You don’t expect to befriend your neighbor in apartment 3B.
Not the one who only speaks in dry observations and quiet glances. Not the one who watches you like he’s memorizing your escape routes.
But some people grow on you.
Like stray cats. Like bad habits. Like nicknames that weren’t yours–until they were.
It starts in the laundry room.
“That’s illegal,” he says.
“So is jaywalking,” you shrug.
He doesn’t ask why you never sleep. You don’t ask why he notices. You have keys to every exit, and he has scars no one sees. But the city is never truly quiet, and you’re both better at listening than you pretend to be.
Return to Sender
WW2!Bucky x Mechanic!Reader
Europe, 1944. You're the only mechanic on base who can fix a transmission faster than a private can break one, and you've got the calloused hands and sharp tongue to prove it. You don't have time for distractions, especially the one with a cocky smile and the habit of leaving notes in your toolbox.
You threaten to drop a wrench on his boots. He says you'd look pretty doing it. Somewhere between the gunfire and the grease, you start hoping he survives long enough to annoy you tomorrow.
The Devil You Know
Mob boss!Bucky x Reader
Forced into a marriage you never asked for, you'll do anything to escape him. You want him dead. He just wants you.
To Have and to Hold Office
Congressman!Bucky x Black Widow!reader
After a late-night in New Orleans, Congressman Bucky Barnes and his chief of staff wake up legally married. An annulment should be simple, but unfortunately, nothing about their lives is simple. With Bucky's reputation on the line and her past threatening to resurface, staying married starts to look like the safest option. It's only supposed to be temporary. Public appearances, a convincing story, and a quiet divorce once the headlines fade. But fake marriage is harder when everyone else believes it. Especially when Bucky is already in love with his wife.
Hamilton
These are all fics from 2021 and before... enter at your own risk.
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summary: Europe, 1944. You're the only mechanic on base who can fix a transmission faster than a private can break one, and you've got the calloused hands and sharp tongue to prove it. You don't have time for distractions, especially the one with a cocky smile and the habit of leaving notes in your toolbox.
You threaten to drop a wrench on his boots. He says you'd look pretty doing it. Somewhere between the gunfire and the grease, you start hoping he survives long enough to annoy you tomorrow.
a/n: yeah so here's the thing. I've brought this fic back from the dead because it's actually been finished and sitting in my drafts for months. sorry about that. it needs some editing, but I figured I'd work on finishing posting this series while I'm working on my THATHO series. I need to stop committing to multi-part series and sit down and write something shorter. also the difference between my style and writing from like a year ago until now is pretty crazy.
The news comes in on a crumpled sheet of official stationery, passed down from a courier with a cigarette tucked behind one ear and boots caked in two days’ worth of road dust. The ink is smudged where the rain caught it, but the words are clear enough:
“48-hour leave granted. London. Rail departs at dawn.”
The air shifts the moment it’s read aloud. It hums, the way an old radio does when it finds the edge of a song. There’s a low chorus of muttered cheers, smothered whoops. Cards are swept off tables. Cigarettes are stubbed out mid-drag. Ramirez is already yelling something about clean shirts and ration chocolate. Someone’s betting on who’s going to come back hungover.
You lean against the doorframe, arms crossed, one boot heel kicked back against the wall. The war doesn’t stop. But for once, it flinches.
Across the room, Bucky stands slowly. You catch it, the way his hand hovers near his ribs like he’s pretending to scratch, like he’s not trying to ease the stitch that still hasn’t healed. His limp is mild, but it’s there, hidden behind the stiff square of his shoulders and the set of his jaw. Each step carries the weight of something that hasn’t let go of him yet.
He’s not looking at you. You’re not looking at him. But you both see each other anyway.
He walks over, saying nothing, just brushing past as he heads for his kit. He smells like gunpowder soap and stubbornness.
You watch the ghost of a wince chase across his expression when he bends to pick up his jacket.
“Hey, grease-girl,” Jenkins pipes up from somewhere behind you, “you two lovebirds better behave in the city. Don’t want any war babies while I’m gone.”
The barracks erupts. Someone actually drops their mess tin. Ramirez nearly chokes on laughter. Jenkins winks with the smugness of a man who knows he’s poking a bear.
You don’t move. Don’t even blink. Just tilt your head slightly and say, dry as kindling:
“I’m more likely to smother him with a pillow than sleep with him.”
The room howls. Chairs scrape. Someone shouts, “Christ, remind me never to get on her bad side—”
“She has a good side?” someone else replies.
Bucky, still across the room, lets out a slow breath through his nose and doesn't turn around. But you can see it. The curl at the edge of his mouth. That grin he gets when he’s biting it back.
You catch it, too. Something shifts in your ribs. Annoyance, maybe. Or something more dangerous. You ignore it.
The light is beginning to fade, washing the room in gold and dust. The kind of light that makes everything look like it already happened. A memory in motion. You roll your eyes, push off the doorframe, and head for your locker, muttering something about “idiots” under your breath.
But you’re already thinking about the train.
Already wondering what it’ll feel like to walk through streets that don’t echo with mortar fire.
Already thinking, against your better judgment, about wearing something that isn’t canvas and grease.
And maybe, about what it’ll do to him when he sees you in it.
—
The pub glows like a hearth against the street’s mist-chilled gloom. Inside, amber sconces flicker against stone walls, painting the floor in shadows and gold. There’s music in the corner, something with a horn and a slow kind of swagger. The scent is all wood polish, warm beer, and that old, comforting promise of a night not lived in uniform.
Steve, Jenkins, Ramirez, and a few others are already deep into their pints, crowding a round table near the fireplace. There’s a looseness to them that hasn’t been seen in weeks: arms draped over chair backs, voices lifted without worry that they’ll be told to shut it.
Bucky sits with his injured leg stretched out just enough to avoid notice, a bottle sweating in his palm. He’s nursing it more than drinking. The light makes a halo of his hair. There’s a bruise under his left eye, but he barely feels it tonight.
Someone cracks a joke about the lieutenant’s haircut.
Another leans toward the waitress like she’s the first woman they’ve seen in years.
Steve’s halfway through a story when the door swings open.
It’s not loud. Just a quiet creak and a burst of streetlamp haze. But the shift is immediate. The pub seems to pause ike London herself held her breath.
And there you are.
You step through the doorway, uncertain for only a blink, one foot tucked behind the other in borrowed heels. Your dress is nothing flashy, dark navy, soft at the hem, worn at the zipper, but it fits like it was waiting for you all this time. It gathers at your waist like it was made to, skimming over hips and settling like dusk around your legs. There’s grease under your nails still but your hands look delicate now, polished, sure.
Your lips are stained a deep, stubborn red. Not war paint. Something older than that. Something timeless.
Your eyes scan the room like a trained mechanic checks for smoke. Calculating. Measured. But you’re not hiding. You let them look.
They do.
A chair creaks. Someone forgets to light the match dangling from their fingertips. A cigarette burns all the way down, unfelt.
Ramirez actually whistles. Jenkins lets out a choked, “Well damn.”
But your eyes find only one face. You’re not disappointed.
Bucky Barnes is staring like you just knocked the air from his lungs. He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t speak. His bottle slips an inch in his hand. For once, his mouth doesn’t know what to do. He looks like someone took the war out of him and left only want.
Steve, ever the witness to his oldest friend’s undoing, watches with an expression that flits between amusement and something gentler.
He leans closer, not even bothering to hide his smirk.
“You okay, Buck?”
Bucky swallows. His voice is rough. He never looks away.
“I’m gonna marry her.”
Steve chokes so hard on his beer it spills onto his jacket.
Jenkins hears it. “What?”
Bucky doesn’t repeat himself. Doesn’t need to. He’s already half-standing, or trying to, forgetting for a second that his leg isn’t what it used to be. He winces, curses softly, and grips the table like it insulted him. You see it — the way he tries to cover the ache, how the smugness returns like armor.
You walk toward them, slow and deliberate, each step echoing in the hollowness left by silence.
He meets your gaze. Eyes dark, mouth parted, heart a thunder in his chest.
You stop just short of the table, one brow arched.
“You gonna stare all night, Sergeant?”
There it is. That flicker in your expression. You’re teasing. But your cheeks are a shade warmer than they were a moment ago.
And he smiles. Like it hurts. Like it’s the only thing that doesn’t.
“Only if I’m lucky.”
You roll your eyes, classic deflection, but there’s something fragile underneath. Something that wants to believe him.
You sit, finally. Steve raises his eyebrows but wisely says nothing more. Jenkins elbows Ramirez and mutters something about needing to change his damn shirt.
The table shifts back to life, slowly. The noise creeps back in. But the space between you and Bucky remains charged — a tension pulled taut like wire, one spark away from unraveling everything.
Outside, London thrums on. War or no war, the night is young.
And he still can’t stop looking at you.
-
You sit at a side table now, the kind with a wobbly leg and half a coaster pressed beneath it. There’s a drink in your hand—something dark, nearly bitter—and the rim is still smudged from your lipstick. You’re not drinking fast. Just turning the glass in your fingers, letting the cold sting your calluses.
Across from you, Steve nurses his own and leans back, sleeves rolled up and collar unbuttoned. There’s a trace of humor in his eyes as he watches the room unfold around you both.
“So,” he says, tipping his chin toward the crowd. “You always clean up like this?”
You smirk. “Only on rare occasions. Blue moons. Enemy surrenders.”
And then:
“Would the lady do me the honor?”
The voice is low, a little too polished. Callahan, all wide grin and boyish charm, standing beside your table with one hand outstretched, the other shoved awkwardly into his pocket. His dress uniform’s wrinkled, but his smile is smooth.
You arch a brow.
Steve lifts his drink and leans back like he’s very interested to see how this plays out.
You glance across the table—just a flicker of your eyes—and there he is.
Bucky.
Arms crossed, beer forgotten. His expression unreadable. Like cloud cover over something dangerous. His jaw works once. Twice.
You take Callahan’s hand.
“Sure,” you say, standing. “Just don’t step on my toes.”
Callahan leads you toward the center of the pub, where others have cleared a makeshift space for dancing. The floorboards creak beneath your heels.
Callahan’s hand lands lightly at your waist. You don’t flinch, but you don’t settle into it either. You laugh at something he says—some line about how you could knock him flat with one of those wrenches—but your eyes are scanning.
The room.
The door.
The table where Bucky was sitting.
He’s gone.
Back at the table, Steve watches your face shift. Watches Callahan’s hand drop just a little lower. Watches the way your gaze flickers like a signal flare.
He lets out a breath and mutters under it:
“Jealous idiot.”
Then louder:
“You gonna do something about it, Buck, or you gonna let Callahan twirl her straight into someone else’s future?”
There’s no answer.
Until there is.
A shadow moves through the crowd. A rustle of motion just behind Callahan’s shoulder.
Then—
“Mind if I cut in?”
Bucky’s voice is rough velvet, stretched tight over something deeper. Something unraveling.
You blink. Just once. A flicker of breath. Then your eyes meet his—dark, steady, unreadable as always—but there’s a question beneath them now. One he won’t ask aloud unless you let him.
You could say no.
But you don’t.
You slide your hand into his.
It’s warm, calloused, familiar.
A little clammy, maybe. But he was just scowling in a corner nursing his jealousy like a wartime Shakespearean hero, so you suppose he has an excuse.
You step into his space. Careful. Measured.
And still, it rattles something loose in your ribs.
His hand settles lightly at your waist—too light. Like he’s afraid of scaring you off. Your free hand lands on his shoulder. You feel the heat of him even through the fabric. The faint shift of muscle and tendon beneath your palm.
You’re stiff at first.
Your feet don’t know how to move in heels. Your hips don’t know how to sway. The pub’s candlelit now, band easing into something slow and syrup-sweet, but your heart’s beating like you’re sprinting through shrapnel.
Bucky doesn’t comment on it. He just sways with you. Easy. Patient.
Then—softly, barely above the music—
“You clean up alright, Trouble.”
Your lips twitch.
“Don’t get used to it.”
He smiles. That boyish, sideways grin like he’s won something he wasn’t supposed to want.
“Too late.”
There’s a silence after that. Heavy with everything not said.
Your hand lingers too long on his shoulder. His thumb brushes—accidentally?—just above your hip. You shift but don’t pull away.
He steps just a breath closer, his movements careful, measured. There’s still a slight limp in his rhythm, but he hides it well.
“You’re real, right?” he murmurs.
His breath brushes your cheek. Warm. Gentle. Real.
“Didn’t just crawl out of a dream?”
You snort. It’s not elegant. But it’s honest.
“Must’ve been a fever dream. I’m the nightmare in it.”
His smile deepens.
“My favorite kind.”
Your internal voice hisses don’t look at him, but of course you do. He’s looking down at you like the war’s on pause and your crooked smirk is the only battle he’s losing tonight.
You try to look unimpressed. Mostly succeed.
He smells like soap and antiseptic and something vaguely metallic—probably a bandage. There’s still a bruise blooming under his jaw, but his eyes are clearer than they’ve been in days.
Still Bucky.
Still frustrating. Still smug. Still yours in ways neither of you are ready to say out loud.
But something’s shifted.
Something in the way his hand rests at your waist—not like he owns you, but like he’d wait for you forever if you asked.
Something in how the music fades from your ears, like someone turned the world down low, just for the two of you.
For a few heartbeats, there’s no London. No war. No wounds.
Just the sway of your bodies. The warmth between you.
The almost of it all.
-
The bar's emptied out. The music's softer now, some half-drunk soldier crooning along to the jukebox. Most of the unit has wandered off into the London night, weaving toward bunks or darker corners. You're still a little warm from the whiskey, the kind of warmth that starts behind the ribs and makes you smile more than you should.
Bucky's beside you, flushed and loose-limbed. He's not staggering, not quite, but his shoulder bumps yours more than once as you walk out the door.
The rain greets you like a curtain. Sheets of it, sudden and silver in the glow of the streetlamps.
“Well, hell,” you mutter.
Bucky blinks up at the sky. “You gotta be kidding me.”
You tug your jacket tighter. He looks left, right, then grins—and doubles back into the pub.
“What are you—”
He returns a second later, triumphantly twirling a forgotten black umbrella.
You raise a brow. “You stole that.”
“I rescued it,” he says, flicking it open with flair. “Besides, whoever left it doesn't need it half as bad as you do.”
You try to glare. It doesn’t hold. Not with the rain falling like music and his stupid grin flashing under lamplight.
So you start walking. He holds the umbrella over you with a soldier's precision—until you notice his shoulder darkening, then the curve of his back. Water clings to his collar.
“You're getting soaked, idiot.”
“You're not,” he shrugs, pleased.
“You're being ridiculous,” you snap, but it's breathless, softer than you'd like.
You reach up and tug his sleeve and he follows without hesitation. His steps slow, and then he ducks beneath the narrow dome of borrowed dry with you. Close now. Too close.
For a moment, he just stares.
His eyes are wide, startled like he hadn’t expected you to pull him in, like this hadn’t been the thing he’d wanted all night. And now that it’s here he looks almost afraid to move.
Rain hisses around you in the dark. The air between you is thick with the heat of everything unsaid.
He smells like the bar: whiskey and woodsmoke and a trace of citrus from that stupid orange you smuggled him three days ago. But underneath that: rain on cotton. Metal. Him.
You glance up to find his face in profile, jaw clenched, a drop of water sliding slow along his cheekbone. You’re just about to say something when his foot slips slightly on the slick cobblestones.
Your hand flies to his elbow instinctively, steadying. His free hand catches your waist in return.
Noses brush.
Your breath catches. So does his.
Neither of you speaks.
The umbrella wobbles overhead, unbalanced by how still you’ve both gone. Too still, like even sound might break this moment.
You can feel his fingers through your coat, firm but careful, like he’s afraid you might vanish if he holds too tight.
His face is inches from yours now. Not even inches. A breath. You can feel the warmth of him, the tension in his spine, the heat building behind his eyes. His gaze flicks to your mouth, just once, then right back up.
And then he leans in. Barely. Just enough to tilt the world.
You don’t move.
Not away.
Not forward.
Just… still.
Your heartbeat roars in your ears. The sound of rain is suddenly muffled, far away. Your hand is still on his arm. His thumb moves over the fabric at your hip.
His nose grazes yours again. Softer this time. Like a question.
And then—
He stops.
A fraction of a second before the line would’ve been crossed, he stops.
You’re not sure who exhales first, but the spell breaks with the smallest breath between your lips.
He pulls back. Gently, reluctantly. Like it takes effort.
You let go of his coat.
The umbrella rights itself. The cold rushes in between you.
You clear your throat, trying to find footing on the other side of something that almost was.
“We should keep walking,” you say, voice low.
He nods once, still not quite looking at you. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, we should.”
But for the rest of the walk, he doesn’t try to take the umbrella back.
And he doesn’t step quite so far away.
You reach the door of the building. He hands you the umbrella.
“Thanks for the rescue,” you say.
“Always,” he murmurs.
You turn in before he can say anything else. Before you can.
Inside, the light spills across the floorboards like honey.
Bucky doesn’t go to bed right away.
He sits on the little cot in the corner of the room he's been given. The umbrella's folded by the door. His hair is still damp. He rests his elbow on his knee, rubbing a hand over his mouth.
Somewhere outside, water drips from a gutter.
He thinks of the way your hand had found his in the dark.
He doesn't sleep for a long time.
-
The sun hasn’t broken the horizon yet when Bucky pulls the door shut behind him, careful not to let it creak. The streets are slick with last night’s rain, puddles catching the dull orange of the few streetlamps still burning. London’s still half-asleep, fog clinging low to the cobblestones like a breath the city hasn’t exhaled yet.
He walks slowly, one hand buried deep in his coat pocket, the other resting occasionally on his thigh as he limps along. It’s worse today — he knew it would be. But he doesn’t slow.
The cold air bites through the layers, numbs his fingers, stings his eyes. Still, he walks.
A few blocks down, past a narrow alley and a boarded-up bakery, he sees it.
The shop is tucked into the corner of a row, crooked windows, paint peeling from the frame, but the inside glows gold with warm lamplight. There’s a velvet curtain drawn halfway back, and in the window, beneath faint curls of condensation, a small display: antique rings lined up like tiny promises, each one waiting.
He opens the door. A bell chimes overhead.
Inside, it smells like old wood and beeswax. The jeweler, an older man with silver glasses and ink-stained cuffs, looks up without surprise. As if men walk in every morning looking to gamble their heart.
“Looking for something particular?” the man asks, voice soft, curious.
Bucky nods once. Says nothing.
The man gestures to a tray of rings. Silver bands mostly, delicate but not dainty, etched with quiet patterns, some smooth, some scarred with time. Bucky reaches out and brushes a fingertip across one. Then another.
And then he sees it.
A narrow silver ring. No stones. No shine. Just clean edges, a sturdy circle. Understated. Honest.
He picks it up. Turns it over in his fingers. It feels right. Heavy enough to matter. Light enough she might actually wear it.
“She’s not the type for frills,” he murmurs.
The jeweler smiles gently. “She doesn’t need them, does she?”
Bucky shakes his head. “No,” he says. “She doesn’t.”
He counts out bills from his pocket — notes crumpled from too many hands — and tucks the ring into the small worn box the jeweler wraps in brown paper and twine.
Bucky slips it into the inside pocket of his coat.
“Not yet,” he mutters to himself as he steps back onto the street, exhaling into the morning chill. “But someday.”
-
The front door creaks as Bucky steps back inside. The smell of stale smoke and cold coffee hangs in the air. Most of the unit’s still asleep, tangled in blankets and dreams, but Steve’s already up, sitting on the edge of a cot, shirt half-buttoned, drinking water from a dented tin cup.
He glances up. Sees the way Bucky winces as he lowers himself onto his bed. Sees, too, the corner of brown paper poking from Bucky’s coat pocket.
Steve frowns. Sets the cup down.
“What’s that?”
Bucky freezes for half a second, then exhales. “Nothing.”
Steve stands. Walks over. Lifts a brow.
“You serious about this?”
Bucky looks up. His face is tired, unshaven, shadowed with something unspoken — but his voice is soft. Sure.
“Always have been,” he says. “Just waiting for her to catch up.”
Steve stares at him for a moment. Then huffs a breath that’s almost a laugh.
“You’re gonna kill each other first.”
“Maybe,” Bucky says, leaning back, closing his eyes. “But she’s worth the bruises.”
summary. After a late-night in New Orleans, Congressman Bucky Barnes and his chief of staff wake up legally married. An annulment should be simple, but unfortunately, nothing about their lives is simple. With Bucky's reputation on the line and her past threatening to resurface, staying married starts to look like the safest option. It's only supposed to be temporary. Public appearances, a convincing story, and a quiet divorce once the headlines fade. But fake marriage is harder when everyone else believes it. Especially when Bucky is already in love with his wife.
word count. 6.7k
warnings. mission shenanigans, sam and yelena are instigators, bucky is SO down bad it's giving me second-hand embarassment, mutual pining, denial, bucky is over protective
masterlist | series masterlist | last chapter | next chapter
Bucky had wanted to come.
That was the first problem.
Bucky Barnes, unfortunately, had developed a habit of wanting to come wherever you were most likely to be shot, stabbed, poisoned, emotionally cornered, or otherwise inconvenienced by the consequences of your own life choices. This was noble in theory, exhausting in practice, and completely unsuitable for the mission currently requiring you to hang upside down from the ceiling of a private records office in Arlington while Yelena ate cashews beneath you.
The facility was owned by a “strategic consulting firm,” which in Washington meant nothing and everything. The front office handled defense contracts, philanthropic partnerships, political risk assessments, and donor management. The locked archive beneath it, according to the files you had stolen from a very nervous man with a waxed mustache, handled something else entirely.
Names, movement logs, enhanced-person incident reports that had never been filed through official channels. Old Widow recovery routes. Contractor payments tied to three shell companies you recognized from Valentina’s orbit.
Bucky had read the first page of the briefing and said, “I’m coming.”
You had said, “No.”
He had said, “That wasn’t a question.”
You had said. “And yet it has been answered.”
Sam, sitting across the kitchen table with his arms crossed and the expression of a man who knew he had been invited to witness a fight rather than participate in a meeting, had said, “I’m gonna regret asking this, but why isn’t he coming?”
“Because,” you had said, taking the folder out of Bucky’s hand before he could glare the paper into confession, “this is a stealth retrieval, not a former-Winter-Soldier-and-sitting-congressman-breaks-into-a-contractor-basement situation.”
Bucky stared at you.
You stared back.
“You can’t be there. If something connects the site to the bill, or to Valentina, you need distance,” You said.
His jaw tightened.
“You’re going,” he had said.
“Yes.”
“That’s different?”
“This is the kind of thing Yelena and I were trained for,” you shrugged. “You’re the congressional sponsor of the bill that might expose her network.”
He had stayed behind. Barely.
Which was why your phone currently had several unread texts from him despite the fact that you were in the middle of a felony.
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
You inside?
11:34
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
Check in.
11:34
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
You good?
11:42
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
I can still come if you need me.
11:43
You had read all of them and answered none. Not because you were avoiding him, but because you were a professional.
“You know,” Sam said in your earpiece, voice low and warm and far too amused for a man sitting on a rooftop two blocks away, “for somebody who insisted Bucky stay home, you’ve checked your phone a lot.”
“I am monitoring external variables.”
“You are monitoring your husband.”
“Fake husband.”
From below you, Yelena stopped chewing.
You froze.
Yelena looked up at you from the floor, one eyebrow lifted.
Her black tactical suit made her blend into the shadows beneath the ceiling panel. A couple cashews fell out of her hand and onto the floor. She had found them in the security break room and claimed them.
“What did you say?” she asked.
You twisted your wrist slightly, keeping the bypass tool pressed to the sensor housing. “I said husband.”
“No.” Yelena’s eyes narrowed. “You said fake husband.”
Sam went silent in your ear.
You sighed through your nose. “Did I?”
“Yes,” Yelena said. “You did.”
“Could have been an accent issue.”
“You do not have accent.”
“Everyone has an accent.”
“Do not linguistics me.”
The tool in your hand beeped softly, the sensor light shifted from red to green.
“Good news,” you said. “Hallway’s clear.”
“Do not change subject.”
“We’re literally changing rooms.”
You swung down from the panel, caught the edge with one hand, then dropped lightly to the floor beside her. Your boots hit the tile with barely a sound. The hallway beyond the records office stretched dark and cold ahead of you, lined with doors requiring keycards, biometric access, or the kind of confidence only rich men and former assassins possessed.
Yelena did not move. She crossed her arms.
“You told me it was real.”
“I did not.”
“You let me think it.”
“She sounds pretty mad,” Sam exhaled in your ear.
Yelena smiled without humor. “I am not mad. Explain.”
“This is not the time.”
“We are in empty hallway after disabling security. Very good time.”
“There are patrols.”
“I will get rid of them.”
“We are on a clock.”
“I am efficient.”
You looked toward the camera you had looped two minutes ago. It would hold for another six before the system caught the irregularity. Behind the next door was the internal archive. Behind that, if the floor plans were accurate, a secure storage room. Somewhere inside it was a physical drive marked with an old Red Room routing cipher that had no business appearing in a D.C. contractor’s foundation file.
You needed to keep moving.
You also knew Yelena well enough to understand that she would stand in the middle of an active mission until sunrise if she decided the emotional injury warranted it. She was very principled that way.
Terrible trait.
“We got married by accident,” you said.
Yelena stared. Sam made a small noise through the comms.
“I need both of you to remain calm.” You said, pointing toward the door and starting walking.
“By accident,” Yelena repeated.
“Yes.”
“And you did not tell me?”
“I was going to.”
“When? Anniversary?”
You reached the keycard panel and crouched in front of it, pulling a narrow tool from your sleeve.
“Probably before then.”
“I would stop talking if I were you,” Sam advised.
“Excellent advice,” you said. “For both of us.”
Yelena crouched beside you, close enough that her shoulder nearly touched yours. Her face had gone still in the way it did when hurt moved under anger. People who did not know her might have missed it. You did not.
The keycard panel clicked.
“Door,” you said.
Yelena did not look at it.
“You told Sam.”
“Bucky told Sam,” you corrected.
“You could have told me.”
“I know.”
That was the wrong thing to say. Or the right thing. Hard to tell. Yelena’s mouth tightened. You pulled the door open and slid inside before she could say anything else.
The archive room was colder than the hallway. Rows of rolling shelves stood under dim motion lights, each marked with dull metal tags and coded labels.
You moved down the first row, counting shelves. “Sam, talk to me.”
For once, Sam sounded cautious. “You’ve got eight minutes before the lobby guard cycles back. Exterior’s clear. Van's still clean. No alarms on my end.”
Yelena followed behind you, steps silent. “You lied to me.”
“I omitted.”
“You omitted the fake part of fake marriage. Crucial part.” Yelena’s glare could have stripped paint. “And then you kept lying to me for two months.”
You found the shelf. Section 4-14. Private philanthropic filings. Contractor-linked donor records. Shell entity cross-references. It was exactly where the floor plan said it would be, which made you immediately suspicious.
You crouched and ran your fingers along the bottom edge of the shelf, feeling for a pressure switch.
There.
Tiny, under the metal lip.
“Trap?” Yelena asked, anger pushed aside by instinct.
“Silent alarm.”
She crouched beside you, all business now. “Lazy.”
You smiled despite yourself and pulled a wedge from your belt. “Hold this.”
Yelena held the shelf steady while you slid the wedge in, locking the pressure plate. Her shoulder brushed yours. For all her fury, she was exactly where you needed her.
That made the guilt worse.
You opened the file drawer and started searching.
“You could have told me,” she said again, quieter this time.
You did not look at her. “I know.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Several answers circled in your head. Because if you knew it was fake, you’d ask why I kept wearing the ring like it wasn’t. Because Bucky is the first good thing I have held and I do not know how to want him without ruining it.
You pulled a folder from the drawer. “Because it’s complicated.”
Yelena scoffed softly. “That is coward’s answer.”
“I hate to agree with her,” Sam started, “but—”
“Finish the sentence and I will make your shield into a serving tray.”
He stopped.
You flipped through the folder, scanning donor names, dates, routing codes. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Then—
Harrington Strategic.
You froze.
Yelena noticed at once. “What?”
“Shell reference.”
You pulled the page free and photographed it. Then another. The codes were old but not old enough. You slid the documents into a scan sleeve and closed the drawer, moving to the next drawer.
“We need the drive.”
“And real conversation,” Yelena said.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Yelena,” you sighed.
“You have fake husband, real feelings, and did not tell me. We are having conversation.”
You reached the secure storage door at the back of the archive. “I do not have real feelings.”
Sam snorted.
“Wilson,” you muttered under your breath in warning.
“I’m just saying,” Sam said. “I was in the car after the truth serum.”
Yelena’s eyes lit up. “What truth serum?”
You closed your eyes briefly.
Wonderful. Excellent. Perfect.
“Can we focus on the mission?”
“You were truth-serumed?” Yelena demanded.
“On accident.”
“Buck put it in her tea,” Sam supplied.
Yelena stared at you.
You kept working on the lock. “He thought it was peppermint extract.”
“Why was truth serum labeled peppermint extract?” Yelena asked.
“That’s not the point.”
“Oh, well okay then. What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
The lock flashed red.
You exhaled, adjusted the bypass needle, and tried again.
“She was telling him how handsome he is,” Sam answered.
You narrowed your eyes. “Wilson.”
Yelena’s smile spread slowly.
“Oh.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You think Congressman Sad Eyes is handsome.”
“I was drugged.”
Yelena leaned against the wall beside the secure door, arms crossed, her earlier anger rearranging itself into something more dangerous: delight.
“You like him,” she said.
“I do not like him.”
“Yes, you do,” Sam and Yelena said at the same time.
The door opened.
You stepped inside. “This is bullying.”
“This is family,” Yelena said.
“Family needs to be quieter on missions.”
The secure room was smaller, lined with locked metal cabinets. The air was even colder here, a preservation chill meant to protect paper, hard drives, and whatever else men with too much money convinced themselves they could keep forever.
You knelt and unrolled a thin tool kit from your sleeve.
Yelena crouched beside you. “Say it.”
“No.”
“Say you like him.”
“I like many people.”
“You do not.”
“I tolerate several.”
“You like him.”
“I like his house. It’s a very nice house.”
Yelena gave you a flat look. “You are in love with townhouse?”
“The water pressure is excellent.”
“Is water pressure why you stare at him when he opens doors?”
“I do not stare.”
“You do.”
“I have to look at him sometimes. He is large and often in the way.”
“You know, for a former assassin,” Sam said in your ear, “your defense strategy is weak.”
You looked toward the ceiling in disbelief that this was your team for this mission. “I should’ve let Bucky come.”
“No, he would be worse,” Yelena snorted.
“He would’ve spent the whole mission asking if you were okay every five minutes,” Sam said.
“He does that because he is neurotic.”
“He does that because he loves—” Sam stopped so abruptly you heard his teeth click.
The lock pick paused in your hand. Sam went quiet. Too quiet. Your pulse changed but you forced your hand to keep moving.
“Because he loves what, Sam?”
“Control,” Sam said quickly. “Mission control. He loves mission control.”
You looked back at the lock until the pins blurred.
You had spent three weeks pretending the truth serum incident had not happened. Three weeks sleeping beside Bucky in the dark, the space between you warm and impossible. Three weeks watching him read labels twice before making your tea. Three weeks since you told him you were friends and colleagues and nothing else.
There were many things you could survive. Guns and needles, a bullet through soft tissue. A fall from three stories if you landed well. You were not sure you could survive Bucky knowing you wanted him and being kind about not wanting you back.
The lock clicked open.
You removed the small black drive from the cabinet, along with a paper index card containing three shell company names and a private event schedule.
Yelena plucked the card from your hand. “These are spouse events.”
“What?”
“Here,” she tapped the second line. “Foundation dinner. Closed guest list.”
You took the card back.
She was right.
A private board reception. A donor retreat listed as “family attendance encouraged.” Not staff. Not aides. Not policy advisors.
Spouses.
Sam’s voice came through. “What is it?”
“Access,” you said.
Yelena’s eyes flicked to you.
You slid the drive into your jacket. “As chief of staff, I can’t get into half these rooms without raising questions. As his wife…”
You felt a slow, unpleasant thrill.
Yelena smiled. “Finally, marriage becomes useful.”
“She doesn’t need encouragement,” Sam sighed.
“Yes, she did,” Yelena argued.
“I did not,” you said.
“You did. You are wasting marriage on longing instead of using marriage to crush enemies.”
“I am not longing.”
Yelena gave you a look. “You’re longing.”
“Oh, she’s longing,” Sam agreed.
“I hate both of you.”
“Maybe,” said Yelena. “But you like him.”
You shut the cabinet harder than necessary.
Fine.
You turned to face her, and Yelena was wearing the expression of a woman who had decided she would rather be shot than leave this alone.
“Fine,” you said.
Yelena stilled.
“Yes, I like him.”
No truth serum or nausea this time.
Yelena’s expression shifted. The triumph softened almost immediately into something protective. Sam made no sound at all.
You continued before anyone could be gentle.
“It’s not serious.”
“Oh, come on,” Sam said.
“It isn’t.”
“You are stealing files while wearing his ring,” Yelena said, “and pretending not to check your phone every time he texts.”
“It is a crush,” you snapped. “That’s all. A stupid, inconvenient crush caused by proximity. We’re done here.”
You turned to the exit.
“You have feelings,” Yelena said.
“I have many feelings. Hunger. Irritation.”
“For him. For Bucky.”
You stopped at the secure room door. “That I can’t do anything about.”
The hallway was still beyond clear. Your camera loop had two minutes left. The guard pattern had changed slightly; you could hear footsteps somewhere above you, a little too quick. Not yet a problem. Soon.
“Why not?” Sam said.
You kept your eyes on the corridor. “Because we have to stay married.”
“That seems like opposite of problem,” Yelena said.
“It is a public arrangement tied to his career, his office, and his bill. If we complicate it and it goes badly, we still have to live in the same house, sleep in the same bed, and lie to every camera in D.C. until we can safely undo it.”
You moved into the hall.
“And besides, he doesn’t want me like that,” you added.
Sam made a sound that might have been physical pain.
“You are stupid,” Yelena said.
“I know what I mean.” You stopped at the corner, checked the reflection in the dark glass of a framed abstract painting, then waved Yelena back a step. “He is kind. That’s what you’re seeing. He treats me well because he treats people well when he thinks they’re his responsibility.”
Sam went very quiet on the comm.
“He opens doors because he’s from the forties,” you continued. He makes tea because he feels guilty. He looks at me like that because he looks at everyone he wants to protect like that.”
Yelena’s voice came low behind you. “Does he?”
You did not answer.
“You ever think,” Sam started, “you keep deciding what he feels because it keeps you from ever having to ask?”
You turned toward the camera above the hall and pulled a compact from your belt.
“You ever think maybe you talk too much?”
“Every day. Doesn’t make me wrong. Just sayin’.”
“You are always just saying. It is your most dangerous condition.”
A soft, red light at the far end of the hallway began pulsing. A silent alarm. Local system only, probably triggered by the guard’s vitals monitor or the camera loop ending sooner than expected.
Sam swore. “You’ve got movement upstairs.”
“How many?”
“Four. Maybe six. Coming down the east stairwell.”
Yelena rolled her shoulders. “Good. I was bored.”
You took the keycard from her and started moving. “Exit route B.”
“I’m moving to pick up,” Sam said.
A crash sounded faintly through the comm.
You closed your eyes for half a second. “Subtle.”
The next ninety seconds were blessedly simple. Men came down the stairwell with earpieces and tactical gear. You and Yelena removed them from the situation.
One would have a bad knee for a week. Another would wake up zip-tied to a pipe with his own belt.
You ran through the service corridor, past the bad lighting, through a stairwell that smelled like dust and overheated electrical wiring. The lock clicked open and the night air hit your face as you slipped into the alley. Cold, damp, full of exhaust and rain. The van sat at the curb, lights off. Sam had parked badly.
Yelena climbed in first, you followed. Sam sat in the driver’s seat and pulled away before the back door was fully shut.
You leaned back against the seat and pulled out your phone. There were new texts from Bucky.
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
Alarm? Sam stopped responding.
12:34
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
I’m coming.
12:36
Your chest tightened and you typed quickly: Mission complete. Do not come.
His reply came almost instantly.
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
You okay?
12:42
You stared at the words. Four letters, one question mark, and somehow the equivalence of a hand at your back.
You typed back: No one died.
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
That’s not what I asked.
12:43
You locked the phone and shoved it into your jacket.
D.C. moved past in blurred lights and government buildings, all stone faces and dark windows. Somewhere across the city, Bucky was probably standing in his kitchen, phone in hand, jaw tight, pretending he was not waiting for you to walk through the door.
Yelena watched you.
“You like being married to him.”
You closed your eyes. The words came before you could make them smaller.
“I like being married to him.”
The van went quiet.
You opened your eyes.
Sam looked at you through the mirror, no grin this time.
Yelena’s expression had softened in the way she hated showing. Her shoulder pressed against yours for one brief second.
They were silent for the rest of the ride, which was something you were grateful for. You didn’t really have the energy to talk about your complicated feelings for your congressman and husband. Your Bucky.
You would have to do better at scrubbing that last idea out of your head.
It wasn’t long before Sam pulled up outside the townhouse. You slid the door open, grabbed your duffel bag, and hopped out.
The townhouse waited ahead, warm light glowing in the kitchen windows and front hall, the living room lamp left on low. Bucky did that now. Left lights on when you were coming home late. Not every light, not enough to make the house look exposed from the street, but enough that you never had to walk in darkness.
You had noticed the first time. You had not mentioned it.
Behind you, the van did not leave. Sam stayed in the driver’s seat with both hands on the wheel, pretending he was not watching you over the dash. Yelena’s face turned toward the townhouse with the pointed interest of someone who had no intention of letting you escape the conversation just because the mission was over.
“You are going to tell him?” She asked.
You checked the street instead of looking at her. The block was quiet, mostly.
“About the mission?”
“About the other thing.”
“There is no other thing.”
Sam made a sound from the front seat.
You looked at him.
He looked straight ahead.
“Did you have something to say, Wilson?” You asked.
“I’m a vault.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Yelena crunched a cashew. “You admitted you like being married to him. You should tell him.”
“No.”
Sam sighed through his nose. “You really think he doesn’t feel anything?”
You looked toward the townhouse again.
The kitchen window was bright enough that you could see the vague shape of someone moving past it, broad shoulders, shirtsleeves, dark hair. Bucky.
Your chest did something embarrassing. You shoved it back down.
“I think Bucky is a decent man who has spent two months trying to make an insane situation less awful for me,” you said. “I think he is honorable. I think he would rather chew glass than make me feel unwanted in my own fake marriage. And I think if I tell him I have feelings and he does not have them back, he will be kind about it, which will be worse.”
Neither of them immediately answered.
Yelena’s mouth pressed into a line. Sam looked briefly down at the wheel, his fingers flexing once around it.
Sam said your name gently. “You don’t know unless you ask.”
“I know enough.”
“You’re making assumptions.”
Yelena looked past you again, toward the house. Her eyes narrowed slightly, not in suspicion this time, but assessment. She had been doing that since the Red Room fell, deciding what might kill you and what might save you. Sometimes she got the two mixed up.
“You like him,” she said. “He makes you feel safe.”
Yelena leaned forward and pressed her forehead briefly to your temple.
The first time she had done it, you had nearly flinched hard enough to break her nose. Now you stood still and let her, because family was apparently just repeated exposure to the same dangerous person until your nervous system gave up and called it love.
“You will call me tomorrow,” she said.
“I have work.”
“You will call me tomorrow.”
You paused. “...yeah. Yeah, okay.”
She stepped back, then pointed two fingers at her own eyes and then at you. “Do not do anything stupid.”
“Text if you need anything,” Sam said from the front seat.
“I won’t.”
“I know. Text anyway.”
The van pulled away before you could answer, leaving you alone on the sidewalk with the cold air, the flash drive, and the deeply irritating knowledge that the two most meddlesome people in your life had somehow become a united front.
You unlocked the front door with your key.
That was still strange.
Your key. Not strange enough that you did not use it. Not strange enough that you had not started keeping it on your normal keyring instead of loose in the side pocket of your bag. But strange enough that every time the lock turned, some part of you remembered this was supposed to be temporary.
The house opened around you, warm and quiet.
It smelled like roasted garlic, cedar soap, and Bucky’s coffee.
You stopped in the entryway. Bucky was in the kitchen.
He stood at the stove in rolled-up shirtsleeves, tie gone, hair slightly mussed like he had run a hand through it too many times. There was a pan on the burner, something wrapped in foil on the counter, two plates already set out, and his phone lying face-up beside the cutting board.
He looked over the second the door opened.
His eyes moved over you in one sweep: face, shoulders, hands, jacket, knees, boots. Checking for blood, limp, shock, pain. Anything out of place.
You shut the door behind you.
“Stop scanning me.”
“You’re limping. You hurt?”
“No.”
His eyes dropped to your knee.
You sighed. “Slightly.”
“Shoulder too?”
You looked down at yourself. “How did you—”
“You’re holdin’ it stiff.”
“I hate your eyes.”
“No, you don’t.”
You went still for a fraction too long.
Bucky noticed. His expression shifted, and he looked back toward the stove like the burner required his full attention.
“Food’s almost done,” he said.
“You cooked?”
“You said you were gonna forget to eat.”
“I said that hours ago.”
“Still seemed likely.”
You toed off your boots by the door and hung your coat on the hook beside his. The motion was too familiar. Boot by boot. Coat on hook. Shoulder beginning to throb where the bruise had started to bloom.
You moved into the kitchen and leaned against the island while Bucky turned off the stove. He had made eggs, toast, roasted vegetables, and rice in a pan with garlic and something else that smelled too good for a man who had once considered protein bars a complete meal.
“You waited to eat?” you asked.
He shrugged one shoulder. “Wasn’t hungry yet.”
Lie.
Bucky carried a plate to the island and set it in front of you first. Then he reached past you for the drawer, pulled out a fork, and placed it beside the plate like this was a perfectly normal thing.
You looked down at the plate, then at him.
“What?”
“You made vegetables.”
“I know how to make vegetables.”
“You own seasoning now?”
His eyes narrowed. “You bought it.”
“Yes, but you’re using it. That’s growth.”
“Eat.”
“Bossy.”
“Chief.”
“Husband.”
He went still for half a second. Then the pan on the stove made a small settling sound, and both of you pretended the room had not changed.
You picked up the fork.
He sat beside you with his own plate, close enough that your knees nearly bumped beneath the island. For a few minutes, you ate without talking about anything important. That had become one of the stranger comforts of living together. The silence.
Bucky let you get four bites in before asking, “Flash drive?”
You tapped the inside pocket of your jacket.
“The archive was real,” you said. Shell references. Donor movements. Some contractor aliases that match the list from last week.”
Bucky’s face changed. The domestic softness didn’t vanish, but something else slid over it. Focus. Concern. The old soldier and the newer congressman meeting somewhere behind his eyes.
“Valentina?”
“Adjacent.”
“Were you seen?”
“No.”
He looked at your knee.
“Not by anyone who remained conscious,” you amended.
“Sweetheart.”
“I had everything under control.”
“You’re limping.”
“I can limp from many noncombat related causes.”
“Like?”
“Drama. A deep commitment to mystique. Or, really, really good se—”
“Alright.”
You couldn’t stop the smile that was pulling at your lips.
There it was. The rhythm. The easy one. The thing that made coming home dangerous because you did not have to force it. With Bucky, you could slide into a conversation already moving. You could say nonsense and he would meet it with that tired patience that somehow made you want to escalate.
Bucky set his fork down. “Can I see your shoulder?”
You rolled your eyes. “It’s minor.”
“Can I see it?”
You unzipped the top of your tactical suit just enough to pull the collar aside and show him the bruise high on your shoulder. The kitchen light caught the darkening patch of skin, already shifting purple around the edges.
Bucky’s face went still.
“Do not make that face,” you said.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
His eyes moved to yours. “May I?”
You handed him permission with a sigh and a nod.
His fingers touched your shoulder gently. He pressed lightly around the bruise, checking swelling, range, damage. It should have been clinical. His hands had done worse things than tend a bruise, and your body had survived worse things than being touched by a man who cared whether you hurt.
Still, your breath went strange.
He withdrew his hand. “You’re gonna be sore.”
“I know.”
“You should ice it.”
“I know.”
“You gonna?”
You smiled.
His mouth twitched. “That means no.”
Bucky stood, went to the freezer, wrapped an ice pack in a towel, and brought it back. You accepted it and pressed it to your shoulder. The cold bit through the towel, sharp enough to steady you.
Something in you softened. It had been doing that too often lately. You had learned to take hits without making them matter. Bruises were inventory. Pain was information. But Bucky looked at every mark on you like it was an argument with the world.
You looked down at the plate. “You’re doing it again.”
“What?”
“Acting like this is worse because it happened to me.”
“It is worse because it happened to you.”
Your fork stopped halfway to your mouth.
Bucky seemed to realize what he had said a moment after saying it. His expression tightened with caution.
For a moment, neither of you said anything. The house hummed around the silence: refrigerator, old pipes, the faint tick of the burner cooling on the stove. Your shoulder ached beneath the ice pack, but distantly now, like a complaint from another room.
Bucky’s eyes dropped to the bruise again, and you knew that if you let him, he would turn that mark into evidence against himself. You could see the shape of it forming. That familiar Barnes guilt, broad-shouldered and self-sustaining.
You set your fork down.
“I don’t mind getting hurt on missions,” you said.
Bucky’s gaze returned to yours immediately. “That’s not something you should say like its normal.”
“It is normal.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Bucky,” you sighed.
“No,” he repeated. “Getting hurt shouldn’t be the price of doing good. Not with you.”
You leaned back slightly against the island, ice pressed to your shoulder, tactical suit half-unzipped at the collar, body tired.
“I mean it,” you said. “I don’t mind. Not like that. I spent years being useful to the wrong people. I was good at it. I was very good at being terrible for whoever pointed me in the right direction.”
Bucky’s expression changed.
You should have stopped, but instead, you looked down at your hand, at the ring sitting there, and continued before the smarter part of you could shut the door.
“Now I get to choose where I point myself. I get to break into an archive and steal evidence from people who think enhanced bodies and scared kids with powers are inventory. I get to be useful on purpose, for something that might actually help someone.” You swallowed, irritated by the sudden roughness in your throat. “So I don’t mind a couple bruises. It’s fine. Almost comforting.”
Bucky was still beside you. You could feel him listening, not as though he was waiting for his turn to speak, but like every word had weight. Like he knew what it was to have your own history used against you and was careful not to become another hand on the scale.
You dragged your thumb against the condensation on your glass.
“It doesn’t make up for anything,” you said. “It doesn’t undo what I did. And I know what people say. I know I was conditioned and controlled and trained and handled and used. I know all the words. I’ve written half of them in memos for other people.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
You laughed once, but it had no humor. “There it is.”
“I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
You looked at him.
His face was open in a way he rarely let it be. Bucky Barnes was never fully unguarded but there was no performance in him now, no congressman, no public husband, no careful joke he could hide behind.
You tilted your head to the side, looking at him from a different angle. “Barnes, you don’t get to say that to me and not yourself. You’re doing the thing where grace applies to everyone in the room except you.”
“That’s not what I’m doin’.”
“It’s exactly what you’re doing.”
Bucky looked down at his hands.
“Steve once told me something similar,” he said, rubbing his thumb over the side of his ring. “He told me that what I did all those years wasn’t me. That I didn’t have a choice.”
Your chest tightened and you looked at him skeptically. “Did you believe him?”
Bucky was quiet for a moment.
“No,” he admitted. “Not then.”
He breathed in slowly, like he was choosing each word before letting it leave him.
“I wanted to. I knew he meant it.” Bucky’s mouth moved slightly, not quite a smile. “Didn’t mean I could carry it.”
You understood that too well. Belief offered from the outside could feel like a coat in the wrong size. Warm, maybe. But not made for your body. Not something you could move in.
Bucky looked up at you again.
“But now?” you asked.
His gaze held yours. “Now I think he was right.”
His words were quiet. Not easy. But there.
“I’m not defined by what they made me do,” Bucky said. “I’m not gonna pretend it didn’t happen. I don’t get to wash my hands and say none of it touched me. But I get to decide what I do with the rest of my life.”
He looked down briefly at the flash drive sitting on the counter between you.
“I can do some good in this world.” He shrugged. “Maybe enough that the good is its own thing, not payment. Not atonement. Just good.”
Your throat ached.
Bucky’s hand rested near his glass, metal fingers still, flesh hand curled loosely beside it. The ring on his left hand caught the kitchen light.
He let out a breath.
“Maybe,” he said, “I can have some good too.”
Bucky said that last part quieter, like he wasn’t sure if he quite believed it yet. He said it like a man asking permission from an empty room.
You looked at him and felt something in you go unbearably soft.
“You deserve good things,” you said.
You had not planned to say it. You were not sure where it had come from. Maybe from the two months of watching Bucky Barnes act like goodness was something he was allowed to protect but never receive.
His face changed in increments. First surprise, then discomfort. Then something raw enough that he lowered his eyes before you could fully see it.
He cleared his throat. “Don’t know about that.”
“I do.”
His eyes came back to yours.
Then his phone buzzed on the counter. The moment fractured.
The screen lit up with a news alert from some garbage entertainment-politics site whose entire business model revolved around grainy photos and hastily made assumptions.
The headline read:
BABY BARNES? INSIDERS SPECULATE CONGRESSMAN’S SUDDEN MARRIAGE MAY HAVE BEEN A SHOTGUN WEDDING
The house went quiet.
“I’m sorry,” you said, pushing your plate away from you. “Apparently I’m what?”
Bucky picked up the phone, thumb moving over the screen. His expression shifted from confusion to irritation. You leaned closer despite yourself.
The article had three photos. One of you leaving the donor reception the night of the truth serum incident, hunched slightly forward, one hand pressed to your stomach while Bucky guided you toward the waiting car. Another of him helping you into the backseat. A third, zoomed and blurred beyond decency, of him standing at the curb looking worried enough to make any tabloid editor salivate.
Under the photos, the caption read:
Mrs. Barnes appeared visibly unwell while leaving an exclusive reception three weeks ago, fueling speculation that the couple’s sudden nuptials may have been prompted by more than romance.
You read it twice, then looked down at your stomach.
“Well,” you said. “News to me.”
Bucky did not laugh easily, and he certainly did not laugh loudly when tabloids were speculating about his fake wife. But his mouth cracked first, then his eyes, and then he turned his face away with one hand over his mouth.
“Oh, this is funny to you?”
“No.”
“You’re laughing.”
“‘M not.”
You picked up his phone and scrolled with one finger. “This is absurd. They cite an anonymous source who says I have been ‘glowing.’”
“You do glow.”
You stared at him.
He looked mildly alarmed by himself.
“I mean… you’re sweaty sometimes.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“That came out wrong.”
“I should hope so.”
He dragged a hand over his face. “I meant you look good.”
Your mouth hung open slightly. His ears went pink.
The tabloid headline seemed to glow between you like a cursed artifact.
“Right. Well.” You looked back at the phone. “Mia’ll kill it in the morning.”
The rest of the evening went on with the kind of absurd normalcy that made your life feel like a badly written cover story. You finished eating. Bucky took the plates. You dried them. Two former assassins doing dishes under warm kitchen lights.
You were putting away the last fork when Bucky said, “You should go upstairs.”
“Bossy.”
“You’re exhausted.”
“Oh, just because I’m pregnant now I can’t take care of myself?”
He rolled his eyes at your joke, standing near the sink towel in hand. Not ordering or pushing, just reading you too well and giving you nowhere to hide.
Bucky said your name softly.
You sighed. “Fine.”
He smiled faintly, stopping in front of you and, without seeming to think about it, brushed a loose strand of hair away from your face.
His fingers were warm against your temple. Your eyes dipped for half a second, your body leaning toward the contact in the automatic way tired bodies lean toward heat. He looked at you with a quiet kind of fondness that had become too common lately.
Then he leaned down and kissed your forehead.
His lips touched your skin like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“You did good tonight,” he murmured.
You hummed something that might have been, “I always do,” but you were not sure it had words.
Bucky stepped back, gathered the towel, and turned to hang it on the oven handle.
You went upstairs because he had told you to, and because your body was beginning to remember it had spent the last several hours crawling through vents and fighting security. You changed slowly in the bathroom, peeling out of the tactical suit and leaving it folded over the hamper. There was a smear of dust along your jaw. You wiped it away with a damp cloth and stared at yourself in the mirror.
You looked tired. And bruised. And married.
The ring caught the light when you braced your hand on the sink.
That was when your mind, traitorous and apparently operating on a delay, replayed the kitchen.
His fingers at your temple. His mouth against your forehead.
You stood very still in the bathroom.
There had been no audience. No office staff, no reporter looking for a tender line to put below a photo. No donor needing reassurance that Congressman Barnes was stable, married, softened by domestic life. No reason to perform anything.
He had kissed your forehead because he wanted to.
But Bucky did things like that.
Did he?
Did he kiss his friends on the forehead? No. No, he did not. You had never seen him kiss Sam’s forehead, though the thought was so amusing your brain tried to seize onto it as an escape route. He did not kiss Peter’s forehead, or Mia’s, and you knew he wouldn’t even try to kiss Yelena’s forehead.
But you had been tired. He was taking care of you. He did that. He took care of people.
He made food and opened doors and checked locks. Bucky Barnes left lights on and walked on the street side. He was kind. That was all. It had to be all.
Because if it was not all, then you had a serious problem.
You gripped the edge of the sink. Your face in the mirror looked unimpressed with you.
“Shut up,” you whispered to it.
You thought of the van. Yelena’s forehead against your temple. Sam watching you through the windshield with that awful careful face.
You ever think you keep deciding what he feels because it keeps you from having to ask?
You hated Sam. You hated him and his ability to say one useful thing every three hundred jokes.
Simultaneously the best and the worst next chapter I could've asked for. Reader coming to terms with their feelings for Bucky, their soft moment when reader came home, the overall feeling of warmth there is from just being in their home..beautiful. breathtaking. amazing. Reader still being in denial about Bucky's feelings despite the obvious hints from Sam, the way their moment was broken by the media, THE WAY READER IS STILL IN DENIAL ABOUT BUCKY'S FEELINGS..DEVASTATING. PHYSICALLY PAINFUL. I NEED THE CONFESSION TO COME OUT NEXT. CHAPTER. PLEASE IM BEGGING YOU
lmao I just know Sam is over the two of them refusing to talk to each other about their feelings. At the end of the day they're both two ex-assassins who are down bad but don't believe they deserve love. Thank you for reading and reblogging !!!
summary. After a late-night in New Orleans, Congressman Bucky Barnes and his chief of staff wake up legally married. An annulment should be simple, but unfortunately, nothing about their lives is simple. With Bucky's reputation on the line and her past threatening to resurface, staying married starts to look like the safest option. It's only supposed to be temporary. Public appearances, a convincing story, and a quiet divorce once the headlines fade. But fake marriage is harder when everyone else believes it. Especially when Bucky is already in love with his wife.
word count. 6.7k
warnings. mission shenanigans, sam and yelena are instigators, bucky is SO down bad it's giving me second-hand embarassment, mutual pining, denial, bucky is over protective
masterlist | series masterlist | last chapter | next chapter
Bucky had wanted to come.
That was the first problem.
Bucky Barnes, unfortunately, had developed a habit of wanting to come wherever you were most likely to be shot, stabbed, poisoned, emotionally cornered, or otherwise inconvenienced by the consequences of your own life choices. This was noble in theory, exhausting in practice, and completely unsuitable for the mission currently requiring you to hang upside down from the ceiling of a private records office in Arlington while Yelena ate cashews beneath you.
The facility was owned by a “strategic consulting firm,” which in Washington meant nothing and everything. The front office handled defense contracts, philanthropic partnerships, political risk assessments, and donor management. The locked archive beneath it, according to the files you had stolen from a very nervous man with a waxed mustache, handled something else entirely.
Names, movement logs, enhanced-person incident reports that had never been filed through official channels. Old Widow recovery routes. Contractor payments tied to three shell companies you recognized from Valentina’s orbit.
Bucky had read the first page of the briefing and said, “I’m coming.”
You had said, “No.”
He had said, “That wasn’t a question.”
You had said. “And yet it has been answered.”
Sam, sitting across the kitchen table with his arms crossed and the expression of a man who knew he had been invited to witness a fight rather than participate in a meeting, had said, “I’m gonna regret asking this, but why isn’t he coming?”
“Because,” you had said, taking the folder out of Bucky’s hand before he could glare the paper into confession, “this is a stealth retrieval, not a former-Winter-Soldier-and-sitting-congressman-breaks-into-a-contractor-basement situation.”
Bucky stared at you.
You stared back.
“You can’t be there. If something connects the site to the bill, or to Valentina, you need distance,” You said.
His jaw tightened.
“You’re going,” he had said.
“Yes.”
“That’s different?”
“This is the kind of thing Yelena and I were trained for,” you shrugged. “You’re the congressional sponsor of the bill that might expose her network.”
He had stayed behind. Barely.
Which was why your phone currently had several unread texts from him despite the fact that you were in the middle of a felony.
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
You inside?
11:34
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
Check in.
11:34
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
You good?
11:42
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
I can still come if you need me.
11:43
You had read all of them and answered none. Not because you were avoiding him, but because you were a professional.
“You know,” Sam said in your earpiece, voice low and warm and far too amused for a man sitting on a rooftop two blocks away, “for somebody who insisted Bucky stay home, you’ve checked your phone a lot.”
“I am monitoring external variables.”
“You are monitoring your husband.”
“Fake husband.”
From below you, Yelena stopped chewing.
You froze.
Yelena looked up at you from the floor, one eyebrow lifted.
Her black tactical suit made her blend into the shadows beneath the ceiling panel. A couple cashews fell out of her hand and onto the floor. She had found them in the security break room and claimed them.
“What did you say?” she asked.
You twisted your wrist slightly, keeping the bypass tool pressed to the sensor housing. “I said husband.”
“No.” Yelena’s eyes narrowed. “You said fake husband.”
Sam went silent in your ear.
You sighed through your nose. “Did I?”
“Yes,” Yelena said. “You did.”
“Could have been an accent issue.”
“You do not have accent.”
“Everyone has an accent.”
“Do not linguistics me.”
The tool in your hand beeped softly, the sensor light shifted from red to green.
“Good news,” you said. “Hallway’s clear.”
“Do not change subject.”
“We’re literally changing rooms.”
You swung down from the panel, caught the edge with one hand, then dropped lightly to the floor beside her. Your boots hit the tile with barely a sound. The hallway beyond the records office stretched dark and cold ahead of you, lined with doors requiring keycards, biometric access, or the kind of confidence only rich men and former assassins possessed.
Yelena did not move. She crossed her arms.
“You told me it was real.”
“I did not.”
“You let me think it.”
“She sounds pretty mad,” Sam exhaled in your ear.
Yelena smiled without humor. “I am not mad. Explain.”
“This is not the time.”
“We are in empty hallway after disabling security. Very good time.”
“There are patrols.”
“I will get rid of them.”
“We are on a clock.”
“I am efficient.”
You looked toward the camera you had looped two minutes ago. It would hold for another six before the system caught the irregularity. Behind the next door was the internal archive. Behind that, if the floor plans were accurate, a secure storage room. Somewhere inside it was a physical drive marked with an old Red Room routing cipher that had no business appearing in a D.C. contractor’s foundation file.
You needed to keep moving.
You also knew Yelena well enough to understand that she would stand in the middle of an active mission until sunrise if she decided the emotional injury warranted it. She was very principled that way.
Terrible trait.
“We got married by accident,” you said.
Yelena stared. Sam made a small noise through the comms.
“I need both of you to remain calm.” You said, pointing toward the door and starting walking.
“By accident,” Yelena repeated.
“Yes.”
“And you did not tell me?”
“I was going to.”
“When? Anniversary?”
You reached the keycard panel and crouched in front of it, pulling a narrow tool from your sleeve.
“Probably before then.”
“I would stop talking if I were you,” Sam advised.
“Excellent advice,” you said. “For both of us.”
Yelena crouched beside you, close enough that her shoulder nearly touched yours. Her face had gone still in the way it did when hurt moved under anger. People who did not know her might have missed it. You did not.
The keycard panel clicked.
“Door,” you said.
Yelena did not look at it.
“You told Sam.”
“Bucky told Sam,” you corrected.
“You could have told me.”
“I know.”
That was the wrong thing to say. Or the right thing. Hard to tell. Yelena’s mouth tightened. You pulled the door open and slid inside before she could say anything else.
The archive room was colder than the hallway. Rows of rolling shelves stood under dim motion lights, each marked with dull metal tags and coded labels.
You moved down the first row, counting shelves. “Sam, talk to me.”
For once, Sam sounded cautious. “You’ve got eight minutes before the lobby guard cycles back. Exterior’s clear. Van's still clean. No alarms on my end.”
Yelena followed behind you, steps silent. “You lied to me.”
“I omitted.”
“You omitted the fake part of fake marriage. Crucial part.” Yelena’s glare could have stripped paint. “And then you kept lying to me for two months.”
You found the shelf. Section 4-14. Private philanthropic filings. Contractor-linked donor records. Shell entity cross-references. It was exactly where the floor plan said it would be, which made you immediately suspicious.
You crouched and ran your fingers along the bottom edge of the shelf, feeling for a pressure switch.
There.
Tiny, under the metal lip.
“Trap?” Yelena asked, anger pushed aside by instinct.
“Silent alarm.”
She crouched beside you, all business now. “Lazy.”
You smiled despite yourself and pulled a wedge from your belt. “Hold this.”
Yelena held the shelf steady while you slid the wedge in, locking the pressure plate. Her shoulder brushed yours. For all her fury, she was exactly where you needed her.
That made the guilt worse.
You opened the file drawer and started searching.
“You could have told me,” she said again, quieter this time.
You did not look at her. “I know.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Several answers circled in your head. Because if you knew it was fake, you’d ask why I kept wearing the ring like it wasn’t. Because Bucky is the first good thing I have held and I do not know how to want him without ruining it.
You pulled a folder from the drawer. “Because it’s complicated.”
Yelena scoffed softly. “That is coward’s answer.”
“I hate to agree with her,” Sam started, “but—”
“Finish the sentence and I will make your shield into a serving tray.”
He stopped.
You flipped through the folder, scanning donor names, dates, routing codes. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Then—
Harrington Strategic.
You froze.
Yelena noticed at once. “What?”
“Shell reference.”
You pulled the page free and photographed it. Then another. The codes were old but not old enough. You slid the documents into a scan sleeve and closed the drawer, moving to the next drawer.
“We need the drive.”
“And real conversation,” Yelena said.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Yelena,” you sighed.
“You have fake husband, real feelings, and did not tell me. We are having conversation.”
You reached the secure storage door at the back of the archive. “I do not have real feelings.”
Sam snorted.
“Wilson,” you muttered under your breath in warning.
“I’m just saying,” Sam said. “I was in the car after the truth serum.”
Yelena’s eyes lit up. “What truth serum?”
You closed your eyes briefly.
Wonderful. Excellent. Perfect.
“Can we focus on the mission?”
“You were truth-serumed?” Yelena demanded.
“On accident.”
“Buck put it in her tea,” Sam supplied.
Yelena stared at you.
You kept working on the lock. “He thought it was peppermint extract.”
“Why was truth serum labeled peppermint extract?” Yelena asked.
“That’s not the point.”
“Oh, well okay then. What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
The lock flashed red.
You exhaled, adjusted the bypass needle, and tried again.
“She was telling him how handsome he is,” Sam answered.
You narrowed your eyes. “Wilson.”
Yelena’s smile spread slowly.
“Oh.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You think Congressman Sad Eyes is handsome.”
“I was drugged.”
Yelena leaned against the wall beside the secure door, arms crossed, her earlier anger rearranging itself into something more dangerous: delight.
“You like him,” she said.
“I do not like him.”
“Yes, you do,” Sam and Yelena said at the same time.
The door opened.
You stepped inside. “This is bullying.”
“This is family,” Yelena said.
“Family needs to be quieter on missions.”
The secure room was smaller, lined with locked metal cabinets. The air was even colder here, a preservation chill meant to protect paper, hard drives, and whatever else men with too much money convinced themselves they could keep forever.
You knelt and unrolled a thin tool kit from your sleeve.
Yelena crouched beside you. “Say it.”
“No.”
“Say you like him.”
“I like many people.”
“You do not.”
“I tolerate several.”
“You like him.”
“I like his house. It’s a very nice house.”
Yelena gave you a flat look. “You are in love with townhouse?”
“The water pressure is excellent.”
“Is water pressure why you stare at him when he opens doors?”
“I do not stare.”
“You do.”
“I have to look at him sometimes. He is large and often in the way.”
“You know, for a former assassin,” Sam said in your ear, “your defense strategy is weak.”
You looked toward the ceiling in disbelief that this was your team for this mission. “I should’ve let Bucky come.”
“No, he would be worse,” Yelena snorted.
“He would’ve spent the whole mission asking if you were okay every five minutes,” Sam said.
“He does that because he is neurotic.”
“He does that because he loves—” Sam stopped so abruptly you heard his teeth click.
The lock pick paused in your hand. Sam went quiet. Too quiet. Your pulse changed but you forced your hand to keep moving.
“Because he loves what, Sam?”
“Control,” Sam said quickly. “Mission control. He loves mission control.”
You looked back at the lock until the pins blurred.
You had spent three weeks pretending the truth serum incident had not happened. Three weeks sleeping beside Bucky in the dark, the space between you warm and impossible. Three weeks watching him read labels twice before making your tea. Three weeks since you told him you were friends and colleagues and nothing else.
There were many things you could survive. Guns and needles, a bullet through soft tissue. A fall from three stories if you landed well. You were not sure you could survive Bucky knowing you wanted him and being kind about not wanting you back.
The lock clicked open.
You removed the small black drive from the cabinet, along with a paper index card containing three shell company names and a private event schedule.
Yelena plucked the card from your hand. “These are spouse events.”
“What?”
“Here,” she tapped the second line. “Foundation dinner. Closed guest list.”
You took the card back.
She was right.
A private board reception. A donor retreat listed as “family attendance encouraged.” Not staff. Not aides. Not policy advisors.
Spouses.
Sam’s voice came through. “What is it?”
“Access,” you said.
Yelena’s eyes flicked to you.
You slid the drive into your jacket. “As chief of staff, I can’t get into half these rooms without raising questions. As his wife…”
You felt a slow, unpleasant thrill.
Yelena smiled. “Finally, marriage becomes useful.”
“She doesn’t need encouragement,” Sam sighed.
“Yes, she did,” Yelena argued.
“I did not,” you said.
“You did. You are wasting marriage on longing instead of using marriage to crush enemies.”
“I am not longing.”
Yelena gave you a look. “You’re longing.”
“Oh, she’s longing,” Sam agreed.
“I hate both of you.”
“Maybe,” said Yelena. “But you like him.”
You shut the cabinet harder than necessary.
Fine.
You turned to face her, and Yelena was wearing the expression of a woman who had decided she would rather be shot than leave this alone.
“Fine,” you said.
Yelena stilled.
“Yes, I like him.”
No truth serum or nausea this time.
Yelena’s expression shifted. The triumph softened almost immediately into something protective. Sam made no sound at all.
You continued before anyone could be gentle.
“It’s not serious.”
“Oh, come on,” Sam said.
“It isn’t.”
“You are stealing files while wearing his ring,” Yelena said, “and pretending not to check your phone every time he texts.”
“It is a crush,” you snapped. “That’s all. A stupid, inconvenient crush caused by proximity. We’re done here.”
You turned to the exit.
“You have feelings,” Yelena said.
“I have many feelings. Hunger. Irritation.”
“For him. For Bucky.”
You stopped at the secure room door. “That I can’t do anything about.”
The hallway was still beyond clear. Your camera loop had two minutes left. The guard pattern had changed slightly; you could hear footsteps somewhere above you, a little too quick. Not yet a problem. Soon.
“Why not?” Sam said.
You kept your eyes on the corridor. “Because we have to stay married.”
“That seems like opposite of problem,” Yelena said.
“It is a public arrangement tied to his career, his office, and his bill. If we complicate it and it goes badly, we still have to live in the same house, sleep in the same bed, and lie to every camera in D.C. until we can safely undo it.”
You moved into the hall.
“And besides, he doesn’t want me like that,” you added.
Sam made a sound that might have been physical pain.
“You are stupid,” Yelena said.
“I know what I mean.” You stopped at the corner, checked the reflection in the dark glass of a framed abstract painting, then waved Yelena back a step. “He is kind. That’s what you’re seeing. He treats me well because he treats people well when he thinks they’re his responsibility.”
Sam went very quiet on the comm.
“He opens doors because he’s from the forties,” you continued. He makes tea because he feels guilty. He looks at me like that because he looks at everyone he wants to protect like that.”
Yelena’s voice came low behind you. “Does he?”
You did not answer.
“You ever think,” Sam started, “you keep deciding what he feels because it keeps you from ever having to ask?”
You turned toward the camera above the hall and pulled a compact from your belt.
“You ever think maybe you talk too much?”
“Every day. Doesn’t make me wrong. Just sayin’.”
“You are always just saying. It is your most dangerous condition.”
A soft, red light at the far end of the hallway began pulsing. A silent alarm. Local system only, probably triggered by the guard’s vitals monitor or the camera loop ending sooner than expected.
Sam swore. “You’ve got movement upstairs.”
“How many?”
“Four. Maybe six. Coming down the east stairwell.”
Yelena rolled her shoulders. “Good. I was bored.”
You took the keycard from her and started moving. “Exit route B.”
“I’m moving to pick up,” Sam said.
A crash sounded faintly through the comm.
You closed your eyes for half a second. “Subtle.”
The next ninety seconds were blessedly simple. Men came down the stairwell with earpieces and tactical gear. You and Yelena removed them from the situation.
One would have a bad knee for a week. Another would wake up zip-tied to a pipe with his own belt.
You ran through the service corridor, past the bad lighting, through a stairwell that smelled like dust and overheated electrical wiring. The lock clicked open and the night air hit your face as you slipped into the alley. Cold, damp, full of exhaust and rain. The van sat at the curb, lights off. Sam had parked badly.
Yelena climbed in first, you followed. Sam sat in the driver’s seat and pulled away before the back door was fully shut.
You leaned back against the seat and pulled out your phone. There were new texts from Bucky.
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
Alarm? Sam stopped responding.
12:34
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
I’m coming.
12:36
Your chest tightened and you typed quickly: Mission complete. Do not come.
His reply came almost instantly.
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
You okay?
12:42
You stared at the words. Four letters, one question mark, and somehow the equivalence of a hand at your back.
You typed back: No one died.
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
That’s not what I asked.
12:43
You locked the phone and shoved it into your jacket.
D.C. moved past in blurred lights and government buildings, all stone faces and dark windows. Somewhere across the city, Bucky was probably standing in his kitchen, phone in hand, jaw tight, pretending he was not waiting for you to walk through the door.
Yelena watched you.
“You like being married to him.”
You closed your eyes. The words came before you could make them smaller.
“I like being married to him.”
The van went quiet.
You opened your eyes.
Sam looked at you through the mirror, no grin this time.
Yelena’s expression had softened in the way she hated showing. Her shoulder pressed against yours for one brief second.
They were silent for the rest of the ride, which was something you were grateful for. You didn’t really have the energy to talk about your complicated feelings for your congressman and husband. Your Bucky.
You would have to do better at scrubbing that last idea out of your head.
It wasn’t long before Sam pulled up outside the townhouse. You slid the door open, grabbed your duffel bag, and hopped out.
The townhouse waited ahead, warm light glowing in the kitchen windows and front hall, the living room lamp left on low. Bucky did that now. Left lights on when you were coming home late. Not every light, not enough to make the house look exposed from the street, but enough that you never had to walk in darkness.
You had noticed the first time. You had not mentioned it.
Behind you, the van did not leave. Sam stayed in the driver’s seat with both hands on the wheel, pretending he was not watching you over the dash. Yelena’s face turned toward the townhouse with the pointed interest of someone who had no intention of letting you escape the conversation just because the mission was over.
“You are going to tell him?” She asked.
You checked the street instead of looking at her. The block was quiet, mostly.
“About the mission?”
“About the other thing.”
“There is no other thing.”
Sam made a sound from the front seat.
You looked at him.
He looked straight ahead.
“Did you have something to say, Wilson?” You asked.
“I’m a vault.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Yelena crunched a cashew. “You admitted you like being married to him. You should tell him.”
“No.”
Sam sighed through his nose. “You really think he doesn’t feel anything?”
You looked toward the townhouse again.
The kitchen window was bright enough that you could see the vague shape of someone moving past it, broad shoulders, shirtsleeves, dark hair. Bucky.
Your chest did something embarrassing. You shoved it back down.
“I think Bucky is a decent man who has spent two months trying to make an insane situation less awful for me,” you said. “I think he is honorable. I think he would rather chew glass than make me feel unwanted in my own fake marriage. And I think if I tell him I have feelings and he does not have them back, he will be kind about it, which will be worse.”
Neither of them immediately answered.
Yelena’s mouth pressed into a line. Sam looked briefly down at the wheel, his fingers flexing once around it.
Sam said your name gently. “You don’t know unless you ask.”
“I know enough.”
“You’re making assumptions.”
Yelena looked past you again, toward the house. Her eyes narrowed slightly, not in suspicion this time, but assessment. She had been doing that since the Red Room fell, deciding what might kill you and what might save you. Sometimes she got the two mixed up.
“You like him,” she said. “He makes you feel safe.”
Yelena leaned forward and pressed her forehead briefly to your temple.
The first time she had done it, you had nearly flinched hard enough to break her nose. Now you stood still and let her, because family was apparently just repeated exposure to the same dangerous person until your nervous system gave up and called it love.
“You will call me tomorrow,” she said.
“I have work.”
“You will call me tomorrow.”
You paused. “...yeah. Yeah, okay.”
She stepped back, then pointed two fingers at her own eyes and then at you. “Do not do anything stupid.”
“Text if you need anything,” Sam said from the front seat.
“I won’t.”
“I know. Text anyway.”
The van pulled away before you could answer, leaving you alone on the sidewalk with the cold air, the flash drive, and the deeply irritating knowledge that the two most meddlesome people in your life had somehow become a united front.
You unlocked the front door with your key.
That was still strange.
Your key. Not strange enough that you did not use it. Not strange enough that you had not started keeping it on your normal keyring instead of loose in the side pocket of your bag. But strange enough that every time the lock turned, some part of you remembered this was supposed to be temporary.
The house opened around you, warm and quiet.
It smelled like roasted garlic, cedar soap, and Bucky’s coffee.
You stopped in the entryway. Bucky was in the kitchen.
He stood at the stove in rolled-up shirtsleeves, tie gone, hair slightly mussed like he had run a hand through it too many times. There was a pan on the burner, something wrapped in foil on the counter, two plates already set out, and his phone lying face-up beside the cutting board.
He looked over the second the door opened.
His eyes moved over you in one sweep: face, shoulders, hands, jacket, knees, boots. Checking for blood, limp, shock, pain. Anything out of place.
You shut the door behind you.
“Stop scanning me.”
“You’re limping. You hurt?”
“No.”
His eyes dropped to your knee.
You sighed. “Slightly.”
“Shoulder too?”
You looked down at yourself. “How did you—”
“You’re holdin’ it stiff.”
“I hate your eyes.”
“No, you don’t.”
You went still for a fraction too long.
Bucky noticed. His expression shifted, and he looked back toward the stove like the burner required his full attention.
“Food’s almost done,” he said.
“You cooked?”
“You said you were gonna forget to eat.”
“I said that hours ago.”
“Still seemed likely.”
You toed off your boots by the door and hung your coat on the hook beside his. The motion was too familiar. Boot by boot. Coat on hook. Shoulder beginning to throb where the bruise had started to bloom.
You moved into the kitchen and leaned against the island while Bucky turned off the stove. He had made eggs, toast, roasted vegetables, and rice in a pan with garlic and something else that smelled too good for a man who had once considered protein bars a complete meal.
“You waited to eat?” you asked.
He shrugged one shoulder. “Wasn’t hungry yet.”
Lie.
Bucky carried a plate to the island and set it in front of you first. Then he reached past you for the drawer, pulled out a fork, and placed it beside the plate like this was a perfectly normal thing.
You looked down at the plate, then at him.
“What?”
“You made vegetables.”
“I know how to make vegetables.”
“You own seasoning now?”
His eyes narrowed. “You bought it.”
“Yes, but you’re using it. That’s growth.”
“Eat.”
“Bossy.”
“Chief.”
“Husband.”
He went still for half a second. Then the pan on the stove made a small settling sound, and both of you pretended the room had not changed.
You picked up the fork.
He sat beside you with his own plate, close enough that your knees nearly bumped beneath the island. For a few minutes, you ate without talking about anything important. That had become one of the stranger comforts of living together. The silence.
Bucky let you get four bites in before asking, “Flash drive?”
You tapped the inside pocket of your jacket.
“The archive was real,” you said. Shell references. Donor movements. Some contractor aliases that match the list from last week.”
Bucky’s face changed. The domestic softness didn’t vanish, but something else slid over it. Focus. Concern. The old soldier and the newer congressman meeting somewhere behind his eyes.
“Valentina?”
“Adjacent.”
“Were you seen?”
“No.”
He looked at your knee.
“Not by anyone who remained conscious,” you amended.
“Sweetheart.”
“I had everything under control.”
“You’re limping.”
“I can limp from many noncombat related causes.”
“Like?”
“Drama. A deep commitment to mystique. Or, really, really good se—”
“Alright.”
You couldn’t stop the smile that was pulling at your lips.
There it was. The rhythm. The easy one. The thing that made coming home dangerous because you did not have to force it. With Bucky, you could slide into a conversation already moving. You could say nonsense and he would meet it with that tired patience that somehow made you want to escalate.
Bucky set his fork down. “Can I see your shoulder?”
You rolled your eyes. “It’s minor.”
“Can I see it?”
You unzipped the top of your tactical suit just enough to pull the collar aside and show him the bruise high on your shoulder. The kitchen light caught the darkening patch of skin, already shifting purple around the edges.
Bucky’s face went still.
“Do not make that face,” you said.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
His eyes moved to yours. “May I?”
You handed him permission with a sigh and a nod.
His fingers touched your shoulder gently. He pressed lightly around the bruise, checking swelling, range, damage. It should have been clinical. His hands had done worse things than tend a bruise, and your body had survived worse things than being touched by a man who cared whether you hurt.
Still, your breath went strange.
He withdrew his hand. “You’re gonna be sore.”
“I know.”
“You should ice it.”
“I know.”
“You gonna?”
You smiled.
His mouth twitched. “That means no.”
Bucky stood, went to the freezer, wrapped an ice pack in a towel, and brought it back. You accepted it and pressed it to your shoulder. The cold bit through the towel, sharp enough to steady you.
Something in you softened. It had been doing that too often lately. You had learned to take hits without making them matter. Bruises were inventory. Pain was information. But Bucky looked at every mark on you like it was an argument with the world.
You looked down at the plate. “You’re doing it again.”
“What?”
“Acting like this is worse because it happened to me.”
“It is worse because it happened to you.”
Your fork stopped halfway to your mouth.
Bucky seemed to realize what he had said a moment after saying it. His expression tightened with caution.
For a moment, neither of you said anything. The house hummed around the silence: refrigerator, old pipes, the faint tick of the burner cooling on the stove. Your shoulder ached beneath the ice pack, but distantly now, like a complaint from another room.
Bucky’s eyes dropped to the bruise again, and you knew that if you let him, he would turn that mark into evidence against himself. You could see the shape of it forming. That familiar Barnes guilt, broad-shouldered and self-sustaining.
You set your fork down.
“I don’t mind getting hurt on missions,” you said.
Bucky’s gaze returned to yours immediately. “That’s not something you should say like its normal.”
“It is normal.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Bucky,” you sighed.
“No,” he repeated. “Getting hurt shouldn’t be the price of doing good. Not with you.”
You leaned back slightly against the island, ice pressed to your shoulder, tactical suit half-unzipped at the collar, body tired.
“I mean it,” you said. “I don’t mind. Not like that. I spent years being useful to the wrong people. I was good at it. I was very good at being terrible for whoever pointed me in the right direction.”
Bucky’s expression changed.
You should have stopped, but instead, you looked down at your hand, at the ring sitting there, and continued before the smarter part of you could shut the door.
“Now I get to choose where I point myself. I get to break into an archive and steal evidence from people who think enhanced bodies and scared kids with powers are inventory. I get to be useful on purpose, for something that might actually help someone.” You swallowed, irritated by the sudden roughness in your throat. “So I don’t mind a couple bruises. It’s fine. Almost comforting.”
Bucky was still beside you. You could feel him listening, not as though he was waiting for his turn to speak, but like every word had weight. Like he knew what it was to have your own history used against you and was careful not to become another hand on the scale.
You dragged your thumb against the condensation on your glass.
“It doesn’t make up for anything,” you said. “It doesn’t undo what I did. And I know what people say. I know I was conditioned and controlled and trained and handled and used. I know all the words. I’ve written half of them in memos for other people.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
You laughed once, but it had no humor. “There it is.”
“I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
You looked at him.
His face was open in a way he rarely let it be. Bucky Barnes was never fully unguarded but there was no performance in him now, no congressman, no public husband, no careful joke he could hide behind.
You tilted your head to the side, looking at him from a different angle. “Barnes, you don’t get to say that to me and not yourself. You’re doing the thing where grace applies to everyone in the room except you.”
“That’s not what I’m doin’.”
“It’s exactly what you’re doing.”
Bucky looked down at his hands.
“Steve once told me something similar,” he said, rubbing his thumb over the side of his ring. “He told me that what I did all those years wasn’t me. That I didn’t have a choice.”
Your chest tightened and you looked at him skeptically. “Did you believe him?”
Bucky was quiet for a moment.
“No,” he admitted. “Not then.”
He breathed in slowly, like he was choosing each word before letting it leave him.
“I wanted to. I knew he meant it.” Bucky’s mouth moved slightly, not quite a smile. “Didn’t mean I could carry it.”
You understood that too well. Belief offered from the outside could feel like a coat in the wrong size. Warm, maybe. But not made for your body. Not something you could move in.
Bucky looked up at you again.
“But now?” you asked.
His gaze held yours. “Now I think he was right.”
His words were quiet. Not easy. But there.
“I’m not defined by what they made me do,” Bucky said. “I’m not gonna pretend it didn’t happen. I don’t get to wash my hands and say none of it touched me. But I get to decide what I do with the rest of my life.”
He looked down briefly at the flash drive sitting on the counter between you.
“I can do some good in this world.” He shrugged. “Maybe enough that the good is its own thing, not payment. Not atonement. Just good.”
Your throat ached.
Bucky’s hand rested near his glass, metal fingers still, flesh hand curled loosely beside it. The ring on his left hand caught the kitchen light.
He let out a breath.
“Maybe,” he said, “I can have some good too.”
Bucky said that last part quieter, like he wasn’t sure if he quite believed it yet. He said it like a man asking permission from an empty room.
You looked at him and felt something in you go unbearably soft.
“You deserve good things,” you said.
You had not planned to say it. You were not sure where it had come from. Maybe from the two months of watching Bucky Barnes act like goodness was something he was allowed to protect but never receive.
His face changed in increments. First surprise, then discomfort. Then something raw enough that he lowered his eyes before you could fully see it.
He cleared his throat. “Don’t know about that.”
“I do.”
His eyes came back to yours.
Then his phone buzzed on the counter. The moment fractured.
The screen lit up with a news alert from some garbage entertainment-politics site whose entire business model revolved around grainy photos and hastily made assumptions.
The headline read:
BABY BARNES? INSIDERS SPECULATE CONGRESSMAN’S SUDDEN MARRIAGE MAY HAVE BEEN A SHOTGUN WEDDING
The house went quiet.
“I’m sorry,” you said, pushing your plate away from you. “Apparently I’m what?”
Bucky picked up the phone, thumb moving over the screen. His expression shifted from confusion to irritation. You leaned closer despite yourself.
The article had three photos. One of you leaving the donor reception the night of the truth serum incident, hunched slightly forward, one hand pressed to your stomach while Bucky guided you toward the waiting car. Another of him helping you into the backseat. A third, zoomed and blurred beyond decency, of him standing at the curb looking worried enough to make any tabloid editor salivate.
Under the photos, the caption read:
Mrs. Barnes appeared visibly unwell while leaving an exclusive reception three weeks ago, fueling speculation that the couple’s sudden nuptials may have been prompted by more than romance.
You read it twice, then looked down at your stomach.
“Well,” you said. “News to me.”
Bucky did not laugh easily, and he certainly did not laugh loudly when tabloids were speculating about his fake wife. But his mouth cracked first, then his eyes, and then he turned his face away with one hand over his mouth.
“Oh, this is funny to you?”
“No.”
“You’re laughing.”
“‘M not.”
You picked up his phone and scrolled with one finger. “This is absurd. They cite an anonymous source who says I have been ‘glowing.’”
“You do glow.”
You stared at him.
He looked mildly alarmed by himself.
“I mean… you’re sweaty sometimes.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“That came out wrong.”
“I should hope so.”
He dragged a hand over his face. “I meant you look good.”
Your mouth hung open slightly. His ears went pink.
The tabloid headline seemed to glow between you like a cursed artifact.
“Right. Well.” You looked back at the phone. “Mia’ll kill it in the morning.”
The rest of the evening went on with the kind of absurd normalcy that made your life feel like a badly written cover story. You finished eating. Bucky took the plates. You dried them. Two former assassins doing dishes under warm kitchen lights.
You were putting away the last fork when Bucky said, “You should go upstairs.”
“Bossy.”
“You’re exhausted.”
“Oh, just because I’m pregnant now I can’t take care of myself?”
He rolled his eyes at your joke, standing near the sink towel in hand. Not ordering or pushing, just reading you too well and giving you nowhere to hide.
Bucky said your name softly.
You sighed. “Fine.”
He smiled faintly, stopping in front of you and, without seeming to think about it, brushed a loose strand of hair away from your face.
His fingers were warm against your temple. Your eyes dipped for half a second, your body leaning toward the contact in the automatic way tired bodies lean toward heat. He looked at you with a quiet kind of fondness that had become too common lately.
Then he leaned down and kissed your forehead.
His lips touched your skin like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“You did good tonight,” he murmured.
You hummed something that might have been, “I always do,” but you were not sure it had words.
Bucky stepped back, gathered the towel, and turned to hang it on the oven handle.
You went upstairs because he had told you to, and because your body was beginning to remember it had spent the last several hours crawling through vents and fighting security. You changed slowly in the bathroom, peeling out of the tactical suit and leaving it folded over the hamper. There was a smear of dust along your jaw. You wiped it away with a damp cloth and stared at yourself in the mirror.
You looked tired. And bruised. And married.
The ring caught the light when you braced your hand on the sink.
That was when your mind, traitorous and apparently operating on a delay, replayed the kitchen.
His fingers at your temple. His mouth against your forehead.
You stood very still in the bathroom.
There had been no audience. No office staff, no reporter looking for a tender line to put below a photo. No donor needing reassurance that Congressman Barnes was stable, married, softened by domestic life. No reason to perform anything.
He had kissed your forehead because he wanted to.
But Bucky did things like that.
Did he?
Did he kiss his friends on the forehead? No. No, he did not. You had never seen him kiss Sam’s forehead, though the thought was so amusing your brain tried to seize onto it as an escape route. He did not kiss Peter’s forehead, or Mia’s, and you knew he wouldn’t even try to kiss Yelena’s forehead.
But you had been tired. He was taking care of you. He did that. He took care of people.
He made food and opened doors and checked locks. Bucky Barnes left lights on and walked on the street side. He was kind. That was all. It had to be all.
Because if it was not all, then you had a serious problem.
You gripped the edge of the sink. Your face in the mirror looked unimpressed with you.
“Shut up,” you whispered to it.
You thought of the van. Yelena’s forehead against your temple. Sam watching you through the windshield with that awful careful face.
You ever think you keep deciding what he feels because it keeps you from having to ask?
You hated Sam. You hated him and his ability to say one useful thing every three hundred jokes.
summary. After a late-night in New Orleans, Congressman Bucky Barnes and his chief of staff wake up legally married. An annulment should be simple, but unfortunately, nothing about their lives is simple. With Bucky's reputation on the line and her past threatening to resurface, staying married starts to look like the safest option. It's only supposed to be temporary. Public appearances, a convincing story, and a quiet divorce once the headlines fade. But fake marriage is harder when everyone else believes it. Especially when Bucky is already in love with his wife.
word count. 6.7k
warnings. mission shenanigans, sam and yelena are instigators, bucky is SO down bad it's giving me second-hand embarassment, mutual pining, denial, bucky is over protective
masterlist | series masterlist | last chapter | next chapter
Bucky had wanted to come.
That was the first problem.
Bucky Barnes, unfortunately, had developed a habit of wanting to come wherever you were most likely to be shot, stabbed, poisoned, emotionally cornered, or otherwise inconvenienced by the consequences of your own life choices. This was noble in theory, exhausting in practice, and completely unsuitable for the mission currently requiring you to hang upside down from the ceiling of a private records office in Arlington while Yelena ate cashews beneath you.
The facility was owned by a “strategic consulting firm,” which in Washington meant nothing and everything. The front office handled defense contracts, philanthropic partnerships, political risk assessments, and donor management. The locked archive beneath it, according to the files you had stolen from a very nervous man with a waxed mustache, handled something else entirely.
Names, movement logs, enhanced-person incident reports that had never been filed through official channels. Old Widow recovery routes. Contractor payments tied to three shell companies you recognized from Valentina’s orbit.
Bucky had read the first page of the briefing and said, “I’m coming.”
You had said, “No.”
He had said, “That wasn’t a question.”
You had said. “And yet it has been answered.”
Sam, sitting across the kitchen table with his arms crossed and the expression of a man who knew he had been invited to witness a fight rather than participate in a meeting, had said, “I’m gonna regret asking this, but why isn’t he coming?”
“Because,” you had said, taking the folder out of Bucky’s hand before he could glare the paper into confession, “this is a stealth retrieval, not a former-Winter-Soldier-and-sitting-congressman-breaks-into-a-contractor-basement situation.”
Bucky stared at you.
You stared back.
“You can’t be there. If something connects the site to the bill, or to Valentina, you need distance,” You said.
His jaw tightened.
“You’re going,” he had said.
“Yes.”
“That’s different?”
“This is the kind of thing Yelena and I were trained for,” you shrugged. “You’re the congressional sponsor of the bill that might expose her network.”
He had stayed behind. Barely.
Which was why your phone currently had several unread texts from him despite the fact that you were in the middle of a felony.
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
You inside?
11:34
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
Check in.
11:34
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
You good?
11:42
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
I can still come if you need me.
11:43
You had read all of them and answered none. Not because you were avoiding him, but because you were a professional.
“You know,” Sam said in your earpiece, voice low and warm and far too amused for a man sitting on a rooftop two blocks away, “for somebody who insisted Bucky stay home, you’ve checked your phone a lot.”
“I am monitoring external variables.”
“You are monitoring your husband.”
“Fake husband.”
From below you, Yelena stopped chewing.
You froze.
Yelena looked up at you from the floor, one eyebrow lifted.
Her black tactical suit made her blend into the shadows beneath the ceiling panel. A couple cashews fell out of her hand and onto the floor. She had found them in the security break room and claimed them.
“What did you say?” she asked.
You twisted your wrist slightly, keeping the bypass tool pressed to the sensor housing. “I said husband.”
“No.” Yelena’s eyes narrowed. “You said fake husband.”
Sam went silent in your ear.
You sighed through your nose. “Did I?”
“Yes,” Yelena said. “You did.”
“Could have been an accent issue.”
“You do not have accent.”
“Everyone has an accent.”
“Do not linguistics me.”
The tool in your hand beeped softly, the sensor light shifted from red to green.
“Good news,” you said. “Hallway’s clear.”
“Do not change subject.”
“We’re literally changing rooms.”
You swung down from the panel, caught the edge with one hand, then dropped lightly to the floor beside her. Your boots hit the tile with barely a sound. The hallway beyond the records office stretched dark and cold ahead of you, lined with doors requiring keycards, biometric access, or the kind of confidence only rich men and former assassins possessed.
Yelena did not move. She crossed her arms.
“You told me it was real.”
“I did not.”
“You let me think it.”
“She sounds pretty mad,” Sam exhaled in your ear.
Yelena smiled without humor. “I am not mad. Explain.”
“This is not the time.”
“We are in empty hallway after disabling security. Very good time.”
“There are patrols.”
“I will get rid of them.”
“We are on a clock.”
“I am efficient.”
You looked toward the camera you had looped two minutes ago. It would hold for another six before the system caught the irregularity. Behind the next door was the internal archive. Behind that, if the floor plans were accurate, a secure storage room. Somewhere inside it was a physical drive marked with an old Red Room routing cipher that had no business appearing in a D.C. contractor’s foundation file.
You needed to keep moving.
You also knew Yelena well enough to understand that she would stand in the middle of an active mission until sunrise if she decided the emotional injury warranted it. She was very principled that way.
Terrible trait.
“We got married by accident,” you said.
Yelena stared. Sam made a small noise through the comms.
“I need both of you to remain calm.” You said, pointing toward the door and starting walking.
“By accident,” Yelena repeated.
“Yes.”
“And you did not tell me?”
“I was going to.”
“When? Anniversary?”
You reached the keycard panel and crouched in front of it, pulling a narrow tool from your sleeve.
“Probably before then.”
“I would stop talking if I were you,” Sam advised.
“Excellent advice,” you said. “For both of us.”
Yelena crouched beside you, close enough that her shoulder nearly touched yours. Her face had gone still in the way it did when hurt moved under anger. People who did not know her might have missed it. You did not.
The keycard panel clicked.
“Door,” you said.
Yelena did not look at it.
“You told Sam.”
“Bucky told Sam,” you corrected.
“You could have told me.”
“I know.”
That was the wrong thing to say. Or the right thing. Hard to tell. Yelena’s mouth tightened. You pulled the door open and slid inside before she could say anything else.
The archive room was colder than the hallway. Rows of rolling shelves stood under dim motion lights, each marked with dull metal tags and coded labels.
You moved down the first row, counting shelves. “Sam, talk to me.”
For once, Sam sounded cautious. “You’ve got eight minutes before the lobby guard cycles back. Exterior’s clear. Van's still clean. No alarms on my end.”
Yelena followed behind you, steps silent. “You lied to me.”
“I omitted.”
“You omitted the fake part of fake marriage. Crucial part.” Yelena’s glare could have stripped paint. “And then you kept lying to me for two months.”
You found the shelf. Section 4-14. Private philanthropic filings. Contractor-linked donor records. Shell entity cross-references. It was exactly where the floor plan said it would be, which made you immediately suspicious.
You crouched and ran your fingers along the bottom edge of the shelf, feeling for a pressure switch.
There.
Tiny, under the metal lip.
“Trap?” Yelena asked, anger pushed aside by instinct.
“Silent alarm.”
She crouched beside you, all business now. “Lazy.”
You smiled despite yourself and pulled a wedge from your belt. “Hold this.”
Yelena held the shelf steady while you slid the wedge in, locking the pressure plate. Her shoulder brushed yours. For all her fury, she was exactly where you needed her.
That made the guilt worse.
You opened the file drawer and started searching.
“You could have told me,” she said again, quieter this time.
You did not look at her. “I know.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Several answers circled in your head. Because if you knew it was fake, you’d ask why I kept wearing the ring like it wasn’t. Because Bucky is the first good thing I have held and I do not know how to want him without ruining it.
You pulled a folder from the drawer. “Because it’s complicated.”
Yelena scoffed softly. “That is coward’s answer.”
“I hate to agree with her,” Sam started, “but—”
“Finish the sentence and I will make your shield into a serving tray.”
He stopped.
You flipped through the folder, scanning donor names, dates, routing codes. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Then—
Harrington Strategic.
You froze.
Yelena noticed at once. “What?”
“Shell reference.”
You pulled the page free and photographed it. Then another. The codes were old but not old enough. You slid the documents into a scan sleeve and closed the drawer, moving to the next drawer.
“We need the drive.”
“And real conversation,” Yelena said.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Yelena,” you sighed.
“You have fake husband, real feelings, and did not tell me. We are having conversation.”
You reached the secure storage door at the back of the archive. “I do not have real feelings.”
Sam snorted.
“Wilson,” you muttered under your breath in warning.
“I’m just saying,” Sam said. “I was in the car after the truth serum.”
Yelena’s eyes lit up. “What truth serum?”
You closed your eyes briefly.
Wonderful. Excellent. Perfect.
“Can we focus on the mission?”
“You were truth-serumed?” Yelena demanded.
“On accident.”
“Buck put it in her tea,” Sam supplied.
Yelena stared at you.
You kept working on the lock. “He thought it was peppermint extract.”
“Why was truth serum labeled peppermint extract?” Yelena asked.
“That’s not the point.”
“Oh, well okay then. What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
The lock flashed red.
You exhaled, adjusted the bypass needle, and tried again.
“She was telling him how handsome he is,” Sam answered.
You narrowed your eyes. “Wilson.”
Yelena’s smile spread slowly.
“Oh.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You think Congressman Sad Eyes is handsome.”
“I was drugged.”
Yelena leaned against the wall beside the secure door, arms crossed, her earlier anger rearranging itself into something more dangerous: delight.
“You like him,” she said.
“I do not like him.”
“Yes, you do,” Sam and Yelena said at the same time.
The door opened.
You stepped inside. “This is bullying.”
“This is family,” Yelena said.
“Family needs to be quieter on missions.”
The secure room was smaller, lined with locked metal cabinets. The air was even colder here, a preservation chill meant to protect paper, hard drives, and whatever else men with too much money convinced themselves they could keep forever.
You knelt and unrolled a thin tool kit from your sleeve.
Yelena crouched beside you. “Say it.”
“No.”
“Say you like him.”
“I like many people.”
“You do not.”
“I tolerate several.”
“You like him.”
“I like his house. It’s a very nice house.”
Yelena gave you a flat look. “You are in love with townhouse?”
“The water pressure is excellent.”
“Is water pressure why you stare at him when he opens doors?”
“I do not stare.”
“You do.”
“I have to look at him sometimes. He is large and often in the way.”
“You know, for a former assassin,” Sam said in your ear, “your defense strategy is weak.”
You looked toward the ceiling in disbelief that this was your team for this mission. “I should’ve let Bucky come.”
“No, he would be worse,” Yelena snorted.
“He would’ve spent the whole mission asking if you were okay every five minutes,” Sam said.
“He does that because he is neurotic.”
“He does that because he loves—” Sam stopped so abruptly you heard his teeth click.
The lock pick paused in your hand. Sam went quiet. Too quiet. Your pulse changed but you forced your hand to keep moving.
“Because he loves what, Sam?”
“Control,” Sam said quickly. “Mission control. He loves mission control.”
You looked back at the lock until the pins blurred.
You had spent three weeks pretending the truth serum incident had not happened. Three weeks sleeping beside Bucky in the dark, the space between you warm and impossible. Three weeks watching him read labels twice before making your tea. Three weeks since you told him you were friends and colleagues and nothing else.
There were many things you could survive. Guns and needles, a bullet through soft tissue. A fall from three stories if you landed well. You were not sure you could survive Bucky knowing you wanted him and being kind about not wanting you back.
The lock clicked open.
You removed the small black drive from the cabinet, along with a paper index card containing three shell company names and a private event schedule.
Yelena plucked the card from your hand. “These are spouse events.”
“What?”
“Here,” she tapped the second line. “Foundation dinner. Closed guest list.”
You took the card back.
She was right.
A private board reception. A donor retreat listed as “family attendance encouraged.” Not staff. Not aides. Not policy advisors.
Spouses.
Sam’s voice came through. “What is it?”
“Access,” you said.
Yelena’s eyes flicked to you.
You slid the drive into your jacket. “As chief of staff, I can’t get into half these rooms without raising questions. As his wife…”
You felt a slow, unpleasant thrill.
Yelena smiled. “Finally, marriage becomes useful.”
“She doesn’t need encouragement,” Sam sighed.
“Yes, she did,” Yelena argued.
“I did not,” you said.
“You did. You are wasting marriage on longing instead of using marriage to crush enemies.”
“I am not longing.”
Yelena gave you a look. “You’re longing.”
“Oh, she’s longing,” Sam agreed.
“I hate both of you.”
“Maybe,” said Yelena. “But you like him.”
You shut the cabinet harder than necessary.
Fine.
You turned to face her, and Yelena was wearing the expression of a woman who had decided she would rather be shot than leave this alone.
“Fine,” you said.
Yelena stilled.
“Yes, I like him.”
No truth serum or nausea this time.
Yelena’s expression shifted. The triumph softened almost immediately into something protective. Sam made no sound at all.
You continued before anyone could be gentle.
“It’s not serious.”
“Oh, come on,” Sam said.
“It isn’t.”
“You are stealing files while wearing his ring,” Yelena said, “and pretending not to check your phone every time he texts.”
“It is a crush,” you snapped. “That’s all. A stupid, inconvenient crush caused by proximity. We’re done here.”
You turned to the exit.
“You have feelings,” Yelena said.
“I have many feelings. Hunger. Irritation.”
“For him. For Bucky.”
You stopped at the secure room door. “That I can’t do anything about.”
The hallway was still beyond clear. Your camera loop had two minutes left. The guard pattern had changed slightly; you could hear footsteps somewhere above you, a little too quick. Not yet a problem. Soon.
“Why not?” Sam said.
You kept your eyes on the corridor. “Because we have to stay married.”
“That seems like opposite of problem,” Yelena said.
“It is a public arrangement tied to his career, his office, and his bill. If we complicate it and it goes badly, we still have to live in the same house, sleep in the same bed, and lie to every camera in D.C. until we can safely undo it.”
You moved into the hall.
“And besides, he doesn’t want me like that,” you added.
Sam made a sound that might have been physical pain.
“You are stupid,” Yelena said.
“I know what I mean.” You stopped at the corner, checked the reflection in the dark glass of a framed abstract painting, then waved Yelena back a step. “He is kind. That’s what you’re seeing. He treats me well because he treats people well when he thinks they’re his responsibility.”
Sam went very quiet on the comm.
“He opens doors because he’s from the forties,” you continued. He makes tea because he feels guilty. He looks at me like that because he looks at everyone he wants to protect like that.”
Yelena’s voice came low behind you. “Does he?”
You did not answer.
“You ever think,” Sam started, “you keep deciding what he feels because it keeps you from ever having to ask?”
You turned toward the camera above the hall and pulled a compact from your belt.
“You ever think maybe you talk too much?”
“Every day. Doesn’t make me wrong. Just sayin’.”
“You are always just saying. It is your most dangerous condition.”
A soft, red light at the far end of the hallway began pulsing. A silent alarm. Local system only, probably triggered by the guard’s vitals monitor or the camera loop ending sooner than expected.
Sam swore. “You’ve got movement upstairs.”
“How many?”
“Four. Maybe six. Coming down the east stairwell.”
Yelena rolled her shoulders. “Good. I was bored.”
You took the keycard from her and started moving. “Exit route B.”
“I’m moving to pick up,” Sam said.
A crash sounded faintly through the comm.
You closed your eyes for half a second. “Subtle.”
The next ninety seconds were blessedly simple. Men came down the stairwell with earpieces and tactical gear. You and Yelena removed them from the situation.
One would have a bad knee for a week. Another would wake up zip-tied to a pipe with his own belt.
You ran through the service corridor, past the bad lighting, through a stairwell that smelled like dust and overheated electrical wiring. The lock clicked open and the night air hit your face as you slipped into the alley. Cold, damp, full of exhaust and rain. The van sat at the curb, lights off. Sam had parked badly.
Yelena climbed in first, you followed. Sam sat in the driver’s seat and pulled away before the back door was fully shut.
You leaned back against the seat and pulled out your phone. There were new texts from Bucky.
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
Alarm? Sam stopped responding.
12:34
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
I’m coming.
12:36
Your chest tightened and you typed quickly: Mission complete. Do not come.
His reply came almost instantly.
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
You okay?
12:42
You stared at the words. Four letters, one question mark, and somehow the equivalence of a hand at your back.
You typed back: No one died.
The Congressman🥵🎖️🦾
That’s not what I asked.
12:43
You locked the phone and shoved it into your jacket.
D.C. moved past in blurred lights and government buildings, all stone faces and dark windows. Somewhere across the city, Bucky was probably standing in his kitchen, phone in hand, jaw tight, pretending he was not waiting for you to walk through the door.
Yelena watched you.
“You like being married to him.”
You closed your eyes. The words came before you could make them smaller.
“I like being married to him.”
The van went quiet.
You opened your eyes.
Sam looked at you through the mirror, no grin this time.
Yelena’s expression had softened in the way she hated showing. Her shoulder pressed against yours for one brief second.
They were silent for the rest of the ride, which was something you were grateful for. You didn’t really have the energy to talk about your complicated feelings for your congressman and husband. Your Bucky.
You would have to do better at scrubbing that last idea out of your head.
It wasn’t long before Sam pulled up outside the townhouse. You slid the door open, grabbed your duffel bag, and hopped out.
The townhouse waited ahead, warm light glowing in the kitchen windows and front hall, the living room lamp left on low. Bucky did that now. Left lights on when you were coming home late. Not every light, not enough to make the house look exposed from the street, but enough that you never had to walk in darkness.
You had noticed the first time. You had not mentioned it.
Behind you, the van did not leave. Sam stayed in the driver’s seat with both hands on the wheel, pretending he was not watching you over the dash. Yelena’s face turned toward the townhouse with the pointed interest of someone who had no intention of letting you escape the conversation just because the mission was over.
“You are going to tell him?” She asked.
You checked the street instead of looking at her. The block was quiet, mostly.
“About the mission?”
“About the other thing.”
“There is no other thing.”
Sam made a sound from the front seat.
You looked at him.
He looked straight ahead.
“Did you have something to say, Wilson?” You asked.
“I’m a vault.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Yelena crunched a cashew. “You admitted you like being married to him. You should tell him.”
“No.”
Sam sighed through his nose. “You really think he doesn’t feel anything?”
You looked toward the townhouse again.
The kitchen window was bright enough that you could see the vague shape of someone moving past it, broad shoulders, shirtsleeves, dark hair. Bucky.
Your chest did something embarrassing. You shoved it back down.
“I think Bucky is a decent man who has spent two months trying to make an insane situation less awful for me,” you said. “I think he is honorable. I think he would rather chew glass than make me feel unwanted in my own fake marriage. And I think if I tell him I have feelings and he does not have them back, he will be kind about it, which will be worse.”
Neither of them immediately answered.
Yelena’s mouth pressed into a line. Sam looked briefly down at the wheel, his fingers flexing once around it.
Sam said your name gently. “You don’t know unless you ask.”
“I know enough.”
“You’re making assumptions.”
Yelena looked past you again, toward the house. Her eyes narrowed slightly, not in suspicion this time, but assessment. She had been doing that since the Red Room fell, deciding what might kill you and what might save you. Sometimes she got the two mixed up.
“You like him,” she said. “He makes you feel safe.”
Yelena leaned forward and pressed her forehead briefly to your temple.
The first time she had done it, you had nearly flinched hard enough to break her nose. Now you stood still and let her, because family was apparently just repeated exposure to the same dangerous person until your nervous system gave up and called it love.
“You will call me tomorrow,” she said.
“I have work.”
“You will call me tomorrow.”
You paused. “...yeah. Yeah, okay.”
She stepped back, then pointed two fingers at her own eyes and then at you. “Do not do anything stupid.”
“Text if you need anything,” Sam said from the front seat.
“I won’t.”
“I know. Text anyway.”
The van pulled away before you could answer, leaving you alone on the sidewalk with the cold air, the flash drive, and the deeply irritating knowledge that the two most meddlesome people in your life had somehow become a united front.
You unlocked the front door with your key.
That was still strange.
Your key. Not strange enough that you did not use it. Not strange enough that you had not started keeping it on your normal keyring instead of loose in the side pocket of your bag. But strange enough that every time the lock turned, some part of you remembered this was supposed to be temporary.
The house opened around you, warm and quiet.
It smelled like roasted garlic, cedar soap, and Bucky’s coffee.
You stopped in the entryway. Bucky was in the kitchen.
He stood at the stove in rolled-up shirtsleeves, tie gone, hair slightly mussed like he had run a hand through it too many times. There was a pan on the burner, something wrapped in foil on the counter, two plates already set out, and his phone lying face-up beside the cutting board.
He looked over the second the door opened.
His eyes moved over you in one sweep: face, shoulders, hands, jacket, knees, boots. Checking for blood, limp, shock, pain. Anything out of place.
You shut the door behind you.
“Stop scanning me.”
“You’re limping. You hurt?”
“No.”
His eyes dropped to your knee.
You sighed. “Slightly.”
“Shoulder too?”
You looked down at yourself. “How did you—”
“You’re holdin’ it stiff.”
“I hate your eyes.”
“No, you don’t.”
You went still for a fraction too long.
Bucky noticed. His expression shifted, and he looked back toward the stove like the burner required his full attention.
“Food’s almost done,” he said.
“You cooked?”
“You said you were gonna forget to eat.”
“I said that hours ago.”
“Still seemed likely.”
You toed off your boots by the door and hung your coat on the hook beside his. The motion was too familiar. Boot by boot. Coat on hook. Shoulder beginning to throb where the bruise had started to bloom.
You moved into the kitchen and leaned against the island while Bucky turned off the stove. He had made eggs, toast, roasted vegetables, and rice in a pan with garlic and something else that smelled too good for a man who had once considered protein bars a complete meal.
“You waited to eat?” you asked.
He shrugged one shoulder. “Wasn’t hungry yet.”
Lie.
Bucky carried a plate to the island and set it in front of you first. Then he reached past you for the drawer, pulled out a fork, and placed it beside the plate like this was a perfectly normal thing.
You looked down at the plate, then at him.
“What?”
“You made vegetables.”
“I know how to make vegetables.”
“You own seasoning now?”
His eyes narrowed. “You bought it.”
“Yes, but you’re using it. That’s growth.”
“Eat.”
“Bossy.”
“Chief.”
“Husband.”
He went still for half a second. Then the pan on the stove made a small settling sound, and both of you pretended the room had not changed.
You picked up the fork.
He sat beside you with his own plate, close enough that your knees nearly bumped beneath the island. For a few minutes, you ate without talking about anything important. That had become one of the stranger comforts of living together. The silence.
Bucky let you get four bites in before asking, “Flash drive?”
You tapped the inside pocket of your jacket.
“The archive was real,” you said. Shell references. Donor movements. Some contractor aliases that match the list from last week.”
Bucky’s face changed. The domestic softness didn’t vanish, but something else slid over it. Focus. Concern. The old soldier and the newer congressman meeting somewhere behind his eyes.
“Valentina?”
“Adjacent.”
“Were you seen?”
“No.”
He looked at your knee.
“Not by anyone who remained conscious,” you amended.
“Sweetheart.”
“I had everything under control.”
“You’re limping.”
“I can limp from many noncombat related causes.”
“Like?”
“Drama. A deep commitment to mystique. Or, really, really good se—”
“Alright.”
You couldn’t stop the smile that was pulling at your lips.
There it was. The rhythm. The easy one. The thing that made coming home dangerous because you did not have to force it. With Bucky, you could slide into a conversation already moving. You could say nonsense and he would meet it with that tired patience that somehow made you want to escalate.
Bucky set his fork down. “Can I see your shoulder?”
You rolled your eyes. “It’s minor.”
“Can I see it?”
You unzipped the top of your tactical suit just enough to pull the collar aside and show him the bruise high on your shoulder. The kitchen light caught the darkening patch of skin, already shifting purple around the edges.
Bucky’s face went still.
“Do not make that face,” you said.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
His eyes moved to yours. “May I?”
You handed him permission with a sigh and a nod.
His fingers touched your shoulder gently. He pressed lightly around the bruise, checking swelling, range, damage. It should have been clinical. His hands had done worse things than tend a bruise, and your body had survived worse things than being touched by a man who cared whether you hurt.
Still, your breath went strange.
He withdrew his hand. “You’re gonna be sore.”
“I know.”
“You should ice it.”
“I know.”
“You gonna?”
You smiled.
His mouth twitched. “That means no.”
Bucky stood, went to the freezer, wrapped an ice pack in a towel, and brought it back. You accepted it and pressed it to your shoulder. The cold bit through the towel, sharp enough to steady you.
Something in you softened. It had been doing that too often lately. You had learned to take hits without making them matter. Bruises were inventory. Pain was information. But Bucky looked at every mark on you like it was an argument with the world.
You looked down at the plate. “You’re doing it again.”
“What?”
“Acting like this is worse because it happened to me.”
“It is worse because it happened to you.”
Your fork stopped halfway to your mouth.
Bucky seemed to realize what he had said a moment after saying it. His expression tightened with caution.
For a moment, neither of you said anything. The house hummed around the silence: refrigerator, old pipes, the faint tick of the burner cooling on the stove. Your shoulder ached beneath the ice pack, but distantly now, like a complaint from another room.
Bucky’s eyes dropped to the bruise again, and you knew that if you let him, he would turn that mark into evidence against himself. You could see the shape of it forming. That familiar Barnes guilt, broad-shouldered and self-sustaining.
You set your fork down.
“I don’t mind getting hurt on missions,” you said.
Bucky’s gaze returned to yours immediately. “That’s not something you should say like its normal.”
“It is normal.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Bucky,” you sighed.
“No,” he repeated. “Getting hurt shouldn’t be the price of doing good. Not with you.”
You leaned back slightly against the island, ice pressed to your shoulder, tactical suit half-unzipped at the collar, body tired.
“I mean it,” you said. “I don’t mind. Not like that. I spent years being useful to the wrong people. I was good at it. I was very good at being terrible for whoever pointed me in the right direction.”
Bucky’s expression changed.
You should have stopped, but instead, you looked down at your hand, at the ring sitting there, and continued before the smarter part of you could shut the door.
“Now I get to choose where I point myself. I get to break into an archive and steal evidence from people who think enhanced bodies and scared kids with powers are inventory. I get to be useful on purpose, for something that might actually help someone.” You swallowed, irritated by the sudden roughness in your throat. “So I don’t mind a couple bruises. It’s fine. Almost comforting.”
Bucky was still beside you. You could feel him listening, not as though he was waiting for his turn to speak, but like every word had weight. Like he knew what it was to have your own history used against you and was careful not to become another hand on the scale.
You dragged your thumb against the condensation on your glass.
“It doesn’t make up for anything,” you said. “It doesn’t undo what I did. And I know what people say. I know I was conditioned and controlled and trained and handled and used. I know all the words. I’ve written half of them in memos for other people.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
You laughed once, but it had no humor. “There it is.”
“I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
You looked at him.
His face was open in a way he rarely let it be. Bucky Barnes was never fully unguarded but there was no performance in him now, no congressman, no public husband, no careful joke he could hide behind.
You tilted your head to the side, looking at him from a different angle. “Barnes, you don’t get to say that to me and not yourself. You’re doing the thing where grace applies to everyone in the room except you.”
“That’s not what I’m doin’.”
“It’s exactly what you’re doing.”
Bucky looked down at his hands.
“Steve once told me something similar,” he said, rubbing his thumb over the side of his ring. “He told me that what I did all those years wasn’t me. That I didn’t have a choice.”
Your chest tightened and you looked at him skeptically. “Did you believe him?”
Bucky was quiet for a moment.
“No,” he admitted. “Not then.”
He breathed in slowly, like he was choosing each word before letting it leave him.
“I wanted to. I knew he meant it.” Bucky’s mouth moved slightly, not quite a smile. “Didn’t mean I could carry it.”
You understood that too well. Belief offered from the outside could feel like a coat in the wrong size. Warm, maybe. But not made for your body. Not something you could move in.
Bucky looked up at you again.
“But now?” you asked.
His gaze held yours. “Now I think he was right.”
His words were quiet. Not easy. But there.
“I’m not defined by what they made me do,” Bucky said. “I’m not gonna pretend it didn’t happen. I don’t get to wash my hands and say none of it touched me. But I get to decide what I do with the rest of my life.”
He looked down briefly at the flash drive sitting on the counter between you.
“I can do some good in this world.” He shrugged. “Maybe enough that the good is its own thing, not payment. Not atonement. Just good.”
Your throat ached.
Bucky’s hand rested near his glass, metal fingers still, flesh hand curled loosely beside it. The ring on his left hand caught the kitchen light.
He let out a breath.
“Maybe,” he said, “I can have some good too.”
Bucky said that last part quieter, like he wasn’t sure if he quite believed it yet. He said it like a man asking permission from an empty room.
You looked at him and felt something in you go unbearably soft.
“You deserve good things,” you said.
You had not planned to say it. You were not sure where it had come from. Maybe from the two months of watching Bucky Barnes act like goodness was something he was allowed to protect but never receive.
His face changed in increments. First surprise, then discomfort. Then something raw enough that he lowered his eyes before you could fully see it.
He cleared his throat. “Don’t know about that.”
“I do.”
His eyes came back to yours.
Then his phone buzzed on the counter. The moment fractured.
The screen lit up with a news alert from some garbage entertainment-politics site whose entire business model revolved around grainy photos and hastily made assumptions.
The headline read:
BABY BARNES? INSIDERS SPECULATE CONGRESSMAN’S SUDDEN MARRIAGE MAY HAVE BEEN A SHOTGUN WEDDING
The house went quiet.
“I’m sorry,” you said, pushing your plate away from you. “Apparently I’m what?”
Bucky picked up the phone, thumb moving over the screen. His expression shifted from confusion to irritation. You leaned closer despite yourself.
The article had three photos. One of you leaving the donor reception the night of the truth serum incident, hunched slightly forward, one hand pressed to your stomach while Bucky guided you toward the waiting car. Another of him helping you into the backseat. A third, zoomed and blurred beyond decency, of him standing at the curb looking worried enough to make any tabloid editor salivate.
Under the photos, the caption read:
Mrs. Barnes appeared visibly unwell while leaving an exclusive reception three weeks ago, fueling speculation that the couple’s sudden nuptials may have been prompted by more than romance.
You read it twice, then looked down at your stomach.
“Well,” you said. “News to me.”
Bucky did not laugh easily, and he certainly did not laugh loudly when tabloids were speculating about his fake wife. But his mouth cracked first, then his eyes, and then he turned his face away with one hand over his mouth.
“Oh, this is funny to you?”
“No.”
“You’re laughing.”
“‘M not.”
You picked up his phone and scrolled with one finger. “This is absurd. They cite an anonymous source who says I have been ‘glowing.’”
“You do glow.”
You stared at him.
He looked mildly alarmed by himself.
“I mean… you’re sweaty sometimes.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“That came out wrong.”
“I should hope so.”
He dragged a hand over his face. “I meant you look good.”
Your mouth hung open slightly. His ears went pink.
The tabloid headline seemed to glow between you like a cursed artifact.
“Right. Well.” You looked back at the phone. “Mia’ll kill it in the morning.”
The rest of the evening went on with the kind of absurd normalcy that made your life feel like a badly written cover story. You finished eating. Bucky took the plates. You dried them. Two former assassins doing dishes under warm kitchen lights.
You were putting away the last fork when Bucky said, “You should go upstairs.”
“Bossy.”
“You’re exhausted.”
“Oh, just because I’m pregnant now I can’t take care of myself?”
He rolled his eyes at your joke, standing near the sink towel in hand. Not ordering or pushing, just reading you too well and giving you nowhere to hide.
Bucky said your name softly.
You sighed. “Fine.”
He smiled faintly, stopping in front of you and, without seeming to think about it, brushed a loose strand of hair away from your face.
His fingers were warm against your temple. Your eyes dipped for half a second, your body leaning toward the contact in the automatic way tired bodies lean toward heat. He looked at you with a quiet kind of fondness that had become too common lately.
Then he leaned down and kissed your forehead.
His lips touched your skin like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“You did good tonight,” he murmured.
You hummed something that might have been, “I always do,” but you were not sure it had words.
Bucky stepped back, gathered the towel, and turned to hang it on the oven handle.
You went upstairs because he had told you to, and because your body was beginning to remember it had spent the last several hours crawling through vents and fighting security. You changed slowly in the bathroom, peeling out of the tactical suit and leaving it folded over the hamper. There was a smear of dust along your jaw. You wiped it away with a damp cloth and stared at yourself in the mirror.
You looked tired. And bruised. And married.
The ring caught the light when you braced your hand on the sink.
That was when your mind, traitorous and apparently operating on a delay, replayed the kitchen.
His fingers at your temple. His mouth against your forehead.
You stood very still in the bathroom.
There had been no audience. No office staff, no reporter looking for a tender line to put below a photo. No donor needing reassurance that Congressman Barnes was stable, married, softened by domestic life. No reason to perform anything.
He had kissed your forehead because he wanted to.
But Bucky did things like that.
Did he?
Did he kiss his friends on the forehead? No. No, he did not. You had never seen him kiss Sam’s forehead, though the thought was so amusing your brain tried to seize onto it as an escape route. He did not kiss Peter’s forehead, or Mia’s, and you knew he wouldn’t even try to kiss Yelena’s forehead.
But you had been tired. He was taking care of you. He did that. He took care of people.
He made food and opened doors and checked locks. Bucky Barnes left lights on and walked on the street side. He was kind. That was all. It had to be all.
Because if it was not all, then you had a serious problem.
You gripped the edge of the sink. Your face in the mirror looked unimpressed with you.
“Shut up,” you whispered to it.
You thought of the van. Yelena’s forehead against your temple. Sam watching you through the windshield with that awful careful face.
You ever think you keep deciding what he feels because it keeps you from having to ask?
You hated Sam. You hated him and his ability to say one useful thing every three hundred jokes.
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Hey girll i love love your fics,, "starling" is my fav series fic everrrr and i am loving this new congressman!bucky series of yours and i appreciate how you also have a sched HAHA its rare to see with fanfic authors. Anyways i just wanted to say how much i love your writing i hope you continue to enjoy it ❤️
hi hi and thank you for the message! I am SO glad you liked starling, I loved their dynamic and would be interested in dipping my toes back in that series for like a bonus scene or something if people are interested.
I'm glad you are enjoying THATO, that one has been so fun to write. Thank you again for the message, I love getting feedback from my readers!
Hi, I’m fairly new to Tumblr, and I’m stumbling across wonderful authors. I love,love,love
The Bucky as a Congressman and his fake PR marriage. I have a question though.
I only see a part one and two. The others are scratched off. Am I missing something?
I’m reading your other stuff and falling in love. Love your work !
Please keep writing. 🥰
Hi and welcome to Tumblr!!
I'm so glad you've been enjoying To Have and to Hold Office, I'm having a great time writing it. The crossed off chapters haven't been published yet. So far parts I, II, and III are out and I'm updating the fic every week on Sundays with the goal of having eight parts total.
You can keep up with the parts through my THATO masterlist here !!
Let me know if you have any other questions and thank you for your kind words.
summary. After a late-night in New Orleans, Congressman Bucky Barnes and his chief of staff wake up legally married. An annulment should be simple, but unfortunately, nothing about their lives is simple. With Bucky's reputation on the line and her past threatening to resurface, staying married starts to look like the safest option. It's only supposed to be temporary. Public appearances, a convincing story, and a quiet divorce once the headlines fade. But fake marriage is harder when everyone else believes it. Especially when Bucky is already in love with his wife.
word count. 10.7k
warnings. politics, everyone's bad at feelings, fake marriage setup, friends with questionable boundaries, bucky is quietly losing his mind, accidental truth serum dosing, sickfic elements, sam wilson, yelena is basically her sister, bucky is a first class yearner, he should teach classes at the yearning academy, a smidge of angst at the end because they're both idiots
masterlist | series masterlist | last chapter | next chapter
The problem with being fake married to Bucky Barnes was that he was very good at being fake married.
Actually, no. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he was good at being married. There was a difference, and you had begun to resent it.
It had been a little over a week since you moved into his townhouse, which was enough time for the house to stop feeling like his and start feeling like a crime scene you had tampered with. You had not hung curtains or rearranged his books alphabetically, though the temptation had been there. But things started appearing.
Your tea on the middle pantry shelf because he had cleared it without making a production of it. Your blue mug in the kitchen cabinet beside his plain white ones. Your hair ties in a little ceramic dish by the bathroom sink, where Bucky had started placing them when he found them on doorknobs, cabinet handles, his wrist once, though he had insisted that last one happened accidentally.
The townhouse itself had become an issue. You had expected to hate it on principle. You had expected the move to feel like a concession, an inconvenience, another piece of public staging in a week already full of too many soft smiles and controlled statements.
His house was infuriatingly nice. The locks were good. The windows were better. There was no upstairs neighbor who performed what sounded like tap dance exorcisms at midnight. You slept better there. That was the worst part.
You had told yourself it was because of the security, and that it had nothing to do with the fact that Bucky slept on the other side of the bed like a man trying to make himself less large, or that he always took the side closer to the door without mentioning it. When you woke from old dreams with your hand halfway under your pillow for a knife you had not slept with in years, he never asked.
You were thinking this while sitting on the bathroom counter, one of Bucky’s sweatshirts swallowing you to mid-thigh, your bare legs crossed at the ankles, a pen between your teeth, and a half-finished crossword folded over your knee.
Bucky stood at the sink shaving. Standard fake-married roommate behavior.
The bathroom smelled faintly of cedar soap, mint toothpaste, and the tea he had made you before coming upstairs. The mirror was beginning to fog at the edges from the shower he had taken earlier. Morning light came in through the frosted window, softening the lines of his face as he drew the razor carefully along his jaw.
You watched him for perhaps two seconds too long, then looked back down at the crossword because you had survival instincts.
“Seven letters,” you said around the pen. “Old-timey word for handsome.”
Bucky’s eyes flicked to you. “Why’re you askin’ me?”
“I’m consulting a primary source.”
He rinsed the razor. “Debonair.”
You removed the pen from your mouth and stared at him. “Of course you knew that.”
He looked unimpressed, going back to shaving. “You gonna write it in?”
“Don’t rush me. I’m deciding if I want to give you the satisfaction.”
His mouth twitched, which nearly ruined the clean line he was shaving beneath his cheekbone.
You pointed the pen at him. “Careful, honeybun. Wouldn’t want to have to clean up bloodshed in the bathroom before eight.”
“Honeybun?”
You nodded. “Yeah, m’trying out old school pet names. Trying to meet you where you’re at, and all that.”
Bucky snorted. “Yeah, alright, babydoll.”
You let it slide, writing in debonair into the little boxes with aggressive pen strokes.
He rinsed the razor again, then reached for the small towel beside the sink. He had placed your mug near your hip so you could reach it without leaning. You had not missed that. You had also not missed the way he did not ask you to get down from the counter even though you were taking up half the useful space and had moved his aftershave to make room for your crossword.
That was the worst thing about living with him. Not the bed or the sight of his ring on the sink while he shaved. The worst thing was how easily he made room. Not in a dramatic way, not with a speech. He just shifted until there was space where there had not been space before.
A shelf. A drawer. A towel hook. A place for your mug. The left side of the bed. The good sightline in the kitchen.
“Five letters,” you said, tapping the crossword. “Moral failing. Common in powerful men.”
“Pride.”
You glanced up, a cheeky smile playing on your lips. “Speaking from personal experience?”
Bucky gave you a look. “Observation.”
“I gotta tell Sam that one,” you said, writing in the letters. “He’ll think it’s funny.”
“You tell Sam anything before coffee, he’ll hang up.”
“Incorrect. Sam loves gossip. He pretends he’s above gossip because he has a shield now, but in reality? He’s a porch auntie.”
Bucky huffed. “A porch auntie?”
You nodded. “Yeah, he likes to sit, observe, and judge. Offer his opinions. Sometimes he offers snacks.”
“He’s downstairs.”
You froze, the pen stopped over the crossword. You looked at him.
“What?”
Bucky wiped his face with the towel, far too calm for a man who had just mentioned an intruder.
“Sam’s downstairs.”
“Since when?”
“About twenty minutes.”
You stared harder. “Samuel Wilson has been in this house for twenty minutes?”
“He knocked.”
“I didn’t hear him.”
“You were arguing with the crossword. He came over to go over scheduling for the donor reception next week.”
“And?”
Bucky glanced at you in the mirror. There was a tiny pause that meant he was choosing which parts of the answer to give you.
“And the bill,” he said.
You waited.
He reached for his aftershave, but you reached it first, moving it behind your back. He stared at you. You stared back.
“Give it.”
“No.”
“It’s mine.”
“Then answer me.”
He sighed through his nose. “Security, scheduling, and the bill. That’s it.”
“Which part of the bill?”
“The current part.”
“The current part,” you repeated. “Excellent. Specific. Very transparent.”
He groaned your name. “It’s early.”
“I’m awake.”
“You’re sittin’ on a bathroom counter in my sweatshirt interrogating me over aftershave.”
You lifted your chin. “And?”
His eyes moved over you, enough that something warm slipped beneath your ribs before you could kill it. He looked away first.
You tossed him the aftershave. He caught it without looking.
Show-off.
“I don’t like not knowing things,” you said.
“I know.”
“I especially don’t like not knowing things while wearing a wedding ring connected to a congressional office, an enhanced-persons bill, and your unresolved martyr complex.”
“My martyr complex is resolved.”
“It is not.”
Bucky smiled faintly, rubbing aftershave along his jaw. “Sam’s waiting downstairs with coffee.”
“Why didn’t you lead with that?”
“You were busy with your crossword.”
You slid off the counter, landing lightly on the tile. Bucky’s hand moved instinctively toward your waist before he caught himself and dropped it.
You pretended not to notice.
The sweatshirt hem shifted high on your thighs, and his eyes went to the wall with the discipline of a man in church. You brushed past him through the bathroom door, close enough for your shoulder to skim his arm.
This was absurd. You were a former Widow, you had done worse things than share a bathroom with a handsome man. You had survived handlers, extraction orders, kill rooms, and fake identities. You would not be undone by Bucky Barnes shaving.
Probably.
Downstairs, the townhouse smelled like coffee and toast, which meant Sam had made himself at home. That was not surprising. He sat at the kitchen island in a dark jacket, your blue mug’s less charming cousin set beside him.
He looked up when you entered, then looked at Bucky behind you. Then looked at the sweatshirt. Then at your bare legs. Then back at Bucky.
His eyebrows climbed.
“Good morning,” Sam said.
“No,” you said, pointing at him.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You said it with your face.”
Sam took a slow sip of coffee. “Y’all look domestic.”
Bucky came into the kitchen behind you and went straight to the coffee machine. “Don’t start.”
“Oh, I’m starting.” Sam leaned back in his chair. “I’ve been downstairs twenty minutes listening to the two of you argue over a crossword clue like a retired couple.”
You set your crossword on the counter. “We are not retired.”
“No, just married.”
“Fake married.”
Sam lifted one finger. “Not legally. And from the sound of that bathroom, not in spirit.”
Bucky set your mug down in front of you.
You looked down. Not coffee, tea. He had brought your mug down from upstairs and refilled it without making a show of it.
Bucky leaned against the counter beside you, coffee in hand. “You said you were here for security.”
You took a long sip of tea and let the warmth settle you. The house was bright in the morning, sunlight catching the edge of the counter and the ring on your hand. Bucky’s kitchen had improved under your supervision. There were snacks now. A bowl of fruit, because Bucky had claimed he liked fruit. Crackers that did not taste like field rations. Jam, honey, and three kinds of tea.
“Security,” you said. “Talk.”
Sam’s expression sobered, though the humor stayed at the edges. “Donor reception next week. Private house. Half the people in the room got money, the other half want it. Bellamy’s people may be sniffing around.”
Bucky opened his mouth to respond but a sound interrupted him.
A soft click from the front door. Not a knock, a click. Your hand was under the island before conscious thought finished forming. There was no knife taped there. Of course there was no knife taped there. This was Bucky’s townhouse, not your apartment. You had considered taping one there two days ago and decided it would be too much too soon.
A mistake.
Bucky moved before you did, stepping quietly away from the counter. Sam’s posture changed in the same breath, easy warmth gone, shoulders loose but ready.
The door opened, and a blonde walked into the townhouse carrying a paper bag and wearing sunglasses.
You stared.
She stared back.
Sam slowly lowered his mug.
Bucky stopped in the hall.
Yelena pushed her sunglasses up onto her head and looked around the entryway, taking in the coat over the chair, your shoes by the table, the fact that you were standing barefoot in Bucky’s kitchen wearing his sweatshirt, and the incriminating diamond on your left hand.
Her mouth flattened.
“Wow,” she said. “Very nice. Domestic. Disgusting.”
You closed your eyes for one second.
“Yelena.”
“No.” She pointed at you with the paper bag. “Do not ‘Yelena’ me.”
Bucky looked at you.
You looked at Bucky.
Yelena had always had a talent for entering rooms like a thrown knife. She had been that way since the Red Room fell and the Widows scattered into a world they had not been raised to understand. Natasha had given so many of you freedom, and Yelena had taken that freedom like a personal assignment: find the ones still lost, drag them out, feed them if necessary, and call them family.
You had not been much younger than her. Enough that after Dreykov was dead and the chemical control was gone, Yelena had looked at you like someone had handed her a baby bird with a knife in its beak.
She had called you annoying, reckless, underfed, and badly socialized. But when you had woken from nightmares in safe apartments during those early months, she had been there.
Yelena set the paper bag on the entry table and walked into the kitchen.
“I had to learn from internet,” she said.
You winced. “I know.”
“From Tweeter. Not even good Tweeter. Political Tweeter. Everyone there is ugly inside.”
Sam nodded. “That is true.”
Yelena shot him a look. “Don’t agree with me yet. I am still deciding if I dislike you.”
Bucky cleared his throat. “Yelena—”
“You marry my sister and do not call me?”
Yelena’s eyes moved over Bucky, assessing him.
You spoke before he could take the blame too easily. “It happened fast.”
Yelena looked at you. “So does gunfire. I still expect update.”
“That’s not comparable.”
“It is very comparable. Both are dangerous and there are usually men involved.”
“She’s got a point,” Bucky said.
You turned to him. “Et tu, Robo-Brutus?”
Bucky frowned. “Robo-brutus?”
You lost the fight with your mouth and smiled.
Yelena saw it. Her face did something. Not softened, Yelena did not soften in obvious ways. But her anger shifted, narrowed, became less theatrical and more hurt.
“You are smiling,” she said.
You stopped.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are smiling in kitchen of secret husband.”
Yelena stepped closer, and for one second, underneath the sunglasses and the sarcasm and the controlled violence of her presence, you saw the woman who had found you after the Red Room and decided, without asking you, that you belonged with her now.
“You did not tell me,” she said.
You looked down at your mug. “I know.”
“You tell Captain America.” She nodded at Sam and sighed. “I am not angry you married sad congressman.”
“Great,” Bucky muttered.
“I am angry because you do stupid life thing and I am not there.”
Your throat tightened. A normal person might have apologized properly. You were not normal people.
“There was no cake,” you said.
Yelena blinked.
You continued. “It was a chapel. There was a package called Jazz It Up. You would’ve hated it.”
“Yes, probably.”
“And the rings were terrible.”
“I saw photo. Very terrible.”
“Vending-machine adjacent.”
“Disrespectful to vending machine.”
You nodded. “Exactly.”
The corner of Yelena’s mouth twitched.
Victory.
Small, but real.
Bucky moved toward the toaster.
“You want breakfast?” he asked.
Yelena turned to him with suspicion.
“What kind?”
“Toast. Eggs.”
“Do not use food to make me less angry.”
“I wasn’t.”
“He was,” you said. “He’s from the forties. If a woman is mad in his kitchen, he tries to feed her.”
Bucky looked over his shoulder. “That’s not—”
Sam cut in. “It’s exactly what you do.”
Yelena considered this, then removed her sunglasses completely and set them on the counter.
“This is manipulative,” she said, “but effective.”
Bucky nodded once. “Eggs?”
“Yes, but I remain betrayed.”
“Understood.”
“And I want toast.”
“Okay.”
“With butter.”
“Got it.”
“And something sweet.”
Bucky looked at you.
You shrugged. “You married into this.”
He gave you a look.
Yelena opened the paper bag she had brought and pulled out a pastry box.
“I brought cake,” she announced.
Sam looked at it. “You brought your own cake to confront them?”
“Yes.”
“Respect.”
You leaned against the counter, watching Bucky take eggs from the fridge like this was a normal morning. Like one of the deadliest women you knew had not broken into his townhouse. Like Sam was not sitting at the island with the expression of a man watching premium cable.
Yelena slid onto a stool and opened the pastry box. “So. Tell me everything.”
Tonight’s event was at a private house in Kalorama. Some kind of reception for the Enhanced Persons Protections Act, though half the guest list looked like people who wanted to support the bill and the other half looked like people who wanted to learn exactly how much it threatened them.
You had spent the morning reviewing names, spouses, companies, private interests, known grudges, possible Valentina connections, and one man whose entire file was just the word “weasel” underlined twice.
Bucky had asked if that was an official classification.
“It is in my office,” you had said.
Now you were standing in the kitchen, trying to put your earring in while glaring at your phone.
“Bellamy is sending Eleanor,” you said.
Bucky looked up from the tea kettle. “His wife?”
“His wife, his fundraiser, his most effective weapon, yes.”
“You like her?”
“She once ruined a councilman’s career over brunch without putting down her mimosa. Of course I like her. I’m not made out of stone.”
“Tea?” Bucky asked, reaching for your mug in the cabinet.
“Yes, please. Something with mint if we have it.”
He nodded and opened the pantry.
There were actual snacks. Crackers, cookies, a small tin of cocoa. A tiny glass bottle with a handwritten label that said peppermint extract.
Bucky picked it up. The handwriting was yours. The bottle was small, dark amber glass with a little dropper cap. It looked like something from a health store or one of the strange specialty markets you and Yelena liked.
He unscrewed the top and sniffed.
Peppermint.
Sharp, clean. Normal enough. He added a few drops to your tea. Maybe four. Possibly five.
You were still glaring at your phone.
“Do not say anything kind to Senator Vale tonight,” you said.
Bucky stirred the tea. “Wasn’t planning on it.”
“You sometimes default to polite when startled.”
Bucky handed you the mug. You took it, still distracted, and drank. Bucky watched your face for a second. No reaction. You lowered the mug and finally looked at him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“The tea is fine.”
“Fine?”
“Don’t get needy.”
He huffed and turned toward the stairs. “Need your dress zipped?”
You turned without comment, presenting him with the open back of your dress.
This was still the part of fake marriage he had not gotten used to. The ordinary things. The things that had no business feeling like trespassing. A zipper. A mug. You standing in his kitchen asking him to close a dress he was not allowed to think too hard about.
Your skin was warm beneath his knuckles. He looked at the wall over your shoulder and pulled the zipper up slowly. The dress closed along your back, dark fabric settling into place like armor.
“There,” he said.
You looked back at him. “No lecture about how I should wear a coat?”
“I was saving it for the car.”
“How gallant of you, soldier boy.”
“‘S cold out.”
“It’s fifty-two degrees.”
“Still cold.”
“You were frozen for seventy years.”
“Yeah, and I didn’t like it.”
That got you to laugh. A quick one. Real. Gone too fast.
Then you stepped away, grabbed your other earring, and finished getting ready while narrating an assassination of Bellamy’s entire family tree that you claimed was “rhetorical and therefore legal.”
The car came to pick the both of you up shortly after. You spent most of the car ride quizzing Bucky on the guests that would be attending the event, and to your surprise, Bucky had done his homework.
By the time you arrived, the reception was already loud. The kind of low, polished noise that came from old floors, expensive shoes, crystal glasses, and people laughing in a way that suggested no joke had actually been told. The house was all tall windows and oil portraits and floral arrangements large enough to hide surveillance equipment in.
Bucky placed a hand at your back as the host approached. You leaned into the touch by half an inch, just enough to sell the picture. Maybe less than half. Maybe he imagined it.
“Representative Barnes,” the host said, smiling too widely. “And Mrs. Barnes. We’re so pleased you could make it.”
Bucky felt you stiffen at Mrs. Barnes, but your smile did not move.
You moved through the first half hour easily. Better than easily. You were good at this. Better than he was, though you would never frame it that way unless you were trying to annoy him. Bucky could stand and look sincere. He could talk about the bill. He could shake hands, remember names, and answer questions.
You could make people comfortable enough to reveal themselves. You smiled at a donor’s wife and had her talking within three minutes about who was nervous about the bill. You complimented Eleanor Bellamy’s earrings and got a quiet list of who had arrived together and who was pretending they hadn’t. You spoke French to a Belgian attaché just long enough to make him nervous, then Russian to a private security consultant who nearly dropped his drink.
Bucky watched it all with a mix of respect and unease. Marriage had changed the way people saw you. That had become obvious fast.
As his chief of staff, people braced themselves when you walked into a room. They watched their words. They knew you had teeth.
As his wife, they underestimated you differently. Some still knew better. Women mostly, the smart ones. But men with expensive watches kept making the same mistake. They treated you like an accessory. Like you were there to soften him, decorate the room, translate his silence into charm.
You returned to his side after speaking with Eleanor Bellamy, your smile still in place, your hand sliding into the crook of his elbow with a practiced ease that made several people nearby look on fondly.
“What’d you find?” he asked under his breath.
“Eleanor thinks Harrington’s group is nervous.”
“About the bill?”
“About the subpoenas.”
Your finger tightened briefly against his sleeve, then Mr. Harrington himself approached.
He shook Bucky’s hand too firmly, then turned to you.
“Mrs. Barnes,” Harrington said. “I imagine married life has softened the congressman.”
Bucky felt you shift beside him.
“No,” you said. “He was already soft where it matters.”
Bucky went still. Harrington blinked. You blinked too. Then you looked at Bucky with alarm.
Harrington laughed uncertainly. “Well. That’s one way to put it.”
“He makes married life easy,” you admitted. “I couldn’t imagine being married to anyone else.”
Bucky looked at you.
You looked back, eyes wide for half a second.
Something was wrong.
You apologized to Mr. Harrington, saying you suddenly felt unwell, and Bucky pulled you quietly to the side of the room.
“Are you alright? You seem off,” he asked softly once you were a few steps away.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“It was like I had an inside thought and it became an outside thought.”
“That happens to you.”
“Not like this.”
Before he could respond, a woman from the veterans’ coalition intercepted the both of you, smiling warmly.
“You two are so lovely together,” she said. “Is it difficult, working with your husband?”
You opened your mouth. Then shut it.
Bucky watched you physically fight your own face.
“Yes,” you said.
Bucky’s eyebrows lifted.
You continued, visibly horrified by yourself. “He is stubborn, exhausting, overprotective, and much more attractive than is necessary in a workplace setting.”
The woman’s smile widened.
“Oh,” she said, delighted. “That’s very sweet.”
You excused the both of you again, your eyebrows furrowing in concern.
“Bucky, something’s wrong,” you muttered, a wave of nausea rolling over you.
Bucky held your elbow to steady you. “Are you alright?”
Before you could answer, Sam turned the corner and took in the sight in front of him.
“What’s going on here?” He asked, looking between them.
You shook your head. “I suddenly feel sick. Don’t ask me questions.”
Sam’s eyebrows rose. Bucky’s attention sharpened.
“Why not?” Sam asked.
You pressed your lips together. Your eyes went slightly unfocused, like someone holding a door shut from the other side.
“Because,” you said, “I’m having trouble not answering them.”
Sam’s face changed. Delight. Then suspicion. Then delight again.
Bucky stepped between you by half an inch. “Sam. Don’t.”
Sam looked at you. “You okay?”
You made a small, strangled sound. “No.”
Bucky’s chest tightened. The answer came clearly. You never admitted you weren’t okay that quickly.
He lowered his voice. “What’s happening?”
You looked at him. Your pupils were not blown, exactly, but your eyes were brighter than they should have been. Your breathing was controlled, but too controlled. Your hand had gone tight around his arm.
“I don’t know,” you said, your face twisting with irritation.
Bucky turned to you fully now, blocking more of the room from seeing. “Did you eat anything strange?”
You shook your head.
“Drink?”
“Just your tea.”
“My tea?”
“The tea you made me while we were getting ready.” You said. “Did you put anything in it?”
Bucky stared at you. “Peppermint extract.”
Your face went perfectly blank. Bucky had seen that look before. Not often. Not in safe rooms. It was the expression you wore when your body got to the answer before the rest of you wanted to.
“What bottle?”
“Small. Amber glass. Handwritten label.”
Your eyes closed.
“That wasn’t peppermint extract,” you said.
Bucky went cold. “What was it?”
You looked past him toward the crowd, then back at him. Your voice was dangerously calm when you spoke again.
“Truth serum.”
The room seemed to narrow around him. Sam made a sound that was probably not helpful. Bucky did not look away from you.
“Why would you label your truth serum as peppermint extract?!”
Your skin was too warm. Your mouth tasted like mint and metal. The lights in the donor’s foyer had grown hard around the edges, each chandelier throwing bright little blades into your eyes. Every laugh from the reception behind you arrived too loudly, too close, too full of teeth. You could feel your pulse in your throat, in your wrists, under the ring on your finger.
Worst of all, beneath the nausea and the chemical heat, there was the constant pressure of honesty building behind your teeth.
Not truth, but compulsion. Truth was a choice, and this was not that. This was old Widow chemistry crawling through your veins, dragging answers out like wire through skin.
Bucky put himself between you and the rest of the reception without seeming to. His hand settled at your back, light enough to pass as husbandly concern, firm enough that you knew he was ready to catch you if your knees gave out.
“You’re sweating,” he said under his breath.
“Thanks, Captain Obvious.”
Bucky’s hand shifted. “Okay. We’re leavin’.”
“We are not leaving.”
“We are.”
“We are at a donor reception for your bill.”
“You’re sick.”
“I have been sick at much more important events.”
Sam, from your left, muttered, “That is not the defense you think it is.”
You wanted to tell him to shut up. You also wanted to ask if the wallpaper was moving or if it was just your nervous system trying to flee your body.
“Get the car, Sam,” Bucky instructed.
Sam pointed toward the front doors. “I’ll pull the car around.”
“Good.”
“I’m helping.”
“You’re grinning.”
You tried to laugh, but the motion made your stomach lurch. Bucky’s hand moved instantly, his palm spreading across the center of your back as you bent slightly at the waist and breathed through your nose.
The reception continued around you, softened by distance and your own rising fever. Voices blurred. Someone laughed. A glass clinked.
You pressed a hand to your stomach and let Bucky guide you toward the hallway. The movement was too smooth to look urgent, too intimate to draw alarm. To anyone watching, Congressman Barnes was simply taking his wife outside for air. His hand at your back. His body angled close. A good husband.
A fake husband who had accidentally drugged your tea and now looked like he wanted to throw himself into traffic about it.
You wanted to make fun of him for that. You wanted to tell him that guilt was unattractive, except it wasn’t—not on him. It was terrible. It was familiar. It was also one of the reasons you had trusted him, because Bucky Barnes was one of the few men you knew who was actually afraid of what he was capable of.
The thought tried to come out your mouth. You clamped your lips shut. Your stomach rebelled immediately.
Bucky felt it. “Don’t fight it.”
You glared at him. “Easy for you to say. You’re not currently one stray question away from announcing state secrets to Kalorama.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said, voice laced with guilt.
“Yes,” you said, because the serum grabbed the answer before you had the chance to soften it. “You should be.”
Bucky stiffened beside you.
Damn it.
You stopped walking, which made the nausea worse, but the look on his face was worse than that. You put a hand on his wrist, fingers tightening around the cuff of his jacket.
“Not like that,” you said.
His eyes found yours.
The hallway had arrowed around him. Around his face, his mouth, the crease between his brows. The worried set of his shoulders. You could hear the party behind you, but it felt like it belonged to another building.
“I mean you should be sorry in the way people are sorry when they step on someone’s foot,” you mutter. “Not in the way you get when you decide you’re personally responsible for every bad thing that has happened since 1943.”
He blinked.
“Sorry, too honest.” You swallowed hard.
His hand turned under yours until he was holding your fingers. “Still true?”
“Unfortunately.”
His thumb moved once over your knuckles.
“C’mere,” he said, pulling you closer to his body so he could support you better. “Car’s here.”
Sam had pulled the SUV directly to the curb and was standing beside the open back door with the posture of a man who had decided he was both chauffeur and audience.
“Your getaway car awaits,” he said.
You pointed at him as Bucky helped you down the front steps. “Sam, stop enjoying this.”
The cold air outside should have helped. It did not. It hit your overheated skin and made you shiver so hard Bucky’s hand tightened at your waist.
You hated needing support. You also hated that he was good at giving it.
He helped you into the backseat with an amount of care that would have been insulting if you had not been trying very hard not to throw up on his shoes. You slid across the leather seat, intending to sit upright with dignity, but the SUV moved half an inch as Sam climbed into the driver’s seat and your stomach dropped through the floor.
Bucky climbed in before you, taking his jacket off and placing it under your shoulder before you could complain. His metal hand braced against the seat while his right hand guided you down with careful pressure at your upper back.
“Lie down.”
“Bossy.”
“Yeah.”
“I am your chief of staff.”
“You’re my wife.”
“Fake wife.”
“Sick wife.”
The argument unfortunately held traction.
You lay down across the backseat, your head ending up in his lap because the universe had apparently decided humiliation should arrive in layers. Bucky went very still beneath you.
For one suspended second, the truth serum, the nausea, the evening, the donor reception, all of it thinned into one clear fact: your cheek was against his thigh, his hand hovering near your shoulder, and you could feel the warmth of him through the fabric of his trousers.
The SUV pulled away from the curb and your stomach lurched again. You groaned and pressed the back of your hand against your mouth. Bucky’s hand came down immediately, broad and warm against your hair.
“Breathe,” he said.
“I am breathing.”
“Through your nose.”
“I know how breathing works.”
“Coulda fooled me.”
“You’re becoming quite bold for a man who poisoned his wife.”
Sam made a sound from the front seat.
Bucky closed his eyes.
“I deserved that one,” he said.
“You deserve several. I’m spacing them out.”
Bucky snorted. “Appreciate it.”
Sam adjusted the rearview mirror, which you noticed because even poisoned and nauseous, you were trained to notice people adjusting mirrors.
He was looking directly at you, not even pretending he wasn’t.
“Wilson,” Bucky said.
“What?”
“Drive.”
“I am driving.”
“Then look at the road.”
“The road is still there.”
“Sam.”
“Fine.”
He looked forward for approximately four seconds.
“So,” Sam said. “Truth serum.”
“Shut up, Wilson,” you grumbled.
He did not.
“I’m just clarifying the situation.”
Bucky’s fingers moved through your hair once, almost absent. Maybe he did it to comfort you. Maybe he did it without thinking. Either way, your whole body noticed, which was extremely inconvenient given that your body was already filing numerous complaints.
“How long does it last?” Sam said.
“Depends on dose, metabolism, training, whether the serum was stabilized properly, and whether your fake husband has a heavy hand.”
Bucky looked down at you. “I put in five drops.”
You lifted your head just enough to glare at him. Five drops.
Bucky’s face changed.
“What?”
“Five?”
“You said you liked mint.”
Sam started laughing.
You dropped your head back into Bucky’s lap and closed your eyes again. “I hate both of you.”
“No, you don’t,” Sam said.
Your mouth opened and your stomach seized. You sat up halfway so fast Bucky had to catch you by the shoulders.
“No,” you said, voice tight. “I don’t.”
Bucky leaned forward with you, one arm around your back now, steady and immediate. “Don’t answer.”
“I know that.”
“Then don’t.”
“I’m trying.”
Sam’s laughter died. “Wait, it makes you sick if you don’t answer.”
You swallowed hard, eyes shut, willing the wave down. “Yeah, bird brain. If I fight too hard. Or try to lie. Yes.”
Bucky’s arm tightened around you.
Sam went quiet for a moment.
Then in a much more careful voice: “Okay, that part’s not funny.”
“No,” you said. “But I’ll recover.”
Bucky exhaled through his nose. “Lie back.”
You did, partly because the nausea was fading to a simmer and partly because his hand at the back of your head made it easier to let go. He arranged you with the same maddening care as before, jacket under your shoulder, your head in his lap, his palm resting lightly against your temple as if he could measure your temperature through sheer concern.
Maybe he could. Maybe it was a feature that came with your super soldier.
Not your super soldier.
The SUV weaved through D.C. traffic, the city lights breaking across the windows in long white and red lines. The backseat smelled like leather, Bucky’s aftershave, and the faint medicinal sharpness of your own poisoned breath. Up front, Sam drove with one hand on the wheel, posture loose, but you could tell he was listening to every breath you took.
He was having too much fun, yes, but he was also worried.
“Alright,” he said after a while, too casually. “Safe questions only.”
“No such thing.”
“Sure there is. Widow stuff.”
Bucky’s head snapped up. “That is not safe.”
Sam ignored him. “Could you really kill a man with a paperclip?"
You opened one eye. “What kind of paperclip?”
Sam’s grin returned in the mirror. “Standard office.”
“Yes.”
Bucky looked down at you. “Really?”
“Not quickly.”
Sam nodded in approval. “See? Educational.”
“Stop asking about murder,” Bucky said, his thumb brushing your temple.
You tried not to enjoy the touch.
You failed.
Sam kept going, because mercy was not one of his spiritual gifts.
“Could you beat Bucky in a fight?”
“Yes.”
Bucky raised an eyebrow.
You did not open your eyes.
“That was fast,” Sam said.
“It was true.”
Bucky’s voice lowered, amused despite himself. “You think you could beat me?”
“I know I could beat you.”
“Super soldier.”
“Predictable.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Predictable?”
“You fight like a man who is used to being stronger than everyone else.”
Bucky’s hand stilled in your hair. You opened your eyes and looked up at him. His face hovered above yours, upside down from your angle, dark hair falling slightly forward, expression caught between offense and interest.
“You rely on force when irritated,” you said. “Your left side is overprotected because of the arm. You assume people will avoid it. I wouldn’t. Also, you hesitate when you think you might hurt me.”
The SUV went quiet. Bucky’s throat moved.
You blinked up at Bucky, realizing what you had said.
Then you added, because you could not help yourself, “I would also cheat.”
Sam laughed so hard the car drifted half an inch before he corrected it.
“Road,” Bucky said, looking forward.
“I got it,” Sam said, still laughing. “I got it.”
You let your eyes close again, heat creeping across your face. You were not sure if it was the serum, the fever, or the fact that Bucky had gone silent beneath you.
His hand resumed its slow, absent motion over your hair after a moment.
You wanted to bite him.
Possibly affectionately. You were not going to examine that.
Sam cleared his throat. “Okay. Next question. What happened to my Valentine’s Day donut?”
Bucky’s brows drew together. “What?”
“Last year,” Sam said, “I brought a dozen donuts to Buck’s office. Special ones from that place in Alexandria. I put a note on the box that said, ‘Do not eat the pink one, Sam is saving it.’ I came back from a call and the pink one was gone.”
You kept your eyes closed.
Sam said your name again.
You said nothing.
Your stomach turned sharply.
Bucky’s hand pressed lightly to your shoulder. “Hey.”
“I ate it,” you said, and immediately felt better.
Sam gasped.
Bucky looked down at you with something like amusement.
“You lied to me,” Sam said.
“I said Bucky looked suspicious.”
“Bucky always looks suspicious. That was low-hanging fruit.”
“Hey,” Bucky interjected.
“I knew it,” Sam grumbled. “You said you didn’t even like strawberry frosting.”
“I don’t.”
Both men waited.
You sighed. “It had jam inside.”
“It had a note.”
Bucky actually laughed then, enough that you felt it in the muscles beneath your cheek. A warm low vibration. You hated how much you liked it.
“Alright,” Sam said, shifting gears. “Serious question.”
“No,” Bucky said immediately.
“You don’t even know what it is.”
“I know your tone.”
Sam ignored him. “How many aliases have you had?”
You considered not answering.
The nausea warned you.
“Thirteen active. More if you count burn names and one very short-lived Belgian art dealer identity.”
Sam’s mouth opened.
Bucky went still again.
You felt his silence before you saw it.
He knew things about your past. More than most. Less than all. He had read the sanitized files, heard the stories you offered like jokes, pieced together the rest from old mission reports and the way you woke up when someone spoke Russian too softly behind you.
But numbers were different.
Thirteen lives. Thirteen names. Thirteen versions of you created to enter rooms, ruin men, disappear afterward.
Bucky’s hand settled against your cheek, not forcing you to look at him. Just there. You did not open your eyes.
Sam’s voice was quieter when he asked, “Did you like any of them?”
“One.”
The answer hurt on the way up.
Bucky’s hand stilled.
You opened your eyes and looked toward the dark window, where city lights blurred against your reflection.
“She had a dog,” you said. “I mean, a fake dog, but—”
“Still counts,” Bucky said softly.
You stared up at him, mesmerized by the way you could still make out the blue in his eyes in the dark of the car. Mesmerized by the way he handled you so gently when you knew you didn’t deserve it. Didn’t deserve him. You fought the urge to tell him how gorgeous he was, how much you enjoyed the feeling of his hands in your hair, how you’d like his hands to be—
Your stomach turned so violently you lurched upright again, hand over your mouth.
Bucky moved with you, arm around your shoulders, his other hand already reaching for the little paper bag Sam had shoved into the seat pocket from some takeout place. He got it open in front of you before you could ask.
You did not throw up. Barely.
But your body shook with the effort, and Bucky held you through it, one hand firm between your shoulder blades, his voice quiet near your ear.
“Breathe. That’s it. Don’t fight it so hard.”
“I’m not—”
You stopped.
Bucky’s fingers pressed lightly against your back.
“You are,” he said.
You hated that he knew. That he was right. You breathed slowly and the nausea loosened.
Sam had gone quiet in the front seat, his joking temporarily stripped down to concern. He drove more carefully now. Fewer sharp stops. Slower turns. He was not careless, not ever, when it mattered.
You sank back down, exhausted now, your head finding Bucky’s lap again like it had been assigned there.
“Done with serious questions,” Bucky told Sam.
Sam nodded once. “Yeah.”
For about a minute, the car was quiet.
Then:
“Can I ask a stupid one?”
Bucky sighed. “Sam.”
“She likes stupid ones.”
“I do,” you admitted.
Sam brightened. “See?”
Bucky looked down at you. You looked up at him.
His expression was soft with worry, but there was a question there too. Permission.
You nodded once.
Bucky looked forward. “One.”
Sam grinned. “Worst date you’ve ever been on?”
Bucky’s entire body went still. “You don’t have to answer.”
You smiled despite the nausea. “I do, actually, if I don’t want to redecorate your lap.”
His mouth shut, a faint red touching his ears.
“The worst operational date was with a French arms broker who cried after sex and asked if I thought his mother loved him.”
Sam made a strangled sound. Bucky looked like he had been hit.
You continued. “The worst real date was with an assistant U.S. attorney who said he liked strong women, but got genuinely scared when I was giving orders in the bedroom later.”
Sam laughed again, quieter this time.
Bucky’s hand had stopped moving through your hair.
You glanced up, his jaw was tight. That was very interesting.
“Barnes?” you said softly.
“I’m fine.” He grunted.
“You’re lying. I can tell because I currently cannot.”
“This is incredible,” Sam whispered.
Bucky looked toward the front seat. “Ask your last question.”
“I already asked my last one.”
“Then be quiet.”
“But now I have a better one.”
“No.”
“It’s not for you.”
“No.”
Sam looked at you in the mirror, the grin returning with terrible caution. “Do you think Buck is handsome?”
Bucky’s hand tightened in your hair. You couldn’t stop yourself from thinking about how you’d like to feel his hands in your hair in a different circumstance.
Your body reacted before your mind could build a wall around it. Heat climbed your neck. Your mouth opened, then shut. Your stomach turned hard.
“No,” Bucky said.
You pressed your lips together. The nausea surged. Bucky felt your body go rigid. He looked down at you, alarm replacing everything else.
“Hey. Don’t answer. Sam, stop.”
Sam lifted a hand from the wheel. “Okay. I’m done.”
But the question was already in the car.
Do you think Buck is handsome?
Stupid question.
Easy question.
You could have said yes. You had said worse tonight. But this felt different with your head in his lap, with his jacket under your shoulder, with his fingers in your hair and his whole body bent around the effort not to take what the serum was trying to hand him.
The answer sat behind your teeth. The refusal sat in your stomach like a blade.
You turned your face into Bucky’s thigh and groaned.
Bucky’s hand slid to the back of your neck, warm and steady. “I’m sorry ‘bout him, sweetheart. Just breathe for me.”
“I hate him,” you said.
“I know.”
Sam said, much quieter, “I’m sorry.”
“No,” you opened one eye toward the front seat. “No, you’re not.”
“I am a little.”
“You’re sorry because Bucky is going to murder you.”
Sam considered this. “That was a factor.”
The serum dragged at the answer, punishing the locked door because it could not get through. Bucky’s thumb moved slowly against your neck, grounding and patient. The kind of touch that made you want to tell the truth for reasons that had nothing to do with chemicals.
“Objectively,” you said finally, voice muffled against his leg, “yes.”
Bucky stopped breathing.
You kept your eyes shut. “He is very handsome in a very annoying way. It’s irritating.”
No one spoke.
The nausea eased at once, which was humiliating.
You continued, because apparently the door that had been open couldn’t be shut.
“And his shoulders are a problem. His hair is usually a problem. The eyes are…” You stopped. Tried to stop. Failed. “The eyes are worse.”
Bucky was very still beneath you.
You opened your eyes and looked up.
Bucky’s face was turned slightly away, but you could see the red at the tips of his ears. The tightness in his jaw had changed into something else. Something shy, almost. Embarrassed and pleased and guilty for being pleased.
That made your chest hurt.
“Also, he dresses like a widowed history professor.”
Sam barked out a laugh.
Bucky looked down at you, and the expression on his face finally cracked.
A smile. Small, helpless, warm.
“You done?” he asked.
“I hope so.”
“Feel better?”
“Physically, yes.”
Sam shook his head. “For what it’s worth, I thought that was beautiful.”
“Wilson, drive into the river.”
“See? She’s fine.”
Bucky gave him a look.
You closed your eyes again, drained from nausea, embarrassment, and the emotional labor of not confessing anything more catastrophic.
His hand resumed its movement through your hair, slower now.
“You okay?” he asked softly.
You wanted to say obviously. The lie rose. Your stomach warned you. So you told the truth.
“No.”
His hand stilled.
Then, gently, “Okay.”
You opened your eyes and looked up at him.
His face was still flushed, still worried, still guilty. His ring caught the passing streetlights where his hand rested near your cheek. His fake wedding ring. Your fake husband.
“You’re very guilty,” you said.
“Yeah.”
“It was an accident.”
“Still happened.”
“You are not allowed to self-flagellate in the back of an SUV.”
“That a rule?”
“Is now.”
His mouth curved faintly. “Okay.”
“And if you apologize again, I’ll say something graphic about your arms just to make you uncomfortable.”
Sam made a noise. “Please don’t threaten him with a good time while I’m driving.”
Bucky shut his eyes.
You smiled weakly.
The SUV turned onto Bucky’s street.
Home, you thought, and immediately wished you had not.
You tried not to think about the fact that the safest place you had been all night was with the man who had accidentally poisoned you.
By the time Sam pulled up in front of the townhouse, Bucky had already decided he was carrying you inside.
He did not announce this.
Announcing it would give you time to argue, and you had already spent the last twenty minutes nauseous, honest, and stubborn enough to keep trying to sit up every time the SUV slowed at a light.
The truth serum had not knocked you out. That might have been easier, in some ways. Instead, it had left you too aware of everything. Too hot, too sick, too sharp around the edges. You kept blinking like the streetlights were too bright. Every so often, your mouth would open like a thought had tried to escape, and you would clamp your lips shut so hard your whole body went tense.
Bucky felt it every time.
Your head was still in his lap. His jacket bunched beneath your shoulder. One of your hands had curled loosely around the fabric near his knee, like you had grabbed onto the nearest thing during a bad turn and forgotten to let go.
Sam put the SUV in park and looked at the two of you through the rearview mirror. His face had lost most of the teasing by then, leaving behind concern and something quieter Bucky did not want to name.
“You need help gettin’ her in?”
“No,” Bucky said.
You opened one eye. “I am not luggage.”
“You’re right,” Sam said. “Luggage is easier.”
You lifted one hand, weakly, and pointed at Sam. “Your betrayal has been noted.”
Sam turned around enough to look at you properly. “You gonna be okay?”
Your mouth opened.
You seemed to consider the question. Or maybe fight it. It was hard to tell now. The serum had started to wear at you in waves, dragging honesty up at odd intervals and punishing you when you tried to push it back down.
Finally, you said, “Probably.”
Sam’s face shifted. “That sounded real.”
“It was.”
Bucky slid carefully out from under you. The second your head left his lap, your eyes shut tighter and your hand went to your stomach.
“Easy,” he said.
“I hate cars.”
“You used to jump out of them.”
“I hated them then, too.”
Bucky got out first, then opened the back door on your side. Cold air slid into the SUV, and you shivered once, hard enough that Bucky stopped thinking about anything except getting you inside.
He leaned in. “C’mere.”
“I can walk.”
“Didn’t ask.”
“Yeah, it’s implied by the way you’re looming.”
“You gonna fight me?”
You opened your eyes and looked at him.
For half a second, he saw the urge. Not a real fight. Not tonight. Just the reflexive objection to being helped. The old, embedded thing in both of you that said needing someone was another way to get trapped.
Then your stomach turned again. Your face tightened, and the fight went out of you with a quiet miserable breath.
“No,” you said.
Bucky reached in and lifted you carefully, one arm beneath your knees, the other around your back. You were warm against him, too warm. Your head tipped into his shoulder like you were too exhausted to keep it up.
The movement made your dress shift against his hand, smooth fabric under his palm. He kept his grip careful. Clinical. Useful. He had carried injured people before. Soldiers. Civilians. Strangers bleeding out in places they never should have been.
That was not the problem.
You were not a stranger. You were not a mission. You were his wife, except not really. His chief of staff. His best friend. The woman who had spent the last car ride accidentally telling him just how attractive he was.
His ears went hot again just thinking about it.
He adjusted his hold and looked at Sam.
“I’ve got her.”
Sam nodded, but his eyes lingered on Bucky’s face for one second too long.
“Yeah,” Sam said quietly. “I know.”
Bucky carried you up the steps and into the townhouse. Sam followed with Bucky’s jacket, your bag, and the folded paper bag Bucky had kept ready in case you got sick again.
Inside, the house was dark except for the entryway lamp Bucky had left on before the reception. Your shoes were still near the console table from earlier. Your coat hung over the arm of the couch. A stack of your folders sat on the coffee table, one marked with a color-coded tab system Bucky did not understand but respected too much to disturb.
His house looked lived in now.
You shifted against him. “Don’t carry me like I’m consumptive.”
Sam shut the door behind you. “Do people still say consumptive?”
“She’s been using historical terms,” Bucky said. “Says she’s tryna ‘meet me where I’m at’ or whatever. But it’s a good sign. Poisoned and still doing her vocabulary.”
“I’m not poisoned,” you muttered into Bucky’s shoulder. “Just, ah, chemically inconvenienced.”
Bucky glanced down at you. “You gonna let me take care of you?”
Your eyes opened. The serum was still in you. He saw it in the way your expression flickered, in the tiny pause before you answered. A fight behind your face.
Then, quietly, “Yes.”
Bucky carried you upstairs. You were quiet against him now, your fingers resting near the collar of his shirt. He could feel the warmth of your breath through the fabric at his shoulder. Every few steps, you swallowed hard, and his grip tightened even though there was nothing more he could do.
He hated all of it.
The tea. The five drops. The look on your face when you had realized what he had done. The fact that you had spent the last hour fighting your own body because of something he had given you.
At the top of the stairs, he carried you into the bedroom and lowered you onto the edge of the bed. He meant to step back immediately, give you space, get water, get a towel, get anything useful.
But you swayed.
He caught you by the shoulders.
“Still with me?”
You looked up at him, your eyes were slightly glassy, but focused.
“Unfortunately.”
His mouth softened despite himself. “Yeah, there she is.”
Sam appeared in the doorway with your bag. “You want me to stay?”
Bucky looked at you.
You were already shaking your head.
“No. I cannot have you asking any more questions near my sickbed.”
Sam put a hand to his chest. “I’m wounded.”
“You’ll live.”
Bucky took your bag from him. “I’ll call if anything changes.”
Sam’s expression sobered again. “You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Drink water,” Sam told you.
You lifted one hand without looking. “Goodbye, porch auntie.”
Sam laughed softly and left. Bucky heard the front door close downstairs.
Too quiet.
He stood by the bed, your bag in hand, watching you breathe through another wave of nausea. You pressed your fingers to your mouth, eyes shut, shoulders tight beneath the straps of your dress.
Bucky moved immediately.
“Bathroom?”
You shook your head once.
“Bowl?”
You nodded.
He grabbed the small trash bin from beside the desk, emptied the papers into a pile on the floor, and set it beside the bed. Then he went into the bathroom for a washcloth, ran it under cool water, wrung it out, and brought it back.
When he pressed it gently to the back of your neck, your whole body loosened by a fraction.
“Thank you,” you said.
He sat beside you, leaving space. “You need anything else?”
“My pajamas.”
“Okay.”
“And help.”
Bucky went still.
You seemed to realize what you had said only after it had left your mouth. The serum had loosened you enough to ask for something before pride could cut it down.
“I can do it,” you said immediately.
The lie hit you fast.
Bucky reached for the bowl, but you pressed a hand to your stomach and breathed through it.
“You don’t need to lie,” he said.
“I hate this.”
“I know.”
“I hate asking.”
“I know.”
He did. Better than most.
He kept his voice low. “I’ll help however you want. You tell me what to do.”
Your hands went to the side zipper of your dress, clumsy with exhaustion. Bucky looked away at once, but not before he saw the strap slide down your shoulder.
He turned to the wall, jaw clenching.
Behind him, fabric shifted. The dress hit the floor with a soft sound. Bucky stared at the paint like it contained answers.
It did not. It was just a wall. A very lucky wall.
“Barnes.”
His voice came out rough. “Yeah?”
“You can turn around. I’m not naked.”
He turned carefully.
Bad idea.
You were sitting on the edge of the bed in your bra and underwear, one arm wrapped around your stomach, hair mussed from the car ride, cheeks flushed from the serum. The washcloth had slipped from your neck to the mattress. Your dress lay pooled at your feet like it had surrendered.
Bucky’s brain stopped being useful.
He had seen you in evening gowns, tactical gear, sweats, blood, rain, a hospital blanket, his sweatshirt in the kitchen that morning. None of that had prepared him for this. For the ordinary intimacy of you half-undressed in his bedroom, too tired to posture properly, looking up at him.
He forced his eyes up to your face.
Your mouth curved faintly. Even sick you noticed.
“Don’t pass out, dreamboat.”
“I’m fine.”
“Sounded like a lie.”
“Wasn’t.”
“Mm.”
You leaned back on your hands. “Top drawer on the left. Pajamas.”
“Left dresser?”
“Yes.”
He moved too quickly, crossing to the dresser and opening the top left drawer. He froze.
Not pajamas.
At least, not only pajamas.
The top layer contained silk and lace, folded things in black and red and dark blue, fabric so delicate it barely looked capable of existing in daylight. It took his brain half a second to understand what he was looking at.
Then his entire body went hot.
Bucky shut the drawer halfway on instinct, then stopped because he still needed the damn pajamas.
“They’re in there,” you said behind him.
His eyes closed.
Of course they were. Of course your pajama drawer also contained lingerie. Of course he had opened it while you sat half-dressed on the bed behind him, sick and trusting and completely unaware that his mind had just betrayed every decent intention he had.
He stared at the drawer again. Pajamas. Find pajamas. He moved a black lace thong with two fingers, like it might explode. Before he could stop himself, he was imagining you in it.
You standing in this room with the lamp low and that sharp little smile on your mouth. You telling him to touch you, and him obliging you instantly. The feeling of the thin lace against your hot skin. Your legs tossed over his shoulders carelessly.
And then he imagines you wearing it for someone else. Letting someone else see the softness under all that armor. Someone else’s hands at your waist. Someone else pulling the straps down. Someone else making you laugh in a bedroom that was not his.
His stomach twisted.
Because of course you owned lingerie. You were an adult woman with a life before this fake marriage and a body that did not belong to him. Of course there had been other men. Other women, maybe. Other names. Other rooms. Other hands.
The ring on your finger was not a claim. The house was not a claim. The bed was not a claim. The word wife was not a claim, not the way he wanted it to be, not when you had agreed to stay married because it was safer than the scandal and not because you wanted him in any of the ways that kept him awake at night.
Still, the thought burned and he hated himself for it.
He hated that some small, ancient, selfish part of him wanted to know whether any of that lace had been worn for someone specific. Whether you had packed it because you planned to wear it again. Whether you had folded it into his dresser like a normal thing because, for you, it was normal.
“Everything okay?” You asked.
“No,” he said, because apparently your truth serum had become contagious.
You laughed weakly. “Find something scandalous, old man?”
He cleared his throat. “Pajamas.”
“Mmhmm.”
He found them at last beneath a folded slip he refused to examine too closely. Soft cotton shorts. An oversized T-shirt. Not his, thank God, because he was not built for that tonight. He closed the drawer with more care necessary and turned back.
His face felt hot.
You noticed immediately. Your eyebrows lifted.
“Oh.”
”Don’t.”
“What did you see?”
“Pajamas.”
“You are an abysmal liar. Are you blushing?”
“No.”
“You are.”
“I’m not.”
He held the pajamas out without stepping too close. “Here.”
You took them, fingers brushing his.
And then, with absolutely no warning and no apparent concern for his survival, you reached behind your back for the clasp of your bra.
Bucky spun around so fast his metal hand clipped the dresser.
The drawer rattled.
You started laughing.
He faced the wall. “What? You’re changing.”
“I was also changing thirty seconds ago.”
“I wasn’t looking thirty seconds ago.”
“You absolutely looked.”
“By accident.”
“Sure.”
He stared at the wall with the grim focus of a man trying to survive interrogation.
“You’re very committed to the gentleman act,” you said.
“It’s not an act.”
You made an unconvinced sound.
The bed shifted as you pulled on the t-shirt.
“Decency restored.”
When he turned around, you were in bed, or halfway there, sitting against the pillows in the oversized shirt and shorts. Your hair was loose around your face. Your skin still looked too warm. The bowl sat on the nightstand beside a glass of water.
He sat on the edge of the bed, far enough away that there was space between you. He wanted to touch your forehead. He wanted to check your pulse. He wanted to keep his hand in your hair until the tight line around your mouth went away.
“Serum wearing off?” He asked.
You nodded slowly. “I think so. It’s less loud.”
“Loud?”
“The honesty feels… loud.”
His throat tightened. “I’m sorry.”
You closed your eyes. “You already apologized.”
“Still.”
“I know.”
“You asked me not to self-flagellate.”
“I did. Very wise of me.”
“Trying not to.”
Your eyes opened. Softer now. Exhausted.
“You didn’t mean to.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“No.” You looked at him for a long second. “It was an accident.”
He nodded.
Bucky should have left it there. He should have told you to sleep, turned off the lamp, gone downstairs, called Sam, and spent the next several hours hating himself in the kitchen like a gentleman.
Instead, he heard your voice in the car again.
The eyes are worse.
He knew better. Knew you were still under the serum, knew asking near the edges was unfair. But the words had been inside him since the car, pressing against old wants he had spent months burying under strategy and restraint.
He looked at you.
“Did you mean what you said?” He asked.
Your fingers tightened around the blanket and he regretted it immediately.
“Sorry,” he said. “Don’t answer that.”
“No.” You swallowed. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not.”
”I can answer.”
“You don’t have to.”
You looked toward the window, then back at him. Your eyes were clear enough now that he let himself hope the serum had eased.
“In the car,” he said carefully. “You said some things.”
“I said many things.”
“Yeah.”
Bucky looked down at the ring on his hand. “I know you were dosed. I know it wasn’t fair. I’m not asking because I want to hold you to anything.”
“Then why are you asking?”
Because I love you.
Because I need to know if there is any part of this that is real for you too. Because every day in this house is killing me a little and I would thank you for it if you asked.
He did not say any of that.
Instead, he said, “I don’t know.”
You watched him for a long moment. Then your expression changed.
“Bucky,” you said. “We’re friends.”
He held still.
You continued, voice careful. “We’re friends. And colleagues. And we get along better than most people who accidentally end up married for press management reasons.”
He felt something in him begin to shrink.
You gave a small shrug, eyes not quite meeting his now.
“I meant what I said in the obvious way. You’re attractive. That’s just… objective information. Like weather. Or the fact Sam talks too much.”
He tried to smile.
“So that’s all?”
You hesitated a fraction, then nodded.
“That’s all.”
The words landed entirely too cleanly.
Bucky had been shot before. Stabbed. Frozen. Cut open and remade into something else. He knew pain in plenty of forms.
This one settled heavy behind his ribs.
Right. Of course. Friends, colleagues, fake spouses. Two people who worked well together and had made a bad decision in New Orleans. That was all it had ever been for you. That was all he had any right to expect.
He nodded once.
“Right,” he said, “of course.”
You looked at him then. Something flickered across your face, but he was already standing, already turning away because he could not sit there and let you see all of it.
“You should rest,” he said.
“Bucky—”
“I’ll be downstairs. Bowl’s there. Water too. Call if you need anything.”
His voice sounded normal. That was good. He had practice.
Bucky crossed to the door and paused with his hand on the frame. He did not look back. If he looked back, he might do something embarrassing, like ask again or apologize or tell you the truth when you didn’t want to hear it.
“Try to sleep,” he said.
Then he left, shutting the bedroom door behind him.
Bucky Barnes had survived wanting things he could not have before. He would survive this too.
He went downstairs, not seeing you grab the bowl he had left beside the bed and bend over it, shaking and miserable as your body rejected the words you had forced through your teeth.
HOLY FUCK -- CAN I JUST SAY THAT I AM ABSOLUTELY IN LOVE WITH THIS FIC!! LIKE HOLY SHIT GIRL YOU ARE COOKING
the two of them being domestically disgusting with each other is the best thing on the planet WHAT
I am obssed w those idiots in love!! GIRL
“The eyes are worse.” this part will b the death of me. crying because the fact that she said this, and then when he asked and the drug HAD ALREADY FADED BUT HE DOESN"T KNOW AAAAGH --- this was criminal
i cannot wait, but CANNOT wait to see where this goes.
I LOVE wha Sam and Yelena add to the story, it's so entertaining and you write banter so well it's criminal
I am SO glad you liked it, I have so much fun writing their dynamic so it means the world to me that other people are reading and enjoying this series as well. Thank you so much for the reblog and the feedback—I get so excited to see what everyone has to say. Love you, working on the next chapter now !!! ❤️
summary. After a late-night in New Orleans, Congressman Bucky Barnes and his chief of staff wake up legally married. An annulment should be simple, but unfortunately, nothing about their lives is simple. With Bucky's reputation on the line and her past threatening to resurface, staying married starts to look like the safest option. It's only supposed to be temporary. Public appearances, a convincing story, and a quiet divorce once the headlines fade. But fake marriage is harder when everyone else believes it. Especially when Bucky is already in love with his wife.
word count. 10.7k
warnings. politics, everyone's bad at feelings, fake marriage setup, friends with questionable boundaries, bucky is quietly losing his mind, accidental truth serum dosing, sickfic elements, sam wilson, yelena is basically her sister, bucky is a first class yearner, he should teach classes at the yearning academy, a smidge of angst at the end because they're both idiots
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The problem with being fake married to Bucky Barnes was that he was very good at being fake married.
Actually, no. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he was good at being married. There was a difference, and you had begun to resent it.
It had been a little over a week since you moved into his townhouse, which was enough time for the house to stop feeling like his and start feeling like a crime scene you had tampered with. You had not hung curtains or rearranged his books alphabetically, though the temptation had been there. But things started appearing.
Your tea on the middle pantry shelf because he had cleared it without making a production of it. Your blue mug in the kitchen cabinet beside his plain white ones. Your hair ties in a little ceramic dish by the bathroom sink, where Bucky had started placing them when he found them on doorknobs, cabinet handles, his wrist once, though he had insisted that last one happened accidentally.
The townhouse itself had become an issue. You had expected to hate it on principle. You had expected the move to feel like a concession, an inconvenience, another piece of public staging in a week already full of too many soft smiles and controlled statements.
His house was infuriatingly nice. The locks were good. The windows were better. There was no upstairs neighbor who performed what sounded like tap dance exorcisms at midnight. You slept better there. That was the worst part.
You had told yourself it was because of the security, and that it had nothing to do with the fact that Bucky slept on the other side of the bed like a man trying to make himself less large, or that he always took the side closer to the door without mentioning it. When you woke from old dreams with your hand halfway under your pillow for a knife you had not slept with in years, he never asked.
You were thinking this while sitting on the bathroom counter, one of Bucky’s sweatshirts swallowing you to mid-thigh, your bare legs crossed at the ankles, a pen between your teeth, and a half-finished crossword folded over your knee.
Bucky stood at the sink shaving. Standard fake-married roommate behavior.
The bathroom smelled faintly of cedar soap, mint toothpaste, and the tea he had made you before coming upstairs. The mirror was beginning to fog at the edges from the shower he had taken earlier. Morning light came in through the frosted window, softening the lines of his face as he drew the razor carefully along his jaw.
You watched him for perhaps two seconds too long, then looked back down at the crossword because you had survival instincts.
“Seven letters,” you said around the pen. “Old-timey word for handsome.”
Bucky’s eyes flicked to you. “Why’re you askin’ me?”
“I’m consulting a primary source.”
He rinsed the razor. “Debonair.”
You removed the pen from your mouth and stared at him. “Of course you knew that.”
He looked unimpressed, going back to shaving. “You gonna write it in?”
“Don’t rush me. I’m deciding if I want to give you the satisfaction.”
His mouth twitched, which nearly ruined the clean line he was shaving beneath his cheekbone.
You pointed the pen at him. “Careful, honeybun. Wouldn’t want to have to clean up bloodshed in the bathroom before eight.”
“Honeybun?”
You nodded. “Yeah, m’trying out old school pet names. Trying to meet you where you’re at, and all that.”
Bucky snorted. “Yeah, alright, babydoll.”
You let it slide, writing in debonair into the little boxes with aggressive pen strokes.
He rinsed the razor again, then reached for the small towel beside the sink. He had placed your mug near your hip so you could reach it without leaning. You had not missed that. You had also not missed the way he did not ask you to get down from the counter even though you were taking up half the useful space and had moved his aftershave to make room for your crossword.
That was the worst thing about living with him. Not the bed or the sight of his ring on the sink while he shaved. The worst thing was how easily he made room. Not in a dramatic way, not with a speech. He just shifted until there was space where there had not been space before.
A shelf. A drawer. A towel hook. A place for your mug. The left side of the bed. The good sightline in the kitchen.
“Five letters,” you said, tapping the crossword. “Moral failing. Common in powerful men.”
“Pride.”
You glanced up, a cheeky smile playing on your lips. “Speaking from personal experience?”
Bucky gave you a look. “Observation.”
“I gotta tell Sam that one,” you said, writing in the letters. “He’ll think it’s funny.”
“You tell Sam anything before coffee, he’ll hang up.”
“Incorrect. Sam loves gossip. He pretends he’s above gossip because he has a shield now, but in reality? He’s a porch auntie.”
Bucky huffed. “A porch auntie?”
You nodded. “Yeah, he likes to sit, observe, and judge. Offer his opinions. Sometimes he offers snacks.”
“He’s downstairs.”
You froze, the pen stopped over the crossword. You looked at him.
“What?”
Bucky wiped his face with the towel, far too calm for a man who had just mentioned an intruder.
“Sam’s downstairs.”
“Since when?”
“About twenty minutes.”
You stared harder. “Samuel Wilson has been in this house for twenty minutes?”
“He knocked.”
“I didn’t hear him.”
“You were arguing with the crossword. He came over to go over scheduling for the donor reception next week.”
“And?”
Bucky glanced at you in the mirror. There was a tiny pause that meant he was choosing which parts of the answer to give you.
“And the bill,” he said.
You waited.
He reached for his aftershave, but you reached it first, moving it behind your back. He stared at you. You stared back.
“Give it.”
“No.”
“It’s mine.”
“Then answer me.”
He sighed through his nose. “Security, scheduling, and the bill. That’s it.”
“Which part of the bill?”
“The current part.”
“The current part,” you repeated. “Excellent. Specific. Very transparent.”
He groaned your name. “It’s early.”
“I’m awake.”
“You’re sittin’ on a bathroom counter in my sweatshirt interrogating me over aftershave.”
You lifted your chin. “And?”
His eyes moved over you, enough that something warm slipped beneath your ribs before you could kill it. He looked away first.
You tossed him the aftershave. He caught it without looking.
Show-off.
“I don’t like not knowing things,” you said.
“I know.”
“I especially don’t like not knowing things while wearing a wedding ring connected to a congressional office, an enhanced-persons bill, and your unresolved martyr complex.”
“My martyr complex is resolved.”
“It is not.”
Bucky smiled faintly, rubbing aftershave along his jaw. “Sam’s waiting downstairs with coffee.”
“Why didn’t you lead with that?”
“You were busy with your crossword.”
You slid off the counter, landing lightly on the tile. Bucky’s hand moved instinctively toward your waist before he caught himself and dropped it.
You pretended not to notice.
The sweatshirt hem shifted high on your thighs, and his eyes went to the wall with the discipline of a man in church. You brushed past him through the bathroom door, close enough for your shoulder to skim his arm.
This was absurd. You were a former Widow, you had done worse things than share a bathroom with a handsome man. You had survived handlers, extraction orders, kill rooms, and fake identities. You would not be undone by Bucky Barnes shaving.
Probably.
Downstairs, the townhouse smelled like coffee and toast, which meant Sam had made himself at home. That was not surprising. He sat at the kitchen island in a dark jacket, your blue mug’s less charming cousin set beside him.
He looked up when you entered, then looked at Bucky behind you. Then looked at the sweatshirt. Then at your bare legs. Then back at Bucky.
His eyebrows climbed.
“Good morning,” Sam said.
“No,” you said, pointing at him.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You said it with your face.”
Sam took a slow sip of coffee. “Y’all look domestic.”
Bucky came into the kitchen behind you and went straight to the coffee machine. “Don’t start.”
“Oh, I’m starting.” Sam leaned back in his chair. “I’ve been downstairs twenty minutes listening to the two of you argue over a crossword clue like a retired couple.”
You set your crossword on the counter. “We are not retired.”
“No, just married.”
“Fake married.”
Sam lifted one finger. “Not legally. And from the sound of that bathroom, not in spirit.”
Bucky set your mug down in front of you.
You looked down. Not coffee, tea. He had brought your mug down from upstairs and refilled it without making a show of it.
Bucky leaned against the counter beside you, coffee in hand. “You said you were here for security.”
You took a long sip of tea and let the warmth settle you. The house was bright in the morning, sunlight catching the edge of the counter and the ring on your hand. Bucky’s kitchen had improved under your supervision. There were snacks now. A bowl of fruit, because Bucky had claimed he liked fruit. Crackers that did not taste like field rations. Jam, honey, and three kinds of tea.
“Security,” you said. “Talk.”
Sam’s expression sobered, though the humor stayed at the edges. “Donor reception next week. Private house. Half the people in the room got money, the other half want it. Bellamy’s people may be sniffing around.”
Bucky opened his mouth to respond but a sound interrupted him.
A soft click from the front door. Not a knock, a click. Your hand was under the island before conscious thought finished forming. There was no knife taped there. Of course there was no knife taped there. This was Bucky’s townhouse, not your apartment. You had considered taping one there two days ago and decided it would be too much too soon.
A mistake.
Bucky moved before you did, stepping quietly away from the counter. Sam’s posture changed in the same breath, easy warmth gone, shoulders loose but ready.
The door opened, and a blonde walked into the townhouse carrying a paper bag and wearing sunglasses.
You stared.
She stared back.
Sam slowly lowered his mug.
Bucky stopped in the hall.
Yelena pushed her sunglasses up onto her head and looked around the entryway, taking in the coat over the chair, your shoes by the table, the fact that you were standing barefoot in Bucky’s kitchen wearing his sweatshirt, and the incriminating diamond on your left hand.
Her mouth flattened.
“Wow,” she said. “Very nice. Domestic. Disgusting.”
You closed your eyes for one second.
“Yelena.”
“No.” She pointed at you with the paper bag. “Do not ‘Yelena’ me.”
Bucky looked at you.
You looked at Bucky.
Yelena had always had a talent for entering rooms like a thrown knife. She had been that way since the Red Room fell and the Widows scattered into a world they had not been raised to understand. Natasha had given so many of you freedom, and Yelena had taken that freedom like a personal assignment: find the ones still lost, drag them out, feed them if necessary, and call them family.
You had not been much younger than her. Enough that after Dreykov was dead and the chemical control was gone, Yelena had looked at you like someone had handed her a baby bird with a knife in its beak.
She had called you annoying, reckless, underfed, and badly socialized. But when you had woken from nightmares in safe apartments during those early months, she had been there.
Yelena set the paper bag on the entry table and walked into the kitchen.
“I had to learn from internet,” she said.
You winced. “I know.”
“From Tweeter. Not even good Tweeter. Political Tweeter. Everyone there is ugly inside.”
Sam nodded. “That is true.”
Yelena shot him a look. “Don’t agree with me yet. I am still deciding if I dislike you.”
Bucky cleared his throat. “Yelena—”
“You marry my sister and do not call me?”
Yelena’s eyes moved over Bucky, assessing him.
You spoke before he could take the blame too easily. “It happened fast.”
Yelena looked at you. “So does gunfire. I still expect update.”
“That’s not comparable.”
“It is very comparable. Both are dangerous and there are usually men involved.”
“She’s got a point,” Bucky said.
You turned to him. “Et tu, Robo-Brutus?”
Bucky frowned. “Robo-brutus?”
You lost the fight with your mouth and smiled.
Yelena saw it. Her face did something. Not softened, Yelena did not soften in obvious ways. But her anger shifted, narrowed, became less theatrical and more hurt.
“You are smiling,” she said.
You stopped.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are smiling in kitchen of secret husband.”
Yelena stepped closer, and for one second, underneath the sunglasses and the sarcasm and the controlled violence of her presence, you saw the woman who had found you after the Red Room and decided, without asking you, that you belonged with her now.
“You did not tell me,” she said.
You looked down at your mug. “I know.”
“You tell Captain America.” She nodded at Sam and sighed. “I am not angry you married sad congressman.”
“Great,” Bucky muttered.
“I am angry because you do stupid life thing and I am not there.”
Your throat tightened. A normal person might have apologized properly. You were not normal people.
“There was no cake,” you said.
Yelena blinked.
You continued. “It was a chapel. There was a package called Jazz It Up. You would’ve hated it.”
“Yes, probably.”
“And the rings were terrible.”
“I saw photo. Very terrible.”
“Vending-machine adjacent.”
“Disrespectful to vending machine.”
You nodded. “Exactly.”
The corner of Yelena’s mouth twitched.
Victory.
Small, but real.
Bucky moved toward the toaster.
“You want breakfast?” he asked.
Yelena turned to him with suspicion.
“What kind?”
“Toast. Eggs.”
“Do not use food to make me less angry.”
“I wasn’t.”
“He was,” you said. “He’s from the forties. If a woman is mad in his kitchen, he tries to feed her.”
Bucky looked over his shoulder. “That’s not—”
Sam cut in. “It’s exactly what you do.”
Yelena considered this, then removed her sunglasses completely and set them on the counter.
“This is manipulative,” she said, “but effective.”
Bucky nodded once. “Eggs?”
“Yes, but I remain betrayed.”
“Understood.”
“And I want toast.”
“Okay.”
“With butter.”
“Got it.”
“And something sweet.”
Bucky looked at you.
You shrugged. “You married into this.”
He gave you a look.
Yelena opened the paper bag she had brought and pulled out a pastry box.
“I brought cake,” she announced.
Sam looked at it. “You brought your own cake to confront them?”
“Yes.”
“Respect.”
You leaned against the counter, watching Bucky take eggs from the fridge like this was a normal morning. Like one of the deadliest women you knew had not broken into his townhouse. Like Sam was not sitting at the island with the expression of a man watching premium cable.
Yelena slid onto a stool and opened the pastry box. “So. Tell me everything.”
Tonight’s event was at a private house in Kalorama. Some kind of reception for the Enhanced Persons Protections Act, though half the guest list looked like people who wanted to support the bill and the other half looked like people who wanted to learn exactly how much it threatened them.
You had spent the morning reviewing names, spouses, companies, private interests, known grudges, possible Valentina connections, and one man whose entire file was just the word “weasel” underlined twice.
Bucky had asked if that was an official classification.
“It is in my office,” you had said.
Now you were standing in the kitchen, trying to put your earring in while glaring at your phone.
“Bellamy is sending Eleanor,” you said.
Bucky looked up from the tea kettle. “His wife?”
“His wife, his fundraiser, his most effective weapon, yes.”
“You like her?”
“She once ruined a councilman’s career over brunch without putting down her mimosa. Of course I like her. I’m not made out of stone.”
“Tea?” Bucky asked, reaching for your mug in the cabinet.
“Yes, please. Something with mint if we have it.”
He nodded and opened the pantry.
There were actual snacks. Crackers, cookies, a small tin of cocoa. A tiny glass bottle with a handwritten label that said peppermint extract.
Bucky picked it up. The handwriting was yours. The bottle was small, dark amber glass with a little dropper cap. It looked like something from a health store or one of the strange specialty markets you and Yelena liked.
He unscrewed the top and sniffed.
Peppermint.
Sharp, clean. Normal enough. He added a few drops to your tea. Maybe four. Possibly five.
You were still glaring at your phone.
“Do not say anything kind to Senator Vale tonight,” you said.
Bucky stirred the tea. “Wasn’t planning on it.”
“You sometimes default to polite when startled.”
Bucky handed you the mug. You took it, still distracted, and drank. Bucky watched your face for a second. No reaction. You lowered the mug and finally looked at him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“The tea is fine.”
“Fine?”
“Don’t get needy.”
He huffed and turned toward the stairs. “Need your dress zipped?”
You turned without comment, presenting him with the open back of your dress.
This was still the part of fake marriage he had not gotten used to. The ordinary things. The things that had no business feeling like trespassing. A zipper. A mug. You standing in his kitchen asking him to close a dress he was not allowed to think too hard about.
Your skin was warm beneath his knuckles. He looked at the wall over your shoulder and pulled the zipper up slowly. The dress closed along your back, dark fabric settling into place like armor.
“There,” he said.
You looked back at him. “No lecture about how I should wear a coat?”
“I was saving it for the car.”
“How gallant of you, soldier boy.”
“‘S cold out.”
“It’s fifty-two degrees.”
“Still cold.”
“You were frozen for seventy years.”
“Yeah, and I didn’t like it.”
That got you to laugh. A quick one. Real. Gone too fast.
Then you stepped away, grabbed your other earring, and finished getting ready while narrating an assassination of Bellamy’s entire family tree that you claimed was “rhetorical and therefore legal.”
The car came to pick the both of you up shortly after. You spent most of the car ride quizzing Bucky on the guests that would be attending the event, and to your surprise, Bucky had done his homework.
By the time you arrived, the reception was already loud. The kind of low, polished noise that came from old floors, expensive shoes, crystal glasses, and people laughing in a way that suggested no joke had actually been told. The house was all tall windows and oil portraits and floral arrangements large enough to hide surveillance equipment in.
Bucky placed a hand at your back as the host approached. You leaned into the touch by half an inch, just enough to sell the picture. Maybe less than half. Maybe he imagined it.
“Representative Barnes,” the host said, smiling too widely. “And Mrs. Barnes. We’re so pleased you could make it.”
Bucky felt you stiffen at Mrs. Barnes, but your smile did not move.
You moved through the first half hour easily. Better than easily. You were good at this. Better than he was, though you would never frame it that way unless you were trying to annoy him. Bucky could stand and look sincere. He could talk about the bill. He could shake hands, remember names, and answer questions.
You could make people comfortable enough to reveal themselves. You smiled at a donor’s wife and had her talking within three minutes about who was nervous about the bill. You complimented Eleanor Bellamy’s earrings and got a quiet list of who had arrived together and who was pretending they hadn’t. You spoke French to a Belgian attaché just long enough to make him nervous, then Russian to a private security consultant who nearly dropped his drink.
Bucky watched it all with a mix of respect and unease. Marriage had changed the way people saw you. That had become obvious fast.
As his chief of staff, people braced themselves when you walked into a room. They watched their words. They knew you had teeth.
As his wife, they underestimated you differently. Some still knew better. Women mostly, the smart ones. But men with expensive watches kept making the same mistake. They treated you like an accessory. Like you were there to soften him, decorate the room, translate his silence into charm.
You returned to his side after speaking with Eleanor Bellamy, your smile still in place, your hand sliding into the crook of his elbow with a practiced ease that made several people nearby look on fondly.
“What’d you find?” he asked under his breath.
“Eleanor thinks Harrington’s group is nervous.”
“About the bill?”
“About the subpoenas.”
Your finger tightened briefly against his sleeve, then Mr. Harrington himself approached.
He shook Bucky’s hand too firmly, then turned to you.
“Mrs. Barnes,” Harrington said. “I imagine married life has softened the congressman.”
Bucky felt you shift beside him.
“No,” you said. “He was already soft where it matters.”
Bucky went still. Harrington blinked. You blinked too. Then you looked at Bucky with alarm.
Harrington laughed uncertainly. “Well. That’s one way to put it.”
“He makes married life easy,” you admitted. “I couldn’t imagine being married to anyone else.”
Bucky looked at you.
You looked back, eyes wide for half a second.
Something was wrong.
You apologized to Mr. Harrington, saying you suddenly felt unwell, and Bucky pulled you quietly to the side of the room.
“Are you alright? You seem off,” he asked softly once you were a few steps away.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“It was like I had an inside thought and it became an outside thought.”
“That happens to you.”
“Not like this.”
Before he could respond, a woman from the veterans’ coalition intercepted the both of you, smiling warmly.
“You two are so lovely together,” she said. “Is it difficult, working with your husband?”
You opened your mouth. Then shut it.
Bucky watched you physically fight your own face.
“Yes,” you said.
Bucky’s eyebrows lifted.
You continued, visibly horrified by yourself. “He is stubborn, exhausting, overprotective, and much more attractive than is necessary in a workplace setting.”
The woman’s smile widened.
“Oh,” she said, delighted. “That’s very sweet.”
You excused the both of you again, your eyebrows furrowing in concern.
“Bucky, something’s wrong,” you muttered, a wave of nausea rolling over you.
Bucky held your elbow to steady you. “Are you alright?”
Before you could answer, Sam turned the corner and took in the sight in front of him.
“What’s going on here?” He asked, looking between them.
You shook your head. “I suddenly feel sick. Don’t ask me questions.”
Sam’s eyebrows rose. Bucky’s attention sharpened.
“Why not?” Sam asked.
You pressed your lips together. Your eyes went slightly unfocused, like someone holding a door shut from the other side.
“Because,” you said, “I’m having trouble not answering them.”
Sam’s face changed. Delight. Then suspicion. Then delight again.
Bucky stepped between you by half an inch. “Sam. Don’t.”
Sam looked at you. “You okay?”
You made a small, strangled sound. “No.”
Bucky’s chest tightened. The answer came clearly. You never admitted you weren’t okay that quickly.
He lowered his voice. “What’s happening?”
You looked at him. Your pupils were not blown, exactly, but your eyes were brighter than they should have been. Your breathing was controlled, but too controlled. Your hand had gone tight around his arm.
“I don’t know,” you said, your face twisting with irritation.
Bucky turned to you fully now, blocking more of the room from seeing. “Did you eat anything strange?”
You shook your head.
“Drink?”
“Just your tea.”
“My tea?”
“The tea you made me while we were getting ready.” You said. “Did you put anything in it?”
Bucky stared at you. “Peppermint extract.”
Your face went perfectly blank. Bucky had seen that look before. Not often. Not in safe rooms. It was the expression you wore when your body got to the answer before the rest of you wanted to.
“What bottle?”
“Small. Amber glass. Handwritten label.”
Your eyes closed.
“That wasn’t peppermint extract,” you said.
Bucky went cold. “What was it?”
You looked past him toward the crowd, then back at him. Your voice was dangerously calm when you spoke again.
“Truth serum.”
The room seemed to narrow around him. Sam made a sound that was probably not helpful. Bucky did not look away from you.
“Why would you label your truth serum as peppermint extract?!”
Your skin was too warm. Your mouth tasted like mint and metal. The lights in the donor’s foyer had grown hard around the edges, each chandelier throwing bright little blades into your eyes. Every laugh from the reception behind you arrived too loudly, too close, too full of teeth. You could feel your pulse in your throat, in your wrists, under the ring on your finger.
Worst of all, beneath the nausea and the chemical heat, there was the constant pressure of honesty building behind your teeth.
Not truth, but compulsion. Truth was a choice, and this was not that. This was old Widow chemistry crawling through your veins, dragging answers out like wire through skin.
Bucky put himself between you and the rest of the reception without seeming to. His hand settled at your back, light enough to pass as husbandly concern, firm enough that you knew he was ready to catch you if your knees gave out.
“You’re sweating,” he said under his breath.
“Thanks, Captain Obvious.”
Bucky’s hand shifted. “Okay. We’re leavin’.”
“We are not leaving.”
“We are.”
“We are at a donor reception for your bill.”
“You’re sick.”
“I have been sick at much more important events.”
Sam, from your left, muttered, “That is not the defense you think it is.”
You wanted to tell him to shut up. You also wanted to ask if the wallpaper was moving or if it was just your nervous system trying to flee your body.
“Get the car, Sam,” Bucky instructed.
Sam pointed toward the front doors. “I’ll pull the car around.”
“Good.”
“I’m helping.”
“You’re grinning.”
You tried to laugh, but the motion made your stomach lurch. Bucky’s hand moved instantly, his palm spreading across the center of your back as you bent slightly at the waist and breathed through your nose.
The reception continued around you, softened by distance and your own rising fever. Voices blurred. Someone laughed. A glass clinked.
You pressed a hand to your stomach and let Bucky guide you toward the hallway. The movement was too smooth to look urgent, too intimate to draw alarm. To anyone watching, Congressman Barnes was simply taking his wife outside for air. His hand at your back. His body angled close. A good husband.
A fake husband who had accidentally drugged your tea and now looked like he wanted to throw himself into traffic about it.
You wanted to make fun of him for that. You wanted to tell him that guilt was unattractive, except it wasn’t—not on him. It was terrible. It was familiar. It was also one of the reasons you had trusted him, because Bucky Barnes was one of the few men you knew who was actually afraid of what he was capable of.
The thought tried to come out your mouth. You clamped your lips shut. Your stomach rebelled immediately.
Bucky felt it. “Don’t fight it.”
You glared at him. “Easy for you to say. You’re not currently one stray question away from announcing state secrets to Kalorama.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said, voice laced with guilt.
“Yes,” you said, because the serum grabbed the answer before you had the chance to soften it. “You should be.”
Bucky stiffened beside you.
Damn it.
You stopped walking, which made the nausea worse, but the look on his face was worse than that. You put a hand on his wrist, fingers tightening around the cuff of his jacket.
“Not like that,” you said.
His eyes found yours.
The hallway had arrowed around him. Around his face, his mouth, the crease between his brows. The worried set of his shoulders. You could hear the party behind you, but it felt like it belonged to another building.
“I mean you should be sorry in the way people are sorry when they step on someone’s foot,” you mutter. “Not in the way you get when you decide you’re personally responsible for every bad thing that has happened since 1943.”
He blinked.
“Sorry, too honest.” You swallowed hard.
His hand turned under yours until he was holding your fingers. “Still true?”
“Unfortunately.”
His thumb moved once over your knuckles.
“C’mere,” he said, pulling you closer to his body so he could support you better. “Car’s here.”
Sam had pulled the SUV directly to the curb and was standing beside the open back door with the posture of a man who had decided he was both chauffeur and audience.
“Your getaway car awaits,” he said.
You pointed at him as Bucky helped you down the front steps. “Sam, stop enjoying this.”
The cold air outside should have helped. It did not. It hit your overheated skin and made you shiver so hard Bucky’s hand tightened at your waist.
You hated needing support. You also hated that he was good at giving it.
He helped you into the backseat with an amount of care that would have been insulting if you had not been trying very hard not to throw up on his shoes. You slid across the leather seat, intending to sit upright with dignity, but the SUV moved half an inch as Sam climbed into the driver’s seat and your stomach dropped through the floor.
Bucky climbed in before you, taking his jacket off and placing it under your shoulder before you could complain. His metal hand braced against the seat while his right hand guided you down with careful pressure at your upper back.
“Lie down.”
“Bossy.”
“Yeah.”
“I am your chief of staff.”
“You’re my wife.”
“Fake wife.”
“Sick wife.”
The argument unfortunately held traction.
You lay down across the backseat, your head ending up in his lap because the universe had apparently decided humiliation should arrive in layers. Bucky went very still beneath you.
For one suspended second, the truth serum, the nausea, the evening, the donor reception, all of it thinned into one clear fact: your cheek was against his thigh, his hand hovering near your shoulder, and you could feel the warmth of him through the fabric of his trousers.
The SUV pulled away from the curb and your stomach lurched again. You groaned and pressed the back of your hand against your mouth. Bucky’s hand came down immediately, broad and warm against your hair.
“Breathe,” he said.
“I am breathing.”
“Through your nose.”
“I know how breathing works.”
“Coulda fooled me.”
“You’re becoming quite bold for a man who poisoned his wife.”
Sam made a sound from the front seat.
Bucky closed his eyes.
“I deserved that one,” he said.
“You deserve several. I’m spacing them out.”
Bucky snorted. “Appreciate it.”
Sam adjusted the rearview mirror, which you noticed because even poisoned and nauseous, you were trained to notice people adjusting mirrors.
He was looking directly at you, not even pretending he wasn’t.
“Wilson,” Bucky said.
“What?”
“Drive.”
“I am driving.”
“Then look at the road.”
“The road is still there.”
“Sam.”
“Fine.”
He looked forward for approximately four seconds.
“So,” Sam said. “Truth serum.”
“Shut up, Wilson,” you grumbled.
He did not.
“I’m just clarifying the situation.”
Bucky’s fingers moved through your hair once, almost absent. Maybe he did it to comfort you. Maybe he did it without thinking. Either way, your whole body noticed, which was extremely inconvenient given that your body was already filing numerous complaints.
“How long does it last?” Sam said.
“Depends on dose, metabolism, training, whether the serum was stabilized properly, and whether your fake husband has a heavy hand.”
Bucky looked down at you. “I put in five drops.”
You lifted your head just enough to glare at him. Five drops.
Bucky’s face changed.
“What?”
“Five?”
“You said you liked mint.”
Sam started laughing.
You dropped your head back into Bucky’s lap and closed your eyes again. “I hate both of you.”
“No, you don’t,” Sam said.
Your mouth opened and your stomach seized. You sat up halfway so fast Bucky had to catch you by the shoulders.
“No,” you said, voice tight. “I don’t.”
Bucky leaned forward with you, one arm around your back now, steady and immediate. “Don’t answer.”
“I know that.”
“Then don’t.”
“I’m trying.”
Sam’s laughter died. “Wait, it makes you sick if you don’t answer.”
You swallowed hard, eyes shut, willing the wave down. “Yeah, bird brain. If I fight too hard. Or try to lie. Yes.”
Bucky’s arm tightened around you.
Sam went quiet for a moment.
Then in a much more careful voice: “Okay, that part’s not funny.”
“No,” you said. “But I’ll recover.”
Bucky exhaled through his nose. “Lie back.”
You did, partly because the nausea was fading to a simmer and partly because his hand at the back of your head made it easier to let go. He arranged you with the same maddening care as before, jacket under your shoulder, your head in his lap, his palm resting lightly against your temple as if he could measure your temperature through sheer concern.
Maybe he could. Maybe it was a feature that came with your super soldier.
Not your super soldier.
The SUV weaved through D.C. traffic, the city lights breaking across the windows in long white and red lines. The backseat smelled like leather, Bucky’s aftershave, and the faint medicinal sharpness of your own poisoned breath. Up front, Sam drove with one hand on the wheel, posture loose, but you could tell he was listening to every breath you took.
He was having too much fun, yes, but he was also worried.
“Alright,” he said after a while, too casually. “Safe questions only.”
“No such thing.”
“Sure there is. Widow stuff.”
Bucky’s head snapped up. “That is not safe.”
Sam ignored him. “Could you really kill a man with a paperclip?"
You opened one eye. “What kind of paperclip?”
Sam’s grin returned in the mirror. “Standard office.”
“Yes.”
Bucky looked down at you. “Really?”
“Not quickly.”
Sam nodded in approval. “See? Educational.”
“Stop asking about murder,” Bucky said, his thumb brushing your temple.
You tried not to enjoy the touch.
You failed.
Sam kept going, because mercy was not one of his spiritual gifts.
“Could you beat Bucky in a fight?”
“Yes.”
Bucky raised an eyebrow.
You did not open your eyes.
“That was fast,” Sam said.
“It was true.”
Bucky’s voice lowered, amused despite himself. “You think you could beat me?”
“I know I could beat you.”
“Super soldier.”
“Predictable.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Predictable?”
“You fight like a man who is used to being stronger than everyone else.”
Bucky’s hand stilled in your hair. You opened your eyes and looked up at him. His face hovered above yours, upside down from your angle, dark hair falling slightly forward, expression caught between offense and interest.
“You rely on force when irritated,” you said. “Your left side is overprotected because of the arm. You assume people will avoid it. I wouldn’t. Also, you hesitate when you think you might hurt me.”
The SUV went quiet. Bucky’s throat moved.
You blinked up at Bucky, realizing what you had said.
Then you added, because you could not help yourself, “I would also cheat.”
Sam laughed so hard the car drifted half an inch before he corrected it.
“Road,” Bucky said, looking forward.
“I got it,” Sam said, still laughing. “I got it.”
You let your eyes close again, heat creeping across your face. You were not sure if it was the serum, the fever, or the fact that Bucky had gone silent beneath you.
His hand resumed its slow, absent motion over your hair after a moment.
You wanted to bite him.
Possibly affectionately. You were not going to examine that.
Sam cleared his throat. “Okay. Next question. What happened to my Valentine’s Day donut?”
Bucky’s brows drew together. “What?”
“Last year,” Sam said, “I brought a dozen donuts to Buck’s office. Special ones from that place in Alexandria. I put a note on the box that said, ‘Do not eat the pink one, Sam is saving it.’ I came back from a call and the pink one was gone.”
You kept your eyes closed.
Sam said your name again.
You said nothing.
Your stomach turned sharply.
Bucky’s hand pressed lightly to your shoulder. “Hey.”
“I ate it,” you said, and immediately felt better.
Sam gasped.
Bucky looked down at you with something like amusement.
“You lied to me,” Sam said.
“I said Bucky looked suspicious.”
“Bucky always looks suspicious. That was low-hanging fruit.”
“Hey,” Bucky interjected.
“I knew it,” Sam grumbled. “You said you didn’t even like strawberry frosting.”
“I don’t.”
Both men waited.
You sighed. “It had jam inside.”
“It had a note.”
Bucky actually laughed then, enough that you felt it in the muscles beneath your cheek. A warm low vibration. You hated how much you liked it.
“Alright,” Sam said, shifting gears. “Serious question.”
“No,” Bucky said immediately.
“You don’t even know what it is.”
“I know your tone.”
Sam ignored him. “How many aliases have you had?”
You considered not answering.
The nausea warned you.
“Thirteen active. More if you count burn names and one very short-lived Belgian art dealer identity.”
Sam’s mouth opened.
Bucky went still again.
You felt his silence before you saw it.
He knew things about your past. More than most. Less than all. He had read the sanitized files, heard the stories you offered like jokes, pieced together the rest from old mission reports and the way you woke up when someone spoke Russian too softly behind you.
But numbers were different.
Thirteen lives. Thirteen names. Thirteen versions of you created to enter rooms, ruin men, disappear afterward.
Bucky’s hand settled against your cheek, not forcing you to look at him. Just there. You did not open your eyes.
Sam’s voice was quieter when he asked, “Did you like any of them?”
“One.”
The answer hurt on the way up.
Bucky’s hand stilled.
You opened your eyes and looked toward the dark window, where city lights blurred against your reflection.
“She had a dog,” you said. “I mean, a fake dog, but—”
“Still counts,” Bucky said softly.
You stared up at him, mesmerized by the way you could still make out the blue in his eyes in the dark of the car. Mesmerized by the way he handled you so gently when you knew you didn’t deserve it. Didn’t deserve him. You fought the urge to tell him how gorgeous he was, how much you enjoyed the feeling of his hands in your hair, how you’d like his hands to be—
Your stomach turned so violently you lurched upright again, hand over your mouth.
Bucky moved with you, arm around your shoulders, his other hand already reaching for the little paper bag Sam had shoved into the seat pocket from some takeout place. He got it open in front of you before you could ask.
You did not throw up. Barely.
But your body shook with the effort, and Bucky held you through it, one hand firm between your shoulder blades, his voice quiet near your ear.
“Breathe. That’s it. Don’t fight it so hard.”
“I’m not—”
You stopped.
Bucky’s fingers pressed lightly against your back.
“You are,” he said.
You hated that he knew. That he was right. You breathed slowly and the nausea loosened.
Sam had gone quiet in the front seat, his joking temporarily stripped down to concern. He drove more carefully now. Fewer sharp stops. Slower turns. He was not careless, not ever, when it mattered.
You sank back down, exhausted now, your head finding Bucky’s lap again like it had been assigned there.
“Done with serious questions,” Bucky told Sam.
Sam nodded once. “Yeah.”
For about a minute, the car was quiet.
Then:
“Can I ask a stupid one?”
Bucky sighed. “Sam.”
“She likes stupid ones.”
“I do,” you admitted.
Sam brightened. “See?”
Bucky looked down at you. You looked up at him.
His expression was soft with worry, but there was a question there too. Permission.
You nodded once.
Bucky looked forward. “One.”
Sam grinned. “Worst date you’ve ever been on?”
Bucky’s entire body went still. “You don’t have to answer.”
You smiled despite the nausea. “I do, actually, if I don’t want to redecorate your lap.”
His mouth shut, a faint red touching his ears.
“The worst operational date was with a French arms broker who cried after sex and asked if I thought his mother loved him.”
Sam made a strangled sound. Bucky looked like he had been hit.
You continued. “The worst real date was with an assistant U.S. attorney who said he liked strong women, but got genuinely scared when I was giving orders in the bedroom later.”
Sam laughed again, quieter this time.
Bucky’s hand had stopped moving through your hair.
You glanced up, his jaw was tight. That was very interesting.
“Barnes?” you said softly.
“I’m fine.” He grunted.
“You’re lying. I can tell because I currently cannot.”
“This is incredible,” Sam whispered.
Bucky looked toward the front seat. “Ask your last question.”
“I already asked my last one.”
“Then be quiet.”
“But now I have a better one.”
“No.”
“It’s not for you.”
“No.”
Sam looked at you in the mirror, the grin returning with terrible caution. “Do you think Buck is handsome?”
Bucky’s hand tightened in your hair. You couldn’t stop yourself from thinking about how you’d like to feel his hands in your hair in a different circumstance.
Your body reacted before your mind could build a wall around it. Heat climbed your neck. Your mouth opened, then shut. Your stomach turned hard.
“No,” Bucky said.
You pressed your lips together. The nausea surged. Bucky felt your body go rigid. He looked down at you, alarm replacing everything else.
“Hey. Don’t answer. Sam, stop.”
Sam lifted a hand from the wheel. “Okay. I’m done.”
But the question was already in the car.
Do you think Buck is handsome?
Stupid question.
Easy question.
You could have said yes. You had said worse tonight. But this felt different with your head in his lap, with his jacket under your shoulder, with his fingers in your hair and his whole body bent around the effort not to take what the serum was trying to hand him.
The answer sat behind your teeth. The refusal sat in your stomach like a blade.
You turned your face into Bucky’s thigh and groaned.
Bucky’s hand slid to the back of your neck, warm and steady. “I’m sorry ‘bout him, sweetheart. Just breathe for me.”
“I hate him,” you said.
“I know.”
Sam said, much quieter, “I’m sorry.”
“No,” you opened one eye toward the front seat. “No, you’re not.”
“I am a little.”
“You’re sorry because Bucky is going to murder you.”
Sam considered this. “That was a factor.”
The serum dragged at the answer, punishing the locked door because it could not get through. Bucky’s thumb moved slowly against your neck, grounding and patient. The kind of touch that made you want to tell the truth for reasons that had nothing to do with chemicals.
“Objectively,” you said finally, voice muffled against his leg, “yes.”
Bucky stopped breathing.
You kept your eyes shut. “He is very handsome in a very annoying way. It’s irritating.”
No one spoke.
The nausea eased at once, which was humiliating.
You continued, because apparently the door that had been open couldn’t be shut.
“And his shoulders are a problem. His hair is usually a problem. The eyes are…” You stopped. Tried to stop. Failed. “The eyes are worse.”
Bucky was very still beneath you.
You opened your eyes and looked up.
Bucky’s face was turned slightly away, but you could see the red at the tips of his ears. The tightness in his jaw had changed into something else. Something shy, almost. Embarrassed and pleased and guilty for being pleased.
That made your chest hurt.
“Also, he dresses like a widowed history professor.”
Sam barked out a laugh.
Bucky looked down at you, and the expression on his face finally cracked.
A smile. Small, helpless, warm.
“You done?” he asked.
“I hope so.”
“Feel better?”
“Physically, yes.”
Sam shook his head. “For what it’s worth, I thought that was beautiful.”
“Wilson, drive into the river.”
“See? She’s fine.”
Bucky gave him a look.
You closed your eyes again, drained from nausea, embarrassment, and the emotional labor of not confessing anything more catastrophic.
His hand resumed its movement through your hair, slower now.
“You okay?” he asked softly.
You wanted to say obviously. The lie rose. Your stomach warned you. So you told the truth.
“No.”
His hand stilled.
Then, gently, “Okay.”
You opened your eyes and looked up at him.
His face was still flushed, still worried, still guilty. His ring caught the passing streetlights where his hand rested near your cheek. His fake wedding ring. Your fake husband.
“You’re very guilty,” you said.
“Yeah.”
“It was an accident.”
“Still happened.”
“You are not allowed to self-flagellate in the back of an SUV.”
“That a rule?”
“Is now.”
His mouth curved faintly. “Okay.”
“And if you apologize again, I’ll say something graphic about your arms just to make you uncomfortable.”
Sam made a noise. “Please don’t threaten him with a good time while I’m driving.”
Bucky shut his eyes.
You smiled weakly.
The SUV turned onto Bucky’s street.
Home, you thought, and immediately wished you had not.
You tried not to think about the fact that the safest place you had been all night was with the man who had accidentally poisoned you.
By the time Sam pulled up in front of the townhouse, Bucky had already decided he was carrying you inside.
He did not announce this.
Announcing it would give you time to argue, and you had already spent the last twenty minutes nauseous, honest, and stubborn enough to keep trying to sit up every time the SUV slowed at a light.
The truth serum had not knocked you out. That might have been easier, in some ways. Instead, it had left you too aware of everything. Too hot, too sick, too sharp around the edges. You kept blinking like the streetlights were too bright. Every so often, your mouth would open like a thought had tried to escape, and you would clamp your lips shut so hard your whole body went tense.
Bucky felt it every time.
Your head was still in his lap. His jacket bunched beneath your shoulder. One of your hands had curled loosely around the fabric near his knee, like you had grabbed onto the nearest thing during a bad turn and forgotten to let go.
Sam put the SUV in park and looked at the two of you through the rearview mirror. His face had lost most of the teasing by then, leaving behind concern and something quieter Bucky did not want to name.
“You need help gettin’ her in?”
“No,” Bucky said.
You opened one eye. “I am not luggage.”
“You’re right,” Sam said. “Luggage is easier.”
You lifted one hand, weakly, and pointed at Sam. “Your betrayal has been noted.”
Sam turned around enough to look at you properly. “You gonna be okay?”
Your mouth opened.
You seemed to consider the question. Or maybe fight it. It was hard to tell now. The serum had started to wear at you in waves, dragging honesty up at odd intervals and punishing you when you tried to push it back down.
Finally, you said, “Probably.”
Sam’s face shifted. “That sounded real.”
“It was.”
Bucky slid carefully out from under you. The second your head left his lap, your eyes shut tighter and your hand went to your stomach.
“Easy,” he said.
“I hate cars.”
“You used to jump out of them.”
“I hated them then, too.”
Bucky got out first, then opened the back door on your side. Cold air slid into the SUV, and you shivered once, hard enough that Bucky stopped thinking about anything except getting you inside.
He leaned in. “C’mere.”
“I can walk.”
“Didn’t ask.”
“Yeah, it’s implied by the way you’re looming.”
“You gonna fight me?”
You opened your eyes and looked at him.
For half a second, he saw the urge. Not a real fight. Not tonight. Just the reflexive objection to being helped. The old, embedded thing in both of you that said needing someone was another way to get trapped.
Then your stomach turned again. Your face tightened, and the fight went out of you with a quiet miserable breath.
“No,” you said.
Bucky reached in and lifted you carefully, one arm beneath your knees, the other around your back. You were warm against him, too warm. Your head tipped into his shoulder like you were too exhausted to keep it up.
The movement made your dress shift against his hand, smooth fabric under his palm. He kept his grip careful. Clinical. Useful. He had carried injured people before. Soldiers. Civilians. Strangers bleeding out in places they never should have been.
That was not the problem.
You were not a stranger. You were not a mission. You were his wife, except not really. His chief of staff. His best friend. The woman who had spent the last car ride accidentally telling him just how attractive he was.
His ears went hot again just thinking about it.
He adjusted his hold and looked at Sam.
“I’ve got her.”
Sam nodded, but his eyes lingered on Bucky’s face for one second too long.
“Yeah,” Sam said quietly. “I know.”
Bucky carried you up the steps and into the townhouse. Sam followed with Bucky’s jacket, your bag, and the folded paper bag Bucky had kept ready in case you got sick again.
Inside, the house was dark except for the entryway lamp Bucky had left on before the reception. Your shoes were still near the console table from earlier. Your coat hung over the arm of the couch. A stack of your folders sat on the coffee table, one marked with a color-coded tab system Bucky did not understand but respected too much to disturb.
His house looked lived in now.
You shifted against him. “Don’t carry me like I’m consumptive.”
Sam shut the door behind you. “Do people still say consumptive?”
“She’s been using historical terms,” Bucky said. “Says she’s tryna ‘meet me where I’m at’ or whatever. But it’s a good sign. Poisoned and still doing her vocabulary.”
“I’m not poisoned,” you muttered into Bucky’s shoulder. “Just, ah, chemically inconvenienced.”
Bucky glanced down at you. “You gonna let me take care of you?”
Your eyes opened. The serum was still in you. He saw it in the way your expression flickered, in the tiny pause before you answered. A fight behind your face.
Then, quietly, “Yes.”
Bucky carried you upstairs. You were quiet against him now, your fingers resting near the collar of his shirt. He could feel the warmth of your breath through the fabric at his shoulder. Every few steps, you swallowed hard, and his grip tightened even though there was nothing more he could do.
He hated all of it.
The tea. The five drops. The look on your face when you had realized what he had done. The fact that you had spent the last hour fighting your own body because of something he had given you.
At the top of the stairs, he carried you into the bedroom and lowered you onto the edge of the bed. He meant to step back immediately, give you space, get water, get a towel, get anything useful.
But you swayed.
He caught you by the shoulders.
“Still with me?”
You looked up at him, your eyes were slightly glassy, but focused.
“Unfortunately.”
His mouth softened despite himself. “Yeah, there she is.”
Sam appeared in the doorway with your bag. “You want me to stay?”
Bucky looked at you.
You were already shaking your head.
“No. I cannot have you asking any more questions near my sickbed.”
Sam put a hand to his chest. “I’m wounded.”
“You’ll live.”
Bucky took your bag from him. “I’ll call if anything changes.”
Sam’s expression sobered again. “You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Drink water,” Sam told you.
You lifted one hand without looking. “Goodbye, porch auntie.”
Sam laughed softly and left. Bucky heard the front door close downstairs.
Too quiet.
He stood by the bed, your bag in hand, watching you breathe through another wave of nausea. You pressed your fingers to your mouth, eyes shut, shoulders tight beneath the straps of your dress.
Bucky moved immediately.
“Bathroom?”
You shook your head once.
“Bowl?”
You nodded.
He grabbed the small trash bin from beside the desk, emptied the papers into a pile on the floor, and set it beside the bed. Then he went into the bathroom for a washcloth, ran it under cool water, wrung it out, and brought it back.
When he pressed it gently to the back of your neck, your whole body loosened by a fraction.
“Thank you,” you said.
He sat beside you, leaving space. “You need anything else?”
“My pajamas.”
“Okay.”
“And help.”
Bucky went still.
You seemed to realize what you had said only after it had left your mouth. The serum had loosened you enough to ask for something before pride could cut it down.
“I can do it,” you said immediately.
The lie hit you fast.
Bucky reached for the bowl, but you pressed a hand to your stomach and breathed through it.
“You don’t need to lie,” he said.
“I hate this.”
“I know.”
“I hate asking.”
“I know.”
He did. Better than most.
He kept his voice low. “I’ll help however you want. You tell me what to do.”
Your hands went to the side zipper of your dress, clumsy with exhaustion. Bucky looked away at once, but not before he saw the strap slide down your shoulder.
He turned to the wall, jaw clenching.
Behind him, fabric shifted. The dress hit the floor with a soft sound. Bucky stared at the paint like it contained answers.
It did not. It was just a wall. A very lucky wall.
“Barnes.”
His voice came out rough. “Yeah?”
“You can turn around. I’m not naked.”
He turned carefully.
Bad idea.
You were sitting on the edge of the bed in your bra and underwear, one arm wrapped around your stomach, hair mussed from the car ride, cheeks flushed from the serum. The washcloth had slipped from your neck to the mattress. Your dress lay pooled at your feet like it had surrendered.
Bucky’s brain stopped being useful.
He had seen you in evening gowns, tactical gear, sweats, blood, rain, a hospital blanket, his sweatshirt in the kitchen that morning. None of that had prepared him for this. For the ordinary intimacy of you half-undressed in his bedroom, too tired to posture properly, looking up at him.
He forced his eyes up to your face.
Your mouth curved faintly. Even sick you noticed.
“Don’t pass out, dreamboat.”
“I’m fine.”
“Sounded like a lie.”
“Wasn’t.”
“Mm.”
You leaned back on your hands. “Top drawer on the left. Pajamas.”
“Left dresser?”
“Yes.”
He moved too quickly, crossing to the dresser and opening the top left drawer. He froze.
Not pajamas.
At least, not only pajamas.
The top layer contained silk and lace, folded things in black and red and dark blue, fabric so delicate it barely looked capable of existing in daylight. It took his brain half a second to understand what he was looking at.
Then his entire body went hot.
Bucky shut the drawer halfway on instinct, then stopped because he still needed the damn pajamas.
“They’re in there,” you said behind him.
His eyes closed.
Of course they were. Of course your pajama drawer also contained lingerie. Of course he had opened it while you sat half-dressed on the bed behind him, sick and trusting and completely unaware that his mind had just betrayed every decent intention he had.
He stared at the drawer again. Pajamas. Find pajamas. He moved a black lace thong with two fingers, like it might explode. Before he could stop himself, he was imagining you in it.
You standing in this room with the lamp low and that sharp little smile on your mouth. You telling him to touch you, and him obliging you instantly. The feeling of the thin lace against your hot skin. Your legs tossed over his shoulders carelessly.
And then he imagines you wearing it for someone else. Letting someone else see the softness under all that armor. Someone else’s hands at your waist. Someone else pulling the straps down. Someone else making you laugh in a bedroom that was not his.
His stomach twisted.
Because of course you owned lingerie. You were an adult woman with a life before this fake marriage and a body that did not belong to him. Of course there had been other men. Other women, maybe. Other names. Other rooms. Other hands.
The ring on your finger was not a claim. The house was not a claim. The bed was not a claim. The word wife was not a claim, not the way he wanted it to be, not when you had agreed to stay married because it was safer than the scandal and not because you wanted him in any of the ways that kept him awake at night.
Still, the thought burned and he hated himself for it.
He hated that some small, ancient, selfish part of him wanted to know whether any of that lace had been worn for someone specific. Whether you had packed it because you planned to wear it again. Whether you had folded it into his dresser like a normal thing because, for you, it was normal.
“Everything okay?” You asked.
“No,” he said, because apparently your truth serum had become contagious.
You laughed weakly. “Find something scandalous, old man?”
He cleared his throat. “Pajamas.”
“Mmhmm.”
He found them at last beneath a folded slip he refused to examine too closely. Soft cotton shorts. An oversized T-shirt. Not his, thank God, because he was not built for that tonight. He closed the drawer with more care necessary and turned back.
His face felt hot.
You noticed immediately. Your eyebrows lifted.
“Oh.”
”Don’t.”
“What did you see?”
“Pajamas.”
“You are an abysmal liar. Are you blushing?”
“No.”
“You are.”
“I’m not.”
He held the pajamas out without stepping too close. “Here.”
You took them, fingers brushing his.
And then, with absolutely no warning and no apparent concern for his survival, you reached behind your back for the clasp of your bra.
Bucky spun around so fast his metal hand clipped the dresser.
The drawer rattled.
You started laughing.
He faced the wall. “What? You’re changing.”
“I was also changing thirty seconds ago.”
“I wasn’t looking thirty seconds ago.”
“You absolutely looked.”
“By accident.”
“Sure.”
He stared at the wall with the grim focus of a man trying to survive interrogation.
“You’re very committed to the gentleman act,” you said.
“It’s not an act.”
You made an unconvinced sound.
The bed shifted as you pulled on the t-shirt.
“Decency restored.”
When he turned around, you were in bed, or halfway there, sitting against the pillows in the oversized shirt and shorts. Your hair was loose around your face. Your skin still looked too warm. The bowl sat on the nightstand beside a glass of water.
He sat on the edge of the bed, far enough away that there was space between you. He wanted to touch your forehead. He wanted to check your pulse. He wanted to keep his hand in your hair until the tight line around your mouth went away.
“Serum wearing off?” He asked.
You nodded slowly. “I think so. It’s less loud.”
“Loud?”
“The honesty feels… loud.”
His throat tightened. “I’m sorry.”
You closed your eyes. “You already apologized.”
“Still.”
“I know.”
“You asked me not to self-flagellate.”
“I did. Very wise of me.”
“Trying not to.”
Your eyes opened. Softer now. Exhausted.
“You didn’t mean to.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“No.” You looked at him for a long second. “It was an accident.”
He nodded.
Bucky should have left it there. He should have told you to sleep, turned off the lamp, gone downstairs, called Sam, and spent the next several hours hating himself in the kitchen like a gentleman.
Instead, he heard your voice in the car again.
The eyes are worse.
He knew better. Knew you were still under the serum, knew asking near the edges was unfair. But the words had been inside him since the car, pressing against old wants he had spent months burying under strategy and restraint.
He looked at you.
“Did you mean what you said?” He asked.
Your fingers tightened around the blanket and he regretted it immediately.
“Sorry,” he said. “Don’t answer that.”
“No.” You swallowed. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not.”
”I can answer.”
“You don’t have to.”
You looked toward the window, then back at him. Your eyes were clear enough now that he let himself hope the serum had eased.
“In the car,” he said carefully. “You said some things.”
“I said many things.”
“Yeah.”
Bucky looked down at the ring on his hand. “I know you were dosed. I know it wasn’t fair. I’m not asking because I want to hold you to anything.”
“Then why are you asking?”
Because I love you.
Because I need to know if there is any part of this that is real for you too. Because every day in this house is killing me a little and I would thank you for it if you asked.
He did not say any of that.
Instead, he said, “I don’t know.”
You watched him for a long moment. Then your expression changed.
“Bucky,” you said. “We’re friends.”
He held still.
You continued, voice careful. “We’re friends. And colleagues. And we get along better than most people who accidentally end up married for press management reasons.”
He felt something in him begin to shrink.
You gave a small shrug, eyes not quite meeting his now.
“I meant what I said in the obvious way. You’re attractive. That’s just… objective information. Like weather. Or the fact Sam talks too much.”
He tried to smile.
“So that’s all?”
You hesitated a fraction, then nodded.
“That’s all.”
The words landed entirely too cleanly.
Bucky had been shot before. Stabbed. Frozen. Cut open and remade into something else. He knew pain in plenty of forms.
This one settled heavy behind his ribs.
Right. Of course. Friends, colleagues, fake spouses. Two people who worked well together and had made a bad decision in New Orleans. That was all it had ever been for you. That was all he had any right to expect.
He nodded once.
“Right,” he said, “of course.”
You looked at him then. Something flickered across your face, but he was already standing, already turning away because he could not sit there and let you see all of it.
“You should rest,” he said.
“Bucky—”
“I’ll be downstairs. Bowl’s there. Water too. Call if you need anything.”
His voice sounded normal. That was good. He had practice.
Bucky crossed to the door and paused with his hand on the frame. He did not look back. If he looked back, he might do something embarrassing, like ask again or apologize or tell you the truth when you didn’t want to hear it.
“Try to sleep,” he said.
Then he left, shutting the bedroom door behind him.
Bucky Barnes had survived wanting things he could not have before. He would survive this too.
He went downstairs, not seeing you grab the bowl he had left beside the bed and bend over it, shaking and miserable as your body rejected the words you had forced through your teeth.
summary. After a late-night in New Orleans, Congressman Bucky Barnes and his chief of staff wake up legally married. An annulment should be simple, but unfortunately, nothing about their lives is simple. With Bucky's reputation on the line and her past threatening to resurface, staying married starts to look like the safest option. It's only supposed to be temporary. Public appearances, a convincing story, and a quiet divorce once the headlines fade. But fake marriage is harder when everyone else believes it. Especially when Bucky is already in love with his wife.
word count. 7.3k
warnings. politics, Bucky hasn't realized Peter Parker is Spiderman, fake marriage setup, friends with questionable boundaries, references to the Red Room and Hydra but nothing graphic, lots of jokes about Bucky's age, reader is a little mean but Bucky is exactly where he wants to be
masterlist | series masterlist | last chapter | next chapter
“Is this thing on?”
“Yeah, camera’s rolling.”
Bucky cleared his throat, adjusting his tie slightly.
He caught a look from you sitting beside him, and immediately let go of the tie, opting instead to rest his arm behind you on the loveseat you were both situated on. You had spent time adjusting his tie before the interview started, and he could see the annoyance behind your eyes as he undid your work.
“Are… are the both of you ready?”
The journalist asked, getting the both of you to pull your gaze away from each other and focus on the camera. Bucky tried for a smile that came across as more of a grimace.
“Yes, we’re ready.” You offered her a bright smile. “Tessa, was it?”
“Tessa Grant.” She nodded, turning to look into the camera facing her. “This afternoon I’m here with Representative Barnes and his wife to talk about congressional life, their recent nuptials, and the Enhanced Persons Protections Act the congressman is sponsoring.”
The journalist launched into more information about Bucky and his first term in office, then introduced you. She read off her cue card the backstory you had provided for her: you grew up in Switzerland, the daughter of diplomats, had returned to the U.S. to attend an Ivy League school, and had eventually met Bucky when you started working on his congressional campaign.
And maybe that could’ve been the life you had if it wasn’t for the Red Room and wasn’t for Valentina, but you tried not to think about that. You settled into Bucky’s side.
“Well, on behalf of the network,” Tessa said, “I’d like to extend my congratulations on your recent wedding. I was personally surprised when I heard the news, I don’t think anyone knew you were seeing anyone, Representative Barnes.”
“Uh, thank you, thank you.” Bucky shifted uncomfortably next to you, you considered if a well-placed jab to his ribs would snap him out of it. “Yeah, we’re… we’re a pretty private couple.”
Tessa gave him a tight smile. “Yes, I can imagine. We’re grateful the both of you made time for this interview. How did the two of you meet?”
The question pulled a real smile from your lips.
The first time you had met Bucky, he wasn’t Bucky at all.
You had met the Winter Soldier about a decade ago when you were on a mission in Manila. You had been deployed to destabilize the local government, and the Winter Soldier had been sent to do the same. You both had different methods in mind to do so.
You never forgot the blue of his eyes, cold and lifeless, hardly containing any man at all. So entirely different from the blue eyes staring down at you now, a smile tugging up at the corners as he recalled the first time he could remember you.
Shortly after Manila, S.H.I.E.L.D. had fallen in D.C., and not long after that, Dreykov’s Red Room fell out of the sky. You didn’t see the Winter Soldier—you didn’t see Bucky—until years later, when Valentina handed you a folder containing details for your next operation.
And you recognized those blue eyes again. No longer a husk of a human, but definitely tired. You read his profile, a former Hydra operative running for Congress. A former weapon trying to do some good in the world. Something twisted in you.
“Well, I had been working a job I wanted to get out of. Paid well, wasn’t the most fulfilling,” you admitted. “And then I came across Bucky’s campaign. I liked his message. I liked him.”
“Was hardly a campaign ‘fore she came along,” Bucky admitted. “Knew I wanted to make a change, didn’t have an idea in hell of how to do it.”
“Oh, it was a trainwreck,” you agreed.
He chuckled, something like admiration glinting in his eyes as he smiled down at you. “Yeah. Didn’t stand a chance of winning until she came around and whipped us into shape. Owe it all to her, really.”
“All the help in the world wouldn’t have made a difference if voters didn’t genuinely like you. Don’t sell yourself short,” you nudged him playfully.
Tessa smiled at the exchange between the two of you. “So how long have you been together?”
You stared at Bucky for a second, silently trying to remember what you had agreed upon earlier.
“Depends what you mean by together,” he answered. “We’ve been together for years now. She’s been beside me through campaigns, hearings, bad hotel coffee, worse polling.”
You softened despite yourself.
“Guess somewhere in all of that, I realized I couldn’t imagine my life without her. Wouldn’t want to. She’s my best friend.”
You couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across your face, despite the fact that you knew you’d be hearing from Sam about that “best friend” comment later.
“And your elopement in New Orleans last week?” The journalist asked.
“Ah, well, when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible,” Bucky said.
You narrowed your eyes. “Did you… Did you just quote When Harry Met Sally?”
“Yeah, sweetheart,” he smiled. “You said you liked the movie, had to see what all the rage was.”
“I-I…” You stared at him incredulously. “When did you even have the time to watch that?”
He shrugged.
“So the wedding,” prodded Tessa, “wasn't just some kind of spontaneous accident?”
“Spontaneous, yes. Accident, no.” Bucky said.
“Oh, me and my dreamboat have just been incredibly happy, y’know?” You squeezed his hand a little harder than necessary. “And we’re also incredibly happy to be given this opportunity to talk about the bill the congressman is sponsoring.”
Beside you, Bucky’s thumb brushed once over your knuckles where your hands were joined together.
“Yes, of course,” Tessa said, glancing down at the card in her lap before looking back up. “The Enhanced Persons Protections Act. Representative Barnes, you’ve been very clear that this bill is one of the central priorities of your first term. Could you explain what it would do?”
The question steadied him. Bucky never liked talking about himself, but the work was different. He leaned forward slightly, his hand still holding yours.
“It protects people who’ve been treated like assets instead of people,” he said. “Enhanced people, but also former operatives, people with abilities they didn’t ask for. The bill creates clearer legal protections against forced recruitment, unlawful testing, coercion, and unauthorized experimentation.”
“You’ve spoken before about your own history making this issue personal.”
“It is personal,” Bucky said.
You watched his profile rather than the camera. His jaw was relaxed, but his eyes were not. There was always a point when interviews turned toward his past where the room seemed to forget he was sitting there.
His thumb brushed over your knuckles again in a grounding way. You did not know if he was grounding himself or you.
“Too many people have been used by governments, private groups who figured no one would stop them,” Bucky continued. “This bill is a declaration that we will not accept that.”
This was Bucky Barnes, with his crooked tie and his competence, and his stupid, steady voice that said things like that and made you remember why you had stayed with his campaign in the first place.
You had been sent to him once. Valentina had handed you the file with his picture clipped to the front and smiled like she’d given you a gift.
It should have been easy. Former assassin turned congressional candidate. Men with guilt complexes were usually easy, you found the wound, pressed your thumb into it, and waited for them to bleed.
Except Bucky had looked at you across a folding table in a half-empty campaign office and asked what you thought of his veterans’ housing plan.
He didn’t ask you about your resume, or your story, or why someone like you had appeared in his life with a perfect cover.
And you had given him your honest opinion on the housing plan. And he had given you a pen with the instructions to “fix it.”
“Well,” Tessa said, pulling you back into the room, “critics of the bill have argued that it creates too much federal oversight. That it may make private security firms or contractors hesitant to work with enhanced individuals at all.”
“Good,” you said. “If a company’s business model depends on exploiting enhanced individuals without oversight, then hesitation seems like a healthy first step.”
Tessa turned slightly toward you. “So you see this as an accountability bill?”
“I see it as a very basic don’t-put-people-in-cages bill,” you replied.
Bucky made a sound beside you.
You looked up at him. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You made a sound.”
“Usually I’m not supposed to say ‘cages’ on camera.” He shrugged.
“I’m not an elected official, your rules don’t apply to me.”
His expression warmed. You realized too late that you were smiling at him.
You were smiling at him the way you smiled when he found you in the hallway after a long vote and silently handed you the tea he pretended not to remember you liked. The way you smiled when he stood in front of a room of powerful men and refused to make himself smaller for their comfort.
You turned back to Tessa. “He needs correcting. Every now and then.”
“And what does Mrs. Barnes need?” Tessa asked.
Your spine tried to leave your body. Mrs. Barnes. You kept your expression pleasant through what could only be described as an internal systems failure.
You opened your mouth to answer but nothing came out. Deeply off-brand.
“She needs people to listen to her the first time,” Bucky said, filling the silence.
You looked up at him. He wasn’t looking at Tessa, he was looking at you.
“She’s usually already figured out the problem,” he continued. “Most folks just waste time making her prove it.”
Tessa leaned forward slightly. “Do the two of you ever find it difficult to separate the personal relationship from the professional one?”
“Yes,” you said immediately.
Tessa looked delighted. “And why is that?”
“Congressional offices are terrible places to have feelings,” you said. “But the work hasn’t changed. We trusted each other before any of this was public. The marriage didn’t create that, it just made people notice.”
The second the words left your mouth, you regretted them. They were true.
Tessa gave you a softer smile. “That’s a beautiful way to put it.”
“I’ll deny saying it if you make it sound sentimental.”
“We have it on camera.”
“Unfortunate.”
“Too late now, sweetheart,” Bucky leaned in closer, his voice low enough that the microphone might catch it but the crew probably wouldn’t.
Sweetheart.
He had called you that earlier. You had nearly blacked out from irritation. Or something similar to irritation. Something in the same district as irritation.
The interview went on. Tessa asked about the bill again, about the coalition behind it, about why some members were hesitant to support it. Bucky answered most of those questions. You corrected him twice when he understated his own work and once when he tried to say the bill had “a few” bipartisan sponsors.
“It has seventeen,” you said.
“Seventeen is a few.”
“Seventeen is not a few. Three is a few.”
“Fine.”
“Say coalition.”
“No.”
“Say coalition for the camera.”
He looked directly into the lens. “Coalition.”
“Good job, hotshot.” You patted his knee.
Bucky’s ears went faintly red.
Tessa asked if marriage had changed his perspective on public life.
Bucky took a moment with that one. Not too long, just long enough for you to feel him choose his words carefully.
“Maybe,” he said. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to keep parts of my life separate. Public, private. Past, present. Work, home. I don’t know if that always works.”
He was looking at Tessa, but his hand was still holding yours.
Bucky continued. “Sometimes the people who know you in one part of your life are the reason you can stand in the other parts.”
You hated that he could say something like that without sounding like he had rehearsed it in a mirror. You hated that you knew he had not rehearsed it because Bucky Barnes would rather walk barefoot across Legos than prepare an emotionally vulnerable answer for television. You hated that the answer landed somewhere under your ribs and stayed there.
Tessa let the silence sit for a moment, then smiled. “That sounds like a good place to end.”
The red camera light went off. Tessa unclipped her microphone with a pleased expression that made you deeply uneasy. You released Bucky’s hand, standing to smooth your dress.
“Tessa,” you said, offering your hand. “Thank you for your time.”
“Thank you.” She shook your hand, then Bucky’s. “You two were wonderful. The bill portion was strong, but the two of you together? There’s a warmth there. It will help people see a different side of him.”
“Yes,” you said. “That’s the hope.”
When you entered behind Bucky, silence rippled across the bullpen.
The office had a rhythm on normal days. Phones ringing. Keyboards clacking. Someone near the kitchenette swearing under their breath because the coffee machine was broken again. Mia saying, “No, absolutely not,” into a phone like she was sentencing someone. Papers moving. Shoes against carpet.
Today, all of it stopped.
Bucky stepped through the doorway first, one hand still near the small of your back from where he’d guided you through the hallway outside. He dropped it before anyone could read too much into it. The whole staff looked up at once.
Legislative aides. Press assistants. The district team.
And Peter Parker.
Bucky’s eyes landed on the kid without meaning to.
Peter stood near the copier with a stack of constituent letters in his arms, shoulders lifted nearly to his ears, eyes too wide behind his earnest little face. There was always something off about that kid. Bucky had seen Peter catch a falling stapler from across a desk once without looking. He had also watched the kid nearly trip over a trash can immediately afterward.
Behind him, you walked into the middle of the office, dropped your bag on the nearest empty chair, and looked around like you were daring the room to make a sound.
“Everyone,” you announced to the room, “if we could gather for two minutes.”
The staff gathered in clusters. Legislative aides near the conference table, press hovering by Mia’s door. Priya from constituent services holding a mug she had not taken a sip from. Oliver pretending not to look directly at your rings.
“I know this is personal news in a public office,” Bucky said, “so I’ll keep it simple. We’re married.”
Peter raised his hand.
Bucky ignored him.
“We wanted to tell you ourselves. The timing got away from us, and I know that puts this office in a strange position.”
Beside him, you did not move. He could feel how carefully still you had gone, as though if you held yourself together tightly enough, no one would see where the lie met the truth.
He wanted to reach for your hand.
He did not.
“Our expectations do not change,” you added. “We are still focused on the bill, the district, and the people this office serves. Our official statement is that the congressman and I are grateful for the kind words, we value our privacy, and we remain focused on the work.”
Peter raised his hand higher.
Bucky stared at him.
The kid lowered it halfway, seeming to reconsider the whole concept of having an arm, then lifted it again like he had committed to the bit and now had to die there.
You looked at him. “Yes, Peter?”
“Is,” Peter began, his eyes moved from you to Bucky, then back to you. “Is congratulations allowed?”
The sharpness in your eyes softened and you offered Peter a smile.
“Yes,” you said. “Congratulations is allowed.”
Peter nodded, very seriously. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks, kid.”
A few staffers murmured congratulations. Priya smiled warmly. Oliver whispered something to the press assistant beside him until Mia turned her head one inch in his direction and killed the thought in his mouth.
Then Elise from scheduling said, “Honestly, I think we’re all just happy for you. I mean, we were surprised. Obviously. But not… that surprised.”
You went very still beside Bucky.
“Not that surprised?” You asked.
“I mean, respectfully,” Peter said, trying to help, “you do fix his tie a lot.”
Both you and Bucky stared at him.
And because Peter Parker didn’t know when to put down the shovel, he continued.
“I mean, he lets you fix them. Which seems like a trust thing. Not a romantic thing. I mean, maybe romantic now. You’re married. Congratulations again.”
Tomas, clearly emboldened, added, “You also know his coffee order.”
“I know everyone’s coffee order,” you said.
“No, you don’t,” Mia said, not looking up from her tablet.
“Traitor.”
“Alright, well that’s probably enough of Q&A time for now,” Mia said, her tone shifting. “We have a veterans’ group arriving in ten minutes, the congressman has a call with Senator Alvarez at two.”
Peter raised his hand again.
Bucky looked at him. “Yes, Peter?”
“Sorry, just for clarity, if someone asks if we’re happy for you, can we say yes?”
Bucky tried not to smile.
You failed first.
“Yes, Peter,” you said. “You can say you’re happy for us.”
Peter smiled. “Great. Because I am.”
Bucky had expected scrutiny or awkwardness. Maybe suspicion. He had prepared for the sharp edge of it. He had not prepared for people being happy or for his staff looking at the two of you and deciding this made sense.
“Wonderful. Emotional moment concluded,” you announced. “Back to work.”
The staff scattered, the office resuming its rhythm. Phones rang again, someone typed too loudly. Peter finally delivered the letters to Priya’s desk, nearly colliding with a chair, caught the chair before it fell, then pretended that had not happened.
“Stop glaring at the intern,” you said beside Bucky.
“I’m not glaring.”
“You absolutely are.”
“There’s something off about him.”
“He’s just a kid,” you shrugged.
Bucky turned to you, narrowing his eyes. “You know something.”
“I know many things.”
“About Parker. You hired him.”
“I hire a lot of people.”
“What do you know?”
You gave him a pleasant smile. “I know we have a veterans’ group in eight minutes and if you keep staring at Peter like that, people are going to wonder why you’re beefing with the intern. Pick on someone your own age, why don’t you, Barnes?”
Bucky huffed in annoyance, but a slow smile spread across his features. “Y’know, speaking of age…”
“What,” you said, raising an eyebrow, “did you leave your dentures somewhere, Optimus-past-his-prime?”
“Optimus…?” Bucky looked confused.
Your mouth formed a little ‘o.’
“You haven’t seen Transformers, have you?”
“I’ve been a little busy, with the Russian brainwashing and everything, sweetheart,” he rolled his eyes.
You scoffed. “You think you’re special, Gandalf?”
“Alright I think—and I understand that reference—we’re getting away from my point. You remember what you said to me in New Orleans?” Bucky asked.
You made a face.
“I said a lot of things, and I definitely don’t remember them all. I have to assume two of those words were ‘I do,’ so I guess that’s something.”
He shook his head. “Not that. You were telling me that no one would believe I’m your boyfriend because I’m too old. Said you were too ‘youthful.’”
You nodded. “Sure, sounds like me.”
A smug grin tugged at the corners of his mouth, and he nodded at the staffers. “I just want to make sure you know that you were just proven wrong. The staff had no problem believing I’m your husband. I guess I am a spring chicken after all.”
You opened your mouth to respond with something sharp and witty, but no words came.
“They’re here,” Mia called from her office.
Bucky nodded, stepping away from you and walking to the front of the office to greet the veterans’ group.
He stopped halfway, turning back to you.
“And one more thing, chief?”
You met his gaze. “Hm?”
“Gandalf was an incredibly powerful wizard. The Dwarves of Durin’s Folk never would’ve been able to retake Erebor without him.”
He shot you a cocky grin and continued on to the front of the office.
You scowled at his retreating form.
“Fuckin’ nerd.”
The jeweler was exactly the kind of place you expected Bucky Barnes to know.
It was tucked into a side street in Georgetown, behind a dark green door with a brass handle polished so thoroughly you could see your own distorted reflection in it. There was no flashy sign out front, no diamonds glittering in the window. Just a small gold plaque that read Feldman & Sons and a narrow window displaying one antique watch, a strand of pearls, and a sign that said “By Appointment.”
“This looks like a place where old money comes to buy its blood diamonds,” you muttered.
“They don’t sell blood diamonds.”
“You asked?”
He glanced at you. “Yes.”
You turned to him.
He looked back, annoyingly calm.
Of course he had asked. Of course James Buchanan Barnes had made sure his fake-marriage ring upgrade did not involve exploitative mining practices. Of course he had probably researched the place, called ahead, and asked careful questions.
You narrowed your eyes. “You’re very prepared for a man who accidentally got married.”
His face did something small, there and gone.
“I like being prepared.”
You looked back at the green door.
You could handle a chapel ring. A cheap little silver thing from a rotating display case between a plastic bouquet and a brochure for the Jazz It Up package. That ring had been ridiculous. Temporary. An object with an exit strategy.
This place had insurance policies and probably used words like “heirloom” seriously. You did not like it.
Bucky looked at you. “We don’t have to do this.”
You snapped your eyes to him. “Excuse me?”
He lifted one shoulder. “If you don’t want to.”
“Oh, I want to. I just want to complain a bit while doing it.”
“That’s different?”
“That’s marriage.”
His mouth twitched.
You pointed at him. “Do not look pleased. I’m using the word as a legal category.”
“‘Course.”
“You’re doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
“The thing where you sound agreeable, but your face is smug.”
“I have a smug face?”
You nodded. “You have many faces. I’m building a database.”
He reached around you and opened the door.
“Always the gentleman,” you said.
“It’s polite.”
“It’s very 1940s.”
“Been told.”
You stepped past him into the shop. “Thanks, Captain Chivalry.”
He sighed behind you.
The inside of Feldman & Sons smelled faintly of lemon oil, old wood, and cold metal. Glass cases lined the walls, each one carefully lit from within. Nothing sparkled aggressively. Everything gleamed with restraint. Rings sat in velvet trays like they were waiting to be chosen by people who knew how to pronounce all the French words on a wine list.
There were antique brooches, men’s watches, signet rings, tiny gold lockets, and diamond bands that looked as if they had survived better-dressed wars than the one currently being waged in your chest.
An older man stepped out from the back room almost immediately.
He had silver hair, rimless glasses, and the composed expression of a person who had seen enough engagement panic to become immune to it. His suit fit beautifully, in the way that made you suspect his tailor knew family secrets.
“Congressman Barnes,” he said warmly.
Bucky nodded. “Arthur.”
Of course he knew his jeweler by first name.
You looked at Bucky. He ignored you.
“And Mrs. Barnes,” Arthur turned to you, his expression softening to something respectful without becoming familiar.
“A pleasure to meet you,” you said brightly.
Arthur smiled. “I understand congratulations are in order.”
“Are they?” You asked.
Bucky said your name under his breath, his tone laced with amusement.
Arthur’s smile deepened. “I’ll say they are.”
Arthur gestured toward a seating area near the back. Two chairs sat before a glass-topped consultation table. A tray had already been arranged there, covered with a dark velvet cloth.
Already arranged.
Bucky had called ahead.
You sat first, because standing there would look suspicious, and because Bucky remained beside your chair until you did.
Arthur took the chair on the other side of the table and folded his hands.
“I pulled a few options based on what Congressman Barnes mentioned over the phone,” he said.
You turned to Bucky. “You mentioned things?”
“He asked what you might like.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing strange,” Bucky said. “Or too showy.”
He was right.
“And that you’d probably prefer something with a little history.”
Also not wrong.
Bucky Barnes knowing things about you was not new. He knew your coffee order, the way you hated having your back to open doors, how you kept snacks in your desk drawer but forgot to eat them, which donors made your jaw clench, and which jokes meant you were actually upset.
You leaned back in your chair. “Fine. Proceed, Arthur. Show me the tasteful evidence.”
Arthur lifted the velvet cloth, and for a second, you forgot to be sarcastic.
There were maybe a dozen of them. Some gold, some platinum, some with diamonds arranged in clean lines, others with sapphires or small emeralds or filigree work delicate enough to make you worry about crushing them in your fist.
Arthur began explaining Edwardian settings, old European cuts, mine cuts, platinum bands, hand engraving, restoration work. You listened with half an ear, because you were good at listening while pretending not to.
Arthur slid a ring with a halo of tiny diamonds around a center stone toward you.
You tilted your head. “I don’t know… it just has third-wife energy. Maybe for one of my next marriages?”
Bucky stifled a laugh.
“I see,” Arthur said with a nod.
Arthur then handed you a thin gold band with small stones.
You tried it on. It looked wrong on your hand. Pretty, yes, but wrong. Like something that would apologize after being stepped on.
“No,” you said. “It would not survive me.”
Bucky’s eyes dropped to your hand, then back to your face. “No?”
“No.”
Arthur moved the next ring into the center of the tray.
It was smaller than some of the others, but not timid. A central diamond set low, not raised like it needed to be shown off. Old cut. Softer than modern stones, catching the light in flashes rather than fire. On either side, tiny sapphires were tucked into the setting, dark enough that they looked nearly black until light hit them.
And when light did hit them, they were the exact same shade of blue as—
No.
No, you were not going to think about that.
“What’s this one?” You asked.
“Old European-cut diamond, with sapphire accents,” Arthur informed you. “The engraving is original, though worn. It’s been cleaned and checked, but not over-restored.”
“Not over-restored,” you repeated.
“No, some pieces lose character if you try to make them look new.”
You picked up the ring, turning it once, watching the light move across the worn detailing. There were tiny imperfections in the metal, softened by time. It looked like something that had survived being loved.
You slid it onto your finger before you could talk yourself out of it.
It fit. Of course it fit. You stared at your hand, your fingers flexing once. The sapphires flashed.
Beside you, Bucky did not move. You could feel his stillness, but you did not look at him because if you looked at him, you would have to name whatever was happening in the air, and you had survived too long by refusing to name things until absolutely necessary.
Arthur smiled faintly. “It suits you.”
You swallowed.
Then lifted your chin. “Well, obviously.”
Bucky’s voice came lower than before. “You like it?”
You looked at him then.
Big mistake.
His eyes were on you now. Blue, steady, unreadable in that infuriating way of his. There was something behind them you didn’t know how to hold.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” you said. “I’m capable of liking beautiful things.”
“I know,” he said softly.
You cleared your throat, looking down at the ring again. “It might be too expensive.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine.”
“It’s covered.”
“By who?”
“Me. Are you done?”
“No. I’m just warming up.”
Bucky sighed. “We need rings.”
“We need rings,” you agreed, “we don’t need to put a down payment on something that could have an ancestral curse.”
His mouth twitched. “Ancestral curse?”
“It’s from the 1910s, anything could have happened.”
“We do inspect for structural damage,” Arthur said gently.
“I am speaking spiritually, Arthur,” you replied.
“Ah.”
“You want to look at more?” Bucky asked.
You looked down at the tray, and suddenly every other ring looked like someone else’s life.
“No.”
The answer came too fast.
“But don’t look too pleased about it,” you added.
“Can’t be pleased my wife likes her ring?”
Your breath caught. You hated how easily he had said it.
You looked toward Arthur. “Do you have men’s rings? Preferably something for a man whose personality is stuck in the stone age?”
“Of course,” Arthur said. “I pulled a few options for Congressman Barnes as well.”
“Excellent,” you said. “He doesn’t get to be financially noble alone.”
“You don’t have to buy mine,” Bucky said, turning to you.
“Oh, I absolutely do.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“This isn’t–”
You leaned closer and smiled. “Husband.”
He stopped. Good. Effective.
You continued sweetly. “Are you denying your wife the joy of gift-giving?”
“You are enjoying this too much,” Bucky muttered.
“I enjoy very few things in life. Let me have this.”
Arthur returned with another tray of men’s bands. Gold, platinum, brushed metal, darker finishes. Some plain, some engraved, some too modern, some too delicate. Bucky tried on a few, but you could tell he wasn’t overly impressed with any yet.
You picked up a simple band with a narrow engraved line around the center. It was solid without being showy. Clean. Old-fashioned. It looked like him. Steady. Understated.
You handed it to him.
“Try this one.”
Bucky took it.
His fingers brushed yours.
He slid the ring onto his left hand, looking at the ring, then at you.
“Well?”
You tried to summon a joke, but for once, it came late.
“It’ll do.”
His eyebrows lifted. “That’s all?”
You shrugged.
After being given the green light for both rings, Arthur took them to a different counter to wrap them up. You leaned back in your chair and crossed your arms.
“You didn’t have to say yes,” Bucky said after a minute.
You turned to face him.
“To the ring?” You asked.
“To any of this.”
You felt your body go still. There it was, the thing under the thing.
“I know,” you said.
You drummed your fingers lightly against your knee, adding, “the old rings looked ridiculous.”
“They did. Probably best that we have rings that don’t look like they came with a free souvenir cup.”
You snorted. “That was almost funny.”
“I try.”
“Do you?”
“With you.”
You stared at him.
He seemed to realize what he had said only after it was too late, his eyes shifting away.
Bucky had expected you to complain more.
He had prepared for it, actually.
Not because you were unreasonable, but because moving into his townhouse had seemed like the kind of thing you would resist on principle. It was one thing to wear a ring in public, one thing to sit beside him in an interview and smile like the marriage had been a private choice, one thing to let the office believe the story because the alternative was worse.
Moving in was different. Closets, toothbrushes. Your shoes by his door next to his. Your books on his shelves. Your life occupying space in his.
Bucky had expected a fight, he had not expected you to walk through the front door of his townhouse, stop in the entryway with a box balanced against your hip, and go silent.
You were trying not to show it, but Bucky had learned you too well for that. Your shoulders lowered the smallest amount. Your eyes moved over the space with the quick, precise assessment you gave every room you entered.
The townhouse was not grand. Narrow, brick-fronted, with creaky stairs and too many built-ins. But it was solid, and significantly nicer and safer than your apartment. Better locks, no alley-facing bedroom window. No lobby where anyone with a clipboard and confidence could talk their way inside.
“Okay,” you said.
Bucky shut the door behind him. “Okay?”
You set the box down on the console table and walked deeper inside, slow enough that he knew you were trying not to seem impressed.
“This is irritating.”
He leaned back against the closed door. “My house?”
“Your house being so nice.”
His mouth tugged despite himself. “Sorry.”
“You should be.”
You glanced around the living room, taking in the dark wood floors, the fireplace, the bookshelves, and the deep green couch Sam had bullied him into buying.
“This severely undermines my moral position,” you said.
“What moral position?”
“That moving in with you is a sacrifice.”
He tilted his head slightly. “Is it?”
You looked back at him, eyes narrowing. Bucky held up both hands. You turned away, but not before he caught the small curve at the corner of your mouth.
“It’s inconvenient,” you shrugged, stepping into the living room and running a hand along the back of the couch. “But materially? This is a significant improvement.”
Bucky picked up the box you had abandoned and carried it toward the stairs. You had packed quickly, which meant very little had been labeled in ways a normal person would understand. This box had DESK/FILES/KNIVES? written on the side in black marker.
He paused at the bottom of the staircase and looked back at you.
“Knives?”
You waved him off. “It’s an old box.”
The townhouse had been quiet for years. Too quiet, sometimes. After everything, he had wanted quiet. He had wanted a place where no one came through the door unless he let them in, where the walls stayed where they were, where the furniture did not move unless he moved it. A place that belonged to him, because for a long time nothing had.
But quiet could turn on a man. The house had a way of making his own breathing sound too loud. A way of stretching night into something flat and empty. He had gotten used to it, or told himself he had. He cooked badly in the kitchen, read reports in the living room, slept poorly in the bedroom, and let the place stay clean because clean was easier than lived-in.
In the space of ten minutes, you had placed two boxes in the hallway, a coat over the banister, your bag on the entry table, and a pair of sunglasses beside his keys.
He carried the box into the bedroom and set it near the dresser. The room felt different with your things in it, even boxed. Warmer.
He looked at the bed and made himself look away.
You were not really his wife. Not like that.
By the time he returned downstairs, you were in the kitchen, opening cabinets. Of course you were. You had your blazer sleeves pushed up and the expression of a woman conducting an inspection that would end badly for someone.
You opened one cabinet, stared inside, then slowly closed it. You opened another. Closed it. Opened the pantry. You went very still.
He braced himself.
“Barnes?”
“Yes?”
“What is this?”
“My pantry?”
“No.”
“It is.”
You stepped aside so he could see.
Coffee. Protein bars. Peanut butter. A few cans of soup. No cereal. No snacks that could be described as anything other than fuel. A small box of tea that Sam had once left behind.
You gestured to it like a prosecutor presenting Exhibit A.
“Y’know we don’t have to ration anymore, right?”
“It’s food.”
He smiled despite himself and reached for one of the smaller boxes near the doorway. This one was labeled KITCHEN/NO KNIVES :(, which worried him more than the knife box. He opened the box. Tea, mugs, a small jar of honey. Two mismatched bowls. A tiny bottle of something labeled in a language he didn’t recognize.
You gave him a small smile, helping to unpack the box.
There it was again: the strange, sharp brightness of having you in his space. You made the air move. You made the kitchen feel less like a room he used and more like a room where things might happen. Arguments, coffee, bad jokes. You opening cabinets and declaring war on his grocery habits.
“I can clear a shelf,” Bucky said, putting the tea on the counter.
Your fingers paused around the mug you were unwrapping.
“A shelf?” You said.
“For your tea.”
“I don’t need a whole shelf.”
“I’ll clear a shelf.”
Bucky opened the pantry and started moving things. Coffee to the top shelf. Protein bars into a basket. Soup to the back. He could feel you watching him, though you pretended to be busy unwrapping mugs. This was his home, and he was shifting his things around so yours could fit.
Behind him, you said, quieter, “You don’t have to rearrange everything.”
He kept moving the coffee. “I know.”
“It’s your house.”
He looked over his shoulder. You were standing by the counter, one mug held in both hands. It was chipped on the handle. Blue. He had seen it on your desk.
“Our cover’s better if it looks like you live here,” he said, turning back to the pantry before you could read him too closely. “Which shelf?”
“One I can reach without climbing.”
“That eliminates a third of them.”
You scoffed, coming up beside him and arranging boxes immediately. He leaned one shoulder against the cabinet and watched you take over. You looked comfortable. Not fully.
You were still too aware of the room, still clocking exits and windows, still moving with the restless caution he knew came from training neither of you liked to name too often. But under it, there was relief. He could see it in the small things. The way you did not flinch when the pipes creaked. The way you left your bag on the chair instead of keeping it looped over your shoulder. The way you had not once asked about the locks, probably because you had already approved them.
“You like it,” he said.
You did not look at him. “Like what?”
“The house.”
You shrugged. “The bathroom is excellent.”
“Glad it passed.”
“The closet is also acceptable.”
“Acceptable?”
“Don’t get cocky. Your living room only has one decorative pillow.”
“It has two.”
“One of them is lumbar support.”
“I like that pillow.”
“That’s because you’re elderly.”
He rolled his eyes. You caught it and smiled, pleased with yourself.
That smile did something to him. It always did, but here, in his kitchen, with your tea on his shelf and your ring catching the light as you moved boxes around, it was worse. Harder to ignore. The whole day had been a long exercise in pretending that every ordinary thing was strategy. The interview. The office. The jeweler.
The lies sat next to the truth so neatly that sometimes he had trouble seeing where one ended. You were moving in because the marriage needed to look real and because your apartment was terrible and his house was better. You were not moving in because he wanted you here.
The house hummed quietly around you. Refrigerator, pipes, distant traffic outside. Your box of tea sat in his pantry. Bucky did not know what to say.
You saved him from trying.
“Well,” you said, turning back to the counter and lifting another box, “that ends today. You’re going to own snacks.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“It is. That’s why people enjoy it.”
He stepped closer and took the box from you before you could lift it.
You frowned. “I had that.”
“I know.”
You crossed your arms. “You know, the chivalry thing is going to get old.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It might.”
“It won’t.”
He carried the box upstairs.
Your bedroom–his bedroom, no, the bedroom–was next. That was the part he had been avoiding in his head, which was useless because the bed was not going to become less obvious through neglect.
You stood near the closet, looking inside with the same expression you had given the pantry, though softer this time. He had cleared half of it before you arrived. More than half, technically. His suits had been pushed to one side. The drawers on the left were empty. The top shelf had space for whatever you kept in those alarming little bags you never let anyone touch.
You looked at the empty side, then at him.
“You did this already?”
He set the box down. “Yeah.”
“When?”
“Before the interview.”
You stared.
“I knew we’d probably need to move fast,” he said.
“You cleared a lot,” you said.
“I don’t need much.”
You passed him on your way out of the closet, close enough that your shoulder brushed his arm. He did not move. Neither did you, not for half a second. Then you continued into the bedroom, scanning the space like you could avoid the bed by sheer force of will.
Bucky watched you notice it.
The bed was made. Neatly, because he had made it this morning before leaving, before the interview, before the office, before rings, before you walking through his front door.
You put both hands on your hips.
“Well,” you said.
Bucky leaned against the doorframe. “Well?”
“We should discuss the sleeping situation.”
“Couch is fine.”
“No.”
He blinked.
You turned toward him. “Absolutely not.”
“I don’t mind.”
“That’s because your relationship with discomfort is alarmingly intimate.”
“It’s one night.”
“It won’t be one night.”
Of course you were right. If you were moving in, if the building staff saw you, if anyone in the office dropped something off, if the public marriage had to survive more than a week, the couch would not work.
More than that, Bucky knew you. You would not let him sleep on the couch in his own house. Not because you were sentimental, but you wouldn’t let him accuse you of elder abuse.
“You take the bed,” he insisted.
You stared at him. He recognized the expression. Wrong answer.
“Barnes.”
“What?”
“You are not being exiled from your own mattress because of a fake marriage we drunkenly wandered into.” You walked to the left side of the bed and put your hand on the pillow. “I’ll take this side, you’re okay with the right?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not going to stare at the ceiling all night like a haunted portrait?”
“I can’t promise that.”
You sat on the edge of the bed and bounced once, testing the mattress.
“This is a very good bed,” you said. “It’s further incentivizing me to stay in this marriage.”
He snorted. “Could be worse reasons.”
“You’re being very agreeable today,” you observed.
He moved toward the door. “I’ll bring up the rest of the boxes.”
Bucky turned and walked downstairs, stopping for a moment at the bottom, hand on the banister, and let himself listen. Not for threats or movement outside.
For you.
Moving around upstairs. Opening a box. Muttering something about his closet. Laughing once under your breath at your own joke.
Bucky looked toward the living room, where your bags sat beside his keys and your coat hung over the arm of the couch. One of your shoes had tipped onto its side near the entry table. Your sunglasses were still beside the bowl where he kept loose change.
Bucky picked up the next box and carried it upstairs to his wife.
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Bucky stood at the sink shaving. Standard fake-married roommate behavior.
The bathroom smelled faintly of cedar soap, mint toothpaste, and the tea he had made you before coming upstairs. The mirror was beginning to fog at the edges from the shower he had taken earlier. Morning light came in through the frosted window, softening the lines of his face as he drew the razor carefully along his jaw.
You watched him for perhaps two seconds too long, then looked back down at the crossword because you had survival instincts.
“Seven letters,” you said around the pen. “Old-timey word for handsome.”
Bucky’s eyes flicked to you. “Why’re you askin’ me?”
“I’m consulting a primary source.”
He rinsed the razor. “Debonair.”
You removed the pen from your mouth and stared at him. “Of course you knew that.”
He looked unimpressed, going back to shaving. “You gonna write it in?”
“Don’t rush me. I’m deciding if I want to give you the satisfaction.”
His mouth twitched, which nearly ruined the clean line he was shaving beneath his cheekbone.
You pointed the pen at him. “Careful, honeybun. Wouldn’t want to have to clean up bloodshed in the bathroom before eight.”
“Honeybun?”
You nodded. “Yeah, m’trying out old school pet names. Trying to meet you where you’re at, and all that.”
summary. After a late-night in New Orleans, Congressman Bucky Barnes and his chief of staff wake up legally married. An annulment should be simple, but unfortunately, nothing about their lives is simple. With Bucky's reputation on the line and her past threatening to resurface, staying married starts to look like the safest option. It's only supposed to be temporary. Public appearances, a convincing story, and a quiet divorce once the headlines fade. But fake marriage is harder when everyone else believes it. Especially when Bucky is already in love with his wife.
word count. 7.3k
warnings. politics, Bucky hasn't realized Peter Parker is Spiderman, fake marriage setup, friends with questionable boundaries, references to the Red Room and Hydra but nothing graphic, lots of jokes about Bucky's age, reader is a little mean but Bucky is exactly where he wants to be
masterlist | series masterlist | last chapter | next chapter
“Is this thing on?”
“Yeah, camera’s rolling.”
Bucky cleared his throat, adjusting his tie slightly.
He caught a look from you sitting beside him, and immediately let go of the tie, opting instead to rest his arm behind you on the loveseat you were both situated on. You had spent time adjusting his tie before the interview started, and he could see the annoyance behind your eyes as he undid your work.
“Are… are the both of you ready?”
The journalist asked, getting the both of you to pull your gaze away from each other and focus on the camera. Bucky tried for a smile that came across as more of a grimace.
“Yes, we’re ready.” You offered her a bright smile. “Tessa, was it?”
“Tessa Grant.” She nodded, turning to look into the camera facing her. “This afternoon I’m here with Representative Barnes and his wife to talk about congressional life, their recent nuptials, and the Enhanced Persons Protections Act the congressman is sponsoring.”
The journalist launched into more information about Bucky and his first term in office, then introduced you. She read off her cue card the backstory you had provided for her: you grew up in Switzerland, the daughter of diplomats, had returned to the U.S. to attend an Ivy League school, and had eventually met Bucky when you started working on his congressional campaign.
And maybe that could’ve been the life you had if it wasn’t for the Red Room and wasn’t for Valentina, but you tried not to think about that. You settled into Bucky’s side.
“Well, on behalf of the network,” Tessa said, “I’d like to extend my congratulations on your recent wedding. I was personally surprised when I heard the news, I don’t think anyone knew you were seeing anyone, Representative Barnes.”
“Uh, thank you, thank you.” Bucky shifted uncomfortably next to you, you considered if a well-placed jab to his ribs would snap him out of it. “Yeah, we’re… we’re a pretty private couple.”
Tessa gave him a tight smile. “Yes, I can imagine. We’re grateful the both of you made time for this interview. How did the two of you meet?”
The question pulled a real smile from your lips.
The first time you had met Bucky, he wasn’t Bucky at all.
You had met the Winter Soldier about a decade ago when you were on a mission in Manila. You had been deployed to destabilize the local government, and the Winter Soldier had been sent to do the same. You both had different methods in mind to do so.
You never forgot the blue of his eyes, cold and lifeless, hardly containing any man at all. So entirely different from the blue eyes staring down at you now, a smile tugging up at the corners as he recalled the first time he could remember you.
Shortly after Manila, S.H.I.E.L.D. had fallen in D.C., and not long after that, Dreykov’s Red Room fell out of the sky. You didn’t see the Winter Soldier—you didn’t see Bucky—until years later, when Valentina handed you a folder containing details for your next operation.
And you recognized those blue eyes again. No longer a husk of a human, but definitely tired. You read his profile, a former Hydra operative running for Congress. A former weapon trying to do some good in the world. Something twisted in you.
“Well, I had been working a job I wanted to get out of. Paid well, wasn’t the most fulfilling,” you admitted. “And then I came across Bucky’s campaign. I liked his message. I liked him.”
“Was hardly a campaign ‘fore she came along,” Bucky admitted. “Knew I wanted to make a change, didn’t have an idea in hell of how to do it.”
“Oh, it was a trainwreck,” you agreed.
He chuckled, something like admiration glinting in his eyes as he smiled down at you. “Yeah. Didn’t stand a chance of winning until she came around and whipped us into shape. Owe it all to her, really.”
“All the help in the world wouldn’t have made a difference if voters didn’t genuinely like you. Don’t sell yourself short,” you nudged him playfully.
Tessa smiled at the exchange between the two of you. “So how long have you been together?”
You stared at Bucky for a second, silently trying to remember what you had agreed upon earlier.
“Depends what you mean by together,” he answered. “We’ve been together for years now. She’s been beside me through campaigns, hearings, bad hotel coffee, worse polling.”
You softened despite yourself.
“Guess somewhere in all of that, I realized I couldn’t imagine my life without her. Wouldn’t want to. She’s my best friend.”
You couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across your face, despite the fact that you knew you’d be hearing from Sam about that “best friend” comment later.
“And your elopement in New Orleans last week?” The journalist asked.
“Ah, well, when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible,” Bucky said.
You narrowed your eyes. “Did you… Did you just quote When Harry Met Sally?”
“Yeah, sweetheart,” he smiled. “You said you liked the movie, had to see what all the rage was.”
“I-I…” You stared at him incredulously. “When did you even have the time to watch that?”
He shrugged.
“So the wedding,” prodded Tessa, “wasn't just some kind of spontaneous accident?”
“Spontaneous, yes. Accident, no.” Bucky said.
“Oh, me and my dreamboat have just been incredibly happy, y’know?” You squeezed his hand a little harder than necessary. “And we’re also incredibly happy to be given this opportunity to talk about the bill the congressman is sponsoring.”
Beside you, Bucky’s thumb brushed once over your knuckles where your hands were joined together.
“Yes, of course,” Tessa said, glancing down at the card in her lap before looking back up. “The Enhanced Persons Protections Act. Representative Barnes, you’ve been very clear that this bill is one of the central priorities of your first term. Could you explain what it would do?”
The question steadied him. Bucky never liked talking about himself, but the work was different. He leaned forward slightly, his hand still holding yours.
“It protects people who’ve been treated like assets instead of people,” he said. “Enhanced people, but also former operatives, people with abilities they didn’t ask for. The bill creates clearer legal protections against forced recruitment, unlawful testing, coercion, and unauthorized experimentation.”
“You’ve spoken before about your own history making this issue personal.”
“It is personal,” Bucky said.
You watched his profile rather than the camera. His jaw was relaxed, but his eyes were not. There was always a point when interviews turned toward his past where the room seemed to forget he was sitting there.
His thumb brushed over your knuckles again in a grounding way. You did not know if he was grounding himself or you.
“Too many people have been used by governments, private groups who figured no one would stop them,” Bucky continued. “This bill is a declaration that we will not accept that.”
This was Bucky Barnes, with his crooked tie and his competence, and his stupid, steady voice that said things like that and made you remember why you had stayed with his campaign in the first place.
You had been sent to him once. Valentina had handed you the file with his picture clipped to the front and smiled like she’d given you a gift.
It should have been easy. Former assassin turned congressional candidate. Men with guilt complexes were usually easy, you found the wound, pressed your thumb into it, and waited for them to bleed.
Except Bucky had looked at you across a folding table in a half-empty campaign office and asked what you thought of his veterans’ housing plan.
He didn’t ask you about your resume, or your story, or why someone like you had appeared in his life with a perfect cover.
And you had given him your honest opinion on the housing plan. And he had given you a pen with the instructions to “fix it.”
“Well,” Tessa said, pulling you back into the room, “critics of the bill have argued that it creates too much federal oversight. That it may make private security firms or contractors hesitant to work with enhanced individuals at all.”
“Good,” you said. “If a company’s business model depends on exploiting enhanced individuals without oversight, then hesitation seems like a healthy first step.”
Tessa turned slightly toward you. “So you see this as an accountability bill?”
“I see it as a very basic don’t-put-people-in-cages bill,” you replied.
Bucky made a sound beside you.
You looked up at him. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You made a sound.”
“Usually I’m not supposed to say ‘cages’ on camera.” He shrugged.
“I’m not an elected official, your rules don’t apply to me.”
His expression warmed. You realized too late that you were smiling at him.
You were smiling at him the way you smiled when he found you in the hallway after a long vote and silently handed you the tea he pretended not to remember you liked. The way you smiled when he stood in front of a room of powerful men and refused to make himself smaller for their comfort.
You turned back to Tessa. “He needs correcting. Every now and then.”
“And what does Mrs. Barnes need?” Tessa asked.
Your spine tried to leave your body. Mrs. Barnes. You kept your expression pleasant through what could only be described as an internal systems failure.
You opened your mouth to answer but nothing came out. Deeply off-brand.
“She needs people to listen to her the first time,” Bucky said, filling the silence.
You looked up at him. He wasn’t looking at Tessa, he was looking at you.
“She’s usually already figured out the problem,” he continued. “Most folks just waste time making her prove it.”
Tessa leaned forward slightly. “Do the two of you ever find it difficult to separate the personal relationship from the professional one?”
“Yes,” you said immediately.
Tessa looked delighted. “And why is that?”
“Congressional offices are terrible places to have feelings,” you said. “But the work hasn’t changed. We trusted each other before any of this was public. The marriage didn’t create that, it just made people notice.”
The second the words left your mouth, you regretted them. They were true.
Tessa gave you a softer smile. “That’s a beautiful way to put it.”
“I’ll deny saying it if you make it sound sentimental.”
“We have it on camera.”
“Unfortunate.”
“Too late now, sweetheart,” Bucky leaned in closer, his voice low enough that the microphone might catch it but the crew probably wouldn’t.
Sweetheart.
He had called you that earlier. You had nearly blacked out from irritation. Or something similar to irritation. Something in the same district as irritation.
The interview went on. Tessa asked about the bill again, about the coalition behind it, about why some members were hesitant to support it. Bucky answered most of those questions. You corrected him twice when he understated his own work and once when he tried to say the bill had “a few” bipartisan sponsors.
“It has seventeen,” you said.
“Seventeen is a few.”
“Seventeen is not a few. Three is a few.”
“Fine.”
“Say coalition.”
“No.”
“Say coalition for the camera.”
He looked directly into the lens. “Coalition.”
“Good job, hotshot.” You patted his knee.
Bucky’s ears went faintly red.
Tessa asked if marriage had changed his perspective on public life.
Bucky took a moment with that one. Not too long, just long enough for you to feel him choose his words carefully.
“Maybe,” he said. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to keep parts of my life separate. Public, private. Past, present. Work, home. I don’t know if that always works.”
He was looking at Tessa, but his hand was still holding yours.
Bucky continued. “Sometimes the people who know you in one part of your life are the reason you can stand in the other parts.”
You hated that he could say something like that without sounding like he had rehearsed it in a mirror. You hated that you knew he had not rehearsed it because Bucky Barnes would rather walk barefoot across Legos than prepare an emotionally vulnerable answer for television. You hated that the answer landed somewhere under your ribs and stayed there.
Tessa let the silence sit for a moment, then smiled. “That sounds like a good place to end.”
The red camera light went off. Tessa unclipped her microphone with a pleased expression that made you deeply uneasy. You released Bucky’s hand, standing to smooth your dress.
“Tessa,” you said, offering your hand. “Thank you for your time.”
“Thank you.” She shook your hand, then Bucky’s. “You two were wonderful. The bill portion was strong, but the two of you together? There’s a warmth there. It will help people see a different side of him.”
“Yes,” you said. “That’s the hope.”
When you entered behind Bucky, silence rippled across the bullpen.
The office had a rhythm on normal days. Phones ringing. Keyboards clacking. Someone near the kitchenette swearing under their breath because the coffee machine was broken again. Mia saying, “No, absolutely not,” into a phone like she was sentencing someone. Papers moving. Shoes against carpet.
Today, all of it stopped.
Bucky stepped through the doorway first, one hand still near the small of your back from where he’d guided you through the hallway outside. He dropped it before anyone could read too much into it. The whole staff looked up at once.
Legislative aides. Press assistants. The district team.
And Peter Parker.
Bucky’s eyes landed on the kid without meaning to.
Peter stood near the copier with a stack of constituent letters in his arms, shoulders lifted nearly to his ears, eyes too wide behind his earnest little face. There was always something off about that kid. Bucky had seen Peter catch a falling stapler from across a desk once without looking. He had also watched the kid nearly trip over a trash can immediately afterward.
Behind him, you walked into the middle of the office, dropped your bag on the nearest empty chair, and looked around like you were daring the room to make a sound.
“Everyone,” you announced to the room, “if we could gather for two minutes.”
The staff gathered in clusters. Legislative aides near the conference table, press hovering by Mia’s door. Priya from constituent services holding a mug she had not taken a sip from. Oliver pretending not to look directly at your rings.
“I know this is personal news in a public office,” Bucky said, “so I’ll keep it simple. We’re married.”
Peter raised his hand.
Bucky ignored him.
“We wanted to tell you ourselves. The timing got away from us, and I know that puts this office in a strange position.”
Beside him, you did not move. He could feel how carefully still you had gone, as though if you held yourself together tightly enough, no one would see where the lie met the truth.
He wanted to reach for your hand.
He did not.
“Our expectations do not change,” you added. “We are still focused on the bill, the district, and the people this office serves. Our official statement is that the congressman and I are grateful for the kind words, we value our privacy, and we remain focused on the work.”
Peter raised his hand higher.
Bucky stared at him.
The kid lowered it halfway, seeming to reconsider the whole concept of having an arm, then lifted it again like he had committed to the bit and now had to die there.
You looked at him. “Yes, Peter?”
“Is,” Peter began, his eyes moved from you to Bucky, then back to you. “Is congratulations allowed?”
The sharpness in your eyes softened and you offered Peter a smile.
“Yes,” you said. “Congratulations is allowed.”
Peter nodded, very seriously. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks, kid.”
A few staffers murmured congratulations. Priya smiled warmly. Oliver whispered something to the press assistant beside him until Mia turned her head one inch in his direction and killed the thought in his mouth.
Then Elise from scheduling said, “Honestly, I think we’re all just happy for you. I mean, we were surprised. Obviously. But not… that surprised.”
You went very still beside Bucky.
“Not that surprised?” You asked.
“I mean, respectfully,” Peter said, trying to help, “you do fix his tie a lot.”
Both you and Bucky stared at him.
And because Peter Parker didn’t know when to put down the shovel, he continued.
“I mean, he lets you fix them. Which seems like a trust thing. Not a romantic thing. I mean, maybe romantic now. You’re married. Congratulations again.”
Tomas, clearly emboldened, added, “You also know his coffee order.”
“I know everyone’s coffee order,” you said.
“No, you don’t,” Mia said, not looking up from her tablet.
“Traitor.”
“Alright, well that’s probably enough of Q&A time for now,” Mia said, her tone shifting. “We have a veterans’ group arriving in ten minutes, the congressman has a call with Senator Alvarez at two.”
Peter raised his hand again.
Bucky looked at him. “Yes, Peter?”
“Sorry, just for clarity, if someone asks if we’re happy for you, can we say yes?”
Bucky tried not to smile.
You failed first.
“Yes, Peter,” you said. “You can say you’re happy for us.”
Peter smiled. “Great. Because I am.”
Bucky had expected scrutiny or awkwardness. Maybe suspicion. He had prepared for the sharp edge of it. He had not prepared for people being happy or for his staff looking at the two of you and deciding this made sense.
“Wonderful. Emotional moment concluded,” you announced. “Back to work.”
The staff scattered, the office resuming its rhythm. Phones rang again, someone typed too loudly. Peter finally delivered the letters to Priya’s desk, nearly colliding with a chair, caught the chair before it fell, then pretended that had not happened.
“Stop glaring at the intern,” you said beside Bucky.
“I’m not glaring.”
“You absolutely are.”
“There’s something off about him.”
“He’s just a kid,” you shrugged.
Bucky turned to you, narrowing his eyes. “You know something.”
“I know many things.”
“About Parker. You hired him.”
“I hire a lot of people.”
“What do you know?”
You gave him a pleasant smile. “I know we have a veterans’ group in eight minutes and if you keep staring at Peter like that, people are going to wonder why you’re beefing with the intern. Pick on someone your own age, why don’t you, Barnes?”
Bucky huffed in annoyance, but a slow smile spread across his features. “Y’know, speaking of age…”
“What,” you said, raising an eyebrow, “did you leave your dentures somewhere, Optimus-past-his-prime?”
“Optimus…?” Bucky looked confused.
Your mouth formed a little ‘o.’
“You haven’t seen Transformers, have you?”
“I’ve been a little busy, with the Russian brainwashing and everything, sweetheart,” he rolled his eyes.
You scoffed. “You think you’re special, Gandalf?”
“Alright I think—and I understand that reference—we’re getting away from my point. You remember what you said to me in New Orleans?” Bucky asked.
You made a face.
“I said a lot of things, and I definitely don’t remember them all. I have to assume two of those words were ‘I do,’ so I guess that’s something.”
He shook his head. “Not that. You were telling me that no one would believe I’m your boyfriend because I’m too old. Said you were too ‘youthful.’”
You nodded. “Sure, sounds like me.”
A smug grin tugged at the corners of his mouth, and he nodded at the staffers. “I just want to make sure you know that you were just proven wrong. The staff had no problem believing I’m your husband. I guess I am a spring chicken after all.”
You opened your mouth to respond with something sharp and witty, but no words came.
“They’re here,” Mia called from her office.
Bucky nodded, stepping away from you and walking to the front of the office to greet the veterans’ group.
He stopped halfway, turning back to you.
“And one more thing, chief?”
You met his gaze. “Hm?”
“Gandalf was an incredibly powerful wizard. The Dwarves of Durin’s Folk never would’ve been able to retake Erebor without him.”
He shot you a cocky grin and continued on to the front of the office.
You scowled at his retreating form.
“Fuckin’ nerd.”
The jeweler was exactly the kind of place you expected Bucky Barnes to know.
It was tucked into a side street in Georgetown, behind a dark green door with a brass handle polished so thoroughly you could see your own distorted reflection in it. There was no flashy sign out front, no diamonds glittering in the window. Just a small gold plaque that read Feldman & Sons and a narrow window displaying one antique watch, a strand of pearls, and a sign that said “By Appointment.”
“This looks like a place where old money comes to buy its blood diamonds,” you muttered.
“They don’t sell blood diamonds.”
“You asked?”
He glanced at you. “Yes.”
You turned to him.
He looked back, annoyingly calm.
Of course he had asked. Of course James Buchanan Barnes had made sure his fake-marriage ring upgrade did not involve exploitative mining practices. Of course he had probably researched the place, called ahead, and asked careful questions.
You narrowed your eyes. “You’re very prepared for a man who accidentally got married.”
His face did something small, there and gone.
“I like being prepared.”
You looked back at the green door.
You could handle a chapel ring. A cheap little silver thing from a rotating display case between a plastic bouquet and a brochure for the Jazz It Up package. That ring had been ridiculous. Temporary. An object with an exit strategy.
This place had insurance policies and probably used words like “heirloom” seriously. You did not like it.
Bucky looked at you. “We don’t have to do this.”
You snapped your eyes to him. “Excuse me?”
He lifted one shoulder. “If you don’t want to.”
“Oh, I want to. I just want to complain a bit while doing it.”
“That’s different?”
“That’s marriage.”
His mouth twitched.
You pointed at him. “Do not look pleased. I’m using the word as a legal category.”
“‘Course.”
“You’re doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
“The thing where you sound agreeable, but your face is smug.”
“I have a smug face?”
You nodded. “You have many faces. I’m building a database.”
He reached around you and opened the door.
“Always the gentleman,” you said.
“It’s polite.”
“It’s very 1940s.”
“Been told.”
You stepped past him into the shop. “Thanks, Captain Chivalry.”
He sighed behind you.
The inside of Feldman & Sons smelled faintly of lemon oil, old wood, and cold metal. Glass cases lined the walls, each one carefully lit from within. Nothing sparkled aggressively. Everything gleamed with restraint. Rings sat in velvet trays like they were waiting to be chosen by people who knew how to pronounce all the French words on a wine list.
There were antique brooches, men’s watches, signet rings, tiny gold lockets, and diamond bands that looked as if they had survived better-dressed wars than the one currently being waged in your chest.
An older man stepped out from the back room almost immediately.
He had silver hair, rimless glasses, and the composed expression of a person who had seen enough engagement panic to become immune to it. His suit fit beautifully, in the way that made you suspect his tailor knew family secrets.
“Congressman Barnes,” he said warmly.
Bucky nodded. “Arthur.”
Of course he knew his jeweler by first name.
You looked at Bucky. He ignored you.
“And Mrs. Barnes,” Arthur turned to you, his expression softening to something respectful without becoming familiar.
“A pleasure to meet you,” you said brightly.
Arthur smiled. “I understand congratulations are in order.”
“Are they?” You asked.
Bucky said your name under his breath, his tone laced with amusement.
Arthur’s smile deepened. “I’ll say they are.”
Arthur gestured toward a seating area near the back. Two chairs sat before a glass-topped consultation table. A tray had already been arranged there, covered with a dark velvet cloth.
Already arranged.
Bucky had called ahead.
You sat first, because standing there would look suspicious, and because Bucky remained beside your chair until you did.
Arthur took the chair on the other side of the table and folded his hands.
“I pulled a few options based on what Congressman Barnes mentioned over the phone,” he said.
You turned to Bucky. “You mentioned things?”
“He asked what you might like.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing strange,” Bucky said. “Or too showy.”
He was right.
“And that you’d probably prefer something with a little history.”
Also not wrong.
Bucky Barnes knowing things about you was not new. He knew your coffee order, the way you hated having your back to open doors, how you kept snacks in your desk drawer but forgot to eat them, which donors made your jaw clench, and which jokes meant you were actually upset.
You leaned back in your chair. “Fine. Proceed, Arthur. Show me the tasteful evidence.”
Arthur lifted the velvet cloth, and for a second, you forgot to be sarcastic.
There were maybe a dozen of them. Some gold, some platinum, some with diamonds arranged in clean lines, others with sapphires or small emeralds or filigree work delicate enough to make you worry about crushing them in your fist.
Arthur began explaining Edwardian settings, old European cuts, mine cuts, platinum bands, hand engraving, restoration work. You listened with half an ear, because you were good at listening while pretending not to.
Arthur slid a ring with a halo of tiny diamonds around a center stone toward you.
You tilted your head. “I don’t know… it just has third-wife energy. Maybe for one of my next marriages?”
Bucky stifled a laugh.
“I see,” Arthur said with a nod.
Arthur then handed you a thin gold band with small stones.
You tried it on. It looked wrong on your hand. Pretty, yes, but wrong. Like something that would apologize after being stepped on.
“No,” you said. “It would not survive me.”
Bucky’s eyes dropped to your hand, then back to your face. “No?”
“No.”
Arthur moved the next ring into the center of the tray.
It was smaller than some of the others, but not timid. A central diamond set low, not raised like it needed to be shown off. Old cut. Softer than modern stones, catching the light in flashes rather than fire. On either side, tiny sapphires were tucked into the setting, dark enough that they looked nearly black until light hit them.
And when light did hit them, they were the exact same shade of blue as—
No.
No, you were not going to think about that.
“What’s this one?” You asked.
“Old European-cut diamond, with sapphire accents,” Arthur informed you. “The engraving is original, though worn. It’s been cleaned and checked, but not over-restored.”
“Not over-restored,” you repeated.
“No, some pieces lose character if you try to make them look new.”
You picked up the ring, turning it once, watching the light move across the worn detailing. There were tiny imperfections in the metal, softened by time. It looked like something that had survived being loved.
You slid it onto your finger before you could talk yourself out of it.
It fit. Of course it fit. You stared at your hand, your fingers flexing once. The sapphires flashed.
Beside you, Bucky did not move. You could feel his stillness, but you did not look at him because if you looked at him, you would have to name whatever was happening in the air, and you had survived too long by refusing to name things until absolutely necessary.
Arthur smiled faintly. “It suits you.”
You swallowed.
Then lifted your chin. “Well, obviously.”
Bucky’s voice came lower than before. “You like it?”
You looked at him then.
Big mistake.
His eyes were on you now. Blue, steady, unreadable in that infuriating way of his. There was something behind them you didn’t know how to hold.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” you said. “I’m capable of liking beautiful things.”
“I know,” he said softly.
You cleared your throat, looking down at the ring again. “It might be too expensive.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine.”
“It’s covered.”
“By who?”
“Me. Are you done?”
“No. I’m just warming up.”
Bucky sighed. “We need rings.”
“We need rings,” you agreed, “we don’t need to put a down payment on something that could have an ancestral curse.”
His mouth twitched. “Ancestral curse?”
“It’s from the 1910s, anything could have happened.”
“We do inspect for structural damage,” Arthur said gently.
“I am speaking spiritually, Arthur,” you replied.
“Ah.”
“You want to look at more?” Bucky asked.
You looked down at the tray, and suddenly every other ring looked like someone else’s life.
“No.”
The answer came too fast.
“But don’t look too pleased about it,” you added.
“Can’t be pleased my wife likes her ring?”
Your breath caught. You hated how easily he had said it.
You looked toward Arthur. “Do you have men’s rings? Preferably something for a man whose personality is stuck in the stone age?”
“Of course,” Arthur said. “I pulled a few options for Congressman Barnes as well.”
“Excellent,” you said. “He doesn’t get to be financially noble alone.”
“You don’t have to buy mine,” Bucky said, turning to you.
“Oh, I absolutely do.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“This isn’t–”
You leaned closer and smiled. “Husband.”
He stopped. Good. Effective.
You continued sweetly. “Are you denying your wife the joy of gift-giving?”
“You are enjoying this too much,” Bucky muttered.
“I enjoy very few things in life. Let me have this.”
Arthur returned with another tray of men’s bands. Gold, platinum, brushed metal, darker finishes. Some plain, some engraved, some too modern, some too delicate. Bucky tried on a few, but you could tell he wasn’t overly impressed with any yet.
You picked up a simple band with a narrow engraved line around the center. It was solid without being showy. Clean. Old-fashioned. It looked like him. Steady. Understated.
You handed it to him.
“Try this one.”
Bucky took it.
His fingers brushed yours.
He slid the ring onto his left hand, looking at the ring, then at you.
“Well?”
You tried to summon a joke, but for once, it came late.
“It’ll do.”
His eyebrows lifted. “That’s all?”
You shrugged.
After being given the green light for both rings, Arthur took them to a different counter to wrap them up. You leaned back in your chair and crossed your arms.
“You didn’t have to say yes,” Bucky said after a minute.
You turned to face him.
“To the ring?” You asked.
“To any of this.”
You felt your body go still. There it was, the thing under the thing.
“I know,” you said.
You drummed your fingers lightly against your knee, adding, “the old rings looked ridiculous.”
“They did. Probably best that we have rings that don’t look like they came with a free souvenir cup.”
You snorted. “That was almost funny.”
“I try.”
“Do you?”
“With you.”
You stared at him.
He seemed to realize what he had said only after it was too late, his eyes shifting away.
Bucky had expected you to complain more.
He had prepared for it, actually.
Not because you were unreasonable, but because moving into his townhouse had seemed like the kind of thing you would resist on principle. It was one thing to wear a ring in public, one thing to sit beside him in an interview and smile like the marriage had been a private choice, one thing to let the office believe the story because the alternative was worse.
Moving in was different. Closets, toothbrushes. Your shoes by his door next to his. Your books on his shelves. Your life occupying space in his.
Bucky had expected a fight, he had not expected you to walk through the front door of his townhouse, stop in the entryway with a box balanced against your hip, and go silent.
You were trying not to show it, but Bucky had learned you too well for that. Your shoulders lowered the smallest amount. Your eyes moved over the space with the quick, precise assessment you gave every room you entered.
The townhouse was not grand. Narrow, brick-fronted, with creaky stairs and too many built-ins. But it was solid, and significantly nicer and safer than your apartment. Better locks, no alley-facing bedroom window. No lobby where anyone with a clipboard and confidence could talk their way inside.
“Okay,” you said.
Bucky shut the door behind him. “Okay?”
You set the box down on the console table and walked deeper inside, slow enough that he knew you were trying not to seem impressed.
“This is irritating.”
He leaned back against the closed door. “My house?”
“Your house being so nice.”
His mouth tugged despite himself. “Sorry.”
“You should be.”
You glanced around the living room, taking in the dark wood floors, the fireplace, the bookshelves, and the deep green couch Sam had bullied him into buying.
“This severely undermines my moral position,” you said.
“What moral position?”
“That moving in with you is a sacrifice.”
He tilted his head slightly. “Is it?”
You looked back at him, eyes narrowing. Bucky held up both hands. You turned away, but not before he caught the small curve at the corner of your mouth.
“It’s inconvenient,” you shrugged, stepping into the living room and running a hand along the back of the couch. “But materially? This is a significant improvement.”
Bucky picked up the box you had abandoned and carried it toward the stairs. You had packed quickly, which meant very little had been labeled in ways a normal person would understand. This box had DESK/FILES/KNIVES? written on the side in black marker.
He paused at the bottom of the staircase and looked back at you.
“Knives?”
You waved him off. “It’s an old box.”
The townhouse had been quiet for years. Too quiet, sometimes. After everything, he had wanted quiet. He had wanted a place where no one came through the door unless he let them in, where the walls stayed where they were, where the furniture did not move unless he moved it. A place that belonged to him, because for a long time nothing had.
But quiet could turn on a man. The house had a way of making his own breathing sound too loud. A way of stretching night into something flat and empty. He had gotten used to it, or told himself he had. He cooked badly in the kitchen, read reports in the living room, slept poorly in the bedroom, and let the place stay clean because clean was easier than lived-in.
In the space of ten minutes, you had placed two boxes in the hallway, a coat over the banister, your bag on the entry table, and a pair of sunglasses beside his keys.
He carried the box into the bedroom and set it near the dresser. The room felt different with your things in it, even boxed. Warmer.
He looked at the bed and made himself look away.
You were not really his wife. Not like that.
By the time he returned downstairs, you were in the kitchen, opening cabinets. Of course you were. You had your blazer sleeves pushed up and the expression of a woman conducting an inspection that would end badly for someone.
You opened one cabinet, stared inside, then slowly closed it. You opened another. Closed it. Opened the pantry. You went very still.
He braced himself.
“Barnes?”
“Yes?”
“What is this?”
“My pantry?”
“No.”
“It is.”
You stepped aside so he could see.
Coffee. Protein bars. Peanut butter. A few cans of soup. No cereal. No snacks that could be described as anything other than fuel. A small box of tea that Sam had once left behind.
You gestured to it like a prosecutor presenting Exhibit A.
“Y’know we don’t have to ration anymore, right?”
“It’s food.”
He smiled despite himself and reached for one of the smaller boxes near the doorway. This one was labeled KITCHEN/NO KNIVES :(, which worried him more than the knife box. He opened the box. Tea, mugs, a small jar of honey. Two mismatched bowls. A tiny bottle of something labeled in a language he didn’t recognize.
You gave him a small smile, helping to unpack the box.
There it was again: the strange, sharp brightness of having you in his space. You made the air move. You made the kitchen feel less like a room he used and more like a room where things might happen. Arguments, coffee, bad jokes. You opening cabinets and declaring war on his grocery habits.
“I can clear a shelf,” Bucky said, putting the tea on the counter.
Your fingers paused around the mug you were unwrapping.
“A shelf?” You said.
“For your tea.”
“I don’t need a whole shelf.”
“I’ll clear a shelf.”
Bucky opened the pantry and started moving things. Coffee to the top shelf. Protein bars into a basket. Soup to the back. He could feel you watching him, though you pretended to be busy unwrapping mugs. This was his home, and he was shifting his things around so yours could fit.
Behind him, you said, quieter, “You don’t have to rearrange everything.”
He kept moving the coffee. “I know.”
“It’s your house.”
He looked over his shoulder. You were standing by the counter, one mug held in both hands. It was chipped on the handle. Blue. He had seen it on your desk.
“Our cover’s better if it looks like you live here,” he said, turning back to the pantry before you could read him too closely. “Which shelf?”
“One I can reach without climbing.”
“That eliminates a third of them.”
You scoffed, coming up beside him and arranging boxes immediately. He leaned one shoulder against the cabinet and watched you take over. You looked comfortable. Not fully.
You were still too aware of the room, still clocking exits and windows, still moving with the restless caution he knew came from training neither of you liked to name too often. But under it, there was relief. He could see it in the small things. The way you did not flinch when the pipes creaked. The way you left your bag on the chair instead of keeping it looped over your shoulder. The way you had not once asked about the locks, probably because you had already approved them.
“You like it,” he said.
You did not look at him. “Like what?”
“The house.”
You shrugged. “The bathroom is excellent.”
“Glad it passed.”
“The closet is also acceptable.”
“Acceptable?”
“Don’t get cocky. Your living room only has one decorative pillow.”
“It has two.”
“One of them is lumbar support.”
“I like that pillow.”
“That’s because you’re elderly.”
He rolled his eyes. You caught it and smiled, pleased with yourself.
That smile did something to him. It always did, but here, in his kitchen, with your tea on his shelf and your ring catching the light as you moved boxes around, it was worse. Harder to ignore. The whole day had been a long exercise in pretending that every ordinary thing was strategy. The interview. The office. The jeweler.
The lies sat next to the truth so neatly that sometimes he had trouble seeing where one ended. You were moving in because the marriage needed to look real and because your apartment was terrible and his house was better. You were not moving in because he wanted you here.
The house hummed quietly around you. Refrigerator, pipes, distant traffic outside. Your box of tea sat in his pantry. Bucky did not know what to say.
You saved him from trying.
“Well,” you said, turning back to the counter and lifting another box, “that ends today. You’re going to own snacks.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“It is. That’s why people enjoy it.”
He stepped closer and took the box from you before you could lift it.
You frowned. “I had that.”
“I know.”
You crossed your arms. “You know, the chivalry thing is going to get old.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It might.”
“It won’t.”
He carried the box upstairs.
Your bedroom–his bedroom, no, the bedroom–was next. That was the part he had been avoiding in his head, which was useless because the bed was not going to become less obvious through neglect.
You stood near the closet, looking inside with the same expression you had given the pantry, though softer this time. He had cleared half of it before you arrived. More than half, technically. His suits had been pushed to one side. The drawers on the left were empty. The top shelf had space for whatever you kept in those alarming little bags you never let anyone touch.
You looked at the empty side, then at him.
“You did this already?”
He set the box down. “Yeah.”
“When?”
“Before the interview.”
You stared.
“I knew we’d probably need to move fast,” he said.
“You cleared a lot,” you said.
“I don’t need much.”
You passed him on your way out of the closet, close enough that your shoulder brushed his arm. He did not move. Neither did you, not for half a second. Then you continued into the bedroom, scanning the space like you could avoid the bed by sheer force of will.
Bucky watched you notice it.
The bed was made. Neatly, because he had made it this morning before leaving, before the interview, before the office, before rings, before you walking through his front door.
You put both hands on your hips.
“Well,” you said.
Bucky leaned against the doorframe. “Well?”
“We should discuss the sleeping situation.”
“Couch is fine.”
“No.”
He blinked.
You turned toward him. “Absolutely not.”
“I don’t mind.”
“That’s because your relationship with discomfort is alarmingly intimate.”
“It’s one night.”
“It won’t be one night.”
Of course you were right. If you were moving in, if the building staff saw you, if anyone in the office dropped something off, if the public marriage had to survive more than a week, the couch would not work.
More than that, Bucky knew you. You would not let him sleep on the couch in his own house. Not because you were sentimental, but you wouldn’t let him accuse you of elder abuse.
“You take the bed,” he insisted.
You stared at him. He recognized the expression. Wrong answer.
“Barnes.”
“What?”
“You are not being exiled from your own mattress because of a fake marriage we drunkenly wandered into.” You walked to the left side of the bed and put your hand on the pillow. “I’ll take this side, you’re okay with the right?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not going to stare at the ceiling all night like a haunted portrait?”
“I can’t promise that.”
You sat on the edge of the bed and bounced once, testing the mattress.
“This is a very good bed,” you said. “It’s further incentivizing me to stay in this marriage.”
He snorted. “Could be worse reasons.”
“You’re being very agreeable today,” you observed.
He moved toward the door. “I’ll bring up the rest of the boxes.”
Bucky turned and walked downstairs, stopping for a moment at the bottom, hand on the banister, and let himself listen. Not for threats or movement outside.
For you.
Moving around upstairs. Opening a box. Muttering something about his closet. Laughing once under your breath at your own joke.
Bucky looked toward the living room, where your bags sat beside his keys and your coat hung over the arm of the couch. One of your shoes had tipped onto its side near the entry table. Your sunglasses were still beside the bowl where he kept loose change.
Bucky picked up the next box and carried it upstairs to his wife.
summary. After a late-night in New Orleans, Congressman Bucky Barnes and his chief of staff wake up legally married. An annulment should be simple, but unfortunately, nothing about their lives is simple. With Bucky's reputation on the line and her past threatening to resurface, staying married starts to look like the safest option. It's only supposed to be temporary. Public appearances, a convincing story, and a quiet divorce once the headlines fade. But fake marriage is harder when everyone else believes it. Especially when Bucky is already in love with his wife.
word count. 6.9k
warnings. alcohol/intoxication, drunk decision making, fake marriage setup, friends with questionable boundaries
masterlist | series masterlist | next chapter
Congressman James Buchanan Barnes moved through the warm New Orleans night with the posture of a man trying very hard not to look like a man who had just spent four hours shaking hands with donors, veterans, reporters, lobbyists, local officials, and one woman who asked if his metal arm was “cold to the touch.”
You had nearly handled that one yourself.
Bucky had stopped you with one hand around your wrist, gently, but firm, before you could ask the woman if her personality was cold to the touch. He had not even looked at you when he did it, just caught your wrist, answered politely, and moved on.
Annoying.
Very annoying.
You stumbled half a step on the uneven sidewalk and immediately cursed whoever had created cobblestones—probably some medieval peasant—and cursed yourself for consuming so much bourbon at the event itself and the afterparty.
“You all right?”
Bucky’s hand moved to your elbow.
You looked down at his hand, then up at him. “You asking as my boss, my congressman, or the man responsible for making me put up with all these rich assholes for hours?”
“I’m askin’ as your friend. Should I be worried?”
“You should always be worried. S’what makes you such an effective public servant.”
He huffed, the closest he usually came to laughing in public.
The hotel was two streets behind you, all soft golden lighting and polished donors and tiny crab cakes that had been arranged on porcelain spoons. You had stolen one of the spoons simply because you were fond of the size and shape, and it now resided securely in the band of your bra.
You had handed Mia your glass of champagne when you noticed Bucky was making that face he made whenever too many people thanked him for his service. He looked like he might turn to stone.
Mia Santos, his communications director, had not asked questions. She was good that way. Also, likely, afraid of you. Healthy.
Now the streets of New Orleans spread out before you in humid, glowing layers. Neon signs illuminated puddles left from an earlier storm. Music leaked out of bars and down avenues. It was too much, in a way that made you feel like the city itself was saying make worse choices.
And who were you to not embrace the local culture?
“I want it on record,” you said, the world spinning around you, “that I was doing just fine before you convinced me to have those last two drinks at the afterparty.”
Bucky snorted. “Trust me, you didn’t need encouragement. You got here all on your own.”
“Rude.”
“Accurate.”
“Two things can be true.”
His eyes slid toward you, lips almost curving again.
Bucky Barnes looked unfairly good illuminated by the lamplights of the French Quarter.
This was not new information. You had known him for years. Seen him at campaign stops, hearings, office crises, hospital visits, safehouses, and one unfortunate charity softball game where he had refused to hit the ball hard because he was scared of killing the pitcher. You vaguely recalled yourself giving him ill-advised advice, something like do it for the children!
You had seen him in suits. In tactical gear. In rolled-up shirtsleeves, tie loose, hair falling into his eyes while you yelled at him for trying to rewrite his own remarks fifteen minutes before delivery.
You were not impressed by Bucky Barnes. Not generally. Not physically.
Usually.
Tonight, however, the humidity had done something catastrophic to his hair, and his shirt collar was open beneath his dark suit jacket, his tie had vanished sometime in the night.
And you were drunk. Pleasantly, dangerously warm. The kind of drunk that made your limbs loose, your mouth faster than your judgement. Bucky had been drinking too.
You knew because you had watched him accept bourbon from three separate people, nurse the first glass, finish the second, and then a third. He seemed looser than usual. Softer around the edges. He had laughed at two of your jokes without pretending it was a cough.
“You’re smiling,” he said.
You blinked. “No. No, I’m not.”
“You are.”
He guided you around a dip in the sidewalk. You noticed, and pretended not to.
“You keep doing that,” you muttered.
“What?”
“Acting like I can’t walk.”
“Yeah, well, m’not sure you can right now. You nearly fought a curb.”
“The curb started it.”
“And you threatened a shrimp tower.”
“You should’ve heard what they were saying to me!”
He shook his head, but he was smiling now. Fully smiling, almost. The real version, not the press version. Not the polite congressional one with the careful mouth and the distant eyes. This one showed up rarely and usually by accident.
You tried to commit it to memory in your drunken state.
You were interrupted by brass, loud and bright. Trumpet, trombone, drum. A little ragged, a little joyous, moving closer from the cross street ahead.
You stopped.
Bucky stopped because you had stopped, and because he was trained by now to treat your sudden stillness as either tactical assessment or impending nonsense.
You held up one hand. “Do you hear that?”
“I hear a lot of things.”
The music got louder as the procession turned the corner.
It was not quite a parade. It was too small and too disorderly. A brass band moved down the street with a dozen people trailing behind it, waving napkins, cups, and what appeared to be a feather boa in the colors of a tropical bird. Someone wore a sash that said Divorced and Delighted! Someone else wore a veil. Three women were laughing so hard they could barely walk.
You inhaled.
“No,” Bucky said, instantly.
“I’m engaging with the public.”
“You’re trespassing into someone else’s event.”
“Cultural immersion.”
The procession drew closer, and the woman in the divorce sash spotted you, gasped at Bucky, then pointed at him with her plastic cup.
“You!” She shouted. “You’re the congressman!”
Bucky’s shoulders shifted, the public face moving into place.
You hated it. Not always, sometimes it was necessary. Useful, even. You had built half his career around understanding when Bucky Barnes needed to be human and when he needed to be untouchable. But tonight, after hours of people mining his trauma for a handshake, you did not want him to have to become Congressman Barnes again.
You stepped in front of him and pointed back at the woman.
“And you are divorced and delighted. Congratulations!”
The woman stared at you for a second. Then she screamed with laughter.
Bucky’s hand closed around the back of your arm, not stopping you, just there. The woman grabbed your free hand.
“Come on, baby, we’re celebrating!”
“What are we celebrating?” You asked.
“Me leaving Dennis!”
The woman pulled you into the moving cluster before Bucky could object, and because Bucky Barnes had survived assassins, aliens, Hydra, and congressional hearings, but had not yet developed a defense against you making delighted eye contact with a newly divorced woman holding a plastic cup, he followed.
The brass band surged around you. You laughed because it was impossible not to. Someone shoved a napkin into your hand, someone else draped beads over your head. A man with a tambourine passed near you, and you reached for it on instinct.
Bucky caught your wrist.
“No.”
“I wasn’t going to steal it!”
He gave you a look.
“I was just going to… redistribute it.”
“That sounds like stealing.”
“Welcome to government, Congressman.”
The man with the tambourine overheard you and grinned. “You want it?”
“Yes!” You said.
“No.” Bucky said.
The man handed it to you, and you lifted it above your head in victory.
Bucky stared at the sky like he was asking God for backup.
You shook the tambourine badly. Immediately, aggressively, with confidence that was disproportionate to your skill.
“You’re off beat,” Bucky winced.
“It’s a counter-rhythm."
Bucky leaned closer, voice low near your ear so you could hear him over the band. “You’re going to get us kicked out of the procession.”
Your skin prickled at the warmth of his breath. Rude. You shook the tambourine directly beside his shoulder to cover whatever your face had just done.
The procession rolled forward, and you let it take you. For a few minutes, there was no policy. No Bucky Barnes brand problem. No veterans’ bill. No old aliases. No list of things you had done and things you would never fully outrun.
There was just music and heat and Bucky’s hand hovering near your back every time you veered too close to the street. Annoyingly chivalrous.
“You know you don’t have to keep saving me from traffic,” you said, glancing at him.
“I do if you keep trying to join it. You’re never allowed to drink bourbon again.”
“You don’t get to tell me what to do, Sarge,” you said, giving him a playful mock salute.
His eyebrows lifted.
Ah.
You had surprised him. You liked surprising Bucky. He spent so much of his life expecting the worst that surprising him with something stupid felt almost virtuous.
“You’re making me regret leaving the hotel.”
“I’m making you a man of the people.”
“I was already elected.”
“Barely.”
“You ran the campaign.”
“And I’m kept up at night by the margins.”
He looked at you for a second, eyes soft with amusement.
You felt something in your chest tilt. No. Absolutely not. Bad chest.
You lifted the tambourine again. “I should return this.”
Bucky just nodded.
You brought the tambourine back to the man who accepted it solemnly.
“You did terrible,” he told you.
“Why, thank you.”
He laughed and kissed your hand.
Bucky’s expression did something interesting. You did not know what to call it. It was not jealousy, obviously not. Bucky was not jealous because a man with a tambourine kissed your hand in a street parade celebrating a Dennis-based divorce. That would be absurd.
Still, when you returned to his side, he was staring at the man with mild suspicion. And when the parade moved on, he did not immediately follow. Neither did you. The music drifted down the street, taking sequins and beads and most of your remaining sense with it.
You stood beneath a wrought-iron balcony dripping with plants, the street damp beneath your shoes, the air heavy and sweet. A neon sign buzzed across the street. Somewhere, a saxophone moved lazily through a melody that sounded like it had been awake for a hundred years.
You looked down, one heel strap had come loose.
“Traitor,” you mumbled to your shoe.
Bucky followed your gaze. “Need help?”
“No.”
You bent down. The street tilted. Bucky caught your elbow.
“I had that,” you said.
“You were about to headbutt a mailbox.”
“Yeah, well, it looked at me funny.”
He crouched before you could object. You stared at him. This was bad. Bucky Barnes on one knee in front of you on a wet New Orleans sidewalk, dark hair falling forward, one hand gentle around your ankle while he fixed the strap of your heel.
You blinked several times, the bourbon offering you several unhelpful thoughts. You rejected all of them. Mostly.
“This is very Cinderella,” you said.
He did not look up. “You calling me the prince?”
“The footman. You’re definitely the footman. The prince had poor vetting procedures.”
“He tried a shoe on every woman in the kingdom.”
“Exactly. Inefficient and weird.”
Bucky fastened the strap and stood. “There.”
He looked at you then. There was something odd in his face. Something still and warm and gone before you could examine it.
“Come on,” he said.
“Where?”
“Hotel.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“The night is young!”
“And I’m old!”
You snorted. “Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.”
“I’ll be carrying you back if we don’t get back soon.”
“I can walk just fine.”
“For now.”
You resumed walking, mostly because standing still made the sidewalk behave suspiciously. Bucky fell into step beside you. The street curved ahead into a slightly darker block. A small sign hung near the corner, hand-painted and purple, advertising ghost tours every hour until 2 a.m.
You stopped again.
“No,” Bucky said.
“You keep saying that. What are you, allergic to fun?”
“I’m not allergic to fun. No ghost tour.”
“That’s exactly what someone allergic to fun would say. You’re afraid.”
“I’ve fought actual ghosts.”
You paused. “Have you?”
He looked at you. “I’ve fought a lot of things. The categories get blurry.”
“That is either very sad or very metal.”
“Both.”
You were already moving toward the cluster of tourists gathered beneath the sign. Bucky sighed behind you.
The ghost tour lasted eleven minutes. Not because the tour was eleven minutes long, but because at minute nine, the guide said something historically inaccurate about tuberculosis, and Bucky, who apparently had limits after all, muttered, “That’s not how quarantine worked.”
You heard him. Unfortunately, so did the guide.
“What was that sir?”
Bucky’s face went blank. You stepped in immediately.
“My uncle is just passionate about public health history.”
Bucky looked at you. You looked back. Uncle? Why had you said that? Probably because “boss” would sound weird.
The guide looked uncertain. “Well, as I was saying—”
“The date’s wrong too,” Bucky said quieter, but still audible.
The guide’s smile tightened.
“Stop heckling the ghost man,” you hissed at Bucky.
“He’s wrong.”
“It’s a ghost tour!”
The guide squinted at the two of you. “Wait, did either of you pay for this tour?”
“Great tour!” You announced. “We’ll leave a five-star–”
“Three stars, max,” Bucky grumbled beside you.
“--review on Yelp. Terrifying. Educational. We’re leaving.”
The guide looked relieved. Bucky let you drag him away.
He waited until you had crossed half the block before he said, “Uncle?”
“Well,” you said, glancing up at him, “no one would believe ‘boyfriend.’”
“Why wouldn’t they believe that?”
You pointed at him, and then at yourself. “Look at you, you’re too old to be my boyfriend.”
He made a face. “Don’t think m’too old to be your boyfriend.”
“Aren’t you like, 120 or something?”
“110,” he grumbled.
You clapped your hands together. “Practically a spring chicken.”
“I don’t look 110.”
“Yeah, that cryostasis chamber did wonders for your skin,” you quipped sarcastically.
“People would believe that we’re dating.”
“Sarge, I’m so youthful. I don’t know, you could be, like, my hot sugar daddy maybe.”
“Hot?”
You felt your cheeks flush. “Yeah—like temperature wise.”
“In March?”
“It’s the humidity. I was mocking you.”
“Were you?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re bad at it. You called me hot.”
You stopped walking and turned to fix him with a look. “James Buchanan Barnes.”
His eyebrows lifted.
Using his full name was usually reserved for near-felonies, bad press, and once when he had tried to skip breakfast before a five-hour hearing.
“Don’t weaponize drunk syntax against me.”
“Drunk syntax.”
“Yes, the grammar of the impaired is inadmissible.”
“In what court?”
“My court.”
The corners of his lips pulled upward. Your stomach did something you did not authorize.
“You’re smiling,” you pointed out.
“Yeah.”
“Stop.”
“Can’t.”
You narrowed your eyes at him. He looked back, warm and amused and too handsome beneath the neon glow of a sign advertising haunted cocktails.
You turned and walked away, advancing in a different direction. Unfortunately, your different direction brought you directly to a small white building with a pink sign in the window.
CRESCENT CITY VOWS. WALK-INS WELCOME. OPEN 24/7.
You slowed. Bucky slowed beside you.
The chapel was narrow and bright, wedged between a closed souvenir shop and a bar emitting aggressive karaoke. Plastic flowers filled the front window. A poster advertised packages: Classic, Jazz It Up, Voodoo Romance.
You stared.
Then you started laughing.
“Absolutely not,” Bucky said.
You pointed at the sign. “Jazz it up!”
“No. We’re leaving.”
“Imagine getting married somewhere between a karaoke bar and a T-shirt shop.”
“People do.”
“Brave people do.”
“Drunk people.”
You stepped closer to the window, peering inside. The lobby had black-and-white tile, a small counter, a display of rings, and a woman behind the desk reading a paperback.
You looked ridiculous together. You in a cocktail dress with beads around your neck; Bucky in a dark suit, tie missing, hair wrecked by humidity.
“Y’know,” you said, “we’d probably be good at a marriage.”
Bucky went still. “Would we?”
“Obviously.”
“Obviously,” he repeated.
“Yes. I already run your life.”
“That’s marriage?”
“Basically,” you continued, counting on your fingers. “We share enemies. We agree on most moral issues and disagree productively on methods. You carry my shoes when necessary. I know how you take your coffee.”
“You insult how I take my coffee.”
“Because I care. Who even puts that much sugar in their coffee, James?”
“You never had to experience rationing.”
You looked up at him. Mistake.
His eyes were on you in a way that did not feel like a joke. It was hard to tell with Bucky. He had layers. Like trauma onion. Or trauma lasagna.
You nudged his shoulder. “What, you don’t think I’d make a good wife?”
Your question had been a joke. It was the kind of joke you made because it was absurd. Because the idea of being anyone’s wife seemed like something that happened to other people, ordinary people, people with normal childhoods and fewer hidden knives.
Besides, Bucky was your best friend. Or at least, one of them. Or the person you trusted most besides Yelena. Bucky thinking of you as a wife would be objectively funny. But he did not laugh.
He looked at you for a long second and said, “I think you’d be impossible.”
You scoffed. “That was not the question.”
“You’d be terrifying.”
“Still not the question.”
The chapel door opened, a young couple stumbled out laughing, both wearing cheap plastic crowns. Behind them, the desk woman called, “Congratulations. Remember, the license copy is the ugly one.”
You stared after them, then looked at Bucky.
“Do you think these are legally binding?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“It’s a licensed chapel. There’s a registration number on the door.”
You looked. Of course there was. Of course he noticed.
“Sexy,” you said. “You and your regulatory literacy.”
He stared.
“Temperature-wise,” you added.
His smile returned. “Sure.”
“What package would you pick?” You asked.
“None.”
“Do you need me to get your EpiPen for your allergy to fun?”
“This again? I’m not picking a wedding package.”
“Hypothetically.”
“No.”
“C’mon, hotshot.”
“Hotshot?”
You shrugged. “Expanding my lexicon. Classic, Jazz It Up, or Voodoo Romance?”
“Classic.”
“Obviously.”
“You asked.”
“No, that’s the correct answer. You’re a practical man.”
He glanced at you. “What would you pick?”
“Voodoo Romance.”
He stared.
“Kidding!” You grinned. “Jazz It Up, obviously.”
Maybe it was the bourbon. Maybe it was the music still rattling in your bones. Maybe it was the way Bucky had looked at you. Maybe it was the fact that for one weird, suspended second, being his wife did not sound like a joke so much as a dare issued by the universe.
“If we got married, Sam would kill you,” you said lightly.
Bucky turned back slowly. “Me?”
“Yes, you’re the man. You’d be blamed.”
“So much for feminism.”
“My feminism is situational.”
“Yelena would kill me too.”
You nodded. “Yelena would kill us both. But she’d start with you.”
“Good to know.”
“She’d be very hurt about missing cake.”
“There’s no cake.”
“That would make her angrier.”
Bucky looked at the chapel. Then at you. His face had gone quiet again.
“You wanna?” he asked.
You laughed, because obviously. Because that was the correct response when your best friend, your boss, the congressman whose schedule you managed and reputation you protected and emotional constipation you had elevated into an operational challenge, asked if you wanted to get married outside a New Orleans chapel after midnight.
You laughed.
But he did not. He smiled, small, almost private.
Your laughter thinned.
“What?”
“Marry me,” he said.
The city tilted.
“You’re joking.”
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
Bucky stepped closer, not enough to crowd you. He never crowded unless there was danger. He understood space better than most people because so much of his had once been taken from him. He stood near you but left air between you, enough for the decision to sit there by itself.
“Bucky, you cannot propose to your chief of staff outside a 24/7 chapel.”
“Why not?”
“Because Sam would develop a stress rash.”
“He’ll live.”
“Because Yelena would turn your arm into modern art.”
“She’ll try.”
“Because I’m drunk.”
“I know.”
“And you’re drunk.”
His eyes flicked over your face. “Right.”
You frowned at him. “This is stupid. You’re supposed to talk me out of bad ideas.”
“I do that all day.”
“And now?”
His eyes moved to the chapel sign again, then back to you.
“Maybe I’m off the clock.”
You stared at him. The problem was that Bucky rarely asked for things. He accepted assignments. Responsibilities, burdens, coffee he hated because you handed it to him. He did not ask for comfort or attention, did not ask for help until absolutely cornered, and even then, he phrased it like a logistical update.
But now he was asking. Maybe as a joke or a drunken impulse. His face gave you nothing obvious. Or maybe it gave you too much and you did not know how to read it.
“You really want to get married?”
“It would be operationally efficient.”
You lifted a finger. “If we do this–”
“We’re doing this?”
“I said if.”
“Okay.”
“If we do this, we pick the Jazz It Up package.”
“Obviously.”
“And we tell no one.”
“Sam will find out.”
“Yeah, because you can’t keep secrets from that guy.”
His gaze dropped to your hands. “Do we need rings?”
“Probably not.”
“If we’re doing this, we’re doing it right.”
“I forgot how old-fashioned you are.”
Bucky reached for the door and opened the door for you. “You coming?”
You should have turned around, should have gone back to the hotel. You should have drunk three glasses of water, removed your makeup, gone to bed, and woken up grateful that the worst thing you had done all night was steal a tambourine.
Instead, you walked into the chapel.
Cool air hit your skin. The lobby smelled like artificial roses, lemon cleaner, and stale champagne. The woman behind the counter looked up from her paperback, took in your dress, Bucky’s suit, the beads around your neck.
You lifted your chin with all the dignity you had left.
“Jazz It Up package, please.”
Bucky exhaled behind you. It might have been a laugh. The woman set down her book and slid a form across the counter.
You looked back at Bucky. His eyes were already on you. For a second, neither of you moved.
Then you smiled, because this was absurd, and you were drunk, and he was your best friend, and the world had made very little sense for a very long time.
“Come on, hotshot,” you said, picking up the pen.
Bucky woke up before the alarm. He always did. It did not matter what time he went to bed, or how late the night had stretched, or how little sleep his body had been given. He came awake all at once.
The hotel room was dim. The curtains were half closed, but a thin slice of morning had made it through the gap and cut across the carpet. Somewhere below, New Orleans was already waking up. He could hear a truck backing up, voices on the sidewalk, a door shutting in the hallway.
Beside him, you were asleep.
You had started the night on your side of the bed, or at least what had become your side. At some point after that, you had drifted diagonally, one knee bent, one arm shoved beneath your pillow, hair spread over the white case like evidence of a fight you had won.
Bucky lay still and watched you breathe. He knew he should move. He knew he should get up, call Sam, call legal, call somebody who could tell him what shape the fallout might take and how fast it would come.
But for a few seconds, he did nothing.
The room was quiet. You were asleep beside him. His wedding ring was on his hand. It was the kind of thing a man could get used to if he were stupid.
He was not stupid. He had done plenty of stupid things. There was a difference.
He lifted his left hand and stared at the ring. It looked wrong there. Cheap, silver, too bright, already scratched along the bottom where it had caught against the hotel keycard last night.
You had chosen it for him. You had stood at the counter, swaying slightly, studying the little velvet tray as if selecting equipment for a mission.
He remembered everything.
The street parade. The tambourine. The chapel door. The way you had looked back at him right before you stepped inside, grinning like the whole night had been built for you personally by a god with bad judgement.
You made a sound in your sleep, small and irritated, and dragged the blanket higher over your shoulder. Your ring caught the light when your hand shifted across the pillow.
The marriage certificate was folded on the desk beneath the chapel brochure, which advertised vow renewals and discount photography. He had meant to put it somewhere safe. Instead, he had put it on top of the minibar menu and gone to bed beside his wife.
His wife.
Bucky closed his eyes. That was not a word he got to keep.
You stirred beside him.
Bucky opened his eyes and turned his head.
Your brow pulled together first. Then your nose wrinkled. Then your whole face folded into a grimace, as if consciousness had personally offended you.
Your eyes opened, and you turned your head very slowly. He watched the memory arrive, not all at once. In pieces. First confusion, then pain, because your hangover was clearly taking up most of your skull. Then recognition.
Your hand came up in front of your face. You sat up so fast the blanket slid to your waist.
“Oh my God.”
Bucky pushed himself up on one elbow. “Morning.”
You turned on him.
“Do not.”
“Okay.”
You looked down at yourself, still wearing the slip dress from last night, wrinkled now and twisted slightly at one strap. You looked over at him. He was still in his trousers and shirt, though the shirt was unbuttoned at the collar and his jacket had been thrown over the desk chair.
Your eyes narrowed.
“Did we—”
“No.”
Your shoulders dropped with visible relief. “Okay.”
“I stayed on top of the covers for half the night.”
You rubbed both hands over your face. “Did you?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened to the other half?”
“You stole the covers and then threatened me when I tried to get them back.”
You threw the blanket off and stood. Too fast, you swayed. Bucky was out of bed before he decided to move, his hand catching your elbow.
You looked at it. He let go.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re hungover.”
You crossed the room with great purpose and slightly poor balance. You lifted the chapel brochure first, squinted at it, and then found the folded certificate beneath. You opened it. Read it. Read it again.
“James.”
There it was. His real name in your voice. Not “Barnes,” not “Congressman.” James meant one of two things: danger or trouble. Possibly both.
Bucky stood beside the bed. “Yeah?”
“This is real.”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t say yeah like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I just asked if you wanted toast.”
He glanced at the certificate. “It’s real.”
You looked back at the paper, then at the brochure, then at your ring.
You turned sharply toward the bathroom, stopped, turned back toward the desk, then turned again toward the minibar.
Bucky watched you make a small, silent circle of panic.
Bucky crossed the room and started the coffee machine. You stood behind him, quiet now except for the small sound of your breathing and the occasional miserable swallow that told him the bourbon was exacting revenge.
Behind him, you said, “We need an annulment.”
He watched the coffee drip into the cup. “Maybe.”
“Not maybe. Definitely. We get an annulment. Today. Or as soon as legally possible. What are Louisiana annulment laws? God, why do I not know Louisiana annulment laws?”
Bucky handed you a mug of coffee. “Because it hasn’t come up.”
“It is up now.”
“Yeah.”
You pointed at him. “Stop saying yeah.”
He pressed his lips together.
You paced. “Ground. We need grounds. Intoxication. Lack of sound mind. No consummation. No intent. Joke intent.”
“Joke intent is probably not in the statute.”
“I will make it case law.”
He almost smiled.
You saw it.
“Do not smile.”
“I’m not smiling.”
“You almost did. Why are you so calm?”
He breathed in slowly. “Because one of us should be.”
“No, I reject that. You should be panicking. This is your career.”
“It’s also yours.”
“I’m staff, I can be replaced.”
“No.”
The word left him before he could soften it.
You blinked.
“No,” he repeated.
Your face changed in a way he hated. Like you had heard something you were not prepared for. You looked away first.
“Fine,” you said, “staff can be investigated, disgraced, and fired.”
“That’s not better.”
“It’s accurate.”
Bucky crossed his arms. “An annulment might not stay quiet.”
You stilled.
This was the part he had to handle carefully. Not because you could not handle the facts. You could handle the facts. You liked facts. You collected them.
You turned back slowly. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, if we file fast, someone notices.”
“People file annulments all the time.”
“Not sitting congressmen married to their chief of staff.”
You stared at him.
“If this gets out as a marriage and annulment, that’s one story. If it gets out as a private marriage, that’s another.”
You laughed once. “You think secret marriage is quieter than annulment?”
“I think secret marriage sounds intentional.”
“It was not intentional.”
“No one needs to know that.”
You opened your mouth, then closed it. He saw the gears turning now, the panic not disappearing, but making room for strategy. You began seeing angles, headlines, risks, who would leak what.
Your eyes dropped to the certificate again, Bucky holding it loosely in his hand.
“People are going to figure out who I am and say I manipulated you,” you said.
Bucky’s jaw tightened. “No.”
“Bucky,” you sighed, “you don’t get to decide what people say.”
“I get to decide what I answer.”
“It’s not the same.”
He knew that. Still, the thought of someone using you as the next weapon against him made something old and violent shift beneath his ribs.
You turned away and walked to the window. You pulled the curtain aside just enough to look out. Morning light hit your face, and he saw how tired you were under the jokes. How tight your mouth had gone.
“The chapel had cameras.”
“Probably.”
“The clerk remembers us.”
“Definitely.”
“If this gets out as a drunken annulment, it becomes…” You paused, searching for the word.
“Blood in the water,” he supplied.
You nodded once. “And we just established credibility for you. The press would have a field day with this… but staying married? That’s insane.”
“It doesn’t have to be forever.”
Your eyes met his.
Bucky made himself keep going. “We wait. Talk to counsel. Figure out what’s already public, what isn’t. If nothing comes out, we handle it quietly. If something does, we control what we can.”
“You sound like me.”
“Believe it or not, I listen to you sometimes.”
You sat down on the edge of the bed, coffee in one hand, the other pressed to your forehead.
“I cannot believe I did this.”
“We did this.”
You snorted. “That’s generous.”
“It’s true.”
“You were drunk, too.” You closed your eyes. “What are you thinking?”
He took a seat in the chair at the desk. “I’m thinking we need to call Sam.”
“Absolutely not.”
“He’ll find out. He’ll be mad if he hears from someone else.”
“He’ll be mad because we got married in a discount chapel.” You pointed at him. “You call him.”
“I was going to.”
“You handle him.”
“I will.”
“And you do not let him yell at me.”
“I would never.”
“I need a shower.”
You set your coffee on the nightstand and disappeared into the bathroom to hopefully wash the events of last night off.
Bucky picked up his phone from the nightstand. There were already too many messages, most from his staff, several from Sam, and one unknown number with a photo attached that Bucky did not open.
His stomach dropped. One crisis at a time. He dialed Sam.
Sam answered on the third ring.
“Please tell me,” Sam said, without greeting, “that the photo I just saw is fake.”
Bucky closed his eyes. “Morning, Sam.”
“No morning. I asked you a question.”
“What picture?” Bucky asked.
Sam laughed once. It was not amused. “What picture, he says. Man, there is a photo of you and your chief of staff walking into a chapel in New Orleans at what looks like drunk o’clock in the morning.”
“My wife.”
Sam paused.
“Your what?”
“A photo of my wife and I in New Orleans.”
Silence. And then:
“Are you an idiot or are you just fuckin’ stupid.”
“I’m going to hang up,” Bucky grumbled.
“Is she there right now?”
“In the shower.”
“Alright, then answer me this. What is wrong with you?”
“I was serious about hanging up.”
“Bucky, I’m your friend. Probably your best friend, maybe your only friend—”
“That’s definitely not true.”
Sam continued. “---and as your best and only friend, I have to tell you, this is your most stupid idea yet. And trust me, you make plenty of those. What were you thinking?”
Bucky ran a hand through his hair. “We clearly weren’t thinking. We had had too many drinks, and—”
“Buck, we both know that’s bullshit. Your super soldier metabolism or whatever doesn’t let you get that drunk off of a couple drinks. Maybe she had too many drinks, but we both know you knew better. So y’wanna try again, with the truth this time?”
Bucky went silent. What was wrong with him? He had definitely been sober enough to know better. But you thought he was on the same page as you, and he had let you believe that. Bucky knew it was messed up, but how the hell would he explain to you that he married you perfectly sober?
“I… I-I don’t know, Sam,” Bucky finally admitted. “It was stupid, I know that. We were just walking around after the summit, and—I don’t know, man—we just stumbled upon this chapel. And she gave me this look, and Jesus, I don’t know how to say no to her when she looks at me like that.”
“You didn’t try something like ‘hey, you’re drunk, you’re my chief of staff, and I’m sober enough to know this is a terrible idea’? You didn’t try that?”
“Well, gee, Sam, wish you had been there—”
“Yeah, loverboy, I wish I had been there too to knock some sense into that thick skull of yours.”
Bucky scowled at the phone. “Sam, I know I fucked up.”
“Then tell her the truth!”
“Sam, I can’t. She’ll… she’ll freak out. And get an annulment, and the press will have a field day with it.”
“You’re worried about the press? Bucky, you lied to her.”
“I didn’t lie, I just…” Bucky was having a hard time believing himself. “I’m just withholding information.”
“Pertinent information.”
“Sam,” and Bucky sounded miserable enough this time to make Sam really pause. “I’ll lose her. If I tell her the truth. She thinks we made this mistake together. If she finds out I married her sober, she’ll be furious.”
“And she’d be right to.”
“Yeah, I know. Trust me, I know. But, Sam, she’d never speak to me again,” Bucky admitted. “I can’t lose her. Not as my chief of staff, not as my friend. Even if she never feels the same way, I need her in my life and if I tell her the truth I’ll lose her.”
Sam sighed on the other line. “Buck, I’m sorry. I know what this means to you, but this isn’t an ‘if’ she finds out kind of situation, it’s a ‘when’ she finds out.”
“It won’t be forever,” Bucky tried to justify. “Just a respectable amount of time until we can quietly get a divorce. And then things can go back to normal.”
“Do you understand what you’re proposing? That you fake a marriage with your chief of staff who you’re in love with?”
“Well, how hard can it be?”
“You need a psych evaluation.”
Before Bucky could respond, the handle to the bathroom door turned and you emerged from the bathroom covered only in a fluffy white towel. His eyes followed the curve of your neck, the smoothness of your skin. He swallowed, looking away and staring at the ceiling like it had become fascinating.
“Is that Sam?” You asked.
Bucky nodded, putting Sam on speaker. “Yeah, he says there’s already a photo of us outside the chapel circulating.”
You narrowed your eyes. “Who sent it to you?”
“Someone I know who saw it in a private group chat,” Sam replied. “The kind where people send things before they hit the press.”
You crossed to the desk and picked up Bucky’s phone without asking. He let you. You opened the unknown message with the attached photo. There you were, outside the chapel. You were looking up at him, laughing. Bucky stood with the chapel door open, looking at you.
Bucky stopped breathing for half a second. The photograph caught too much, he looked at you like the whole street had gone quiet.
“This is not ideal,” you muttered.
“Understatement of the year,” Sam scoffed through the speaker.
You zoomed in on the photo. “Bad angle.”
Bucky frowned. “What?”
“My left side is better.”
“Are you serious?” Sam said.
“Private group chat means it’ll leak soon,” you said.
“What’s the public version if it leaks?” Sam asked.
“The public version,” you said slowly, “is that we got married privately after the summit.”
Sam made a sound. “That’s it?”
“That’s all they get,” you said. “Bucky is a public figure, I’m staff, people are invasive. We wanted to keep personal matters out of the press.”
“Is that believable?”
You looked at Bucky.
It was too believable, that was part of the problem. The two of you had kept your friendship private in its deepest parts for years. People saw the work, the banter, the sharp comments in hallways. They did not see the late nights, the way you knew when he needed to leave a room, the way he knew when you were lying about being fine.
The public would believe you had hidden a relationship, because, in some ways, you had hidden something. Just not the thing they would think.
“Yes,” you said. “It’s believable.”
Sam was quiet for a moment.
“Can you sell it?”
“I can sell anything,” you shrugged. “If we look panicked, it becomes a scandal. If we look like we made a private choice and intend to remain private, people get bored.”
Sam snorted. “People do not get bored of Bucky Barnes secretly marrying his chief of staff.”
“I’ll give them something more interesting by Tuesday.”
Bucky leaned against the desk.
You were already working. He could see you building the story in your head. It was almost beautiful, in a way that made him uneasy. You had once used that mind to destroy people. Now you used it to protect him. He tried not to think too hard about how much that meant.
“And if people ask how long you’ve been together?”
“Our private life is private,” you said.
Sam groaned. “That’s not an answer. That sounds like an answer you give when the real answer is bad.”
“The real answer is bad.”
“Fair.”
Bucky picked up the certificate. “Chief, we need to decide before it leaks.”
You stared at him. “Decide what?”
“If we’re staying married for now.”
The room went still. You looked at him like he had just placed a loaded gun on the desk. You turned away and walked back to the window, pulling the curtain aside. You just stood there, fingers gripping the fabric.
“I’m not asking you to do this forever,” Bucky said.
“I know.”
“I’m not asking you to do anything you don’t want.”
You laughed once. “That’s the problem with you.”
He frowned. “What is?”
“You make it very hard to accuse you of being the villain.”
Sam was quiet for a long moment. Then he sighed.
“I’m going to let you two talk. Buck, don’t be stupid twice before breakfast.”
The call ended.
Bucky didn’t know what to say.
“Okay,” you said.
“Okay?”
“We wait long enough to see if the photo leaks,” you shrugged. “Long enough to get legal advice, long enough to prevent this from becoming a week-long morality play about whether the former Winter Soldier is fit to choose a spouse.”
Bucky flinched, not much, but you saw it and looked furious with yourself.
“That’s not—”
“I know.”
“No, I didn’t mean—”
“I know.”
Your mouth closed.
For a second, neither of you moved. Then, he folded the hurt away, because that was what Bucky did when there was no safe place to put it.
“Okay,” he said. “We wait.”
You nodded once.
He managed a small smile. “Okay. Good. We have a plan. Now, what does my wife want to eat for breakfast?”
summary. After a late-night in New Orleans, Congressman Bucky Barnes and his chief of staff wake up legally married. An annulment should be simple, but unfortunately, nothing about their lives is simple. With Bucky's reputation on the line and her past threatening to resurface, staying married starts to look like the safest option. It's only supposed to be temporary. Public appearances, a convincing story, and a quiet divorce once the headlines fade. But fake marriage is harder when everyone else believes it. Especially when Bucky is already in love with his wife.
word count. 6.9k
warnings. alcohol/intoxication, drunk decision making, fake marriage setup, friends with questionable boundaries
masterlist | series masterlist | next chapter
Congressman James Buchanan Barnes moved through the warm New Orleans night with the posture of a man trying very hard not to look like a man who had just spent four hours shaking hands with donors, veterans, reporters, lobbyists, local officials, and one woman who asked if his metal arm was “cold to the touch.”
You had nearly handled that one yourself.
Bucky had stopped you with one hand around your wrist, gently, but firm, before you could ask the woman if her personality was cold to the touch. He had not even looked at you when he did it, just caught your wrist, answered politely, and moved on.
Annoying.
Very annoying.
You stumbled half a step on the uneven sidewalk and immediately cursed whoever had created cobblestones—probably some medieval peasant—and cursed yourself for consuming so much bourbon at the event itself and the afterparty.
“You all right?”
Bucky’s hand moved to your elbow.
You looked down at his hand, then up at him. “You asking as my boss, my congressman, or the man responsible for making me put up with all these rich assholes for hours?”
“I’m askin’ as your friend. Should I be worried?”
“You should always be worried. S’what makes you such an effective public servant.”
He huffed, the closest he usually came to laughing in public.
The hotel was two streets behind you, all soft golden lighting and polished donors and tiny crab cakes that had been arranged on porcelain spoons. You had stolen one of the spoons simply because you were fond of the size and shape, and it now resided securely in the band of your bra.
You had handed Mia your glass of champagne when you noticed Bucky was making that face he made whenever too many people thanked him for his service. He looked like he might turn to stone.
Mia Santos, his communications director, had not asked questions. She was good that way. Also, likely, afraid of you. Healthy.
Now the streets of New Orleans spread out before you in humid, glowing layers. Neon signs illuminated puddles left from an earlier storm. Music leaked out of bars and down avenues. It was too much, in a way that made you feel like the city itself was saying make worse choices.
And who were you to not embrace the local culture?
“I want it on record,” you said, the world spinning around you, “that I was doing just fine before you convinced me to have those last two drinks at the afterparty.”
Bucky snorted. “Trust me, you didn’t need encouragement. You got here all on your own.”
“Rude.”
“Accurate.”
“Two things can be true.”
His eyes slid toward you, lips almost curving again.
Bucky Barnes looked unfairly good illuminated by the lamplights of the French Quarter.
This was not new information. You had known him for years. Seen him at campaign stops, hearings, office crises, hospital visits, safehouses, and one unfortunate charity softball game where he had refused to hit the ball hard because he was scared of killing the pitcher. You vaguely recalled yourself giving him ill-advised advice, something like do it for the children!
You had seen him in suits. In tactical gear. In rolled-up shirtsleeves, tie loose, hair falling into his eyes while you yelled at him for trying to rewrite his own remarks fifteen minutes before delivery.
You were not impressed by Bucky Barnes. Not generally. Not physically.
Usually.
Tonight, however, the humidity had done something catastrophic to his hair, and his shirt collar was open beneath his dark suit jacket, his tie had vanished sometime in the night.
And you were drunk. Pleasantly, dangerously warm. The kind of drunk that made your limbs loose, your mouth faster than your judgement. Bucky had been drinking too.
You knew because you had watched him accept bourbon from three separate people, nurse the first glass, finish the second, and then a third. He seemed looser than usual. Softer around the edges. He had laughed at two of your jokes without pretending it was a cough.
“You’re smiling,” he said.
You blinked. “No. No, I’m not.”
“You are.”
He guided you around a dip in the sidewalk. You noticed, and pretended not to.
“You keep doing that,” you muttered.
“What?”
“Acting like I can’t walk.”
“Yeah, well, m’not sure you can right now. You nearly fought a curb.”
“The curb started it.”
“And you threatened a shrimp tower.”
“You should’ve heard what they were saying to me!”
He shook his head, but he was smiling now. Fully smiling, almost. The real version, not the press version. Not the polite congressional one with the careful mouth and the distant eyes. This one showed up rarely and usually by accident.
You tried to commit it to memory in your drunken state.
You were interrupted by brass, loud and bright. Trumpet, trombone, drum. A little ragged, a little joyous, moving closer from the cross street ahead.
You stopped.
Bucky stopped because you had stopped, and because he was trained by now to treat your sudden stillness as either tactical assessment or impending nonsense.
You held up one hand. “Do you hear that?”
“I hear a lot of things.”
The music got louder as the procession turned the corner.
It was not quite a parade. It was too small and too disorderly. A brass band moved down the street with a dozen people trailing behind it, waving napkins, cups, and what appeared to be a feather boa in the colors of a tropical bird. Someone wore a sash that said Divorced and Delighted! Someone else wore a veil. Three women were laughing so hard they could barely walk.
You inhaled.
“No,” Bucky said, instantly.
“I’m engaging with the public.”
“You’re trespassing into someone else’s event.”
“Cultural immersion.”
The procession drew closer, and the woman in the divorce sash spotted you, gasped at Bucky, then pointed at him with her plastic cup.
“You!” She shouted. “You’re the congressman!”
Bucky’s shoulders shifted, the public face moving into place.
You hated it. Not always, sometimes it was necessary. Useful, even. You had built half his career around understanding when Bucky Barnes needed to be human and when he needed to be untouchable. But tonight, after hours of people mining his trauma for a handshake, you did not want him to have to become Congressman Barnes again.
You stepped in front of him and pointed back at the woman.
“And you are divorced and delighted. Congratulations!”
The woman stared at you for a second. Then she screamed with laughter.
Bucky’s hand closed around the back of your arm, not stopping you, just there. The woman grabbed your free hand.
“Come on, baby, we’re celebrating!”
“What are we celebrating?” You asked.
“Me leaving Dennis!”
The woman pulled you into the moving cluster before Bucky could object, and because Bucky Barnes had survived assassins, aliens, Hydra, and congressional hearings, but had not yet developed a defense against you making delighted eye contact with a newly divorced woman holding a plastic cup, he followed.
The brass band surged around you. You laughed because it was impossible not to. Someone shoved a napkin into your hand, someone else draped beads over your head. A man with a tambourine passed near you, and you reached for it on instinct.
Bucky caught your wrist.
“No.”
“I wasn’t going to steal it!”
He gave you a look.
“I was just going to… redistribute it.”
“That sounds like stealing.”
“Welcome to government, Congressman.”
The man with the tambourine overheard you and grinned. “You want it?”
“Yes!” You said.
“No.” Bucky said.
The man handed it to you, and you lifted it above your head in victory.
Bucky stared at the sky like he was asking God for backup.
You shook the tambourine badly. Immediately, aggressively, with confidence that was disproportionate to your skill.
“You’re off beat,” Bucky winced.
“It’s a counter-rhythm."
Bucky leaned closer, voice low near your ear so you could hear him over the band. “You’re going to get us kicked out of the procession.”
Your skin prickled at the warmth of his breath. Rude. You shook the tambourine directly beside his shoulder to cover whatever your face had just done.
The procession rolled forward, and you let it take you. For a few minutes, there was no policy. No Bucky Barnes brand problem. No veterans’ bill. No old aliases. No list of things you had done and things you would never fully outrun.
There was just music and heat and Bucky’s hand hovering near your back every time you veered too close to the street. Annoyingly chivalrous.
“You know you don’t have to keep saving me from traffic,” you said, glancing at him.
“I do if you keep trying to join it. You’re never allowed to drink bourbon again.”
“You don’t get to tell me what to do, Sarge,” you said, giving him a playful mock salute.
His eyebrows lifted.
Ah.
You had surprised him. You liked surprising Bucky. He spent so much of his life expecting the worst that surprising him with something stupid felt almost virtuous.
“You’re making me regret leaving the hotel.”
“I’m making you a man of the people.”
“I was already elected.”
“Barely.”
“You ran the campaign.”
“And I’m kept up at night by the margins.”
He looked at you for a second, eyes soft with amusement.
You felt something in your chest tilt. No. Absolutely not. Bad chest.
You lifted the tambourine again. “I should return this.”
Bucky just nodded.
You brought the tambourine back to the man who accepted it solemnly.
“You did terrible,” he told you.
“Why, thank you.”
He laughed and kissed your hand.
Bucky’s expression did something interesting. You did not know what to call it. It was not jealousy, obviously not. Bucky was not jealous because a man with a tambourine kissed your hand in a street parade celebrating a Dennis-based divorce. That would be absurd.
Still, when you returned to his side, he was staring at the man with mild suspicion. And when the parade moved on, he did not immediately follow. Neither did you. The music drifted down the street, taking sequins and beads and most of your remaining sense with it.
You stood beneath a wrought-iron balcony dripping with plants, the street damp beneath your shoes, the air heavy and sweet. A neon sign buzzed across the street. Somewhere, a saxophone moved lazily through a melody that sounded like it had been awake for a hundred years.
You looked down, one heel strap had come loose.
“Traitor,” you mumbled to your shoe.
Bucky followed your gaze. “Need help?”
“No.”
You bent down. The street tilted. Bucky caught your elbow.
“I had that,” you said.
“You were about to headbutt a mailbox.”
“Yeah, well, it looked at me funny.”
He crouched before you could object. You stared at him. This was bad. Bucky Barnes on one knee in front of you on a wet New Orleans sidewalk, dark hair falling forward, one hand gentle around your ankle while he fixed the strap of your heel.
You blinked several times, the bourbon offering you several unhelpful thoughts. You rejected all of them. Mostly.
“This is very Cinderella,” you said.
He did not look up. “You calling me the prince?”
“The footman. You’re definitely the footman. The prince had poor vetting procedures.”
“He tried a shoe on every woman in the kingdom.”
“Exactly. Inefficient and weird.”
Bucky fastened the strap and stood. “There.”
He looked at you then. There was something odd in his face. Something still and warm and gone before you could examine it.
“Come on,” he said.
“Where?”
“Hotel.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“The night is young!”
“And I’m old!”
You snorted. “Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.”
“I’ll be carrying you back if we don’t get back soon.”
“I can walk just fine.”
“For now.”
You resumed walking, mostly because standing still made the sidewalk behave suspiciously. Bucky fell into step beside you. The street curved ahead into a slightly darker block. A small sign hung near the corner, hand-painted and purple, advertising ghost tours every hour until 2 a.m.
You stopped again.
“No,” Bucky said.
“You keep saying that. What are you, allergic to fun?”
“I’m not allergic to fun. No ghost tour.”
“That’s exactly what someone allergic to fun would say. You’re afraid.”
“I’ve fought actual ghosts.”
You paused. “Have you?”
He looked at you. “I’ve fought a lot of things. The categories get blurry.”
“That is either very sad or very metal.”
“Both.”
You were already moving toward the cluster of tourists gathered beneath the sign. Bucky sighed behind you.
The ghost tour lasted eleven minutes. Not because the tour was eleven minutes long, but because at minute nine, the guide said something historically inaccurate about tuberculosis, and Bucky, who apparently had limits after all, muttered, “That’s not how quarantine worked.”
You heard him. Unfortunately, so did the guide.
“What was that sir?”
Bucky’s face went blank. You stepped in immediately.
“My uncle is just passionate about public health history.”
Bucky looked at you. You looked back. Uncle? Why had you said that? Probably because “boss” would sound weird.
The guide looked uncertain. “Well, as I was saying—”
“The date’s wrong too,” Bucky said quieter, but still audible.
The guide’s smile tightened.
“Stop heckling the ghost man,” you hissed at Bucky.
“He’s wrong.”
“It’s a ghost tour!”
The guide squinted at the two of you. “Wait, did either of you pay for this tour?”
“Great tour!” You announced. “We’ll leave a five-star–”
“Three stars, max,” Bucky grumbled beside you.
“--review on Yelp. Terrifying. Educational. We’re leaving.”
The guide looked relieved. Bucky let you drag him away.
He waited until you had crossed half the block before he said, “Uncle?”
“Well,” you said, glancing up at him, “no one would believe ‘boyfriend.’”
“Why wouldn’t they believe that?”
You pointed at him, and then at yourself. “Look at you, you’re too old to be my boyfriend.”
He made a face. “Don’t think m’too old to be your boyfriend.”
“Aren’t you like, 120 or something?”
“110,” he grumbled.
You clapped your hands together. “Practically a spring chicken.”
“I don’t look 110.”
“Yeah, that cryostasis chamber did wonders for your skin,” you quipped sarcastically.
“People would believe that we’re dating.”
“Sarge, I’m so youthful. I don’t know, you could be, like, my hot sugar daddy maybe.”
“Hot?”
You felt your cheeks flush. “Yeah—like temperature wise.”
“In March?”
“It’s the humidity. I was mocking you.”
“Were you?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re bad at it. You called me hot.”
You stopped walking and turned to fix him with a look. “James Buchanan Barnes.”
His eyebrows lifted.
Using his full name was usually reserved for near-felonies, bad press, and once when he had tried to skip breakfast before a five-hour hearing.
“Don’t weaponize drunk syntax against me.”
“Drunk syntax.”
“Yes, the grammar of the impaired is inadmissible.”
“In what court?”
“My court.”
The corners of his lips pulled upward. Your stomach did something you did not authorize.
“You’re smiling,” you pointed out.
“Yeah.”
“Stop.”
“Can’t.”
You narrowed your eyes at him. He looked back, warm and amused and too handsome beneath the neon glow of a sign advertising haunted cocktails.
You turned and walked away, advancing in a different direction. Unfortunately, your different direction brought you directly to a small white building with a pink sign in the window.
CRESCENT CITY VOWS. WALK-INS WELCOME. OPEN 24/7.
You slowed. Bucky slowed beside you.
The chapel was narrow and bright, wedged between a closed souvenir shop and a bar emitting aggressive karaoke. Plastic flowers filled the front window. A poster advertised packages: Classic, Jazz It Up, Voodoo Romance.
You stared.
Then you started laughing.
“Absolutely not,” Bucky said.
You pointed at the sign. “Jazz it up!”
“No. We’re leaving.”
“Imagine getting married somewhere between a karaoke bar and a T-shirt shop.”
“People do.”
“Brave people do.”
“Drunk people.”
You stepped closer to the window, peering inside. The lobby had black-and-white tile, a small counter, a display of rings, and a woman behind the desk reading a paperback.
You looked ridiculous together. You in a cocktail dress with beads around your neck; Bucky in a dark suit, tie missing, hair wrecked by humidity.
“Y’know,” you said, “we’d probably be good at a marriage.”
Bucky went still. “Would we?”
“Obviously.”
“Obviously,” he repeated.
“Yes. I already run your life.”
“That’s marriage?”
“Basically,” you continued, counting on your fingers. “We share enemies. We agree on most moral issues and disagree productively on methods. You carry my shoes when necessary. I know how you take your coffee.”
“You insult how I take my coffee.”
“Because I care. Who even puts that much sugar in their coffee, James?”
“You never had to experience rationing.”
You looked up at him. Mistake.
His eyes were on you in a way that did not feel like a joke. It was hard to tell with Bucky. He had layers. Like trauma onion. Or trauma lasagna.
You nudged his shoulder. “What, you don’t think I’d make a good wife?”
Your question had been a joke. It was the kind of joke you made because it was absurd. Because the idea of being anyone’s wife seemed like something that happened to other people, ordinary people, people with normal childhoods and fewer hidden knives.
Besides, Bucky was your best friend. Or at least, one of them. Or the person you trusted most besides Yelena. Bucky thinking of you as a wife would be objectively funny. But he did not laugh.
He looked at you for a long second and said, “I think you’d be impossible.”
You scoffed. “That was not the question.”
“You’d be terrifying.”
“Still not the question.”
The chapel door opened, a young couple stumbled out laughing, both wearing cheap plastic crowns. Behind them, the desk woman called, “Congratulations. Remember, the license copy is the ugly one.”
You stared after them, then looked at Bucky.
“Do you think these are legally binding?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“It’s a licensed chapel. There’s a registration number on the door.”
You looked. Of course there was. Of course he noticed.
“Sexy,” you said. “You and your regulatory literacy.”
He stared.
“Temperature-wise,” you added.
His smile returned. “Sure.”
“What package would you pick?” You asked.
“None.”
“Do you need me to get your EpiPen for your allergy to fun?”
“This again? I’m not picking a wedding package.”
“Hypothetically.”
“No.”
“C’mon, hotshot.”
“Hotshot?”
You shrugged. “Expanding my lexicon. Classic, Jazz It Up, or Voodoo Romance?”
“Classic.”
“Obviously.”
“You asked.”
“No, that’s the correct answer. You’re a practical man.”
He glanced at you. “What would you pick?”
“Voodoo Romance.”
He stared.
“Kidding!” You grinned. “Jazz It Up, obviously.”
Maybe it was the bourbon. Maybe it was the music still rattling in your bones. Maybe it was the way Bucky had looked at you. Maybe it was the fact that for one weird, suspended second, being his wife did not sound like a joke so much as a dare issued by the universe.
“If we got married, Sam would kill you,” you said lightly.
Bucky turned back slowly. “Me?”
“Yes, you’re the man. You’d be blamed.”
“So much for feminism.”
“My feminism is situational.”
“Yelena would kill me too.”
You nodded. “Yelena would kill us both. But she’d start with you.”
“Good to know.”
“She’d be very hurt about missing cake.”
“There’s no cake.”
“That would make her angrier.”
Bucky looked at the chapel. Then at you. His face had gone quiet again.
“You wanna?” he asked.
You laughed, because obviously. Because that was the correct response when your best friend, your boss, the congressman whose schedule you managed and reputation you protected and emotional constipation you had elevated into an operational challenge, asked if you wanted to get married outside a New Orleans chapel after midnight.
You laughed.
But he did not. He smiled, small, almost private.
Your laughter thinned.
“What?”
“Marry me,” he said.
The city tilted.
“You’re joking.”
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
Bucky stepped closer, not enough to crowd you. He never crowded unless there was danger. He understood space better than most people because so much of his had once been taken from him. He stood near you but left air between you, enough for the decision to sit there by itself.
“Bucky, you cannot propose to your chief of staff outside a 24/7 chapel.”
“Why not?”
“Because Sam would develop a stress rash.”
“He’ll live.”
“Because Yelena would turn your arm into modern art.”
“She’ll try.”
“Because I’m drunk.”
“I know.”
“And you’re drunk.”
His eyes flicked over your face. “Right.”
You frowned at him. “This is stupid. You’re supposed to talk me out of bad ideas.”
“I do that all day.”
“And now?”
His eyes moved to the chapel sign again, then back to you.
“Maybe I’m off the clock.”
You stared at him. The problem was that Bucky rarely asked for things. He accepted assignments. Responsibilities, burdens, coffee he hated because you handed it to him. He did not ask for comfort or attention, did not ask for help until absolutely cornered, and even then, he phrased it like a logistical update.
But now he was asking. Maybe as a joke or a drunken impulse. His face gave you nothing obvious. Or maybe it gave you too much and you did not know how to read it.
“You really want to get married?”
“It would be operationally efficient.”
You lifted a finger. “If we do this–”
“We’re doing this?”
“I said if.”
“Okay.”
“If we do this, we pick the Jazz It Up package.”
“Obviously.”
“And we tell no one.”
“Sam will find out.”
“Yeah, because you can’t keep secrets from that guy.”
His gaze dropped to your hands. “Do we need rings?”
“Probably not.”
“If we’re doing this, we’re doing it right.”
“I forgot how old-fashioned you are.”
Bucky reached for the door and opened the door for you. “You coming?”
You should have turned around, should have gone back to the hotel. You should have drunk three glasses of water, removed your makeup, gone to bed, and woken up grateful that the worst thing you had done all night was steal a tambourine.
Instead, you walked into the chapel.
Cool air hit your skin. The lobby smelled like artificial roses, lemon cleaner, and stale champagne. The woman behind the counter looked up from her paperback, took in your dress, Bucky’s suit, the beads around your neck.
You lifted your chin with all the dignity you had left.
“Jazz It Up package, please.”
Bucky exhaled behind you. It might have been a laugh. The woman set down her book and slid a form across the counter.
You looked back at Bucky. His eyes were already on you. For a second, neither of you moved.
Then you smiled, because this was absurd, and you were drunk, and he was your best friend, and the world had made very little sense for a very long time.
“Come on, hotshot,” you said, picking up the pen.
Bucky woke up before the alarm. He always did. It did not matter what time he went to bed, or how late the night had stretched, or how little sleep his body had been given. He came awake all at once.
The hotel room was dim. The curtains were half closed, but a thin slice of morning had made it through the gap and cut across the carpet. Somewhere below, New Orleans was already waking up. He could hear a truck backing up, voices on the sidewalk, a door shutting in the hallway.
Beside him, you were asleep.
You had started the night on your side of the bed, or at least what had become your side. At some point after that, you had drifted diagonally, one knee bent, one arm shoved beneath your pillow, hair spread over the white case like evidence of a fight you had won.
Bucky lay still and watched you breathe. He knew he should move. He knew he should get up, call Sam, call legal, call somebody who could tell him what shape the fallout might take and how fast it would come.
But for a few seconds, he did nothing.
The room was quiet. You were asleep beside him. His wedding ring was on his hand. It was the kind of thing a man could get used to if he were stupid.
He was not stupid. He had done plenty of stupid things. There was a difference.
He lifted his left hand and stared at the ring. It looked wrong there. Cheap, silver, too bright, already scratched along the bottom where it had caught against the hotel keycard last night.
You had chosen it for him. You had stood at the counter, swaying slightly, studying the little velvet tray as if selecting equipment for a mission.
He remembered everything.
The street parade. The tambourine. The chapel door. The way you had looked back at him right before you stepped inside, grinning like the whole night had been built for you personally by a god with bad judgement.
You made a sound in your sleep, small and irritated, and dragged the blanket higher over your shoulder. Your ring caught the light when your hand shifted across the pillow.
The marriage certificate was folded on the desk beneath the chapel brochure, which advertised vow renewals and discount photography. He had meant to put it somewhere safe. Instead, he had put it on top of the minibar menu and gone to bed beside his wife.
His wife.
Bucky closed his eyes. That was not a word he got to keep.
You stirred beside him.
Bucky opened his eyes and turned his head.
Your brow pulled together first. Then your nose wrinkled. Then your whole face folded into a grimace, as if consciousness had personally offended you.
Your eyes opened, and you turned your head very slowly. He watched the memory arrive, not all at once. In pieces. First confusion, then pain, because your hangover was clearly taking up most of your skull. Then recognition.
Your hand came up in front of your face. You sat up so fast the blanket slid to your waist.
“Oh my God.”
Bucky pushed himself up on one elbow. “Morning.”
You turned on him.
“Do not.”
“Okay.”
You looked down at yourself, still wearing the slip dress from last night, wrinkled now and twisted slightly at one strap. You looked over at him. He was still in his trousers and shirt, though the shirt was unbuttoned at the collar and his jacket had been thrown over the desk chair.
Your eyes narrowed.
“Did we—”
“No.”
Your shoulders dropped with visible relief. “Okay.”
“I stayed on top of the covers for half the night.”
You rubbed both hands over your face. “Did you?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened to the other half?”
“You stole the covers and then threatened me when I tried to get them back.”
You threw the blanket off and stood. Too fast, you swayed. Bucky was out of bed before he decided to move, his hand catching your elbow.
You looked at it. He let go.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re hungover.”
You crossed the room with great purpose and slightly poor balance. You lifted the chapel brochure first, squinted at it, and then found the folded certificate beneath. You opened it. Read it. Read it again.
“James.”
There it was. His real name in your voice. Not “Barnes,” not “Congressman.” James meant one of two things: danger or trouble. Possibly both.
Bucky stood beside the bed. “Yeah?”
“This is real.”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t say yeah like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I just asked if you wanted toast.”
He glanced at the certificate. “It’s real.”
You looked back at the paper, then at the brochure, then at your ring.
You turned sharply toward the bathroom, stopped, turned back toward the desk, then turned again toward the minibar.
Bucky watched you make a small, silent circle of panic.
Bucky crossed the room and started the coffee machine. You stood behind him, quiet now except for the small sound of your breathing and the occasional miserable swallow that told him the bourbon was exacting revenge.
Behind him, you said, “We need an annulment.”
He watched the coffee drip into the cup. “Maybe.”
“Not maybe. Definitely. We get an annulment. Today. Or as soon as legally possible. What are Louisiana annulment laws? God, why do I not know Louisiana annulment laws?”
Bucky handed you a mug of coffee. “Because it hasn’t come up.”
“It is up now.”
“Yeah.”
You pointed at him. “Stop saying yeah.”
He pressed his lips together.
You paced. “Ground. We need grounds. Intoxication. Lack of sound mind. No consummation. No intent. Joke intent.”
“Joke intent is probably not in the statute.”
“I will make it case law.”
He almost smiled.
You saw it.
“Do not smile.”
“I’m not smiling.”
“You almost did. Why are you so calm?”
He breathed in slowly. “Because one of us should be.”
“No, I reject that. You should be panicking. This is your career.”
“It’s also yours.”
“I’m staff, I can be replaced.”
“No.”
The word left him before he could soften it.
You blinked.
“No,” he repeated.
Your face changed in a way he hated. Like you had heard something you were not prepared for. You looked away first.
“Fine,” you said, “staff can be investigated, disgraced, and fired.”
“That’s not better.”
“It’s accurate.”
Bucky crossed his arms. “An annulment might not stay quiet.”
You stilled.
This was the part he had to handle carefully. Not because you could not handle the facts. You could handle the facts. You liked facts. You collected them.
You turned back slowly. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, if we file fast, someone notices.”
“People file annulments all the time.”
“Not sitting congressmen married to their chief of staff.”
You stared at him.
“If this gets out as a marriage and annulment, that’s one story. If it gets out as a private marriage, that’s another.”
You laughed once. “You think secret marriage is quieter than annulment?”
“I think secret marriage sounds intentional.”
“It was not intentional.”
“No one needs to know that.”
You opened your mouth, then closed it. He saw the gears turning now, the panic not disappearing, but making room for strategy. You began seeing angles, headlines, risks, who would leak what.
Your eyes dropped to the certificate again, Bucky holding it loosely in his hand.
“People are going to figure out who I am and say I manipulated you,” you said.
Bucky’s jaw tightened. “No.”
“Bucky,” you sighed, “you don’t get to decide what people say.”
“I get to decide what I answer.”
“It’s not the same.”
He knew that. Still, the thought of someone using you as the next weapon against him made something old and violent shift beneath his ribs.
You turned away and walked to the window. You pulled the curtain aside just enough to look out. Morning light hit your face, and he saw how tired you were under the jokes. How tight your mouth had gone.
“The chapel had cameras.”
“Probably.”
“The clerk remembers us.”
“Definitely.”
“If this gets out as a drunken annulment, it becomes…” You paused, searching for the word.
“Blood in the water,” he supplied.
You nodded once. “And we just established credibility for you. The press would have a field day with this… but staying married? That’s insane.”
“It doesn’t have to be forever.”
Your eyes met his.
Bucky made himself keep going. “We wait. Talk to counsel. Figure out what’s already public, what isn’t. If nothing comes out, we handle it quietly. If something does, we control what we can.”
“You sound like me.”
“Believe it or not, I listen to you sometimes.”
You sat down on the edge of the bed, coffee in one hand, the other pressed to your forehead.
“I cannot believe I did this.”
“We did this.”
You snorted. “That’s generous.”
“It’s true.”
“You were drunk, too.” You closed your eyes. “What are you thinking?”
He took a seat in the chair at the desk. “I’m thinking we need to call Sam.”
“Absolutely not.”
“He’ll find out. He’ll be mad if he hears from someone else.”
“He’ll be mad because we got married in a discount chapel.” You pointed at him. “You call him.”
“I was going to.”
“You handle him.”
“I will.”
“And you do not let him yell at me.”
“I would never.”
“I need a shower.”
You set your coffee on the nightstand and disappeared into the bathroom to hopefully wash the events of last night off.
Bucky picked up his phone from the nightstand. There were already too many messages, most from his staff, several from Sam, and one unknown number with a photo attached that Bucky did not open.
His stomach dropped. One crisis at a time. He dialed Sam.
Sam answered on the third ring.
“Please tell me,” Sam said, without greeting, “that the photo I just saw is fake.”
Bucky closed his eyes. “Morning, Sam.”
“No morning. I asked you a question.”
“What picture?” Bucky asked.
Sam laughed once. It was not amused. “What picture, he says. Man, there is a photo of you and your chief of staff walking into a chapel in New Orleans at what looks like drunk o’clock in the morning.”
“My wife.”
Sam paused.
“Your what?”
“A photo of my wife and I in New Orleans.”
Silence. And then:
“Are you an idiot or are you just fuckin’ stupid.”
“I’m going to hang up,” Bucky grumbled.
“Is she there right now?”
“In the shower.”
“Alright, then answer me this. What is wrong with you?”
“I was serious about hanging up.”
“Bucky, I’m your friend. Probably your best friend, maybe your only friend—”
“That’s definitely not true.”
Sam continued. “---and as your best and only friend, I have to tell you, this is your most stupid idea yet. And trust me, you make plenty of those. What were you thinking?”
Bucky ran a hand through his hair. “We clearly weren’t thinking. We had had too many drinks, and—”
“Buck, we both know that’s bullshit. Your super soldier metabolism or whatever doesn’t let you get that drunk off of a couple drinks. Maybe she had too many drinks, but we both know you knew better. So y’wanna try again, with the truth this time?”
Bucky went silent. What was wrong with him? He had definitely been sober enough to know better. But you thought he was on the same page as you, and he had let you believe that. Bucky knew it was messed up, but how the hell would he explain to you that he married you perfectly sober?
“I… I-I don’t know, Sam,” Bucky finally admitted. “It was stupid, I know that. We were just walking around after the summit, and—I don’t know, man—we just stumbled upon this chapel. And she gave me this look, and Jesus, I don’t know how to say no to her when she looks at me like that.”
“You didn’t try something like ‘hey, you’re drunk, you’re my chief of staff, and I’m sober enough to know this is a terrible idea’? You didn’t try that?”
“Well, gee, Sam, wish you had been there—”
“Yeah, loverboy, I wish I had been there too to knock some sense into that thick skull of yours.”
Bucky scowled at the phone. “Sam, I know I fucked up.”
“Then tell her the truth!”
“Sam, I can’t. She’ll… she’ll freak out. And get an annulment, and the press will have a field day with it.”
“You’re worried about the press? Bucky, you lied to her.”
“I didn’t lie, I just…” Bucky was having a hard time believing himself. “I’m just withholding information.”
“Pertinent information.”
“Sam,” and Bucky sounded miserable enough this time to make Sam really pause. “I’ll lose her. If I tell her the truth. She thinks we made this mistake together. If she finds out I married her sober, she’ll be furious.”
“And she’d be right to.”
“Yeah, I know. Trust me, I know. But, Sam, she’d never speak to me again,” Bucky admitted. “I can’t lose her. Not as my chief of staff, not as my friend. Even if she never feels the same way, I need her in my life and if I tell her the truth I’ll lose her.”
Sam sighed on the other line. “Buck, I’m sorry. I know what this means to you, but this isn’t an ‘if’ she finds out kind of situation, it’s a ‘when’ she finds out.”
“It won’t be forever,” Bucky tried to justify. “Just a respectable amount of time until we can quietly get a divorce. And then things can go back to normal.”
“Do you understand what you’re proposing? That you fake a marriage with your chief of staff who you’re in love with?”
“Well, how hard can it be?”
“You need a psych evaluation.”
Before Bucky could respond, the handle to the bathroom door turned and you emerged from the bathroom covered only in a fluffy white towel. His eyes followed the curve of your neck, the smoothness of your skin. He swallowed, looking away and staring at the ceiling like it had become fascinating.
“Is that Sam?” You asked.
Bucky nodded, putting Sam on speaker. “Yeah, he says there’s already a photo of us outside the chapel circulating.”
You narrowed your eyes. “Who sent it to you?”
“Someone I know who saw it in a private group chat,” Sam replied. “The kind where people send things before they hit the press.”
You crossed to the desk and picked up Bucky’s phone without asking. He let you. You opened the unknown message with the attached photo. There you were, outside the chapel. You were looking up at him, laughing. Bucky stood with the chapel door open, looking at you.
Bucky stopped breathing for half a second. The photograph caught too much, he looked at you like the whole street had gone quiet.
“This is not ideal,” you muttered.
“Understatement of the year,” Sam scoffed through the speaker.
You zoomed in on the photo. “Bad angle.”
Bucky frowned. “What?”
“My left side is better.”
“Are you serious?” Sam said.
“Private group chat means it’ll leak soon,” you said.
“What’s the public version if it leaks?” Sam asked.
“The public version,” you said slowly, “is that we got married privately after the summit.”
Sam made a sound. “That’s it?”
“That’s all they get,” you said. “Bucky is a public figure, I’m staff, people are invasive. We wanted to keep personal matters out of the press.”
“Is that believable?”
You looked at Bucky.
It was too believable, that was part of the problem. The two of you had kept your friendship private in its deepest parts for years. People saw the work, the banter, the sharp comments in hallways. They did not see the late nights, the way you knew when he needed to leave a room, the way he knew when you were lying about being fine.
The public would believe you had hidden a relationship, because, in some ways, you had hidden something. Just not the thing they would think.
“Yes,” you said. “It’s believable.”
Sam was quiet for a moment.
“Can you sell it?”
“I can sell anything,” you shrugged. “If we look panicked, it becomes a scandal. If we look like we made a private choice and intend to remain private, people get bored.”
Sam snorted. “People do not get bored of Bucky Barnes secretly marrying his chief of staff.”
“I’ll give them something more interesting by Tuesday.”
Bucky leaned against the desk.
You were already working. He could see you building the story in your head. It was almost beautiful, in a way that made him uneasy. You had once used that mind to destroy people. Now you used it to protect him. He tried not to think too hard about how much that meant.
“And if people ask how long you’ve been together?”
“Our private life is private,” you said.
Sam groaned. “That’s not an answer. That sounds like an answer you give when the real answer is bad.”
“The real answer is bad.”
“Fair.”
Bucky picked up the certificate. “Chief, we need to decide before it leaks.”
You stared at him. “Decide what?”
“If we’re staying married for now.”
The room went still. You looked at him like he had just placed a loaded gun on the desk. You turned away and walked back to the window, pulling the curtain aside. You just stood there, fingers gripping the fabric.
“I’m not asking you to do this forever,” Bucky said.
“I know.”
“I’m not asking you to do anything you don’t want.”
You laughed once. “That’s the problem with you.”
He frowned. “What is?”
“You make it very hard to accuse you of being the villain.”
Sam was quiet for a long moment. Then he sighed.
“I’m going to let you two talk. Buck, don’t be stupid twice before breakfast.”
The call ended.
Bucky didn’t know what to say.
“Okay,” you said.
“Okay?”
“We wait long enough to see if the photo leaks,” you shrugged. “Long enough to get legal advice, long enough to prevent this from becoming a week-long morality play about whether the former Winter Soldier is fit to choose a spouse.”
Bucky flinched, not much, but you saw it and looked furious with yourself.
“That’s not—”
“I know.”
“No, I didn’t mean—”
“I know.”
Your mouth closed.
For a second, neither of you moved. Then, he folded the hurt away, because that was what Bucky did when there was no safe place to put it.
“Okay,” he said. “We wait.”
You nodded once.
He managed a small smile. “Okay. Good. We have a plan. Now, what does my wife want to eat for breakfast?”
summary. After a late-night in New Orleans, Congressman Bucky Barnes and his chief of staff wake up legally married. An annulment should be simple, but unfortunately, nothing about their lives is simple. With Bucky's reputation on the line and her past threatening to resurface, staying married starts to look like the safest option. It's only supposed to be temporary. Public appearances, a convincing story, and a quiet divorce once the headlines fade. But fake marriage is harder when everyone else believes it. Especially when Bucky is already in love with his wife.
warnings. 18+ NSFW, eventual smut, fake marriage, friends to lovers, mutual pining, former black widow reader, morally gray reader, accidental marriage, alcohol/intoxication, light angst, Sam being exhausted, Yelena being a menace, Valentina being Valentina, mentions of past trauma, truth serum, accidental poisoning, sex pollen, dubcon-adjacent due to sex pollen but with verbal consent, no use of y/n
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summary: Five years before the events of the wedding, you've just graduated college and you can't help but catch the eye of your father's protégé.
a/n: so this obviously is a flashback to events before the start of this series. there is an age gap between the reader and Bucky, in this fic she's like 21-22 and he's probably about 30.
Five years ago.
A chessboard sits between your father and Bucky Barnes, pieces discarded absentmindedly like casualties of war. Firelight catches on the amber liquid in the whiskey glasses on the desk. Bucky takes a sip from his glass as he scans the board, trying to find any areas of weakness in his current strategy.
The door creaks, disrupting his focus, and you breeze in, laughter from the party behind you following you inside. You’re in a tight, fitted dress–entirely inappropriate for the family gathering outside, Bucky thinks. You lean against the door with a champagne flute dangling from the tips of your perfectly manicured fingers.
“Dad,” you say, your voice half a whine. “You promised you’d be downstairs by now. It’s my graduation party, remember? Whole four years of me not flunking out of Columbia deserves at least one toast.”
Your dad’s eyes leave the board briefly to offer you an apologetic smile. “I’ll be down shortly, love. Let me finish this game with James. Promise it won’t take long. I’ve nearly got him.”
Bucky’s brows furrow at the comment. He didn’t feel nearly gotten. Was he missing something? He doesn’t have time to overthink, because with a huff you’re pushing off the doorframe to come closer. Bucky can smell the perfume on your skin and it’s nearly intoxicating.
The hem of your dress rides up scandalously high as you lean over the edge of the desk to get a good look at the board. Bucky’s jaw tightens, his hand curling into a fist against his thigh in an attempt to maintain control of himself. He tries to keep his eyes fixed on the chess board in front of him, but he betrays himself for a second too long, gaze dragging down the smoothness of your legs.
And your father notices. Of course he does.
His eyes narrow and his lips curve into a warning. “Careful, James. You keep staring too long, you’ll lose before you even make a move.”
Bucky can feel his face warm, and he snaps his gaze away from you completely. “Won’t happen again, sir.”
You’re not paying attention to the exchange at all, already motioning to one of Bucky’s pieces. “Dad’s about to put you in check, by the way. One move with the rook and you’re finished.”
Bucky blinks once. Then twice. He looks back at the board, and you’re right. He hadn’t seen it.
Your father chuckles softly, glancing up at you with warmth behind his eyes. “Sharp as ever. James, you ought to take lessons from her.”
You smirk at Bucky, raising your champagne flute to him in a mock salute. “Don’t lose too badly, Barnes.”
Then you’re spinning on your heel, disappearing into the buzz of the party. Silence falls again between the two of them. Your father leans back in his chair. He studies Bucky’s expression for a moment, then moves his rook into place.
Check.
“You’ve got a wandering eye, James.” Your father says coolly. “Don’t think I didn’t notice.”
Bucky feels his throat tighten. “Wasn’t my intention, sir.”
He wants to argue further, insist it isn't like that, but it is. It's exactly like that. He wants you in ways he can't even say out loud. He has to remind himself that she's a child compared to himself. She trusts him to be safe, and all he can think about is ruining her.
“Intentions don’t matter. She’s still just a girl. She’s too young. Not for you to look at like that. Do you understand me?” The calm of your father’s voice was terrifying.
Bucky forces himself to move his next piece. “I understand.”
“She’s too good for this life. Too good for me. Too good for you. If you forget that, I’ll make sure to remind you,” he said, the threat plain.
“I won’t forget.”
Your father looks up from the board for a moment, studying Bucky’s face for a moment before nodding, satisfied. “When she’s older…if for some reason I’m not here to look after her… it’ll fall to someone I can trust.”
Your father’s eyes narrow as he moves a piece on the board. “If that someone is you, James, you’d better do right by her. You hear me?”
Bucky swallows hard. He’s not sure if this is some kind of blessing or another threat. Maybe both? The weight settles softly on his shoulders.
“I’d keep her safe,” he says quietly.
Your father gives a faint nod, a real smile tugging at the edge of his lips, as if some kind of secret test has been passed. Then he moves his queen with precision into her final position.
“Checkmate,” he murmured with satisfaction.
Bucky forced a smile, but the game had stopped mattering to him by now. The only thing on his mind was your father’s words.
-
Outside, your parents had gone all out for your graduation party. The garden glows under the lights that have been strung from the roof to the trees on the opposite side of the lawn, and champagne glasses glimmer in the light.
Bucky’s eyes find you immediately, leaning up against the bar, already flushed, tipsy from too many toasts. You swirl your bubbles in your glass as a young hotshot slides in next to you, an easy grin on his face, his hand making its way around your waist all too easily.
And he knows he shouldn’t—he had promised your father he wouldn’t even look at you—but Bucky feels absolutely rotten watching another man put his hands on you. Before his mind can catch up, his body is making his way across the yard toward the bar.
“...wonder, princess, what other sounds I could get out of you.”
Bucky only catches the end of this douchebag’s line and his fingers are already curling into a fist. To his irritation, you seem to be enjoying the attention, your hand placed playfully on his arm, and you throw your head back with soft laughter. There’s no way you find this guy funny, Bucky thinks to himself, chalking it up to the alcohol.
“Tony,” you draw his name out, “you love talking, don’t you? Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is?”
Tony grins like he’s won a prize, his fingers slipping lower down your thigh. “I’d like to put my mouth—”
“Don’t even finish that thought.”
Bucky’s voice is low and lethal. He closes a hand around Stark’s wrist in a bruising grip, yanking him back a step. Tony is predictably alarmed.
Your eyes flicker with surprise that quickly morphes into amusement as you lean back onto the bar to watch the show. He looks terrifying in the glow of the lights, his broad shoulders squared, lips pressed into a thin line.
Tony narrows his eyes and attempts to mask his discomfort with bravado, sending a smirk your way. “Didn’t know you had a babysitter tonight.”
“Didn’t know you had a death wish,” Bucky snaps, his voice dropping to a growl. “Touch her again, and I’ll break every bone in your hand.”
The tension between them is thick as smoke, and only broken by your laughter.
You clap your hands together, delighted at the exchange, a wicked grin tugging at your lips. “Well, it seems introductions are overdue. Tony, this is Bucky Barnes, my father’s protégé. Bucky, Tony Stark.”
“Protégé,” Tony echoes with a smirk, but now there’s some wariness in his eyes. He straightens his jacket, mutters some excuse about finding someone, and makes himself scarce.
“Are you happy with yourself?” You sigh when Tony is out of earshot. “You successfully cockblocked me.”
Bucky’s eyes narrow on you. “You weren’t seriously thinking about sleeping with him.”
“Maybe I was,” you shrug. “But since that’s no longer an option, are you offering yourself up as a sacrifice?”
His throat tightens but he’s determined not to see the effect you’re having on him. “You’re more drunk than I thought. Seriously, what the hell were you thinking? Do you know what your father would say if he saw you like that?”
“Relax, Barnes. Was having fun, that’s all.”
“Fun?” He looks at you with incredulity. “Letting Stark paw at you like that? S’that your idea of fun?”
“Yes, and you stopped him,” you say, taking a step closer toward him. “How gallant.”
He says your name, and if it wasn’t laced with so much irritation, it might’ve been hot. “This isn’t a joke.”
You’re leaning into him now, nudging his leg playfully with your knee, fingertips grazing the lapel of his suit. His throat works, eyes flickering traitorously to where your neckline dips. He hates himself for it. Hates how much he wants more.
“You know,” you murmur, “for a man so worried about what my father would say, you don’t seem to mind looking at me.”
For a second he almost caves. Almost drags you into him like he’s dreamed of doing. Bucky catches your wrist before you can touch his chest, his grip firm but gentle. “Go inside.”
“Why don’t you make me?” You grin, undeterred. And Christ, Bucky thinks, if only you knew how many times he’d dreamed of it already. You lean just close enough for him to feel your breath against his jaw.
He holds your gaze for a moment, wrestling with his internal thoughts. Every muscle in his body is coiled tight with the effort it takes to step back. He drops your wrist.
Your smirk falters for a brief moment at the rejection, but only for a heartbeat. You place your empty glass on the bar, the sound sharp enough to shatter ice, and saunter away from him without a second glance.
Bucky doesn’t move until you’re completely out of eyesight. Then, he drags his hand over his face. Stomach sick with guilt. With want. With the memory of your smile.
God help him, he's in love with you.
Your soft laugher and wit, that body he can't stop imagining pressed against his. You're everything he wants and everything he can never have.
Because he promised your father. Because you're too bright. Because to love you would mean dragging you into a life you never asked for. Because you'll never look at him the way he looks at you.
He'll guard you. Protect you. Kill for you. But he'll never be allowed to love you.
Not the way he wants.
Not the way that tears him apart.
He resigns himself to it. To wanting and never taking. To loving without being loved.
summary: you put on a show in hopes of finally seeing your husband's icy exterior crack.
warnings: references to sexual content, threats (promises?) of exhibitionism
a/n: hi! here's another addition to my the devil you know collection. as always, requests are open!
The bass slams into you like a fist to the chest the moment you step into the club, lights strobing violet and blue. You don’t belong here. Not in the beaded mini dress that screamed Paris runway, not in the glittering diamonds at your neck. Everything about you was polished wealth.
Steve followed a step behind you. “He’s going to kill you.”
Natasha cuts him a look. “He’s going to kill us. For letting her get this far.”
“Relax,” you smirk, “I’m just here for a drink.”
“You don’t even like tequila,” Steve mutters as the bartender sets a shot down in front of you.
You slam it back, wince, and wave for another. “I like it tonight.”
“Slow down, will you?” Natasha leans on the counter beside you. “You’ve had three shots already and we just got here.”
You grin at her wickedly, sliding the next shot to her. “I’ll stop when I’m dead. Which, apparently, is any minute now. Isn’t that right, Rogers?”
Natasha takes the shot effortlessly, not blinking an eye. “I give you an hour before Barnes shows up.”
“An hour? Try ten minutes,” Steve groans.
“That’s the point,” you say, turning to face them both, “I want him to snap. To get angry for once is his stupidly perfect life.”
“Fine,” Natasha sighs. “But if he kills us all for this, I’m haunting you.”
“Deal,” you say, shooting her a sugary smile, pushing yourself up from the bar, and striding toward the stage.
The DJ doesn’t need much bribing, you flash him a grin and bat your eyelashes and his eyes lit up.
“You sure you wanna do this, sweetheart?”
“Oh, I’ve never been more sure,” you smirk.
The bass drops, a heavy pulsing rhythm that rattles through your bones. You climb the steps up to the stage, and the crowd notices instantly. Wolf whistles, cat calls. You spin to face them, grinning like you’re on top of the world.
Then, your fingers find the hem of your mini-dress, and before Steve and Natasha even realize what’s happening, you tug your dress off over your body and toss it into the crowd.
The crowd roars, nearly shaking the walls. You stand on stage in nothing but lace and heels, flushed and gleaming under the stage lights.
“Oh my God,” Steve chokes on his drink, “she’s actually doing this.”
Natasha’s chair screeches, already making an effort to shove through the men pressing toward the stage. “Of course she is. Move—”
Steve’s face is redder than the bottom of your heels, one hand firmly covering his eyes. “Nope. I am not watching this.”
“At least watch her fucking back,” Natasha snaps, cutting through the crowd like a knife.
You weren’t looking at either of them. You weren’t thinking about Natasha’s annoyed scowl or Steve’s horrified blush. You were drunk and furious, your body warm with the liquor you had already consumed.
Your husband refused to touch you. The most action you’d gotten was the kiss at the altar, and you had needs that he wouldn’t give you. Wouldn’t let anyone else near you either. You hated him for it. Hated yourself even more for wanting his touch.
So you let the light wash over you on stage, the lace clinging to your skin and the heels keeping you steady as you spin on stage. The crowd roars their approval again. You revel in it.
Then the crowd shifts.
Bucky stands in the doorway, black suit immaculate, tie loosened like he’d come straight from work. His eyes lock on you immediately. Blue steel, bright and burning, cutting straight through the alcohol induced liquor in your veins. His men flank him, quickly spreading through the club.
For a long moment, no one moves. The crowd seems to hold its breath in anticipation.
When he speaks, his voice is low and lethal.
“Show’s over.”
The words land like a gunshot, the DJ scrambling to kill the track and the speakers cutting to static. With a wave of two fingers from Bucky, his men begin shoving patrons toward the exits in spite of their protests.
You stay where you are, hands finding their place on your hips, chest heaving. He strides forward, his steps controlled and deliberate. When he reaches the edge of the stage, he shrugs off his jacket and tosses it at your feet.
“Put it on.”
You feel your pulse stutters. The alcohol in your stomach curdles into something sour. You wanted him angry, wanted to see a crack in the exterior, and now you’d gotten it.
You lift your chin stubbornly. “What’s the matter? Didn’t like the show?”
“Not when it's you putting it on for the whole club,” he growls.
The club is emptying fast, Natasha still making her way toward the both of you. Steve drags a hand down his face in mortification.
“Put on the jacket,” Bucky says again.
You pretend to think about it before slowly shaking your head. “Hm, no. No, I don’t think so.”
You shift your weight, your lace-clad body still on display beneath the lights. The crowd is almost entirely gone by now, but you don’t care. The point is him. His fury. You want to drink it down like another round of tequila.
“I’m not asking,” he says, a dangerous calm rippling across his face, and now he’s stepping up onto stage. “Last chance.”
Your pulse skips. For the first time, a sliver of unease slides into your spine. You wanted him furious, but there was something in his voice now that felt different. He’s not angry. He’s just done.
Your gaze drops from his and you lower yourself to pick the jacket off the floor of the stage, slowly pulling it on over your body.
“Good girl,” he says, and you blanch at the comment. “You think you’re funny, don’t you? Dragging your red bottoms across this stage. Begging for my attention.”
Your chest heaves, fury and something warmer twisting low in your stomach. “You think this is begging?”
“Dancing half-naked in my club, knowing I’d come for you?” He nods. “Looks a lot like begging to me.
You open your mouth to respond but you never get the chance. In a swift motion, he effortlessly scoops you up and slings you over his shoulder like a doll. You let out a squeak at the sudden action, pounding your fists against his back.
“Bucky—what the fuck! Put me down!”
His arm tightens around your thighs, holding you firm. “Not a chance, dove.”
“I swear to God—”
“Swear all you want,” he says, and you can feel the vibration of his words in your core as you’re held tightly over his shoulder. “You’re done putting on your shows. They don’t get to look at you like that.”
You’re still struggling as Bucky passes Natasha and Stee without a word to either of them. The car is waiting outside, black and sleek. He hauls you inside, setting you down none too gently on the leather seat and sliding in beside you. The door shuts and the partition immediately goes up. The car rumbles beneath you, quickly speeding away from the club and the scene you caused.
“You’re insane,” you hiss at him.
His hand reaches out and catches your chin, tilting your face to his. “You wanted my attention, didn’t you? Well now you’ve got it.”
Your throat goes dry. “You don’t get to–”
“Don’t I?” His thumb brushes your lower lip in a taunting manner. “You wanted me to get angry. You wanted me looking at you. You wanted to know what it’s like to drive me out of control.”
“Shut up,” you manage, your words breathy and weak.
He chuckles darkly. “If you wanted an audience, you could’ve just asked. I’d have you on my desk, spread open for me. Let the whole crew watch as I ruin you.”
Your breath catches in your throat, heat spreading across your face and sparking low in your belly. “You’re disgusting.”
“And you’re soaked through my coat right now, aren’t you?” His hand slips lower, gripping your thigh through the coat, hard enough to make you gasp. “Don’t bother denying it.”
Your nails dig into the leather seat, and you find yourself a mix of fury and something else you don’t want to name. “This is the first time you’ve even touched me since our wedding. You won’t give me what I want, but you won’t let anyone else either. You’re a coward.”
His eyes darken. “Coward? Dove, you have no idea how close I am to bending you over this seat and fucking that attitude out of you.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
He leans in until his nose brushes against your temple. “Try me. Keep dancing half-naked in my clubs. Keep testing me. See what happens when I finally stop holding back.”
Your mouth snaps shut, shame and want tangling in your gut.
“Say it,” he murmurs, “say you wanted me angry. Say you wanted me looking only at you.”
Your jaw clenches, glaring at him even as your body betrays you. “Go to hell.”
“If hell’s where you are,” he says, smirk spreading, “I’ll build my kingdom there.”
The car jolts to a stop outside his mansion, the silence stretching razor-thing. You tug his jacket around you tighter, nails biting into your palms, doing your best to wrestle back control.
The truth hangs heavy in the air. You’d gotten what you wanted. His rage. His attention. His hands on you.
