fog. Low. Commanding in that quiet way he had, like he expected to be obeyed without raising his voice. When you turned your head (mistake, fuck, the room tilted like a ship in rough seas) he was leaning forward, elbows on knees. Close enough you could smell gunpowder clinging to his clothes. Sweat drying on his skin.

Something indefinable that made your thighs press together involuntarily, muscles clenching with a need you'd been ignoring for months.

"Wasn't."

"You're a shit liar."

His flesh hand found your ankle through the blanket, thumb pressing into the hollow below the bone. Just that. Just his thumb on your fucking ankle, and your whole body went electric. Heat bloomed from that single point of contact, spreading up your leg like wildfire, pooling low in your belly where it turned liquid and wanting.

"Talk to me." Not a request. "Need to know that brain's still working."

The authority in his voice made something in your chest flutter and drop. You swallowed, throat clicking dry. Your pulse was everywhere suddenly: throat, wrists, between your legs where you were already getting embarrassingly wet from his thumb on your ankle. Jesus.

"It's working." But your voice came out wrong. Rough. Like you'd been screaming. Or like you wanted to. Your tongue felt thick in your mouth, clumsy with the effort of forming words when all your blood was rushing south.

"Yeah?" His hand slid higher, fingers wrapping around your calf through the thin hospital blanket. The pressure was firm, possessive, his thumb stroking along the muscle in a way that made your breath catch. "Tell me something then. Anything. Mission report. Grocery list." A pause, his grip tightening just a fraction. "Why you've been looking at me like that for months."

The words hit like cold water down your spine, shocking and clarifying all at once. Your stomach dropped, rolled, settled somewhere near your knees. Heat flooded your face, your chest, spreading like wildfire under your skin.

You jackknifed up. Another mistake. The room spun violently, nausea rising fast, and his other hand shot out to steady you. Metal fingers splayed across your ribcage, right below your breast, and you both froze.

The cold of the metal burned through the thin hospital gown, each individual finger plate pressing into your skin like a brand. You could feel the mechanical whir of the joints, barely audible but vibrating against your ribs. Your nipple hardened instantly, visible through the thin fabric, and his eyes tracked the movement.

"Like what?" But you knew. God, you knew. Your voice came out breathy, giving you away.

You had been trying so hard not to be obvious about it. The way you tracked him during briefings, eyes following the movement of his hands as he gestured. How training sessions always ended with you pressed against the mat, his weight holding you down, both of you breathing too hard for it to be about the spar. The way your skin felt too sensitive for hours afterward, phantom pressure of his grip lingering on your wrists.

"You know what." His thumb was moving in circles on your calf. Small. Deliberate. Testing. His metal hand hadn't moved from your ribs. You could feel each segment of the joints, the barely-there warmth where flesh met machine at his shoulder, conducting down through the prosthetic. "Same way I look at you."

Your heart stuttered, actually skipped a beat in your chest. Heat pooled low in your belly, liquid and urgent. Your underwear was definitely wet now, clinging to sensitive skin.

Someone laughed nearby. The spell should've broken. Should've had him pulling back, you making a joke, both of you pretending this wasn't happening. Instead, his hands tightened. Claimed. His flesh hand slid higher, fingers spanning your knee now, and the possession in that grip made your inner walls clench around nothing.

"Bucky..."

"Been driving me fucking insane." The words tumbled out like he'd been holding them back with his teeth. Raw. Unfiltered. "Months of watching you. The way you move. Do you have any idea what you look like after training?" His eyes tracked down your body, pupils dilating as his gaze lingered on the rapid rise and fall of your chest. "Skin all flushed. Breathing hard. That look in your eyes like you could go another round, like you're just getting started. Fuck, I can't..."

He broke off, jaw clenching so hard you could hear his teeth grind. A muscle jumped in his cheek, his control fraying at the edges.

"Don't." It came out before you could stop it, breathless and rushed. Your skin was burning, too tight, too sensitive. Every nerve ending screaming for contact. "Be good, I mean. Don't. You don't have to do that."

His eyes snapped to yours. Dark. Dangerous. The kind of look that preceded very bad decisions.

"You're concussed."

"So?"

"So you're not thinking straight."

"I'm thinking just fine." Your hand found his wrist. The flesh one, the one attached to fingers still making those maddening circles on your skin. His pulse hammered under your fingertips, fast and hard, betraying his calm exterior. "Been thinking about this for months. About you. What you'd feel like. How you'd..."

Your breath hitched as his thumb pressed harder, finding a sensitive spot behind your knee you didn't know existed. The pressure sent electricity shooting up your thigh, making your cunt clench with want.

"Stop." But his hand was sliding higher, past your knee now, fingertips grazing the soft skin of your inner thigh, and his breathing had gone ragged. Harsh. His metal hand flexed against your ribs, a mechanical whir that sounded loud as a gunshot in the quiet. "Someone could see, baby."

"Yeah." You were burning up. Skin too tight. Your cunt was throbbing, clenching, already wet enough that you could feel it starting to soak through your underwear. The thin hospital gown felt like too much and not enough all at once. "They could."

"Fuck."

His metal hand shifted, thumb brushing the underside of your breast through the gown, and you couldn't stop the soft noise that escaped. Your nipple hardened instantly, visible through the thin fabric, and his eyes tracked the movement like a predator tracking prey.

"You're gonna kill me." Low. Rough. Barely audible.

"No sleeping, right?" You were playing with fire and you knew it. Could see it in the way his jaw worked, the muscle jumping under stubbled skin. The way his flesh hand had gone still on your thigh, fingers pressed deep enough to leave marks. "Gotta keep me awake somehow."

He didn't respond. Just stared at you with those dark eyes, breathing too controlled, too measured. The silence stretched between you, taut as a wire, until you couldn't stand it anymore.

"Touch me." Desperate. Raw. Your hips lifted slightly off the bed without your permission, seeking. "Please, Bucky. I need... I've needed—"

His hand moved so fast you didn't see it. One second it was on your thigh, the next it was between your legs, cupping you through underwear that was already embarrassingly wet. The heel of his hand ground against your clit and your whole body arched, spine bowing off the mattress.

The pressure was perfect and not enough, too much fabric between you and what you needed. Your mouth fell open on a silent gasp, eyes rolling back as he pressed harder.

"Quiet." His voice had dropped an octave. Dangerous. The tone that meant follow orders or face consequences. "You want this, you stay quiet. Understand?"

The authority in his voice made your cunt clench, empty and aching. You nodded frantically, already trembling. He'd barely touched you and you were coming apart. Months of want crashing down all at once, making you dizzy with need. Or maybe that was the concussion. Hard to tell when his fingers were stroking along the edge of your underwear, teasing. So close to where you needed them.

"Words."

"Yes." Barely a whisper. "I can... I'll be quiet."

"Good girl."

The praise hit you like a physical thing. Warmth spread through your chest even as your cunt clenched, desperate for friction. You bit your lip hard, tasting copper, trying to hold back the whimper building in your throat.

He watched your face with an intensity that made you want to hide and display yourself all at once. His fingers played with the elastic of your underwear, dipping just underneath before retreating. Teasing. Making you wait. Making you want.

"Been thinking about this, you know." Quiet. Almost conversational if not for the rough edge to his voice. "For months. How wet you'd get. What sounds you'd make."

His fingers slipped under the elastic finally, and the first touch of skin on skin made you both shudder. You could feel the calluses on his fingers, rough against sensitive flesh.

"Christ." His fingers slipped under the elastic, and the first touch of skin on skin made you both shudder. "You're—fuck, you're soaked. Fucking dripping for me."

Two fingers pushed inside without warning and your vision whited out. The stretch burned in the best way. Thick fingers, filling you, his metal hand spanning your ribs to keep you steady. You could hear everything: footsteps in the distance, the lewd, wet sound as he withdrew his fingers just to push them back in deeper, the catch in his breath when your inner walls spasmed around him.

Your hand flew to your mouth, muffling the moan that wanted to escape. The tendons in your neck stood out with the effort of staying quiet, staying still, when every instinct screamed to rock down onto his fingers. To chase the pressure building in your belly.

"Look at you." His thumb found your clit, circling with devastating precision. The callus on his thumb caught on the sensitive bundle of nerves just right, making your thighs shake. "Taking it so good, sweetheart. That's it, nice and easy."

His fingers curled inside you, finding that spot that made stars explode behind your eyelids. Your free hand fisted in the sheets, knuckles white, the cheap fabric tearing under your grip. The pressure was building too fast, coiling tight in your belly like a spring wound too far. Your inner walls fluttered around his fingers, drawing them deeper, trying to keep them inside.

"There she is." Dark satisfaction in his voice. "God fucking damn, I can feel how close you are."

Voices. Getting closer. Multiple people, from the sound of it.

Bucky's fingers stilled inside you but didn't withdraw. You made a wounded noise behind your hand and his metal fingers came up to cover your mouth, cool against your overheated skin.

"Shh." His lips were at your ear, breath hot against your neck. "Not a sound."

The torture of it. His fingers buried inside you, stretching you, filling you, but not moving. Your whole body was wound tight as a bow string, clit throbbing against his thumb. You could hear the conversation clearly now. Nurses discussing shift changes. Normal, mundane, while you were spread open and dripping on Bucky's fingers.

Your cunt clenched involuntarily around him and his breath hitched against your ear.

"Quiet." His lips were at your ear, breath hot against your neck. "They're right there, sweetheart. Right fucking there and you're spread open on my fingers." His thumb pressed against your clit—not moving, just firm, steady pressure that made you see stars. "Can you be quiet for me? Huh? Can you be good?"

A whimper escaped behind his hand. Your whole body was shaking with the effort of staying still, thighs trembling, stomach muscles clenched so tight they ached. You were so close, teetering on the edge, just needing a little more pressure, a little more movement.

"'Atta girl," he breathed, and you clenched harder around his fingers. "Being so fucking sweet for me. Just a little longer."

The voices finally faded. Footsteps retreating down the hall. But Bucky waited. One heartbeat. Two. Your chest was heaving, spots dancing in your vision from holding your breath.

Then his fingers were moving again, hard and fast and deep and obscene and exactly what you needed. His metal hand left your mouth to wrap around your throat. Not squeezing, but claiming. Feeling your pulse hammer against his palm like a trapped bird.

"Come for me."

The command in his voice, the pressure of his fingers, the way his thumb pressed against your clit. It was too much. The orgasm hit like a freight train, sudden and overwhelming, every nerve ending firing at once. You bit down on your lip hard enough to draw blood, body convulsing around his fingers. Your cunt clenched rhythmically, pulling his fingers deeper, and he worked you through every second of it. Drawing it out until you were shaking, oversensitive, pushing weakly at his wrist.

"Beautiful," he rasped, slowly withdrawing his fingers. They were soaked, glistening in the harsh fluorescent light. He brought them to his mouth without hesitation, and the sound he made when he tasted you—low, guttural, hungry—made your exhausted cunt clench with renewed interest.

Jesus Christ. Your thighs pressed together, trying to ease the renewed ache between them. Your whole body felt liquid, boneless, like you might melt into the mattress.

"Bucky." You didn't know what you were asking for. Everything. Anything. Your voice was wrecked, barely a whisper.

"Five more hours."

His eyes tracked over your body, taking in your flushed skin, the way your chest still heaved, the visible wetness on your thighs. The promise in his gaze made you shiver.

The bed dipped suddenly, the narrow mattress protesting as he stood and then climbed onto it, stretching out beside you.

"Scoot over."

"What? There's no room."

"Then we make room."

His arm went around your waist, hauling you back against his chest with easy strength, and suddenly you were surrounded by him. Heat. Solid muscle. The unmistakable press of his cock against your ass, hard and insistent through tactical gear. The length of him, the thickness you could feel even through layers of fabric, made your mouth go dry.

Your breath caught. He was so much bigger than you like this, curved around your body, making you feel small. Protected. Owned. His metal arm banded across your stomach, holding you in place with gentle but unbreakable strength.

"Someone will see," you gasped, repeating his words from earlier.

"Let them."

His flesh hand was already moving under the hospital gown, palm sliding over your stomach, your ribs, cupping your breast like he had every right to it. Your nipple was already hard, sensitive, and when his fingers found it, rolling it between thumb and forefinger, your back arched involuntarily. The sensation shot straight to your cunt, making you clench around nothing.

He didn't say anything. Just held you there, fingers playing with your nipple while his cock pressed insistently against your ass. You could feel him breathing, chest rising and falling against your back, controlled but not quite steady.

You pressed back instinctively and his breath hitched.

"Careful." Warning in his tone. His hand tightened on your breast, just shy of painful. "You're hurt. Not gonna—fuck, sweetheart, don't move like that."

But your hips were already rolling in small circles, grinding back against him. You could feel how big he was through the tactical pants, how hard, and your cunt clenched with want despite the orgasm still making your thighs shake. The friction wasn't enough, too many layers between you, but it was something.

"Can't help it." True. Your body moved without permission, seeking friction, pressure, him. Every roll of your hips made him twitch against you, made his breathing rougher. "Want—"

"I know what you want."

His metal hand slid down, fingers finding you still wet, still swollen. Two fingers pushed inside without warning and you keened, muffling the sound in his shoulder. The angle was different like this, deeper, his palm grinding against your clit with each movement.

"You want my cock." A statement, not question. His voice was wrecked, barely controlled. "Want me to fuck you right here where anyone could see. That right?"

You nodded frantically, beyond words. His fingers were moving steady, deep, curling to hit that spot that made your vision blur at the edges. Your hips rocked between his hand and his cock, chasing pressure from both sides.

"Can't." But his hips were moving now too, grinding against your ass in rhythm with his fingers. The friction, the heat of him even through clothes, was driving you insane. "Not here, baby. Not when I can't..."

His breath caught as you clenched around his fingers, inner walls fluttering, trying to pull him deeper.

"Fuck."

Someone walked past your curtain. Close enough that the fabric rustled. Bucky's fingers didn't stop, if anything moved faster, and you had to turn your face into his shoulder to muffle the keening noise building in your throat.

The wet sounds seemed impossibly loud in the quiet bay. His fingers moving in and out, your slick arousal making everything easier, messier. You could feel it on your thighs, probably soaking through your hospital gown.

"Such a good girl." Quiet. Reverent almost, tinged with awe. "Taking it so sweet for me."

His voice broke as you ground back particularly hard against his cock, the friction making him thrust forward involuntarily. You could feel him throbbing through the pants, could feel the damp spot where he was leaking pre-come.

"Gonna make me come in my fucking pants, doll."

The image of Bucky losing control—coming just from this—made your cunt clench hard around his fingers. He groaned, low and rough, his cock twitching against you. His control was slipping, you could feel it in the way his fingers moved faster, less controlled, more desperate.

His fingers curled, finding that spot inside that made your vision go white at the edges. Your body was shaking, overwhelmed, another orgasm building impossibly fast. Too much. Too sensitive. But his metal arm held you in place, keeping you right where he wanted you.

"One more." Not a request. A wet kiss to your cheek, warm and mocking. "Give me one more."

His thumb pressed hard against your clit, fingers curling insistently, and that was it. You came with a muffled sob, body convulsing in his arms. This orgasm was different. Deeper, rolling through you in waves that seemed to go on forever. You could feel yourself gushing around his fingers, soaking his hand, definitely soaking the sheets. Your vision went white, then black at the edges, everything narrowing to the pleasure coursing through your body.

He worked you through it until you were boneless, whimpering, aftershocks making you twitch with every movement of his fingers. When he finally withdrew them, you could hear how wet they were. Feel the evidence of your orgasm cooling on your thighs, between your legs, probably visible even through the gown.

He brought his fingers to your lips.

"Open."

You did without thinking, tasting yourself on his skin. Salt and need and the metal tang of his prosthetic where it pressed against your chin. His cock jumped against your ass and his breathing went ragged, harsh, like he was barely holding on.

"Jesus Christ." Muttered against your neck, his breath warm. "Four more hours."

Four more hours.

You shivered, cunt aching despite your exhaustion. Your whole body felt wrung out, oversensitive, every nerve ending still firing randomly. But you could already feel the heat building again, slow and insistent.

"Don't think I'll survive," you whispered, honest.

His laugh was dark, full of promise.

"You will." His fingers were already sliding between your legs again, finding you swollen and sensitive and wet, so fucking wet. "Gonna take such good care of you. Gonna keep you awake."

The promise in his voice made you shiver. Four more hours of this. Four more hours of his hands, his mouth, his controlled breathing breaking apart when you pressed against him just right. Four more hours of being held down, held open, taken apart piece by piece while trying to stay quiet.

You were definitely going to die.

But what a way to go.

His fingers slipped inside again, and you whimpered from the oversensitivity. Gentle this time, just barely moving. Just enough to keep you on edge, to keep you present, to keep you from drifting off. The concussion made everything feel distant and immediate at once, like you were floating and drowning simultaneously.

"Stay with me." Quiet command. His lips pressed against your neck, not quite a kiss. "No sleeping."

"Hard to sleep when you're..." You lost the words as his fingers curled, a slow, deliberate movement that made your whole body tighten. Another strangled breath escaped your throat as you squirmed against him, dizzy and hungry.

"When I'm what?"

"You know what."

"Want to hear you say it."

But you couldn't. Not with his fingers moving like that, not with his cock pressed against you, not with the way your body was already building toward another orgasm despite being wrung out. Instead you just pressed back against him, letting your body say what your mouth couldn't.

"Four more hours," he said again, and this time it definitely sounded like a promise.

Your fingers trembled as you pinned your hair, the bobby pins slipping twice before catching hold. Each attempt sent a fresh wave of heat crawling up your neck, perspiration beading along your hairline despite the cool October air seeping through the window. The mirror reflected a stranger—someone trying too hard to be something she wasn't. You pressed your palms flat against the vanity, feeling the wood grain bite into your skin, and forced yourself to take three deep breaths.

The knock came at exactly eight o'clock.

Your stomach dropped like a stone thrown down a well, that nauseating freefall sensation making you grip the doorknob for balance. That now-familiar cocktail of dread and something else—something that made heat pool low in your belly and your thighs clench involuntarily—washed over you in waves. You pressed damp palms against the dress's scratchy fabric, feeling the cheap material catch on your calluses, and opened the door.

Bucky Barnes leaned against your doorframe in a black suit that probably cost more than your father's funeral. The hallway light caught the sharp angles of his face, throwing shadows that made him look carved from marble. Beautiful and terrifying in equal measure. His hair was slicked back again, not a strand out of place, emphasizing the cutting edge of his cheekbones. His eyes traveled from your carefully pinned hair to your sensible shoes in one long, assessing sweep that made your skin prickle with awareness.

His mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "That what you bought with my money?"

Pride stiffened your spine, vertebrae clicking into alignment like soldiers at attention. "I didn't use your money."

"No?" He pushed off the doorframe, moving into your space with that predatory grace that made your pulse skip and stutter. The smell of him invaded your lungs—expensive cologne layered over something darker, more dangerous. Cigarettes and leather and that underlying scent that was purely him, purely male. "Then what'd you do with it? Stash it under your mattress like a good little miser?"

"I—" The words stuck in your throat like a fishbone as he circled you slowly, each step deliberate, measured. You could feel the weight of his gaze like hands on your body, assessing, cataloging. The air displaced by his movement raised goosebumps along your arms. "I wanted to use my own money."

"Your own money." He came to a stop directly in front of you, close enough that you had to tilt your head back to meet his eyes. The movement exposed your throat, made you feel vulnerable as a lamb before a wolf. "And this is what your money buys? Department store clearance rack?"

Heat flooded your cheeks, the burn spreading down your neck to your chest. Your fingers found the fabric at your waist, worrying the seam. "It's perfectly nice—"

"It's perfectly boring." His fingers caught the fabric at your waist, rubbing it between thumb and forefinger with obvious disdain. The brush of his knuckles against your ribs made your breath hitch, diaphragm spasming. "Scratchy. Cheap. The kind of dress a secretary wears when she's trying to catch her boss's attention and failing."

The casual cruelty of it made your eyes sting, tears threatening at the corners. Your throat constricted, narrow as a reed. You'd tried so hard, spent money you couldn't afford, and still—

"We're gonna be late," he said, already turning toward the door. "Get your coat. Unless you plan on wearing a flour sack to keep warm too?"

You grabbed your mother's old wool coat with shaking fingers, the familiar weight of it both comforting and shameful. Your cheeks burned like someone had slapped them, the humiliation a physical thing that sat heavy in your chest. But as you followed him to the waiting car, you caught something in his reflection in the window—a tightness around his mouth, the way his jaw muscle jumped like he was grinding his teeth.

The car was another reminder of the gulf between you: a pristine black Cadillac with leather seats that creaked expensively when you slid in. The smell of leather and lemon polish made your empty stomach turn. Bucky held the door open, a mockery of gentlemanly behavior that felt more like herding a sheep to slaughter.

"Scoot over," he ordered, sliding in beside you instead of taking the front seat.

The bench seat shrank to nothing with him next to you. His thigh pressed against yours through layers of fabric, the heat of him seeping through like a brand. You could feel the solid muscle of his leg, the way it flexed when he shifted. Your skin felt too tight, hypersensitive where he touched you and aching where he didn't.

"I could have—"

"Listen carefully," he interrupted, not looking at you as the driver pulled away from the curb. His profile was sharp as cut glass in the passing streetlights. "My family doesn't know about your father's debt. Far as they're concerned, you're just some girl I met. We clear?"

You nodded, but your throat had closed up entirely, vocal cords frozen.

"Words, dollface. Use them."

The command in his tone made something hot and liquid pool in your belly. "Yes. Clear."

"Good." He lit a cigarette with practiced motions, the orange glow briefly illuminating the angles of his face. The smell of tobacco mixed with his cologne, creating a scent that was becoming dangerously familiar. "They're gonna ask questions. How we met, what you do, where you come from. Keep it simple. Closer to the truth, the better. You work at a factory. We met at a diner. I liked your smile or some shit like that."

"My smile?" Your voice came out breathy, uncertain.

He glanced at you then, something unreadable flickering in his eyes like heat lightning. "Yeah, well. It's believable enough. You do have a nice smile when you're not looking like someone killed your puppy."

The unexpected almost-compliment made your chest constrict, ribs suddenly too small for your lungs. "What else should I know?"

"Just..." He took a long drag, the ember casting shadows on his face. When he exhaled, you watched the smoke curl from his lips, found yourself wondering if his mouth would taste like ash. "Try not to let them see you're scared. They're like wolves—they smell fear, they attack. Keep your head up, answer direct questions, and for Christ's sake, don't volunteer information."

"Are they really that bad?"

His laugh was humorless, more bark than mirth. "My old man could order someone's death between the soup and the fish course and not miss a bite. So yeah, dollface. They're that bad."

Your stomach turned to water, sloshing uncomfortably with each turn of the car. The Barnes estate squatted on the edge of Brooklyn like a fortress, all stone and shadow and implicit threat. Even in the gathering darkness, you could make out the elaborate gates, the guards who watched the car pass with flat, reptilian eyes. Their gazes felt like cold fingers trailing down your spine.

Your hands twisted in your lap, nails digging crescents into your palms hard enough to hurt. The pain helped ground you, kept the panic from climbing up your throat like bile. Bucky helped you from the car, his hand at your elbow sending conflicting signals through your nervous system—comfort and threat wrapped in the same touch.

"Remember," he murmured against your ear, his breath making the baby hairs at your nape stand on end. "You're just a girl I'm seeing. Nothin’ special. Nothin’ threatening."

The foyer hit you like diving into cold water—all marble and crystal and suffocating opulence. Your heels clicked against the floor, each step echoing like gunshots. The chandelier above refracted light into a thousand cutting edges. But it was the silence that made your skin crawl, heavy and expectant, the kind that came before storms. Or executions.

"James." The voice came from the parlor, female and smooth as aged whiskey with an undertone of arsenic. "You're late."

"Traffic, Ma." Bucky's hand pressed against your lower back, the heat of his palm seeping through the cheap fabric. You could feel each individual finger, the way his thumb moved in a tiny, absent circle that was probably unconscious. "You know how it is."

The parlor was worse than the foyer—stuffed with expensive furniture that looked like it would bruise you if you sat wrong. The people draped across it wore power like expensive perfume, subtle but unmistakable. Bucky's mother held court from a velvet settee, her steel-gray hair sculpted into an elaborate style that defied both gravity and taste. Her blue eyes—so like her son's but utterly without warmth—dissected you in one surgical glance.

You felt naked, exposed, like she could see through the dress to every inadequacy underneath. Your skin prickled with cold sweat.

"And who's this?" She didn't rise, didn't offer a hand. Just studied you with the kind of focus that made lab specimens of living things. "Do you have a name, dear?"

You gave it, voice steadier than the tremor in your hands. Around the room, other family members watched with lazy interest, like well-fed cats noticing a mouse but not quite hungry enough to pounce. Yet. Two women who must be Bucky's sisters lounged on a loveseat, their dresses making yours look even shabbier by comparison—silk versus sandpaper. Their husbands stood by the bar, and something in the way one of them looked at you made your stomach clench with instinctive warning.

"Don't hover in the doorway," a male voice commanded, and the entire room shifted like iron filings toward a magnet.

George Barnes entered like a natural disaster—inevitable, overwhelming, destructive. Your lungs forgot how to expand. This wasn't a man who needed to raise his voice or make threats. This was a man who wore violence like a comfortable suit, whose very presence changed the molecular structure of the room. The air grew thicker, harder to breathe.

He was shorter than his son but broader, built like a prizefighter gone slightly to seed. His face might have been handsome once, before years of casual brutality carved permanent lines around his mouth and eyes. But it was his gaze that made your knees liquid—flat and cold as a shark's, taking in everything and giving back nothing. No light reflected in those eyes. They swallowed it whole.

"So." He stopped directly in front of you, close enough that you could smell his aftershave—something expensive that couldn't quite mask the underlying scent of copper. Old blood or fresh violence. "You're James's new friend."

"Yes, sir." The words came out barely above a whisper, your throat constricting like a hand was wrapped around it.

"Speak up." Not a shout, just a quiet command that made your spine snap straight like a marionette's strings had been yanked. "I don't like mumblers."

"Yes, sir," you repeated, louder this time, though your voice shook like autumn leaves.

He circled you slowly, and you felt like prey being sized up for the kill. Your skin prickled everywhere his gaze landed, cold sweat gathering between your shoulder blades. Your heart hammered so hard you were sure everyone could hear it, a rabbit's frantic pulse broadcasting your terror.

"Where did you say you met my son?"

"Murray's Diner," Bucky supplied smoothly. "On Flatbush."

"I didn't ask you." George's voice didn't change inflection, but Bucky fell silent immediately. The power dynamic hit you like a physical blow—if George Barnes could silence his son so easily, what could he do to you? "I asked her."

Your throat felt like sandpaper, tongue thick and clumsy. "Murray's Diner. On Flatbush. I was having coffee after my shift."

"After your shift?" His tone sharpened with interest. "And where do you work?"

"Steinberg Textiles." The truth came out before you could think to lie.

"A factory girl." The words dripped disdain. "Sewing buttons? Hemming skirts? Working with all those other girls, gossiping over the machines?"

"I operate the overlock machines," you said, a tiny flare of pride making you lift your chin. "It's skilled work."

"Skilled work." He repeated it like it was a foreign language. "A woman doing factory labor. How... modern. Tell me, what does a working girl's family think of such employment?"

"My parents are dead." The words came easier than expected, though saying it out loud made your chest ache with fresh grief.

"No husband to provide for you? No brothers to take responsibility?" George continued his circle, coming to stand before you again. "A young woman, alone in the world, punching a clock like a man. Some would call that unfortunate. Others might say it's... convenient."

You fought the urge to run, muscles coiled tight as piano wire. The implication in his words was clear—a woman without protection, without a man's oversight, was either to be pitied or suspected.

"My son has a weakness for strays," George mused, eyes never leaving your face. "Always bringing home broken things and trying to fix them. Isn't that right, James?"

"If you say so, Pop." Bucky's voice was carefully neutral.

George's smile was a thin knife slash that didn't reach his eyes. "I do say so. Question is whether this particular stray is house-trained."

"Dinner's ready," Winifred announced, rising with practiced grace that made you feel like a newborn colt trying to walk. "Shall we?"

The dining room continued the theme of oppressive wealth. Crystal glasses caught the light like diamonds, each place setting more elaborate than anything you'd seen outside of department store windows. The china looked thin enough to see through, delicate as butterfly wings and probably worth more than a year of your wages. Bucky pulled out your chair with mocking courtesy, his fingers brushing your shoulders as you sat. The contact sent electricity skittering down your spine, nerve endings firing in confusion.

"So," one of the sisters—Rebecca, you thought—leaned forward with sharp interest. Her smile reminded you of broken glass. "Tell us about yourself. Working in a factory must be so... different from what we're used to."

You opened your mouth to respond, tongue dry as dust, but Bucky cut in smoothly. "Not much to tell. She works, she goes home. Simple life."

"Let her speak for herself, James." This from the other sister—Sarah—whose voice had an edge like a straight razor. "We're all curious about your new... friend."

Throughout the first course, they peppered you with questions disguised as interest. Each one landed like a small cut, death by a thousand paper cuts. Where did you live? (A boarding house, you lied, not wanting them to know about your father's apartment.) What did your parents do? (Your father worked construction, your mother was a seamstress.) How long had you been seeing James? (Two weeks, Bucky answered when you hesitated, your mind blank with panic.)

Your hands shook as you lifted your water glass, the crystal chiming against your teeth. The men largely ignored you, discussing business in terms vague enough to be legal but clear enough to be threatening. Terms like "territory" and "collection" and "permanent solutions" that made your food taste like ash.

All except one of the brother-in-laws—Marcus, married to Rebecca—who kept finding excuses to look your way. His gaze felt like hands on you, possessive and unwanted.

It started during the fish course.

A brush of fingers when the wine was poured, so light you thought you'd imagined it. Your skin crawled at the contact, but you forced yourself to remain still. Then a foot against yours under the table, persistent enough that you shifted away. When you moved, he moved with you, his shoe trailing up your calf like a serpent.

Your fork clattered against your plate, the sound explosively loud in the formal dining room. Bucky glanced at you, one eyebrow raised in question.

"Butter fingers," you managed, face burning like someone had held a flame to your cheeks.

Marcus smiled from across the table, all teeth and predatory intent. "You seem nervous. First time dining in civilization?"

"Marcus." Rebecca's tone was one of fond exasperation, the kind reserved for misbehaving pets. "Don't tease the poor thing."

"Who's teasing?" His hand disappeared beneath the tablecloth, and suddenly there were fingers on your knee, hot as a brand through the fabric. "Just trying to make her feel welcome."

You pressed your legs together, trapping his hand, but he only chuckled. His thumb stroked along your inner thigh, and bile rose in your throat, acid and burning. Your whole body went rigid, muscles locking like you'd been turned to stone.

"You're awfully quiet," Sarah observed, her voice coming from very far away. "Cat got your tongue?"

Marcus's hand crept higher, fingers digging into soft flesh hard enough to bruise. You grabbed your wine glass, needing something to do with your hands, something to focus on besides the violation happening beneath the white tablecloth. The crystal shook in your grip, wine threatening to spill.

"She's shy," Bucky said, but there was something off in his voice. A tightness that suggested he'd noticed your distress but misread its cause. "Not used to the Barnes family charm."

"Charm." George's laugh was like gravel in a cement mixer. "That what we're calling it now?"

Marcus's fingers found the edge of your garter, toying with it while maintaining perfect composure above the table. Your breath came in short, sharp pants that you tried to disguise. Sweat gathered at your temples, between your breasts, the salt taste of panic on your lips.

"Tell us about your family," Winnie suggested, tone deceptively mild. "Were they in trade as well?"

You tried to focus, to form words, but Marcus's hand was insistent, invasive, his thumb rubbing circles that made your skin crawl like insects were burrowing beneath it. "My father—he was—"

"Take your time," Marcus said, smile widening to show too many teeth. Under the table, his fingers pushed harder, trying to pry your legs apart. "We've got all night."

Something in you snapped.

The violation, the casual cruelty, the sense of being nothing more than meat for these wolves to tear apart—it all crashed together in a wave of panic and rage that moved your body before your mind could catch up.

You jerked back so violently your chair scraped against the floor with a shriek of wood on wood. Your fork clattered to your plate with enough force to crack the delicate china. Your hands shook visibly as you pressed them flat against the table, trying to ground yourself, trying not to scream.

"I—" Your voice cracked like breaking glass, thin and sharp. "Excuse me. I need—powder room?"

"Down the hall, second door on the left," Rebecca supplied, her expression caught between amusement and annoyance, like you were a pet that had peed on her expensive rug.

You fled on unsteady legs, aware of the silence you left in your wake—thick and heavy as velvet. Your heels caught on the plush carpet, making you stumble. The hallway stretched forever, a tunnel with no end, until finally you fell against the bathroom door and locked it behind you with fumbling fingers.

Your whole body shook like you had a fever, teeth chattering despite the warm air. You pressed your palms against your eyes hard enough to see stars, trying to push back the tears that threatened to fall. Your skin still crawled where Marcus had touched you, phantom fingers leaving invisible bruises.

The knock came less than a minute later, sharp and demanding.

"Occupied," you called, voice thick with unshed tears.

"Open the door." Bucky's voice, flat and emotionless as stone.

"I'll be out in—"

"Now."

The command in his tone made you turn the lock with trembling fingers. He pushed inside immediately, closing the door behind him with deliberate softness that was somehow worse than if he'd slammed it. The bathroom shrank to nothing with him in it, all that powerful presence focused on you like a spotlight.

"Want to tell me what that was about?" He leaned against the door, arms crossed, expression unreadable as a closed book.

"I—nothing. I just needed a moment."

"Bullshit." He moved closer, crowding you against the sink. The marble edge dug into your lower back, cold through the thin dress. "You just made a scene at my father's table. Nobody makes scenes at George Barnes's table without consequences. So I'll ask again—what happened?"

Shame burned hot in your throat, thick as smoke. How could you tell him? That his sister's husband had been groping you like meat at a butcher's shop? That you'd been too frozen to stop it until it was too late?

"Your brother-in-law—" The words stuck like broken glass in your throat.

"Which one?"

"Marcus." You couldn't meet his eyes, staring instead at his tie. Burgundy silk. Expensive. "He was—under the table, he kept—"

"Kept what?" His voice had gone very soft, very dangerous. The kind of quiet that preceded violence.

"Touching me." It came out barely above a whisper, shameful and small. "His hand on my—he wouldn't stop."

The silence stretched like a wire pulled taut, vibrating with tension. You risked a glance up to find Bucky's face completely blank, eyes flat as his father's. The expression made your blood run cold.

Without a word, he turned and left, the door clicking shut with terrible finality.

You stood there shaking, sure you'd just made everything worse. He was angry—at you, for causing a scene, for letting another man touch what he'd claimed as his. For being weak. The tears came then, hot and bitter, as you splashed cold water on your face with trembling hands. Your reflection in the gilt mirror showed a girl destroyed—makeup streaked, hair disheveled, eyes swollen and red.

When you finally emerged, legs still unsteady as a newborn fawn's, the dining room was unchanged. Everyone in their places, conversation flowing like nothing had happened. Marcus sat across from you, cutting his meat with precise movements, not a hair out of place.

"Feeling better?" Winifred asked as you slid back into your seat, muscles still jumping with aftershocks of panic.

"Yes, ma'am. Sorry for the disruption."

"These things happen," she said, though her tone suggested they shouldn't. "The rich food can be overwhelming when you're not used to it."

Bucky sat beside you, posture relaxed, engaged in discussion with his father about something to do with shipments. He didn't acknowledge your return, didn't touch you or offer comfort. The message was clear—you were on your own.

The rest of dinner passed in a blur of careful bites and measured breathing. Marcus didn't try to touch you again, but his smirk said he knew he'd won. You'd shown weakness, made a scene, proved you didn't belong. The women exchanged knowing looks while the men continued their coded business talk, and you sat there like a statue made of spun glass, ready to shatter at the slightest touch.

"James," George said as the dessert plates were cleared. "Marcus. My study. We need to discuss the dock shipments from Havana."

They rose without question, Bucky still not looking at you. The three men disappeared down the hall, leaving you with the women who circled like vultures sensing carrion. Your skin prickled with their attention, predatory and amused.

"Well," Sarah said, lighting a cigarette with practiced elegance. The smoke wreathed her face like a veil. "That was quite the performance."

"I don't know what you mean." Your voice came out steady, though your hands trembled in your lap.

"Of course not." Rebecca's smile was razor-sharp, cutting without drawing blood. "Though word of advice? If you're going to play with the big boys, you need to learn to handle your liquor better. And everything else."

They dissected you with surgical precision—your clothes, your hair, your obvious unsuitability for their world. Each word landed like a blow to already bruised skin. You sat there and took it, having no defenses left, no energy to fight back. Your body felt hollowed out, a shell running on autopilot.

Then, cutting through their chatter like a blade through silk—a scream.

Not a shout or cry of surprise. A full-throated scream of agony that made every muscle in your body lock tight. It came from the direction of George's study, raw and animal and wrong.

"What—" Sarah began, but Rebecca touched her arm, shaking her head minutely.

Another scream, this one with words. "Jesus Christ! Jesus fucking Christ, you broke it! You fucking broke it!"

Marcus. That was Marcus screaming.

Your blood turned to ice water in your veins. The women exchanged glances and then, as if by silent agreement, resumed their conversation. Sarah asked Winifred about her plans for the spring gala. Rebecca critiqued the dessert course. They spoke over the sounds coming from the study—the thud of impact, flesh on flesh, the scrape of furniture being overturned. The meaty sound of fists on skin. Marcus begging, voice high and desperate.

You sat frozen, teacup rattling against its saucer in your trembling hands. The bone china felt like it might shatter in your grip. The screaming had stopped, replaced by lower sounds—broken sobs, maybe, or the kind of sounds men made when they were trying not to beg.

Twenty minutes later, the men returned.

George first, observing with the detached interest of a man watching a mildly entertaining show. Then Bucky, rolling down his shirt sleeves with methodical precision. His knuckles were split and bleeding, the blood stark against his skin. His hair fell across his forehead, and there was a splatter of red across his white shirt. Finally Marcus, cradling his right hand against his chest, face gray with pain and shock. Sweat and blood had soaked through his expensive clothes, and one eye was already swelling shut.

"Marcus had a little accident," George announced conversationally, settling back into his chair. "Got his hand caught in a door. Clumsy."

You could see from where you sat that his thumb was bent at an impossible angle, the joint clearly shattered. Your stomach lurched, acid burning the back of your throat.

"How terrible," Winnie said without a trace of concern. "Should we call Dr. Morrison?"

"Already done." George sipped his brandy like nothing had happened. "He'll be by in the morning. Nothing that won't heal with time."

Marcus said nothing, just stood there swaying slightly, shock making his eyes glassy. Rebecca rose with a put-upon sigh.

"Come on, darling. Let's get you some ice."

They left together, Marcus leaning heavily on his wife, leaving spots of blood on the cream carpet that everyone pretended not to see. The conversation resumed as if nothing had happened, but you caught the way the other brother-in-law—Anthony—kept his hands carefully visible on the table, fingers spread flat against the wood.

"We should go," Bucky said abruptly. "Early meeting tomorrow."

"Of course." Winnie rose to kiss his cheek, a gesture that looked more like a warning than affection. "Do bring your friend again. She's... educational."

You stood on shaking legs, managing the goodbyes, the false smiles, the pantomime of civility. But as you moved toward the door, George's voice stopped you.

"Just a moment."

He approached with that predator's stride, and before you could react, his hand shot out to grip your chin. His fingers were cold, strong enough to bruise, forcing your face up to meet his gaze. You stopped breathing entirely, body going rigid with terror.

"You seem like a smart girl," he said softly, voice conversational despite the violence in his grip. "Smart enough to know that what happens in this house stays in this house. Aren't you?"

You couldn't nod, couldn't speak, could only stare into those flat, dead eyes that promised terrible things if you disappointed him.

"I asked you a question."

"Yes," you whispered, the word barely audible.

"Yes, what?"

"Yes, sir."

His thumb stroked along your jaw, a mockery of gentleness. "Good. Because I'd hate for something to happen to such a pretty face. Or to the rest of you. Accidents can be so... comprehensive."

Beside you, Bucky had gone completely still—not the stillness of submission but the coiled tension of a spring about to snap. You could feel the violence radiating off him, barely contained.

George's smile widened, apparently satisfied with whatever he saw in your terror. "Run along now. And remember—family business is family business."

He released you so abruptly you stumbled. Bucky's hand was on your elbow instantly, practically dragging you toward the door. You barely had time to grab your coat before he was pushing you outside, down the steps, his grip just shy of painful.

"Get in the car," he said through gritted teeth.

"Bucky—"

"Get in the fucking car. Now."

The drive started in absolute silence, Bucky's hands white-knuckled on the wheel, the speedometer climbing dangerously high as he tore through the dark streets. You could see the muscle in his jaw jumping, his split knuckles leaving smears of blood on the leather steering wheel.

You pressed yourself against the passenger door, as far from him as possible, hands clenched so tight your nails bit bloody half-moons into your palms. The adrenaline was wearing off, leaving you shaky and sick. Your skin felt too tight, like you might split apart at the seams. Your chin throbbed where George had gripped it, and you knew there would be bruises tomorrow—five perfect fingerprints marking you as Barnes property.

"You're breathing too fast," Bucky said flatly, not looking at you. "Keep it up and you'll pass out."

"I can't—" The words came out strangled, your chest tight as a drum. Black spots danced at the edges of your vision. "I can't breathe, I can't—"

"For fuck's sake." He yanked the wheel hard right, tires screaming against asphalt as he pulled over. The car hadn't even fully stopped before he was dragging you across the bench seat, manhandling you between his legs with your back to his chest. "Breathe. Now."

You tried to pull away but his arm locked around your waist like a vise. "Let me—"

"Shut up and focus." His other hand pressed flat against your sternum, fingers splayed wide. "In through your nose, out through your mouth. Don't make me count for you like you're a fucking child."

His chest rose and fell against your back with exaggerated steadiness. You had no choice but to follow his rhythm, your body gradually syncing with his. The pressure of his hand on your chest was firm, almost too hard, but it gave you something to focus on besides the panic.

"Your father," you gasped between breaths. "He threatened—"

"Yeah." The word came out clipped, and his whole body went rigid behind you. A muscle jumped in his jaw, and when he spoke again, his voice was carefully controlled. "My old man does what he wants. Always has."

"He grabbed me—"

His hand on your sternum flexed, fingers digging in slightly. For a moment, he said nothing, and you could feel the war in him—the tension radiating through every point of contact between your bodies. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, dangerous. "Next time, you keep your distance. You see him coming, you move. You don't give him the chance."

"How am I supposed to—"

"You learn." His arm tightened around your waist, and there was something almost desperate in the grip. "You learn fast, or this arrangement ends with you in pieces. Understand?"

You nodded, feeling the way his breathing had gone slightly uneven. There was fear there, buried under layers of control—not fear of his father, exactly, but fear of what his father could do. To you. To this precarious deal that kept you both bound. “And Marcus?” "Marcus is handled." The words were final, absolute. His thumb moved against your ribs, just barely, a gesture that might have been unconscious. "He won't touch you again.”

The possessiveness should have frightened you more. Instead, you found yourself sinking into his warmth, letting his steady breathing regulate yours. He smelled like cigarettes and violence and expensive cologne, a combination that shouldn't have been comforting but was. Your body betrayed you, melting against him as the panic slowly receded.

"I couldn't stop him," you whispered, shame thick in your throat. "I just sat there and let him—"

"Stop." The word came out sharp, cutting. His hand left your sternum to grip your chin, forcing your head back at an uncomfortable angle. "You think I wanna hear you whine about it? What's done is done."

The sudden coldness made you flinch. "I was just trying to explain."

"Explain what? How you froze up? How you let him paw at you for ten minutes before doing something about it?" His laugh was ugly, mocking. "I got eyes, dollface. I saw plenty."

Tears pricked at your eyes, but anger flared beneath the hurt. "Then why didn't you stop it sooner?"

"Because I wanted to see what you'd do." His grip on your chin tightened, not quite painful but far from gentle. "Wanted to see if you had any spine or if I was wasting my time on a mouse."

"That's cruel."

"That's practical." He released your chin with a slight push, making you gasp. "You think my family's gonna go easier on you next time? Think they're gonna stop testing you because I broke Marcus's thumb? Grow up."

The harshness of it made your chest constrict. You tried to pull away from him, but his arm around your waist was iron. "Let me go."

"No." His voice dropped lower, dangerous. "You're gonna sit here and breathe like a normal person instead of hyperventilating all over my leather seats. You pass out, I'm dumping you on the curb."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Try me." But even as he said it, his hand spread wider across your stomach, thumb moving in tiny, unconscious circles that made your muscles clench. The contrast between his harsh words and that barely-there touch made your head spin. "I got enough problems without adding your fainting spells to the list."

You forced yourself to breathe deeper, slower, trying to ignore how every inhale pressed you more firmly against his chest. His body was a furnace at your back, all solid muscle and coiled tension. You could feel every point of contact between you—his thighs bracketing yours, forcing them slightly apart, his arm heavy across your waist. Your skin prickled with awareness, nerve endings firing in ways that had nothing to do with fear.

"That's better," he said after a moment, and his voice had gone rougher. "See? Not so hard when you stop being dramatic about it."

"I'm not being dramatic. Your father just threatened to—"

"To what? Hurt you? Kill you?" His free hand came up to trace the tear tracks on your cheek, the touch clinical but his breathing had changed, gone slightly uneven. "Welcome to the family, sweetheart. He threatens everybody. It's how he says hello."

You jerked your face away from his fingers. "Why did you defend me if you think I'm so pathetic?"

"Because you're mine." The words came out flat, but his hand on your stomach flexed, fingers digging in slightly. "Same reason I'd fuck someone up for keying my car or stealing my watch. It's about property, not feelings."

"I'm not property."

"Aren't you?" His voice was almost bored, but you could feel his heart beating faster against your back. "Your old man left you to pay off his debts. That makes you property by definition. My property, specifically."

The brutal truth of it hit like cold water. Your throat constricted, fresh tears threatening. Behind you, his breathing definitely hitched—not so subtle this time. His thumb resumed its maddening circles on your stomach, and you realized with a shock that your dress had ridden up slightly when he'd pulled you across the seat. His hand wasn't on fabric anymore—it was on the bare skin between your dress and the top of your stockings.

"Gonna cry again, baby?" He sounded almost curious, but his voice had dropped an octave. "Go ahead. Won't change anything."

"You're an asshole."

"Yeah." He agreed easily. "And you're a factory girl in a cheap dress who owes me more money than she'll ever see. We all got our crosses to bear."

"At least I'm not a violent thug who gets off on hurting people."

His hand stilled on your stomach. For a moment, you thought you'd pushed too far. Then he laughed—dark and genuinely amused. "You think I get off on violence? That's cute, dollface. Real cute."

"Then what do you get off on?"

The question hung in the air between you, loaded with implications you hadn't intended. His hand started moving again, but slower now, deliberate. Each circle made your breath catch, made heat pool low in your belly.

"Careful," he warned, and his voice had gone silky, dangerous. "You sure you want to know the answer to that?"

You should have said no. Should have kept your mouth shut. Instead: "Maybe I do."

His arm tightened around your waist, pulling you impossibly closer. You could feel every inch of him now—the hard planes of his chest, the flex of his thighs. And pressed against your lower back, unmistakable evidence that violence wasn't the only thing affecting him tonight.

"That dress," he said suddenly, voice rough as gravel. "Fucking thing's been driving me crazy all night."

You froze in his arms. "You said it was ugly."

"I lied." His thumb traced the edge of your stocking top, making your whole body jerk. "Had to. Because what I wanted to say was that it made you look like every dirty thought I've ever had. That cheap fabric clinging to your curves, riding up when you sat down, showing just enough skin to make me want to see more."

Your heart slammed against your ribs. "Bucky—"

"Shut up." But it wasn't harsh this time. It was strained, like he was barely holding himself together. "You have no idea what you looked like at that table. So fucking proper, so good, while my brother-in-law had his hand on your thigh. Made me want to break more than his thumb. Made me want to throw you over my shoulder, carry you out of there, and show you exactly who you belong to."

Heat flooded your body, pooling between your thighs. You pressed them together, but that only made it worse. "You can't just say things like that."

"Why not? It's true." His hand slid fractionally higher on your stomach, fingertips brushing the underside of your ribs. "Been thinking about it since I picked you up. How easy it would be to push that dress up, spread your legs, and make you forget all about being a good girl."

A whimper escaped before you could stop it. Behind you, he made a sound that was almost a growl.

"Now get in your fucking seat before I do something we'll both regret."

You scrambled back to your side of the car, skin burning everywhere he'd touched. Your inner thighs were slick, and you pressed them together desperately, trying to ignore the ache between them. He gripped the steering wheel hard enough to make the leather creak, jaw clenched so tight you could see the muscle jumping.

"Where are we going?" you asked when he turned onto an unfamiliar street.

"My place." He didn't look at you. "Where did you think? Your daddy’s apartment?"

The reminder that you were staying with him—that this arrangement meant sharing his space—hit like a physical blow. "I forgot."

"Yeah, well. Remember quick. This is your life now, sweetheart. My house, my rules, my schedule."

The brownstone was darker than you'd expected, all masculine angles and shadows. It smelled like him—leather and smoke and something indefinably male. He led you upstairs without ceremony, movements sharp with barely contained tension.

"Your room," he said, pushing open a door. It was small but clean, with a single bed that looked almost child-sized compared to what you'd glimpsed of his room down the hall. "Bathroom's across the hall. Kitchen's downstairs. Don't go in my room or the basement."

You twisted your hands in front of you, suddenly feeling the weight of everything crashing down. Your father was dead. You'd been groped at dinner. Threatened by George Barnes. And now you were standing in a stranger's house where you'd be living indefinitely. "I need things from my apartment. Clothes, toiletries—"

"Tomorrow." He stood in the doorway, blocking the exit, and you realized just how big he was. How easily he filled the space. "Lock your door."

"Why?"

His smile was all edges, nothing warm in it. "Because right now I'm thinking about all the ways I could make you forget Marcus ever touched you. And trust me, darlin’, none of them are nice."

Heat flooded your body, pooling low and urgent in places you tried not to think about. The feeling confused you—how could fear and this... other thing exist in the same breath? "I don't understand what you mean."

"No?" He stepped closer, and your back hit the doorframe. "You don't understand that I've been hard since I dragged you into my car? That I've been thinking about hiking up that cheap dress and finding out what kind of panties a good girl like you wears?" His voice dropped to a rumble. "Bet they're cotton. White. Bet you've never let anyone see them before."

Your face burned with humiliation and something else—something that made your thighs clench involuntarily. "Stop it."

"Why? Am I shocking you?" His eyes tracked down your body, lingering on the places where your dress clung. "Poor little factory girl, never heard a man talk dirty before. Never had anyone tell her exactly what they want to do to her."

"You're being mean." Your voice came out shakier than you wanted.

"Yeah, I am." He moved closer still, caging you against the doorframe without touching. "Want me to be crueler? Want me to tell you how I'd push you down on that tiny bed and spread your legs? How I'd make you beg for things you don't even have names for?"

You pressed yourself harder against the wood, heart hammering. The ache between your legs was getting worse, confusing, almost painful. You'd felt hints of this before—late at night, alone in your bed—but never like this. Never from just words. "I don't—I've never—"

"I know." His voice went rough with something dark. "I can see it all over you. How fucking innocent you are. Makes me want to ruin you. Take every 'please' and 'thank you' and turn them into my name while you're sobbing into the pillow."

"Why are you saying these things?" The words came out as barely a whisper. Your whole body was trembling, caught between the urge to run and the strange, horrible need to hear more.

"Because you're standing there looking at me with those big eyes, breathing so hard I can see your tits moving, and your face is all flushed like you're running a fever." He leaned in, voice dropping to a whisper. "Because you're soaking through your panties right now and you don't even understand why."

The crude words hit like a slap. "I'm not—"

"Liar." He smiled, and it was predatory. "Bet if I put my hand between your legs right now, I'd find you dripping. Bet you'd make the sweetest sounds when I touched you. All confused and desperate, not knowing whether to push me away or beg for more."

Tears pricked your eyes—frustration, embarrassment, and the horrible truth that he was right. You could feel the wetness between your thighs, the uncomfortable ache that made you want to squirm. "Please stop."

"Aw, 'please'?" He cooed, mocking. "That's cute, baby. Real fuckin’ cute. You know what? Maybe I won't wait. Maybe I'll just push you into that room right now and show you exactly what happens to good girls who end up in bad men's houses."

"You wouldn't." But your voice shook with uncertainty. Would he?

"Wouldn't I?" His hand came up to brace against the doorframe, knuckles still bloody from Marcus. "Already broke a man's thumb for touching what's mine. What do you think I'd do to have you under me? To hear you say my name like a prayer while I take you apart?"

The words should have terrified you. Instead, your eyelids went heavy, drooping half-closed as heat rolled through you in waves. Your lips parted on a shaky exhale, and you swayed slightly where you stood. The ache between your thighs had become a pulse, insistent and demanding. You pressed them together, seeking friction, and a small, desperate sound escaped your throat—not quite a whimper, not quite a sigh.

He went very still.

His eyes tracked over your face, taking in your flushed cheeks, your parted lips, the way your chest rose and fell with shallow, rapid breaths. His gaze dropped lower, noting how you'd shifted your weight, thighs pressed tight together, hips canted slightly forward like you were seeking something you couldn't name.

"Fuck," he breathed, and suddenly the predatory heat was gone, replaced by something almost like panic. "Fuck, you're actually—Jesus Christ, you're getting off on this."

The crude observation made you whimper for real this time, high and needy. Your hands clutched at the doorframe behind you, nails digging into wood.

"You don't even know what you're doing, do you?" His voice had gone rough, strangled. "Standing there making those sounds, looking like you're about to come apart just from my fucking words. Christ."

He stepped back so fast you nearly fell, legs unsteady without the doorframe to hold you. Your body chased his warmth instinctively before you caught yourself. His face had gone hard, closed off, but you could see something wild in his eyes—fear, maybe, or recognition of a line he'd almost crossed.

"Lock your fucking door." The words came out harsh, bitten off. "Lock it right fucking now."

"Bucky—"

"Now!" He was already backing away, hands clenched at his sides. "Lock it before I do something that'll make us both sorry. Before I forget you're not just some—" He cut himself off with a snarl, turned on his heel, and stalked down the hall.

His bedroom door slammed with enough force to shake the house.

You stood there trembling, thighs slick and uncomfortable, confusion making your head spin. What had just happened? One moment he'd been saying those things—horrible, dirty things that made you feel like you were burning from the inside out—and the next he was running like you'd done something wrong.

With shaking hands, you closed your door and turned the lock. Through the walls, you could hear him moving around—pacing, cursing, the crash of something breaking.

You sank onto the narrow bed, still in your cheap dress that now felt too tight, too warm. Your body pulsed with unfamiliar need, an ache you didn't know how to satisfy. You pressed your thighs together, but that only made it worse.

You lay back on the uncomfortable mattress, staring at the ceiling, body still thrumming with frustrated energy. Tomorrow you'd have to face him, pretend his words hadn't carved themselves into your memory. Pretend you hadn't liked the way they made you feel, even as they terrified you.

But tonight? Tonight you pressed your palm flat against your stomach, feeling the flutter of nervous heat, and wondered what would have happened if he hadn't stopped. If he'd pushed you into the room like he'd threatened. If he'd done all those things he'd described in such devastating detail.

The ache between your legs pulsed harder, and you turned onto your side, curling into yourself. You were in so much trouble. Because despite the fear, despite the confusion, despite everything—you wanted to find out what came next.

Even if it ruined you.

Especially if it did.

Steve's voice crackles through your phone speaker, carefully neutral in that way that means he's managing a situation. You shift on the uncomfortable plastic chair, holding your phone between your shoulder and ear while you fill out insurance paperwork with your good hand.

"What blood?"

"The blood on his—you know what, never mind. How's the wrist?"

"Sprained. I'll live." You pause, pen hovering over a question about previous injuries. "Steve, why are you calling me about blood?"

"No reason."

"Steven Grant Rogers."

A pause. You can practically hear him running a hand through his hair. "He might have been interrogating a Hydra operative when I called about your accident."

"And?"

"And he might have... left abruptly."

"Steve."

"Still covered in the operative's blood."

"Jesus Christ."

"I broke several traffic laws trying to catch up with him, but he had a head start and that bike is faster than—" Something crashes in the background. "Shit. I should go. Just, uh. Maybe give the hospital a heads up?"

"A heads up about what—"

The automatic doors explode open like they've personally offended him.

"Never mind," you mutter, watching Bucky stride through the ER like an avenging angel dressed in tactical gear and what is definitely someone else's blood. "He's here."

"Is he—"

You hang up on Captain America.

Three nurses scatter. An orderly drops his clipboard. A small child points and whispers, "Mommy, is that the Winter Soldier?"

His eyes find yours across the crowded waiting room and everything else ceases to exist. The murderous expression melts off his face so fast it's almost comical, replaced by something raw and desperate that makes your chest tight. His shoulders drop from murder-mode to oh-thank-god and he's moving, crossing the space between you in long strides that have people scrambling out of his way.

"Buck—" you start, but he's already there.

His hands frame your face with devastating gentleness, thumbs ghosting over your cheekbones like you might evaporate. The metal one leaves a smudge of something you're not going to think about too hard. His eyes catalog every inch of you, frantic and thorough.

"You're okay." His voice comes out gutted. "You're—Steve said accident, said hospital, and I—"

"I'm fine." You cover his flesh hand with yours, trying to ground him. The soul bond thrums between you, flooded with his barely-contained panic. "Bucky, breathe. It's just a sprained—"

His gaze snaps to your wrapped wrist and the temperature drops ten degrees. The shift is instant—soft boyfriend to Winter Soldier in 0.2 seconds flat. A muscle in his jaw ticks.

"Where?"

One word. Flat. Deadly. The kind of tone that makes trained assassins reconsider their life choices.

Your thighs clench at absolutely the wrong moment.

"Bucky—"

"Where is he."

"It was an accident—"

"Don't care." His metal hand drops to your shoulder, plates recalibrating with that soft whir that means he's fighting for control. "Someone hurt you."

"A teenager in a minivan hurt me," you clarify. "By accident. At five miles per hour."

He processes this information like a targeting computer, eyes scanning the waiting room with mechanical precision. They land on Tyler Hendricks—seventeen, terrified, wearing a Midtown High letterman jacket and clutching a juice box like a lifeline.

"Him?"

"Bucky, no."

But he's already moving, that predator-stride that would be absolutely terrifying if it wasn't so goddamn attractive. Tyler sees death approaching and goes pale enough to match the walls.

"Oh shit," Tyler whispers. "Oh shit oh shit oh shit—"

Bucky looms, all six feet of blood-splattered tactical gear and barely-leashed violence. Tyler might actually be crying.

"You did this?"

Tyler opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. No sound comes out.

The silence stretches. You watch from your chair, caught between concern for Tyler's blood pressure and an inappropriate appreciation for how Bucky's shoulders look in his compression shirt.

"I—yes? It was—the light was—I'm so sorry, man, I'll pay for everything, please don't murder me, I have college applications due—"

"College applications." Bucky's voice is winter-quiet, which is somehow worse than yelling. "You hurt my girl and you're worried about college applications."

"I mean—yes? No? I don't know what the right answer is here, sir. Mr. Soldier. Sergeant Barnes? Wikipedia said you were a sergeant—"

"You looked me up on Wikipedia?"

"I wanted to know how to address you properly before you killed me!"

Bucky circles Tyler's chair slowly, each step measured and deliberate. The poor kid tracks him like a mouse watching a cat, juice box forgotten.

"Do you know what a sprained wrist means?" Bucky asks conversationally.

"Um. Swelling? Four to six weeks of healing?"

"Wrong." Bucky stops directly behind him. Tyler goes rigid. "It means she's in pain. Because of you."

"I'm really sor—"

"It means I have to watch her hurt." His voice drops lower. "Do you have any idea what that does to me?"

Tyler squeaks. Actually squeaks. "It means you get to fuss over me and carry my groceries and open every single jar in the apartment," you interrupt, trying for levity. "Bucky, stop terrorizing children."

"He's not a child. He's old enough to drive. Old enough to hurt—"

"Old enough to have his prefrontal cortex still developing," you interrupt. "Also old enough to need therapy after this. Tyler, honey, you're doing great."

"I am?" Tyler's voice cracks three times in two words.

"No," Bucky says flatly.

You roll your eyes. "Come here, James."

The use of his first name makes him pause. He gives Tyler a look that threatens death and dismemberment, then lets you pull him away. But not before leaning down one more time.

"I know your name," he says quietly. "Tyler Hendricks. Midtown High. License plate AGH-2847. Instagram handle @TylerBBallKilla04. If she has even one moment of unnecessary pain because of this—"

"James."

He gives Tyler another look that promises creative violence, then stalks back to you. The second he reaches you, his hands find your face again, gentler this time, thumbs stroking your cheekbones like you're made of spun glass.

"Stop threatening minors," you murmur. His touch makes you feel a little soft, a little dizzy.

"He hurt you."

"It was an accident."

"Don't care." He presses his forehead to yours, and you can feel the tremor running through him. "Can't—fuck, baby, when Steve called—"

"I know." You reach up to cradle his jaw, feel him lean into it helplessly. "But hey, I'm okay. We're okay."

He exhales shakily, then straightens. Turns back to Tyler, who immediately tries to become one with his chair.

"You're paying for her medical bills."

Jesus Christ.

"Yes sir!"

"And her car repairs."

"Absolutely!"

"And—"

"Bucky." You tug on his tactical vest. "We have insurance."

"And her pain and suffering," he continues, ignoring you.

"I don't think that's—"

"Are you suffering?" he asks you, eyes still on Tyler.

"Tremendously," you deadpan.

"See? Pain and suffering."

Tyler nods frantically. "Whatever you want! My mom's a dentist, I can throw in free cleanings!"

Bucky blinks. Once. Twice. You can see him trying to process this unexpected turn. "Are you... bribing me with dental care?"

"Is it working?" “No.”

"We should go," you say, standing carefully. "Before you give him a heart attack."

Bucky immediately wraps an arm around your waist, taking most of your weight like you've broken your leg instead of sprained your wrist. The casual display of strength makes heat pool in your stomach.

"Call if you need anything," Tyler says desperately. "Anything at all! I'm really good at calculus! And I babysit!"

"We don't have kids," Bucky says flatly. Then, under his breath, so quiet only you catch it: "Yet."

You pinch his side through his gear—hard enough to make your point. He retaliates immediately, metal fingers finding that spot just above your hip that makes you squirm. You have to bite your lip to keep from making an undignified sound in front of poor, traumatized Tyler.

"I can also do yardwork!"

You're definitely laughing now, muffled against Bucky's shoulder. He guides you toward the exit, but pauses at Tyler's chair.

"I know where you live."

"That's deeply concerning!" Tyler's voice hits a pitch only dogs can hear.

"Good. It should be."

And then he's guiding you out, hand splayed possessively on your lower back. The cold air hits like a shock after the hospital warmth. Without hesitation, he shrugs out of his jacket and wraps it around you, ignoring your protests.

"Is that actually someone's blood?" you ask, eyeing a suspicious stain.

"Probably."

"Bucky."

"What? He was Hydra. He'll live." He helps you onto his bike with careful hands, gentler than you've ever seen him. "Probably."

"You can't just—"

"You were hurt," he says simply, like that explains everything. Justifies everything. And in his mind, it probably does.

He swings onto the bike, pulling you tight against his back. You can feel the tension slowly leaving his body now that he has you close, safe, confirmed alive and whole.

"For the record," you murmur against his ear, "the whole protective thing? Very sexy."

His hands tighten on the handlebars. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Probably shouldn't traumatize teenagers over it, though."

"He had it coming."

"He's probably stress-drinking his apple juice as we speak."

"Good." He starts the engine, then glances back at you. "You really okay?"

You press a kiss to the spot just below his ear, feel him shiver. "Take me home and I'll show you how okay I am."

The bike peels out of the parking lot fast enough to leave rubber on the asphalt.

(Tyler Hendricks posts about his near-death experience on Reddit that night. It goes viral. The title reads: "TIFU by rear-ending the Winter Soldier's girlfriend."

The top comment is from Steve Rogers' verified account: "You got off easy, kid.")

You'd been expecting it for days now—watching the calendar bleed red X's toward this moment, each sunset another coin dropped into death's collection plate. Your father's debts didn't die with him. The Barnes family made sure everyone in Brooklyn understood that much.

Your fingers stilled on the dishrag, soap bubbles trembling against your wrists. Through the kitchen window, October rain slicked the fire escapes black, turning the whole neighborhood into something out of a fever dream. You could run. The thought flickered and died before it could catch flame. Where would you go? Who in this city would shelter someone marked by the Barnes name?

Three more knocks. Harder this time.

Your pulse kicked against your throat as you dried your hands, each movement deliberate, buying seconds you couldn't afford. The condolence cards still littered the kitchen table—With deepest sympathy and May he rest in peace—their pastel flowers mocking in the lamplight. Two weeks since they'd lowered him into Greenwood soil. Two weeks of waiting for this exact sound.

You smoothed your housedress with trembling hands, caught sight of yourself in the dark window—pale face, shadows under your eyes, hair escaping from pins that never quite held. You looked exactly like what you were: a girl in over her head, drowning in grief and debt.

The lock turned like a death rattle under your palm.

James Barnes filled your doorway like smoke fills a room—inevitable, suffocating, impossible to contain. You'd heard about him, of course. Everyone had. The Barnes family's primary enforcer was the kind of man mothers warned their daughters about in whispers, though those same mothers probably dreamed about him when the lights went out.

He was... not what you'd expected.

Tall and broad-shouldered in a charcoal suit that cost more than your father owed, rain darkening the fabric across his shoulders. His hair was slicked back from a face that belonged in those moving pictures your friends giggled over—sharp jaw, full mouth, eyes the color of a winter sky before snow. The kind of face that made smart girls stupid.

And God help you, you could feel your intelligence draining away as he stood there, studying you like a cat with a cornered mouse.

"Well, well." His voice rolled out like expensive bourbon, Brooklyn accent thick enough to cut. A smile played at the corner of his mouth, dangerous and knowing. "Ain't you just the sweetest little thing I've seen all week."

The words hit like a slap disguised as a caress. Heat crawled up your neck, part embarrassment, part something else entirely. Your hand tightened on the doorknob until your knuckles went white. "Mr. Barnes—"

"Bucky." He corrected, already pushing past you into the apartment like he had every right. The smell of him—rain and expensive tobacco, something darker underneath—invaded your lungs. "My father’s Mr. Barnes. I'm just Bucky, dollface."

He turned in your small foyer, giving you his back as he surveyed your apartment. The broad lines of his shoulders, the confident set of his stance—everything about him screamed danger. When he faced you again, his smile had sharpened into something predatory.

"You gonna close that door, sweetheart? Or you hoping the neighbors get a show?"

You pushed the door shut, the click of the lock loud as a gunshot in the tense silence. When you turned back, he'd moved closer—close enough that you had to tilt your head back to meet his eyes.

"I don't have it." The words tumbled out too fast, fear making you graceless. "The money. I don't have it yet, but I'm working on—"

"Sure you are." He reached out, fingers catching your chin. The touch was light but inescapable, forcing you to hold his gaze. "Working real hard in that factory, bringing home, what? Twelve dollars a week? Fifteen if you pull doubles?" His thumb brushed across your bottom lip, and your breath caught. "At that rate, you'll have me paid off in... let's see... about five years. Not counting interest."

Your stomach dropped through the floor. "I can—there must be some arrangement—"

"Oh, there's gonna be an arrangement, sweetheart." His hand slid from your chin to your throat, palm resting against your racing pulse. "Just maybe not the kind you're thinking. See, I got a look at you through that window while I was waiting. Watched you doing dishes like a good little housewife. And I got to thinking—waste of a perfectly good dame, letting you work your fingers to the bone in some factory."

"Please." The word came out breathless, his proximity affecting you in ways that made shame curl hot in your belly. "I'll do anything—"

"Anything?" His eyes flashed with interest, and you realized your mistake immediately. "Now that's dangerous talk, baby. Girl like you shouldn't make promises she ain't prepared to keep."

You tried to step back, but he followed, crowding you against the wall. This close, you could see the rain droplets still clinging to his eyelashes, could count the faint freckles across his nose. Could feel the heat radiating off him like a furnace.

"You're shaking," he observed, voice dropping to a rumble. "Do I scare you, pretty girl?"

"Yes." The honesty escaped before you could stop it.

"Good." His free hand came up to brace against the wall beside your head, caging you in. "You should be scared. But see, I'm looking at you, and I'm not seeing scared. I'm seeing something else." His thumb stroked along your throat, feeling your pulse jump. "I'm seeing curious. Interested. Like maybe part of you wonders what it would be like to stop being such a good girl all the time."

The heat in your face could have lit the whole building. "That's not—I'm not—"

"You know what I think?" He leaned closer, until his breath fanned across your cheek. "I think you've been cooped up in this apartment, playing nurse to your old man, working yourself to death, never having any fun. When's the last time a fella took you dancing? Bought you a nice dinner? Made you feel like a woman instead of a workhorse?"

"That's none of your business—"

"Everything about you is my business now." The words came out flat, matter-of-fact. "Your daddy made sure of that when he put his name on my books. But I'm willing to be... flexible about collection methods."

"What do you mean?"

He pulled back enough to study your face, and his expression shifted to something calculating. "How about we discuss this civilized-like? You got coffee in this joint?"

The whiplash of his mood change left you dizzy. "I—yes?"

"Good." He stepped back, giving you room to breathe at last. "Make us some coffee, and we'll hash this out like adults. Unless you'd rather I just take what I can carry and call it square? Though looking around..." He glanced at your shabby furniture, the worn rug, the water stain on the ceiling. "Doesn't look like that'd cover even the interest."

You pushed off from the wall on unsteady legs, grateful for the excuse to put distance between you. "Coffee. Right. I can—yes."

He followed you into the kitchen, and somehow the small space shrank even further with him in it. You were hyper aware of him as you moved—the weight of his gaze, the sound of his breathing, the way he dominated the room without even trying.

"Sit," you managed, gesturing at the kitchen table. Annoyed at your own automatic hospitality. "Please."

"Such nice manners." But he sat, pulling out a chair and settling into it like a king on a throne. His eyes tracked your movements as you lit the stove. "Your mother teach you those?"

"Yes." The word came out clipped as you measured coffee grounds with shaking hands.

"She teach you anything else?" The question was loaded with suggestion. "How to take care of a man? Make him comfortable? Keep him happy?"

You fumbled the coffee pot, nearly dropping it. "She taught me to be respectable."

"Respectable." He drew the word out like it tasted funny. "That's real nice, dollface. Real nice and real boring."

The chair creaked as he shifted, and when you glanced over your shoulder, he was lighting a cigarette with practiced ease. He caught you looking and winked, the gesture somehow more threatening than flirtatious.

"See something you like?"

You turned back to the stove quickly, face burning. "The coffee will be ready in a minute."

"Take your time. I'm enjoying the view."

You could feel his eyes on you as you worked, cataloging every movement. It made you self-conscious in a way that was entirely new—aware of how your dress pulled across your hips when you reached for cups, how the kitchen light probably showed the outline of your slip through the thin fabric.

"You know," he said conversationally, "most people in your position would be trying to butter me up right about now. Batting their lashes, showing a little leg, trying to work an angle. But not you."

"Would it help?" The question slipped out before you could stop it, curious and appalled.

His laugh was dark, appreciative. "Might. Depends on how good you are at it. You even know how to flirt, baby? Or did your respectable mama skip that lesson?"

"I know how to be honest."

"Honest." He sounded amused now. "All right, let's have some honesty then. Turn around. Let me get a good look at what we're working with."

Your hands stilled on the percolator. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me. Turn around. Slow-like."

"I'm not a piece of meat at the butcher's—"

"No, you're collateral on a debt." All humor fled his voice. "And I'm trying to figure out what that collateral's worth. So be a good girl and turn around before I lose my patience."

The threat in his tone was unmistakable. You set the percolator on the stove with careful movements, then slowly turned to face him.

He'd stubbed out his cigarette and was leaning back in the chair, arms crossed over his chest. His eyes moved over you with clinical precision, taking in everything from your scuffed shoes to your mended collar.

"Come here."

Your feet felt like lead. "The coffee—"

"Will keep." He crooked a finger at you. "I said come here."

You moved forward on unsteady legs until you stood before him. This close, you had to look down to meet his eyes, and the position made you feel strangely powerful for a moment. Until he spoke again.

"Turn." He made a spinning motion with his finger. "Let's see the whole package."

Humiliation burned through you, but what choice did you have? You turned in a slow circle, arms wrapped around yourself, feeling his gaze like hands on your body.

"Stop."

You froze, back to him now.

"You got a nice figure under all that fabric." His voice had roughened. "Real nice. Too bad you hide it under these nun clothes."

"They're work clothes—"

"They're a crime, is what they are." You heard the chair scrape and then he was behind you, not touching but close enough that you could feel his warmth. "A body like yours should be draped in silk. Shown off in pretty dresses that hug these curves."

His hands hovered near your waist, not quite making contact. "Yeah, I could work with this. Put you in something nice, teach you how to walk in heels, how to smile pretty for the right people..."

"I don't understand." Your voice came out embarrassingly breathy.

"Sure you do." His breath stirred the hair at your nape. "Your daddy owes me a grand. You got maybe fifty bucks worth of stuff in this whole joint. That leaves us with a sizeable gap. But you?" His hands finally settled on your waist, light but possessive. "You could be worth something. If you're smart about it."

You jerked away from his touch, spinning to face him. "I'm not—I won't—"

"Won't what?" He moved back to lean against the counter, casual as could be. "Won't let me help you? Won't take the deal that keeps you out of the gutter? What exactly won't you do, princess?"

"I won't be your whore." The word tasted bitter on your tongue.

"Who said anything about whoring?" He looked genuinely amused. "If I wanted a whore, I know where to find them. Hell, for a grand I could have a whole stable. What I need is something different."

The percolator started to bubble. You turned to tend to it, needing the familiar action to steady yourself. "Then what do you need?"

"A girl on my arm. Someone respectable. Clean. The kind of dame you bring home to meet the family, not the kind you bang in the back of a Studebaker."

Your hands shook as you poured coffee. "I don't—why would you need that?"

"Because even bad men got mothers." He accepted the cup you offered, fingers brushing yours in the exchange. "And mine's been breaking my balls about settling down. Finding a nice girl, giving her grandkids, the whole nine yards."

"So find one."

"I did." His eyes locked on yours over the rim of his cup. "She's standing right in front of me, looking like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth."

"I'm not nice." The protest sounded weak even to your ears. "And I'm certainly not your girl."

"Not yet." He set down the coffee, leaning forward. "But you could be. For a price."

You sank into the chair across from him, suddenly exhausted. "What exactly are you proposing?"

"Simple. You be my steady girl. Come to family dinners, work events, anywhere I need a pretty face and good manners. In exchange, I knock a hundred bucks off your debt for every major shindig. Fifty for smaller stuff."

Your mind raced, doing the math. "That would take—"

"Few months, tops. I got a busy social calendar." He pulled out another cigarette but didn't light it, just rolled it between his fingers. "Unless you'd prefer to pay it off the traditional way? Though at twelve bucks a week..."

"Why me?" The question burst out before you could stop it. "You could have any girl in Brooklyn. Pretty ones. Experienced ones. Ones who actually know how to—to be what you need."

"Those girls got histories. Reputations. They know the score and they want things—marriage, money, status." He finally lit the cigarette, exhaling smoke through his nose. "You? You're clean. Untouched. Got that wide-eyed innocent thing that'll make my mother cream her panties."

The crude comparison made you flinch. "Do you have to be so vulgar?"

"Does it bother you?" He leaned forward, predatory interest sparking in his eyes. "Good girls like you probably never heard a man talk about real things. About what we want. What we think about when we see a dame like you all buttoned up and proper."

"Stop."

"You know what I thought when I saw you through that window?" He continued as if you hadn't spoken. "Thought about how easy it'd be to mess you up. Wrinkle that pressed dress. Pull those pins from your hair. Make you look like you'd been properly fucked instead of washing dishes like somebody's spinster aunt."

Heat flooded your face and pooled low in your belly. "You're disgusting."

"I'm honest." He flicked ash into one of the sympathy cards, watching your face as he defiled it. "And if you're honest with yourself, you'd admit you've wondered. What it would be like. What I could teach you."

"I haven't—"

"Liar." The word was soft, almost affectionate. "Bet you've been locked up in this apartment so long you're climbing the walls. Bet you lie in that narrow bed at night, touching yourself, wondering when you're gonna get to live a little."

Blood roared in your ears. "How dare you—"

"Tell you what." He stood abruptly, and you shrank back in your chair. "I'm gonna make this real simple. You got three choices. One: you find a way to pay me cash. Full amount, by end of the week."

"You know I can't—"

"Two: I take what I can get and put the word out that you're in the market for alternative employment. Plenty of houses downtown need fresh faces. Young, pretty, desperate—you'd do real well."

Nausea rolled through your stomach. "Please—"

"Or three." He moved around the table toward you. "You take my deal. Be my girl when I need you. Play the part, look pretty, keep your mouth shut when it matters and open when I tell you to."

You stood on shaking legs, backing away. "I need time to think—"

"No." He caught your wrist, not hard but firm. "You need to decide. Right now. Because I got other stops to make tonight, and I ain't coming back here without an answer."

"You can't just—"

"I can. I am." He pulled you closer, until barely a breath separated you. "But here's something to sweeten the pot. You say yes, and I'll throw in a kiss. Just one. So you know what you're signing up for."

Your heart hammered against your ribs. "That's supposed to convince me?"

"Yeah." His free hand came up to cup your jaw. "Because you've been wondering since I walked in what it would be like. And baby?" His thumb stroked across your cheekbone. "I'm really fucking good at it."

Something unfamiliar and ugly stirred in your stomach. "You're unbelievably arrogant."

"I'm right." He tilted your face up. "So what's it gonna be? You gonna be smart? Or you gonna let pride cost you everything?"

You stared up at him, this beautiful, terrible man who held your future in his callused hands. Thought of your father's debts, of rent coming due, of the factory girls with their hollow eyes and rattling coughs. Thought of your empty bed and empty future and empty stomach when the money ran out.

"Sundays," you heard yourself say, voice wavering. "I get Sundays. To visit my parents' graves."

Something flickered in his eyes—surprise, maybe, or respect. "Done."

"And I want... boundaries. You can't just—just take whatever you want."

"Be specific."

Your face burned, heat flooding your cheeks. Your tongue felt thick in your mouth. "No... expectations. Beyond what we agree to. I won't share your bed. Won't be your—your kept woman."

"Kept woman." He seemed to taste the words. "That's real delicate, dollface. But let's be clear about something." His grip on your wrist tightened slightly. "You'll be living in my house. Wearing clothes I buy. Eating food I provide. If that ain't kept, I don't know what is."

"That's different—"

"Is it?" He released your wrist only to settle both hands on your waist, holding you in place. "But fine. I won't drag you to my bed. Won't force nothing you don't want. But baby?" His voice dropped to a growl. "You're gonna want it. Gonna beg for it before this is over."

"Never."

"We'll see." His hands flexed on your waist, thumbs brushing the underside of your ribs through the fabric. "So is that a yes? You'll be my girl?"

The word stuck in your throat. Girl. Such a simple word for such a complex trap. But what choice did you have?

"Yes."

Triumph flashed across his face, sharp and predatory. "Good choice, honey. Now come here and seal the deal."

"You said a kiss. Just one."

"That's right." He backed you against the kitchen counter, caging you in with his body. "Just one. Better make it count."

Your hands came up to his chest automatically, whether to push him away or pull him closer, you couldn't tell. The expensive fabric of his suit was soft under your palms, the body beneath it hard as granite.

"I haven't—" The admission stumbled out. "I don't know how—"

"I know." His hand slid into your hair, pins scattering to the floor with tiny metallic sounds. "That's what makes this so fucking sweet. Now shut up and let me teach you something."

You had just enough time to suck in a breath before his mouth covered yours.

The first contact sent lightning racing down your spine. His lips were softer than they had any right to be, warm and sure as they pressed against yours. You made a sound—a squeak of pure shock that would have mortified you if you could think—and your entire body went rigid.

He pulled back just enough to murmur against your lips. "Relax, baby. I ain't gonna bite. Not this time."

Then he was kissing you again, slow and patient, like he had all night to take you apart. His hand in your hair tilted your head for a better angle while the other splayed across your lower back, holding you steady. The counter edge dug into your spine but you barely noticed, too overwhelmed by the sensation of his mouth moving against yours.

You'd been kissed before—brief, dry pecks that left no impression. This was something else entirely. This was... consumption. He kissed like he was trying to brand himself onto your soul, like he wanted to ruin you for anyone else who might try.

Your hands fisted in his shirt as the shock began to wear off, replaced by something hotter, hungrier. Your body softened against his without your permission, melting into his heat like wax near a flame. He made a sound of approval that rumbled through his chest and into yours.

"That's it," he murmured, breaking away to trail his lips along your jaw. "Good girl. Such a good girl, opening up for me."

"I'm not—" But your protest died as he found a spot just below your ear that made your knees buckle.

"Yeah, you are." His teeth scraped against your pulse point, light enough not to mark but sharp enough to make you gasp. "So sweet. So fucking innocent. Makes me want to wreck you."

His mouth returned to yours before you could respond, and this time there was nothing patient about it. He kissed you like he was starving and you were a feast, like he wanted to crawl inside you and live there. When his tongue traced the seam of your lips, you understood what he wanted without being told.

The first slide of his tongue against yours pulled a sound from your throat you'd never made before—desperate, needy, completely involuntary. Your whole body shuddered, a tremor that started at the base of your spine and rolled outward like an earthquake.

"Fuck," he groaned into your mouth, and the profanity should have appalled you. Instead, it made heat pool between your thighs in a way that had you pressing them together. "Christ, you're shaking for me. You that worked up from just a kiss?"

You tried to answer, but he was already kissing you again, deeper this time. His tongue stroked against yours with devastating skill, teaching you a rhythm that made your head spin. You tried to follow his lead, to give back what you were getting, and when your tongue tentatively met his, he growled like a man possessed.

His hand tightened in your hair, holding you still as he plundered your mouth. The other hand slid down to grip your hip, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise through the fabric. You should have protested the possessive handling. Instead, you arched into him, seeking more contact, more pressure, more everything.

Time lost meaning. The world narrowed to his mouth on yours, his hands holding you in place, the solid weight of him pressing you into the counter. Your lungs burned for air but you couldn't bear to break away, too drunk on the taste of him—coffee and cigarettes and something darker, essentially male.

He bit your bottom lip, a sharp nip that made you gasp, then soothed it with his tongue. The alternating pain and pleasure short-circuited something in your brain. Your hands slid up to tangle in his hair, messing his perfect style, pulling him closer.

"Jesus," he panted against your mouth. "Look at you. Coming apart for me already. I barely touched you and you're about to combust."

"Shut up," you managed, and pulled his head back down.

He laughed into the kiss, dark and delighted. "There she is. There's that fire I knew was hiding under all that propriety."

His hips pressed forward, pinning you more firmly against the counter, and you felt—oh God. The hard length of him pressed against your belly, obvious even through layers of fabric. The evidence of his arousal should have terrified you. Instead, it made you feel powerful. You did that. You, with your inexperience and nun clothes and good girl manners.

He must have felt your realization because he ground against you deliberately, making sure you felt every inch. "Yeah, baby. That's what you do to me. Got me hard as a fucking rock just from kissing you."

The crude words made your face flame, but lower, between your legs, something clenched with want. You pressed your thighs together harder, trying to ease the ache building there.

"You feel it too, don't you?" His mouth moved to your throat, sucking at the sensitive skin. "That need. That empty feeling that wants filling. Bet if I put my hand under that ugly dress, I'd find you soaking wet for me."

You shuddered. "Don't—"

"Don't what? Don't tell the truth? Don't make you face what your body already knows?" He bit down where your neck met your shoulder, hard enough to mark, and your vision whited out. "You can lie to yourself all you want, dollface. But your body's honest. It knows who it belongs to now."

His mouth returned to yours, swallowing any protest you might have made. This kiss was filthier, deeper, his tongue fucking into your mouth in a rhythm that made your hips move involuntarily. You were making sounds—desperate, needy little whimpers that would have mortified you if you could think. But thinking was impossible with his hands on you, his mouth devouring yours, his body caging you in like you were something precious he refused to let escape.

You didn't know how long he kissed you. Minutes? Hours? Days? Time meant nothing in the face of such overwhelming sensation. You were drowning in him, in the taste and smell and feel of him, and the terrifying part was that you didn't want to surface for air.

When he finally pulled back, you both were breathing like you'd run a marathon. His perfectly styled hair was completely wrecked, sticking up where your fingers had gripped. His lips were swollen, slick with your shared saliva. And his eyes—God, his eyes were nearly black with want, only a thin ring of blue remaining.

You probably looked worse. You could feel how swollen your lips were, how flushed your face must be. Your hair had come completely undone, falling around your shoulders in waves. And between your legs... you squeezed your thighs together, mortified by the wetness you could feel there.

"Look at you," he said, voice rough as gravel. "Thoroughly kissed. Marked up. Looking like somebody's been taking real good care of you."

His thumb traced your bottom lip, and you couldn't help the way your tongue flicked out to taste it. His eyes flared with heat.

"Fuck." The word came out strangled, and something shifted in his expression—a flicker of vulnerability that disappeared so fast you might have imagined it. His jaw clenched. "Christ, no wonder your old man kept you locked up. One kiss and you're ready to spread your legs for the first man who shows you a good time."

The cruel words hit like cold water, shocking after the heat of his kiss. You flinched, and his smile turned mean.

"What? Thought this was some fairy tale? Thought I'd kiss you and fall in love?" He laughed, but it sounded forced. "You really are green, aren't you? This is business, dollface. Nothing more."

"I know what this is," you managed, though your voice shook.

"Do you?" He pulled out a wad of cash, thick enough to make your eyes widen, and tossed it carelessly on the table. It landed next to your father's sympathy cards, the bills fanning out like an insult. "Buy yourself something that doesn't look like it came from a church rummage sale. Something that shows you got tits. Maybe some lipstick that won't come off so easy."

Your face burned with humiliation. "I don't need your money—"

"Yeah, you do." He was already at the door, not looking at you. "Eight o'clock tomorrow. Don't be late. And dollface?" He glanced back, but his eyes didn't quite meet yours. "Try not to read too much into this. You're a debt and a convenience. That's all."

The door closed behind him with a soft click. Your knees immediately gave out, and you slid down the counter to sit on the floor, fingers pressed to lips that still tingled from his kiss.

What had you done? What had you agreed to? And why did his cruel dismissal hurt more than it should?

You could still taste him. Still feel the phantom pressure of his hands, his mouth, his body holding you in place. Your skin felt too tight, like you might burst out of it at any moment. And between your legs...

You pressed your thighs together harder, but it only made the ache worse. He'd kissed you like he was drowning, held you like you were precious, then tossed money at you like you were exactly what he'd implied—a piece of goods to be purchased and dressed up.

But you'd felt the way his hands shook, just slightly, when he pulled away. Heard the rough catch in his voice before he covered it with cruelty. He could pretend all he wanted that you were just business, but his body had told a different story.

You sat on your kitchen floor until your breathing returned to normal, staring at the money scattered across your table. More cash than you'd seen in months, thrown at you like scraps to a dog. Part of you wanted to burn it. The practical part knew you'd spend it on exactly what he demanded—a dress that would make you look like you belonged in his world, even if you never would.

You'd agreed to be Bucky Barnes'... what? Pretend sweetheart? Fake companion? The terminology from your mother's generation felt antiquated, but his “girl" seemed too modern, too casual for whatever this arrangement was.

One thing was certain—you were in deep trouble. Because despite his cruel words, despite the dismissive way he'd thrown money at you like you were nothing, you were going to dream about him. About the way he'd kissed you like he wanted to consume you whole. About the hardness pressed against your belly and the way he'd groaned into your mouth like you were unraveling him.

About the split second before his mask slipped back into place, when he'd looked at you like you'd shaken something loose in him he hadn't expected.

The coffee had gone cold on the table. The sympathy cards lay scattered, defiled with ash and now mocked by dirty money. Tomorrow you'd walk into the Barnes family home on the arm of their enforcer. Tomorrow you'd start playing a role that might destroy everything you thought you knew about yourself.

Tonight, you climbed to your feet on shaky legs and gathered the bills with trembling fingers. You'd buy the dress. Play the part. Be his empty-headed arm candy who didn't know she was being used.

But you knew the truth, even if he didn't want to admit it. That kiss had shaken him just as much as it had destroyed you. And maybe, just maybe, that gave you more power than either of you realized.

You touched your swollen lips one more time, remembering not just the heat of his mouth, but the way he'd said "fuck" like the word had been punched out of him. Like you'd affected him in ways he hadn't anticipated.

Eight o'clock tomorrow. Less than twenty-four hours to figure out how to play a part you'd never auditioned for. How to be the kind of girl who belonged on Bucky Barnes' arm. How to survive in his world without losing yourself completely.

But as you got ready for bed, the money tucked away in your kitchen drawer, you wondered if the real danger wasn't in losing yourself.

It was in finding out that maybe, underneath all his cruelty and dismissal, James Barnes was just as lost as you were.

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