You're The Risk, I'm Gonna Take It
Summary: Your soulmate's name etched on your arm was the one thing that kept you alive, during your time under the hands of Dreykov and even after being recruited by the Avengers. But sometimes, you wish that the situation wasn't so difficult. Because the owner of the name marked on your arm was the same man was the same man you trained with in the Red Room.
warnings: angst, heavy with reader insert, requited unrequited love, you might be frustrated with the reader but so am i
the idea for this oneshot came from me rediscovering risk by gracie abrams and thinking about how it's a perfect song to use for a soulmate au
“You ever plan to show me the mark on your arm, mini-Widow?” Tony asks you.
He’s holding his glass of champagne in one hand, while playfully grabbing at your arm with his free one. You laugh it off, shoving his hand away from you and tutting at him.
“I can break your hand with a single move, Tony. Don’t even try.”
“Oh, come on! Nat’s seen it!”
As if on cue, Natasha sits beside you, mirroring the same look of amusement you had on your face. “That’s because I’ve known her longer.”
“And she’s seen me nake—”
“Spare me the details!” Tony interrupts you, hands frantically waving in front of your face. “I’ll figure it out. One way or another!”
“I’m a genius! Nothing ever gets past me. Now, excuse me ladies, I better stop Thor before he kills Clint with alcohol poisoning.”
From afar, you hear hoots and cheers right where Clint is trying to chug what you assume to be Asgardian mead in a flask. Tony, at first, tries to step in and tell Thor to quit enticing ‘Midguardians’ with a drink that could put the average person in the hospital with just five sips. You recognize the lightheartedness in his tone, but you know that he isn’t entirely far from the truth.
Not everyone was a God or had some freak serum running in their veins.
Just a few feet away from all the ruckuses stood Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, and Bucky Barnes, laughing at some exchange between the three of them. Your eyes immediately gravitate to the brunette—your heart embarrassingly stuttering when you drink in just how good he looked despite wearing a simple outfit. Nothing out of the ordinary, just a dark blue shirt that hugged his biceps really well and jeans that wrapped around his thighs incredibly so.
When your eyes land on him, it’s difficult to stop admiring the features he donned on his body. The little scars scattered around the edges of his face, the wrinkle of his shirt telling you he had most likely grabbed from the bottom of his drawer, the stubble on his chin—which, you realized a few days ago he had kept at the same length ever since you complimented how good it looked on him.
He's annoyingly the most handsome man you’ve ever laid eyes on.
When you let yourself drink in how handsome he looked, you don’t realize his eyes were set on you until you met his stare. Eyes widening in surprise, but you’re quick enough to hide it and smile at him, nerves worsening when you think you see a hint of a smirk on his face. The plates on his metal arm shift as he grips tighter on the bottle of beer he’s nursing down, and you swear he’s doing it to taunt you.
“Does he know?” Natasha’s voice somehow rings louder than the chatter and music.
You turn to her, your smile faltering as you shake your head. You can’t bring yourself to look at her in the eyes, always interrogating and curious. Your hands fidget with the loose thread on your sleeves.
“You should tell him, pchelka.”
“I don’t think he’d like that.”
You don’t answer her question, partly because you know it’s rhetorical, and the other because should you give an answer, you’re ashamed of the fact that it was more for you than it was for him.
At 5 years old, you remember telling your parents about your dreams of marrying a prince. Granted, you’re pretty sure that almost every young girl at that age had some fantasy of marrying into a family of ranking and somehow magically inherit a whole kingdom. You remember how your mother would ask questions about how the prince looked, and your father acting as if you meeting a man in your dreams was the end of the world.
You remember laughter, being carried in the arms of your father while he told you that you weren’t allowed to marry any man until you were 30. That he only had 11 years left being the most important man in your life before your soulmate’s name would appear on your left arm.
You remember telling him he’ll always be important to you. And you remember how his smile dropped, looking at you with sadness etched across his face as he said, “I won’t be.”
You remember fresh dinners, warm sheets, and slow dances. You can still feel your mother’s fingers running through your hair as she soothed you to sleep, the raspiness of her voice after a tiring day but still trying to show you that she loved you.
At 13 years old, your parents sold you to Dreykov.
At 15 years old, you’re one of the most lethal Widows that the Red Room had raised.
Now, they’re memories you look back at with bitterness, with hate—as you deal with the life they left you with.
It’s what you think of while you’re staring at the cold soup served to you 15 minutes ago. It wasn’t by any means delicious—it was all vegetables and chicken thrown into a bland broth, that you’d think by now you would’ve gotten used to. But for the past 9 years you’ve been in this place you consider to be a prison, you feel as if you’ll never get to know anything beyond your training.
That’s nothing for else for you except for what the Red Room gave to you.
To become a killer. You are not a person, but a weapon.
The name written on your arm itches as you try to down the rest of your soup. It had started acting that way since the Red Room had welcomed HYDRA soldiers to train you all. And it had started to get worse when you were forced to train with the Winter Soldier. Since HYDRA had thought it best to put their asset to train with one of the Red Room’s best, and with Natasha gone, you were the next best thing they offered. Brutal, hard, and unrelenting—the Soldier didn’t even give you the chance to catch your breath no matter how exhausted you were.
But you couldn’t allow yourself to fail.
You hated losing, but more than that, you hated the consequences that would come after.
It would start small: they gave you less rations of food, longer hours of training, and shorter hours of rest in a brightly lit room. Then the batons would come in, and so did the cuts and bruises on your knees from the two hours your ballet teacher spent beating them with the stick. Then it would be depriving you of a sustainable diet for a whole week—left only to feed off sweet potatoes and three cups of water. And then more, more, more, and worse.
You try your damned hardest to block, evade, kick, and get a hit in. But it’s obvious that from stamina alone, he was getting the upper hand. You were beyond exhausted, and you could already practically feel the ache of your bones when you wake up the next day.
And, just like it always was, your best just wasn’t enough.
That day ended with the Soldier fracturing your left arm—ironically, right where your mark was—and a tsk from your superior.
So, now you were stuck with bland soup and a lukewarm cup of water—your last of the day.
You think you hate the Soldier more for being the reason why you were almost beaten to death that day, than you did your parents for bringing you to the field in God-knows-where.
“So, let me get this right,” Rhodey spoke as the others sat around the couch. “You’ve already met your soulmate but didn’t do anything to let them know that they were?” he asks almost incredulously.
After all the visitors and guests of the party had left, Tony insisted that you all just hang-out before formally ending the party. Bonding is important for team dynamics, he had declared. Now, all of you had spent the past two hours and a half talking about anything and everything. Thor sharing his latest adventures with the Guardians, Clint affectionately complaining about Kate and Yelena ruining his sleep schedule, and a short-lived game of two-truths-one-lie that ended when you all realized Wanda had been reading your minds to figure out which was the lie. Cheating, but clever.
Now, after Tony had drunkenly announced to everyone that he had never seen your soulmate mark, and everyone eventually realizing that you had meticulously made an effort to never show the mark on your arm, the talk of the hour was you. You figured it was harmless to give them a few details here and there. When it first appeared, how it itched during a particularly rough training in the Red Room, how it was the only thing that tethered you to sanity.
Something that would eventually be yours after everything you had, had been taken away from you.
As long as they never figure out whose name it was etched on your skin.
“Never said that I’ve met him, Rhodey,” you answer.
“But you said that it itched! That’s what happens when you meet them!”
You shrugged. “Or maybe I was just itchy.”
“Look, I don’t know why this is such a big deal for you all!” You confess. “I mean, some people don’t even end up with the soulmates given to them. This,” you point at the spot where your soulmate mark was, “is not an end-all-be-all. And my situation isn’t even half as bad as others.”
Sam Wilson, the cheeky little bastard, raised his hand. “I think it’s just interesting because the entire time you’ve been here, no one’s ever seen you in anything else but long sleeves and jackets. You’re obviously hiding something.”
“Or someone,” Tony chimes in.
“I’m just saying, it shouldn’t be a big deal,” you say.
Steve, who had been quiet for the most part of the conversation, speaks up. “If it’s not a big deal then why don’t you tell us?”
Tony nods and looks at you as if Steve had said something revolutionary to human knowledge. “Look, not even a little peek? Just show us the first letter and we’ll leave it alone!”
You know that their insistence in wanting to see your mark was all in good faith. You had never meant for it to be completely hidden; it was just a habit to wear longer sleeves and warm clothes after everything you had been through. It wasn’t even that you were consciously trying to hide it at first.
You just selfishly wanted to keep it to yourself because you were so used to having everything be taken away from you that you just want this for yourself.
No matter how unfair it was for your soulmate, you’ve already convinced yourself that he was better off not knowing who you were.
“You can all just use your imagination because I am going to bed,” you say as you rise from where you’re seated on the couch. Everyone groans and tells you to stay, but you laugh and wave them off, saying goodnight.
You’re about five steps away from the elevators when you hear footsteps follow after you. You turn your head around and almost trip when you see that it was Bucky. You furrow your brows when you realize he’s not with anyone else, which was usually the case. It was either Steve or Sam who always accompanied him.
You already dread the elevator ride up to your floor.
Not because you hate being in the same room as him, no. It’s one of the things you love most about being an Avenger—you’re almost always around him.
It’s just that you hate the feeling it gives you.
You give him a curt smile when he steps in the elevator to stand beside you. It’s quiet for the most part, just the faint whirring of the elevator rising and music being played being the only sounds that filled the small space. You’re facing your head to the wall on your left when Bucky clears his throat.
“You’re lucky, you know.” He says it so lowly that you think you’re imagining him talking to you. But he is, and he’s looking at you straight in the eyes already when you look at him.
God, you could drown in the shade of his eyes.
Bucky shrugs, lips forming into a thin line. “You still have it.”
It takes you a moment to get what he’s saying, but you do. You still have the mark, you still have your soulmate’s name written on your skin, is what he means. You get it from how he brings out his metal hand from his pocket and turns his arm around. Staring at nothing but the plates of metal where soft skin would be.
Your heart breaks when you see the strained expression on his face. You allow the silence to speak for your empathy before you break it.
“I don’t show people because. . .because I figured it better for me to keep it to myself than be set up for disappointment again. I guess I’m doing it to protect them, too.”
Bucky mirrors the look in your eyes—grieving over something that you never had the chance to have. If anyone could understand your situation, it was him. Which was, arguably, the worst part of all of this.
When the elevator dings and the doors open, it was your cue to leave. You don’t want to spend another second in that space because you’re afraid that if he keeps looking at you like that, you’ll tell him who it was. You mutter a quick goodbye before dashing to your room.
When you’re in your room, you lean against the door and take a deep breath. You strip yourself of the clothing that felt increasingly constricting as Bucky’s face burned inside your head. You took to the shower, letting the water run down your body. Your eyes burning with the tears that threatened to fall.
It’s when you look down to your arm that they do.
Your lip trembles and your chest aches as your finger traces the lines.
A few days after the party, Fury comes to you all with a file in his hand—a mission, you’ve grown to learn. He gathers everyone up in a room to brief you all about what you would do. It was the usual, for the past six months you had been tracking the remaining HYDRA bases, some active and some abandoned.
Retrieve files, track down any clues that you could get, save civilians if need be—nothing extremely out of the ordinary.
Except for the fact that you knew the base as if it were your own home. Because, at one point, it was.
You see Natasha from the other side of the table, perusing the file as if it were the last thing she’d ever be able to read. From a few seats away, you hear Yelena cursing under her breath.
“I thought we destroyed it,” Yelena said. The fear in her voice makes your head spin.
At least, it doesn’t faze Fury. “You did. But only the Red Room Academy. Since Dreykov made a deal with HYDRA to train their Widows, it seems that they wanted to cover more ground. More bases, more Widows, so they lent this to the Red Room. Decided to make use of it.”
“But Dreykov’s dead,” Natasha says almost robotically. She’s looking at Fury with what you recognize to be a mix of resentment and skepticism. “Yelena and I killed him.”
“Never said you didn’t, Agent Romanoff. But this was a different base.” Fury turns to you and calls your name.
You realize that the entire time, since Fury had handed you the file, you had been quiet. Which wasn’t exactly unusual, you think you’re one of the people who usually kept to themselves. But it’s obvious that your lack of participation in the conversation wasn’t because of that.
“If I’m not mistaken this was your base?”
“Uh, yeah. Yeah. It was, it’s. . .”
You’re thankful for Steve and his captain instincts for stepping in. “So what are we going to do?”
“Well, as far as we know it isn’t active. Hasn’t been since Agent Romanoff and Agent Belova destroyed the Red Room Academy. They all fled somewhere, hidden but they’re still there. But that’s not what you’re being sent for. There are files in this base that holds information on other Widows. Widows that you’ve been looking for, Yelena.”
“I thought we got everyone out of there.”
“You did. But the others are out there. And we need their files, or else they’re just another Jane Doe case.”
“Why didn’t they bring the files with them when they left?”
You answer for Fury. “Because they know we’ll come back for them.”
“So, what, we’re walking into a trap?”
“I don’t think we are,” Natasha says. “The Red Room was smart enough to keep all the Widows’ information in a database. The goal here isn’t to make sure we’re the only ones who have those files.”
“We’re getting those files because we want to know who we’re searching for,” you say as you stand from your seat.
You don’t stay for when Fury’s telling who’s needed on the mission. You already know from the way Fury kept glancing at you as he spoke that you would sooner or later be on that jet. You at least save him from the task of having to show some type of regret that he was asking you to be on the mission.
You’re on your way to the weapons room when you feel your phone buzz in your pocket. You take it out to see it’s only Tony letting you know you need to be in the jet in 45 minutes.
As you place your usual weapons of choice in your suit, you hear the sliding door open. From the faint footsteps, you already know that it’s Yelena. Years of being told to tread on your feet lightly to not be heard. Years of being in that damned Red Room and the lessons you were taught never leaving your body no matter how hard you tried.
She’s beside you in a second, and you can tell that she’s trying to choose what words to say.
You’re about to tell her that the other Widows disappearing wasn’t her fault, but the both of you speak at the same time.
“It’s not your fault that they’re out there—”
“—Barnes is coming with us.”
That you weren’t exactly expecting. But it makes sense, previous HYDRA soldier and Red Room trainer coming with you on the mission. You feel like an idiot for missing that.
The troubled countenance Yelena wore on her face was noticeable gone when you look at her. It makes you groan when you see her cheeky, teasing attitude back. You already know this is something she won’t let go for the entirety of the mission.
“You know, he looked pretty concerned while Fury was briefing us.” Her voice was playfully taunting.
“I’m sure. He trained us.”
“Don’t act coy, now, zolotse. He offered to be part of the mission.”
Now, that you totally weren’t expecting to happen.
Yelena’s smirk grows. “Seems like your soulmate doesn’t need a mark to know it’s you.”
“Stop it, Yelena.” You say it lightly, but the weight behind your words is there.
Yelena’s playfulness cracks when she sees how you’re pained you look talking about it. “What are you so afraid of that it’s stopping you?”
You’re able to let only a sigh out before you spoke. Which, you were so hell-bent on never saying out loud. Because if you did, then it would be heard. And it would turn real. But you don’t think you can let yourself be the only one holding it back.
And this was Yelena, your sister and your family.
“Because I don’t want to let him live with the fact that his soulmate would always be tied to that part of him that he’s been trying so hard to make amends with. You know this, Yelena.”
“I do, but don’t you think it’s unfair to him that you’re making this decision.”
“I know it is. But I also know it’s gonna hurt him more knowing it’s me.”
“I won’t leave this alone, zolotse. If only you can see beyond this guilt that you don’t even have to carry, then you’ll see that how he cares about you will trump over any possible outcome that you’ve sabotaged yourself with. You can’t stop him from finding out.”
“I know,” you say defeatedly.
Thankfully, Yelena leaves the conversation at that. She wraps her arms around your shoulders tightly, and you instinctively burrow your head in the crook of her neck. It reminds you of when she first found you. When she broke you free from the chemical subjugations and mind control, and for the first time in ten years you felt afraid. But she was there.
Despite Fury telling you that the base was inactive, you know enough not to trust that piece of information fully. It wasn’t often that he was wrong, but you’re familiar with how HYDRA and the Red Room worked that there would always be something to catch you off-guard.
And just like always, you were right.
But it wasn’t anything you couldn’t handle. Cleverly placed traps, some agents that you figured were stationed to watch over the base and the files of missing Widows stashed somewhere inside.
You just hated that wherever you went, Bucky would follow you too.
At first, you’re appreciative, he tells you to look out for a hit that would’ve compromised you if it weren’t for his warning. He even doesn’t hesitate to pick you up from when you fell after a particularly nasty kick to the chest.
But you realize that he hasn’t left your side since stepping foot out of the quinjet.
You gave it some doubt, thinking that perhaps he was ordered by Steve to watch over you in case any HYDRA agent tried to hurt you, or Sam’s older brother tendencies stepping in and telling his friend to make sure you’re home from this mission without a scratch on you. But he lets you take the lead, follows wherever you go, protects you, and even once asked if you were okay when you reached the training room.
The forced nod you give him is enough to keep him quiet for the rest of the time you search for the room where you’re sure they kept the files. You reach a familiar corridor, one where you recall new recruits—you laugh at the word, because really, the right word was victims—would be kept before their first day of training. Your hands reach for the doorknob, and you try your hardest to ignore the obvious thumps of your heart that reaches your eyes when you feel Bucky’s warm hand reach behind you.
The second the door opens, your raise the gun in your hands as you scan the room for any possible threat. Bucky does the same. When you clear the room and both deem is safe, you place your gun down and rush to the near-empty shelf in the corner of the room.
You reach for the stack of brown manila folders, covered in cobwebs and dust, place it on the metal table in the center of the room, and you feel your heart constricting when you see pictures of familiar faces on each of them. Their names are all-too familiar to you, some you would seek out in the middle of the night after a rough session, some you never got to see again after a mission.
Bucky is behind you while you’re looking at the folders, searching the other shelves for any similar ones. He sees a few, not as much as the one you found, but opens some of them anyway. He sees some faces he vaguely remembers, some students he used to train while under the control of HYDRA. He briefly wonders if they’ve made it out like him.
When he opens another folder, his breath gets stuck in his throat when he sees it’s yours. He’s about to tell you what he’s found, but finds that there’s no voice in him as he reads the rest of what’s written about you.
At first it’s details he already knows about you, eye color, hair color, name. But then it’s details about your parents, when you were first brought to the Red Room, your progress as a Widow, and your fighting techniques. Then he reads about your time training with the Winter Soldier, how despite your evident progress as a fighter, you would always lose him. He makes a mental note to store that information later and find a way to apologize to you.
Then his eyes reach the bottom of the page, and he swears he feels his heart drop to his stomach when he reads:
SOULMATE MARK: JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES.
His eyes are stuck on that line. Reading and reading it again as if magically the information written on the paper was wrong and he was imagining it. But it’s there, and it wasn’t changing.
Then he thinks about the multiple times he’s caught you staring, and him always shrugging it off as curiosity or shyness despite Sam’s insistence that no girl looks at anyone like that just because. And then he remembers how your right hand always scratches at your left arm when he’s around. And how every time he’s close to you or even gets the chance to talk to you, his heart feels just about ready to burst whenever you look at him.
There were the signs all along, signs that he never even realized he had been trying to ignore for the longest time because. . . well, he never thought that after everything he had done, he was worthy of finding his soulmate.
That, and because falling of that train that day had taken everything from him, his soulmate mark along with it.
“Bucky?” Your voice snaps him out of his trance. His hands close the folders as fast as he could, the sound of it closing shocking the both of you with his strength. You don’t let it bother you though, something he’s realized you’ve always done whenever he showed any sort of ability he got from the serum. Even when it was close to the same strength that the Winter Soldier had.
You give him a small smile, mistaking his tense demeanor from being bothered about the missing Widows, and not the fact that he knows. “We need to go.”
All you get from him is a small ‘okay’ and you’re on your way back to the quinjet. It doesn’t escape you that he’s quiet, which you wouldn’t mind any other day, but there’s a certain aura around him that makes you think that in those brief few minutes you two spent retrieving the files, he’s seen something he shouldn’t have.
It’s been weeks, and it’s killing you how Bucky hasn’t once showed himself to you or stayed long enough in the same room for you to greet him. You figure it’s what you wanted—makes it easier for you to hide the fact that you’re clearly affected by him. It also makes the fact that you’re hiding such a huge secret from him an easier task to do because you’re not feeling compelled to spill everything to him after seeing how bothered he looked during that flight back to the tower.
You’re trying not to let it get to you, you tell yourself that it’s okay. That’s it’s for the best that you stay out of his way.
And it’s clear that you’re not the only one who sees it.
“Just go talk to him,” Sam says definitively. He’s been trying to get you to talk to Bucky for the past week, like it’s easy for you to do. Which you don’t exactly fault him for.
“Or maybe he’s ignoring me for a reason.”
“Which is why you should go talk to him if he does.”
You groan and lay your head in your hands. You’ve been battling with yourself for the last hour thinking if it would just be better to tell Sam the reason why you’re finding it so difficult.
“You’re into him, aren’t you?”
You’re looking at him as if he’d caught you doing something wrong. And it doesn’t help that your lack of an answer is taken as confirmation.
“You are! Aha! I knew it!”
“Oh my God, Sam, shut up! I never said anything!”
“You don’t have to, sugar. No words are needed when your eyes speak for themselves.”
“You’re annoyingly poetic when you can be.”
Sam laughs. “Look, all I’m saying is, maybe you’re not the only one who’s bothered about the distance.”
You want to dismiss the blush that’s warming your cheeks at the thought. Your leg is bouncing up and down while you’re weighing your decisions if it’s a good idea to tell Sam or not. Though you love Natasha and Yelena with your whole being and trust them with your life, it’s still difficult to keep the fact that Bucky Barnes, of all people, was the one person you were meant to end up with.
That the person you’d think about during those years in the Red Room, was the same man who trained with you until your body was screaming. But you learned to forgive him, learned to accept that it was a thing of the past. Because, despite how many times you were subjected to the consequences of losing to him, he was the one thing that kept you going.
Even just the mere thought of him was enough for you to forget the cruelty you were forced to live with your entire life.
You were invested even before you had met James—Bucky.
“He’s my soulmate,” you say lowly. Just quiet enough for Sam to hear, or not if he hadn’t been paying attention to you. But he caught it.
And he’s completely in shock when he processes it.
“Bucky is your soulmate?!”
“I just told you that, didn’t I?”
“Wait—but that. . . you met him while you were in the Red Room!”
“First time it itched was when they made us train together.”
Sam is quiet for a few seconds. “Will you tell him?”
“I’ve thought about it. I mean . . . I can’t keep something this big hidden forever but . . . I always figured it was better to hide it. That way he’s saved from the fact that his soulmate is someone connected to his past.”
“And you don’t either, Sam. Because you weren’t there. You didn’t see how intense the Soldier could get. He didn’t hold back. And I know for a fact that some part of Bucky carries guilt over that. And—”
“—and if you tell him, he’ll blame himself for what happened.” Sam quickly gets your point and sighs. The complexity of the entire situation getting to him too.
“And you’re sure he doesn’t know?”
The question makes you think: does he? You’re almost sure that he doesn’t know, but after the mission, he had made it a point to not even cross paths with you. You tried to think of any other reason for it. Maybe you did something during that mission that turned him off. Maybe he was disappointed in you for not getting the other Widows when you were saved. Maybe he was tired of being nice with you. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
But you think really hard. Does he know? He wouldn’t be ignoring you so determinedly if he didn’t know. But did he?
Natasha’s voice echoes from where she’s stood. She’s walking down the steps and to the couch where you’re seated with Sam. Her hand finds itself soothing your hair as she talks.
“It’s hurting the both of you, both this distance and your secret. Just talk to him.”
“We’ve lived our whole lives in service for the people who never cared about us. This job asks a lot from us to risk everything the mere second we agreed to do it. What’s so different about this?”
You say the thing you’ve always been scared of admitting.
“Because if this ends up being the wrong thing, then it’ll just be another case of thinking I can have something for myself and end up disappointed.”
Nat’s quiet for a few moments, Sam too. You can tell by how they looked at each other that they don’t agree with you, that this couldn’t ever be the wrong thing. But they can’t fault you for thinking that way when it was all you ever knew.
“I think,” Sam says, pausing for a few seconds to collect his thoughts before continuing, “you can’t let this be the only thing for you. I understand you’re afraid, and I understand even more than I’ll never get just how difficult it’s been for you. But you shouldn’t deprive yourself of something that can be and will be good just because you’re afraid it’ll go wrong.”
“You shouldn’t hold yourself back from something good just because you’ve been so used to bad things.” Natasha continues for him.
You know they’re right, and it makes you even more frustrated because it’s true. You’ve been holding yourself back from a good thing because you’re so afraid it’ll be taken away again, that it’ll end up being a classic disappointment for you.
But somehow, despite your tumultuous life and the ceaseless warfare that you were somehow always faced with, Bucky was always there. Whether or not he was himself, or he was the Soldier—Bucky Barnes had been a constant in your life that you’re so sure he’s the one thing that, whatever evil force the world has in store, would never be able to be taken from you. And despite the fact that you’ve been trying your damned best to keep him at an arm’s length, he would always seem to gravitate towards you. Always wanting to talk to you, wishing to get to know you, trying to get a laugh out of you.
Despite, despite, despite it all—he was there.
You want to hit yourself being so stupid.
You don’t know where you got the sudden burst of confidence from—probably going so far as to claim you’ve actually deluded yourself into making this decision—but right now, you’re stood in the middle of Bucky’s room.
He seated on the foot of his bed, obviously bothered by something from the way he doesn’t even show any ounce of surprise that you knocked on his door. And he’s quiet which isn’t exactly far off from how he is usually, but it’s unsettling something in you.
“Um,” you muster out to try and lessen the awkwardness, “I haven’t seen you in a while.”
You think that despite surviving the Red Room and fighting other supervillains that the job of being an Avenger came with, this was the most nervous you’ve ever been.
“I—uh—just wanted to see how you were doing.”
God, you hate that you’re so bad at this.
You can hack into the government’s database and get past the hundreds of security passes with just a breeze, you can fight off 50 armed men in fifteen minutes with just two knives, you know thirty years’ worth of classified S.H.I.E.L.D. information, you’ve defeated aliens, monsters, and a whole evil empire for Christ’s sake, but you can’t for the life of you keep up a conversation with James “Bucky” Barnes.
The absurdity of the situation makes you want to laugh.
And the tension makes you feel like it’ll kill you before an evil doctor does, you hastily say a goodbye and turn to leave his room.
But Bucky doesn’t let you. No, he doesn’t even give you the chance to get three steps in before he’s charging at the door and blocking your path.
If it were any other situation, you’d admire the way his chest is heaving and how the shirt tightens around his upper body.
“You’re not leaving.” He says it like it’s an order.
Which you don’t mind if it was. You think if he told you to jump from his window after this you would do it in a heartbeat.
“You do. I know you do or else you wouldn’t be here.”
You’re quiet again, but not because you’re at a loss for words. You’ve gone through this moment multiple times in your head ever since you realized that Bucky Barnes was the same man who fought with you when your soulmate mark itched. It’s because you’re so enamored by him—his face, his physique, his scent, him—that you can’t focus on anything else.
But Bucky mistakes your silence as something else, and you see it in the way his face contorts when seconds pass and you haven’t said anything.
This prompts you to speak, and to snap out of your stupor because you can ogle Bucky another time. “What? No! Why would you—”
“Then why haven’t you said anything about the fact that the mark on your arm has my name written on it?”
It’s something you expected already, him knowing. You knew at one point he would know about it, whether by your account or from something else. But it doesn’t make the realization any less shocking.
“Why didn’t you tell me about how I was the reason you were treated so badly and had to . . . to face harsh reprimanding because of me? Are you that afraid of me? Is that why you’ve always seemed so . . . far?”
Again, you expected this. You knew he would blame himself the second he discovered that you were once at the receiving end of the Winter Soldier’s sheer strength. And even worse that the pain your body had to deal with didn’t end at that.
But seeing how defeated Bucky looked, it broke your heart. Not even angry at the fact that you hid it from him, but more about the fact that he didn’t remember, that he couldn’t control it.
“No, no. That’s not it, Bucky,” you try to reason with him, “it’s really not anything you did. I just—I was selfish, okay? I didn’t think it was something you needed to know because I didn’t want you to beat yourself up for something that you had no control over. And . . . I never told you because I selfishly thought it was better to keep this from you because I’m afraid. Notofyouofcourse! I just . . .”
You take a deep breath in before you decide that it’s time to just let it out.
“God, for the longest time I’ve spent my entire life getting used to things not being mine or being taken away from me. My family, my life, my autonomy, my self—but your name was the one thing I had for myself. They couldn’t take you away from me, couldn’t even make me try to forget you if they tried. The thought of you, the thought of finally meeting you when I got out of that life was the one thing that kept me here. I knew I was already in it deep before I even met you. But then I did, and I realized that . . . if you knew about it, then you’d spend the rest of your life being reminded about that part of you you’ve worked so hard to make amends with. And I couldn’t do that to you. I don’t want to be a constant reminder of that pain in your life.”
The entire time you speak, Bucky doesn’t take his eyes off of you. He’s less angry at himself and more sympathetic now as you go on. He thinks about the fact that you had to keep this secret for so long because you weren’t afraid of him, but rather you were afraid of what it could mean for him. The entire time, you were doing it to look out for him.
And he hates that you made that decision for yourself. But he understands you. If he were in your position, he’s sure he would do the same.
There’s a part of him that wants to tell you that he’s angry at the fact that you kept something so big from him. He wants to shout at you for hiding the fact that he’s yours, when he’s spent so long thinking if the reason why you always seemed to keep distance from him was because you hated him for something he could’ve done. He wants to tell you that he’s frustrated at you, too.
Because you just look so beautiful in front of him right now. You’re pouring your heart out, spilling a secret you’ve withheld for more than you whole life, and Bucky thinks that you’ve never looked more beautiful than this moment.
He loves the sound of your voice too much to drown it out with his own. Realizes that he loves how your hands try to look for something to anchor yourself to. Observes that you only stop talking to take a breath in, but never stopping to let him speak.
No matter how many times he’s opened his mouth, you don’t let him say a word.
Which he wouldn’t mind, but he’s held himself back from you for so long.
Long before you confessed this secret, long before he’d had this crush on you. It embarrasses him to accept the fact, but the second he set his eyes on you he’d already been hooked.
And it’s what drives him to decide not to wait for you to stop speaking when his hands grab the side of your head, brings it close to his, until you finally process how his hot breath hits your lips.
And he doesn’t wait any longer to kiss you.
He kisses you like it’s the one thing he was made to do—slowly, deliberately, and deeply. Like he had been a man starved (which, he probably was) from this affection. He kisses you like it comes as natural to him as breathing, like you’re the thing tethering him to reality before he falls deeper into the depths of how much he loves you.
He realizes he loves you, and he doesn’t shy away from showing it.
And the two of you allow yourself to drown in it.
You realize it had always been a futile effort to keep him away from you. The two of you were always meant to find your way back to each other. Like you were both made from the same star that burst eons ago, fated to find each other again like stardust made to meet and mold as one, to shine as if it had never burst and never left, and to burn. Again and again and again.
It's too soon to tell him you love him, but you think you’ll tell him after this.
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