"Got something worth sharing there, Ghost?" Soap had asked him, mouth humming over the pint he was indulging in.

Ghost had just gave him a lidded look, as if to say "drop it". But later that evening, when Ghost stepped out for a smoke, pulling the little photograph out to look at when no one was around, Soap managed to catch a glimpse. He didn't realize Ghost was outside by himself, thinking he'd run off to the bathroom, so Soap was surprised to see the lieutenant when he'd stepped out for a smoke himself.

Not announcing his presence, Soap saw the little picture of you for just a few seconds. Enough to notice that it was a woman. A pretty woman, at that.

After that, Soap made a few attempts at getting Ghost to tell him about the girl in the Polaroid.

"Taking a little vacation when I get back," Soap had told him once, weeks after the bar in Prague. "Hope I meet a cute bird. What about you, Lt? Got a bird waiting for you back home?"

"Not your business, Sergeant."

It didn't take long for Soap to give up on trying to learn anymore about you. His lieutenant was as secretive as he was admirable out in the field. Soap decided that secrets were secret for a reason; most of the team was quiet about their personal lives, only dropping vague bits and pieces. It made sense that someone like Ghost wouldn't drop any pieces at all.

By the time Soap happens to see you, in the flesh, he's almost forgotten about that little Polaroid of you.

They're on a two month break. It was around Christmas time, the time of year when Soap tried to see as many old faces as possible, so he'd been driving down south to visit some friends before he got holed at home with the family for the holidays.

He knew his skull-faced teammate was from Manchester, which was readily available information given the man's thick accent. But he didn't even consider that he might run into the lieutenant there.

Soap stops by a holiday market on his way to see an old roomie. Hot wine, trinkets, warm food. He's not usually impressed by the Brits, but this market is something out of a movie, he thinks.

He's got a warm cup of Grenache in his gloved hands when he sees a set of familiar broad shoulders, tucked inside a black winter jacket and attached to the familiar skull-covered face. There's no way. No fucking way, he thinks to himself, narrowing his eyes to squint across the crowd of people. But it was most definitely his lieutenant; Soap knew it from the way he walked like a tank, sticking out like a sore thumb among all the civvies.

Soap is smirking the whole time he makes his way over.

He's expecting a look of surprise on Ghost's face. He's expecting the lieutenant to scowl at him before pulling him in for an awkward, half-hug. He's expecting a small chat before they part ways again.

What Soap isn't expecting is to see a young bird next to him.

You're walking next to Ghost, just barely touching his side, and a glowing smile is on your face. You've got on a knitted dress that reaches your ankles and a warm coat, but the layers do nothing to hide the visible baby bump.

Ghost is carrying various shopping bags, assumably all belonging to you, and he keeps looking down at you as if worried you're going to get lost in the crowd or run off to another stall without informing him.

The sight of it causes Soap to stop.

Instead of surprising the lieutenant like he'd planned to, he suddenly feels like he is intruding on a private moment. He's got a girlfriend? Of course he bloody does, Soap thinks, remembering the photograph from all those months ago.

He is ready to backtrack and pretend he never spotted Ghost at a holiday market of all places, when the lieutenant is suddenly looking right at him. Eyes widen at first, but then they narrow considerably. The brief moment that Ghost looks away from you is enough to make you follow his gaze, landing right on Soap about five meters away.

Ghost tries to keep walking, eager to pretend he never saw the Sergeant. But you're already putting two and two together. Soap can see the mental math you are doing, looking between him, then looking at the hulking man beside you.

Your eyes flicker with excitement.

You start waving at Soap.

Christ, I'm sorry, Lt.

He's got no choice but to walk up to the two of you now that he's been spotted.

"Hi!" you chirp, tucking your arm through Simon's so he can't start walking away. He groans to himself- this couldn't be happening. "Gosh, you must be Simon's teammate?"

"Yes, ma'am," Soap gives a nod. The three of you are standing amid the people. Soap's got a better look at you now and he realizes you're not just a girlfriend. The slim band on your finger, the prominent bump under your dress- the lieutenant's got a wife.

"I've never met any of Simon's friends before," you exhale excitedly, and the use of the word friends makes Ghost want to gag. "Simon," you whisper and give his arm a small squeeze. "Why don't you introduce us?"

Soap pities the lieutenant in this moment, but he can't say he doesn't enjoy the way Ghost instantly obeys your request.

"Johnny," he gives Soap a stiff nod. "This is Y/N. Y/N, this is Johnny."

You start chatting with Soap, asking him about what he's doing there and how he's enjoying the wine. Small talk. But all the while, Soap is trying to wrap his head around the bizarrely mundane sight of it all. The fact that Ghost is spending his free time walking around a holiday market, carrying the shopping bags of his pregnant wife. His beautiful wife, at that. Soap never imagined he'd witness something like it.

"Well, I don't want to keep you two," Soap says, but mostly he is referring to Ghost, who has said maybe two words. "Better get going."

"You're not keeping us," you shake your head. "It was so nice to meet you, Johnny. Are you... are you busy this evening?"

Ghost immediately knows what you're thinking. He also knows that once you get an idea in your head, and you get excited about it, it's extremely hard to say no to.

"Well, I-"

"We'd love to have you for dinner," you beam at him, leaning into your husband's side. "Right, Simon? We rarely have guests over."

"Is that such a bad thing?" Ghost clicks his tongue and grumbles under his breath.

The pointed look you give him almost makes Soap laugh out loud.

____

And that was how Ghost ended up agreeing to have his teammate over for dinner. Even more bizarre than the initial encounter is the home you two share, Soap figures. When he arrives later that evening, he brings in a bottle of bourbon and a small wrapped gift. He steps into the warm house, immediately met with an interior that is cozy above all else; dim lights and flickering candles, a small tree already up in the living room, a couch covered in Christmas-themed blankets.

And Soap is surprised to find that his lieutenant is the one in the kitchen, while you're the one greeting him.

"Simon will like this," you say, taking the bourbon.

"And this is for you," Soap rubs his neck, handing you the gift. "Well, both of ya, I suppose."

You don't open the gift until after dinner. Soap learns that Ghost did most of the cooking since it's been hard for you to be on your feet for too long lately. He learns that you're due in 8 weeks, and Ghost has already put the nursery together. (He nearly smashed the crib when he couldn't figure it out for two hours, apparently). You almost offer to show Soap, but decide against it, knowing that your husband was already out of his comfort zone as it was. Some things were best kept just for you two.

And Soap tells you about all the fun times they've had together. The near-death experiences, the times that Ghost almost killed them both whenever he was behind the wheel, all the different cities they've been to.

Simon only speaks up to add comments like, "That's not how I remember it" or "You're a worse driver than me".

Soap notices the lieutenant gradually start to relax, soften up a bit. What he doesn't notice is that it's mostly due to your hand on top of his thigh under the table, rubbing gentle circles.

You open the small present once everyone is done eating.

"It's really not much," Soap says, "Just somethin' I managed to pick up on the way over."

But the contents of the box pull at each string of your heart. You tear off the bow and open it to reveal a small, knitted romper, the color of cream. It's soft to the touch and it invites a moisture to your eyes (because everything made you cry these days).

"Johnny, thank you," you tell him earnestly. You'd only met the man a few hours ago, but already you were fond of him. Trusted him with your husband's life, even.

"Didn't know what the sex is," he explains sheepishly, catching a glimpse of the lieutenant's unreadable gaze. "Thought this would work for either one."

You look at Simon. You wish he'd say thank you, but instead he clears his throat. "Gonna clean up the kitchen," Ghost says gruffly, and stands from the table.

When he's gone, you offer Soap an apologetic smile. "He has a hard time accepting gifts," you explain on your partner's behalf, rubbing the swell of your belly.

"I figured," Soap shrugs. "If I'm honest, I can't believe he's got a family like this... like you. Bit surprising."

"It took him awhile," you hum thoughtfully, recalling the years of patience that your relationship demanded of you. "It took him two years to tell me he loves me. Another three to propose."

"Sounds about right for Ghost."

You nod in agreement and sigh. "I'm grateful he has someone like you. I know he's got a funny way of showing it, but Simon is secretly grateful, too."

_____

Ghost is the one to see Soap to the door. You wave your goodbyes, eyes starting to get heavy. Your husband quietly urges you to "slip into something more comfortable, pet", and you were happy to abide. Soap has noticed how gentle the brooding man is with you. Small touches to your waist, little kisses to your hair, grazing his hand over your belly. It’s a remarkable contrast to the demeanor Soap, and everyone else, knows him for.

As you're changing into your pajamas, Ghost is standing in the middle of the front doorframe, arms crossed.

"Nice place you got here, Ghost," Soap tells him with a cheeky grin. "Reckon I should stop by more often?"

His lieutenant doesn't seem to share his enthusiasm, instead grumbling in annoyance, “Fuckin’ hell. Don’t push your luck, Johnny.”

There is a warning in Ghost’s eyes that Soap knows him well enough to read, loud and clear: don’t tell anyone about what you saw today.

Rounds shattered the pillar above Merrick’s head. Keegan ducked left and returned fire with precise, short bursts, but you were already on the move — flanking, sweeping across the debris-strewn upper level like a machine. No wasted movement. Not an ounce of fear.

Logan hit the ground beside Hesh as a bullet tore through the wall behind them “That’s her,” he said. “Fuck, that’s her. She’s trying to kill us.”

“She’s not her anymore,” Merrick growled.

You vaulted over the ledge and dropped down behind cover, reloading mid-motion, then fired again, a perfect suppressive arc that pinned all four Ghosts. You were faster, smarter, better, than you had been before.

Rorke had made you into a weapon.

But Merrick had seen enough war to know one thing: the faster they move, the harder they fall.

“Keegan!” he barked. “Flash and stun. Move now.”

The sniper lobbed the first flashbang high, it ricocheted off the ceiling, right over your cover in a burst of white, screaming smoke.

You stumbled.

The second came fast. A shock-pulse grenade. Not enough to kill, but certainly enough to disorient you.

You hit the ground hard. Your gun clattered away into the rubble. Your limbs twitched and your muscles spasmed, refusing to obey as your brain screamed at them to move.

The Ghosts were on you in seconds. Keegan kicked your rifle out of reach. Logan pulled your arms behind your back and slipped zipcuffs around your wrists, tightening them down painfully, while Merrick held you steady, face grim. Hesh stood over you, watching, his expression unreadable.

You couldn’t fight them, but you cursed loudly. “Get your filthy hands off me—fuckers—traitors—you’ll all burn!”

No recognition. Not even a flinch. Just violent fury.

Merrick looked down at you with so much pity in his eyes, like someone staring at a dying animal.

“She doesn’t remember us,” Logan said quietly. “At all.”

“That’s not her fault,” Hesh replied, quickly, his voice tight.

“You sure about that?” Keegan muttered.

Merrick knelt beside you. “You don’t know who we are, but we know exactly who you are. You’re one of us, and we look after our own.” He knocked a knuckle gently on your forehead. “We’re going to fix this.”

You laughed, something harsh and hollow. “I know exactly who you are. I’m not one of you.”

Hesh’s jaw flexed, but he said nothing as he looked down at you, his eyes swimming with something akin to sorrow and underneath it, a quiet rage.

-

They brought you into base medical sedated and restrained. Elias Walker met his team at the doors, eyes dark with something between fury and grief.

Merrick only said three words. “She doesn’t remember.”

Elias stared at the unconscious form on the stretcher. Your body, scarred and armored, in the colors of the enemy.

He didn’t say anything for a long time. Then: “Prep the secure room. No one gets in except me, Hesh, and Dr. Emmerich.”

“You think you can undo it?” Keegan asked, his voice betraying no emotion.

Elias’s eyes never left you. “I don’t know,” he said. “But we’re going to try.”

-

The storm hadn’t let up. Rain hammered the roof of medical facility like a warning drumbeat, constant and cold.

Elias stood alone in the observation room above the med bay. Below, through reinforced glass, your body lay still on the table, wrists restrained, IVs running through your arm, vitals steady. Alive, but something was wrong.

You were breathing, stable, but it wasn’t you down there. Not the young woman who used to call him “sir” with a knowing smile. Not the medic who’d dragged Logan out of a collapsed hotel in Caracas while her own leg bled. Not the girl who made his oldest son laugh like he hadn’t since childhood.

This... this was a stranger with your face. He heard the door open behind him. Heavy footfalls in a familiar gate. Merrick.

Elias didn’t look over. Just kept his eyes on the medic bed below.

“You always said she was tough,” Merrick said gently. “Surviving eight months in the Federation? Most people wouldn’t last eight days.”

“I didn’t think I’d see her again,” Elias murmured. “And now that I have… well, I’m not sure I have.”

Merrick didn’t answer. The truth didn’t need repeating.

“She was more than just a medic,” Elias said. “She knew how to read people, find what they needed. Kept them steady. Hell, she kept me steady sometimes.”

He turned, finally, face creased with years of war, and now, something heavier than battle fatigue.

“But with Hesh… Christ, Tom. She lit him up. Made him better. I’d watch them talking in the mess after ops, laughing like there was no war outside the walls, and I’d think... maybe he’ll survive this life after all.” He exhaled, slow. “I don’t know what Rorke did to her. I don’t know how deep it runs. What if she never comes back? What if we’re wasting time on a ghost that’s never going to remember she was one of us?”

Merrick stepped beside him, silent for a moment, watching the steady rise and fall of your chest below.

“Hesh hasn’t slept. Hasn’t eaten much either. He’s running drills like he’s fine, but I’ve seen the cracks.”

“I know,” Elias said quietly. “I see it. He won’t say it out loud, but... he’s scared. If we don’t fix this, it’ll be like losing her all over again.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw, jaw clenched tight. “I would do anything to take that pain from him. To fix this.”

Not many people saw this side of Elias: tired, emotional, raw.

“I know you would,” Merrick murmured. “But you can’t. We can only try to help her remember. Give her a reason to want to come back. And if she doesn’t…” He trailed off.

Elias’s answer was a whisper, not for anyone but himself. “Then we don’t let Hesh fall with her.”

-

The med bay was quiet, save for the low hum of machines monitoring your vitals. A soft beep every few seconds. A slow inhale. A slower exhale.

You were awake now. Alert. Strapped to the bed at the wrists and ankles. Still mildly sedated, but your eyes were sharp, watchful, cold. Like a cornered animal that hadn't quite decided if it would bite or wait for a better opening.

Thunder rumbled above you and you flinched.

Hesh stood just inside the doorway. He hadn’t said anything yet. Just watched you from the edge of the room like approaching a time-bomb. His hands were clenched at his sides.

“You don’t have to play games,” you said, finally. Your voice was dry and flat. “You won’t get information from me.”

“That’s not why I’m here,” Hesh replied softly. He stepped forward, slowly, like walking a tightrope. “I’m not your enemy.”

You watched him with that same dead-eyed stare, expression betraying only anger and vitriol.

“You’re David Walker. Ghost operative. American loyalist. Son of Elias Walker. You were flagged by the Federation as a Tier One priority target. I know everything I need to know about you.”

The words sounded as if they had been blindly memorized, likely from a dossier.

He swallowed hard. That cut deep, more than he’d admit. “I’m not here as a Ghost,” he said. “I’m here as... the man who loves you. Or used to. I’m not even sure if you’re in there anymore.”

Your eyes narrowed slightly. Still no recognition. “Love,” you repeated, as if it was a foreign word, or maybe a bad joke. “You think I’d believe that?”

“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” Hesh admitted. “Except that the woman I knew — the woman I loved — she would never fire on her team.”

Your voice sharpened, your malic almost palpable. “The Federation showed me what you really are. What the Ghosts are. Who your father is—”

He shook his head, stepping deeper into the room. “You used to come to me after rough missions,” he said. “You’d curl up under my arm and tell me that the world felt quieter when I was there.”

Your expression stayed neutral, but your fingers twitched. An involuntary movement. A spark of something?

“You like black coffee,” Hesh continued. “You hate the cold. You always carried extra morphine even when protocol said not to, because you didn’t like watching people suffer.”

Silence. You looked at him. Even as your instincts screamed at you that he was the enemy, you were in danger, something pulsed dully in the back of your mind.

“Stop it,” you muttered, your eyes darkening.

“You’re too embarrassed to admit it, but you’re scared of storms. You once told me that if you weren’t a medic, you’d raise dogs somewhere quiet. You like yellow roses better than red.”

You jerked at the restraints violently. “I said stop it.”

“And the night before you disappeared,” Hesh whispered, “you kissed me and said, ‘Don’t let this war change who we are.’”

A long silence.

You blinked, slowly. A tiny crease appeared in your brow, like your mind hit a wall it didn’t recognize. “It’s not true,” you hissed sharply. “I don’t remember any of that.”

“That’s okay,” Hesh said. He stepped even closer, now at the edge of the bed. “Then let me remember it for both of us. Until you’re ready.”

You didn’t answer. You just… looked at him, even as your gaze carried skepticism. But you didn’t spit, or scream, or curse.

And for Hesh, in that moment, that was enough to feel hope come flooding back.

He didn’t turn around when the door hissed opened. but he didn’t need to. He knew the sound of those footsteps, the voice that followed, low and firm.

“That’s enough, Hesh,” Merrick rumbled.

Hesh stood frozen at your bedside, jaw tight, eyes still locked on you. “Just a little longer,” he said, not asking.

Merrick stepped in, calm and measured. “That’s not your call.”

“She’s starting to remember,” he argued, voice rising. “You saw it!”

Merrick looked at you.

You stared back, shoulders rigid against the restraints, lips slightly parted. There was no warmth in your face… but there was something else now. A flicker behind your eyes. Not quite recognition, but something. An opening.

But Merrick didn’t want to push you, not yet.

He put a hand on Hesh’s shoulder to steer him towards the door.

“She’s overwhelmed,” He muttered as they made their way out of the room. “Pushing her harder right now might not pull her back. It might break her.”

“She’s not broken,” Hesh insisted. “She’s in there.”

“Then let’s make sure she stays in one piece long enough to come back.” Merrick’s grip on Hesh’s shoulder softened. “Come on. Let me do my part. You already did yours.”

Reluctantly, Hesh backed off. He took a final look at you from the doorway, eyes soft, lips twitching into a small frown, then he turned and walked away.

The door slid shut behind him, leaving you alone with Merrick.

For a long moment, he said nothing. He just watched you. No angle or act. Just a man who’d seen more war than he cared to remember, trying to read the eyes of someone he used to care about.

“You want the truth?” he said finally. “I don’t care what Rorke told you. I don’t care what they made you see. What I do care about is whether there’s anything left of you behind those eyes that still wants to be a Ghost.”

You stared at him, still stone-faced. “You think this is some kind of redemption arc?” you said coolly. “Question me gently, say the right words, hope I cry and remember some sweet memory about campfires and war stories?”

He didn’t flinch. “No,” Merrick said. “I know this ain’t a movie. I’ve seen the Federation’s work up close. I’ve seen good men shoot their own squad mates because someone rewired their heads.”

He took a step closer.

“So I’m not asking you to remember. I’m asking you something simpler.”

You didn’t respond, but something in your posture shifted, your head tilting slightly. You were listening.

“When Hesh looked at you, spoke to you... did you feel anything? Even if it was just a headache?”

You hesitated, a second too long. “No,” you said, your voice wavering.

Merrick caught it. He nodded once.

“That’s all I needed to know.” He turned to leave. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said over his shoulder. “Not to test you. Not to fix you. Just to see which part of you shows up.”

And then he was gone, and you were alone again. Alone with a steady pulse ringing in your ears and Hesh’s voice in your head. ‘You like yellow roses better than red.’

You squeezed your eyes shut and laid your head back, trying to fight off the growing migraine.

-

The Federation command center was buried beneath ten stories of black concrete and reinforced steel, humming with screens, codes, and cold fluorescent lights. On the top floor, in a soundproofed war room painted in shadow, Gabriel Rorke stood with his back to the table.

He was silent as the report came in. “Sir, we have confirmation. Subject Seven was captured alive by Task Force Stalker two nights ago. Extraction failed. She’s being held at the Santa Monica facility.”

The officer paused, waiting for the explosion that never came.

Rorke said nothing. The silence pressed against the walls like a second atmosphere. The air went colder.

“Her current state is unknown, but telemetry stopped the moment she went dark. We believe they’ve neutralized her uplink. Command suggests containment protocol—”

“Out.”

The officer froze. “Sir?”

“I said out.”

He left without another word.

Rorke stared at the black-glass window overlooking the control floor. His reflection stared back: eyes sunken, storm-gray, hands clenched behind his back.

She was gone.

No, not gone. Taken.

His weapon. His project. His success story. She was proof that loyalty was a lie. That everyone breaks eventually. Even medics with warm eyes and gentle hands. Especially them.

He’d broken her. Rebuilt her. Made her see the truth.

The way she moved in the field… precise, unflinching. The way she said the Ghosts’ names with disdain, like she’d always hated them. That wasn't a trick. That was purity.

And now the Ghosts had her. Touching that mind. Scratching at it. Trying to pull her back into the delusion of family.

Rorke’s lip curled. “They think they can unmake what I built.”

He walked to his private console and opened her file. Footage played: training sessions, mission debriefs, neural sync trials.

In one, she laughed after finishing a Federation live-fire drill. She wiped the sweat from her brow, smudged with ash and blood, and looked straight into the camera. This time, she hadn’t hesitated. She was proud.

And Rorke had been proud of her, too.

In some cold, fractured corner of him… he had begun to see her as something like a daughter. But daughters were liabilities. Attachments. Weaknesses.

“You get too close to the fire, Gabriel,” the voice of his old CO once warned. “Eventually, it burns you too.”

Rorke closed the file. Eyes hard. Shoulders squared.

“Let them try. Let them waste their time with soft words and sentiment.”

He turned to the console and opened a secure comm.

“Initiate Suppression Protocol 66. Asset is compromised. If she doesn't kill them, we will.”

A pause.

“And if they flip her back?”

Rorke stared at the blinking cursor on the screen. His reply was cold. “Then we kill her, too.”

He shut the console off.

And in the dark silence that followed, for the first time in months... he felt something like regret.

But only for a moment. Then it was gone.

-

The med bay lights were dimmed. The midnight quiet permeated through the building, save for the rhythmic beeps and hums of machines hooked up to you.

You lay still in the bed, staring up at the ceiling.

Blank. White. Cold.

Like your head, like your thoughts. Except…

Not entirely. Because there was a buzzing in the back of your brain. Not the sharp directives of the Federation. Not the clarity of purpose you’d been trained to follow.

This was softer.

It came in fragments. Words without source. Feelings without logic. A warmth in your chest when you remembered a certain voice. An ache you couldn’t explain when you heard Hesh say your name.

It didn’t make sense. You hated the Ghosts. You wanted to kill them… Didn’t you?

The door opened. Footsteps followed, soft and unhurried.

You turned your head slightly. It wasn’t Merrick. Not Hesh. It was the other one. The younger one. Logan Walker.

His eyes were quiet. Expression unreadable. He didn’t carry the weight his brother did in his shoulders, but something colder lingered behind his silence. Like he’d seen things he didn’t speak of. Chosen not to.

He didn’t say anything as he stepped in. Just moved to the chair beside your bed and sat down.

You watched him warily. “Come to ask me what I remember?” You grunted.

He shook his head once. “No.”

A moment passed.

“Come to stare at the traitor?”

“No,” he repeated.

You frowned. “Then why are you here?”

He looked at you.

Then very calmly he said, “You saved my life once. In Caracas. Shrapnel in my thigh. You helped carry me out when I couldn’t walk.”

You blinked. Something buzzed faintly in your ears. “No,” you said plainly. “That’s not—”

“You bled the whole way. Got hit yourself. Refused to let Keegan help you until I was stable.”

You shook your head. “Sorry, kid. I don’t remember that.”

Logan just nodded, accepting it. No anger. No pleading. “I didn’t think you would.”

Silence fell again. The machines kept beeping.

Finally, you muttered, “Then why tell me?”

He looked away, toward the corner of the room. “Because whether you remember or not… I do.”

You stared at him.

His voice was so calm and sure, as if he didn’t need you to believe. He only needed you to hear it.

“You weren’t like this,” he uttered, still not meeting your eyes. “You used to hum when you checked our vitals. Used to say names gently, like they were people, not problems. Now…” He finally turned back to you.

“Now you look at me like I’m a target.”

You didn’t respond. You didn’t deny it, either.

Logan stood, quiet as he came, but he paused at the door.

“Whatever they put in your head… fight it.” His voice was quiet, firm. “Not for us. For you.”

Then he left.

This time, the silence didn’t feel as empty. You looked back up at the ceiling.

And for the first time since waking up here, a tear slipped down to your temple. You didn’t even realize it was there until it cooled on your skin.

And you didn’t know why you were crying.

-

It came slowly at first, like sunlight leaking into the cracks between curtains.

Warmth.

Soft cotton sheets.

The low hum of a fan running somewhere nearby.

A weight across your waist. Skin against skin.

His arm was draped over you, fingers splayed gently against your bare stomach, breath warm on the back of your neck.

Hesh.

He murmured something, sleepy and slurred, then shifted closer, pulling you in tighter like he never wanted to let go.

You laughed softly under your breath, not because anything was funny, but because you were happy. You felt safe. Because you knew exactly how he liked his eggs. Because you’d memorized the scars on his ribs and the cadence of his breathing.

Because he was yours and you were his.

“You’re clingy in the mornings,” you mumbled, your eyes still closed.

“M’clingy always,” he whispered against your skin.

Your eyes fluttered open and you rolled to face him. He smiled that lopsided grin… sleep-heavy, unguarded.

You felt it deep in your chest, that strange peace and comfortability that only came with years of vulnerability and trust.

The way his hand rested just above your heart. The way his presence anchored you to the world.

Safe. Wanted. Known.

His eyes searched yours like they didn’t need to ask anything. Like they already knew everything.

“You’re staring,” you teased.

“I’m memorizing,” he corrected you, softly. “Just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“In case the world ends,” he replied, his voice just above a whisper.

He kissed your forehead.

You laughed again, as if you didn’t quite understand his line of thinking, but you didn’t mind. The words rolled off your tongue almost like a playful scolding. “I love you.”

You jolted awake, heart hammering, wrists straining against the restraints.

Even as the dream faded, your body remembered it.

The weight of his arm, the warmth of his chest, the press of his lips to your skin.

You were burning, not with hate or anger, but something else…

Your restraints were still in place. The sterile air had no warmth. Your skin felt too tight, your throat dry, and your heart was racing. You were sweating. You didn’t understand why your hands trembled.

You were still flushed when the door hissed open.

Hesh stepped in, his uniform half-buttoned, dog tags swinging slightly as he walked in. His eyes were tired, but alert, like he hadn’t slept much, either. He didn’t speak right away, just stood there, holding a thermal mug, steam curling up from the top.

You couldn’t look at him, not at first. Suddenly he was too real and you were too raw.

“Morning,” he said gently. You didn’t reply, eyes fixed on the far wall. “Did you sleep okay?”

You shrugged, cheeks hot. You felt like a teenager again. Embarrassed and flustered.

You didn’t know how to lie, not when the memory of his skin was still pressed into yours like a bruise. You swallowed hard.

“You okay?” he asked quietly. You couldn’t speak. Not with the feel of his skin still clinging to your palms. Not with the echo of I love you still buzzing in your head. You finally looked up, just for a second, and met his gaze.

It hit like a punch to the gut.

You knew those eyes. Dark green, like a storm passing by a foggy window. You’d stared into them a hundred times before. In war zones, in med tents, in beds with tangled sheets. You knew him.

But Rorke had warned you. “They’ll get in your head,” he’d said. “Make you think things, make you feel things. You can’t trust them.”

You were quick to turn your head away, finding a smudge on the wall to fix your gaze on. “I had a dream,” you whispered. You weren’t sure why you were telling him.

“Good or bad?”

You paused. “...Both.”

He didn’t push, but stepped over to your bed before sinking down onto it, barely sitting on the edge.

His presence was warm. quiet. A tether to something you didn’t understand. For the first time since waking up here, you didn’t want to run from it.

“Maybe your brain’s starting to fight back,” he said softly. “Maybe it’s remembering what it was like… to be loved.”

Silence settled between you, with only the sound of your vitals monitors buzzing in the background. After a long moment, you spoke.

“You have a scar,” you whispered. “On your ribs. A small one. Crescent shaped.”

He blinked, then nodded slowly. “Broke two ribs falling off a roof when I was fifteen,” he said. “You used to trace it when you couldn’t sleep.”

You looked down, before you went on, your voice barely audible. “You have two stars tattoos on the back of your right arm.”

Hesh didn’t reply, but placed his mug on the counter across from your bed. He shrugged off his fatigue jacket and rolled up the sleeve of his grey t-shirt.

There it was: two black stars tattooed on the back of his right bicep.

Your breath caught in your throat. If Rorke had been telling the truth, how did you know about Hesh’s scars? His tattoos?

You felt a migraine coming on and desperately wanted to press a hand to your forehead. Your wrists flexed against your cuffs. “Why do I feel like I miss you… and hate you… at the same time?”

“Because the real you is still in there,” Hesh murmured. “And she’s trying to come home.”

You finally met his eyes and something squeezed tightly in your chest. “What if I never make it?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Then I’ll keep coming back here. Every damn day until you do.”

masterlist

header by me it’s my first one leave me be

You didn’t answer right away. You stared at the screen for a long time, your stomach twisting. You told yourself you should ignore it. That if he wanted to talk, he should’ve done it a long time ago. But you knew you were going.

Even as you typed out “ok” and threw your phone on the bed with a groan, you were already halfway through planning what you were going to say. What you were going to scream, really. You were going to punch his stupid, beautiful face the second you saw him.

You met him at his place. You hadn’t been there since the breakup, but everything was still the same. Same lights. Same scent. Same fucking shoes by the door that made your chest hurt.

He opened the door before you even knocked, like a dog waiting at the window. If you weren’t so mad, you’d laugh, but instead, you stared him down.

"You look pissed," he said.

"I'm not here to fucking smile at you," you shot back, walking past him.

"Fair enough."

You turned to face him, arms crossed. "Well? You dragged me here to say something, so say it."

He looked at you for a long second. Then, "I don’t want you dating other people."

You blinked, then laughed. "Wow. That’s rich. You broke up with me, and now you get jealous the second someone else looks at me? That’s really fucking mature, Simon."

He didn’t say anything.

"What the fuck do you even want from me?" you snapped. "You didn’t want to be with me, but I can’t be with anyone else either? What is that?"

He muttered something under his breath.

"What?"

He glanced away, jaw tight. "I said, preferably, I want to keep you in a fucking glass cage."

There was a beat of silence. Long enough for you to blink, tilt your head, and reconsider every life choice that had brought you to this exact moment. Because he hadn’t just said that. He couldn’t have.

You narrowed your eyes. "Hello, Joe from You? Are you out of your fucking mind?"

Simon sighed. "I'm not joking. I can't fucking bear to lose you again."

You scoffed, stepping back. "Right. That’s why you broke up with me. Because it was too good, huh?"

"I was scared. It wasn’t your fault. It was never your fault."

"No, it wasn’t. But you made it mine anyway. You made me think I fucked something up. You made me sit with that for months."

He took a step closer. "I could’ve done more. I should’ve done more. I didn’t know how to handle what I felt for you, and I’m sorry."

"You should be," you said, voice quieter now, angrier in a different way. "Because I was all in. And you walked away."

Simon nodded slowly. "I know. And it kills me. You think I didn’t want to call you? You think I didn’t stare at my phone every night thinking about it? I didn’t think I deserved you. But now… I don’t care. I’ll be selfish. I want you back. I want you with me. Not him. Not anyone else. Me."

You stared at him for a moment. Everything about him made your chest ache. Your fists clenched. "You don’t get to do this unless you mean it."

"I mean it. All of it. I don’t care what it takes. I’ll do it. Just… don’t shut the door on me. Not yet."

Your voice was shaking now, but you didn’t look away. "I want to hit you."

"Go ahead."

"I want to scream at you for making me feel disposable."

"You weren’t. You aren’t. You never will be."

You paused, eyes burning. "You better fucking grovel. I'm not making this easy."

"Wouldn’t expect anything less."

You finally let out a shaky breath. Your shoulders dropped just a little, and your voice was low when you said, "I’m not dating him."

"Good. Because I was serious. I would’ve killed him."

"You're an idiot."

"But I'm your idiot. If you'll have me."

You didn’t say anything, just stared at him, still trying to decide if you wanted to punch him or kiss him. Maybe both.

Simon stepped closer, his eyes softening a little. Without a word, he reached up and gently brushed a stray hair behind your ear. Then, before you could react, his lips touched yours, and you didn’t pull away. Instead, you let yourself lean in, closing the space between you.

When you finally broke apart, he smiled, a little shy now. “Still want to punch me?”

You rolled your eyes but couldn’t stop the small smile creeping up. “Maybe just a little.”

----------------------------------------------

Recovery is slow and boring, mostly. The days blur together in a way that makes it hard to keep track, and everything in the medical wing feels the same with those bright lights, stiff sheets, and walls that don’t let in any noise or air.

You sleep too much, but you’re always tired. Your body hurts in places you don’t fully understand, and even though the doctors say you’re healing, you don’t feel like you’re getting better. It’s not just your head—it’s something else. Something sitting in your chest that won’t go away.

People visit, but not all at once. Soap shows up the most, always with some stupid story or joke that feels like it’s meant to distract you. He talks fast, laughs too loud, and leans back in the chair like he’s been there a hundred times before. You think he’s trying to keep things light, but there’s something about the way he looks at you when you’re not speaking that makes it obvious he’s worried.

Gaz is more subtle. He doesn’t try to talk your ear off, he just sits nearby and asks if you need anything. You get the sense he knows what not to say. Price calls in once from wherever he is. His smile looks strained on the screen, like he’s trying too hard to stay positive. You appreciate it anyway.

You ask about Simon more than once. You try to keep it casual, but everyone seems to notice. But the answers don’t change. “He’s busy,” Soap says. Or, “He’s not one for hospital visits.” Sometimes they just shrug and move on. It starts to feel like you’re not supposed to ask. Like bringing him up is some kind of mistake.

You don’t remember why it matters so much, but it does. It bothers you, the way they all talk around it. The way no one really looks you in the eye when you mention his name.

“Was I close to him?” you ask Soap during one of his visits.

He shifts in the chair beside your bed, one leg bouncing slightly. “Everyone’s close in the field. Life and death does that.”

But that’s not the question. You can tell he knows it too, by the way he doesn’t meet your eyes.

You start dreaming again after a few weeks, and it’s never the same twice. Most of the time, it’s just flashes—quick, messy bits that don’t always make sense.

Sometimes it’s simple stuff: the feeling of a hand on your back, steady and reassuring, or someone laughing close to your ear. The weight of someone next to you in bed, the way your body relaxed without even thinking about it. The sound of a voice, very deep, quiet, and familiar, but the words never come through clearly. You wake up with the feeling that someone was talking to you, but you can’t remember what they said.

Other nights are worse. Loud and violent. You hear shouting—your own, maybe. Or his. There’s gunfire, smoke, and people running. The pressure of fear sits heavy in your chest even after you’re awake.

Sometimes you feel pain, too, like your body is remembering something your brain can’t. You’ll sit up in bed gasping, sweating, with no real memory of what happened, just this overwhelming feeling that something went wrong.

And no matter what kind of dream it is, it always ends the same way. With that name stuck in your throat. You never say it out loud in the dream, but you wake up with it on your tongue, like you were trying to call out to him even in your sleep.

Simon.

Coming back to base is harder than you thought it would be. It’s like you’re stepping into a life that’s not really yours anymore. There are so many things around you that feel familiar but at the same time completely strange.

You see your name on your ID badge, the photo looking back at you from the plastic, but it feels like it belongs to someone else. Your locker is right where it’s supposed to be, and your fingers know the code by muscle memory, opening it without you even thinking. But even with all those little things working like they should, nothing inside feels like it fits.

You keep waiting for something to click, for a part of you to catch up and say, “Yes, this is home.” But it doesn’t. It feels like you’re trapped in someone else’s skin, like your body belongs to another person.

Simon is everywhere and nowhere. You catch glimpses of him from time to time, just a shadow moving down the hall or slipping through a doorway before you can reach out.

Whenever you actually see him, he’s always in a rush, like he’s trying to get away from something, or from you. He doesn’t stop or talk. His face is cold when you do manage to look at him, and he moves too fast for you to say anything before he disappears again. It’s like he’s avoiding you on purpose, and that hurts more than you expected.

After days of catching only quick glimpses, you finally see him clearly. He’s coming out of the briefing room, no mask on this time, and the sharp line of his jaw is so familiar now that you don’t even have to think twice. It’s him—Simon.

Your voice slips out before you can stop it. “Simon.”

He freezes for a moment. Just a brief pause, like he’s trying to decide what to do next. Then he turns his head just a little, not fully facing you. “Can’t talk. I’m late.”

And just like that, he’s gone. Moving away fast, disappearing down the hallway like he always does—just out of reach, like everything else you thought you knew about him and about this place.

You start writing things down, those small details that come back to you, or things you notice around you. Like how Soap has this way of calling you by a nickname that somehow makes your stomach flip every time you hear it, even though you don’t really understand why. Or how Gaz keeps offering you his coffee every morning, even though you never drink it.

It’s like a quiet gesture, one of the few constants you can hold on to. And sometimes, when it’s late and the hall is almost empty, you catch a shadow lingering just outside your door. It stays there just long enough for you to think it’s real.

Then there’s a photo you find tucked away in your file, something no one ever talked about. It’s you and Simon, both covered in mud, standing close together. Closer than what teammates usually are. His hand is resting on your waist like it belongs there. You’re smiling in that photo, and not the forced kind, but a real smile, easy and natural. You look at it for so long that your eyes start to blur.

Eventually, you tape that photo inside your locker. Every morning, before you go out, you find yourself staring at it a little longer than the day before, like you’re trying to remember what it felt like to be that close to him, and maybe hoping that one day it’ll mean something again.

You finally catch him alone in weapons storage. He’s there restocking gear, moving with the precision that makes it clear his mind is somewhere else, probably somewhere he doesn’t want to be. His hands are steady, but every motion feels tight, like he’s trying hard not to think too much.

You clear your throat and say his name. “Simon.”

He doesn’t turn to look at you. His back stays to you, his shoulders rigid.

You take a step closer. “Can we talk?”

He shakes his head without facing you. “Not now.”

You let out a quiet, frustrated breath. “You always say that.”

He freezes for a moment, his hands pausing in mid-air as if trying to decide whether to keep working or to answer you. Finally, he puts the box down on the table slowly. His whole body stiffens, and you can tell whatever he’s holding back is about to come out.

He still doesn’t look at you, but his voice drops low, rough around the edges. “Because it’s always true.”

You don’t believe him, so you take another step closer. “You’re lying.”

That’s when something in him shifts—just a quick flicker in his eyes, a tightening of his jaw. Maybe it’s anger or regret, or maybe it’s all tangled together. He swallows hard, then finally meets your gaze for a brief second. It’s raw and unguarded, even if he tries to hide it.

His voice softens, but there’s an edge you can’t ignore before he repeats himself. “Not now.”

You swallow past the lump in your throat, the tightness in your chest growing.

He looks away again, rubbing the back of his neck like he’s trying to keep himself together. The silence stretches between you, but neither of you says anything more. You can feel the weight of everything left unsaid hanging in the air.

You stand there, waiting for something—an explanation, a sign, anything—but it never comes. Finally, you turn and walk away, the sound of your footsteps echoing in the quiet room.

At first, the memories don’t come all at once. It’s slow, almost like they’re buried under a heavy weight you can’t quite lift. They come in tiny flashes, little pieces that catch your attention for just a second before disappearing again. You don’t even notice it happening at first.

Maybe it’s the smell—something about the way his jacket smells when he’s nearby. It’s faint but familiar, like a mix of smoke and leather, something that sticks in your mind without you meaning to remember it.

Or maybe it’s the sound he makes when he’s thinking, almost like a soft humming sound that you’d swear no one else would notice. You remember the way your hand fits perfectly in his, like it was meant to be there, how heavy it felt when he finally took it.

And then, more comes. Not all at once, but slowly, piece by piece.

You see yourself in a hotel room, nothing fancy, just bare walls and a bed pushed against the corner. You remember how quiet it was, how the air seemed still except for the sound of his breath, warm against your neck, close enough to make your skin prickle.

You remember talking quietly, voices low enough so no one else could hear, words that mattered more than you realized at the time. You can almost feel his lips brushing gently over a scar on your shoulder, the touch light but somehow full of meaning.

You remember the day you told him you’d follow him anywhere—even into hell. It wasn’t just words; you meant it. And when it came down to it, you did.

Then the mission comes back. The chaos. The explosion. You hear him yelling your name, sharp and urgent, just before the grenade lands too close to you. Your body moves before your brain can catch up—throwing yourself to the ground, the impact hitting hard, pain burning through you.

After that, there’s nothing. Just the silence, the dark, the emptiness.

Then this—right here, right now.

The next day, you stand by the garage, shifting your weight from one foot to the other. You don’t know how long you’ve been there. The sky changes slowly above you, colors fading from blue to soft pinks, then darkening to evening shades. The air cools against your skin. The hum of the generators is the only sound, filling the quiet around you. You try to steady your breathing, but your heart feels like it’s pounding in your throat.

Time stretches. You watch the empty street, waiting. You don’t know exactly what you’re waiting for, only that you have to be here. Somewhere deep down, you believe he’ll come. Maybe he already knows you’ll be waiting. Maybe he always knows more than you think.

Finally, he appears. He rounds the corner, walking slower than usual, like he’s unsure. Maybe he’s been thinking about this moment for a while. Maybe he’s been dreading it. His eyes don’t meet yours at first; they’re focused on the ground just ahead.

You gather yourself and say the words you’ve kept inside, the ones you’ve said a hundred times in your head but never out loud. “I remember.”

He stops, but he doesn’t say anything, just stands there.

“I remember everything,” you say again, louder this time, trying to push past the silence.

His shoulders rise slightly, like he’s holding his breath, then drop as if the weight of it all is too much. He still won’t meet your eyes. “Then you know why I didn’t tell you,” he finally says, his voice low.

“No,” you reply, stepping closer, your chest open but your throat tight like you’re about to cry. “Tell me. Explain it.”

He looks away again. “I didn’t want you to remember.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to be with you anymore.”

His words hit harder than you expected. The quiet after feels too loud, almost unbearable. You laugh, but it sounds wrong, too forced. “That’s not true.”

This time, his eyes flick up, locking with yours for the briefest moment. There’s no softness there, no warmth. Just cold steel, hard and unbreakable. “You think I’d lie just to protect your feelings?”

“Yes,” you breathe, your voice shaking. “That’s exactly what I thought you’d do.”

He looks away again. “It was a mistake.”

Your stomach twists into knots. “Say that again.”

Without hesitation, he says it clearly. “Being with you was a mistake.”

It feels like your whole body freezes. Your breath catches, and your hands shake with a mix of anger and hurt. “I risked everything for you.”

His voice is sharp, cutting. “And I never asked you to. You think that means I owe you something?”

“I thought it meant something more. I thought it meant you cared.”

He laughs, low and bitter. “I thought I did, too. But it’s different now. I can’t keep pretending.”

The cold spreads inside you, and you swallow hard. “You don’t mean that.”

He stays quiet.

“Simon,” you say softly, almost pleading.

“I don’t want to do this,” he says, voice softer but still distant.

“Then don’t,” you whisper, your voice breaking. “But please, don’t lie.”

“I’m not lying,” he says firmly. “I’m doing the only thing I can. I’m letting you go.”

You look at him, willing him to crack, to reach out, to show some part of the man you once knew.

But he doesn’t.

So you turn and walk away.

He simply watches you disappear into the dark.

PART 2

-------------------------------------------

@nightunite hope you enjoyed babes

“Depends which one you mean,” you say.

Sam grins. “I mean the one who ruined my life in that indie film where you died at the end.”

“Ah,” you say. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“I had to lie to my therapist about how much I cried.”

You laugh again. “I cried shooting it.”

Sam turns to Bucky. “Man, you didn’t say she was cool.”

Steve stands and extends a hand. “Captain Steve Rogers. It’s a pleasure.”

You take it. “The pleasure’s mine. Big fan of your whole ‘punching Nazis’ arc.”

Steve chuckles. “Thanks, still working on the sequel.”

You’re all still standing in that gentle, easy circle when Natasha finally speaks.

“You’re prettier in person,” she says simply.

You blink, caught off guard. “Thank you?”

“It wasn’t a compliment,” Natasha replies, and smiles.

You smile back. “I like you already.”

There’s a pause and everyone laughs. Even Bucky, especially Bucky. The moment settles like it was always meant to be this way.

You’re curled into the couch now, drink in hand, laughing into the rim of your glass as Sam launches into a dramatic retelling of the time he got caught watching one of your movies on a quinjet, mid-mission.

“I swear to God, the mission brief was boring,” Sam says. “So I’m scrolling through the in-flight stuff, and boom, there you are. Staring out a rain-covered window. It was over after that.”

You grin, chin resting on your hand. “Which ones have you seen?”

“Oh, uh….The Last Goodbye,” he says, then adds immediately, “But also Glass Garden, Something in Autumn, The Moth Room, that space one, the one with the piano, what was that called?”

“Reverie,” Steve offers helpfully.

“Right! Reverie!” Sam snaps his fingers. “And Kingdom Come….And, oh, Marrow. That was dark.”

You blink. “You’ve seen all of them?”

Sam puts a hand on his chest. “Ma’am, I am emotionally invested.”

You’re still laughing when Sam says, “We actually just watched one a couple weeks ago. Me, Steve, and Buck, In The Quiet After.”

Your eyes slide to Bucky instantly, the laugh dying in your throat. “You watched it?”

Bucky clears his throat, nods. “Yeah.”

Your smile softens, eyes searching his. “What did you think?”

Bucky glances down for a second, then looks back up at you. “That you’re amazing.”

Your heart stutters behind your ribs. That word, amazing carries more weight than it should. But from him? It sounds like he means it.

Before you can say anything, Natasha leans in from the other couch, studying your lips. “What shade of red is that?” she asks casually.

You blink, caught off guard again. “Oh. Um, Monroe by Verre.”

Natasha nods, satisfied. “Figures. I use Vesper. Yours is more of a ‘kiss-me-in-the-dark-alley’ red. I like it.”

You laugh, a little breathless. “Thanks.”

Steve claps his hands once, standing. “Alright, let’s get the ladies another drink.”

Bucky looks over at you, brow raised like he’s checking in, asking without words if you’re okay to be left for a minute.

Before you can answer, Natasha waves a dismissive hand. “Relax, Barnes. I’m not gonna bite her.” She leans back. “She’s safe with me. Now go, we’re thirsty.”

You nod, smiling at him, he hesitates slightly then follows Steve toward the bar.

Sam rises too, stretching. “I’m gonna go see if I can steal one of those mini food trays. The one with the prosciutto thingies. Don’t leave me out here without carbs.”

Now you’re alone with Natasha, she doesn’t say anything at first. Just sips what's left of her drink, eyes scanning the room, lashes heavy. Without looking at you she says, “You have sad eyes.”

You blink. That catches you clean in the chest. No warning, no preparation. Just the truth, dropped like a pin in the middle of a marble floor.

You turn to her, unsure what to say. But she’s already leaning in slightly, hand gentle as it lands on your knee, warm and grounding.

“I’ve worn that look,” she says. “It’s heavy. The world thinks it’s mystery. Men think it’s glamour. But really? It’s just loneliness. The kind that lingers even when you’re smiling.”

You swallow, no words come.

Natasha doesn’t press. She just sits with you in that silence like she’s been there before. Like she knows exactly how far down it goes. She says, quieter this time, “Sometimes people need to see through you to actually see you. It’s not a weakness.”

You don’t answer. But your fingers curl slightly into the hem of your dress, and for once, the tears that prick at your lashes aren’t from exhaustion. They’re from relief, someone saw you and didn’t look away.

Steve leaned against the counter, watching Bucky out of the corner of his eye as the bartender slid two drinks their way.

“You like her,” he said, not accusing, more like just stating.

Bucky didn’t answer right away. His eyes stayed fixed across the room, on you, the way your head tilted back when you laughed at something Sam said, your hand still loosely curled around your drink.

“I care for her,” he said, voice quiet and rough. “A lot.”

Steve nodded once, like he already knew. He didn’t push.

Bucky kept watching you from where he stood, the soft curl of your smile, the way you were actually relaxed for once. The version of you no one else ever got to see. His chest ached with it, with the weight of wanting to protect something so fragile, so hidden.

Steve shifted, reaching into his blazer. “About her stalker, I know they have him but—”

Bucky turned slightly. Steve pulled out a slim folder, not thick but heavy in implication. “I’ve got the file, from when you asked before. You can take it after the party.”

Bucky nodded. “Thanks.”

Natasha approached, still barefooted and drinkless. She snatched the glass from Steve’s hand with a small smirk. “Mine,” she said, raising it toward him. Steve let it go without argument.

“I’m going to mingle,” Natasha said, glancing toward the dance floor. “Maybe scare a few billionaires.”

She turned to Bucky. “Be careful with her.”

That pulled his eyes up. “What?”

Natasha just stared. “I’m serious,” she said. “She’s about one sharp word away from crumbling.”

He bristled. “She’s stronger than you think.”

“I know she is,” Natasha replied evenly. “That’s the problem, people like her… they don’t fall apart when they should. They wait, they stack the weight until it’s too late.”

Bucky clenched his jaw.

Natasha leaned in slightly. “She’s been in survival mode so long she doesn’t know how to stop pretending. You’re the only thing I’ve seen her reach for that wasn’t scripted.”

Bucky didn’t say anything.

“Relax, Barnes,” she added with a little smirk, “I’m not questioning you. I’m warning you.”

She turned, drink in hand, and disappeared into the crowd with all the quiet confidence of someone who’s seen too much. Bucky stayed there for a second. Two drinks in hand. Just… staring.

You were across the room, sitting alone now, Sam had run off for food or a drink or who knows what. Your posture was graceful, elegant even, but now that Natasha had said it, he saw it.

The quiet twitch in your fingers. The way you kept fixing the hem of your dress, then your bracelet, then the ring on your finger, all muscle memory. Nervous energy dressed up as poise.

Sam reappeared, triumphant, holding an entire tray of tiny hors d’oeuvres like he’d just won a war. Your face lit up, really lit up. Like a kid, like a person, like someone who has been told “no” for a long time and forgot what “yes” felt like.

You laughed when he offered you one with an exaggerated bow. Then you actually ate it, it was the first real bite of food you’d had in days, you reached for another and Bucky just stood there. Watching you come alive in real time.

Steve slapped a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go,” he said, nodding toward the couches. “Before you stare a hole through her.”

-

Steve was halfway through a story about how Bucky once punched a guy twice his size for stealing a kid’s lunch money, and Bucky, deadpan, fired back with a story about Steve getting his ass handed to him by a twelve-year-old with a skipping rope.

You’d laughed so hard you wiped a tear from the corner of your eye. You were still laughing when it hit you, hard, the realization of it all.

It happened so quickly, most people wouldn’t have caught it. But Bucky did, he watched your smile falter just slightly. Your eyes didn’t crinkle the same way.

You glanced around the couches, at Steve and Sam, then the whole room. The warmth between them all, the way they moved like puzzle pieces that had already figured out where they belonged.

Family and friendship. Years of love and memory and stupid inside jokes and unspoken glances.

You had none of that. No one who remembered your birthday without a calendar invite. No one who knew what your laugh sounded like when you weren’t acting. No one who would talk about the time you stayed up all night building a pillow fort or snuck out to see a concert. You didn’t have stories like that because you hadn’t had a life like that,

Your whole face dropped. Not dramatically, quietly. Like the light inside you dimmed just enough for Bucky to feel it like a punch to the ribs. He swallowed. Something twisted behind his breastbone.

He didn’t want to see your face fall ever again, not like that. Not when you’d only just started to smile for real. He cleared his throat. Before he could talk himself out of it, he stood, turned to you and did something he hadn’t done since the 1940s, since before.

“Dance with me.”

Steve’s glass paused halfway to his mouth, slowly, a grin stretched across his face, wide and warm, like he’d just watched a ghost come back to life.

“Really?” You blinked. "You wanna dance with….me?”

Bucky nodded, his voice was softer this time, low so only you could hear it. “You’re the only one I wanna dance with.””

Your expression broke into something unguarded, pure surprise wrapped in soft disbelief. You took his hand, his fingers curled around yours with so much care it made your chest ache.

He led you gently toward the open space near the center of the room, a place where the music swelled just loud enough to pull you both into something quieter.

You moved close, almost chest to chest. Muscle memory took over, he spun you once, your laugh trailing behind like stardust and pulled you back in with a grace he didn’t know he still had.

Bucky, he was smiling. Not the crooked half-lift he usually gave when he was amused or tolerating someone.

Sam stood there watching, eyes wide. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile like that.”

Steve’s voice was soft. “In all the years I’ve known him… I’ve never seen that smile.”

The song changed, slower now more tender. But neither of you stepped away. You stayed in his arms, swaying like the world didn’t exist.

Your voice came barely above a whisper. “I don’t want this to end.”

His eyes glanced down at you. “It doesn’t have to, y’know.”

You looked up at him, eyes glassy. “I’ve never been this happy in my life.”

Bucky’s hands slid gently around your waist, pulling you just a little closer. “Then stay in it, with me.”

You didn’t answer, you didn’t have to. It was all in the way you looked at him like maybe you were starting to believe happiness wasn’t something made up for movies.

The night blurred at the edges, dulled by warm drinks, real laughter, and a little too much Asgardian liquor. Your hand was in his, fingers laced, and you stumbled a little in your heels when you reached the hallway. Bucky caught you without thinking, steady hands at your waist like it was instinct.

You looked up at him, cheeks flushed, eyes shining. “I’ve been thinking,” you said, voice low, thick with mischief.

He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? About what?”

“Your lips.”

That threw him. “My… lips?”

You nodded, smiling, drunk on wine and happiness. “I’m gonna kiss them.”

He didn’t say anything. Didn’t move, just stood there, caught somewhere between surprise and anticipation.

Your hands slid up to the back of his neck, soft and sure, and then you leaned in. Pressed your mouth to his, warm and slow and a little clumsy but real. His hands rose instinctively to your face, palms bracketing your jaw like you might disappear. He kissed you back like he was afraid to break whatever spell this was.

When you pulled away, your smile was quiet, a little dazed.

“I’m gonna go lie down,” you whispered, voice light. “Before I do something really embarrassing.”

He didn’t tease. Just opened the door to his room and nodded toward the bed. “Get some rest.”

You nodded too, suddenly shy, and padded inside, kicking off your heels. You curled onto his bed like you’d been there a hundred times, back to him, arm tucked under your cheek. You didn’t say goodnight. You didn’t have to.

He didn’t watch you sleep.

He sat on the couch instead, ran a hand through his hair, and reached for the file waiting on the coffee table. The moment was still in his mouth, soft and slow and lingering, but the words on the page stole the warmth from his chest.

Elias Corrin.

He turned the page.

A series of disturbing notes, scrawled handwriting. Photos, too close, too focused. Mailroom logs. Security reports. Mental health history flagged. Prior arrests. Declared unstable. Released on condition of monitored care, care that clearly didn’t happen. A restraining order ignored. GPS trackers found on two former assistants. One note, timestamped just last week: If I can’t have her, no one will.

Bucky exhaled, slow through his nose. They said they caught him, they swore he was in custody.

But something about it didn’t sit right. Not with that last message. Not with how your shoulders still tensed when you thought no one was looking. He closed the file, thumb brushing the corner of the last page.

He looked over at you, asleep in his bed, curled into yourself like a secret and felt something quiet and sharp settle behind his ribs.

If he’d let himself believe in promises, he would’ve made one right then. Instead, he just stayed awake and kept watch.

You woke up disoriented. For a second, you thought you were home. The sheets were warm, soft. The light filtering in was gentle, not sharp like it usually was.

Your eyes caught the unfamiliar ceiling. The heavier weight of the comforter. The sound of someone breathing, slow, steady.

You sat up, blinking. There he was.

Bucky, slouched on the couch, legs stretched out, one arm tossed over the back. His metal hand was relaxed for once, not clenched like it usually was. His face was soft. Peaceful in a way you didn’t think he knew how to be, just like that, it all came rushing back, the party, the dancing, the kiss, the way you laughed like you weren’t scared of anything.

You reached for your purse and fished out your phone. It was a warzone. Dozens of missed calls, texts, emails. All from your team.

Some angry, some cruel.

Where the fuck are you.

Do you have any idea what you’ve done.

We protect you and this is how you repay us?

You think being seen with him is going to help your image?

God, you're such a dumb bitch.

Your chest tightened, not wanting to read the rest. You locked the screen and put the phone down like it might catch fire. Your fingers itched, and before you could stop yourself, you opened your browser. Typed your name.

Nothing.

No headlines, no photos, no video clips or shaky footage from partygoers. The Tower was clean, you knew it would be, but you still had a little part of you that didn’t trust it. You exhaled, the breath caught halfway up your throat.

You slid off the bed and padded into the bathroom. The makeup was still there. Smudged eyeliner, faded lipstick, glitter, clinging to your cheekbones. You leaned over the sink and turned the faucet on, cupping water in your hands and scrubbing everything away.

When you looked up at your reflection, there you were. No filters, no lashes, no red carpet armor. You left the bathroom and opened one of Bucky’s drawers. Took a pair of sweatpants that looked like they could fit two of you and a soft, worn t-shirt that smelled like him. You rolled the waistband twice and tied the drawstring tight, brushed your hair back with your fingers, and walked barefoot into the living room.

He stirred on the couch, blinking slowly.

When he looked up and saw you, no makeup, messy hair, standing in his clothes like it wasn’t the most vulnerable thing you could’ve done.

You held his gaze. “I gotta go home,” you said softly. “I’m in trouble.”

He sat up, rubbing a hand over his face. “You wanna eat first?”

You hesitated, nodded. “Sure.”

In the kitchen, Steve was flipping pancakes. Sam was leaning against the counter, drinking coffee straight from the mug. They looked up when you walked in.

You in Bucky’s shirt, sleeves past your hands. His sweatpants dragging a little at your ankles.

They both paused, didn’t say anything. Bucky followed close behind and shot them a look, sharp, silent, don’t start.

Steve smiled anyway, all soft and casual. “Hope you’re hungry.”

You slid onto a stool at the island, tucking your legs underneath you. “I don’t remember the last time I had breakfast that smelled this good,” you said quietly. You didn’t say it for sympathy. It was just true.

Steve plated pancakes, eggs, bacon. Sam pushed a glass of orange juice your way. No one made a big deal about anything. They just… let it be normal. It felt strange and kind of perfect.

After a while, after the food and the small talk and the brief moment where you forgot what waited outside, you stood, napkin in hand.

“Thank you,” you said to Steve, sincere. “For the food and….just everything.”

Steve just nodded. “Anytime.”

Bucky grabbed his keys. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll get you home.”

When you got back to your house, they were already inside. Not waiting, just there like always, like they never left. The moment the door clicked shut, the noise started.

“You disappeared.”

“You embarrassed us.”

“You know how hard we work to protect your image? And that's how you treat us?! Like garbage?”

“I’ll tell you who's garbage!”

Bucky stood just inside the entryway, jaw tight, arms crossed. He didn’t say a word.

“You don’t answer your phone for one night and we have to put out ten fires.”

“You think people won’t talk?”

“Stupid girl.”

Gina steps forward, “Enough,” she said, voice sharp. “We’ll talk about this later. In private.”

They backed off immediately, like soldiers hearing a command. Not because they respected her. But because who else was in the room with them, Bucky.

Brett handed you a clipboard, like a weapon. “New schedule.”

You glanced at it, top to bottom, packed. Your eyes hit one line. Bold.

Nude Scene — 3 Weeks.

Clipped to the back: a single sheet.

Diet Breakdown. Daily Intake. Weight Targets.

You didn’t blink. Just nodded and held the papers at your side like they didn’t burn your skin.

“Phone,” Gina said.

You pulled it from your pocket, handing it over.

Just like that they were gone, moved to the kitchen, already fighting about something else. The second the door shut behind them, Bucky looked at you.

“Why do you let them treat you like that?”

You didn’t answer right away. “It’s easier,” you said finally. “If I push back, it just gets louder.”

He stepped a little closer. “You said you didn’t want to do that scene.”

“I say a lot of things,” you muttered, eyes still on the floor. “Doesn’t mean it matters.”

He frowned. “You don’t get to say no?”

Your laugh was soft and dry, “There are a lot of things I don’t want to do,” you said. “That doesn’t mean I get a choice.”

You didn’t tell him what you gave up to be at the Tower last night. That one night of normal, dancing, pancakes, his hands on your waist, it had a cost. You made peace with it already.

“Might as well suck it up,” you added. “Right? Give the people something they apparently can’t live without, my body.”

Bucky didn’t answer. Just stared at you like he didn’t know whether to hug you or break a wall.

The door creaked open again. Leah stuck her head in. “Barnes. You can go, we don’t need you anymore today.”

Bucky’s eyes didn’t leave yours. “You gonna be okay?”

You nodded, offered him a small smile the kind of nod you give when there’s no fight left in you.

“I’ll text you,” you said.

He nodded too, he hated that he did, he hated leaving you here. He turned for the door. Leah, behind him, smirked just a little. “No, she won’t.” and then she shut the door in his face.

---

The next day, you were on set, sort of.

It wasn’t a full shoot, just screen testing. Wardrobe, lighting, a camera rigged to capture how you looked under three different kinds of studio sun.

You sat in a folding chair in the corner, hair pinned up, silk robe over a vintage slip dress, drinking lukewarm coffee while a production assistant ran cables behind you. You looked tired, but not fake-tired. The kind of tired that lived in your bones.

Bucky stood nearby, hands in his pockets, watching the swirl of controlled chaos.

“What’s this one about?” Bucky asked, nodding toward the bustle of the set.

You didn’t look up. Just took another sip of the coffee that had gone cold an hour ago.

“Some sad Hollywood star,” you said, flat.

He looked over at you.

You gave a small, half-laugh the kind that didn’t touch your eyes. “Fitting, right?”

Bucky didn’t laugh, didn’t joke. He just watched you, the way your shoulders stayed tense even when you were sitting, the way your eyes flicked across the room like you were searching for something that wasn’t there.

“She’s famous,” you added, voice quieter now. “Everyone knows her face. But no one actually knows her.”

You paused, then gave a faint shrug. “It’s called Lucky.”

Bucky didn’t say anything at first, finally under his breath: “Doesn’t sound like luck.”

Later on that week, maybe two days, maybe three, Bucky knocked on your door. Not for work, not because he had to, they gave him the day off today.

You opened it in socks and a crewneck, eyebrows raised like you weren’t expecting him.

He rubbed the back of his neck, awkward as hell, deciding after hyping himself up all day that he was just going to say it. “I was thinking,” he said, “maybe I could take you to dinner.”

You blinked. “Like…”

“Not as security,” he cut in, fast. “Just, me. Taking you out, like normal people do.” He looked nervous. “Like a date, I wanna take you on a date, it’s fine—”

He felt stupid like you might laugh, you didn’t. You smiled, that small, real one he was getting addicted to and said, “Yes.” So fast he didn’t even finish his sentence.

The place wasn’t fancy, it was barely even modern. A little hole-in-the-wall diner tucked down a side street in Brooklyn, the kind with cracked vinyl booths, fries that came in paper baskets, and a jukebox that only played songs recorded before 1975.

You wore jeans and a hoodie. Hair pulled back, no makeup and he couldn’t stop looking at you. Not because of what you were wearing. Not because of what anyone else would’ve noticed. But because this was the first time he’d seen you like this, out and about. You looked… happy. Like you were in on a secret no one else knew.

You ordered pancakes for dinner and stole fries off his plate. You told him a story about a role you almost got when you were nineteen and how you sabotaged the audition on purpose because you didn’t want to play “a girl who dies from a broken heart.”

“Ironic now,” you’d said, biting into a fry.

He didn’t argue. But he reached across the table and nudged your hand with his and when your eyes met his, something soft passed between you. Just two people trying to figure out how to breathe again.

You didn’t rush through dinner, you lingered.

The two of you talked like there wasn’t a clock in the world, about music, movies, what Coney Island used to look like before it got cleaned up. You told him about your favorite director (he hadn’t heard of them), and he told you about the first movie he ever saw in theaters before the war.

“It was a double feature,” he said. “One reel broke halfway through, so the whole audience just sat there waiting like someone died.”

You laughed. “That’s very on-brand for you.”

When the check came, he tried to pay, stubborn about it, you told him you considered this your first official fight but you let him, just this once.

The sky was already dark when you stepped outside, the street was quiet. Empty enough to feel like it belonged to you then it started to rain.

Not a downpour, just that light, misty kind of rain that clings to your lashes and makes the streetlights look like halos.

You looked up at the sky, then back at him. “Of course,” you said, smiling. “Feels fitting.”

Bucky pulled off his jacket without a word and draped it over your shoulders. It was warm from his body heat, and too big, and perfect.

He walked beside you in a black t-shirt, not caring about the cold or the rain. His hand brushed yours once, twice, until finally, he just reached over and held it.

Not tightly, not like a claim. Just enough to say I’m here and you didn’t let go, you never wanted to again.

You walked like that the whole way back. No security, noentourage. Just the city, the rain, and the two of you.

At your door, he hesitated. You stood there in his jacket, fingers curled at the sleeves, and said, “That was the best night I’ve had in… maybe ever.”

He smiled.You looked up at him, nervous suddenly, and said, “Wanna come by tomorrow?”

He blinked. “You mean, like—”

“Just come over,” you said, softer now. “I don’t have anything scheduled. No press, no meetings. I figured maybe we could… I don’t know. Be normal.”

Bucky nodded. “What time?”

“Ten,” you said. “Bring coffee.”

He smirked. “Anything but craft services?”

You grinned, stepping back toward the door. “Exactly.”

You started to turn toward the door, then paused. Looked back. “Hey, Bucky?”

He turned his head, eyes on you. “Yeah, sweetheart?”

The name hit low in your stomach. You smiled, cheeks flushing, but didn’t look away.

“I’ve been in so many movies,” you said. “Played every kind of love story… but I’ve never had a kiss in the rain before.”

He paused, just a breath then his smile deepened. It wasn’t teasing, It was soft, slow, like something old and familiar settling into place.

He stepped forward, closing the space between you. His hands found your waist, yours lifted to his chest and then he kissed you, like something out of a movie.

Not like before. This time it was deeper, wetter, with the rain clinging to your skin and your breath catching somewhere between his mouth and your heart.

When he finally pulled back, he stayed close, noses brushing, rain dripping from his lashes.

“Glad I could be your first, ” he murmured.

You smiled, barely breathing. “Hopefully my only.”

He let that linger between you. Didn’t say anything, just smiled, that quiet, just-for-you kind of smile that you were already getting addicted to.

You stepped back, still wearing his jacket, fingers trailing down his arm as you turned toward the door.

“See you tomorrow, Sarge.”

Bucky stood there after you shut the door, soaked to the bone, smiling like a man who finally had something worth getting caught in the rain for.

---

He showed up at ten on the dot. Coffee in hand. Hoodie slung on. That soft, unsure look in his eyes like he wasn’t totally convinced you hadn’t changed your mind.

You opened the door in his jacket, the same one from the last night and a messy bun that was maybe more sleep than style. Your eyes lit up at the sight of him.

“Good. You’re punctual. I like that in a man,” you teased, taking the coffee from him with both hands. “You remembered.”

“I remember everything,” Bucky said, stepping inside. “Especially when it comes with threats about craft services.”

You smiled into the lid of your coffee. “You hungry?”

He shrugged. “I could eat.”

You’d already made eggs. Just because. Toasted two slices of bread, burnt the edges on one, blamed the toaster, he didn’t care he’d eat anything you made.

He sat across from you at the kitchen island while you finished scrambling the last bit of eggs in the pan. The light streaming through the windows caught the edges of your hair. He watched it for a little too long.

After breakfast, you disappeared for a minute. When you came back, you were holding a shopping bag. A mischievous smile spread across your face.

“Wig day,” you announced.

Bucky blinked, choking on air. “Wig what?”

You reached in and pulled out a bright hot pink bob for you and a ridiculously curly blonde one for him.

He stared at it like it might bite him. “I am not wearing that.”

“Oh, you are,” you said, already pulling yours on. “We’re going incognito.”

“I already have a disguise,” he argued, gesturing to himself.

“Buck,” you said seriously, walking up to him and holding the wig just over his head. “Please, for me.”

You hit him with the full force of a pout. The kind of expression that could level buildings.

He sighed. “If you ever tell anyone—”

“Swear on my Oscar,” you said solemnly.

He gave in and twenty minutes later, the two of you were walking hand-in-hand through the Saturday morning farmers market, you in oversized sunglasses and hot pink hair, Bucky in a blonde monstrosity and didn’t even try to blend in.

You were laughing before you even made it to the first vendor.

“God, this is so freeing,” you said, grabbing two honey sticks from a basket and handing him one. “This is the most fun I’ve had in public since I was seventeen.”

“Do people even recognize you?” Bucky asked, chewing on his stick.

“Not unless they’re really looking.” You popped yours into your mouth. “You’d be surprised what a wig can do. That and not smiling for cameras.”

He smiled a little at that.

You made him buy sunflowers, a whole bunch of them and when he rolled his eyes, you shoved them into his arms and said, “For the compound, It needs color.”

“Its gray.”

“Exactly.”

You made him try a slice of fresh peach from one of the stands. He groaned, visibly impressed. “This might be the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”

You nodded, smug. “I have excellent taste, in fruit and men.”

He coughed, caught off guard, and you just kept walking like you hadn’t said anything at all.

A little boy walked by holding his mom’s hand, eyes wide. He looked up at Bucky’s wig and said, very seriously, “I like your funny hair.”

Without missing a beat, Bucky deadpanned, “Thanks, it’s natural.”

You lost it, laughed so hard you had to stop walking, one hand on your stomach, the other on Bucky’s arm for support.

“God,” you wheezed. “I think I pulled something.”

He smiled, not a small smile but the kind that showed just how old he was, wrinkles and all. He couldn't stop watching you, all teeth, all light.

“You’re ridiculous,” he said.

“You love it.”

“Maybe I do.” He whispered

You looked up at him then and for a second, it felt like a normal life. Like this wasn’t temporary. Like this was the part people forget to write about, the joy that lives in quiet places. In stupid wigs and sticky fruit fingers and hand-holding.

You walked a little closer after that and when the sun dipped behind a cloud, Bucky looked over and thought: Yeah, this is what it’s supposed to feel like.

You got back to your house with sunflowers in one hand, a bag of peaches in the other, and your wigs still barely hanging on.

Bucky tugged his off the second the door shut. You kept yours on just to make him laugh one last time before finally giving in and tossing it onto the entryway bench.

“God,” you groaned, kicking your shoes off. “We looked like walking satire.”

“You bought them,” he pointed out.

“Exactly,” you grinned, “I have no one to blame but myself.”

He set the peaches on the counter and opened the fridge, standing there like he lived here, like this wasn’t weird and it wasn’t. Not with him.

You poured two glasses of water, handed him one, and nodded toward the back patio.

“Come on,” you said.

Your backyard was ridiculous.

Big enough for events. Empty enough to echo. Most days it just sat there, silent and underused, like a stage no one had written a scene for.

But tonight you made it yours. You laid a thick blanket right in the middle of the lawn, a bottle of water and two peaches between you.

Just you two and the stars, you dropped down first, looking up, arms folded under your head.

He hesitated briefly before lowering himself beside you. The sky above was endless, crisp and clear. You sighed. “So… that one’s called ‘The Sad Actress Who Bought Too Many Wigs.’”

He turned his head. “Is it?”

You nodded solemnly. “Legend says she cried on cue and never learned to cook.”

Bucky snorted. “Sounds tragic.”

“Deeply.”

He pointed upward. “That one’s Cassiopeia. Queen of vanity, everyone thought she was prettier than the gods.”

You squinted. “Is that a compliment?”

He smirked. “No comment.”

You laughed and rolled closer to him, propping your chin on his shoulder. The warmth of his body seeped into your side. He didn’t pull away. You kept pointing, making up fake names, dumb stories about the sky.

He chimed in with the real ones. Orion, Lyra, Andromeda. He told you about them softly, like they were old friends he hadn’t seen in a long time.

Eventually, you went quiet. Your cheek was against his shoulder now. His hand rested lightly on your waist, not holding you there just being there. You could feel his heartbeat where your arm brushed his chest.

You tilted your head, voice small, tired in a different kind of way. “Do you ever think we were meant to make it here?”

He was quiet for a second. “Not until now.”

--------

They were setting up for the next shot, bright lights overhead, crew darting around like bees and Bucky had been pulled aside by one of the stunt coordinators. Something about camera angles and needing a second set of eyes.

He kept glancing over his shoulder, trying to keep you in his line of sight. You were across the stage with Leah, Brett close behind, flipping through notes and talking too fast. You were nodding along, too much, too quickl like a wind-up doll that forgot how to stop.

Then something changed. Your smile, the one you wore like armor slipped. Not all at once. Just… a flicker. A soft stutter in your face like something cracked. You said nothing, but Bucky saw it. He saw you and then you turned, walking off set. Not storming, just… gone.

Bucky’s head snapped to follow you, heart picking up. He moved to go after you, but Brett stepped in, gesturing toward a mark on the floor. “She’ll be back, don’t worry about her trust me, she’s not worth it. Just being a diva again. This always happens when she doesn’t get enough sleep.”

Leah added without looking up from her phone, “Let her wear herself out. She’ll come back ready to work, it's nothing."

Something in Bucky’s chest clenched. “She’s everything.” He spoke, giving them the coldest look he could, they rushed away.

He barely finished what he was doing, his heart racing, barely listening then ducked out. The set was a maze, allways of prop rooms, makeup trailers, walls plastered with posters from old releases and peeling tape marks from years of taped call sheets.

It took him longer than he liked. But eventually, he found your dressing room. The door was cracked, he didn’t knock but didn’t barge in either. He just stood there, quiet in the hallway, watching through the sliver.

You were sitting at the vanity, that wide, glowing mirror with the bulbs lining every edge. The kind they use in every movie to say this is what fame looks like. But you didn’t look like the girl they all talked about. You looked empty.

Eyes glassy, staring at your reflection like you didn’t recognize yourself. Your back was straight, shoulders set, trained posture. The kind they drilled into you, but your hands were shaking in your lap and then the tears started.

No noise, no breakdown. Just quiet streams falling over your cheeks like they’d been waiting all day for permission. Then your breath hitched. Once. Twice and suddenly it wasn’t quiet anymore.

You were sobbing. Body curled forward, heels digging into the rung of the stool, hand coming up to cover your mouth like you were afraid someone might hear. As if feeling was the real shame.

That’s when Bucky moved. He stepped inside, gently, not saying anything. You didn’t see him at first. Not until the door clicked shut behind him, he locked it too.

You flinched, turned, eyes red, cheeks blotchy, makeup streaked down like melted glass.

“Sorry,” you breathed, voice hoarse. “I didn’t want anyone to—” You stopped, shook your head but it was just all too much and it was Bucky. So you let it out, finally. “I don’t wanna do this anymore.”

Bucky froze, heart pinched in his chest.

You looked down at your hands like they weren’t yours. “I can’t keep doing this. I feel like I’m disappearing. Like they hollowed me out and left this thing behind and everyone keeps clapping for her but I don’t even know her, I don’t wanna be her.”

You were trembling now, but still trying to hold it in.

“They don’t care if I’m tired, or scared, or if I don’t wanna be touched. I just smile. I go where I’m told. I let them touch my hair, my face, my body and they say it’s mine, but it’s not. None of it is.” You looked up at him then.

“I don’t wanna be lucky,” you whispered. “I just wanna be okay.”

Bucky crossed the room in two steps. He didn’t grab you, he didn’t rush. He just knelt down in front of you and reached for your hands, carefully, like he was afraid to scare you off and wrapped both of his around yours.

“You don’t have to keep doing this,” he said, voice low. “Not like this, not for them.”

You looked at him, eyes swimming. “What choice do I have?”

“You have me,” he said. No hesitation.

You blinked.

He gave your hands the gentlest squeeze. “You have me.”

You stared at him, throat tight, hands trembling inside his. You wanted to say something, anything. But nothing came. Just silence and the hum of the dressing room lights above. His thumb brushed over your knuckles lightly, grounding.

“I didn’t think I would ever deserve to feel this way, ” he said quietly. “Didn’t know if I could, not after everything.”

You looked up slowly, surprised.

“I thought what I have was it, just Steve and Sam, I thought… maybe that was all I got, that this was it for me.”

“I didn’t think I deserve anything good,” he added, his voice rougher now. “Not after what I’ve done, what I’ve been.”

Your lip quivered. Not because of what he said. But because it was you he was saying it to.

“But then I met you,” he continued. “And I didn’t see it at first. Not the real you. Just the version they sell, all glam and armor. You were like… smoke. I couldn’t hold on to anything.”

You let out a soft laugh through your tears, the kind that hiccups on its way out.

He smiled gently. “But this? Right now. This you? The you that’s sitting here trying to breathe? That’s the one I want.”

You swallowed hard.

“I want this you forever or however long you’ll have me.”

You didn’t speak, couldn’t. Not with your heart beating like that, instead you took your hands out of his and tossed them around his neck and his went around your waist and you just held each other.

The doorknob jiggled, fast and impatient. Then came the banging. “Why is the door locked?”

You froze. Your body instinctively straightened. That trained tension snapping back into your spine.

Bucky pulled away, holding your face in his hands, and looked at you.“We can figure this out,” he said. “If you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to. You don’t owe them anything, you’re not a brand. You’re not a puppet, you’re a person.”

More banging.

“If you wanna stop, we stop.”

“Give me a second!” you shouted, voice cracking.

“We don’t have a second!” Leah’s voice, sharp and slicing through the wood like a blade.

You closed your eyes, inhaled. Wiped your face. “I have to finish today,” you whispered.

He hated it. God, he hated that sentence. Hated how defeated it sounded. But he understood it. He’d been there. He knew what it meant to survive one more day just to make it through the night.

So he nodded and you nodded back, he placed a kiss to the top of your head before standing up.

You turned back to the mirror, and stared at yourself like a stranger. You smoothed your hair. Blotted under your eyes, swallowed everything.

Three breaths.

You put your mask back on. Not the glamorous one, the functional one the one that let you live.

You turned to him. “Okay.”

He hesitated, then walked to the door, unlocked it. It burst open like a war zone.

“Oh my God, your makeup,” Leah groaned. “What the hell happened?”

She waved the makeup artist over like a soldier summoning backup.

Bucky didn’t say a word. He stepped back into the corner, jaw locked, watching them descend on you with powder and brushes like you were a problem to be fixed.

But you weren’t, he knew that now. You were someone trying to survive and he wasn’t going anywhere.

The sun was just starting to set when the last shot wrapped.

You stood off to the side, arms crossed, exhausted but wired the kind of tired that lives in your bones. You kept looking at the car they’d sent for you, engine humming down the block, driver waiting, door open.

But you didn’t move. Bucky walked up behind you, silent as always.

You didn’t turn, just asked, “You heading home?”

He didn’t answer, just asked. “Why?”

Youlooked at him. “I don’t really wanna go back to the house,” you admitted, voice low.

He didn’t ask why. He just nodded once, then said, “It’s movie night at the Tower.”

You blinked. “Is that code for something?”

“No, just pizza and Sam forcing everyone to watch The Mummy again.”

You stared at him.

“Do you wanna go?” he asked, more careful now. “I never go. They’ll be shocked.”

You chewed your bottom lip. “Would that be… okay?”

Bucky tilted his head, like he couldn’t believe you were actually asking. “Would that be okay?” he echoed. “Sam probably won’t even watch the movie. He’ll just stare at you the whole time.”

You laughed, shoulders relaxing. “Okay.”

He smiled, small and soft. “Okay.”

You glanced once more at the waiting car, then pulled your phone from your bag and shot off a quick text to Leah: Don’t need a ride. Going home with a friend.

Then you turned the phone off, it was the most rebellious thing you’d done in years.

Outside the studio, you followed Bucky across the parking lot. The sky now streaked with blue and gold, the city soft around the edges.

Then you saw it, the bike, his bike. You stopped walking. “You’re kidding.”

Bucky turned, confused. “What?”

“You ride a motorcycle?”

“I mean, yeah. You thought I drove a Prius?”

You laughed and it echoed in the open air.

“If you don’t want to take it I can get one of the guys to come get us,” he offered. “We can Uber—”

“No.” You were already walking toward the bike. “I’ve always wanted to go on one.”

He blinked. “Seriously?”

You nodded, already tugging his helmet from the handlebars.

“You’re gonna want to hold on tight,” he warned.

“Was planning on it.”

He handed you the helmet, watched you adjust the strap like you’d done it a thousand times, then swung his leg over the seat.

You climbed on behind him. Your arms slid around his middle like you were built to fit there.

He revved the engine, and the bike took off, smooth, fast, cutting through the night with wind in your hair and something wild in your chest.

You didn’t want the ride to end.

But it did with the Tower glowing against the skyline, warm and gold like a beacon. Bucky parked just outside and helped you off, his hand lingering just a second longer than necessary at your waist.

You walked in together still laughing at something dumb he’d said when you passed a billboard with your face on it.

The elevator dinged open, you stepped inside and the second the doors opened to the communal floor, voices carried through the hall.

“I’m not watching The Mummy again, Sam!”

“Then get your own movie night!”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Every week,” he muttered.

You were still smiling when you stepped into the room both of you and it took about three seconds for all conversation to stop.

Sam’s mouth dropped open. Steve nearly choked on his drink. Natasha raised one eyebrow, very slowly.

Tony blinked. “Well, look who’s got himself a plus one.”

You stepped in carefully, wearing a sweatshirt two sizes too big, still Bucky’s the one you stole the first night you were on lock down, the night he got to see a glimpse of you. You looked real, you looked like you.

“Hey,” you said, shy but calm.

Sam stood up like he forgot how legs worked. “I…you…again? Is this real life?”

“She’s not a unicorn, Wilson,” Bucky muttered.

Tony clapped a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “Proud of you, Barnes. First soul you’ve shown in seventy years.”

You smirked, cheeks flushed, and followed Bucky to the couch. Someone handed you a slice of pizza. Natasha tossed you a blanket without saying a word. You thanked her softly, when the movie started, you barely watched it.

Halfway through the second one, your legs were draped over Bucky’s lap, your head resting against his chest. His arm was around your shoulders. He wasn’t even watching or paying attention to the movie. At one point, he glanced down and found your eyes half closed.

“You can sleep,” he murmured, voice barely above the hum of the movie.

“I don’t sleep in front of people,” you mumbled, already drifting.

“’S’ just us.”

You didn’t answer because you felt safe enough to close your eyes and sleep.

You woke up in a bed that wasn’t yours. The sheets were soft. The room was quiet. Familiar, now. Too quiet for a Tower full of Avengers.

You blinked against the light seeping through the windows, sitting up slowly. Bucky’s hoodie was still wrapped around you and you definitely weren’t on the couch anymore.

You smiled to yourself, just a little, realizing he must’ve carried you in. A second later, you heard the bathroom door open, steam rolling out into the room and then he stepped out in just a towel, wrapped low. Water still dripped from his hair, sliding down his chest, his arms, every inch of him sculpted like a man made of war and time.

Your mouth dried instantly. You tried, god, you tried not to stare. But then he caught your eye and he smirked. His cheeks flushed just slightly. “Steve’s cooking,” he said, casually like he wasn’t standing there a walking Greek statue. “Do you wanna eat?”

You swallowed. “Uh…no. I mean…yes. I just…” You cleared your throat. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll eat.”

He nodded, turning back into the bathroom. “Just give me a second.”

You sat there in the quiet, heart still thudding in your chest like a traitor. When he came out, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt now, hair still damp but combed back, you stood and followed him down the hall.

The kitchen was already alive with the smell of something warm and buttery and Steve muttering to himself about how “Sam never remembers to buy enough eggs.”

You stepped in behind Bucky, barefoot, eyes still adjusting and they started clapping, Sam whistled.

You blinked. “What’s… happening?”

“You haven’t heard yet?” Natasha asked from the stool, sipping coffee with one brow raised.

You shook your head slowly. “I haven’t turned my phone back on.”

Steve gave a tight smile. “Friday?”

“Yes, Captain Rogers?” the AI chirped.

“TV on.”

The screen lit up above the counter and there you were.

Big and bold on a news segment, not a paparazzi shot, but a full-blown entertainment headline.

“—confirmed just this morning that Y/N L/N will be receiving the lifetime achievement award at this year’s Global Arts Guild ceremony…”

Clips started playing, you on red carpets, you in films. Montages of you crying, dancing, bleeding on screen every performance they could scrape together for the sake of a narrative.

Bucky looked over at you, you were still. Still watching, barely breathing. The music cut, then the anchor changed.

“But not everyone is celebrating…”

Images now of you on set arguing, looking exhausted, distraught, one clip of you snapping at someone off-screen, another where you were just… sitting, crying, not acting. They spoke over it all.

Critics questioning your mental state. Saying it was “ungrateful” to be sad when you “had everything.” Comparing you to people “with real problems.”

“Friday, turn it off,” Bucky said sharply.

The screen went black, silence rang in the room. No one said a word. You stood there, chest tight, face unreadable. Then you turned toward the stove, putting on one of your best performances. “It smells delicious.”

Steve’s expression faltered. His brows pulled together, regret softening his mouth. “I didn’t know they’d play that stuff,” he said quietly. “I just thought you’d wanna know about the award.”

You nodded once, calm and composed. “It's okay.”

He slid a plate toward you, warm and full. “It tastes even better.”

You smiled. “Thanks,” you whispered.

Steve’s hand brushed your wrist as you reached for the plate. “Of course.”

Across the kitchen, Bucky watched the way you sat down slowly at the island, fork in hand, holding yourself together like a paper bird in the rain.

He drove you home with one hand on the wheel and the other resting on his thigh, knuckles flexing like he was trying to keep himself from reaching for you.

The ride was quiet. Not awkward, just heavy. Everything that had aired that morning was still hanging between you like fog.

When he pulled up to the gate, he didn’t cut the engine right away. He looked at you. You were already unbuckling, eyes on the road ahead.

“You gonna be okay?” he asked softly.

You gave a small, practiced smile. “Of course. I’m receiving the biggest award I possibly could. I’m living the dream, remember?”

He didn’t smile. He tilted his head just a little, brows drawn together. “You can tell me.”

You blinked and then a single tear slid down your cheek.

You wiped it away quickly with your sleeve. “I just think I need to be alone for a few days. Please don’t take it personally.”

He shook his head. “No, I get it.”

You turned to open the door, but he caught your wrist gently.

“Call me if you need anything, alright?” he said. “I’ll be here in a second.”

You nodded. He pulled you in, wrapped his arms around you, not too tight, just enough. His lips pressed against your forehead, soft and grounding. He stepped back and let you go. You walked up the steps and opened the front door, turning once to look at him.

He was still there. You gave him the smallest smile, and then disappeared inside.

The moment the door shut, your knees buckled. You didn’t cry right away, you didn’t scream, you just sank.

Right there in the front entryway, curled on the cold marble floor, eyes staring at the ceiling like it might answer all the questions in your chest. You didn’t know how long you laid there.

But eventually, the silence cracked open inside you and the tears came hard and fast, your palms pressed over your face as your shoulders shook.

When it stopped, you got up slowly and went to the piano. Your fingers hovered above the keys. Then pressed down, soft at first something mournful, aching. But it shifted, the sound built, heavier, angrier, not chaotic, but alive. In the middle of it, you realized something: You didn’t want to do this anymore, not like this. You weren’t going to.

You threw on one of those stupid wigs from the market, the blonde curly one this time and sunglasses. Hoodie up, disguise solid in your opinion. You went into a cell phone store, calm as ever. “I need a new phone, new number.”

The guy barely looked up. “You switching carriers?”

“No, just my life.” You paid in cash. That night, you sat on your couch in the dark, lit by the glow of your new screen and started making calls..

You slept 6 hours that night and Saturday morning rolled around and you called a realtor first thing.

“Yes, of course we can keep it private,” she said. “Off-market, no press, no walkthroughs.”

“How soon can we list it?” you asked.

She paused. “Depends how quickly you want to move.”

“Immediately, I want it gone.”

“And where are you looking to move to?”

You smiled faintly. “Something smaller, quiet. With a porch and a real kitchen.”

Saturday afternoon, you called the director of Lucky. You hadn’t signed anything thankfully, just did the screen tests.

“I’m not taking the role,” you said, calm.

There was a beat of stunned silence. “Is this a joke?”

“Nope. Just… give it to the next girl. I hope she kills it.” You hung up before they could ask why.

Saturday night, the old phone, the one you were supposed to use wouldn’t stop ringing.

Brett. Leah. Your team. Unread texts stacked like bricks:

What are you doing.

You can’t disappear.

You are under contract. You don’t get to do this.

Call us now or else.

Responses now or we’ll walk, you need us!!

So you called them. “You don’t have to walk. I’m parting ways.”

They reminded you of your contract fees, the legal hit, the money it was always about the money.

You didn’t flinch. “Who do I send the check to?”

Sunday morning became one of your favourite days. You already felt freer, and you couldn't wait to tell Bucky. You’d heard nothing from him not because he wasn’t trying, but because he was respecting you and your space.

But Bucky was freaking out on the inside, Steve told him not to worry.

“She’s fine, Buck, she’s a tough girl.” he said, calm, sipping coffee.

But Bucky was pacing, he hadn’t slept. That’s when his phone buzzed.

Unknown number: Can you come over?

He froze, then another message: It’s me. I got a new phone. My own phone.

His chest loosened, he turned to Steve. “She texted me. She wants me to come over.”

Steve smiled behind his mug. “Then what are you still doing here?”

He got there fast, you were already waiting by the door. Your hair was cut. Still long, but no longer the red-carpet glamour length. Just to your shoulders. You were barefoot. Wearing jeans and a plain tee.

You smiled, small but sure. “Come in, Sarge.”

Bucky stepped inside, closing the door behind him slowly.

You were already in the middle of the room, arms crossed, bare feet tucked beneath you on the rug. You looked nervous, but there was something else in your eyes, something lighter.

He opened his mouth to ask what was going on, but you spun around first, your voice lifting the silence:

“So… you’re fired.”

He froze. “What?”

You were smiling but he still looked stunned. He tried to say something again, but nothing came out, just confusion.

Before he could spiral, you stepped forward, both hands reaching out to grab his. “And before you start panicking, because I can see it written all over your face,” you said, gently, “let me explain.”

You gave his hands a small squeeze and guided him toward the living room. You both sat down on the couch, and for a second, you just sat there, facing forward, fidgeting with your fingers.

Your heart was thudding, saying it made it real, saying it to him made it real, but you were ready. “I turned down the movie.”

He blinked.

You kept going. “I broke my contract with Brett, Leah and Gina, the whole team. I have a new phone, a new number, only you have it.”

He stared at you, barely breathing.

“This house is getting sold,” you continued, voice shaking slightly now. “And at the awards… I’m announcing my retirement.”

You couldn’t look at him. You stared down at your hands, picking at a loose edge of skin by your nail, trying to stay steady.

“I’m done, Bucky. I’m really done.”

There was a long pause, his voice came in low and careful. “This is what you want?”

You finally looked at him. And for the first time in a long time, your voice didn’t shake. “This is what I want.”

His eyes softened, shoulders dropping like he’d been holding his breath for months.

You smiled, smaller now, but it reached your eyes. “There’s just one more thing I want.”

He tilted his head. “What’s that?”

You smiled wider, heartbeat climbing. “You.”

Your smile grew, his did too. Without thinking, he pulled you into his lap, arms curling around your waist like it was the most natural thing in the world.

You giggled, straddling him, your hands on his shoulders, foreheads nearly touching.

“You, Bucky Barnes,” you whispered, voice thick with love, “are the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Something in him broke, not in a bad way, never in a bad way, not with you, but like a dam that had been waiting to fall, he didn’t speak but just one tear slid down his cheek.

You reached up and brushed it away.

He closed his eyes, leaned into your touch like it was the only thing holding him together.

“I’ve never…” he started, but had to stop. Reminding himself to swallow and breathe. “I’ve never had anyone say that. Not to me, not like that.”

You kissed the corner of his mouth, then again pressing your forehead to his. “You deserved to hear it, every word.”

His arms tightened around you, like he was afraid to let go. Like he’d finally been handed something he thought he’d never get and he wasn’t about to lose it.

And you? You finally felt safe, you felt free, you felt like you.

-----

Monday morning the house was still the kind of still that only came after a long week of too much noise.

Bucky woke up in the guest room. He laid there for a while, staring up at the ceiling, listening to the faint hum of something distant the fridge, maybe or the house itself breathing.

It was always like this here. Quiet, not in a peaceful way, but in a way that felt… empty. The ceilings were too high. The air too clean. No signs of life except for the woman asleep down the hall.

He sat up, bare feet hitting the hardwood. It was early. Light hadn’t fully made its way through the blinds yet, but he could see the faint glow of it creeping up over the hills through the tall windows in the hallway.

Your door was cracked open.

He padded down the hallway, moving like he had a hundred times before in a hundred different safehouses, alert, careful. But this wasn’t a mission. It was just you.

You were curled up in the middle of your massive bed, half-buried in the covers. One leg kicked out from under the sheets, hair a soft mess across the pillow. Face turned slightly toward the window.

You looked like someone who belonged to the morning. Not the cameras, not the lights, not for anyone else but him.

Just here….just you.

He didn’t come in. Just leaned against the doorway and watched for a minute, arms crossed loosely over his chest. Then you stirred.

A soft stretch, a furrow in your brow, a breath pulled in through your nose, slowly, your eyes opened. You blinked once, then again and then you smiled, slow and sleepy.

“Good morning, Sarge,” you said, voice gravelly from sleep.

It made something in his chest twist.

“Morning,” he said softly.

You yawned and rolled onto your back, your arm flopping out dramatically. “What time is it?”

“Early.”

“Too early?”

He smirked. “Little bit.”

You turned your head toward him fully now. “You watching me sleep, Barnes?”

“Maybe.”

You smiled again and tucked your hands beneath your head.

“Don’t make it weird,” you added, teasing.

He chuckled under his breath, shaking his head, and finally stepped into the room.

“You hungry?” he asked.

You made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a dying cat.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, already turning back toward the kitchen.

You sat up slowly, hair wild, sheets pooled in your lap.

“Hey, Bucky?” you called after him.

He paused, looking back over his shoulder.

Your voice was soft. “Thanks for being here.”

His jaw tightened, just a little and he nodded once. “You don’t have to thank me,” he said. “I wanna be here and I’m not going anywhere.”

---

On Tuesday the sun was starting to fall, soft and gold, casting long shadows across the back patio. The heat of the day had slipped into something gentler, warm enough to still sting your skin, but lazy enough to feel like summer was finally exhaling.

You padded barefoot onto the tile, hair pulled back, sunglasses perched on your head. Bucky followed behind you slowly, his t-shirt loose, sweats hanging low on his hips. He hadn’t quite figured out how to be in a house like this, so clean, so open but with you in it, it didn’t feel so empty.

“Pool’s too quiet,” you said, glancing over your shoulder. “It’s depressing.”

You walked to the edge and dropped your towel, standing there in a black bikini that wasn’t even trying to be dramatic, just simple, flattering. You didn’t pose.

You just stood there in the sun like you belonged to it. He tried not to stare.

Tried.

You caught him anyway.

“Like what you see?” you asked, not coy, just curious, a small smirk pulling at your lips.

He didn’t look away, he didn't pretend, “Yeah,” he said simply.

You smiled wider. “Good.”

You dove in and disappeared under the water. Bucky watched the ripples spread, standing there for another beat before finally tugging off his shirt.

He didn’t say anything as he jumped in, just hit the water with a clean splash and surfaced to see you laughing.

He hadn’t heard that sound from you enough.

“You’re slow,” you called, floating on your back now.

“You cheated.”

You swam laps, you raced, you lost on purpose. You climbed up onto the edge just to cannonball in again. You teased him, splashed him, laughed when he tried to dunk you and failed.

In the deep end, you drifted toward him. The water was cool now, the sky streaked in purples and pinks. You wrapped your arms around his shoulders, let your fingers slide down his neck.

“Hey,” you whispered.

He looked at you, then you kissed him.

It wasn’t heated, you weren’t there, not yet. It was soft. Wet lips and wet skin. Your hands resting against his jaw like you were scared he might disappear.

When you pulled back, he was still looking at you like you were something he couldn’t believe was real.

After dinner and fresh clothes, you sat at the piano with a towel still around your shoulders, hair damp and curling at the ends. The living room was dim, the night coming in soft through the glass doors.

Bucky sat on the couch behind you, arms stretched across the back, fingers tapping lightly in rhythm as you played.

No lyrics, just music.

Something low and steady, with dips in all the right places. Sad, but not broken. Hopeful he liked to think or at least almost.

He closed his eyes.

When you finished, the final note hanging in the air like something unsaid, his voice came low. “Play it again.”

You didn’t hesitate, you just started from the top, you realized you would do anything for Bucky Barnes.

He sat there, still as stone, listening like he was hearing you for the first time all over again.

--

Wednesday morning was quiet until it wasn’t. You made the mistake of opening your laptop.

You told yourself you wouldn’t check. You told yourself it didn’t matter. But your fingers had a mind of their own, typing your name into the search bar like you were bracing for a punch.

And there it was, headline after headline, stacked like a wall you couldn’t climb over:

“Y/N L/N FIRES ENTIRE TEAM: PR STUNT OR BREAKDOWN?”

“Former Publicist Speaks Out: ‘We Couldn’t Help Her Anymore’”

“Too Much Too Fast — A Cautionary Tale.”

“Not even The Avengers can save her!”

They didn’t care about facts, they cared about drama.

You stared at the screen until the words blurred. Your throat felt tight, like it was closing in on itself. You didn’t even notice Bucky at first, not until the soft sound of ceramic on wood made you flinch.

He was standing there in the doorway with two mugs. One for him, one for you. He didn’t ask what you were reading. He didn’t need to, he could see it all over your face. He just walked over, set your coffee down without a word, and disappeared again into the other room.

You sat frozen, eyes still on the screen. Still seeing all the words: unstable, ungrateful, too much.

Then the sound of music pulled you out of the haze, the soft scratch of vinyl spinning up. Not your playlist, his.

Low, slow jazz. Ella Fitzgerald humming through the speakers like the world wasn’t trying to tear you apart.

He came back into the room and held out a hand. “Come here.”

You didn’t speak. Certainly didn’t argue, didn’t hesitate. You walked right into him like your body already knew what to do. Like this had always been the escape route you never knew you had.

His arm slid around your waist, his fingers laced with yours, and he began to sway barely moving, just shifting with the music. You let your cheek press against his chest.

The headlines were still on the screen across the room. But they felt a million miles away.

“You really know how to shut up a spiral,” you mumbled into his shirt.

“I’ve had practice,” he said.

He kissed your temple gently, like a period at the end of a sentence. “Steve told me to never type my name into any search bar.”

Your eyes fluttered closed, you hummed. “He’s smart, why he's the Captain.”

Bucky just held you tighter as the music crackled and the world faded. The silence inside your own head wasn’t heavy anymore, it was just filled with him.

---

The house smelled like citrus and sunscreen on Thursday, with hints of something sweet baking in the oven that you absolutely did not make yourself. Bucky was lighting the citronella candles out back. You were fluffing pillows on the deck furniture like it mattered. You wouldn't admit it but you were nervous, you never had anyone in your home before that wasn’t paid to be here, beside Bucky now. But even before he was paid to be here. So having Sam and Steve willingly wanting to come hang out with you, your nerves were out of control.

“They’re gonna love you,” Bucky said when he caught you anxiously smoothing out the same throw blanket for the third time. “It’s gonna be fine.”

You didn’t look at him. “They already know me.”

“I know,” he said, stepping closer, brushing your hand away so he could take over. “But I can hear your heartbeat sweetheart,”

You swallowed, remembering he was enhanced, you nodded. “Okay, yeah, right.”

You were still nervous. They showed up at 4:37pm, three minutes early, which somehow felt very Steve.

Sam walked in first, sunglasses still on, stopping in the foyer like he forgot how to speak.

“Holy shit,” he said slowly. “This place is insane.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Told you.”

Steve came in behind him, eyes roaming across the clean lines and open space, the floor-to-ceiling windows looking out into the backyard. “Didn’t expect this.”

You leaned against the banister, arms crossed. “What were you expecting?”

Sam shrugged, still glancing around. “I don’t know. More… velvet? Dramatic drapes? Maybe a spiral staircase.”

You snorted. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“No, no,” Sam said. “This is classy. It’s like if Restoration Hardware had a baby with a Bond villain’s hideout.”

Steve grinned, patting Sam on the shoulder. “Ignore him. It’s beautiful…It’s—”

“It's not me.” You cut him off, “They uh made me buy it, I’m selling, gonna find something more….me.”

Sam smiled, “You gotta have velvet at that place, screams you.”

By sundown, you were all out back Bucky’s arm slung comfortably around your waist, Sam mixing some kind of weirdly decent cocktails from the little bar cart you never used, Steve manning the fire pit like he’d trained for it.

“Alright,” Sam said, clapping his hands together after his first drink. “Somebody better tell me how this happened.”

“What?” you asked, smiling into your glass.

He gestured between you and Bucky. “This, you two. The world’s grumpiest man and Hollywood’s most untouchable starlet?”

You looked at Bucky. “We’re a romcom waiting to happen.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “You think we’re a romcom?”

“I think you’re the broody lead who doesn’t realize he’s in love until like… minute seventy-five,” you teased, glancing up at Bucky with a grin.

Steve let out a deep, genuine laugh. “That sounds about right.”

Sam leaned back in his chair, swirling the ice in his drink. “So, you excited for Saturday? Google told me you’re the youngest person to ever receive the award.”

You fidgeted with your glass, not quite meeting anyone’s eye. “I mean… I’m honored, of course. It’s huge. But I can’t wait for it to be over.”

Sam raised a brow. “Over?”

You exhaled slowly. “No more movies. No more red carpets. No more flashing lights, or interviews, or pretending to be something I’m not every day.”

There was a small pause. Sam blinked. “Wait, hold up. I think I missed a scene. What are you talking about?”

You glanced between them. “I’m retiring. I’m announcing it during the speech.”

Steve sat up straighter, eyes cutting to Bucky, then back to you. “That’s… huge.”

You nodded once. “Yeah, it is. But I’m ready. I never really wanted all of this…not in the way people think I did. I just want to breathe again.”

Sam looked honestly bummed. “Damn, you’re my favorite actress.”

You swallowed, guilt brushing the edge of your chest. “I’m sorry, Sam.”

He waved it off, even if his face still read like he’d just been told his favorite show got canceled. “Nah, it’s cool. Whatever makes you happy. But I’m gonna need you to sign every single one of my DVDs. Make ‘em collector’s items.”

You laughed, “Of course, anything for you.” Bucky squeezed your knee gently, and when you looked over, he was already looking at you.

“Anyway,” you said, holding up the bag, “who wants to roast marshmallows?”

“Hell yeah,” Sam grinned, already reaching for a stick.

You burned yours on purpose just to make Bucky eat them, because you found out two days ago that he hates them crispy.

“You’re evil,” he muttered, chewing the blackened sugar like it might kill him.

“Character building,” you said sweetly, sliding another one onto your stick.

Steve was telling a story about the first time he ever saw Bucky try to flirt, something involving a newspaper stand, a broken heel, and a pie and Sam was howling.

The fire crackled and night got softer. Your head eventually found its way to Bucky’s shoulder, your legs tucked up under you.

“You alright?” he asked quietly.

You nodded. “Yeah.”

The fire started to die down and Steve and Sam had claimed their guest rooms, you stood on the back deck with Bucky, looking out over your massive, mostly unused backyard. The air smelled like wood smoke and jasmine. You wrapped your arms around yourself, and he came up behind you, wrapping his around you too.

“This has been…” you started, then shook your head. “I don’t have the words for it, actually…”

He didn’t push. You turned in his arms, looking up at him, eyes searching his face in the low light, you swallowed heavily.

“I think I’m falling in love with you,” you said quietly. It was the first time the words left your mouth. The first time you didn’t choke on them.

Bucky didn’t flinch, he didn’t even look surprised. He just smiled, “Well,” he said, brushing your hair behind your ear, “I’ll catch you.”

Your heart stopped.

“Because I’m already there, sweetheart.”

He kissed you like he meant it this time, not rushed, not hungry, just slow and deeply. Like he wanted to memorize it, like he didn’t care about anything except the way you tasted or the way your breath caught in your throat when his hand slid up your spine.

His lips moved against yours with the kind of patience that said he wasn’t going anywhere. That you weren’t just a moment he’d lose when the lights came up.

Later, you fell asleep tangled in each other’s arms, your limbs wrapped around him like you were afraid to let go. The sheets were kicked down to your ankles, skin warm from the heat you shared. His fingers traced lazy patterns on your back until your breathing slowed, evened out.

You fit into him like the part of a story he didn’t realize was missing and now that he had you, he couldn’t imagine the ending without you in it.

-----

Friday started quiet. You were making breakfast in one of Bucky’s old t-shirts, one he claimed you stole but never actually asked for back. The sleeves hit your elbows, and the hem barely grazed your thighs. You kept dancing around the kitchen barefoot, humming along to a playlist you threw on without thinking.

Bucky was pretending to read the paper, but his eyes weren’t on the headlines, they were on you.

“Stop staring,” you teased, flipping a pancake, “it’s creepy.”

“You’re in my shirt,” he said, not bothering to look away.

You rolled your eyes. “You left it here.”

“You stole it.”

“Possession is nine-tenths of the law.”

“You know that doesn’t apply to my clothes, right?”

You turned around slowly, one brow lifted. “Are you gonna take it back?”

He just leaned back in his chair and smirked. “Not a chance.”

You spent most of the day in the pool. You dunked him once, and he swore vengeance for at least an hour after. You swore he cheated when you raced. He said you were just a sore loser. It was the kind of day that made the rest of the world feel like background noise.

At some point in the late afternoon, you collapsed into a pile of towels on a lounge chair, your hair still damp, cheeks warm from the sun.

“Everything’s gonna change tomorrow,” you murmured.

Bucky leaned over from the chair beside you. “Why do you say that?”

You looked at him, eyes soft. “Because once I say it out loud, I can’t un-say it. Y’know the retirement, the house, leaving it all behind.”

He was quiet for a second. “You’re not leaving everything.”

You swallowed. “It feels like I am.”

His hand reached over, found yours. “You’ve got me, that part isn't going anywhere.”

It was almost midnight when it shifted.

You were curled into him on the couch, both of you still wearing barely anything, skin warm from the day. You made a dumb joke about his middle name again, and he made a worse one about your acting in that one drama you hated. You pushed him, he pulled you back.

The laughter faded slower this time. Not awkward, just… softer. Like you were waiting for something.

You were already facing him, his palm against your bare thigh, thumb moving in slow, thoughtless circles. You traced a finger down his chest, eyes on the line of his jaw.

“Come here,” he whispered.

You did. Of course you did.

You kissed him first, slow and easy, mouths finding a rhythm you’d been circling for days. Weeks. Months. It wasn’t frantic, wasn’t rushed, it felt more like relief.

When he lifted you into his lap, you wrapped your legs around his waist like you’d always belonged there. His hands slid beneath the shirt you were still wearing, his shirt, his fingers grazing skin like he was memorizing it. You pulled back just far enough to look him in the eye, your forehead resting against his.

“I love you,” he said.

You froze.

It wasn’t a whisper, itt wasn’t an accident. He said it like he meant it. Like he’d been holding it in for days, maybe longer.

You smiled, eyes glassy but steady. “Say it again.”

His hand cupped your cheek. “I love you.”

You kissed him again, harder this time and everything that followed was slow. Worshipful. Hands and mouths and sighs, skin against skin, all of it quiet and deliberate. He touched you like you were something precious. You held him like he was something you’d waited a lifetime for.

There were moments when neither of you said a word, just breathing into each other’s mouths and there were others when you couldn’t stop, when you told him how safe he made you feel, how real this felt, how badly you wanted him to stay. He didn’t promise anything he couldn’t give. He just stayed.

After, you lay on your side, head on his chest, your fingers tracing slow circles over the scar near his collarbone. His hand moved lazily along your spine, down to your hip, back up again. Your legs tangled beneath the sheets.

“I could stay here forever,” you whispered, not even meaning to say it out loud.

“You could,” he said, kissing your forehead. “I’d never stop you.”

You smiled into his skin. “I love you too, you know.”

“I don’t deserve you,” he murmured.

“You deserve the world Bucky.”

---

The Saturday morning sun filters softly through the curtains, casting a warm glow across the bedroom. You stir, the familiar scent of coffee and something delicious wafting in from the kitchen. Stretching, you realize the bed beside you is empty, the sheets slightly cool where Bucky had been. A sleepy smile tugs at your lips as you sit up, the oversized shirt you borrowed from him slipping off one shoulder.

Padding barefoot into the kitchen, you find Bucky at the stove, his back to you. He’s shirtless, wearing only a pair of sweatpants that hang low on his hips, and his hair is still tousled from sleep. The sight of him, so at ease in your space, sends a flutter through your chest.

He turns as he hears you approach, a spatula in one hand and a tender smile spreading across his face.

“Morning beautiful,” he greets, his voice still husky. “Hope you’re hungry.”

You lean against the doorway, arms crossed, feigning nonchalance. “You really didn’t have to cook,” you tease, though the affection in your tone is unmistakable.

He sets the spatula down and crosses the room to you, pressing a gentle kiss to your temple. “Yes, I do,” he murmurs against your skin. “Today’s a big day.”

Your heart swells at his thoughtfulness. Together, you sit down to a breakfast of perfectly cooked eggs, golden toast, fresh strawberries, and steaming coffee. The conversation is light, filled with shared smiles and the occasional brush of hands. Despite the significance of the day ahead, there’s a comforting normalcy in this moment, a grounding calm before the impending storm of the awards ceremony.

After breakfast, you retreat to your bedroom to get ready. The absence of a glam team, stylists, and handlers is both liberating and daunting. Standing before the mirror, you take a deep breath, embracing the solitude and the authenticity it brings.

You curl your lashes, apply a subtle touch of makeup, just enough to feel like yourself, not someone they’ve painted on you. No red lipstick tonight, just soft pink. Something gentle, something you.

Then you step into the satin cream dress you chose yourself. Your favorite, because of its quiet elegance… and because it has pockets. You slip your hands into them automatically, fingers brushing over the small carved bird Bucky made for you. It’s warm from sitting on the dresser, shaped perfectly to your palm. You slide it into your pocket and let it stay there, a piece of him with you, grounding you.

You smooth the fabric over your hips, checking yourself once in the mirror. You look like… you. Not just some actress, not a product but…you.

Your phone buzzes.

You cross the room in bare feet and check it: a message from Sam, full of emojis, clapping hands, a star, a winking face, a rocket, a slice of pizza. You laugh under your breath.

Before you can respond, another message comes through. A selfie of Sam and Steve on the couch, grinning like idiots. Behind them, the awards show is already playing on the TV. There’s popcorn in Steve’s lap. Sam’s doing peace signs with both hands.

You cover your mouth with one hand, not to hide your smile but to keep from crying. You’re not used to this. The support, the friendship. Love that isn’t transactional. For so long, you thought this kind of thing didn’t exist. Now you know better.

A knock at the door pulls you out of your thoughts, it opens and Bucky’s standing there. Black suit. Crisp white shirt. Tie just slightly undone and he’s holding something, a little velvet box in one hand, something he’s not drawing attention to. His eyes lock on you and he just stops.

He stares. Takes a slow breath like he needs to restart his heart.

“You…”

His voice is rough, low, and a little stunned.

“You look beautiful.”

You feel your cheeks warm. Your pulse skips.

“I mean it,” he says, stepping into the room. “You don’t even look real. You look like… like every dream I ever had before the war.”

Your eyes flicker down, shy and soft. “You clean up alright yourself.”

He walks toward you, slow. With one hand, he lifts the box and opens it.

Inside, is a delicate gold bracelet. Simple, elegant, with a single little charm, a star. He doesn’t explain it, you just know.

“For luck,” he says.

Your fingers tremble just a little as you hold out your wrist. When he fastens it, his thumb brushes over the inside of your skin, and you feel it down to your ribs.

You whisper, “Thank you.”

He meets your eyes again. “Thank you,” he says back.

“Ready?” he asks.

You nod.

“Let’s go get your goodbye.”

Opting to forgo the chaos of the red carpet, you and Bucky slip into the venue through a side entrance. The auditorium is a sea of elegantly dressed attendees, the air thick with anticipation. Cameras flash, capturing moments that will soon flood the media. Despite the grandeur, Bucky’s hand remains a steady presence on your lower back, grounding you amidst the whirlwind.

The ceremony progresses, awards presented, speeches delivered. Each moment brings you closer to your segment. Your heart pounds, a mix of excitement and apprehension. Then, the lights dim, and a hush falls over the crowd.

The screen illuminates with your name in bold, golden letters, accompanied by a swell of orchestral music. The montage begins, a journey through your career, meticulously curated to encapsulate years of dedication and artistry.

It opens with a clip from your breakout role, a younger version of yourself delivering a line that, at the time, felt like just another script but now resonates with profound significance. The scene transitions to a red carpet moment, flashes of cameras capturing your wide-eyed wonder as you navigate the newfound fame.

Next, a montage of roles showcasing your versatility, an intense courtroom drama where your impassioned monologue left audiences spellbound; a lighthearted romantic comedy, your laughter infectious; a gritty independent film, raw and unfiltered, revealing depths of emotion you hadn’t known you possessed.

Interspersed are behind-the-scenes snippets, laughing with castmates, moments of vulnerability during rehearsals, candid interviews where your passion for the craft shines through.

The montage crescendos with a recent scene, one that garnered critical acclaim. Your character stands alone, gazing out over a vast landscape, a single tear rolling down her cheek. The camera lingers, capturing the depth of emotion in your eyes, a testament to your growth as an artist.

As the screen fades to black, the audience erupts into applause, the sound thunderous and heartfelt. You sit frozen, emotions swirling, pride, nostalgia, a tinge of sadness. Bucky’s hand finds yours, his grip firm and reassuring.

Leaning close, he whispers, “That’s you. All of it and it’s incredible, you’re incredible.”

The applause echoes through the theater like a wave, rising and rising, refusing to settle. You sit still, breath caught somewhere in your chest, your fingers laced tight with Bucky’s. His palm is warm, grounding. You glance at him for just a second, long enough to see it in his eyes, that he means every word he just whispered.

You blink forward again, lashes damp, as the lights shift on stage. The host steps back into the spotlight.

He smiles, holding a small stack of note cards that he doesn’t even glance at.

“There are careers,” he begins, “and then there are lives and every once in a while, someone comes along who blurs that line so seamlessly that you can’t tell where the performance ends and the person begins.”

The crowd quiets again. No rustling, no coughing. Just breaths, held.

“We watched her grow up on screen. We’ve seen her fall in love, lose it, rage against it. We’ve seen her die a dozen different deaths and survive all of them in the hearts of her audience. She gave us everything. Every tear, every laugh, every look that didn’t need words.”

You feel Bucky’s thumb trace a slow circle over your knuckles.

“She made it look effortless. But it wasn’t, we know that now and still, she gave, and gave, and gave. For over two decades, she has captivated the world… and tonight, we honour her for it.”

You feel your throat tighten.

“She taught us that beauty isn’t perfection. It’s honesty. It’s vulnerability and she did it all while carrying the weight of fame with the grace of someone born to do it and the soul of someone who never wanted it.”

He pauses, lets the words sink in. You swear your heart stops.

“Please join me in celebrating a once-in-a-generation talent. An artist. A survivor. A woman who changed the face of cinema… simply by being real.”

He turns toward the front row.

“Y/N L/N, recipient of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award.”

The room erupts. Bucky stands first.

The sound swells, applause, cheers, a few people whistling. Some are already on their feet before you even move.

But Bucky doesn’t rush you. He stays right beside you as you rise, his hand slipping from yours only when you’re steady on your feet. He whispers again, just before you go: “Go take what’s yours.”

With the carved wooden bird in your pocket and his love wrapped around your shoulders like a second skin you walk toward the stage.

The stage is gold-drenched.

Warm light spills across the floor, catching the satin folds of your cream dress, the one with the hidden pockets and just enough weight to feel like armor. You stand steady, heels grounded, the carved wooden bird nestled in your hand.

The glass award gleams beside you. The room is silent now, waiting. Holding its breath.

You inhale slowly. Feel the rise and fall of your ribs. The steadying ache of what it took to get here.

“I don’t think I ever believed I’d stand here. Not because I didn’t want to but because for a long time, I didn’t believe I’d survive long enough to see it.”

A pause. Soft laughter from the crowd, unsure, uncomfortable.

You smile faintly. But it doesn’t quite reach your eyes. “I’ve spent more of my life playing other people than I have playing myself and that’s the thing no one tells you about this industry if you do it long enough, you forget where the role ends and where you begin.”

Bucky hasn’t taken his eyes off you.

“I was good at pretending. I won awards for pretending. I got paid to smile, to be beautiful, to be likable. But I wasn’t any of those things. I was just… tired.”

You glance down at the bird in your hand. Curl your fingers around it.

“For a long time, I thought love wasn’t meant for people like me. Not the real kind, anyway. The kind that sees you, I mean really sees you and doesn’t run.”

Bucky’s chest tightens.

“I thought quiet meant failure. That if the cameras weren’t flashing, if the crowd wasn’t clapping, I was nothing. But then I learned something.”

You lift your head. “The quiet? It’s where everything real lives.”

“So… I’m stepping away. Tonight, I’m saying goodbye to all of it. I’m retiring. Not because I’m not grateful but because I’m ready to start living.”

Gasps and murmurs fill the arena, flashes from cameras and phones go wild.

You don’t flinch. “I’m done playing someone else’s idea of me. From here on out, I’m just gonna be me.”

The audience rises. Applause fills the room, crashing over you like thunder and you smile.

You reach for the award, fingers closing around the smooth glass.

POP.

A sound that doesn’t belong. It’s sharp and violent. The applause doesn’t stop, not at first. But your smile falters. The glass in your hand shatters and so does the world.

Your body jerks, like something pulled you backward. You stumble, a gasp ripping from your throat. Your eyes wide, disoriented.

You look down, the silk of your dress turns red, blooming like a rose from the center of your stomach. The warmth spreads fast, too fast.

The award fully slips from your hands and crashes to the stage in shards. The room turns into chaos, you barely register the screams. You only see him, Bucky. He’s already moving, another shot rings out, not at you this time, from Bucky raising his gun with no hesitation.

When he turns he sees him, Elias. He’s not in custody, he bets he never was. He’s in the back of the theater. A face twisted in obsession, mouth open in something like a smile, but it’s gone in a blink. Bucky makes sure of that, one shot. Clean. Between the eyes, Elias drops.

Bucky’s already on stage about to grab you when your knees buckle. He catches you mid-collapse, lowering you to the stage with shaking hands, already slick with blood.

“Hey. Hey. No—no, stay with me.”

He presses his hands to the wound, hard. There’s too much blood.

“Don’t do this, baby. Please. Please don’t—”

His voice cracks.

You blink up at him, eyes glassy. Your lashes tremble.

“I’m glad,” you whisper, voice a ghost. “That I got to feel something.”

Your hand reaches for his cheek, leaving a smear of blood.

He leans into your palm like it’s the only thing tethering him.

“And I’m glad I got to feel it… for you.”

“No,” he chokes. “No, no, you’re okay. You’re okay—help is coming—just stay with me—please.”

Your breath hitches.

Once.

Twice.

Your eyes don’t close dramatically. They just… soften, drift.

Your hand slips from his cheek and Bucky, he pulls you into his arms, cradling you like something sacred. People are screaming, running. But no one helps and on a stage built to honour you, surrounded by flowers and flashing lights and the echoes of everything you gave all Bucky can do is whisper your name like a prayer he knows won’t be answered.

Everything goes quiet.

You’re not listening, not really. You can’t hear anything over the pulse in your ears.

You shift your weight in your heels. Smile again. Flash another glance toward the cameras. They eat it up, you give them more.

Every pose is polished. Every hair is perfectly placed. Every reaction is rehearsed. But no one asks if you’re happy. No one would believe you if you said you weren’t and maybe that’s the worst part.

Because on nights like this, under the golden lights and velvet ropes, you’re not a person. You’re a thing. A body in couture. A name they know. A face that sells and the show must go on.

Always.

So you blow a kiss toward the crowd. You laugh at a joke you didn’t hear.

----

The kitchen at the compound was unusually quiet for 8 a.m.

Steve sat at the island with a tablet, squinting at whatever article caught his interest. Next to him, Bucky flipped through the newspaper, actual paper, the only man in the building still committed to ink and print.

“…They’re remaking Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” Steve muttered.

Bucky didn’t look up. “Blasphemy.”

Footsteps, then a voice, too cocky for the hour. “Morning, grumpy,” Tony announced, striding in like he owned the place, which, technically, he did.

Bucky lowered the paper an inch. “Don’t.”

Tony stole Steve’s toast. Steve scowled. “Seriously?”

Tony dropped a thick folder onto the counter with a theatrical thud. “Got a mission for you.”

That got Bucky’s attention. He folded the paper, leaned back, arms crossed.

Steve raised a brow. “He’s not cleared.”

Tony shrugged, chewing toast. “This is different. No fieldwork, no guns. No jumping off buildings, unless she throws him off one, which… fair bet.”

Bucky opened the file. Glossy photo, sunglasses, silk scarf. Smiling like she had the world in her pocket, which he would come to learn she did.

“Who’s this?”

Tony smirked. “Y/N L/N.”

Steve squinted. “The movie star?”

Tony nodded.

Bucky blinked. “Why would a movie star need me?”

Sam entered just in time. “Wait, who’s getting you?”

“Y/N Y/L/N.” Tony pointed at Bucky. “He’s going to be her bodyguard.”

Sam nearly dropped his protein shake. “No fucking way.”

Tony grinned. “Knew you’d appreciate it.”

Sam grabbed the file, flipping through. “Dude. She’s massive. Like… stalkers, paparazzi, sold-out appearances, screaming crowds. Her life’s a circus.”

Bucky looked unimpressed. “So send a security team.”

“She asked for you,” Tony said. “Well, her team did. Wanted the best.”

Bucky scoffed. “Why me?”

Tony smirked, because of course he did. “Because you’re the best. I hate that you are, but facts are facts and I love facts.”

He dropped the folder on the counter like it weighed nothing. Bucky stared down at it like it might explode. Bucky stared back at the photo, you were beautiful there was no doubt. You looked perfect, but you were just some girl in diamonds and silk and an expression that didn’t mean anything. You looked like every other starlet in every other ad. All light, no weight.

“Why the hell would someone like her need someone like me?”

Sam plopped down at the counter, flipping through the file like it was a magazine. “Because she’s got stalkers. Serious ones. There’s one guy, I saw on this gossip site I follow, who has been sending her letters since she was sixteen. Broke into her house twice. Held her captive once, for, like, 24 hours.”

Bucky shook his head. All of it felt ridiculous, like a plotline from one of those movies you were probably in.

You were famous, beautiful. Everything he wasn’t. He was a mess of history and metal and trauma in a jacket that didn’t fit right.

“Do I have a choice?” he asked flatly.

Tony took a long sip of his coffee and turned for the hallway. “Nope.” Then he was gone, because of course he was.

Bucky looked down at the photo again. She was laughing in it. That fake, trained kind of laugh. He knew it because he’d worn the same one in his file photos. The ones they used to show he was “adjusting well.” Your smile didn’t reach your eyes.

A hand clapped him gently on the shoulder, Steve. “It’s not gonna be that bad,” he said. “At least you’ll be out of the Tower. Doing something, something normal.”

Bucky stared at him, normal….right. He was a guy with blood on his hands and a barcode in his brain. A guy who hadn’t had a real conversation that didn’t involve tactical strategy or surveillance in… well, ever…and now he was supposed to babysit Hollywood’s favorite face?

He sighed and picked up the file. “She probably smells like perfume and entitlement,” he muttered.

Steve just smiled, too used to him by now.

Bucky didn’t smile back.

----------

Your suite smells like roses, burnt espresso, and tension. “Absolutely not,” you say, calm and clipped, as you scroll through your phone. “Get someone else.”

Your manager, Brett, sighs like he’s been holding his breath since 6 a.m. “Y/N. It’s not up for debate.”

You set your phone down slowly. “It is if you expect me to share space with a guy who used to kill people because someone said a few magic words.”

“He’s not like that anymore.”

“Right,” you mutter. “Because trauma just disappears.”

There’s a pause, another voice, one of your publicists, because apparently you need more than one, Leah, trying to sound gentle. “He’s the best we could get. Discreet, physically intimidating and he’s an Avenger.. We need you alive, you have contracts to complete..”

You glance between them. Brett’s jaw is tight. Leah’s trying too hard. You already know this is non-negotiable, nothing ever is anymore.

You pick up your phone again and say coolly, “Fine, bring in the ex-brainwashed assassin.”

They exchange a glance. “He prefers ‘Sergeant Barnes.’”

-----

When you first lay eyes on him, he walks in like he doesn’t want to be there. You don’t blame him, you don’t either. Leather jacket. Black jeans. Expression like thunderclouds. You already know who he is before anyone says a word.

He’s not what you expected. You thought he’d look more… broken or brutal. Instead, he looks like someone holding himself together with string. Sharp eyes. Quiet fury, but those blue eyes, god they were gorgeous, he was too.

He doesn’t smile, doesn’t flinch. Just stands there while Brett introduces him. “Y/N, this is Sergeant Bucky Barnes.”

You glance at your manager, then at Bucky. “Do I salute, or are we skipping that part?”

Bucky raises an eyebrow.

“Guess we’re skipping it,” you say, grabbing your coffee from the table and walking past him.

“Don’t talk to the press,” you toss over your shoulder. “Don’t talk to me unless it’s necessary and don’t fall in love with me.”

You’re joking, no one ever would

----

Bucky rides in silence. You’re pretending to be texting someone, pretending to be fake-laughing at a meme. Your assistant is reviewing your schedule: press junket, interview, table read, fitting.

You don’t look at him. He watches you through the rearview mirror. Everything about you is curated. Nails, lashes, the way you sit, like you’re always in a frame, always on camera.

He doesn’t see the appeal.

He’s not impressed by fame. He’s seen the world from the shadows. Glitter doesn’t mean safety. Glamour doesn’t mean goodness. You’re just another rich girl in a diamond cage. Still, he watches you like a soldier, like a threat.

You breeze past him into the building, sunglasses on, smile ready. He trails behind, clocking exits, cameras, fans, your security team.

Inside, it’s chaos, assistants shouting, lights flashing, everyone talking about you like you’re not standing there. You say nothing. Just nod, pose, walk where you’re told.

You’re perfect, plastic.

You sit in a chair, silent, while three people adjust your outfit. Bucky leans against the wall.

Someone says something about your last breakup. You laugh, it’s fake….empty. But they all buy it, he doesn’t

Your phone buzzes. You read it, then lock the screen without reacting. Bucky notices your hand twitch, a tiny, involuntary move. No one else does.

You glance at him once in the mirror, just once and he swears he sees something in your eyes but then the mask is back.

----

He walks you to your suite. No one talks.

Your heels click against the marble, each step echoing like punctuation. You don’t look back. You don’t slow down. Your assistant is three steps behind you, frantically unlocking the door like her job depends on it because it probably does.

You step inside the suite without acknowledging either of them.

White roses, chilled water, room temp lighting. Everything exactly the way your team demanded it. The air smells like money and tension.

You don’t even glance around. Before the door closes behind you, you pause one heel pivoting delicately on the floor and glance back over your shoulder.

He’s still standing there. Stiff and ilent. Arms folded like he’s waiting for an excuse to walk off the job.

You tilt your head. Smile.

But it’s not a sweet smile. It’s the kind that’s been sharpened over years of interviews and red carpets. Poisoned at the edges. “You always look this miserable, or is that just for me?”

He doesn’t answer. Of course he doesn’t.

You smirk, slow and mean, a laugh without sound, and shut the door in his face.

The lock clicks and outside, Bucky exhales like he’s just made a deal with the devil.

This job is going to suck.

----

You wake up before your alarm.

You always do.

It’s not anxiety, not really. It’s… habit. You’ve trained your body like a machine. Five hours of sleep is more than enough when you’re running on caffeine and compulsion.

You lie there for a moment, staring at the ceiling. Neutral cream color. No photos on the walls. No sound except for the hum of the air conditioner.

Someone knocks, twice, precisely. That’s the cue. You don’t speak, you don’t need to. This part doesn’t require you. The door opens, and the day begins

You know Brett will want a smile today. Leah will say you look tired. Marcy will try to shove that green juice down your throat again. You’ll let them, that’s the deal. You don’t own your mornings, haven’t in years.

Somewhere between the third nomination and the second perfume line, you stopped asking for space. They never gave it, and you stopped missing it.

They take your phone before you can read any texts, not that you would have any real ones. “You don’t need distractions,” Brett says, without looking at you, you nod.

They unlock your bedroom door from the outside. You don’t react.

You sit still as they go through your day. Makeup in thirty. Car at eleven. Don’t speak to press directly. Don’t touch fans, don’t make eye contact unless it’s on a red carpet.

You sip the green juice.

You pretend it tastes good.

You don’t remember what you actually like anymore.

Bucky’s already waiting.

He watches, arms crossed, as Brett speaks to you like you’re a child. Leah adjusts your coat. Your assistant carries your bag, even though you could carry it yourself.

They swarm around you, and you don’t say a word. They move you like you’re part of the scenery. He notices your silence first. Not out of peace, out of resignation.

He notices how you never touch your phone. How you’re never the one who opens a door. How you glance at Brett before answering a question.

You don’t move unless told, you don’t exist unless activated. You’re like a prop in your own life. He’s seen prisoners act freer and the worst part is you let them do it.

------

You’re perfect.

Dress like liquid diamonds. Hair pinned like an old Hollywood starlet. Lashes long enough to cast shadows.

You smile on cue. Laugh at questions that aren’t funny. Tilt your head just slightly to the left, it photographs better that way.

Bucky watches from behind the velvet rope. Arms crossed, shoulders tight. He’s not fidgeting, but he’s bracing. Always is, around this kind of crowd. The glitz, the lights, the smiles that don’t reach the eyes.

He hears someone say you’re “effortless.” He wants to laugh. Nothing about you is effortless. You’re a war machine wrapped in satin.

Inside, you take your seat. Cameras move around the announcers, the lights dim. They’re showing the nominees now, Best Actress.

Five clips, five women, one winner. Bucky scoffs at the reality of it all, how stupid this all truly is. But he can’t stop watching thinking back to Sam’s text from earlier ‘$20 says she takes it home’ Bucky responded back with ‘$50 she doesn’t’

The first few are polished, clean. Impressive, maybe. But calculated, controlled.

The screen fades in: it’s you, 1940s costuming. Hair curled and pinned. A wool coat, buttoned wrong because your hands are shaking. You’re walking up a long stretch of dirt road in London, a telegram crumpled in your fist.

The sound design is too quiet. The only thing you can hear is your breath, shallow and shaky and the crunch of your shoes on the frostbitten earth.

A voice reads over the shot. Cold, military, detached.

“We regret to inform you…”

You don’t speak, you run.

You stumble as you sprint up the front steps of a brownstone. A woman in black opens the door like she’s been waiting for you. There are more behind her. Neighbors, wives, sisters. All of them dressed in mourning.

You don’t look at any of them.

You try to step forward, but your knees give. They hit the concrete. Hard. You fall like you’ve been shot.

Bucky sees the scrape on your knees as the camera pans in, blood smearing across grey stone. He wonders if that was real or scripted. He votes scripted, but the way your face twists in pain makes him doubt it.

Then you scream, It rips out of you like something that’s been caged.

“NO!”

The whole auditorium flinches, your voice cracks wide open.

“No, no, no—he promised! He PROMISED me—! He said he was coming back!! NO— I don’t believe you! No, no, no, no….”

You’re not crying for the camera. You’re grieving, your body is shaking, your heaving like breathing physically hurts you.

You pound your fists into the stone. You shove off the women who try to gather around you. They’re crying too now, holding each other as you come undone in the middle of the street.

You don’t sob, you wail and it’s a sound Bucky’s never heard before or maybe one he’s tried to forget.

It’s the sound he imagines came out of his mother’s chest the day a man in uniform knocked on her door. It’s the sound he hopes to god he never has to hear again.

His jaw tightens, his throat locks, his eyes sting, but he doesn’t blink. Because he can’t. He straightens his spine, just like he was taught. Tighten the muscle, stand tall, don’t feel it, not here, not now.

The screen goes black, applause follows. Loud, immediate…earned.

But Bucky doesn’t move. He looks down at his hands, balled into fists at his sides, slowly, he looks at you.

You’re sitting in the front row, smiling politely, accepting the praise like it’s just part of the job.

But he knows what he saw, that wasn’t a performance. That was grief, that was real.

The presenters open the envelope.

There’s a joke about the glue being too strong, the crowd laughs. So do you, you tilt your head just right, camera-ready.

Bucky exhales like he’s underwater.

“And the winner is…”

A pause.

“Y/N L/N!!!”

The crowd explodes, a standing ovation. Cheering like it’s the end of the world.

You stand slowly, carefully, like you’ve practiced this before. You smile like someone just told you they love you.

You make your way up the stage, dress flowing like silver water under the lights. You hug the announcers, take the heavy glass statue, and step toward the mic.

The room quiets as you speak.

“Thank you.” Your voice is calm, measured. Just the slightest crack around the edges. “This role was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.” You glance out at the crowd, eyes glassy.

“To imagine living in a time like that, being in a world where people didn’t know if the person they loved was coming home, where a letter could end everything… it shattered something in me. It really did.”

“And I’m standing here because women lived through that. Women endured that and so did the men they loved and I wanted to honor them, I’m thankful I got to.”

You swallow hard, look down at the award.

“Acting has given me so much. But more than anything, it’s given me a voice I didn’t always know how to use.”

You look up again, past the cameras, past the lights.

“To the fans, to the crew, to the people who believed in me when I didn’t even believe in myself, thank you.” You blow a kiss into the air.

The room swells with applause. You smile one last time and you walk offstage, heels echoing like gunfire, shoulders slumped like you’re carrying something heavier than glass.

Backstage, Bucky doesn’t take his eyes off you. Someone hands you champagne, you drink it from the bottle. You hand off the award without looking at it, your face drops and your eyes go distant.

Bucky only takes his eye’s off you when his phone buzzes.

Sam: knew she’d win. she always does, you owe me $50.

Bucky stares at the text for a while.

He wants to write back: you should’ve seen her backstage.

But he doesn’t.

---------

You’re staring out the tinted window, face unreadable, while your assistant scrolls through your calendar.

“Lunch with Vogue,” she says.

You blink slowly. “I hate the editor.”

“She loves you, though.”

You nod. Because that’s enough of a reason.

Bucky sits in the passenger seat, watching your reflection in the mirror.

You haven’t said a word since you got in. Not to him, not to anyone, unless prompted. He chalks it up to ego or moodiness.

You bite your lip to stop the shaking. You smile when the camera flashes outside the car.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Unreal.”

You hear it, you say nothing.

You’re filming a commercial. Champagne, slow-motion smiles. Music blasting. You’ve done this campaign six times. You fucking hate champagne.

“Again,” the director says. “More playful this time, Y/N.”

You do it again, you laugh on cue. You toss your head back. You hate how your earrings pull on your earlobes, but you don’t touch them. You hate the smell of the set perfume, but you don’t flinch.

From the sidelines, Bucky watches it all. Leaned against a lighting rig, arms crossed.

“She loves the spotlight,” someone says behind him.

Bucky doesn’t disagree. You stand in it like you were made for it, the way your chin tilts just enough for the cameras, the way your lips part in that rehearsed, polite smile. You seem to drink it in, all the flash and noise and attention. You look like you belong there.

But what they don’t see is that you haven’t eaten all day. That the corset is too tight, cutting into your ribs, that every breath is a performance, sometimes you wished you weren’t breathing at all. No one notices, no one asks.

They don’t know you haven’t really laughed in months. Not the kind that starts in your chest and makes your eyes water. Just the polite kind. The one they teach you for red carpets and late night interviews. The kind that photographs well.

They don’t know about the days where it all feels too quiet, even when it’s loud. When you drive up the coast alone and wonder how fast you’d have to be going for the curve to take you off the edge. Not out of sadness. Not even out of fear. Just… curiosity.

You don’t want to die. Not really. You just want to feel something that doesn’t come with a script.

After the take, you walk off set and sit in a chair by yourself. Bucky watches you hand your phone to Leah without being asked.

He watches Brett adjust your robe before you even touch it. He watches you smile at a crew member and then go completely blank the moment they pass. He thinks you’re cold, you think you’re conserving energy.

Bucky sees it from the hallway. He wasn’t meant to. Your door’s open slightly. You’re standing in front of a mirror, holding your face with both hands like you’re trying to keep it from falling apart.

You whisper to yourself, something he can’t hear and then slap a smile onto your face. You turn, open the door.

You jump when you see him standing there. “Jesus,” you mutter. “Creep much?”

He doesn’t apologize.

You brush past him, coat draped over one arm, pretending like you didn’t just rehearse a fake expression for the last two minutes.

Bucky shakes his head as you go. He still doesn’t get it.

You eventually get home and strip yourself of everything the day gave you, you lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, again. The TV is on but muted. You don’t know what channel. Your phone buzzes, Leah sends a revised schedule for tomorrow. You don’t respond, you don’t cry.

You just blink, slowly, and say to the ceiling, “Get through one more day.” You don’t believe it, but you say it anyway.

-----

The trailer lot was a mess.

Lights everywhere, crew yelling, someone spilled coffee on a cable and now half the power was out. The shoot was running behind…again.

Bucky stood with his arms crossed by the production trailer, watching the chaos like it personally offended him. He didn’t do chaos unless it involved something he could punch and then came the voice.

Yours. Loud, sharp enough to cut glass. “No! Absolutely not. I said no to the green one, does no one ever listen to me?!"

You stormed out of your trailer, heels clicking like gunshots, satin robe flowing behind you like a cape.

Your hair was half done, makeup already starting to melt under the lights, and you were holding what looked like a couture dress with two fingers like it personally insulted your family.

“Do I look like I just walked out of Mamma Mia?” you snapped at your stylist, voice cutting. “No? Then why the hell would I wear this?”

People scattered. Your manager started apologizing before you even finished talking.

Bucky just watched blankly. Spoiled, he thought. Completely unhinged, an un grateful brat who probably didn't know what a hard day actually was.

You tossed the dress at some poor assistant and marched back into the trailer, muttering something about firing everyone and never working in this town again.

“She’s exhausted,” someone said nearby. “She hasn’t had a day off in months.”

Bucky didn’t even look at them. He didn’t get it. Exhausted? For what?

You stood on a stage and talked. You wore pretty clothes and smiled at cameras. He’d lived in the woods for weeks eating bugs during wartime. He’d bled out in alleyways, dug bullets out of his own thigh. That was exhausting.

This? This was pretend. This was fake, you were fake. He didn’t say it out loud. Just shook his head, turned, and kept walking. That’s when he heard it.

The trailer door, not your trailer, but the office one was cracked open just enough. He didn’t mean to stop. He didn’t mean to listen. But your name came up, and his legs rooted themselves to the ground.

“He was outside her hotel again.”

“How the hell does he keep getting this close?”

“They think he’s hacked into call sheets. He’s finding her schedule before we even approve it.”

“He’s escalating. The notes are more aggressive, more personal.”

“She doesn’t even react anymore.”

“Yeah, well, she never does.”.

“We should lock her down this weekend. No events. Nothing public. Spin it as a scheduled break.”

Bucky blinked, slowly. The air felt heavier all of a sudden.

She doesn’t even react anymore.

He didn’t know why that line stuck, just that it did. Later, Brett flagged him down near the lot exit, sunglasses on like he was someone important.

“You’re off this weekend,” he said, waving it off like a minor inconvenience. “She’ll be locked in at the house. No press, no events. All quiet.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “And the stalker?”

Brett shrugged. “She’ll be fine. We’ve got in-house security. You’ve earned the break. She’s a lot, but… nothing at all. You know what I mean?”

Bucky didn’t. He didn’t know what any of it meant. But he didn’t argue. Didn’t even know why he felt the need to argue. This was a job, you weren’t his problem, you never had been and never will be.

He took his keys without a word.

You were heading to your car at the same time, heels off now, coat thrown over your shoulders like armor, hair pinned perfectly again, mask back in place. The driver was already waiting, of course.

You stopped at the car door, glanced over. “So,” you said, voice softer now. “You’re off this week?”

“Apparently.”

You smiled. Not the one from press junkets or award shows. A smaller one, more human. It didn’t reach your eyes, but it was the closest he’d seen. “Enjoy it.”

He didn’t smile back, just grunted. “Try not to cause any more trouble.”

Your laugh was quiet. Not a performance, just something real, pushed through exhaustion. “I’ll do my best.”

You slid into the car, the door shut and just like that, you were gone.

Bucky stood there for another full minute before walking away. Still trying to figure out why he felt like he’d missed something important.

————

Two days later, Bucky was back at the Tower. The city felt quieter here, less like performance, more like breathing. Steve and Sam were already in the kitchen, post-run, towels slung over their shoulders, sweat still drying.

Sam tossed Bucky a water bottle. He caught it one-handed. “So,” Sam said, leaning against the counter, “how’s the movie star?”

Bucky scoffed. “She’s a piece of work.”

Steve glanced up from the paper he was pretending to read. “That bad?”

“She doesn’t talk unless she has to. She’s always on, like everything’s some promo tour. Even off-camera, it’s exhausting.”

Sam raised a brow. “She’s been famous since what, ten? Maybe she doesn’t know how to turn it off.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Her team treats her like a product. I watched some assistant take her phone out of her hand mid-text. She doesn’t even open her own car doors. They tell her what to eat, where to go, what to say. She just does it, doesn’t blink.”

Steve frowned. “And she just… takes it?”

“She doesn’t flinch, it’s like she’s not really there.”

Steve folded the paper and set it down. “That kind of sounds like survival.”

Bucky looked at him, scoffs. “You’ve never met her, you wouldn’t know.”

“I don’t have to,” Steve said gently.

Bucky ignored him. “I watched her snap at some poor girl the other day over the color of a dress.”

Sam snorted. “You snap when we move your knives or reorganize your ammo stash.”

Bucky turned, glaring. “That’s different.”

“If you say so,” Sam said, smirking. “Come on, movie night. You’re coming.”

“I don’t—”

“Nope,” Sam said, already walking. “You’re coming.”

The Tower’s theater room was dim, the seats stupidly plush. Steve had a bowl of popcorn bigger than Bucky’s head. Sam handed him a beer with a shit-eating grin.

“What are we watching?” Bucky asked warily.

“It’s a surprise,” Sam said.

That should’ve been the first red flag, the lights dimmed, and the screen lit up. Bucky’s face twisted the second the title card appeared. “No,” he said flatly. “Absolutely not.”

“Sit down,” Sam said, tugging him back into the seat. “Watch the art happen.”

Your name lit up the screen, In The Quiet After. The same film from the award show, Bucky sighed so hard it came out like a growl.

Of course it was that movie, the one you won for. The one everyone was still talking about in quiet tones like it was sacred. Sam smirked and passed him the popcorn, Bucky didn’t touch it.

He was already watching and he hated that he watched

The first scene opened with a wide shot, London under a grey sky, everything washed in a cold, early-morning haze. A train pulled into the station slow and quiet. Inside, you sat by the window, your cheek pressed to the foggy glass, lips parted slightly like you’d just forgotten how to breathe. You didn’t say anything, didn’t need to.

Your eyes were already telling the truth, hollow, wide, tired. Like you were mourning something you hadn’t lost yet or maybe something you’d already lost long ago, but hadn’t let yourself feel.

It wasn’t acting. Not the kind he was used to, anyway.

The story unfolded slowly, like memory. You played the fiancée of a soldier who’d been missing in action for nearly a year. The war was winding down, but hope, the kind that hurt still lived in you.

There was a scene where you folded his letters, over and over, until they were so creased the words disappeared. Another where you danced alone in your kitchen with a record playing, eyes shut, holding a sweater like it was a person. Bucky didn’t breathe through that one.

Bucky sat forward, elbows on his knees, beer forgotten. Then the telegram came, the scene they showed when you won that award. A different scene started when you didn’t cry at first. You just stood in the hallway, dress wrinkled, light slanting through a window like it was trying to reach you. Your legs gave out again. Just crumpled underneath you, the sound you made this time wasn’t a sob, it was a whimper, low and shaking, like something breaking in a place no one could see.

You stood in front of his empty closet, touching the things he left behind, a medal, a book, a shaving kit and when you pressed your face to the shirts still hanging there, Bucky had to blink fast, jaw clenched.

There was a scene, a short one where your character sat at the edge of the ocean, shoes off, staring at the water like it owes you something and you whispered, “I wasn’t afraid until they told me he was gone and now I’m afraid of everything.”

That one stayed in his chest, the last shot was you sitting at the window, hair half brushed, looking out at nothing.

Not waiting, just existing. The screen faded to black, the credits rolled. The room was quiet. Sam shifted beside him, eyes still locked on the screen. Bucky sat there, frozen, a fist pressed to his mouth and when the credits rolled, he didn’t move.

Sam leaned over. “Admit it. That was good.”

Bucky didn’t say anything. He blinked, fast, and wiped a tear away so quickly it almost didn’t count but Sam saw it.

“Not you too,” Bucky muttered when he heard Steve sniff beside him.

Steve just shrugged. “She’s good.”

Bucky didn’t say anything.

He was still thinking about the look on your face in that last shot, how it wasn’t dramatic, or showy, or polished. Just tired, real. That scared him more than he’d admit. It felt real, he’s felt that feeling before himself. He swallowed hard.

The film moved him, it felt like what could have been if he found someone before he got his papers, watching you dance in the street with a man you loved, laughing like it hurt and when he died, you crumbled in silence, not tears. Just… nothing.

He was still watching the dark screen littered with white words of everyone who made the film, he couldn’t stop thinking of the scream. Not yours, but the one he never heard from his sister, or his mother, or the world that mourned him when he disappeared.

——

The silence at your house was overwhelming, it usually was.

No cameras, no crew, no voices in your ear telling you where to be. Just the soft hum of the fridge, the creak of the floorboards under your bare feet, and the muted echo of a house too big for one person.

You hadn’t turned the TV on, you didn’t want noise, not the fake kind. You sat at the piano in your sunken living room, hair pulled up, hoodie sleeves pushed to your elbows. You let your fingers hover over the keys for a long time before pressing the first note.

You wrote without meaning to, it came out slow, low, soft.

They put me in diamonds, tell me I shine. Pose for the photos, say the right lines. But nobody asks if I slept last night. Nobody asks if I’m really alright.

You played the chorus over and over until the melody started to hurt.

It's quiet now, no scripts, no gold. Just me in the dark, getting tired of roles. They all say I’m lucky, but they don’t have a clue…what it’s like to be seen and never seen through. When the laughter fades to air, I’m just a girl with no one there.

Your voice cracked once, but no one was around to hear it.

You liked singing more than acting, always had. Singing felt like you, writing felt like something real. But that didn’t sell, not the way your face did, not in the way your body did.

They’d said it so many times, you’d stopped arguing. You had the kind of face that belonged on billboards. So that’s where they put you, said you were too pretty to hide behind a mic. That your voice was fine, but your face was profitable. So you shut up and smiled and gave them what they wanted, you always ended up here, playing music for a room that would never applaud.

-------

The studio was freezing. The kind of cold that crept under skin and made bones ache. Probably on purpose, keep the talent uncomfortable. Keep them alert, keep them obedient, its what they use to do for him.

Bucky stood just outside the wardrobe trailer, arms crossed, metal fingers flexing now and then just to feel something. He didn’t shiver, he didn’t feel cold like that anymore.

He was watching nothing and everything at once, lights shifting across the lot, assistants rushing like ghosts with clipboards and coffee. The hum of production noise buzzed in the background. Mostly, he ignored it.

Until your voice cut through it. “I don’t want to do this!”

It made him blink.

He’d never heard you say no to anything. Not to your team, not to the cameras. Not to the weight of your own exhaustion. Now that he thought about it, that was because no one had ever listened long enough to hear you.

“I said I don’t want to do this,” your voice rose again, cracking on the edge. “I’m not doing nudity. I told you that!”

A pause.

A sound that made Bucky’s stomach turn. That sick, sharp snap of skin on skin. A sound his body recognized faster than his brain.

A slap.

He didn’t think, didn’t hesitate. He just moved. The door slammed open hard enough to rattle the hinges. Cold air rushed in behind him.

You were standing in the middle of the trailer, stiff and trembling. Satin robe gripped tight around your frame like armor. Your makeup was half-finished, but your eyes were all fire and fear. A bright red handprint bloomed across your cheek like war paint.

Brett turned, visibly irritated. “This doesn’t concern—”

Bucky stepped in front of you, slow and dangerous. “Move.”

Brett straightened his spine like it might make him taller. “You don’t tell me what to do! I tell people what to do.”

Bucky’s voice was like ice. “You gonna move me?”

Brett didn’t blink, but he didn’t answer either. Because the truth was: everyone knew who Bucky was. Maybe Brett wasn’t afraid of you, but he was sure as hell afraid of the man standing between you and him now.

Brett backed away, grabbed his tablet, muttered something about schedules, about budgets, about “not being done” but he was already retreating. The door slammed shut behind him.

The air in the trailer changed, it was thick and heavy. You didn’t look at Bucky right away. Just stood there, unmoving, one hand slowly rising to your cheek, like your body couldn’t decide whether to comfort itself or feel the bruise.

“Thank you,” you said, voice soft but unsteady.

He didn’t move either. “Just doing my job,” Bucky muttered.

You nodded, but something in your face cracked when he said it. Like the words “job” hit a little too hard, because of course he was paid to protect you.

“Of course.” It came out flat and empty.

Bucky shifted, watching you. You looked small at that moment. Not weak, just… unguarded. Like someone who was running out of ways to hold themselves together. “You okay?”

You nodded, eyes still on the floor. “Of course.” But the second time, your tone was different. Like you didn’t believe yourself either.

You didn’t wait for a response, you just walked out.

Chaos hit less than an hour later.

You were walking to the car, head down, wrapped in a coat you didn’t remember putting on, when the entire lot seemed to shift. Shouts rang out, radios crackled. Security scrambled to lock the gates. Flashes went off, someone screamed. The sound of feet pounding pavement.

Bucky was already moving. He didn’t wait to be told. He didn’t need clearance. He stepped between you and the sound, body tight and still, pressing close until your back touched his chest.

You didn’t flinch, of course you didn’t. Because this wasn’t new for you. None of it was, not the panic, not the threat. Not the way you had to keep walking like you weren’t being hunted. You didn’t even seem to care about your life being in danger.

Your publicist, Leah, came running, phone pressed tight to her ear.

“He’s here,” she said, breathless. “We think he followed her from the last hotel. How the hell does he keep finding her?”

Bucky’s jaw locked. His eyes scanned the crowd, already calculating exits, cover, line of sight. He reached for your hand, not hard, just firm and tucked you behind him like instinct.

Bucky was still inches from your back when Leah caught up to you both, still talking fast. “We’re not sending her to that appearance Friday. We’re leaking it anyway, we think he’ll show. In the meantime, Sergeant Barnes, you’re with her 24/7, you’re staying at the house.”

You didn’t argue, just nodded. “Why’s your cheek red?” Leah asked, barely looking up.

You adjusted your sunglasses. “Ran into a door.”

Leah rolled her eyes. “Of course. The beauty, but with no brains.”

Bucky winced at that one. He looked at you, waiting for your reaction but you didn’t have one, you didn’t respond, nothing you just kept walking.

———

You didn’t speak on the drive home.

When you unlocked the door and let him in, you didn’t say welcome. You didn’t offer a tour, you just kicked off your shoes, dropped your bag by the wall, and disappeared into the kitchen like he wasn’t there at all.

Bucky stood in the foyer for a minute, looking around. The place was immaculate, modern and well magazine-worthy. But there were no photos. No personal touches, no signs of family, no warmth. It was clean to the point of being sterile. You lived in a house that looked staged for a sale.

His footsteps echoed. You came back with a bottle of water, handed him one wordlessly, and went upstairs. The silence in the house wasn’t peaceful. It was suffocating, he couldn't imagine having to live here.

Bucky sat down in one of the perfect chairs in the perfect living room and stared at the wall across from him. This wasn’t how he imagined the world's biggest movie star to live, this was how ghosts lived.

The door buzzed just after six.

Bucky had been sitting on the perfect chair, trying to figure out what the hell to do with himself in a house that didn’t feel lived in. He opened the door before the second knock. The woman standing there didn’t even blink.

“Relax,” she said, holding up a tiny keypad and some wires. “Just updating her security. Won’t take long.”

She didn’t ask for permission. Just stepped inside like she owned the place. She didn’t even take off her heels.

“Gina,” she added, like that explained anything. “I’m her publicist or one of them, technically. You probably already met Leah, she's the hands on one, no way I could deal with our little diva all day.”

Bucky followed her as she moved to the wall near the front door, unscrewing a panel and installing a new keypad. He stayed quiet, watched every move. She knew she was being watched and didn’t care. “Just showing you where you’re sleeping,” she said casually. “Couple of days, right? Guest room’s down here. Hers is right above it.”

She motioned toward a sleek white door by the front hallway.

“Help yourself to anything,” she added. “Don’t touch her piano, don’t wake her up unless there’s an emergency. Don’t ask her too many questions, she won’t answer them.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “What’s the plan for the guy?”

Gina checked something on her phone. “We leaked that she’s going to an event on Friday. We’re hoping he shows, cops will be watching.”

Bucky crossed his arms. “Has he ever tried anything violent?”

Gina paused. “There was one incident. A few years ago, but she talked her way out of it. Manipulated him, acted her way out of it, that’s what she’s good at.”

She glanced at him, eyes sharp. “That’s why she wins awards, she’s good at faking it.” She smiled, a little too smug and walked out the door without waiting for a response.

Bucky waited until she was gone, then pulled out his phone. “Steve,” he said when the line clicked on.

“You good?”

“Define good,” Bucky muttered. “She’s locked in her own house because she has this stalker. The place has high level security. Some publicists just came by to upgrade the system even further, it's crazy for just one girl.”

Steve’s voice came calm. “The stalker?”

“Name’s Elias Corrin.”

“I’ll look into it.”

“Yeah okay,” Bucky said.

He hung up and leaned back against the door, staring into the quiet. He didn’t know what the hell he’d walked into. But he didn’t like how deep the hole looked from here.

That night he found you outside.

You were barefoot on the patio, legs pulled up into the chair, arms wrapped tight around your knees. The lights from the pool lit your skin in pale, blue glimmer almost otherworldly, like moonlight underwater. One empty bottle of wine sat on the table. Another was already open, half-gone.

You didn’t hear the door open. You didn’t hear his steps. It wasn’t that he was trying to be quiet. You just weren’t listening, your mind too loud.

You turned when you finally heard the soft slide of glass. Your voice was low, hoarse from the day. “You want a drink?”

“No thanks,” Bucky said. “I can’t get drunk.”

You tilted your head, like you were trying to figure out if that was sad or not. “By choice?”

“No, the serum.”

“Oh,” you murmured. “Right, super soldier.” You paused. “Weird that that stuff actually exists.”

He nodded.

You gestured toward the chair across from you. “You can sit. I’m not gonna throw anything.”

He hesitated, then sat.

You were humming something, a soft, sad thing with no real melody. Like you were just filling the silence so it didn’t swallow you. It wasn’t a song, it wasn’t for him. It was just for you, but Bucky… felt it. Low in his chest, somewhere hard to reach. Like the ache of something he hadn’t admitted yet.

You didn’t look at him when you said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

He didn’t answer, just kept his eyes on you.

“This house is cold, empty.” You took a sip. “Want to know something stupid?”

He waited.

“I used to dream about my perfect house. Not like this, not marble floors and designer furniture. I wanted a little white one. Big wraparound porch, a garden, wind chimes. Maybe photos on the walls of all the friends I’d have. A kitchen that actually smelled like something.”

You smiled at your wineglass. It didn’t reach your eyes.

“I pictured pots and pans hanging over the island. You know, the messy kind. With a coffee mug that doesn’t match the rest. Something that looked like someone lived there, oh my god, I can't forget about stained glass windows so when the sun shines, my house would be happy to.

He looked around at the manicured patio, the spotless glass, the perfect silence. “Why don’t you make it that?”

You shook your head like he didn’t understand.

“It’s never that easy,” you said. “Money buys a lot, but not silence that doesn’t feel like you’re drowning in it. Not real people, not anyone who stays.”

He watched you carefully, the way your voice dipped like a record dragging on the wrong speed.

“Aren’t you happy?” he asked.

“If there’s a camera around? Yeah,” you said, pausing briefly you took a deep breath, then softer, almost a whisper, like it wasn’t meant to be heard, “But no, not really.” The words hovered between you like smoke.

You stared out at the water, blinking slow. “I wanted to sing. That’s all I wanted. Just… write songs, play piano, maybe disappear into it.”

Bucky didn’t speak. He didn’t want to interrupt whatever this was, the first time in the weeks he’s been assigned to you that he saw you be real, and he wouldn't admit it but he was fascinated by this lifestyle that was the complete opposite to his.

“But they said my face was too pretty to waste, and said acting sold more. Said I’d be stupid not to take the offers.” You snorted into your glass. “So I did, because I didn’t know what else to do, who else to be.”

You shook your head. “Now I’m rich, alone…exhausted and everyone thinks I’m this spoiled little thing who throws tantrums about champagne or shoes or the wrong shade of lipstick…. sometimes I do it, y'know? Throw fits everyones expecting me to throw, just to feel something more than what I do.”

You turned to look at him. “But I don’t even know what I want anymore, Bucky. I just know it was never this.”

His name sounded different coming from your lips. It wasn’t flirtation or business, it was something honest. Like you were asking him to just see you, not fix you. He stayed silent. Sometimes silence was safer than saying the wrong thing, his mind was too busy reeling the you he made up in his head, the you that screamed for a different coloured dress because you were a brat, not the you that did it to give the people what they made you, to give yourself something to feel.

You took another sip, lips curling slightly. “You wanna hear something really fucked up?”

He gave you a slow nod.

“Every year, on my birthday, they throw these huge parties. Red carpet, champagne, some exclusive venue with a million fake people. The same faces, the same photos. But every year, I show up, smile, and think…” you laughed bitterly, “God, I can’t believe I made it another year.”

He frowned, finally responding. “What do you mean?”

You looked up, eyes shining with something sharp. “I mean, how does someone live this long,” you said, “without feeling anything at all?”

Just like that, the air shifted, it's like the earth felt it to become the wind picked up. Bucky felt it, the weight in your voice, the truth behind the joke. The kind of sadness that doesn’t scream or cry or beg. The kind that just exists, quiet and constant.

He didn’t know what to say, he barely did day to day with basic, easy conversations so he just stayed, like Steve did for him when he needed him to and that mattered.

You looked at him again, and this time, your voice cracked a little. “Don’t look at me like that, like I’m breakable.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m looking at you like you’re real.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I get it,” he said. It was barely more than a whisper.

You blinked. “You do?”

“Parts of it.”

You didn’t say anything back. Just stared at him for a long time, until the silence wasn’t heavy anymore, just quiet, then you just poured another glass and kept humming.

--------

The house is quiet again. Not in the eerie way it used to be, where silence felt like a scream. This kind of quiet is soft, bearable…almost warm. No one’s called for you. No cameras, no red carpet, just Bucky.

You woke up late, no alarms, no stylists, no fake lashes. Just sunlight cutting through the blinds and the faint clink of him making coffee downstairs.

He didn’t speak when you walked in, just slid a mug across the island like it was something he’d done a hundred times. You sat across from him in an old sweatshirt, knees curled under you. No makeup, no walls. He didn’t stare but he noticed. He always does.

It’s strange, how fast the noise fell away.

The city is still out there, of course. Cameras, crowds the mess of it. But here, even in this steril house it’s quiet in a way he doesn’t mind.

He watches you more now. Tries not to, but he does. You hum while you make toast, barefoot on marble floors. You read paperbacks and roll your eyes when the plot disappoints you. You talk more, not much, but more.

Yesterday, you asked about Brooklyn. About what music he liked before the war. Not as an interview, but just… because. He didn’t give you much. But you didn’t look disappointed and that scared him a little. Because this was supposed to be a job.

It’s late when it happens, hours past the point where anyone normal would be asleep. The house is dim, quiet. Bucky’s sitting in the armchair by the glass doors, a book open in his lap he’s not reading it’s just… there. Then he hears it, soft scuffling in the kitchen. A cupboard door thudding shut, another opening. A drawer slammed a little too hard.

“HA! I found ’em!” You pop up from behind the island, holding a crinkly bag of marshmallows like you just won the lottery.

He doesn’t say anything, just watches. You’re wearing flannel pajama pants and one of his sweatshirts you borrowed two days ago and never gave back.

You spin around, holding the bag in front of you like a trophy. “Come on.”

He raises an eyebrow. “No.”

You pout. “Come on, Sarge. I need you to start the fire or I’ll probably burn the house down.”

He groans but you hit him with it, the puppy dog face, not just any the best he’s ever seen, big eyes…lip jutted. That kind of ridiculous, manipulative sweetness that shouldn’t work on him but it does.

He sighs, pushes up from the chair. “Fine.”

Your whole face lights up and it’s not fake. Not for the cameras, just real and because of him and that’s when he thinks in this moment you don’t remind him of the sun. You remind him of the stars, bright, but only in the dark.

The fire pit flickers out back. You’re curled up with a blanket draped over your shoulders, holding a roasting stick like it’s some ancient tool. Bucky crouches near the flames, getting the wood just right.

“I feel like I should be paying you,” you joke.

“You are,” he says.

You laugh, really laugh, the kind that reaches your eyes. You hand him a marshmallow. “Don’t burn this one.”

He does, immediately but you make him eat it anyway.

You talk, and it’s easier now. You tell him about your first audition. How you tripped on your own heels and nearly threw up in front of three casting directors. You tell him about learning to cry on cue, about learning to smile when you wanted to scream.

You ask him about his family, not like you’re prying, but like you actually care.

He tells you about his mom. How she used to braid his sister’s hair before school, how she always left the porch light on for him, even when he came home past curfew. How his dad never said much but always made sure the heater worked. He doesn’t say much more. But it’s something.

You’re staring into the fire, the flames rising and sinking like they’re breathing. Your last marshmallow is too close, the edge catching and curling black. You don’t flinch. You let it burn a little longer before pulling it back, watching the char bubble and blister.

You pop it into your mouth anyway, ashy, sweet. You barely taste it. Softly, too softly for how heavy the words are you speak.

“I used to think I’d die young.”

It comes out like a throwaway thought. Like something you’ve said before to the ceiling at 3 a.m. But now it’s out here in the open, between you and the fire and him.

You roll your eyes at yourself, laughing once, dry and bitter. “Not in some big dramatic way. Not pills or headlines or anything that’d ruin the brand.” You shake your head. “Just… quietly. Like, one day I’d stop, fade out, a footnote.”

You glance at him, just for a second, then back to the flames.

“But yet here I am,” you murmur, “with a super soldier, roasting marshmallows, under lockdown because some guy thinks…” You don’t finish that sentence.

Bucky’s jaw ticks. His body goes still, but he doesn’t interrupt. You get the sense he knows better than to.

You keep going, because if you stop now, it’ll crush you.

“I’ve had everything they said I should want. All of it. Magazine covers, designer gowns, awards with my name etched in gold like that’s supposed to mean something.”

You laugh again, hollow this time. “I’ve been told I’m beautiful by people who don’t even make eye contact. I’ve smiled through breakdowns. I’ve clapped for co-stars who took everything I wanted and through it all, I thought eventually….eventually I’d feel full.”

You pause, let the fire crackle for you.

“But I don’t.” Your voice is lower now. “Most days, I don’t feel anything at all. Just… tired. All the time. Like I’m running on autopilot. Like I’m standing in the middle of a room full of people screaming my name and I’ve never been lonelier.”

The wind shifts and fire flickers. You don’t look at him when you say it, but it’s the truth that floors him.

“This is the most joy I’ve had in years and I’m paying you to be here.”

That quiet silence hits hard. You feel your throat tighten. So you turn to him, finally, and your eyes are glassy, not full of tears, just… worn.

“Does that make me crazy?”

Bucky doesn’t answer right away. He watches you, really watches you like you’re not a headline or a paycheck or a woman wrapped in satin on someone’s magazine cover. You’re just a person now, barefoot, burned out, asking if your emptiness means you’re broken.

“No.”

You blink at him.

--------

Wednesday morning starts slow, the kind of quiet that hangs gently in the air, like the house itself is still asleep.

Bucky’s already out on the patio, sitting on the bench, coffee in hand. His hair is still damp from the shower, sticking up a little at the back, and he’s wearing the same navy t-shirt from the night before, stretched a bit at the shoulders.

The air is cool, and the sky is soft gray. He’s not thinking about much, or maybe too much. He doesn’t know the difference anymore. Just staring at the garden, at the fence line, at the leaves trembling in the breeze. He hears the creak of the sliding door.

You step outside barefoot, sleeves too long on a borrowed hoodie. You’re balancing two mismatched mugs in your hands like they’re made of glass. You don’t say anything.

You just hand one to him. He looks up, surprised. He takes it without question, and puts his other one down.

You sit beside him, folding your legs up into the chair, knees pulled to your chest, like you’re trying to make yourself smaller. Your mug disappears into your hands.

Neither of you says a word for a while. The only sound is the wind brushing the trees and the faint clink of ceramic when one of you shifts. You sip slowly, so does he. You hated the quiet but this, felt different, this quiet sounded different.

You don’t look at him when you speak. “I hate the quiet, it makes me feel like I failed.” Your voice is soft and thoughtful.

Bucky turns his head, watching you.

You’re staring at the trees like they’ve got all the answers. “I know its stupid but if it isn't loud, if people aren't clapping, I thought it meant I wasn’t enough.”

You rest your chin on your knees. “I didn’t know quiet could feel… nice."

Bucky nods, not quick, just slow. Like he’s been thinking the same thing for years and never knew how to say it.

“It’s the only time I know I’m okay,” he says quietly.

You look back at him for a second, not too long just enough to let the words settle. “Yeah,” you say.

---

You’re in the screening room. You’re the one who picked Casablanca. Bucky didn’t argue, anything to get the last movie he saw out of his head, your movie.

The lights are dim, you’ve got a blanket wrapped around you, feet tucked under your legs, and a bowl of popcorn between you that neither of you are really touching.

He’s not watching the movie, he’s watching you.

The way you mouth the lines under your breath. The way your eyes crinkle slightly during the airport scene. The way your voice is quieter when you say: “We’ll always have Paris.”

You notice him watching. “What?” you whisper.

He shakes his head. “You’ve seen this a hundred times.”

You smile. “That obvious?”

“You don’t even look at the screen during the last scene.”

You shrug. “I know how it ends.”

He leans back, watching the flickering light dance across your face.

“You ever wish you had that? The whole ‘we’ll-always-have’ moment?”

You go quiet. “No, I think I’d rather have something that stays.”

You look at him, neither of you says anything after that. The credits roll, you don’t hit pause, don’t get up.

You both sit in the low blue glow, blanket still wrapped around your shoulders, his hand resting lightly on the couch between you. Not touching. Just there and when you eventually stand, stretch, and yawn into your sleeve, you look at him and you wish he was not just someone paid to be here.

He watches you leave, he memorises the way the blanket slips off your shoulder, the way your bare feet pad across the floor, the way you glance back once but don’t say anything.

He doesn’t move, doesn't stop you. Why would he?

But something in his chest feels…off. He wishes, just for a moment, that he wasn’t just the guy on the couch, the bodyguard. He wishes you had stayed, turned around or said his name again like you meant it. Long after you disappear, he keeps staring at the empty hallway. Still warm from you, still quiet in that way that feels like something is missing.

------

The Thursday morning sun is high when you find him.

You’ve just finished lunch or at least pushed half of it around your plate while pretending to eat and you spot Bucky out in the backyard. He’s sitting under the shade of the lone tree near the edge of the property, sleeves pushed up, hair messy, working on something with his hands.

At first you think it’s a knife, but as you get closer, you realize it’s a small block of wood. He’s carving. You’re not sure what, and you don’t ask.

You just drop down into the grass beside him, not bothering with grace or performance. Just you, in worn leggings and an old band tee, barefoot, your hair a little messy from the wind.

“What are you making?” you ask, casually.

He shrugs. “Don’t know yet.”

You watch his hands move, steady and careful, everything you wish you had. You realise you're staring at his hands too long, you decide to start a conversation “Tell me about Steve.”

He raises an eyebrow without looking up. “Why?”

You shrug. “You talk about him like he’s some mythical figure.”

Bucky smirks. “To me, he kind of is.”

You pick at the grass near your ankle. “What was he like? Before he got all tall and shiny.”

That makes him laugh, not some big one but real, you realising it's the best thing you ever heard.

“He got beat up every day,” Bucky says, carving knife still moving. “Small guy, loud mouth with a heart way too big. He was always standing up for people who didn’t ask him to. Even when he didn’t have the strength to back it up.”

You nod, resting your chin on your hand. “What about Sam?”

Bucky’s mouth pulls into something softer. “He’s the best guy I know. Smart, always knows what to say. He jokes a lot but… he means well, he sees people…really sees them, he saw through me. Sees the good in people before they see it.” He pauses. “They are two sides of the same coin, they’re the best people to have on your side.”

You pause. “You love them.”

He glances at you. “Yeah,” he says. No hesitation. “They’re family.”

There’s a moment of silence, the breeze picks up, ruffling the loose strands around your face. You lean back into the grass, legs stretched out, eyes closed against the sun. You speak so quietly he almost doesn’t catch it. “I don’t think I’ve ever had that.”

He sets the carving knife down slowly.

You open your eyes but don’t look at him. “Someone who just… knows me. Without all the filters, not the version of me they pay for. Not the headline, just….me. The way you talk about them.”

You exhale like you’ve been holding that sentence in for years. “I think I’d trade everything for that.”

You’re not expecting a response. You don’t even know why you said it.

But Bucky’s voice comes low. “You're not alone as you think.”

You turn your head to look at him, eyes narrowing just slightly, you don’t believe him but then he meets your gaze without flinching and your chest loosens, just a little.

You’re both in the kitchen. The sun’s gone down, but neither of you noticed, it’s the kind of night where time slips sideways.

You’re sitting cross-legged on the marble counter in worn socks and his hoodie, picking through the fridge drawer for grapes like you live there. Bucky leans against the island, arms folded, watching you with the kind of expression that’s halfway between amused and curious.

The little bird sits on the table behind him. It’s still rough around the edges, but it’s starting to take shape, something delicate carved out of something solid, just like him you think.

The air is calm, you’re not trying to fill the silence. You just exist in it together. You toss a grape at him, he catches it.

Out of nowhere, you say something, you don’t even remember what. Something sarcastic and weird and a little too honest about celebrity facial treatments or the time someone tried to sell your bathwater online.

Bucky snorts, actually snorts. It’s sudden and unexpected you freeze, mid-chew, eyes wide…then you snort, louder, messier, completely involuntary.

It hits you both at the same time.

You start laughing, big, belly-deep laughing. The kind that catches you off guard, the kind that makes your cheeks hurt.

“Oh my God,” you wheeze, pointing at him, “you snort when you laugh!”

His ears flush, but he doesn’t stop smiling. “Apparently.”

“Who would’ve thought? Sargent Barnes, war hero….snorts.”

He shrugs. “Haven’t done it in years. Maybe not since… my sister.”

That quiets the laughter, but it doesn’t kill the warmth. You shift, leaning back against the fridge. “What was her name?”

He nods. “Rebecca, I called her Becca. She was younger, smart….tough. Used to pretend she hated me, but she’d cry if I didn’t tuck her in when Ma was working late.”

You smile softly. “You were good to her.”

“I tried to be.” He swallows, “What about you? Do you have any siblings?”

You pause, then tilt your head. “You didn’t Google me?”

Bucky chuckles, low and tired. “There was a file. Mostly about your stalker. Ellis, right?”

You nod once. “Yeah, him.”

“Didn’t say much else,” he adds. “No siblings, no school records. Nothing normal. Just interviews and promo stuff and… threat reports.”

You look at him, expression unreadable. “I guess that tracks.”

He pushes off the counter, grabbing a glass of water. “I’d rather learn the real stuff from the source anyway. The internet’s mostly crap.”

That makes you smile, you nod. “I don’t have siblings, it was just me and my parents weren’t really in the picture, oh and I was homeschooled.” You don’t elaborate, and he doesn’t push.

Your eyes drift to the little bird on the table. You nod toward it. “What’s with the bird?”

He glances back. Picks it up in one hand, brushes his thumb over the grooves. His expression goes quieter, faraway.

“Birds don’t stay anywhere long,” he says. “They don’t belong to anyone. But they always find their way back, no matter how far they go.”

—————

It's Friday morning and you’ve barely touched your toast.

It sits cold on your plate while you curl into the window seat, knees drawn to your chest, sleeves pulled over your hands. You watch the driveway like it might come to life, like your stalker might materialize out of the shadows and end this awful waiting.

The house is too quiet, even the birds outside sound cautious. Your stomach churns, but not from hunger, from dread.

You keep hearing the same line in your head, over and over: They’re supposed to catch him tonight. As if that makes it safe, as if that makes it over. It doesn’t feel over. You don’t think it ever will.

Bucky finds you just after lunch, when he notices you’re not downstairs, not in the kitchen, not anywhere.

He walks past the stairwell and sees you, still there, still staring and something in him just knots. He doesn’t say your name, he just sits down beside you. The cushion shifts under his weight.

Your voice is quiet. Barely there. “You ever sit so still, it feels like the world’s moving around you?”

He nods, eyes on the window. “Yeah.”

You take a shaky breath. “They’re supposed to catch him tonight.”

“I know.”

You don’t look at him. Your voice is soft but sharp. “He sent me a letter once. Said he watched me sleep, said I looked like an angel.”

Bucky stiffens. Every instinct in his body coils tight.

“I was sixteen. I didn’t even know what the hell that meant. I just knew it made my skin crawl.”

You laugh once, it’s not a real laugh…more of a release. Bitter and brittle. “He thinks I belong to him. He’s… quiet. Calculated, smarter than anyone gives him credit for and he always finds me. No matter how many houses I buy. No matter how many bodyguards they hire.”

His jaw tightens. He wants to say he understands but he doesn’t. Not really, he’s been the shadow before. The one who follows, he knows what that kind of obsession looks like, what it feels like.

But this is different, this is….you, unraveling slowly in front of him, all he can do is offer his presence. “You’re safe now,” he says, his voice low. “With me, you are.” He swallows, “I wouldn't, I won't let anything happen to you.”

You turn to him, eyes tired. “I feel safe…here, with you.”

He doesn’t say anything, he does something he’s never done before…he just lays his hand over yours.

It’s warm and steady, something you’ve never felt before and to his surprise you hold it tighter than you mean to.

By Friday night he can tell you’re still wound up, still stuck inside your own head, even after dinner.

You smile at him when he offers tea, but it’s automatic. Your shoulders are too tight, your eyes are too far away.

So he says it, casually, like it’s nothing. “You play piano?”

You blink. “What?”

He shrugs. “Saw it in the sitting room, you said you loved music more right?”

You raise a brow. “What, you wanna sing a duet?”

Bucky huffs a laugh and shakes his head. “No, no, I just… miss music sometimes. Real music, not the garbage they play in stores now.”

You smile for real this time. It’s small, but it’s there. “I could play for you.”

He doesn’t answer, just gestures with his hand.

You lead the way. You sit on the bench and let your fingers rest on the keys, just for a moment. You don’t speak, you don’t explain what you’re about to play. You just start..it’s soft, slow. The kind of melody that makes the walls feel like they’re holding their breath.

Bucky leans against the archway, arms crossed, eyes locked on your hands. You don’t look at him, you’re somewhere else entirely.

Your fingers glide across the keys like you’ve done it a thousand times. Like the music lives in you, just waiting for the silence.

He watches and he feels something inside him break open a little. Because this? This is….you. No press, no cameras, no posing.

Just raw, haunting beauty.

He can’t imagine what your voice would sound like and maybe he doesn’t want to. Not yet. Because this, just this is already more honest than anything he’s ever known.

You finish the last note, and it lingers in the air like a held breath. You look over at him, eyes wide. A little nervous. “Well?” you ask.

Bucky just shakes his head once. Voice barely above a whisper. “That was… beautiful.”

You smile, but your eyes are wet. You don’t cry. But he sees how badly you want to.

———

It’s Saturday morning now, you barely slept.

You kept shifting beneath the sheets, cold despite the weight of the blanket. Your mind wouldn’t stop looping: He’s going to be caught. It’s almost over. He’s going to be caught. It’s almost over.

But it didn’t feel like peace. It felt like the second before an earthquake. Like stillness before glass shatters.

Your chest aches with nerves, your skin feels too tight. So you get up just after five. The sun hasn’t even risen, the sky is that pale kind of blue that makes the world feel like it’s holding its breath.

You pad into the kitchen in thick socks. Hair messy, hoodie hanging off one shoulder. You tie your hair back lazily and open the fridge, staring like you’re waiting for it to give you purpose.

You don’t know why you start making breakfast. You just… want to do something kind, something normal.

You make everything because you don’t know what Bucky likes. Toast, eggs, bacon and coffee in that old mug he keeps using. You cut the strawberries into little perfect slices. You line them into a fan on the edge of the plate, even though no one’s going to notice.

For a second, it feels like a house, like a home even in the white marble, sterile kitchen. Not a set, not a stage. A home. .

The front door slams open, you flinch so hard the knife in your hand clatters into the sink.

Footsteps and voices echo off the walls. Brett. Leah. Two others. Storming in like they own you, which they do. You let them.

“He’s in custody,” Brett announces, breathless, already half on his phone. “He was parked a block down. Had maps, call sheets, photos…creepy shit.”

You don’t move. The strawberries still in your hand. You don’t know if you feel relief or anything at all.

Bucky wakes the second he hears the noise. He comes down the hall shirtless, tugging a tee over his head, dog tags thudding softly against his chest, eyes sharp with instinct.

“What the hell’s going on?” he says, voice gravel and steel.

Leah doesn’t look at him. “We got him, it’s handled.”

She turns to you. “You need to go make yourself presentable. Interviews start at ten. There’s a presser at the hotel. You’ll speak briefly. We’re drafting the statement now.”

“I—” you start, dazed. “I made breakfast.” You say it like it matters.

Brett looks up from his screen, scoffs. “You’re on a diet. You don’t need this. We’ll order a green smoothie or something. Go change.”

And it’s gone, everythings gone. That small, warm thing you’d tried to build. Gone. You nod, slowly, like you’re moving underwater. Everything feels muted, numb. You started to feel real, feel human over the last couple days and just like that, like your shedding skin, it’s gone.

You turn toward the stairs. Bare feet soundless on the wood, skin cold against the polished surface. Everything feels far away, your body, your voice, the day itself. Like you’re floating inside a version of yourself that isn’t quite real anymore.

“I made you breakfast.”

You barely recognize your own voice. It comes out quiet, fragile. A whisper, almost childlike in its softness. Like if you speak louder, it’ll crack.

Bucky stops mid-step, freezes. You feel him turn, feel his gaze land on you and you hate how exposed you are.

You’re standing there in a faded t-shirt, too big on your frame. Sleeves shoved up to your elbows. Your hair’s still tangled from sleep, lips dry, eyes tired but not defeated, not yet.

You look at him like you’re trying. Like you’re trying so hard to keep this one little thing from slipping through your fingers. Trying to hold on to something normal, something kind. Just one moment that’s yours, he sees it.

He steps toward you carefully, slow, cautious. Like you might shatter if he moves too fast. Like you’re a bird that’s already half-decided to fly away.

He reaches out and wraps his fingers around your wrist. Not tight, just enough to anchor you.

You both just stand there, surrounded by chaos, shouts from down the hall, footsteps thudding across tile, Leah barking about call times, Brett’s voice cutting in and out of a phone call.

But all of it fades. It’s just you and him now, suspended in the noise.

Your voice cracks when you speak. “I just wanted to say thank you.”

He opens his mouth, voice low. “You don’t have to thank me. I—”

“I know.” You nod quickly, cutting him off, eyes flickering toward the floor. “You’re just doing your job.”

He shakes his head before you even finish, like he can’t stand hearing you say it.

“No,” Bucky says, and his voice is rough now, unsteady in a way that catches you off guard. “I’d do it again. In a heartbeat.”

That silence between you swells, full of every word neither of you has the nerve to say. Something real, something dangerous.

“Let’s go! We’re already late!”

Brett’s voice cuts like glass.

You flinch, again. Shoulders twitch up like you’re trying to make yourself smaller. Eyes drop, hands pull in close to your chest like you’re retreating and you start to turn, you always do.

But Bucky doesn’t let go. Instead, he reaches into his pocket. His hand brushes yours, careful, deliberate. He slips something into your palm, small, warm from his touch. His fingers fold yours around it like a secret.

You glance up at him, brows drawn together, confused.

He doesn’t explain, doesn’t speak. Just gives you the smallest nod, like he’s handing you something he didn’t know how else to say.

And you go, you don’t look back. Not until you’re behind the door of your bedroom, alone again. Where it’s quiet. Where you’re allowed to fall apart. You sit on the edge of the bed, your hand still closed in a fist.

When you finally open it, it’s the bird. The one he carved, the one he made.

It fits perfectly in your palm, smoothed down along the wings. Made with hands that have destroyed and protected and carried too much.

It’s not just a carving. It’s a message. I see you.

You let out a small gasp when you realize that someone finally sees you.

Bucky watches you disappear up the stairs barefoot, shoulders drawn, your fist still wrapped tight around whatever he gave you.

He lingers at the bottom for a moment, listening to the storm of voices in the hallway. He turns. “Where exactly was he?”

Leah barely glances at him, arms crossed, Bluetooth earpiece flashing as she flips through a stack of printed call sheets.

“Two blocks down. Surveillance caught him in his car, windows blacked out, engine running. He had her itinerary on the passenger seat. Press stops, hair appointments. Shit even we didn’t approve yet.”

Bucky’s jaw tenses. “And?”

“And nothing,” Brett cuts in, stepping out of the dining room, already dressed like he’s about to walk a red carpet himself. “NYPD took him in. He’s being processed. PR’s drafting a statement now. We’re controlling the narrative.”

“Controlling the—” Bucky stops himself. Takes a breath. He steps closer. “What exactly did he have?”

“Maps. Photos. Schedules. Hotel room numbers. Stuff that hasn’t gone public.” Brett shrugs like it’s just another day at the office. “Creepy, sure, but nothing that’s gonna stick longer than a few news cycles. We spin it right, she’s golden.”

“She could’ve died.”

“She didn’t,” Brett says, smiling like that’s the end of it. “And now she’s trending.”

Something hot twists in Bucky’s chest. Something that used to come before violence. He shoves it down.

He looks around the room, sees assistants carrying in garment bags, stylists setting up makeup lights by the floor-to-ceiling windows. The kitchen island is already cleared for curling irons and hot tools.

“She’s not even ready yet,” Bucky says, trying to track where you went.

Leah turns, pulling a compact from her purse and flipping it open. “She won’t need to be. We’ve got wardrobe, glam, full team en route. Hair in thirty, face in forty-five. Out the door in ninety.”

Bucky frowns. “She just woke up.”

“And?” Brett says, already texting again.

“She hasn’t eaten. She—” Bucky stops, then says it quieter, rougher, “She made breakfast for us.”

That makes Leah laugh. “Oh God, was that what that was?”

“She needs—”

“What she needs is to get out the door in full glam and pretend she wasn’t almost murdered again,” Brett snaps. “We’ve got donors expecting a statement. Sponsors asking for visibility. You want to be helpful? Stay out of the way.”

Bucky looks at both of them and all he sees are people who profit from your pain. You’re not a person to them, you’re a product. He turns before he says something he’ll regret.

Bucky wants to check on you, he wants to climb up those stairs so badly. God, he wants to, wants to knock gently on your door and ask if you’re okay. Not as your hired help, not as the guy who keeps things from getting too close.

Just as Bucky, as the guy who got to see you, the real you over the last few days but he doesn’t.

Instead, he walks out to the porch, still hearing the chaos inside the team barking orders, stylists setting up, the fucking sound of a steamer heating up in the kitchen like that’s more important than the fact that you haven’t even had a bite of the breakfast you made.

He takes out his phone and calls the only person who knows how to translate the weight he’s carrying.

“Hey,” Steve answers. “You alright?”

“No,” Bucky says.

It’s quiet on the other end for a moment, like Steve’s bracing. “Talk to me Buck.”

Bucky runs a hand down his face, presses his thumb against the corner of his eye like it might keep the ache there from settling in too deep.

“They got him,” he says. “Ellis, caught him last night outside that stuoid event, he had addresses, faked credentials, hotel floor plans. Stuff not even public.”

“Shit,” Steve mutters.

“He’s been watching her. Following her, probably inside her house at some point and no one even noticed. She told me he used to write her letters when she was sixteen. Said he saw her sleep. Said she looked like an angel.”

Bucky’s throat tightens.

“She’s lived her whole life being owned by people. By this industry. By her fear. Every room she walks into, someone’s already decided who she has to be. She’s surrounded by a team who talks over her. Who hands her protein shakes like they’re medicine. Who tells her what to wear and when to smile and what parts of her body she’s allowed to hate.”

He pauses, hand curling around the edge of the porch railing.

“She made me breakfast this morning. Got up before the sun. She sliced strawberries like she thought it would matter.”

Steve doesn’t say anything. He knows better than to interrupt.

“And when they came in, her team, they stormed in, started barking orders before she’d even had a chance to exist in the morning. They told her she didn’t need to eat. That she had press to do. That she had a role to play andI watched her disappear in front of me, Steve. I watched her vanish.”

There was a small moment of silence, Bucky’s voice softer, “She’s not who I thought she was.”

Bucky exhales, long and shaky, then his voice breaks a little when he continues. “She’s… funny. Quiet in the morning. Hums when she makes toast. She’s even more beautiful without the make up, and glamour and when she talks about the kind of life she wanted, just a garden and a messy kitchen and wind chimes, my chest, Steve it aches.”

He swallows hard.

“Because she doesn’t think she deserves it. She thinks the world has already decided what she’s supposed to be. She calls herself a product…a performance. But when she plays the piano, Steve…” he stops, voice catching, “it’s like hearing something alive for the first time.”

Steve’s voice comes, low and gentle. “You care about her.”

“I didn’t want to,” Bucky says. “But yeah, I do and I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do now, because I’m watching her put the mask back on. She went from crying on my shoulder to being someone I can’t reach again.”

“She’s protecting herself,” Steve says. “You gotta see that.”

“I do, that’s what makes it worse.”

Steve speaks again, carefully. “Bucky… if she feels safe with you, really safe, she’ll come back. Let her protect herself for now. But don’t let her forget she has another choice.”

Bucky nods, even though Steve can’t see it.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Yeah, okay.”

He ends the call, puts the phone in his pocket, stares out into the quiet for a long time. He’s not sure if he knows how to live with it, if he can’t protect the version of you the world never bothered to notice.

---

Steve lets out a long sigh as he hangs up the phone. He leans back in the chair at the long glass conference table, pinching the bridge of his nose, the way he does when something gets under his skin.

Sam walks in holding two coffees, casual in joggers and a hoodie. “What’s up, Cap?” he asks, handing Steve a cup before dropping into the seat across from him.

Steve’s quiet for a second. Just shaking his head like he’s still trying to wrap his mind around the call. “Bucky called.”

“Oh?” Sam sips. “Everything okay?”

Steve exhales again. “He’s rattled, says they caught the stalker this morning. Ellis.”

Sam’s brows raise. “Damn. That’s good, right?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, slowly. “But… it’s not just that.”

Sam raises an eyebrow.

Steve looks up at him, steady. “He talked about her.”

Sam pauses. “Her her?”

Steve nods. “He said she made him breakfast. Said she plays piano barefoot and hums while she makes toast. That she hasn’t worn makeup around him in days.” He pauses. “Said she looks sad even when she smiles. And that when she talks about what she wants… it hurts.”

Sam grins into his coffee. “He likes her.”

Steve gives him a look.

“No,” Sam says, holding up a hand, “like likes her.”

“He cares about her,” Steve says quietly. “More than I think he expected.”

Sam leans back, a slow smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Good. I haven’t seen him care about someone in, well, ever.”

Before Steve can respond, the doors slide open and Tony walks in mid-sentence with himself, fiddling with a StarkPad. “I swear if Rhodey sends me one more email with the subject line ‘just checking in,’ I’m—”

He stops, glancing between them. “Why do you both look like someone died?”

“Bucky called,” Steve says.

Tony raises an eyebrow. “Is he still brooding around the movie stars mansion?”

“He said some things,” Steve answers. “About her.”

Tony’s mouth pulls into a small, knowing smile.

“No,” he says. “Not surprised. They’re the same side of a coin.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

Tony shrugs, but there’s something in the way he does it like he’s downplaying too much. “C’mon,” he says. “Bucky’s all steel and ghosts and guilt. She’s satin and smiles and sadness. But inside?” He taps his temple. “They’re both haunted. Both performing. Just trying to survive in a world that used them up and kept asking for more.”

Steve shifts in his seat. “How would you know that?”

Tony sips his coffee, too casual.

“Do you know her?” Steve asks again, firmer this time.

Tony meets his eyes. “I knew her father. Worked with mine. That’s all.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Tony holds the stare for a beat too long before finally answering.

“I know what it’s like to be a product of something you didn’t ask for. I know what it’s like to lose control of the narrative. So… yeah. Maybe I see it in her. Maybe I’ve seen it before.”

Sam looks between them. “So you’re saying she’s more like Buck than anyone else?”

Tony nods, quiet again. “I’m saying he might be the first person in her life who doesn’t want anything from her.”

Steve furrows his brow. “Her father worked with Howard?”

“Yeah,” Tony says, walking over to pour himself a cup of coffee. “Back in the day, scientist. Biochemical and neural interface research. Smart guy. A little twitchy. Always wore vests.”

“Like lab vests?” Sam asks.

Tony smirks. “Like bulletproof vests.”

That makes Steve straighten. “What kind of work were they doing?”

Tony glances at them both. “Classified.”

Sam sighs. “Come on.”

Tony looks at Steve. “You remember how many times people tried to recreate the serum after you?”

Steve nods, slowly. “You think it was that?”

Tony shrugs, leans against the counter. “I can’t prove it. But that’s the buzz I always heard. Quiet lab work, off the books. Lotta military interest. Howard kept it off the public radar. If it was about the serum, it was buried deep.”

Sam frowns. “What happened to him?”

Tony’s face darkens for a moment. “File says ‘deceased.’ No cause of death. No investigation. Just… gone.”

Steve looks down. “And she was how old?”

“Sixteen, maybe seventeen,” Tony says. “They emancipated her within weeks. Pretty much immediately after the funeral, which—” he glances between them, “there wasn’t one.”

Sam whistles under his breath.

“And then her team took over,” Tony finishes. “Press started building her up. Face of the future, Hollywood’s miracle girl. You know the rest.”

Steve leans back in his chair, jaw set. “No one ever asked questions?”

Tony lifts a brow. “When the world wants to sell a star, it doesn’t care where the kid came from. They just needed her to be pretty, quiet, and compliant and she played the part.”

Sam rubs his jaw. “No wonder Buck’s stuck.”

Steve nods slowly. “Yeah.”

---

You’re halfway through a late-day shoot in your living room. The lighting crew is moving softboxes across the marble floor while a makeup artist powders your cheekbones between takes, and someone’s telling you to “give them glass, not warmth” whatever the hell that means.

You’re tired. Not soul-tired, not yet… just worn. You’ve been in this same room for hours, modeling outfits you didn’t pick, smiling for a lens that doesn’t know the difference between a real expression and a pretty one.

You’ve got one heel kicked off under the coffee table. Your hair is perfect. You haven’t eaten since that stupid green juice and then the door bursts open.

Your assistant stumbles in like she’s running from something, breathless, gripping a heavy ivory envelope with trembling fingers.

“It just came.”

You blink. “What just came?”

She hands you the envelope like it might explode. “They couriered it. No one gets these.”

You take it, slide your thumb under the seal, and open it slowly, half-dreading some new obligation.

You read it once, then again. Your press team all but explodes around you. “They invited her to their tower, do you understand what this does for us?”

“This is next-level exclusive.”

“Q2 branding could double if we leverage this right—”

You tune them out. You’re still staring at the invitation.

Your name, printed in silver ink. A formal invitation from Stark Industries to a private event at Avengers Tower. No cameras, no press, no red carpet. Just the inner circle.

You run your finger along the edge of the paper like it might tell you why this feels different.

Across the room, Bucky is leaning against the wall, arms folded, jaw tight. He’s been watching you all day, the same way he always does now. Not like security, like he’s studying you.

He speaks over the noise, his voice calm, quiet meant just for you. “What’s got them all worked up?”

You walk toward him, still holding the envelope. “They invited me to Avengers tower, you're home."

He raises an eyebrow, taking the envelope when you hold it out. He scans it quickly, his eyes darting across the text like he’s reading a threat or maybe a puzzle.

He lifts his gaze. “Are you gonna go?”

You shrug. “Of course.” A pause. “I want to meet your friends.”

There’s something in the way you say it, not casual, not for show. You mean it. You’ve been building this quiet thing with him all week, and now you want to see the world he comes from, a real one. Not the world with red carpets, his world.

He hesitates, his fingers flex slightly around the envelope.

“Are you coming with me?” you ask, gaze steady.

He doesn’t answer right away. “As your bodyguard?”

You smile, real this time. Soft around the edges. “No, as my date?"

His chest tightens. You don’t see it, but he feels it. A stutter-beat under his ribs.

You turn before he can answer. Just like that, pivoting back toward the set, the lights, the camera waiting to eat you alive again. “Think about it,” you call over your shoulder.

Then you’re gone, humming under your breath again, barefoot now, holding the invitation like it doesn’t weigh anything. Like you didn’t just drop a grenade in the middle of his day.

Bucky stays frozen.

He watches the lighting crew adjust your hair. Watches your team scramble over themselves to draft a statement in case photos leak. Watches your smile flash for the camera, just like always.

But all he can hear is the way you said, I want to meet your friends. All he can feel is the way the word date landed in his chest. Because now he’s not thinking about your stalker or the shoot or holding that stupid envelope in his hand.

He’s thinking about your laugh. Your humming. Your bare feet on cold floors and the way his heart hasn’t beaten steady since Tuesday.

That night, the house is too quiet. Not peaceful quiet. Not the kind that settles you, the kind that presses.

Bucky stands in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, half-finished cup of coffee cooling in his hand. He hasn’t touched it in ten minutes. Doesn’t even remember pouring it.

The only sound is the faint ticking of the old wall clock above the stove. Somewhere in the house, someone from your team is packing up wardrobe racks. Someone else is wheeling out lights. But here, in the kitchen, it’s just him and his spiraling thoughts.

Why would you ask him? Why would you ask him to be your date? Him? You could have anyone, ask anyone.

He’s not the guy who gets invited to towers and black-tie things. He doesn’t wear suits well. He doesn’t schmooze. He barely speaks at all some days. He never even shows up for the galas or parties even though they are held where he lives.

You, on the other hand, you move through the world like you were made for it. A camera clicks and you breathe elegance. You throw your head back when you laugh like it was choreographed and still… you asked him.

No security detail. No “you’ll be close anyway.” You asked him to go as your date and that four letter word, it feels too big, too good.

You’re a star. A world built around flashbulbs and first-name fame and he’s just a soldier trying to forget what it felt like to be a weapon. Still trying to remember how to be human.

He stares down into the dark surface of his coffee and thinks, you shouldn’t want me.

He doesn’t hear you come in. Just senses you, soft footfalls, no heels, tired socks on polished hardwood.

You move past him toward the sink, the hem of your hoodie brushing your thighs. It’s yours this time, not borrowed. Your hair’s pulled up in a loose knot, mascara smudged slightly under one eye. You look worn in the way that means you’ve finally stopped performing for the day.

You fill your water glass without looking at him.

The soft hum of the faucet fills the silence, steady and familiar. Your back is to him, shoulders slouched just enough to say you’ve stopped performing, even if you haven’t fully let go. Not yet.

He watches the way you move, it's quiet and natural. The kind of stillness that doesn’t beg to be noticed but always is. The kind that tells him you’re finally not bracing for something. Your shoulders don’t tense when you hear him step closer. Not like they did the first day.

He hears himself speak before he’s fully ready. “I’ll go… with you.” His voice is quieter than usual. Less sure. Like he’s afraid the words might float back into his throat if you turn around too fast.

You freeze, hand still on the faucet, water still running. The moment hangs there for a breath, then another. You turn— low, deliberate, like you’re giving him time to take it back if he wants to.

But he doesn’t. Your eyes lock onto his, wide and searching.

“You will?” you ask, voice light but careful. Like you don’t want to tip whatever balance has just formed.

He nods once. “Yeah.”

Just one word. But it carries more than most people say in an entire speech. You stare at him for a second.

He watches it happen, your face changes slowly. That kind of expression that can’t be faked, not even if you tried. Your smile breaks through like sunlight, hesitant at first, like it’s checking to see if it’s allowed but then it settles fully, soft and bright and open.

Not for the cameras, not for your team. Just for him. Bucky’s breath catches a little. Because that smile? That one? It reminds him of the stars. The ones he used to stare at on the long walks home after curfew. The ones that stayed bright no matter how dark everything else got.

You laugh, barely a sound, just the smallest exhale with a grin in it. “I wasn’t sure you’d say yes.”

“I didn’t think I’d be someone you’d ever want to ask,” he admits, voice rough around the edges.

Your smile falters for a second not because it’s gone, but because something about that sentence hits. “You’re the only one I would’ve asked.”

It knocks the air right out of his lungs. Neither of you says anything after that.

The water in your glass is full now, long past full, but you don’t notice until it drips over your fingers and hits the floor with a soft tap.

You blink down at it, then smile again, smaller this time, almost shy. You turn the faucet off, shake the water from your hand, and start toward the stairs.

But halfway there, you stop and glance back at him.

“Don’t be late,” you say, voice quiet but warm.

He’s left in the kitchen, heart thudding against his ribs like it doesn’t know how to beat slow anymore.

-----

It’s late when Bucky finally shows up at the compound. The lights are dim in the common area, but Steve and Sam are still up, Steve nursing a cup of tea on the couch, Sam sprawled across a chair with his phone, feet kicked up like he owns the place.

Bucky drops his overnight bag by the wall with a grunt.

Sam barely looks up. “What, you get lost?”

“Traffic,” Bucky mutters.

Steve squints at him. “You’re flushed.”

“I’m not flushed.”

“You’re flushed,” Sam echoes.

Bucky rolls his eyes, crossing to the counter for a bottle of water.

“I thought you were staying at her place till Sunday?” Steve asks.

“Had to come back,” Bucky says casually, twisting the cap. “Tony invited her to that party tomorrow.”

Steve sits up straighter. “He did?”

Bucky nods once, sipping. “Whole team lost their damn minds.”

He hesitates, for a moment. Steve and Sam both notice.

They lock onto him like bloodhounds. Sam leans forward slowly. “And?”

Bucky shrugs, too casual. Way too casual for how it makes him truly feel. “She asked me to go with her.”

Sam bolts upright like he got shocked. “No fucking way.”

He looks like Christmas came early. Actually, like it broke through the window.

Bucky winces as Sam jumps to his feet. “You’re her date? Her date-date?! Like plus-one, wear-a-suit, maybe-dance-if-there’s-music date?”

“Calm down,” Bucky mutters.

“I will not!” Sam’s practically vibrating. “I get to meet her. I get to breathe the same air as her. I’ve seen every movie, even the one with the horse!”

Steve is laughing now, shaking his head.

“She asked you?” he says.

Bucky shrugs again, trying hard not to smile and he fails.

Steve grins wider. “Get up.”

Bucky frowns. “Why?”

“We’re raiding your closet,” Steve says. “Party’s tomorrow. We’re not letting you embarrass her.”

“Embarrass her?” Bucky echoes, affronted.

Sam’s already halfway to the hallway. “Oh, I know you own that funeral jacket you wear every time we go out, don’t even try it.”

Steve claps him on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

The floor is littered with jacket options, half-buttoned shirts, and three separate pairs of boots.

Bucky is standing in front of the mirror, arms crossed, wearing his good jacket, the one he doesn’t wear because it makes him feel like he’s trying too hard. His sleeves are rolled just enough. So he doesn’t look like a bodyguard tomorrow night. He looks like a man trying not to hope for too much.

“You’re wearing the good jacket,” Sam says, eyeing him.

“You never wear the good jacket,” Steve adds, leaning against the doorframe.

Bucky shifts uncomfortably. “It’s just a party.”

“A party,” Sam echoes, eyes twinkling, “with her.”

Bucky doesn’t answer, not right away.

He looks at himself in the mirror. At the way his face looks less harsh when he’s not frowning. At the way his shoulders aren’t so tight tonight.

“She’s not what I made her out to be,” he says quietly. “ Just so you both know, It was all a front.”

Steve looks at him, steady. “Yeah, we know.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to.

Because it’s all over his face, Sam just grins and says, “He’s so in trouble.”

-----

Bucky waits in the hall down the stairs from your bedroom, leaned casually against the wall like it’s just another day. He checks his watch once, twice. Runs a hand through his hair. He tries not to think too hard about what you might look like when you step out.

He hears voices downstairs, They’re not loud, not urgent but sharp.

“…she said she’d do that nude scene—”

He frowns, body stilling.

“She agreed to it?”

“Only on the condition that he go with her as her date tonight after we objected.”

His jaw tightens.

“She really played that one well.”

“She always does. That’s why she’s where she is.”

“She really wanted to go with him.”

He doesn’t catch every word, just those.

But it’s enough, enough to make something cold bloom in his chest. He’s not angry. Not exactly. He doesn’t even know what he feels just that it hits harder than he expected. Like someone just knocked the wind out of something he didn’t realize he’d been building.

Then the door at the top of the stairs creaks open and everything else drops, you step out slowly, one hand on the banister.

The overhead light hits the fabric of your dress and it glides across your figure like liquid. Black satin, off-shoulder. Cinched perfectly at the waist. Classic, timeless. Your hair’s swept back into soft waves. Your lips are a perfect, understated red. Diamond studs, no necklace. You don’t need one.

You look like you stepped out of one of Bucky’s memories from a reel that played in sepia tone, the kind he saw on leave, when the war felt far away and beauty felt possible.

He forgets how to breathe, under his breath, meant only for you “You…” You stop on the top step. He meets your eyes. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

Your lips part, not in shock, but like you’re about to say something, something real but your team swoops in like a wave, rushing around you.

“Okay, here’s what you’re saying tonight—”

“If anyone asks about the film, keep it vague—”

“No direct quotes unless we wrote them—”

“Give me your phone, you can have it back before the party.”

“You need to take photos for socials.”

You don’t flinch, you hand it over without hesitation, because you’ve done it a hundred times, it’s like a reflex.

That’s what hits Bucky hardest, not the dress, not the cameras, not the reveal. But the way you hand over your freedom like it’s just part of the outfit.

Still, right before you’re ushered out the front door, you glance back at him. Just once before you speak slowly, “You look beautiful too Bucky Barnes.”

The car ride over is quiet. But not the tense kind of quiet. Just a mutual, steady kind.

You scroll through your phone, half-listening to the muffled chaos of your team barking orders in the seats behind you. Your body is still, perfectly poised, but your thumb moves across the screen like you’re somewhere else entirely.

Bucky sits beside you, elbow resting against the door, tie slightly loose. He doesn’t say much but he doesn’t have to.

Halfway to the Tower, he pulls out his phone.

Bucky: Don’t let her team into the party. Names are Brett, Leah, Gina.

A few seconds pass.

Steve: Got it.

You glance over at him once, he pockets the phone without comment.

The car slows as it approaches the private entrance to the Tower. Security lights sweep across the windows before the gate lifts. The building looms above, sleek and cold from the outside, its glass glinting under the night sky.

You’re quietly staring out at the lights, legs crossed, hands resting in your lap. Your dress shifts as the car stops, the fabric pooling slightly at your ankles.

You don’t move right away, you glance toward Bucky. “So this is where you live?” you ask softly.

He nods, looking out the window with you. “This is where I live.”

You tilt your head. “Hmm, only a little bigger than my place.” You joke.

That makes him laugh, it's low and warm in his chest, like you caught him off guard in the best way.

“It’s Stark’s,” he says. “We all just stay here.”

The driver gets out, walking around to open the door, but Bucky beats him to it. He steps out first, straightening his jacket, and then leans down to offer you a hand.

You take it. His metal fingers wrap around yours, cool at first, but steady. He helps you out gently, careful of your dress. You rise with practiced grace, heels clicking softly on the stone.

He goes to let go, like he always does. But you don’t let him. Your fingers tighten around his, just enough to say not yet. He doesn’t pull away.

He looks down at your hand in his, then up at you. You’re watching the entrance, chin high, eyes calm but he sees the faintest tension in your jaw, so he holds on.

You walk together, hand in hand, toward the entrance past the glowing glass, the red velvet ropes, the security guards who already know your names.

You lean in just slightly, voice low. “Don’t let go, okay?”

His grip tightens. “I won’t.”

Inside, the marble foyer glows under warm golden lights. Everything sleek, everything Stark.

You and Bucky walk hand-in-hand toward the elevator, calm, in sync, effortless. People look, of course they do. But no one says anything.

You feel it the way the world shifts when you enter a room with him. Not just because of who you are. But because of who he is to you right now.

Your team isn’t so lucky.

“Y/N!”

Brett’s voice echoes through the glass and stone.

You glance back just in time to see all three of them, Brett, Leah, and Gina stopped firmly at the front door.

“We just need to confirm authorization—” Someone says.

Then the security guard doesn’t flinch. “Sorry. You’re not on the list.”

“What? Are you serious? We’re her team!”

“Exactly,” the guard says. “She’s inside. You’re not.”

You glance up at Bucky. He’s already looking at you, smiling small, smug, and satisfied. You smile back because you’re free even if it's just for a night.

Your fingers tighten around his metal hand. The one that he thought would scare you, that should scare you. But you don’t even think about it.

“Lead the way, Sarge,” you whisper.

The elevator doors opened onto the 33rd floor, and for the first time in weeks, you weren’t met with flashing cameras or screaming fans. No paparazzi pressed behind barricades, no handlers whispering cues in your ear.

Just warmth.

The party was already underway, not loud or flashy, but intimate in the way only real people make a space feel. Low jazz drifted through the air, the soft clink of glasses echoing gently against polished marble floors. Laughter, shoulder squeezes, familiarity.

Bucky walked slightly in front of you, your hand still in his not as security, not as a shield, but as something closer to a tether. You felt it. The way his hand adjusted to yours. Like he didn’t want to let go either.

“Well, well, well.” Tony Stark, of course, found you first. Drink in hand, half-smile already forming.

He stepped forward with that signature Stark ease, the kind that made everyone either lean in or want to slap him.

“Look who it is,” he said. “Good to see you again, Y/N.”

You smiled, not for show.. Small, but present. “You too, Tony.”

Bucky blinked, caught off guard. His brow creased slightly as he looked between the two of you.

“You know him?” he asked.

You nodded, still smiling, joking mostly. “Popular people have to stick together, right?”

Tony barked a laugh. “God, I love her. Go have a drink. Say it’s on me, even though it's an open bar, just sounds more generous that way.”

You chuckled as Tony wandered off into a sea of board members and Avengers alumni.

Bucky’s hand was still in yours as you made your way toward the bar.

He finally asked, quieter now, more curious than anything, “How do you know Stark?”

“My dad worked with Howard,” you said, eyes scanning the room. “I used to run around their estate when I was a kid. Tony was older, not around much.”

Bucky stopped slightly. Stilled, at the name. Howard. The weight of it, the war, the serum and everything that followed. He looked at you carefully now. Like a missing piece just shifted into place.

“What did your dad do?” he asked.

You shrugged, sipping your drink. “Scientist, biochem. I guess kind of a genius. He and Howard were obsessed with whatever they were doing, never saw him much, it was all classified”

He didn’t say anything, but he could feel the tension pulling tight inside his chest.

You glanced at him, catching it.

“He disappeared when I was seventeen,” you said. “One day he just didn’t come home. Papers said it was an accident. There was no body, no funeral.”

Bucky’s jaw clenched.

You continued like you were reading off a grocery list, detached and well-practiced. “My mom… I never met her. Gave birth, didn’t want the job and left.” It wasn’t bitter, it wasn’t broken, it was just empty.

Bucky didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything at all. You took another sip, then looked up at him over the rim of your glass. Your lipstick left the faintest smudge.

“Take me to Steve,” you said softly. “I wanna meet your best friend.”

The shower is warm. You step in first, tug him in behind you. When you draw the curtain back, it is like you both are secluded in your own personal world, where the flourescent light is dappled into candlestrength and everything is warm and wet and quiet as the womb. It is a birth in more ways than that, a rebirth, a cleansing.

Simon has been utterly silent so far, silent as he stowed his gear in the furthest closet from the bedroom, silent as you kissed the corner of his jaw, silent as you work a lather in your hands and drag lines of foam across his chest, ringing around each pectoral. You don't hold it against him. He needs this first shower to swipe the blood from his hands and the battlefield from his mind.

After this, you will make dinner and he will eat it with vigor. Maybe you'll put on an old movie, maybe then he'll return your kisses and run a large hand between the warmth in your thighs.

There were nights when he lay awake staring at the ceiling of whatever temporary barracks or safe house they were shoved into, thinking about you walking through town, thinking about your hair, the shape of your hands, the way you’d laugh at something on your phone, and he’d feel this horrible tightness in his chest because he wasn’t there to keep people away from you.

He knew it was irrational, knew you weren’t going anywhere, but the fear still chewed at him. You were the only good thing he had, and he was terrified of what months of silence and absence might do. The others could think he was paranoid or pathetic, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to get home before his own head made him lose it completely.

You weren’t doing much better.

If anything, you were worse, because you weren’t the one keeping busy with missions or drills or keeping your hands occupied. You were at home, in the space he left behind, surrounded by him and not him at the same time.

His shirts were in your drawers, his mask shoved into the closet, his boots by the door where he’d last kicked them off, and every single piece of it reminded you that he was gone.

It drove you insane, the way you’d find yourself checking your phone every ten minutes even though you knew there wouldn’t be a message, the way you couldn’t stand going out because you felt like people were looking at you differently, like they could tell you were alone now and that made you fair game.

You tried to distract yourself, you really did. Friends invited you out, you nodded along to their plans, but most of the time you found some excuse not to go.

Because every time you thought about sitting at a bar or a café without Simon there, you just pictured some guy trying to chat you up, and the thought made you so angry that you couldn’t even bring yourself to step outside. The idea of someone even thinking they had a chance with you while he was gone made your blood boil.

Sometimes you’d pace the apartment muttering about how if anyone so much as looked at you wrong, you’d tell Simon the second he got back and let him deal with it, because that’s what he was good at, wasn’t he? Making people back off. Making people understand what was his.

And god, you missed him. Not just in the way people normally miss someone, but in this obsessive, gnawing way that made you feel like you were unraveling.

You’d sleep with his shirt balled up against your face, you’d check the locks on the door three times at night like if you made sure enough times then no one could come in and try to take what was his.

Sometimes you’d sit on the couch with his mask in your lap, just staring at it and whispering things you’d never admit to out loud, things about how you belonged to him and he belonged to you and you didn’t care if it sounded crazy. Because if Simon thought about you half as much as you thought about him, then maybe you weren’t crazy—you were just in love.

The door had barely shut before it turned into a fight. Not a normal fight, just the two of you going at each other because there was too much inside that had nowhere to go.

Simon had his hands locked on your waist, pulling you close like he was afraid you’d vanish if he loosened his grip, and you had your fists bunched in his jacket, shoving at him hard enough to make his back hit the wall with a thud.

You were kissing him, but it wasn’t kissing the way it was supposed to be—it was your teeth knocking into his, it was anger spilling out between gasps, it was the sound of months of wanting and fearing and burning.

“Tell me,” he muttered against your mouth. “Tell me no one touched you while I was gone.” His hand slid up to your throat, not tight but firm, thumb digging into the side of your neck, forcing your head back just enough that you had to look up at him. His eyes were wild, bloodshot, and his mask still pushed up onto his forehead.

You laughed breathlessly, and a little cruel. “Touched me? You think I’d let anyone lay a hand on me? I’d break their fucking fingers before I let them.”

His jaw tightened, his nose brushing yours as he growled, “Don’t lie to me. You’re too fucking perfect, people must’ve tried. They must’ve looked at you.”

“Of course they looked,” you snapped, shoving him harder. “They looked, Simon, and I hated every second of it. You weren’t here, and I wanted to tear their eyes out just for staring. You don’t get to ask me that like I don’t know what you were doing over there—”

“What I was doing?” he cut you off, voice rising. “I was losing my mind out there, thinking of you in this flat, thinking of other men walking past you on the street. D’you think I even looked at anyone? I couldn’t fucking breathe without wondering if you’d still be mine when I got back.”

That stopped you for half a second. His voice broke on the word mine, and the way he looked at you, made your chest ache and burn all at once.

You wanted to tell him you were his, always his, but instead what came out was ugly and raw: “You think I’m the kind of woman who waits around wondering if her man’s got some other girl in his bed? No, Simon. I’m the one who keeps the knife under her pillow and the doors locked, I’m the one who tells herself every night you’re not allowed to fucking leave me. You belong to me, and I’ll kill anyone who forgets it, including you.”

He made a low sound, somewhere between a growl and a moan, and then his mouth was on yours again, rougher this time, his teeth catching your bottom lip hard enough that you tasted blood. You gasped into him, biting back just as viciously, both of you fighting for control of a kiss.

Your back hit the wall this time, his weight pressing into you, one of his thighs forcing its way between yours. “Say it,” he demanded, breath hot against your ear. “Say you’re mine. Say you never let anyone near you.”

“Yours,” you hissed, nails digging into his shoulders through his jacket. “Always yours. But you say it too. Say you didn’t so much as look at anyone else.”

“Didn’t touch. Didn’t even look. I couldn’t. All I fuckin’ saw was you,” he rasped, forehead pressing hard against yours. His hand slid up under your shirt, dragging it so roughly it nearly tore. “D’you know what you’ve done to me? Months away, nothing but your face in my head, your voice. I’m losing it, love. I’m not right without you.”

You shoved his jacket off his shoulders, nails catching on the fabric. “Good. Go crazy. I want you that way. I don’t want normal, and I don’t want calm. I want you obsessed with me, just like I’m obsessed with you.” Your voice cracked as you said it, not from sadness but from how much truth was behind it. You yanked his dog tags hard enough that his head jerked forward. “Now prove it.”

His hand caught your jaw, tilting your head back, and his mouth was on your throat, biting hard enough to bruise, like he was marking you in the only way he knew how. You moaned, dragging him closer, trying to climb him where he stood. You weren't really kissing anymore; it was teeth and tongues and hands everywhere, frantic and rough and half out of control.

“Bedroom,” you gasped, already stumbling as you tried to pull him with you. “Now, Simon. I swear if you waste another second—”

“Think you’re givin’ the orders?” he snarled, but he still let you drag him, still let you tear at the buckles and straps of his gear like you were trying to peel him out of it before he could vanish again. “Christ, woman, you’re out of your fuckin’ mind.”

“So are you,” you shot back, shoving him down onto the edge of the bed the second you got him there. “That’s why it works.”

And then you were straddling him, tearing at his shirt, his hands gripping your thighs so hard it was going to leave bruises, both of you looking at each other like you’d been starving for months and finally had a chance to eat. The argument wasn’t over, not really, but it had turned into something you were both going to settle with your bodies instead of words.

------------------------------------------------

finally, one, two, three full breaths passed.

when his lips gentled with uncertainty against yours, reality slammed back into you with the full force of a thirty-foot tall wave breaking against shore. any rational thought you'd ever had disintegrated into tiny grains of sand, before washing away into the ocean of simon riley.

desperately, your mouth chased his—lips parting around the warmth of his, fingers curling into the cotton of his long-sleeved shirt to pull him even closer.

he pressed your back flat to the dark walls of the pub's bathroom hallway, a groan vibrating through him when your tongue shyly explored his in belated response.

his touch, his low noises, his corded muscles rippling under your fingertips—it all blanked your mind more effectively than any form of torture ever could.

nothing remained except this. except him—the knock of his nose against yours, born from pure urgency; the warmth of his palm cradling the back of your skull while long fingers threaded through the silk of your hair.

when the hand pressing into the side of your waist drifted, lower and lower until it splayed against the curve of your rear, your nerves fried in an explosion of colour.

and when those calloused fingers squeezed the malleable flesh, a whimper pulled your spine taunter than a drawn bowstring. heat bloomed across your cheeks at the broken sound that had slipped free from you.

simon cussed then, voice rough and low as he dragged himself back from you. just a little; just enough to breathe.

just enough for your unsteady gaze to lift and catch sight of the faint lipstick stains painting his swollen mouth.

just enough for the embers in your stomach to burn stronger—red-hot and sizzling.

"m'sorry luv. bloke was lookin' at y'wrong and i..." he cleared his throat, rough and unpracticed, as a subtly shaking hand tucked a wisp of hair behind your ear. his heart tugged at the subconscious way you leaned into his palm.

"m'sorry swee'heart. i shouldn't 've grabbed you like tha’." he rasped once more, brows drawing as if in pain.

your slim fingers curled around the tender skin of his wrist, folding above precise lines of ink as you shook your head, almost fervently.

"please don't apologize, si," you croaked in reassurance. "i've… god, i’ve wanted you for so long." the confession slipped free before you could even attempt to swallow it back.

it sent bolts of liquid lightning down simon’s spine. the whiskey of his eyes clouding over so fast it sent a tremble of weakness through your knees. his mouth hunted down the sweetness of yours once more, slotting together so easily it felt like breathing.