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BUCKY BARNES

× RESIDUAL NERVES ¦ Bucky meets that new member everyone keeps talking about and praising... and is the moment his eyes land on her when he remembers those words his mom used to tell him. | here | 811 words

× I ALMOST DO ¦ Bucky loves his best friend. Can't see his life without her. Truth is, he's too scared to share certain feelings until it's too late. | here | 1.3 k words Part 1

× HALFWAY ¦ He would wait for her to heal, to get better. That's what love does and after all, he's been in love with her for a long time, he could wait more. | here | 1.3 k words Part 2

× SUITS ¦ She loves his best friend in suits and with his new congressman side job, it's harder to hide her thoughts. It's such a good thing Bucky is an idiot who's too blind and just thinks it's friendly banter. | here | 1.1 k words

× NOT ENOUGH RIGHT NOW ¦ Bucky has been dating his lovely girlfriend for five months already and even then, he's still too scared to touch her the way he wants because, what if he hurts her? | here | 973 words

× RUIN THE FRIENDSHIP ¦ Such a cliché moment. They both say it's way to release the stress after missions but then it was almost every night. Both trying too hide their feelings for a long time until it's hard. | here | 890 words

× I JUST WANT YOU ¦ There's nothing more that Bucky Barnes loves after making love to his girlfriend... except after care. He loves how soft, secured and loved he feels with her. He always gotta let her know. | here | 1.1 k words

× GOT THE WHOLE BLOCK LOOKING LIKE YOU ¦ Bucky Barnes never thought he would have normalcy in his life after Hydra. Then, he never thought he would fall in love. And now, he wants everything with her, including many kids. It's just he's shy to share his thoughts. | here | 1.5 k words

× RISK ¦ Bucky Barnes thinks his neighbor it's the prettiest woman he has ever seen, always a pleasure talking with her and because of that, they gotta stop talking. The last thing he wants is her getting hurt because of him. | here | 983 words

× GIGGLING INSIDE ¦ There's something everyone knows. Bucky Barnes can't stand her. It's not that he's rude but she's the only teammate he doesn't like interacting with. No one knows Bucky is a mess because of her. Always giggling inside like a teenage girl. | here | 1.8 k words

× ENDLESS FEBRUARY ¦ Bucky Barnes is finally having some peace in his life. He has a lovely girlfriend, share their world together... so why is that dreadful day from February 1945 still coming around to torment his mind? | here | 1.9 k words

× A LOT OF WORK ¦ He wasn't looking for her but somehow, Alpine was that match Bucky needed in his life (besides his girlfriend) to feel complete. | here | 1.4 k words

× EXCLUSIVE ¦ He can't imagine himself with anyone that isn't his girlfriend. Seems imposible. Bucky Barnes is just deeply in love with her. | here | 1.3 k words

× HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY, HONEY ¦ A soft day with a very in love Bucky Barnes. He wants to give it all the cliché things to his girlfriend. | here | 857 words

× SIDELINES ¦ Bucky rarely gets injured during missions until that day. He thought the injury was the worst thing ever until he founds out who's gonna be his replacement, "taking care" of his best girl. | here | 2.2 k words

× SAFE ¦ A simple question with his therapist makes Bucky Barnes realize who is his safe place. | here | 1.7 k words

× AS SLOW AS YOU NEED ¦ Despite all of the trauma, Bucky Barnes decides to see the good in things... especially with you. Not caring if you're a bit grumpy. | here | 3.6 k words

× WHEN YOU CALL AGAIN ¦ Friends don't kiss. Friends don't miss each other the whole day. Friends don't stay at 2 am talking. Friends don't make love... so why Bucky Barnes insisted on calling her that? | here | 860 words

× FORTY-SEVEN SECONDS ¦ Mission was supposed to be simple. She was going inside the building. Bucky was gonna be protecting her from another one. Bucky felt something was wrong. He should've know better. | here | 2 k words

× AND THE WORLD HAS SOMEHOW SHIFTED ¦ Days used to be gray for Bucky Barnes... until he sees the light in her. Now she's here shining in the starlight and it's like the sky is new and it's warm and real and bright. | here | 1.6 k words

× YOUR EYES WHISPERED, "HAVE WE MET?" ¦ Why is Bucky Barnes constantly dreaming about a woman? Were those scenarios real? Was that truly his past? Why is he feeling like something is missing in his life? | here | 1.7 k words

× RUN AWAY ¦ +18 ¦ Even in moments of happiness, Hydra finds a way to get inside Bucky's head. After an intense, vulnerable moment, some old fears resurface, making him question if he’s done something wrong. | here | 3.1 k words

× HOME ¦ In a half-unpacked apartment filled with boxes, stray knives, and swing music, Bucky and his girlfriend share a pizza on the floor, some kisses and discover that home isn't about the furniture. Between old habits, new beginnings, and a dance neither expected, they're figuring it out—one reluctant twirl at a time. | here | 1.7 k words

× MARCH 10TH ¦ No nightmare. No trigger. That's when it was obvious that Hydra didn't just steal Bucky's past. They tried to steal his birthday too. But this year? The clock hits midnight in her arms instead. | here | 3.5 k words

× MORE THAN WORDS ¦ She thought they were just cleaning out his apartment. Old photos, dusty boxes, memories Bucky never quite sorted through. Then she found a small wooden box and dozens of letters, all in his handwriting, all with your name on top. He never meant for you to read them. Too embarrassing. Too honest. But now? His apartment isn't the only thing getting thoroughly unpacked. | here | 2.6 k words

× HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MY LOVE ¦ Bucky Barnes doesn't do big speeches. He does quiet mornings, stolen afternoons, and handwritten proof that she's the best thing that's happened to him since he got his life back. Best birthday ever? Yeah. Definitely. | here | 2.2 k words

× I'M JUST TOO SOFT FOR ALL OF IT ¦ The world is loud. Missions, expectations, voices telling Bucky Barnes he should be more, do better, get fixed already. So he goes to the one place where the noise stops. A home that smells like her. A kitchen with a humming stove. Someone who doesn't ask what's wrong, just offers a mug and a choice: talk about it, or pretend the world doesn't exist for a while. | here | 2.9 k words

× WARM IT UP ¦ +18 ¦ The problem with being a man out of time wasn't the tech or the history. It was the quiet. And Bucky had been drowning in it. Seventy-four years without being touched. Then a cookout, a porch swing, and a woman who owns the calmest eyes he has ever seen asked the right question and changed everything. | here | 3.6 k words

× SELFISH ¦ She went back to 1943 for a mission. Forty minutes. In and out. Simple. Except she saw him... young, whole, before the train, before Hydra, before everything. He looked at her like she was a miracle. And she walked away. Leaving him. Because saving that Bucky would mean losing hers. Now she's home, drowning in guilt, confessing the worst thing she's ever done. | here | 3.7 k words

× ACTUALLY ROMANTIC ¦ +18 ¦ Three days in a mission that ran long, a shoulder that won't quit aching, and the kind of exhaustion that sleep alone can't fix. He comes home late and finds her still awake, still waiting, still wearing that sleep shirt he loves. What he needs isn't rest. Not yet. It's her. Slow, quiet, the kind of desperate that doesn't need words. Her. Only her. He always needs her. | here | 5 k words

× HOLD ON TO THE MEMORIES, THEY WILL HOLD ON TO YOU... AND I WILL HOLD ON TO YOU ¦ Bucky Barnes remembers too much about the Hydra days but no one warned him about which things he could forget. And new nightmares are there because he forgets things that happens with her and they're slipping through his fingers. He doesn't want to forget her. | here | 4.2 k words

× 'S TOO MUCH ¦ +18 ¦ There's a small detail between The Winter Soldier and Bucky Barnes. The first one was quiet and stealth was injected in his veins. The second one didn't know how vocal he could be until he had his girlfriend exploring him and his sounds are delicious as hell. | here | 329 words

× ONES AND ZEROS (AND YOU) ¦ +18 ¦ Bucky Barnes can't stand his phone, the way it makes him feel like a man left behind by time. But his girlfriend is patient. She always have been. So he learns. Just a little. Just enough. One night, alone, he figures out something small. Something stupid, probably. Just a picture. Just her face. Turns out, the hardest thing to learn isn't technology. It's letting someone see how much you love them. | here | 7.3 k words

× HONEY ¦ Bucky Barnes in a suit should be illegal. His girlfriend knows this. She also knows they don't want kids but every time he comes home wesring those suits, tailored perfection, her hormones are out of control. Bucky notices. He's got enhanced senses, way too much love for her and he's about to discover that traitorous biology is a two-way street. It's maybe in their cards anymore? | here | 3.8 k words

CLARK KENT

× YOU'RE OKAY. I'VE GOT YOU. ¦ Clark Kent is in love with her. So much sometimes it scares him there might be a time he hurts her. It's always such a good thing she's always there to show him her love. | here | 1.1 k words

Clark’s night had been a particular kind of hell. He didn't remember landing on your terrace.

One moment he was standing in the cratered ruin of what used to be a warehouse district on the outskirts of Metropolis, his hands still trembling from the echo of kryptonian fists meeting flesh, and the next he was here—boots silent on the weathered tile, the city sprawling beneath him like a circuit board of light and shadow.

The villain had called himself Pavor. A meta-human with the unsettling ability to weaponize fear, to reach into the deepest, most vulnerable parts of a person's mind and pull out their nightmares made manifest. Clark had faced worse. He'd faced world-enders and reality-benders, creatures from the Phantom Zone and gods from distant pantheons. But Pavor had done something that none of the others had managed.

He'd made Clark watch you die.

Not just once. A hundred times. A thousand. Each death more intimate and horrible than the last. A car accident on a rain-slicked street where Clark was too slow, too far away, his super-hearing catching your final breath across seven city blocks. A terminal illness that ate through your beautiful, laughing body while Clark held your hand and felt the life drain out of you, powerless to stop it because even he couldn't cure the incurable. An explosion in your apartment building that he arrived at two minutes too late, your favorite mug still warm on the kitchen counter, your scent still lingering in the hallway.

The worst one—the one that still had his hands shaking even now—was the simplest. You'd been walking home from the grocery store, a bag of oranges in your arms, and a man with a gun had wanted your wallet. In the vision, Clark had been standing right there. Right. There. And he'd still been too slow. The bullet had entered your chest before he could move, and you'd looked at him with such confusion, such betrayal, as if to say why didn't you save me? when you didn't even know he was there at all.

The villain was neutralized now. Sedated in a meta-human containment cell, his fear-dust swept up by biohazard teams. But the images lingered, burned into Clark's brain like afterimages from a nuclear blast.

He needed to see you.

The thought was urgent, desperate, clawing at his chest with something that felt dangerously close to panic. He needed to see your face, to hear your heartbeat, to feel you—warm and solid and alive—under his hands. The rational part of his mind, the part that had been doing this for almost two years, told him to go home first. Change out of the suit. Put on the glasses and the flannel shirt and the carefully constructed persona of Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter. That was the agreement, wasn't it? Not a formal one, not something you'd ever demanded, but something he'd built between you anyway. With you, he got to be just Clark. Not Superman. Not the symbol, the icon, the guy who caught planes and deflected asteroids. Just the man who burned his toast in the morning and left his socks on the bathroom floor and kissed the back of your neck while you were trying to make coffee.

But tonight, the thought of putting on that mask felt unbearable. Like another layer of separation between him and the thing he needed most.

So here he was. Boots on your terrace. The cape heavy on his shoulders, the House of El crest emblazoned across his chest. He'd never shown up like this before. Not once. You knew who he was—he'd told you, three months into the relationship, sitting on this very terrace with his heart in his throat and the words “I'm Superman” tasting like broken glass in his mouth—but you'd never seen him like this. The suit had always been something that happened somewhere else, in a different part of his life, the part he tried so hard to keep separate from the quiet sanctuary he'd found with you.

The sliding door was unlocked. It was always unlocked when he visited, a small act of faith that still made something in his chest ache. He could see you through the glass, curled on the couch with a book in your lap and a mug of tea steaming on the side table. You were wearing his university sweatshirt—the one he'd almost thrown away a dozen times because it was faded and threadbare, but you'd fished it out of the donation bag and claimed it as your own. Your hair was loose around your shoulders, still slightly damp from a shower, and you were absently chewing on your lower lip the way you did when you were concentrating.

His knees nearly buckled.

He'd watched you die tonight. He'd watched your eyes go dark and your heart stop and your blood pool on pavement, on tile, on the pristine white sheets of a hospital bed. He'd screamed your name in a dozen different nightmares, had reached for you a thousand times and come up empty. And here you were, reading one of your favorite books with your feet tucked under you, completely unaware that somewhere across the city, a so called God had been weeping over your corpse.

Clark slid the door open and you looked up immediately, a smile already forming on your lips—and then froze. Your eyes went wide, traveling from his face down the length of his body, taking in the suit and the cape and the way he was standing there like a man who'd just survived something he couldn't name.

“Clark?” Your voice was soft, uncertain, already tinged with concern. You set the book aside and rose from the couch, moving toward him slowly, carefully, the way you might approach a wounded animal. “Baby, what's wrong?”

He tried to speak. Tried to form words, to explain, to apologize for showing up like this without warning. But the sound that came out of his mouth was closer to a sob, raw and broken, and suddenly he was crossing the room in two strides and pulling you into his arms.

The contact nearly undid him.

You were warm. So impossibly, achingly warm, your body fitting against his like you'd been made to be there. Your heartbeat thrummed against his chest, steady and strong and alive, and Clark buried his face in your hair and breathed you in. Lavender shampoo. The faint trace of the tea you'd been drinking. Something underneath that was just you, the scent he'd committed to memory months ago, the one that meant home.

“Clark.” Your hands came up to cup his face, gentle but insistent, pulling back just enough to look at him. Your thumbs swept across his cheekbones, catching tears he hadn't realized he'd been shedding. “Talk to me. Please.”

He closed his eyes, leaning into your touch. “There was a man tonight,” he said, and his voice came out rough, scraped raw. “He could—he could show people their fears. Make them real, somehow. In their minds.” He swallowed hard, and the next words came out on a shudder. “He showed me you. Dying. Over and over again. I watched you die so many times, and every time—every single time—I couldn't save you.”

Your breath caught. He felt it, felt the slight hitch in your chest, the way your fingers tightened almost imperceptibly on his jaw.

“Clark,” you whispered.

“I know it wasn't real.” The words came faster now, tumbling out of him like water through a broken dam. “I know that. I've dealt with fear-manipulators before, I know how it works, I know none of it actually happened. But I couldn't—I couldn't shake it. I couldn't stop seeing your face, couldn't stop hearing—” His voice cracked. “I needed to see you. I needed to hold you. And I couldn't go home and change first, I couldn't put on the glasses and pretend to be someone else for one more second, because I'm not—I'm not someone else, not with you, I've never been someone else with you, and I just—”

The words were coming too fast now, tripping over each other, spiraling. Clark could feel it building in his chest—that familiar, terrible pressure, the one he'd learned to recognize over years of burying things too deep. His heart was hammering, which was ridiculous because his heart didn't do that anymore, hadn't done that since he was a teenager learning to control his powers, but here it was, pounding against his ribs like a caged animal. His breathing was too quick, too shallow, and he couldn't seem to get enough air even though he didn't technically need to breathe at all, not really, not the way you did, but his body didn't seem to care about technicalities right now.

She's dead. She's dead and you're hallucinating and any second now you're going to blink and she's going to be gone and you're going to be back in that warehouse with her blood on your hands and—

“Clark.”

Your voice cut through the spiral like a blade through silk. Not loud. Not demanding. Just there, steady and warm and impossibly, impossibly present.

“Clark, look at me.”

He couldn't. He couldn't look at you because if he looked at you, he'd see the bullet hole or the sickness or the closed eyes or one of the thousand other ways he'd watched you die tonight, and he couldn't—he couldn't—

Your hands moved from his face to his shoulders, and then you were guiding him, gently but firmly, until his back hit the wall beside the sliding door. Not hard—you didn't have the strength to move him if he didn't want to be moved—but he went willingly, bonelessly, because some deep part of him recognized that you were trying to anchor him, and he needed an anchor more than he needed air.

“There you go,” you murmured, and your hands were on his chest now, right over the S-shield, and he could feel the warmth of your palms even through the suit. “I've got you. I'm right here. Feel my hands, Clark. Can you feel them?”

He nodded, a jerky, desperate motion. Your hands. He could feel your hands. Smaller than his and soft and warm, pressed against the symbol of his house, against the place where his heart should have been beating out of control but was instead starting, slowly, to calm.

“Good.” You stepped closer, and now your body was pressed against his, not in a way that was sexual but in a way that was grounding, solid and real and undeniable. You were warm all along his front, from his chest to his thighs, and he could feel every point of contact like a lifeline. “Now breathe with me, okay? Just breathe. In...” He felt your chest expand against his. “...and out.”

He tried. He really tried. But the images were still there, flickering behind his eyelids every time he blinked, and his breath came out in a shuddering gasp instead of anything resembling controlled.

“That's okay,” you said, and your voice was so soft, so impossibly gentle, like you were soothing a spooked horse rather than the most powerful being on the planet. “That's okay, baby. Just try again. In...”

This time, he followed. His chest rose against yours, and he felt the way you smiled—felt the curve of your lips against his collarbone where you'd pressed your face.

“Good. So good. Now out...”

He exhaled, and some of the pressure in his chest went with it.

“That's it.” Your hands started moving on his chest, slow circles over the fabric of his suit, soothing and repetitive. “You're doing so well, Clark. Just keep breathing with me. In...”

She's warm. She's warm and she's solid and she's here.

“...and out.”

Her heart is beating. I can hear it. I can feel it.

“In...”

It's not the vision. The vision was cold. She was cold in the vision.

“...and out.”

She's not cold. She's never been cold. She's the warmest thing I've ever known.

“In...”

She's alive.

“...and out.”

She's alive. She's alive. She's alive.

Clark's eyes opened. He hadn't realized he'd closed them. And there you were—your face tilted up to his, your eyes soft and patient and full of so much love it made something in his chest crack open all over again. But this time, it wasn't the bad kind of cracking. This was the kind that let light in.

“Hi,” you said softly, and there was the barest hint of a smile playing at your lips.

“Hi,” he managed, and his voice was wrecked, scraped raw, but it was his again.

Your hands slid up from his chest to his face, cradling his jaw, your thumbs tracing the curve of his cheekbones. You were so gentle with him, so careful, like he was something precious rather than something dangerous. He didn't understand how you did it. Didn't understand how you looked at him—at the suit, at the symbol, at the man who'd just fallen apart in your arms—and saw something worth holding.

“I'm here,” you said, and it wasn't the first time you'd said it tonight, but somehow it felt different now. Slower. More deliberate. Like you were pressing the words into his skin, making sure they stuck. “I'm here, Clark. I'm not a vision. I'm not a hallucination. I'm not going to disappear.”

He opened his mouth—to apologize, probably, because apologizing was what he did, was what he'd been training himself to do since he was old enough to understand that his existence was complicated—but you shook your head slightly, your thumbs pressing gently against his lips.

“No,” you said. “Don't. Don't apologize for needing me. Don't apologize for falling apart. You're allowed to fall apart, Clark. You're allowed to be scared and tired and overwhelmed and human, even if you're not—even if you're more than that. Especially because you're more than that. You carry so much. All the time. You never stop. You never let yourself just... be.”

Your hands moved from his face to his hair, pushing back the dark waves that had escaped the gel, your fingers carding through the strands with a tenderness that made his eyes sting.

“So here's what's going to happen,” you continued, and your voice was still soft but there was something underneath it now, something fierce and protective and utterly, utterly sure. “You're going to stand here with me for as long as you need to. And I'm going to hold you. And you're going to feel me—every part of me—and you're going to let yourself believe that I'm real.”

You took one of his hands—his stupid, heavy, dangerous hands, the hands that could punch through steel and crush diamonds—and pressed it flat against your chest, right over your heart.

“Feel that?” you asked.

He felt it. Of course he felt it. He could feel the steady thrum of your heartbeat against his palm, could feel the expansion of your lungs with every breath, could feel the warmth of your blood moving through your veins. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever felt.

“That's me,” you said. “That's my heart. It's beating because I'm alive, Clark. I'm alive, and I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not for a very, very long time, if I have anything to say about it.”

“But you can't promise that,” he whispered, and the words came out broken, aching, almost childish and he didn’t stop himself. “I can't protect you from everything. I couldn't in the visions. I tried, and I couldn't, and what if—what if one day—”

“Then we'll deal with that day if it comes.” Your voice was firm, unyielding, nothing like the soft, soothing tone from before. This was the voice you used when you were drawing a line in the sand, when you were refusing to let him spiral any further. “But it's not today, Clark. Today, I'm here. Right now, I'm here. And you're here. And we're together, and we're alive, and we love each other, and that's enough. That has to be enough, because it's all we have.”

You lifted his hand from your chest and pressed a kiss to his palm, right in the center, your lips warm and soft against his skin. Then you turned his hand over and kissed his knuckles, one by one, a slow and deliberate ritual.

“These hands,” you said between kisses. “These hands have caught airplanes. These hands have held up buildings. These hands have saved the world more times than I can count.” You looked up at him, and your eyes were shining. “But do you know what my favorite thing about these hands is?”

He shook his head, not trusting his voice.

“They hold me,” you said simply. “They hold me when I'm sad. They hold me when I'm scared. They hold me when I'm happy and when I'm angry and when I'm so tired I can't keep my eyes open. They hold me like I'm something precious, something worth protecting. And every time you hold me, I feel safe. Not because you're Superman. Because you're you. Because you're the man who loves me.”

A tear slipped down his cheek. You caught it with your thumb, wiping it away like it was nothing, like it didn't matter that he was crying in front of you for the second time tonight.

“I love you,” you said, and the words were so simple, so small, and yet they filled every empty space in his chest. “I love you, Clark Kent. I love the reporter and the hero and the farm boy from Kansas. I love the man who burns toast and leaves socks on the floor and cries at dog commercials. I love the man who showed up on my terrace tonight in his Superman suit because he was scared and he needed me. I love all of you. Every broken, beautiful piece.”

Clark let out a breath he felt like he'd been holding for hours. The tension in his shoulders—the tension he hadn't even realized was there until this moment—began to ease. The images were still lurking at the edges of his mind, but they seemed dimmer now, less urgent, like nightmares fading in the light of morning.

You stepped back just enough to look at him properly, your hands sliding down to rest on his hips. Your eyes traveled over him—the suit, the cape, the S-shield—and instead of fear or uncertainty, he saw something else. Something that looked like wonder. Like acceptance. Like love, pure and simple and absolute.

"You know," you said, and your voice was lighter now, teasing at the edges, “I've always wondered what this suit would feel like. Before meeting you, of course.”

Despite everything—despite the nightmares and the panic and the tears—Clark felt the corner of his mouth twitch. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Your fingers traced the edge of the S-shield, following the curve of the symbol. “It's softer than I expected. I always imagined it would be... I don't know. Hard. Impenetrable.”

“It is,” he said. “Impenetrable, I mean. Mostly.”

“Hmm.” You looked up at him through your lashes, and there was something in your expression now that made his breath catch for an entirely different reason. “And yet I can still feel you through it. Still feel how warm you are. Still feel your heart beating.” Your palm pressed flat against his chest, right over the symbol. “Still feel how much you love me.”

Clark's hands came up to cover yours, pressing them more firmly against his chest. “I don't know how to explain how much I love you,” he said, and his voice was raw but steady now. “I don't have words big enough. I don't have gestures grand enough. I just... I love you. I love you in ways I didn't know I could love someone. I love you in ways that scare me, because it's so much, and if I ever lost it—if I ever lost you—”

“You won't,” you said, and it wasn't a promise—not really, not one either of you could guarantee—but it was close enough. It was hope, and sometimes hope was all anyone had.

You rose up on your toes and kissed him, soft and slow and sweet. It wasn't the desperate, frantic kiss you always have. This was something else. Something that felt like a vow. Like a benediction. Like you were trying to pour every ounce of love you felt into him through the simple press of your lips.

When you pulled back, your eyes were bright, and your smile was the one he fell in love with—the one that crinkled the corners of your eyes and made him feel like he'd come home.

You kissed him again.

But now, it wasn't a gentle kiss, not the soft, sweet kind you usually shared over morning coffee or lazy Sunday afternoons. This was urgent, desperate, your mouth slanting over his like you were trying to pull the pain out of him through sheer proximity. Your fingers tangled in his hair, not caring that the gel he used to keep it tamed was probably leaving residue on your palms, and you kissed him until he forgot how to breathe.

When you finally pulled back, your eyes were bright with unshed tears. “I'm here,” you said, fierce and quiet all at once. “I'm right here, Clark. I'm not going anywhere.”

He made a sound—something broken, something grateful—and kissed you again. And again. And again, each kiss softer than the last, until he was just pressing his lips to your forehead, your temples, the corner of your mouth, the pulse point at your throat where your heartbeat still sang its steady, beautiful rhythm against his skin.

“I love you,” he said against your neck. The words felt too small for the enormity of what he felt, but they were all he had. “God, I love you so much.” He murmurs, nipping at your neck. “Can I take you to bed?,” he said softly, and his voice had shifted into something lower now, something that made his stomach tighten. “Please. I need—I need to feel you. All of you.” All you did was nod and that, besides that look in your eyes, was all he needed.

He started to lift you—one arm under your knees, the other around your back, the way he always did because he could and because you made that delighted sound every single time—but you pressed a hand to his chest and stopped him.

“No,” you said, and there was a new edge to your voice. Something determined. Something that made him pause, his hands stilling on your hips. “No, Clark. Tonight, I was going to—I was going to take care of you.” Your fingers curled into the fabric of his suit, right over where his heart was hammering. “When I saw you standing there, in the suit, looking like you'd seen a ghost—I thought, “okay. I've got this. I'm going to hold him. I'm going to love him. I'm going to make him forget every single terrible thing he saw tonight”.”

His throat tightened. “Sweetheart—”

“But then you kissed me.” Your voice softened, your thumbs tracing small circles against his chest. “And I felt how much you needed this. Needed me. Not in a way that I could fix by being on top, or by taking control. You needed to hold me. You needed to feel me underneath you, alive and warm and yours.” You looked up at him, and your eyes were so full of love that it almost hurt to meet them. “So I'm not going to fight you for it. But I am going to get this suit off you first.”

Clark blinked. “What?”

A small smile tugged at the corner of your mouth—the first real smile he'd seen from you since he'd arrived, and god, it was like watching the sun come out after months of rain. “You heard me, Kent.” Your hands moved to the clasp of his cape, fingers working with a determination he'd only ever seen you apply to stubborn jar lids and particularly difficult crossword puzzles. “I love you. I love that you showed up here like this, that you trusted me enough to come to me when you were falling apart. But I am not having sex with you while you're wearing enough spandex to make a 1980s rock band jealous.”

A surprised laugh escaped him—shaky, wet, still caught somewhere between a sob and actual humor. “It's not spandex. It's a Kryptonian combat weave—”

“I don't care if it's woven from the beard hairs of Zeus himself,” you interrupted, finally managing to unhook the cape and letting it pool to the floor in a dramatic puddle of red. “It's coming off.”

And just like that, something in his chest loosened. Just a little. Just enough for him to remember that this was you, that you'd never once treated him like a symbol or a savior, that you'd always been more interested in the man beneath the armor than the armor itself.

“Help me with the boots,” you said, already reaching for the zipper on the side of his right boot, and Clark found himself sinking onto the edge of the couch, letting you kneel in front of him and pull each boot off with a kind of focused intensity that made his heart ache.

You worked in silence for a moment, the only sounds the soft rasp of fabric and your steady breathing. When both boots were off—thrown unceremoniously into the corner, where they landed with two heavy thuds—you looked up at him, and your hands came to rest on his knees.

“Stand up,” you said softly.

He stood and you rose with him, your hands sliding up his thighs to hook your fingers into the waistband of the suit. “Arms up,” you murmured, once you saw it was a two piece suit and he obeyed, lifting his arms above his head as you peeled the top half of the suit off him in one smooth motion. The Kryptonian fabric whispered against his skin, and then he was standing in front of you in nothing but the blue undersuit and you paused, your hands flat against his chest.

“There he is,” you whispered, and your voice cracked just slightly on the last word. “There's my Clark.”

He couldn't speak. Couldn't form words around the lump in his throat. He just stood there, trembling under your touch as your hands explored the landscape of his chest—the scars you'd memorized months ago, the hard planes of muscle, the places where his heartbeat pulsed warm against your palm.

“Let me see all of you,” you said, and it wasn't a demand. It was a question, soft and open, and Clark nodded because he couldn't say no to you. Not tonight. Not ever.

You peeled the undersuit off him slowly, almost reverently, your knuckles brushing against his stomach, his hips, the sensitive skin at his sides. When it pooled at his feet and he stepped out of it, leaving him in nothing but his briefs—black, plain, the kind he bought in multipacks from the department store because who was going to see them anyway—you made a sound low in your throat that made his cock twitch.

“Beautiful,” you breathed, and your hands were on him again, tracing the lines of his hips, the jut of his hipbones, the soft trail of hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of his briefs. “You're so beautiful, Clark.”

“Sweetheart, mmhm I—” His voice came out strangled.

“Shh.” You pressed a finger to his lips, then replaced it with your mouth, kissing him slow and deep. “You said you needed to take care of me tonight. So take me to bed. But I want you naked when you do it. I want to feel you—all of you—nothing between us.”

He lifted you then—finally, finally—and you wrapped your legs around his waist with a quiet moan, your center pressing against the thin fabric of his briefs, and he could feel how warm you were, how ready, and it took every ounce of his considerable self-control not to just take you against the wall right there.

The walk to your bedroom was short but eternal. He could feel your heartbeat against his chest, fast and steady, and your mouth was on his neck, your teeth scraping against the sensitive skin just below his jaw, and by the time he laid you down on the bed, he was so hard it was almost painful.

You reached for the hem of his sweatshirt—the one you were wearing, the one that still smelled faintly of him underneath your shampoo—and pulled it over your head in one fluid motion. You weren't wearing anything underneath, and Clark made a sound like a wounded animal at the sight of you, bare and beautiful and spread out on the sheets like an offering.

“Clark.” Your voice was soft but steady. "”our briefs. Off. Now.”

He couldn't help the broken laugh that escaped him. “Bossy tonight.”

“You almost died in a who knows where and then watched me die a thousand times in your head,” you said, and your eyes were serious now, deep and unwavering. “I think I'm allowed to be bossy.” A pause. “Besides, you're the one who wanted to take care of me. Can't do that if you're not even undressed yet.”

He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his briefs and pushed them down, his cock springing free, hard and flushed and already leaking against his stomach. Your eyes dropped to it, and your lips parted, and Clark felt a surge of heat so intense it nearly knocked him off his feet.

“Come here,” you said, reaching for him. “Come here, I need you, honey.”

He crawled onto the bed, settling over you, his weight braced on his forearms so he wouldn't crush you. The contact was overwhelming—skin to skin, chest to chest, his cock pressing against your thigh—and you both groaned at the same time.

“I kept hearing your heartbeat stop,” he admitted, the words spilling out of him in a whisper as he pressed his forehead to yours. “In the visions. It would just... stop. And I would scream, and it wouldn't start again, and I couldn't—” He pressed his face into your neck, breathing you in. “You have to understand. I've heard things. Seen things. In all my years doing this, I've witnessed horrors that would break most people. But nothing—nothing—has ever hurt like watching you die.”

Your hands slid down his back, fingers digging into the muscles there, pulling him closer. “I'm here,” you said, and your voice was steady even though your eyes were wet. “Feel my heartbeat, Clark. Feel it.”

He did. He pressed his ear to your chest, right over your heart, and listened. thrum-thrum, thump-thump. Steady and strong and real. Your hand came up to cradle the back of his head, fingers threading through his hair, and he felt the vibration of your voice through your ribcage as you spoke.

“I love you,” you said into the quiet. “I love you, I love you, I love you. That heartbeat is yours. It's always been yours. Every single beat, from the moment we met until the moment I die—and I'm not dying tonight, Clark, I'm not dying anytime soon—every single one of them is for you.”

He kissed his way down your body. Slowly. Deliberately. Each kiss a confirmation, a reassurance, a tiny prayer of gratitude. He kissed the spot where your pulse beat at the base of your throat. He kissed the hollow between your collarbones. He kissed the swell of your breasts, took one nipple into his mouth, and you arched beneath him with a cry that went straight to his cock.

“Clark, mmhm oh fuck”

He sucked gently, then harder when your fingers tightened in his hair, and your other hand scrabbled at the sheets like you were trying to anchor yourself. He switched to the other breast, giving it the same attention, and your hips were rolling against his, your wetness slick against his stomach.

“Please,” you gasped. “Please, Clark, I need you inside me—”

He lifted his head, looking down at you. Your eyes were dark, your lips parted, your chest heaving. You were the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, and he'd seen galaxies born and die.

“Not yet,” he said, and his voice was rough but steady now. “I'm not done taking care of you.”

He kissed lower, trailing his mouth down your sternum, your stomach, the soft curve of your belly. When he reached the waistband of your pajama shorts—the tiny cotton ones you wore to bed, the ones with the little strawberries on them that made him smile every single time—he hooked his fingers into them and pulled them down your legs along with your underwear, tossing them somewhere behind him.

And then you were bare beneath him, open and wanting, and Clark settled between your thighs like he was coming home.

He kissed the inside of your knee. Then your thigh. Then higher, and higher, until his breath was hot against your center and you were shaking, your hands fisting in the sheets.

“Clark—”

“Shh,” he murmured, and then he licked you—one long, slow stripe from your entrance to your clit—and the sound you made was enough to bring him to his knees if he hadn't already been there.

You tasted like heaven. Like home. Like everything he'd been desperate for since the first nightmare had taken hold. He buried his face between your thighs and worshipped you, his tongue drawing patterns on your clit, his fingers sliding inside you and curling just so, and you were crying out his name, your hips bucking against his mouth. He loves spending his time with you, licking, sucking and sometimes his teeth are involved.

“That's it,” he murmured against you, and the vibration made you whimper. “Let me hear you, my love. Let me feel you. I need to know you're real, sweetheart, I need to feel you come apart for me—”

You came with a shattered cry, your whole body convulsing, your thighs clamping around his head, and Clark didn't stop. He licked you through it, gentler now, softer, until you were pushing at his shoulders with trembling hands.

“Too much,” you gasped. “Too much, honey, I can't handle more.”

He crawled back up your body, kissing you so you could taste yourself on his lips. Your arms wrapped around his neck, pulling him close, and he could feel your heart hammering against his chest.

“I love you,”he said, and it came out like a prayer. “I love you, I love you, I love you so much, baby.”

“Then fuck me,” you said, half-laughing, half-sobbing. “Please, Clark, I need to feel you deep inside.”

He reached between you, positioning himself at your entrance, and paused. Looked down at you. Your eyes were wet, your face flushed, your lips swollen from his kisses. You looked utterly wrecked, and utterly here, and something in his chest cracked open and healed all at once.

“Talk to me,” he said, and his voice was raw. “While I'm inside you. I need to hear your voice. I need to know you're with me.”

“I'm with you,” you said, and your hands cupped his face, pulling him down until your foreheads touched. “I'm always with you, Clark. Now please—”

He pushed inside you. Slowly. So slowly. Inch by agonizing inch, watching your face the whole time—the way your eyes fluttered shut, the way your lips parted, the way you gasped his name like it was the only word you remembered how to say. When he was fully seated, buried to the hilt inside your heat, he stopped. Just held there, letting you both adjust, letting himself feel every pulse and flutter of your body around him.

“Gosh,” he breathed. “Oh Gosh, you feel so good, my love.”

“I know.” Your voice was wrecked. “I know. Move, Clark. Please.”

He pulled back and thrust forward, and the sound you made was obscene, perfect, the most beautiful thing he'd ever heard. He set a rhythm—slow at first, deep and deliberate, each thrust a reaffirmation that you were here, you were alive, you were his.

“I watched you die,” he said, and the words came out between thrusts, ragged and raw. “I watched you die in a hospital bed. I watched you die in a car crash. I watched you die in something that could be our shared home.” His voice broke, and he thrust deeper, and you moaned. “I watched a man shoot you in the chest while I was standing right there, and I couldn't—I couldn't, oh damn.”

“Clark.” Your hands were everywhere—his face, his shoulders, his back, pulling him closer, holding him like you could keep him from flying apart. “I'm here. I'm here. Feel me—feel me, honey.”

He did. He felt the way you clenched around him, the way your nails dug into his shoulders, the way your heels pressed into the backs of his thighs, urging him deeper. He felt your heartbeat thrumming against his chest, faster now, matching the rhythm of his hips. He felt the wetness on his cheeks—tears, his or yours, he couldn't tell anymore—and the warmth of your breath against his neck.

“You're so beautiful,” he said, and he was crying now, actually crying, the tears falling onto your face and mixing with yours. “You're so beautiful and I can't lose you, I can't—”

“You won't.” You kissed his tears, your mouth soft and desperate against his cheeks, his eyelids, the corner of his lips. “You won't lose me, Clark. I'm not going anywhere. I'm right here. I'm right here, I'm right here, I'm always here.”

Your words became a chant, a mantra, a prayer, and Clark fucked you through it, hard and deep and desperate, his hand sliding between your bodies to rub your clit in tight circles.

“Come for me,” he said, and it wasn't a request. “Come for me, sweetheart, I need to feel you—I need to know you're real, that you’re here, that you’re mine.”

You shattered. Came apart around him with a cry that was almost a scream, your body convulsing, your inner walls clenching around him like a vice, and Clark followed you over the edge with a groan that was torn from somewhere deep in his chest. He spilled inside you, wave after wave, his hips stuttering as he buried himself as deep as he could go.

For a long moment, there was nothing but breathing. Nothing but the sound of your hearts—his steady and strong, yours fast and fluttering—and the rustle of sheets as you both trembled through the aftershocks.

Clark collapsed beside you, pulling you into his arms, your head tucked under his chin and your legs tangled with his. He could feel your tears on his chest, could hear the little hitches in your breath as you cried, and he held you tighter, his lips pressed to the top of your head.

“I'm sorry,” he said after a long moment, his voice muffled by your hair. “For showing up like this. For—for dumping all of that on you. You didn't sign up for all this mess, baby.”

“Stop.” Your hand pressed flat against his chest, right over his heart. “Don't you dare apologize. Not for this. Not for needing me.” You tilted your head back to look at him, and your eyes were red-rimmed but fierce. “I signed up for all of you, Clark Kent. The good days and the bad ones. The nightmares and the morning coffee. The cape and the glasses. You don't get to hide parts of yourself from me just because you think they're inconvenient or scary or too much.”

He pressed a kiss to your forehead, then your nose, then your lips. “I love you,” he said, because the words were inadequate but they were all he had. “I love you more than I know how to say.”

You smiled—that soft, devastating smile that had undone him from the very first moment he'd seen it—and snuggled closer, your ear pressed over his heart.

“Then show me,” you said quietly. “Every day. For the rest of our lives.”

Clark looked down at you—at the tear tracks on your cheeks, the love in your eyes, the way your body was pressed against his like you were trying to crawl inside his skin and stay there—and he felt something shift. Something settle. Something that felt like hope.

“I will,” he said, and his voice was steady now. Certain. “Every day. For the rest of our lives.”

Outside, the city hummed its endless night-song. Inside, wrapped in each other and the quiet aftermath of love, Clark Kent let himself believe that everything might just be okay.

He had you, after all. And that was enough. That was everything. You are his everything.

The gown was a mistake.

Not the gown itself—the gown was stunning, a deep emerald thing that pooled at your feet like liquid velvet and made your skin look like it had been kissed by something ancient and expensive. The neckline plunged just enough to be interesting without being scandalous. The back dipped to somewhere in the vicinity of your waist, held together by nothing but faith and a single delicate clasp that you'd made Bucky practice opening and closing three times before you'd deemed him ready for public consumption. No, the gown was perfect.

The mistake was wearing it before seeing him.

You'd had to come early. That was the problem. Some nonsense about being one of the responsable ones from the team, greeting the donors" and "please for the love of god someone needs to make small talk with the ambassador from Sokovia while Tony tries to fix the hologram projector." So you'd kissed Bucky goodbye at the door of your shared apartment—he'd been in his boxers, hair still damp from the shower, that morning's trim already blurring the lines of his buzz cut back toward something shaggier—and you'd promised to save him a dance.

That had been two hours and fifteen minutes ago.

More tan two hours of champagne flutes and canapés and the particular strain of social performance that came with being adjacent to Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Two hours of smiling until your cheeks ached and deflecting questions about your "relationship with the Winter Soldier" and pretending not to notice the way certain guests looked at you like you were either a saint or a fool for loving him.

Two hours of glancing at the door every thirty seconds like a dog waiting for its owner to come home.

Music swelled from somewhere—a string quartet playing something classical and vaguely pretentious, the kind of music that was supposed to make people feel sophisticated while they held champagne flutes and discussed geopolitics in hushed, important tones. Crystal chandeliers dripped from the ceiling like frozen waterfalls, casting prismatic light across the sea of black ties and glittering gowns. Somewhere to your left, Sam Wilson was telling a story that involved a lot of hand gestures and the word "unbelievable," and somewhere to your right, Carol Danvers was laughing at something Tony Stark had said, her teeth impossibly white against her impossibly perfect everything.

You couldn't have told a single person what any of them looked like.

Because your boyfriend had just walked through the door, and the entire room had gone blurry around the edges.

Later, you would try to find the words for what you felt in that moment. You would fail. You would describe it to him in fragments—like being hit by a truck, like the floor dropped out, like someone poured honey into my veins and set it on fire—and he would laugh at you, soft and fond, and kiss the top of your head.

He was late, the bastard. Fashionably late, which was not a thing he usually did—Bucky Barnes operated on a schedule that belonged to a man who had spent decades being told exactly when to eat, sleep, and kill. He was the kind of person who showed up fifteen minutes early to everything, who stood outside your apartment building waiting because he'd rather be early than risk making you wait.

All you could do was stare. He was wearing black. All black.

Not the tactical black of his mission gear, not the soft, worn black of his favorite henley, but the deep, dangerous black of a man who knew exactly what he was doing. The jacket was tailored to within an inch of its life, broad shoulders stretching the fabric in a way that made you think about what was underneath. The trousers fit him like they'd been sewn onto his body while he stood perfectly still, which they probably had

But the suit wasn't what destroyed you. The shirt was what destroyed you. It was going to kill you.

Black. Silk. The top two buttons undone.

Black silk—silk, of all things, since when did Bucky Barnes wear silk?—buttoned up to his throat, except it wasn't buttoned up to his throat. The first two buttons were undone, just enough to show a sliver of pale skin, just enough to make you ache, and there, barely visible against his chest, was the chain of his dogtags that caught the light, two small discs of metal nestled against his skin, even thought they were hidden beneath the shirt and you watched in real time as his pulse beat a steady rhythm beneath them. The same dogtags you'd held in your hands while he slept, reading the embossed letters by moonlight, tracing the edges with your thumb like they were a prayer. The same dogtags you see each night above you while he makes love to you.

The chain glinted, just a flash of silver in the hollow of his throat, and you wanted to bite him there.

And his head. God, his head.

The buzz cut was fresh—you could tell, could see the clean lines where he'd trimmed it before leaving, the way the short bristles caught the chandelier light and threw it back in soft glints. Without the curtain of hair to soften anything, the suit made him look like something out of a noir film. A hitman. A spy. A man who had done terrible things and would do them again if it meant getting what he wanted.

And what he wanted, you realized, as his gaze swept the ballroom and found you, was apparently you.

His eyes locked onto yours across the crowded room, and something passed between you—something hot and electric and entirely inappropriate for a charity gala hosted by the Avengers. His mouth curved. Not a smile, not exactly. Something smaller. Something knowing. The kind of expression that said I know exactly what I'm doing to you right now, and I'm not sorry.

You were going to kill him.

You were going to march across this ballroom and kill him with your bare hands, and then you were going to bring him back to life and kill him again, and then maybe, maybe, you would let him kiss you.

But you didn't march because your feet seemed to have forgotten how to work.

Sam's voice faded into background noise. The champagne flute slipped in your grip, and you barely registered catching it before it shattered on the floor. All you could see was him—the impossible, infuriating, devastatingly beautiful man who had apparently decided that tonight was the night he would finally push you past the point of no return.

“Uh oh,” Natasha said from somewhere to your left, her voice dry as a martini. “She's gone.”

“Completely offline,” Sam agreed. “I've seen this before. Total system failure.”

You couldn't even muster the energy to glare at them. Because Bucky was walking toward you, and the crowd seemed to part around him like water around a stone, and the buzz cut caught the chandelier light and gleamed, dark velvet against the sharp planes of his skull, and the suit jacket pulled across his shoulders with every step, and the dogtags swung gently with the rhythm of his movement.

“Hi, honey.”

His voice was low. Rough. The kind of rough that came from somewhere deep in his chest, from spending too long wanting something he wasn't sure he deserved. His eyes dragged over you—the emerald gown, the bare shoulders, the way your hair had been pinned up to expose the line of your neck—and you saw his pupils blow wide. He was so close, close enough that you could smell his cologne—something woodsy and warm, a new bottle you'd picked out together last month, the one that made you want to bury your face in his neck and stay there indefinitely.

“Hi,” you managed. It came out as a squeak.

Bucky's smile widened, just a fraction. His eyes dropped to your mouth, then back up to your eyes, slow and deliberate and hot.

“You look...” He trailed off, shook his head slightly, like he couldn't find a word big enough. “Jesus. You look so fucking beautiful. I think I said it before you left home but you’re the prettiest here, baby.”

Now you know that the dress you'd spent three hours picking out, was worth it. You'd done your hair up in something complicated that involved approximately forty-seven bobby pins and a prayer. You'd put on the earrings he'd given you for your birthday, the ones that caught the light like captured stars.

“You—” You stopped. Swallowed. Started again. “You cannot look like that in public, James Buchanan Barnes. It's indecent. I'm going to have to file a complaint with someone.”

His eyebrows rose. “A complaint?”

“With HR. Or Tony. Or the President. I don't know, someone.” You reached out and grabbed his lapels—the fabric was so soft, expensive wool that slid through your fingers like water—and pulled him closer. “You look like something I want to eat with a spoon.”

Beside you, Sam choked on his champagne.

Bucky's flesh hand came up to cover yours where it gripped his jacket, his thumb stroking across your knuckles in a slow, soothing circle. “That's... a new one.”

“I'm full of new ones. You've undone me. I'm un-done. I'm going to be a puddle on this very expensive floor, and it's your fault, James. You—” You had to stop, swallow, try again. “You look like you're about to commit a crime.”

His mouth quirked. “What kind of crime?”

“All of them.”

He laughed—soft, private, meant only for you—his metal hand settled on your waist, cool even through the silk of your dress, and he leaned down until his mouth was level with your ear. The buzz cut brushed your temple—that velvet sensation, that ridiculous texture that you still couldn't get enough of—and his breath was warm against your skin. “You're adorable like this, even when I am having some innapropiate thoughts about you in this dress” he murmured, low enough that only you could hear.and that was when your body finally remembered how to move.

You closed the distance between you in one step, grabbed the front of his suit jacket—the fabric was obscenely soft under your fingers, expensive in a way that made you want to ask questions you didn't actually care about the answers to—and pulled him down into a kiss.

He made a sound. Something surprised and pleased, something that vibrated against your lips and traveled down your spine like a match striking. His hands found your waist—flesh and metal, warm and cool, familiar—and he pulled you closer, deeper, like he'd been waiting for this all night.

Maybe he had.

The kiss wasn't long—you were in a ballroom, after all, surrounded by people who were definitely staring—but it was intentional. It was a statement. It was mine, mine, mine in a language everyone could understand.

When you pulled back, his eyes were dark.

“Okay,” he said, a little breathless. “Okay. So I'm guessing you approve of the suit.”

“The suit,” you repeated. Your voice was doing something strange—higher, thinner, like you were about to laugh or cry or possibly both. “Bucky. Bucky. Do you have any idea what you look like right now?”

His brow furrowed. “Based on your reaction so far, I'm gonna go with 'confused and vaguely terrified.'”

You punched him in the chest. Not hard. Just enough to make a point.

“You look like someone took every single one of my weaknesses and put them in a blender and poured them into the shape of a man,” you said, the words tumbling out too fast, too honest. “You look like you should be illegal in several countries. You look like—like a problem, Bucky Barnes, and I am going to spend this entire evening being a problem right back at you.”

His lips twitched. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Prove it.”

“I'm not making any promises,” you said and then you let him lead you toward the bar, your hand slipping down from his lapel to twine your fingers through his. His flesh hand was warm, calloused, familiar, and the contrast between that warmth and the cool metal of his other hand on your waist made you shiver.

The bar was a long, gleaming stretch of marble at the far end of the ballroom, staffed by a man in a white jacket who looked like he'd seen everything and was no longer impressed by any of it. Bucky ordered for you both—old-fashioned for him, something fruity and pink for you that made his lips twitch when the bartender set it down—and you stood together at the end of the bar, shoulders touching, watching the crowd swirl and eddy like a river of wealth and power.

Except you weren't watching the crowd.

You were watching him.

The way his throat moved when he swallowed. The way his fingers curled around his glass, flesh hand and metal hand in perfect symmetry. The way the buzz cut made the line of his jaw look like something carved by a Renaissance sculptor who had known he was creating a masterpiece. The way his dogtags caught the light every time he breathed, that tiny flash of silver in the hollow of his throat, and god, you wanted to put your mouth right there.

“You're staring,” he said, not looking at you.

“You're stare-able,” you replied. “It's not my fault.”

He turned his head then, and the look he gave you was slow and molten and dangerous. “We're in public, sweetheart.”

“I'm aware.”

“There are cameras.”

“Let them look.” You set your drink down on the bar—untouched, forgotten—and stepped closer to him, close enough that your chest almost brushed his, close enough that you had to tilt your chin up to meet his eyes. “Let them see. I don't care.”

His breath caught. Just a fraction, just enough that you noticed, and his metal hand came up to rest on your hip, fingers splaying across the silk of your dress like he was claiming you. “What's gotten into you tonight?”

You, you wanted to say. You've gotten into me. You've crawled under my skin and made a home there, and every time you look at me like that, I forget how to breathe.

Instead, you reached up and ran your fingers over the short bristles at the back of his head.

His eyes fluttered shut. Just for a second. Just long enough for you to see the effect you were having on him.

“I like your hair, the lack of it,” you said, soft and simple. “I like your suit. I like your everything, Bucky. And I've been watching you, and I can't—” You paused, swallowed, tried to find words that didn't feel inadequate. “I can't handle it. You're too much. You're too good. And everyone in this room is looking at you like they want to eat you alive, and I just... I want them to know you're mine.”

He opened his eyes.

The grey had gone dark, nearly blue, and there was something burning in them that made your stomach flip over. “Sweetheart—”

“I'm not done.” You pressed closer, your free hand coming up to rest on his chest, right over his heart. It was pounding. Good. “You're wearing silk, Bucky. Silk. Do you know what that does to me? Do you have any idea what I've been thinking about for the past hour?”

His Adam's apple bobbed. “Tell me.”

“No.” You grinned, and it wasn't a nice grin. It was the kind of grin that made him groan and drop his forehead to yours, the kind of grin that meant trouble. “I'll show you later. But right now, I need you to kiss me.”

“We're in the middle of a gala.”

“I don't care.”

“There are photographers, sweetheart.”

“Let them get a good angle.”

He stared at you for a long moment—long enough that you started to worry you'd pushed too far, long enough that the flush on your cheeks started to feel less like desire and more like embarrassment—and then he moved.

His metal hand slid from your hip to the small of your back, pressing you flush against him. His flesh hand came up to cup your jaw, thumb tilting your chin up, and when he kissed you, it was nothing like the chaste, quick pecks he usually allowed in public.

It was filthy.

Open-mouthed and hungry, his tongue sliding against yours, his teeth grazing your lower lip, his whole body curving around yours like he was trying to absorb you. He tasted like whiskey and something darker, something that was just him, and you made a sound against his mouth—something desperate and pleading—that you'd be embarrassed about later.

Right now, you didn't care.

You couldn't care. Because his hand was in your hair now, careful of the pins but demanding, tilting your head exactly where he wanted it, and the buzz cut was brushing your forehead, and the dogtags were cool against your collarbone where they'd slipped out of his shirt, and oh, oh, this was what you'd been waiting for.

When he finally pulled back—slowly, reluctantly, like he was physically incapable of putting distance between you—his lips were reddened and his eyes were dark and his chest was heaving.

“There,” he said, voice rough. “Now they know.”

You were pretty sure your mascara was ruined. You were also pretty sure you didn't care.

“One more,” you whispered.

He laughed—that low, helpless laugh that meant you're going to be the death of me—and kissed you again. Softer this time, almost sweet, but with an undercurrent of promise that made your toes curl in your heels.

“You're going to be the death of me,” he said, echoing your thoughts exactly.

“Good death,” you managed. “Top ten deaths. Five stars.”

He shook his head, but he was smiling, and the smile reached his eyes, and god, you loved him. You loved him so much it made your chest ache, made your throat tight, made you want to drag him into a closet and keep him there until the end of time.

The next hour was a blur.

You stayed glued to his side—hand on his arm, fingers threaded through his, palm pressed flat against the small of his back whenever you moved through the crowd. You introduced him to people whose names you forgot immediately, and he was polite and quiet and devastating, and every time he spoke, his voice rumbled through you like thunder.

He ate it up.

You could tell. The way his hand tightened on your waist when you leaned in to whisper something in his ear. The way his breathing changed when you ran your fingers over the short bristles of his buzz cut, just once, just to remind him you were thinking about it. The way his eyes tracked your every movement like he was memorizing you.

At one point, Tony Stark cornered you both near the dessert table.

“Barnes,” Tony said, gesturing with a champagne flute. “Bold choice. The all-black. The silk. The—is that two buttons? That's two buttons. That's a statement. I respect it.”

Bucky's arm slid around your waist, casual and possessive. “Wasn't trying to make a statement.”

“Oh, you were definitely trying to make a statement.” Tony looked at you, then back at Bucky, then at you again. “Is she okay? She seems... not okay.”

“I'm fine,” you said, and your voice was about an octave too high. “I'm perfectly fine. Why wouldn't I be fine?”

“Because you've been staring at Barnes's chest for the last three minutes like you're trying to set it on fire with your mind.”

You looked down. Bucky's hand was on your waist. The silk of his shirt was right there, the dog tags gleaming, the hollow of his throat right there, and you realized with a start that Tony was right.

You had been staring.

“I'm going to get some air,” you announced.

“We're in a ballroom,” Tony said. “There's no air. It's all recycled.”

“Then I'm going to find some different air.”

You grabbed Bucky's hand and pulled him toward the terrace doors.

He came willingly—he always came willingly—but you heard the low laugh he tried to hide, felt the way his fingers interlaced with yours like they belonged there.

The garden was quiet.

The terrace led to a small courtyard, hidden from the ballroom by a hedge maze that was probably meant to be romantic and was definitely meant to keep drunk donors from wandering into restricted areas. Fairy lights twinkled in the trees above, casting everything in soft gold. The sounds of the gala faded to a distant murmur, replaced by crickets and the gentle splash of a fountain somewhere out of sight.

You stopped in the middle of the cobblestone path, turned to face him, and looked.

The fairy lights caught the angles of his face—the sharp cheekbones, the strong jaw, the way the buzz cut made his eyes seem impossibly large and impossibly blue. His suit jacket was unbuttoned now, hanging open over the silk shirt. The dog tags had shifted slightly, the chain catching the light as he breathed.

He was leaning against a stone pillar, arms crossed over his chest, watching you with an expression you couldn't quite read.

“So,” he said. “Air?”

“Shut up.”

“You dragged me out here for a reason, sweetheart.”

“I know.” You stepped closer. “The reason is that I cannot be held responsible for my actions in a room full of people when you look like that. It’s your fault.”

His eyebrow arched. “My fault?”

“Your everything.” You were close enough now to touch, close enough to see the way his pulse jumped in his throat. “The suit. The shirt. The buttons, Bucky. Two buttons. Who do you think you are?”

“Your boyfriend?”

“That's not an excuse.”

“It's the only excuse I need.” He chuckles, that sound that makes your knees weak.

You reached up and ran your hand over his head—the buzz cut, the soft bristles, the warmth of his scalp beneath your palm. He closed his eyes, just for a second, and a sound escaped him—something low and wanting, something that made your knees weak.

“You've been doing this all night,” you said. “Walking around like—like that. Letting me touch you. Letting me kiss you. Watching me fall apart in public like some kind of—of spectacle.”

His eyes opened. The smirk that curved his mouth was lethal—the one he kept reserved only for you, the one that said I know exactly what I'm doing and I'm not sorry and also you love it.

“Maybe I like watching you fall apart,” he said. “Maybe I like knowing that I can do this—” He reached up and undid the third button of his shirt, just one more, just enough to expose another inch of skin, the top of his chest, the beginning of the dark trail of hair that disappeared beneath the silk. “—and you forget how to speak.”

You forgot how to speak.

He laughed—low and satisfied—and pushed off from the pillar, closing the distance between you until you were chest to chest, his hands on your hips, your hands on his shoulders. The silk of his shirt was warm under your palms, and you could feel the heat of his skin through the fabric, could feel his heart beating steady and strong.

“You're doing this on purpose,” you accused.

“Absolutely.”

“You're evil.”

“I've been told.”

You kissed him.

It wasn't gentle—it was hungry, desperate, the kind of kiss you gave someone when you'd been holding back for hours and your self-control was a thread about to snap. He met you with equal intensity, his metal hand coming up to cup the back of your head, his flesh hand gripping your hip hard enough to bruise.

You bit his lower lip. He groaned. The sound went straight between your legs.

“Sweetheart,” he breathed against your mouth. “We're in a garden.”

“I don't care.”

“People can see.”

“Let them.”

But even as you said it, you knew he was right. The terrace doors were still visible through the hedge, and you could hear laughter drifting from the ballroom, and neither of you was nearly drunk enough to risk that kind of scandal.

“Later,” you said, pulling back just enough to look at him. “When we get home. I'm going to—”

“Yeah?” His voice was rough. “What are you going to do?”

You ran your hand over his buzz cut again, watched his eyes flutter shut, watched his lips part on a shaky exhale.

“I'm going to take that suit off you,” you said. “Very slowly. Button by button.”

“There are a lot of buttons.”

“I'm aware.”

“And then?”

“And then I'm going to kiss every inch of skin you've been torturing me with all night. Your collarbone. Your chest. That place behind your ear that makes you shiver. And then you’ll whimper, we know you love when I make you whimper like that.”

His grip tightened on your hip. “You're trying to kill me.”

“You started it.”

He kissed you again—softer this time, deeper, a promise of everything that was waiting for you both at home. When he pulled back, his eyes were soft, the smirk replaced by something more vulnerable. Something that looked like home.

After some time, you didn’t know if it was seconds, minutes, it could be hours, Bucky led you down the gravel path, his hand warm in yours, until you reached a small stone bench tucked beneath a sprawling oak. The leaves rustled overhead, and somewhere nearby, a fountain trickled, and the whole place smelled like jasmine and night-blooming flowers and him.

He sat down, then tugged you onto his lap without asking, arranging you so that you were straddling his thighs, your dress pooling around you both like a spill of green silk.

“Hi,” he said, looking up at you.

“Hi,” you said back.

His hands settled on your waist—flesh and metal, warm and cool—and he leaned back against the bench, watching you with those dark, dark eyes. The fairy lights caught the planes of his face, the sharp cheekbones, the strong jaw, the velvet-soft buzz cut that you still hadn't gotten enough of.

“You're staring again,” he said.

“I'm appreciating,” you corrected him. “There's a difference.”

“Is there?”

“Yes. Staring is what strangers do. Appreciating is what girlfriends do.” You ran your hands over his shoulders, feeling the expensive wool of his jacket, the warmth of his body beneath. “And I am appreciating the hell out of you right now, James.”

He hummed, low in his throat, and his fingers traced idle patterns on your hips. “You were pretty handsy in there.”

“I was restrained. You should see what I wanted to do.”

“Oh yeah?” His voice dropped, went dark and teasing. “What did you want to do?”

You leaned forward, bracing your hands on his chest, and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “I wanted to undo the rest of your buttons. Right there. In front of everyone. I wanted to see how far that silk goes down.”

His breath hitched. “Honey—”

“I wanted to put my mouth on your dogtags.” You kissed his jaw. “Right here.” His throat. “And here.” The hollow of his collarbone, where the chain disappeared beneath his shirt. “And here.”

His hands tightened on your hips, fingers digging into the silk, and when you pulled back to look at him, his expression had shifted. The teasing was still there, underneath, but there was something else now. Something hungry.

“You have no idea,” he said, voice rough, “what it does to me. When you look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I'm the only thing in the room.” His metal hand came up to trace the line of your jaw, cool and smooth. “Like you want to devour me. Like you've never seen anything better in your entire life.”

“I haven't,” you said simply. “I haven't seen anything better. Not ever.”

He made a sound—something between a groan and a sigh—and pulled you down into a kiss that was nothing like the ones in the ballroom. Those had been for show, for the cameras, for the people watching.

This was for you.

Slow and deep and searching, like he was trying to find something inside you, like he was mapping every corner of your mouth with his tongue, like he was memorizing the way you tasted so he could recall it later, in the dark, when you weren't there.

You melted against him. There was no other word for it. Your hands slid into his hair—that buzz cut, that velvet, that impossible softness—and you felt him shiver beneath you, felt his grip tighten, felt his whole body go taut like a wire about to snap.

“I love this,” you breathed against his mouth. “I love you. I love the way this feels. I love that you did this for yourself, because you wanted to, because it makes you comfortable, and I get to touch it anyway.”

His forehead dropped to yours. “You're going to make me cry at a gala.”

“Good tears or bad tears?”

“Good tears. Overwhelmed tears.” He laughed, a little wetly, and his hands smoothed up your back, pulling you closer. “I don't... I don't know how you do this. How you make me feel like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like I'm enough.” The words were barely a whisper. “Like I don't have to be anything other than what I am. Like this—” He touched his own head, the short bristles, a self-conscious gesture that had become second nature. “—isn't a mistake. Like I'm not a mistake.”

You kissed him. Hard and fierce and demanding, pouring everything you couldn't say into the press of your lips, the sweep of your tongue, the way your fingers curled against his scalp.

When you finally pulled back, your eyes were burning.

“You are not a mistake,” you said, and your voice shook. “You have never been a mistake. You are the best thing that ever happened to me, James Buchanan Barnes, and if you ever doubt that again, I will—I will spank you in front of our team, I swear to god.”

He blinked.

Then he laughed—a real laugh, bright and surprised and so full of joy that it made your heart stutter—and pulled you into his chest, wrapping both arms around you so tightly that you could barely breathe.

“I love you,” he said into your hair. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

“I love you too,” you said, muffled against his shoulder. “Now stop being insecure about the buzz cut. It's ruining my aesthetic.”

He snorted. “Your aesthetic?”

“My 'being wildly attracted to my boyfriend' aesthetic. It's very important.”

He pulled back just enough to look at you, and there it was—the smirk. The one he reserved only for you. The one that said I know exactly what I'm doing, and I'm going to keep doing it until you combust.

“So,” he said, slow and deliberate, “just to be clear. You like the buzz cut.”

“I love the buzz cut.”

“You like the suit.”

“I want to burn the suit so I can have you naked faster, but yes. I like the suit.”

“You like the dogtags.” He reached up and pulled the chain out of his shirt, letting the silver tags rest against the black silk, and your mouth went dry.

“Bucky.”

“And you've been thinking about this all night.” His voice dropped, went dark and sweet like honey and whiskey. “About getting your hands on me. About getting your mouth on me.”

“Bucky.”

“So here's what's going to happen.” He shifted beneath you, settling you more firmly on his lap, and his smirk sharpened into something dangerous. “We're going to stay here for a little while longer. Long enough that people notice we're gone. Long enough that Sam sends someone to check on us.”

“That's—that's not—why would we—?”

“Because,” he said, and leaned in until his lips brushed the shell of your ear, “I want them to know that I took you out to this garden. I want them to know that we were gone for forty-five minutes. I want them to wonder, sweetheart. Maybe we fuck here, maybe we make out like teenagers or maybe I just have you in my lap while we look at the lights but I want them to look at you tomorrow, with that pretty smile on that beautiful fase and I want them to wonder”

You shivered. Full-body, no-holding-back shivered, and you felt him smile against your neck.

“You're evil,” you whispered.

“I'm yours,” he corrected, echoing your words from earlier, and then his mouth was on your throat and you forgot how to think entirely.

The garden became a blur of sensation after that.

His hands—both of them, flesh and metal, warm and cool, everywhere—sliding up your thighs beneath the silk of your dress. Your fingers—tangled in his hair, in the collar of his shirt, in the chain of his dogtags—pulling and clutching and begging without words. His mouth—on your jaw, your throat, the place where your pulse beat frantic and wild—leaving marks that would bloom purple by morning.

“Tell me,” he murmured against your collarbone. “Tell me what you want.”

“You,” you gasped. “I want you. I've wanted you all night. I've wanted you since you walked through that door looking like—like that, like some kind of—of wet dream in a tailored suit—”

He laughed, low and dark, and his metal hand slid higher, cool fingertips brushing the inside of your thigh. “Wet dream?”

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

You kissed him. It was the only way to shut him up, and he knew it, and he wanted it, and god, you loved this man. You loved him so much it felt like drowning, like falling, like the most dangerous and wonderful thing you'd ever done.

When you finally pulled back—breathless, flushed, your dress rumpled and your hair half-fallen from its pins—he was looking at you like you were the answer to a question he'd been asking for a hundred years.

“I love you,” he said, simple and certain. “I love you, and I love the way you look at me, and I love that I get to have this. You. Tonight. Tomorrow. Every day.”

Your eyes burned. “Bucky—”

“I know.” He kissed your forehead, soft and sweet. “I know. We don't have to say it again. I just... I needed you to know.”

You cupped his face in your hands—the buzz cut, the stubble, the sharp cheekbones, the impossible beauty of him—and kissed him until you couldn't feel the tears anymore.

“Forty-five minutes,” you said when you finally let him go.

“What?”

“You said we'd stay here for forty-five minutes.” You glanced at your watch—a small, vintage thing that had belonged to your grandmother—and raised an eyebrow. “We've been out here for twelve.”

His smirk returned, slow and lethal. “Then we'd better make the most of the remaining thirty-three.”

He pulled you back down, and the garden swallowed you whole.

“We should go,” he said. “Say goodbye. Make an excuse.”

“We've only been here an hour.”

“An hour too long, baby. Weh ave only kissed and I gripped you around and you maybe roll your hips in that way I love but it’s a garden and I bet my ass that Stark has cameras around because he probably doesn’t want another incident like the one in Punta Mita.”

He was right. You knew he was right and the memory makes you chuckle. But you couldn't make yourself move, couldn't make yourself step away from the warmth of him, the solidness of him, the way he looked at you like you were the only thing in the world that mattered.

“One more minute,” you said.

“We don't have a minute.”

“Then thirty seconds.”

He smiled—that real smile, the one that crinkled his eyes and made you feel like the sun had come out. “Thirty seconds,” he agreed.

You spent them with your forehead pressed to his, breathing the same air, feeling the same wanting hum between you like a live wire.

When you finally pulled apart, his hand found yours.

“Home?” he said.

“Home.”

The apartment smelled like you—candle wax and something floral, the remnants of whatever perfume you'd dabbed on your wrists before leaving. The door had barely closed behind you before you had him pressed against it, your mouth on his, your hands fisting in the lapels of his suit jacket.

He laughed against your lips—breathless, giddy, young in a way he rarely got to be.

“Impatient,” he murmured.

“You have no idea.”

“I have some idea.”

You pushed the jacket off his shoulders, let it fall to the floor, and he didn't complain—just watched you with those dark, dark eyes, his chest rising and falling under the silk shirt. The dog tags had shifted again, resting now against the hollow of his throat, and you bent your head to press a kiss to the spot just below them.

His head fell back against the door. A sound escaped him—low, wrecked, perfect.

“Sweetheart.”

“Shh.” You kissed the line of his collarbone, following the chain of the dog tags down to where it disappeared beneath the silk. “I've been thinking about this all night.”

“Me too.”

“Thinking about getting you alone. Getting you undressed. Finding out if the rest of you is as—” You kissed the place where his neck met his shoulder, felt him shudder. “—devastating as the parts you were showing off.”

“Jesus.”

“Not Jesus. Just me.”

You pulled back just enough to look at him.

He was beautiful.

The buzz caught the low light of the apartment, the short bristles casting tiny shadows on his scalp. His cheeks were flushed, his lips reddened from kissing, his eyes so dark they were almost black. The silk shirt gaped open, exposing more of his chest than you'd seen all night, and you could see the muscles shifting beneath his skin as he breathed.

“Bedroom,” you said.

“Bedroom,” he agreed.

He didn't wait for you to lead. Instead, he swept you up—one arm under your knees, the other around your back—and carried you down the hallway like you weighed nothing. You laughed, startled and delighted, and buried your face in his neck.

“You're going to ruin the gown,” you said.

“It's your gown.”

“It's expensive.”

“I'll buy you another one. Five more.”

He laid you down on the bed—your shared bed, the one with the worn sheets and the pillows that smelled like him, the one where you’d spent countless nights tracing the lines of his face and learning the sounds he made when he was happy, when he was sad, when he was wanting—and for a moment, he just stood there.

Looking at you. Taking you in.

The streetlight filtered through the curtains, throwing the room in soft gold and grey. The fairy lights from the garden had followed you home, apparently, because everything seemed to glow—the curve of your shoulder where the emerald gown had slipped, the gleam of his metal arm, the dark bristles of his buzz cut catching the dim light like a halo.

“You’re staring again,” you said, and your voice came out softer than you intended.

“So are you.”

“Fair point.”

He didn’t move. Just stood at the edge of the bed, drinking you in, and you watched something shift in his expression—the usual guardedness falling away, replaced by something raw and open and almost frightened in its tenderness.

“Can I tell you something?” he asked.

“Anything.”

“I was nervous tonight.” He said it like a confession, like a secret he’d been holding in his chest all evening. “Ridiculously nervous. Standing in front of the mirror for twenty minutes, trying to decide if I should undo a third button or if that would be too much.”

You laughed—soft, disbelieving. “You were nervous?”

“Terrified.” He climbed onto the bed, slow and deliberate, and when he hovered over you—braced on his metal arm, his flesh hand coming up to cup your face—you felt the weight of him, the warmth of him, the way his thumb stroked your cheek like you were made of something precious. “I kept thinking… what if she doesn’t like it? What if she thinks I look like a thug? What if she spends the whole night embarrassed to be seen with me?”

“Bucky.”

“I know it’s stupid.” His eyes dropped, lashes dark against his cheeks. “I know. You’ve told me a hundred times. But I can’t help it. Every time I walk into a room full of people, I hear their thoughts. I see the way they look at me. The Winter Soldier. The assassin. The weapon.” He swallowed hard. “And then I see the way you look at me, and I think… maybe I’m not that person anymore. Maybe I get to be someone else. Someone good.”

Your heart cracked open, spilling warmth through your chest, and you reached up to touch his face—the sharp line of his jaw, the softness of his lips, the place where his stubble met the smooth skin of his cheek.

“You are good,” you said. “You are the best person I know, James Buchanan Barnes. And I am never embarrassed to be seen with you. Do you understand? Never.”

His eyes searched yours, looking for something—doubt, maybe, or pity, or the lie he’d been trained his whole life to expect. He didn’t find it. All he found was you, looking back at him, steady and sure.

“Okay,” he said, and his voice was rough. “Okay.”

He hovered over you—braced on his metal arm, his flesh hand coming up to cup your face—you felt like the entire world had narrowed to this single moment.

“I love you,” he said. “In case I haven't said it enough tonight.”

“You've said it.”

“I'll say it again.” He kissed your forehead. “I love you.” Your nose. “I love you.” Your chin. “I love you.”

Each kiss was softer than the last, more reverent, like he was trying to memorize the shape of you.

“I love you too,” you whispered. “Even when you show up to galas looking like a war crime.”

He laughed—that real laugh, the one that shook his shoulders and made your chest ache. “A war crime?”

“A handsome war crime.”

“I'll take it.”

You reached up and ran your hands over his buzz cut, savoring the velvet-soft bristles, the warmth of his scalp, the way his eyes fluttered shut and his whole body seemed to melt into your touch.

“You have no idea what you do to me,” you said. “With this. With the suit. With the buttons, Bucky. I'm never going to recover.”

“Good,” he said, and his voice was rough. “Then we're even.”

“Even?”

“Because I've been wrecked since the moment I saw you in that gown.” His metal hand traced the neckline of the emerald velvet, feather-light, barely touching. “The way it fits you. The way it moves when you walk. The way everyone in that room was looking at you like they wanted to eat you alive, and I had to stand there and smile and pretend I wasn't imagining all the ways I was going to take you apart the second we got home.”

Your breath caught.

“So yeah,” he continued, his voice dropping lower, his mouth hovering just above yours. “We're even.”

He kissed you.

It was different from the kisses in the ballroom, different from the desperate tangle in the garden, different from the frantic hello at the door. This kiss was slow. Deep and searching, the kind of kiss that asked questions and answered them in the same breath. His mouth moved against yours like he had all the time in the world, like there was nowhere else he’d rather be, like you were the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth.

You let yourself sink into it. Into him.

Your hands found his head—the buzz cut, the soft bristles, the warmth of his scalp beneath your palms—and you marveled, not for the first time, at how something so simple could feel so intimate. Without the curtain of hair to hide behind, there was nowhere for him to go. He was here, completely and utterly, and the vulnerability in his expression when you pulled back made your breath catch.

“You have no idea,” he murmured, “what it does to me when you touch me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m yours.”

“You are mine.”

His smile was small and soft and so full of love it made your chest ache. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I am.”

He kissed your forehead. Your nose. Your chin. The corner of your mouth. Each one a tiny absolution, a thank-you, an I love you in a language that didn’t need words.

“Can I take this off?” he asked, his fingers finding the zipper of your gown.

“Please.”

He drew it down slowly, agonizingly, the whisper of metal on metal the only sound in the room besides your breathing. His eyes stayed on yours the whole time, watching your reaction, making sure you were okay. Even now, even after all this time, he was checking in—because that was who he was. That was who he’d always been, under the metal and the memories and the century of pain.

A good man. A sweet man.

The emerald velvet pooled at your waist, and his breath caught.

“Sweetheart,” he said, and his voice was wrecked.

“What?”

“You’re so beautiful.” He said it like he couldn’t believe it, like he was seeing you for the first time. His hands hovered over your bare skin—not touching, not yet, just revering. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Don’t start that.”

“I mean it.”

“I don’t care what you mean.” You reached up and pulled him down, until his forehead rested against yours, until you were breathing the same air. “I love you. I chose you. Every day, I wake up and choose you. And I will keep choosing you, over and over, until I stop breathing. Do you understand?”

His eyes were bright. His jaw was tight.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “Yeah, I understand.”

He kissed you again—deeper this time, hungrier, but still gentle. Always gentle, with you. Even when he was desperate, even when he was wanting, even when his hands shook with the effort of holding back, he was gentle. Because that was who he was. That was who the world had tried to break and failed.

The gown came off the rest of the way, and he made a sound—something low and wondering, something that vibrated against your skin and traveled down your spine like a match striking.

“Can I tell you something else?” he asked, his lips brushing your collarbone.

“You can tell me anything.”

“I love the way you look at me.” He pressed a kiss to the hollow of your throat. “I love the way you say my name.” Another kiss, lower this time, over your heart. “I love the way you touch me, like I’m not broken, like I’m not—like I’m just me.”

“You are just you.”

“I know.” He lifted his head, and his eyes were soft, soft, soft. “Because of you. I know.”

His hands mapped your body like he was memorizing it—the curve of your waist, the dip of your hip, the place where your pulse beat quick and fragile at your wrist. His touch was feather-light, almost reverent, and every brush of his fingers left a trail of fire in its wake.

“You’re shaking,” he said.

“You’re touching me.”

“Is that okay?”

“It’s better than okay.” You reached for him, tugged at his shirt, the silk slipping through your fingers. “But I need you closer.”

He helped you. Buttons came undone, silk parted, and then his chest was bare above you, and you forgot how to breathe.

He was beautiful. All of him. The broad shoulders, the smooth planes of his chest, the trail of dark hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of his trousers. The metal arm gleamed in the low light, the vibranium plates shifting as he moved, and you reached up to trace the place where flesh met machinery—the boundary line that he’d once been ashamed of and now wore like armor.

“You’re doing it again,” he said softly.

“Doing what?”

“Looking at me like I’m something precious.”

“You are something precious.”

His throat worked. His eyes, impossibly, went soft.

“Sweetheart.”

“I mean it.” You sat up, pushed the silk shirt off his shoulders, let it fall somewhere on the floor. Your hands mapped his chest—the warm skin, the steady heartbeat, the way his breath hitched every time your fingers brushed over a sensitive spot. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. With the buzz cut. Without the buzz cut. In a suit. In your boxers. In nothing at all.” You looked up at him through your lashes. “Especially in nothing at all.”

He made a sound—half laugh, half groan—and captured your mouth with his.

The kiss was everything. Deep and hungry and desperate and tender all at once, the kind of kiss that happened when two people had been wanting each other all night and finally, finally had the privacy to do something about it. His hands were everywhere—your back, your hips, your thighs—and you arched into his touch like a flower turning toward the sun.

“I want to take my time with you,” he said against your skin. “Is that okay?”

“Yes.” The word came out breathless. “God, yes.”

“I want to learn every inch of you again. The way you look tonight. The way you feel.” His metal hand skimmed down your side, over your ribs, over your hip, leaving goosebumps in its wake. “I want to memorize you.”

“Bucky.”

“Shh.” He pressed a kiss to the hollow of your throat, right where the dog tags had rested against his skin all night. “Let me.”

You let him.

He was thorough. He was patient. He kissed every inch of skin he could reach—your shoulders, your arms, the inside of your wrists, the palms of your hands. He traced the line of your spine with his metal fingers, and you arched into his touch like a cat. He murmured your name like a prayer, over and over, until it lost all meaning and became just a sound, just a breath, just the shape of his love for you.

At some point, his trousers followed the shirt. The dog tags stayed on—you’d asked him to keep them, once, and he’d never taken them off since—and they swung between you as he moved, cool metal against your heated skin.

“You’re so good to me,” he said, and his voice was thick. “You’re so good, sweetheart. I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”

“You existed,” you said. “That’s all. You existed, and I found you, and I’m never letting you go.”

He laughed—wet, almost, like he was crying or close to it. “Promise?”

“Promise.”

He kissed you again, and this time there was nothing slow about it. This was want, pure and simple, the kind of want that had been building all night, all week, all lifetime. His body pressed you into the mattress, and you wrapped your legs around his waist and your arms around his neck and pulled him close, close, close.

His face was inches from yours. The buzz cut brushed against your forehead, soft and warm. His eyes were dark and bright all at once, full of something that looked like wonder.

“I love you,” he said, and his voice broke on the words.

“I love you too.” You kissed the corner of his mouth. “Now show me, Barnes.”

He smiled—that real smile, the one that crinkled his eyes and made you feel like the sun had come out—and he did.

He showed you with every touch, every kiss, every murmured word against your skin. He showed you in the way he held you, like you were something fragile and precious and worth protecting. He showed you in the way he moved—slow at first, deep, deliberate, drawing out every sensation until you were trembling beneath him, gasping his name into the dark.

“That’s it,” he breathed. “That’s it, sweetheart. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

And he did. He always did.

His hands found yours, fingers interlacing, pinning them gently to the mattress on either side of your head. The metal hand was cool, the flesh hand warm, and the contrast made you shiver. He pressed his forehead to yours, staying close, staying connected, even as the pace built and the world narrowed to just the two of you.

“Look at me, precious,” he said. “Please. I need to see you.”

You opened your eyes—you hadn’t realized you’d closed them—and found him watching you. His gaze was intense, burning, but underneath it was something softer. Something that looked like awe.

“There you are,” he whispered. “There’s my girl.”

You made a sound—something between a laugh and a sob—and pulled him down into a kiss.

He swallowed every noise you made, held you through every tremor, whispered I love you against your lips until the words lost all meaning and became just a rhythm, just a heartbeat, just the truth of him.

And when you finally shattered—when the world went white and bright and everything—he was right there with you, holding on, holding together, pressing his face into the curve of your neck and breathing your name like a benediction.

At 3 am, around the time where the city had gone quiet and the streetlight had flickered out and the only light in the room came from the soft glow of the bathroom, where you’d left the door cracked—you lay with your head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat.

It was steady now. Calm. The frantic thrum from earlier had settled into something slow and rhythmic, a lullaby in B-flat major.

His hand was in your hair, fingers combing through the tangles with absent-minded tenderness. His other arm—the metal one—was wrapped around your waist, holding you close even in sleep’s approach. The dog tags rested against his skin, cool and familiar. You traced the outline of them with your fingertip, feeling the stamped letters, the weight of history, the story of a man who had survived things no one should survive and somehow found his way to this.

To you.

“Hey,” he said, voice rough with sleep.

“Mm?”

“I’m glad I cut my hair.”

You lifted your head, propped your chin on his chest, and looked at him. The buzz cut was already growing out—you could see it, the faint shadow of length that would need trimming in the morning. But right now, in the dim light, it looked perfect. Soft. His.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” His flesh hand came up to cup your face, his thumb brushing your cheek. “Because now I know. Even at a fancy gala, even in a suit that costs more than our first apartment combined, even with everyone looking at me like they’re trying to figure out if I’m a hero or a weapon…” He paused, swallowed. “You still look at me the same way.”

“And what way is that?”

He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was barely a whisper.

“Like I’m worth coming home to.”

You kissed him. Soft. Slow. A promise.

“You’re worth everything,” you said. “In a suit. Out of a suit. With a buzz cut that makes me want to do unspeakable things to you in public gardens.”

He snorted. “We didn’t do anything in the garden.”

“Barely.”

He laughed—that real laugh, the one that made your heart feel too big for your chest—and pulled you back down against him. His arms wrapped around you, flesh and metal, and he pressed a kiss to the top of your head.

“You’re sweet, you know that?” you murmured into his chest.

“Me?”

“You. The way you touch me. The way you look at me. The way you check in, even when you’re—” You paused, searched for the word. “—even when you’re lost in it. You’re always careful with me. Always gentle.”

He was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was thick.

“That’s because you’re the most important thing in my life,” he said. “And I spent a long time being something else. Something hard. Something that broke things.” His arms tightened around you. “I never want to break you.”

“You couldn’t break me,” you said. “Even if you tried.”

“I know.” He pressed another kiss to your hair. “That’s why I love you.”

You fell asleep like that—tangled together, heartbeat to heartbeat, the man with the buzz cut and the dog tags and the heart that had learned to love again holding you like you were the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth.

And in the morning, when the sun came streaming through the curtains and you woke to find him already watching you, soft-eyed and sleep-rumpled and more beautiful than any suit or gala or garden could ever make him, you smiled.

“Good morning, James.”

“Good morning, sweetheart.” He ran his hand over his own head—the new gesture, the one that was already becoming yours—and grinned. “I love you, did you know that?”

The safehouse is a shoebox. One room, one bed, one flickering bulb that buzzes like a dying insect. Rain hammers the tin roof, and somewhere in Ajijic, the trail on your target has gone cold. You’re re-checking the window seal, peering through the gap in the curtains to watch the wet street below, when his hands land on your hips—not gently, not hesitantly, but with a full, firm claim that pulls you back against his chest like you belong there, like he’s been waiting all day for the excuse to touch you. His body is warm even through the tactical gear, and you feel the steady thump of his heartbeat against your spine, that stubborn rhythm that somehow always manages to stay calm no matter how bad things get.

“Eyes on the street,” you murmur, even as your body betrays you by leaning deeper into him, your head tilting just enough to give him access to the curve of your neck.

“Street’s empty, baby,” he says, and his mouth finds that spot just below your ear—not kissing, not yet, just breathing you in like you’re the only real thing in the entire city. His stubble scrapes softly against your skin, and a shiver runs down your spine that has nothing to do with the cold rain outside. “Has been for an hour. Checked five times. One was enough. One because you were distracting me and the other three because you were looking fucking hot in that reflection.” He murmurs, his fingertips tickling you a bit. “Empty as hell, honey.”

“We don’t know that,” you try, but your voice comes out weaker than you intended, breathier, and he notices because he always notices everything about you. His metal fingers splay across your stomach, cool through the thin fabric of your shirt, and he finally presses a kiss just below your ear—slow, deliberate, the kind of kiss that says I’m not going anywhere.

“I know,” he murmurs against your skin. His flesh hand comes up to turn your face toward him, and you twist properly in his arms to look at him. Rainlight catches the edge of his jaw, the shadow under his eyes, the way his dark hair has come loose from its tie and fallen across his forehead. Bucky, the one that was called by many, either the team or the general public as the grumpiest Avenger, the one who never laughs at Tony’s jokes, who drinks his coffee black and glowers at anyone who talks before noon, (anyone except you, you could be yapping and he would hear each word with so much interest), who once made an agent uncomfortable just by staring at him across a briefing room table—is looking at you like you reinvented gravity. Like you’re the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth. “Scanned the street many times. The building across the way twice. The roof access once for fun.”

“You’re supposed to be watching our six,” you whisper, but it comes out less like a reprimand and more like an invitation, and you both know it.

“I am watching our six,” he says, and then he kisses the corner of your mouth—lazy, devastating, the kind of kiss that makes your knees feel unreliable. His thumb brushes across your lower lip, tracing the shape of you like he’s memorizing it all over again. “You’re our six. You’re our seven, eight, and nine. You’re the whole damn number line, doll.” You snort and roll your eyes, because that is genuinely the worst line he has ever given you, but he just grins that rare, crooked grin and presses his forehead to yours. “Four days,” he says quietly, and his voice cracks on the last syllable. “Four days of sharing walls, sleeping in not very comfortable ways, not touching you except to pass a scope or a bandage. Four days of watching you through a sniper lens and wanting.” He swallows hard, and you feel the tremor in his hands where they grip your hips. “I miss you. Even when you’re right here. That’s pathetic, right?”

No one would believe it. Not the grumpy man who sits in the corner of common room parties and leaves by nine. Not the man who once told Parker to shut up with a single look, just because the teenager was innocently flirting with you, and actually succeeded. Not the guy who glares at anyone who tries to hug him and talks about his space. But here he is, clinging to you like you might evaporate, his broad shoulders curved inward just to fit himself around you, his eyes soft and desperate and so full of love it makes your chest ache. This is the Bucky no one else gets to see—the one who falls asleep with his head in your lap, who makes you coffee exactly the way you like it without being asked, who says your name in the dark like it’s a prayer. It’s the most him thing he’s ever done, and you wouldn’t trade it for anything.

You turn fully in his arms, sliding your hands up his chest over the ridges of his tactical vest, and you feel his breath hitch when your fingers curl into the fabric. “The comms are off?” you ask, even though you already know the answer.

“Pulled the battery myself,” he confirms, and his voice has dropped to something lower, rougher, something that makes your stomach flip.

“And the target?”

“Two blocks east, probably asleep.” His hands slide down to your waist, squeezing once, and his eyes are nearly black in the dim light. “And right now, I don’t give a fuck, baby,” You kiss him first, open-mouthed and a little rough, the way he likes when he’s been holding back for too long—and he makes a sound against your lips that is low and grateful and almost pained, like he’s been starving and you just handed him a meal. He walks you backward until your spine hits the wall with a soft thud, and then his hands are everywhere. Undoing, unclasping, mapping every inch of you like he’s afraid you’ll disappear. The metal one is careful at first, his vibranium fingers gentle against your ribs, and then less careful when you tug his hair and say his name the way you do when you mean faster, harder, please. The flesh one slips under your waistband, and he groans against your throat like it physically hurts him to stay quiet.

“You have no idea,” he breathes, his lips dragging down to your collarbone, teeth grazing the delicate skin there. “What you do to me. What I’d do to keep you.” Your head falls back against the wall, and you can feel him smile against your skin, smug and adoring all at once. “Mmhm say it, please,” he murmurs, almost in a whimper, “My name.”

“James,” you whisper, and his grip tightens like you’ve just given him something precious.

“Yeah,” he says, almost to himself. “That’s it. That’s all I need.” And then he drops to his knees.

Just like that, the guy who grumbles about team movie nights and once told Sam Wilson he’d rather eat glass than do a trust fall, the man who acts like affection is a foreign language he never bothered to learn—on his knees on a cracked linoleum floor in a Mexican safehouse, looking up at you like you hung the moon. His flesh hand splays across your hip, thumb stroking small circles through your pants, and his metal one presses flat against the small of your back, steadying you like he knows your legs are about to give out. “People think they know me,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to your stomach through your shirt, and then another one lower, and another one lower still. “They don’t. They get the grump. The whole history. The resting murder face. They don’t get this.”

His teeth graze the waistband of your pants, and you gasp, your fingers tangling in his hair. “They don’t get the part of me that stays awake just to watch you sleep,” he continues, his voice muffled against your hip bone. “They don’t get the way I say your name when no one else is listening. They don’t get how I’d burn down every mission, every protocol, every order if it meant keeping you safe.” His eyes meet yours, blown wide and wrecked already, and you feel your heart crack open a little. “You’re the only mission I never want to complete,” he says softly. “Because then what? Then I’d have to stop coming home to you.”

“Bucky,” you try, but your voice comes out strangled, and you’re not sure if you’re asking him to stop or to never stop.

“Thank you,” he cuts in, and his voice is thick, almost reverent. “For this. For tonight just being us. No extraction team listening in through the comms. No Nat making that stupid eyebrow thing tomorrow morning. No Steve raising his eyebrows across the breakfast table like he knows exactly what we did.” He presses one more kiss to your stomach, right above your navel, and then he rises slowly, dragging his body up against yours so you feel every inch of him—the hard planes of his chest, the cool press of his metal arm, the very obvious evidence that he wants you just as badly as you want him. His mouth finds your ear, and his breath is hot against your skin. “Just you and me and this shitty bed with its shitty springs and its shitty scratchy sheets.”

You laugh, breathless. “You want the bed?”

He grins—that rare, crooked thing that still makes your chest ache after all this time—and his hands slide down to grip your thighs. “I want you on every surface in this room,” he says, low and rough, and the sound of it goes straight between your legs. “Starting with the one that won’t give you splinters. Then the wall again. Then maybe the floor if you’re still standing after all that.” He lifts you like you weigh nothing—like you’re made of air and starlight—and you wrap your legs around his waist automatically, your arms looped around his neck. He carries you across the room without breaking eye contact, and something about the way he looks at you makes you feel seen in a way no one else has ever managed.

When he lays you down, the ancient springs scream in protest, and he doesn’t care. He just lowers himself over you, bracing his weight on his forearms so he doesn’t crush you, and for a moment he just looks. His flesh hand comes up to trace your face—your brow, your cheek, your lips, the curve of your jaw. Like he’s memorizing you all over again. Like he’s seeing you for the first time. Like he’s praying to a god he doesn’t quite believe in and thanking them anyway. “I love you,” he says, and it sounds like a secret he’s been keeping too long, something too big for his chest to hold. “I love you so much it makes me stupid. Makes me sloppy. Makes me forget there’s a world outside this room and this bed and you.”

You pull him down by the back of the neck, your fingers threading through his dark hair, and you kiss him slow and deep and certain. “Then stop talking about it,” you whisper against his lips.

He laughs against your mouth—a real laugh, bright and broken and so full of something tender it makes your eyes sting. And then he stops talking. He stops thinking about missions and targets and extraction points. He stops being the so called grumpy one, the man with the metal arm and the dark past and the walls built so high no one could ever climb them. He just becomes yours—every desperate, clinging, embarrassingly in love inch of him. Every soft whisper and needy sound. Every time he says your name like it’s the only word he hasn’t forgotten how to say.

Outside, Ajijic keeps raining, and the target stays two blocks away, and none of it matters. Inside, the grumpiest man you know is tracing the line of your collarbone with his lips, and his hands are shaking slightly, and he keeps pulling back every few seconds just to look at you again like he can’t quite believe you’re real.

No one back at the compound would ever believe it. They see the scowl and the silence and the way he keeps everyone at arm’s length. They don’t see him like this—soft and wrecked and so deeply, stupidly in love that he forgets to be anyone but yours.

But you don’t have to tell them.

Let them think he’s just the grumpy one. You know better. You know exactly what he sounds like when he falls apart on your name, and you know exactly how he feels tangled around you in a too-small bed in a too-loud city, and you know that tomorrow morning he’ll make you coffee and complain about the rain and act like nothing happened.

And you’ll smile and drink your coffee and let him pretend.

Because tonight? Tonight he was yours. Just like tomorrow and everyday after that. Every broken, beautiful, desperately in love piece of him.

The apartment smelled like him—cedar and gunmetal, something old and something warm—even before he walked through the door.

You were curled on the couch, knees tucked under a quilt that had no business being on a Brooklyn evening in late May but which you refused to give up even as the first humid whispers of summer crept through the window screens. A dog-eared paperback dangled from your fingers, the ceiling fan spun its lazy circles overhead, and somewhere two floors up someone was playing jazz at a volume that suggested they either had no neighbors or no shame. The city hummed its usual lullaby outside the open windows, the smell of somebody's charcoal grill drifting up from the fire escape three floors down, and you were comfortable. Safe. That particular flavor of domestic stillness that had taken you months to get used to after Bucky had barreled into your life and turned everything you thought you knew about softness on its head.

The lock turned. Three clicks—old habit, military precision, the kind of muscle memory that didn't fade even after decades of being someone else's weapon. The door swung inward and then—

“Oh,” you said.

Not because you were disappointed. Not because you were horrified. But because your brain had just short-circuited somewhere between your occipital lobe and your mouth, and all that came out was that single, stupid syllable, flat as a stone skipped across still water.

Bucky Barnes stood in the doorway, early summer clinging to the shoulders of his leather jacket, and his hair was gone.

Not all of it—he wasn't cue-ball bald, thank god, you didn't think you would have survived that—but the familiar dark waves that usually fell across his forehead, the ones you tangled your fingers in when he was sleepy, the ones that curled at the nape of his neck and made him look like he'd just rolled out of a 1940s recruitment poster? Gone. Shorn down to a dark, velvety fuzz that hugged the perfect shape of his skull like a second skin, so short you could probably see the pale skin beneath if you stood close enough.

He'd kept the stubble on his jaw but everything else had been sacrificed to whatever demon possessed him between the hours of six and nine tonight.

The door closed behind him with a soft thunk. He didn't move further into the room. Just stood there in the entryway, the warmth of the evening clinging to him, and watched you.

And you watched him back, because holy hell.

He looked—

There was no word for it. Not in English, or Spanish, not in the three other languages you spoke passably well, not in the silence that stretched between you like a held breath. He looked dangerous. The buzz cut changed everything. Without the curtain of hair to soften the angles, his cheekbones were knives, his jaw was a cut diamond, and his eyes—those impossible light blue eyes that had seen a century of horrors and somehow still found room for tenderness—they seemed bigger somehow. More exposed. More him.

The metal arm gleamed under the overhead light, the vibranium catching the glow and throwing it back in soft golds and silvers, and without the shaggy dark hair to balance it, the contrast was almost obscene. Man and Soldier. Flesh and something other. He looked like something out of a dream you'd wake up from gasping, sweating, sheets twisted around your thighs, heart pounding.

You realized, with a distant sort of horror, that your mouth had fallen slightly open.

Bucky's expression flickered.

It was subtle—a micro-shift in the set of his shoulders, a minute downturn at the corner of his lips. The kind of thing you'd miss if you didn't know him the way you knew him, if you hadn't spent countless nights mapping the topography of his face with your fingertips, learning every crease and shadow and the stories they told.

“It's that bad, huh?” He said it lightly. Too lightly. The words hung in the air between you, fragile as spun glass.

You blinked. What?

He tugged off his jacket—movements comical and stoic, almost harsh—and draped it over the hook by the door without looking at you. “Should've known. Sam said it was a mistake. 'Barnes,' he said, 'you do not have the bone structure for a buzz cut, put the clippers down and step away from the mirror.' But did I listen? No. I never listen.” He laughed. It didn't reach his eyes. “Guess I should've asked you first, right? That's what normal boyfriends do. They ask. They don't just come home looking like a—a thug.”

“Bucky—”

“It's fine.” He ran a hand over his head—a gesture that was clearly new, clearly unconscious, his palm skimming over the short bristles like he was surprised to find them there. “It was just bothering me, you know? The heat. The weight of it. And I swear to god, sweetheart, I sweat like a sinner in church the second the temperature hits seventy-five. The serum doesn't do everything right, apparently.” Another pass of his hand, almost defensive now. “Figured this would be easier. For missions, too. Less to grab onto in a fight. Tactical. Very tactical. That's what I told myself.”

“Bucky—”

“And now I look like I just got out of basic training circa 1943, which was not the look I was going for, believe me. I was going for 'cool and collected.' Maybe 'mysterious.' Instead I got ‘now give me your lunch money.'” He finally, finally looked at you properly, and what you saw in his expression made something in your chest crack clean in two.

He was nervous.

This man. This impossible, indestructible, century-old super-soldier who had faced down Hydra and aliens and his own personal apocalypse. He was standing in his own apartment, freshly shorn, looking at you like a teenager waiting to be rejected.

“Sweetheart,” he said, and his voice had gone rough at the edges, “if you hate it, just say so. I can—I don't know. Wear a hat. That grandpa hat you love making fun of. Or I can grow it back. Whatever you want. I just... I couldn't stand it anymore. The way it stuck to my forehead. The way it felt heavy. You don't understand, it's like wearing a wool blanket on your head when it's eighty degrees out, and I know you liked playing with it, and I should have asked, and I'm sorry, I'm—”

You stood up.

The quilt fell away, pooling on the couch cushions. The paperback hit the floor with a soft thump that neither of you acknowledged. You crossed the room in four steps, bare feet silent on the hardwood, and stopped just close enough to feel the heat radiating off his body.

He was so tall. He was always tall, but without the hair, he seemed taller. Broader. More present. You had to tilt your chin up to meet his eyes, and when you did, you saw the insecurity lurking there, swimming just below the surface like something waiting to breach.

“You absolute moron,” you said, and your voice came out breathless.

His brow furrowed. “That's not—is that good or bad? Because I'm getting mixed signals here, and my therapist said I need to work on—”

You grabbed the front of his henley—soft grey, worn thin from washing, the collar stretched out because he had a habit of tugging on it when he was thinking—and yanked him down.

He came willingly, of course. He always came willingly. But there was a moment of confusion in his eyes before your mouths met, a flicker of what is happening that made you want to shake him and kiss him in equal measure.

The kiss was not gentle.

It was hungry, desperate, the kind of kiss you give someone when words have failed you and your body has decided to take over. You bit his lower lip—just a nip, just enough to make him gasp—and used the distraction to push him backward until his spine hit the wall with a thud that rattled the framed print of the Brooklyn Bridge hanging beside the door.

His hands found your waist. They always found your waist, like they were magnetized there, the flesh hand warm and calloused, the metal hand cool and smooth. He squeezed, a reflex, and you felt the tension in his shoulders start to ease.

“Okay,” he breathed against your mouth. “Okay. So you don't hate it.”

You pulled back just far enough to look at him.

His lips were already reddened, parted slightly, and his pupils were blown wide enough that the blue of his irises was barely visible. The short hair made his face look raw. Vulnerable. Like someone had peeled back a layer of him you'd never seen before, and underneath was something even more beautiful than the version you'd fallen in love with.

“Hate it?” you repeated. Your voice was doing something strange—higher, thinner, like you were about to laugh or cry or possibly both. “Bucky. Bucky. Do you have any idea what you look like right now?”

His Adam's apple bobbed. “Based on your reaction so far, I'm gonna go with 'confused and vaguely terrified.'”

You punched him in the chest. Not hard. Just enough to make a point.

“You look like a fucking god,” you said. “You look like someone took every single one of my weaknesses and put them in a blender and poured them into the shape of a man. You look—” You had to stop, had to breathe, because you could feel your face heating up and your thoughts scattering like startled birds. “I couldn't speak, Bucky. That's why I was quiet. You opened the door and my brain just... stopped. Because you're standing there looking like that, and I'm supposed to just carry on a normal conversation?”

Something shifted in his expression. The insecurity didn't vanish—it never did, not completely, not with everything he'd been through—but it receded, pulled back like a tide giving way to sun-warmed sand.

“Yeah?” he said. Soft. Almost disbelieving.

“Yeah.” You reached up and touched his head.

The sensation was wild. Instead of the familiar silky strands you usually threaded your fingers through, your palm met soft, short bristles that tickled your skin. You made a sound that you're not even going to pretend it was dignified, it was somewhere between a gasp and a moan, and ran your hand over the curve of his skull again, marveling at the way the short hair felt under your palm. Like velvet. Like a peach. Like something you wanted to rub your cheek against like a cat marking its territory.

Bucky's breath hitched.

“That's...” He trailed off, swallowed hard. “You're making a face.”

“I'm having a sensory experience,” you corrected him. “There's a difference.”

His lips twitched. The first real smile of the evening, tentative and a little bit goofy, and it transformed his whole face from heart-stopping to devastating. “A sensory experience.”

“Don't mock me. I'm grieving.”

“Grieving?” Now he just looked confused again.

You dropped your hand, let it fall to his chest, and tried to ignore the way his heartbeat thrummed against your palm. “I can't pull your hair anymore.”

The silence that followed was deafening.

Bucky stared at you. You stared back. And then, slowly, like the sun coming up over a battlefield, he laughed.

Not the hollow laugh from earlier. Not the self-deprecating deflection he used as armor. A real laugh, surprised and warm and so full of relief that it made your chest ache. His head fell back against the wall, exposing the long line of his throat, and you watched the laughter move through him like a wave.

“That's what you're upset about,” he said when he could breathe again. “Not the hair. The hair-pulling.”

“I had plans for that hair,” you said, and you absolutely did not pout. Bucky loves that lovely pout. “Do you know how many times I've lain awake at night thinking about getting my hands in it again even after I just did it? How many fantasies involved me yanking your head back by those perfect, stupid, gorgeous curls while I—”

His hand clapped over your mouth.

It was his flesh hand, warm and a little rough, and his eyes had gone dark in a way that made your stomach flip over.

“Okay,” he said, and his voice had dropped about an octave. “Okay, honey. I get it. You're not mad.”

You licked his palm.

He jerked his hand away with a scandalized noise, and you grinned up at him, triumphant.

“I'm not mad,” you confirmed. “I'm furious. There's a difference.”

“You keep using words that don't mean what you think they mean.”

“Shut up and let me admire you.”

You pushed off his chest and took a step back—just one, just enough to see all of him. The buzz cut. The sharp cheekbones. The way the collar of his henley gaped slightly, showing the pale skin of his clavicle. The metal arm, gleaming, beautiful, his. He stood there under your gaze like a man who had spent decades being looked at and never once seen, and you wanted to wrap him up in something soft and never let the world touch him again.

But first—

“Turn around,” you said.

He raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Because I want to see the back.”

Something vulnerable flickered across his face again, but he obeyed. Turned slowly, deliberately, like he was giving you time to change your mind. And when his back was to you, you saw that the short hair extended all the way down, hugging the strong column of his neck, exposing the place where his skull met his spine in a way that made your mouth water.

The nape of his neck. His nape. There was something about a man's nape, about the vulnerability of it, the way the hair grew in soft whorls and the skin was always a little paler there. It was the part of him that was easiest to kiss when he was sleeping, easiest to touch when he was sad, easiest to nuzzle when he came home exhausted and dropped his head into your lap.

Now it was just... there. Bare and beautiful and waiting.

You stepped forward, go on your tiptoes and pressed your lips to the back of his neck.

He shivered. Full-body, no-holding-back shivered, and his hand came up to grip yours where it rested on his hip.

“That's not fair,” he said, and his voice was wrecked.

“I'm not trying to be fair.” You kissed him again, higher this time, at the base of his skull where the short bristles gave way to soft skin. “I'm trying to make a point.”

“And what point is that?”

You wrapped your arms around him from behind, pressing your cheek between his shoulder blades. He was so warm. Always so warm, the serum running hot in his veins, and you could feel his heart beating steady and strong beneath your palms.

“The point,” you said into the fabric of his henley, “is that I love you. With hair. Without hair. In a buzz cut that makes you look like a sexy ex-con fresh out of super-soldier prison. I love you, Bucky. Not the packaging. But also—” You squeezed him tighter, felt him relax incrementally. “—the packaging is really fucking good right now, and we're going to have a conversation later about why you didn't warn me before committing an act of aesthetic terrorism on my boyfriend.”

He turned in your arms.

You were chest to chest, nose to nose, and his eyes were soft now. The insecurity had faded to something fainter, something manageable, and in its place was a warmth that made you want to curl up inside it and never leave.

“An act of aesthetic terrorism,” he repeated, and his mouth curved.

“Don't laugh. I'm serious.”

“I'm not laughing.”

“Your eyes are laughing. I can see them laughing.”

He cupped your face in both hands—flesh and metal, warm and cool, the most beautiful dichotomy you'd ever known—and tilted your head back gently. “You’re so precious. And thank you,” he said, and the words were simple but the weight behind them was enormous. “For... not hating it. For not making me feel stupid. For—”

You kissed him again. Softer this time. A promise.

“You could shave your head bald and tattoo 'Property of Hydra' on your forehead, just like you joked about that time when you got drunk on Thor’s liquor” you said against his lips, “and I would still love you. I would just also be very, very angry about it.”

He laughed—that real laugh again, the one that crinkled the corners of his eyes—and pulled you into his chest. His chin rested on top of your head, and you felt more than heard the contented sigh that escaped him.

“Promise me something?” he murmured.

“Anything.”

“If I ever do something stupid again—”

“When. When you do something stupid again.”

“When I do something stupid again,” he conceded, “don't let me spiral for three minutes before you tell me you like it. I was this close—” He held up his flesh hand, thumb and forefinger a millimeter apart. “—to calling Steve and asking if I could crash on his couch.”

“You were not.”

“I absolutely was.”

You pulled back just enough to look at him, and the image hit you like a freight train, your Bucky, freshly buzzed, standing in the hallway of your apartment building, phone in hand, contemplating whether his best friend would judge him for seeking sanctuary from his girlfriend's prolonged silence.

“I'm sorry,” you said, and you meant it. “I should have said something sooner. I just... you broke me, Barnes. You broke my brain. I was looking at you and thinking things that are probably illegal in several states.”

His eyebrow arched. “Illegal?”

“Obscene. Lewd. The kind of thoughts that get people smited.”

He was grinning now, full and bright, and you wanted to bottle the sound he made—half laugh, half groan—and carry it with you forever.

“Smited,” he said. “That's not a word.”

“It is now. I invented it. For you.”

He kissed your forehead. Your nose. The corner of your mouth. Each one a tiny absolution, a thank-you, an I love you in a language that didn't need words.

“I have a confession,” he said, and his voice had gone low again, the kind of low that made your toes curl against the hardwood.

“What's that?”

He reached up and ran his hand over his own head—the new gesture, the one you were rapidly becoming obsessed with—and looked at you through his lashes. “I kept a lock of it. The hair I cut off. Sam said it was weird, but I... I remembered how much you liked playing with it. And I thought maybe...” He trailed off, suddenly shy.

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe you'd want it. For... I don't know. A bookmark. Or a weird souvenir. Or—” He stopped, cleared his throat. “Forget it. It's stupid.”

You were going to combust. Right there in the entryway of your Brooklyn apartment, wearing a worn out black t-shirt and your favorite pair of fuzzy socks, you were going to spontaneously burst into flames because James Buchanan Barnes had kept a lock of his own hair for you.

“You kept me your hair, just like a mom would do it with the first hair cut of their baby.” you said, and your voice came out strangled.

“It's in a Ziploc bag in my jacket pocket. Don't tell Sam.”

“I'm going to frame it.”

“You are not.”

“I'm going to put it in a locket and wear it around my neck like a Victorian widow mourning her soldier husband.”

“Sweetheart—”

“And every time someone asks about it, I'm going to tell them it's a relic of the man I loved before he committed an act of aesthetic—”

He kissed you.

It was the only way to shut you up, and he knew it, and you let him because his mouth was warm and his hands were steady and the short bristles of his hair tickled your palms when you reached up to touch them.

The kiss deepened.

You weren't sure who moved first—maybe both of you, maybe neither, maybe the space between you simply collapsed under the weight of everything unspoken. His back was still against the wall, but now you were pressed flush against him, every line of your body curved into every line of his, and his hands had slid from your waist to your hips, fingers digging in like he was afraid you might disappear.

“Mmhm, honey” he murmured against your mouth, and the word was barely a breath, barely a sound, but it hit you somewhere deep and aching.

Your hands were on his head again. You couldn't help it. The velvety texture of the buzz cut was addictive, and every time you dragged your palms over the short bristles, Bucky made a sound—a tiny, broken thing that seemed to surprise even him. His eyes fluttered shut. His grip tightened. His whole body seemed to lean into your touch like a plant turning toward the sun.

“Jesus,” he whispered. “You really... you really like it.”

It wasn't a question. Not anymore. But there was still something wondering in his voice, something awed and almost childlike, like he couldn't quite believe what was happening.

You pulled back just enough to look at him, and what you saw stole the breath from your lungs.

His face was open. Not guarded, not careful, not the mask he wore for the world. The buzz cut had stripped away more than just hair—it had stripped away the last of his defenses, the last little hiding place where he could tuck himself away from being seen. And now he was just... Bucky. Your Bucky. With his pink lips and his dark lashes and the way his chest was rising and falling like he'd just run a marathon.

“I don't just like it,” you said, and your voice came out thick. “I love it. I love the way it feels. I love the way it looks. I love that you did it because you were uncomfortable and sweaty and done with dealing with things that annoy you. I love that you're mine, Bucky Barnes. With hair. Without hair. In a Ziploc bag.”

A choked laugh escaped him. “You're never going to let that go.”

“Never.”

He reached up and cupped the back of your head, flesh hand warm against your scalp, and pulled you back into him. But this kiss was different. Slower. Deeper. Less desperate and more devouring, like he was trying to memorize the shape of your mouth, the taste of your breath, the little sound you made when his teeth grazed your lower lip.

“I love you,” he said, and the words were so quiet you almost missed them. “I love you so much it scares me sometimes. Do you know that? Do you have any idea what it's like—what it's been like—coming home to you every night? After everything? After all the things I've done and all the things that were done to me?” His forehead dropped to yours, and his breath fanned warm across your lips. “I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. For you to wake up one day and realize you deserve better than a broken super-soldier with a metal arm and a hundred years of nightmares.”

“James—”

“But then you look at me like this.” His thumb traced the line of your jaw, feather-light. “Like I'm something precious. Like I'm worth something. And I think... maybe. Maybe I get to have this. Maybe I get to have you.”

Your heart cracked open, spilling warmth through your chest, and you kissed him—not to silence him, not to distract him, but because there were no words big enough for what you felt. So you poured it into the kiss instead. Into the way your fingers traced the short bristles of his hair. Into the way your body curved against his like it had been made to fit there.

He groaned—a low, helpless sound—and his hands slid down your back, pulling you impossibly closer. The wall was cold against his shoulders but you were warm, so warm, and he could feel your heartbeat racing against his chest, could feel the way your breath hitched every time his metal fingers skimmed the bare skin of your lower back where your shirt had ridden up.

“You're going to kill me,” he muttered into your neck, where he'd buried his face like he couldn't get close enough. “You know that, right? Walking around looking at me like that, touching me like that, wanting me like that. I'm a dead man.”

“Good thing you're hard to kill,” you managed, and then his mouth found the spot behind your ear and you forgot how to form words entirely.

He kissed a path down the column of your throat, unhurried, reverent, like he had all the time in the world and intended to use every second of it. His flesh hand tangled in the hair at the nape of your neck; his metal hand pressed flat against your spine, the cool vibranium a delicious shock against your over-warm skin. And every few seconds, he would pull back just enough to look at you—to see you, really see you—and the expression on his face was something you wanted to bottle and keep forever.

Devotion. That was the only word for it. Pure, unfiltered, slightly overwhelmed devotion.

“I was so scared,” he admitted, voice muffled against your collarbone. “Walking up the stairs. Turning the key. I kept thinking... what if she doesn't recognize me? What if she looks at me and sees a stranger? What if—”

Your fingertips tugged gently on the short bristles at the back of his head—not a pull, not really, just a reminder—and he lifted his face to meet your eyes.

“I would know you anywhere,” you said. “Blindfolded. In the dark. In a crowd of a thousand people. I would know you, Bucky. Hair or no hair. Metal arm or—” You paused, considered. “Okay, the metal arm is kind of distinctive. But you know what I mean.”

He laughed—that real laugh, the one that crinkled his eyes and shook his shoulders and made you feel like the sun had come out from behind the clouds. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

He kissed you again, softer this time, and when he pulled back, his eyes were bright.

“Come here,” he said, and lifted you.

You yelped—a completely undignified sound that you would deny to your dying day—as he hauled you up by the thighs, and suddenly your legs were wrapped around his waist and your arms were locked around his neck and he was carrying you away from the wall, across the living room, past the couch with its abandoned quilt and the coffee table with its ring-stained surface and the bookshelf crammed full of paperbacks and mission reports and a single framed photograph of the two of you at Steve and Natasha’s wedding, your head thrown back in laughter, his eyes soft as he watched you.

The bedroom was dim, the last of the evening light filtering through the curtains, painting everything in shades of gold and grey. He laid you down on the bed like you were something fragile—something precious—and then he just... stopped.

Stood there at the edge of the mattress, looking down at you with an expression you couldn't quite read.

“What?” you asked, suddenly self-conscious.

“Nothing.” His voice was rough. “Just... looking.”

He reached up and ran his hand over his own head again—that new gesture, the one that was already becoming yours, the one that meant he was thinking or nervous or overcome. The short bristles caught the fading light, and you watched the way his biceps flexed, the way his jaw tightened, the way his chest rose and fell with each breath.

“You're staring,” you said.

“So are you.”

“Fair point.”

He climbed onto the bed, slow and deliberate, and when he hovered over you—braced on his metal arm, his flesh hand coming up to cup your face—you felt like the entire world had narrowed to this single moment. To the weight of him. The warmth of him. The way he looked at you like you were the first good thing he'd seen in a hundred years.

“I love you,” he said again, and this time the words came easier, like they'd been waiting to be spoken. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Each repetition was a kiss—your forehead, your nose, your chin, the corner of your mouth. Not hurried. Not frantic. Just... certain. Like he was making a promise he intended to keep.

Your hands found his head again, and you marveled at how something so simple could feel so intimate. The buzz cut meant there was nothing to hide behind. No curtain of hair to duck behind when things got too real. Just him. Just Bucky, bare and beautiful and utterly, devastatingly present.

“I love you too,” you whispered. “Even without the hair. Especially without the hair, apparently. Who knew?”

He buried his face in the crook of your neck, and you felt him smile against your skin.

“You're ridiculous,” he said.

“I'm yours,” you corrected him.

And when he lifted his head to kiss you again—deep and slow and full of everything he couldn't say—you felt something shift between you. Not the desperate hunger from before, but something quieter. Something deeper. The kind of love that didn't need to prove itself, that had nothing to defend and nothing to hide.

The kind that could survive anything, even a haircut like that.

Later, much later, the kind of later where the jazz upstairs had gone quiet and the city had settled into its deepest hour, and the sheets were twisted around your legs and his metal arm was cool against your bare shoulder and his flesh hand was tracing lazy patterns on your hip—you lay with your head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat.

It was steady now. Calm. The frantic thrum from earlier had settled into something slow and rhythmic, a lullaby in B-flat major.

His hand was in your hair, fingers combing through the tangles with absent-minded tenderness. Fair was fair, after all.

“Hey,” he said, voice rough with sleep.

“Mm?”

“I'm glad I cut it.”

You tilted your head to look at him, and he was beautiful in the dim light filtering through the blinds. The buzz cut made him look younger, somehow. Less burdened. Like the man he might have been if the 1940s had been kinder. A sheen of sweat still lingered on his forehead—the apartment was warm, the summer humidity doing no favors—and you reached up to brush it away without thinking.

He caught your hand, pressed a kiss to your palm, and smiled.

“Because now I know,” he continued. “Even without the hair, even without the—what did you call it? 'Aesthetic'—you still look at me the same way.”

“And what way is that?”

He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was barely a whisper.

“Like I'm worth something.”

You lifted your head, cupped his face in your hands—flesh and metal, warm and cool, the most beautiful dichotomy you'd ever known—and kissed him until you felt the last of the insecurity drain away.

“You're worth everything,” you said. “With hair. Without hair. Sweating like a sinner in church. In a Ziploc bag in your jacket pocket. Everything, Bucky Barnes.”

He snorted. “You're never going to let that go, are you?”

“Never.”

“Good.”

He pulled you back down, tucked you against his side, and pressed one last kiss to your forehead.

“Goodnight, honey.”

“Goodnight, my love.”

And somewhere in the dark, the man with the buzz cut and the metal arm and the heart that had learned to love again smiled, held on tighter, and finally, finally let himself believe he was home.

The autumn of 1936 was the kind of season that made Brooklyn feel like a promise.

Bucky Barnes was nineteen years old, which meant he was old enough to know better and young enough to ignore it entirely. He had a steady job at the docks, a reputation that followed him down every street in Bay Ridge, and a circle of friends who would've followed him into a fire if he'd asked.

But the only person he wanted to follow anywhere was you.

You, who lived three blocks over and had been his partner-in-crime since he was seven years old and you'd punched Lance Baizen in the nose for calling Bucky a tiny crying baby. You, who showed up at his fire escape at all hours with a stolen pie or a new record or just the weight of whatever was sitting heavy on your chest that day. You, who laughed with your whole body, who knew how to hold a cigarette like a film star, who looked at Bucky like he was something worth looking at.

He'd been in love with you for three years.

He hadn't told a soul.

Not Steve, who would've looked at him with those too-sharp eyes and said something maddeningly perceptive like "So tell her, then." Not his sisters, who would've squealed and plotted and made it into a production because they loved you that much. Not even you, when you'd fallen asleep on his shoulder during a double feature at the cheap cinema theater, your breath warm against his neck and your fingers loosely curled around his sleeve.

He should have kissed you then.

He remembered everything about that night. The scratch of the wool seats. The flicker of the projector. The way your eyelashes cast tiny shadows on your cheeks. He'd sat there, frozen, heart pounding so loud he was sure the whole theater could hear it, and he'd thought, This is it. This is the moment.

And then the film had ended, and you'd woken up, and you'd stretched and smiled at him like nothing had happened, and he'd smiled back like nothing had happened, and nothing had happened.

Nothing ever happened.

Because you were his best friend. Because you were the person he couldn't imagine living without. Because if he kissed you and you didn't want it, if he told you and you didn't feel the same, he wouldn't just lose a potential girlfriend. He'd lose you.

And Bucky Barnes had lost enough in his short life to know that some things weren't worth the risk.

So he didn't kiss you.

He took you to Coney Island instead a couple of times, watched you shriek on the Cyclone, won you a stuffed bear you named after his two named, that sat on your dresser for years. He walked you home in the rain, held his jacket over both your heads, let you steal sips from his flask. He tucked a strand of hair behind your ear once, slow and careful, and you'd looked at him with something unreadable in your eyes.

“You're staring, Barnes,” you'd said, but your voice was soft.

“You're worth staring at,” he'd replied, and that was true too.

But it wasn't an invitation. It wasn't a confession. It was just another almost, another nearly, another moment that slipped through his fingers like smoke.

The winter of 1941 was cold enough to freeze the East River solid, or so the old men on the corner claimed. Bucky didn't know about that, but he knew his apartment was drafty, his mother was worried about rationing, and every time he looked at you these days, his chest ached like a bruise.

You were twenty-two now. He was twenty-four. You'd both grown up, in all the ways that mattered and some that didn't. You'd gotten a job at the telephone exchange. You'd dated a few boys— nice ones, mostly, the kind your mother and his mother would approve of— but none of them had stuck. You still showed up at his fire escape. You still fell asleep on his shoulder. You still looked at him like he was the only person in the room.

And Bucky still hadn't kissed you.

“You're an idiot,” Steve said one night, hunched over his sketchbook in Bucky's kitchen. The radio was playing something soft and sad. The window was fogged with steam from the kettle.

“I'm protecting our friendship,” Bucky said, which was the lie he told himself most often.

“You're just protecting yourself. You know you're being a coward.”

“Watch it, Rogers. I can easily throw you out the window.”

Steve didn't look up from his drawing. “You've been in love with her since we were almost sixteen. She's been in love with you since she was twelve. Everyone knows this except the two of you, and at this point, I'm starting to think it's intentional.”

Bucky's heart stuttered. “She's not—she doesn't "love" me, Steve, you're being an idiot.”

“She looks at you like you hung the moon, Buck. She remembers everything you've ever told her. She made you a birthday cake last year from scratch, and you know she can't cook to save her life. She burned her hand on the oven and didn't even mention it because she wanted you to have a nice birthday.” Steve finally looked up, and his expression was softened by something that might have been pity. “What are you so afraid of?”

Losing her, Bucky thought. I'm afraid of losing her, and I'm afraid of living without her, and I'm afraid that if I say it out loud, it'll become real, and then I'll have to actually do something about it, and I don't know if I'm brave enough for that.

“Nothing,” he said. “I'm not afraid of anything.”

Steve snorted. “Liar.”

You came over the next night. It was Friday, which meant you'd bring Chinese food from the place on 4th Avenue and Bucky would complain about the price and you'd eat it anyway, sitting cross-legged on his floor with the cartons spread out between you like offerings.

You looked tired. There were shadows under your eyes, and your usual bright energy was dimmed to something softer, something quieter.

“Bad day?” he asked, handing you a pair of chopsticks.

You shrugged, picking at your noodles. “Just long. Mrs. Feldman called nine times to complain about her bill. I think she's lonely. Her husband died last spring, you know.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said quietly. “I remember.”

There was a pause. The radiator clanked. Somewhere outside, a car backfired.

“Bucky,” you said, and your voice was strange. Fragile in a way he'd never heard before.

“Yeah?”

You looked at him. Really looked. Your eyes felt like the sky just before a storm, and right now, they were full of something he couldn't name.

“Have you ever wondered...” you started, then stopped. Shook your head. “Never mind.”

“What?”

“Nothing. It's stupid.”

“Since when do you get to decide what's stupid? Nothing you say it's stupid. Ever.” He set down his chopsticks, turning to face you fully. “Tell me.”

You bit your lip. It was a nervous habit you'd had since childhood, and Bucky had always found it devastating. “Have you ever wondered what it would be like,” you said slowly, “if things were different?”

“Different how?”

“I don't know.” You laughed, but it came out wrong. Hollow. “If we weren't us. If you weren't my best friend and I wasn't yours. If we were just two people who met somewhere, anywhere else. Would it be easier, do you think? To say the things we don't say?”

Bucky's heart was a fist in his chest, pounding against his ribs like it was trying to escape.

“What things?” he asked, and his voice came out rougher than he intended.

You stared at him for a long moment. The air between you felt electric, charged with something that had been building for years, decades, a lifetime.

Then the moment passed.

You looked away, reaching for your carton again. “Nothing,” you said, and your smile was back in place, bright and false. “Forget I said anything. This sesame chicken is getting cold.”

Bucky wanted to reach across the space between you. He wanted to take your face in his hands and make you look at him again. He wanted to kiss you, finally, after all these years of wanting, and find out what it would feel like to stop pretending.

But you were eating your noodles, and the moment was gone, and he was a coward.

So he didn't.

-

The war came like a thief in the night, stealing everything that mattered before anyone had a chance to say goodbye.

Bucky enlisted because it was the right thing to do, because Steve had already tried and been rejected, because the news from Europe got worse every day and he couldn't sit still in Brooklyn while the world burned. He told himself it was patriotism. He told himself it was duty.

But when he knocked on your door that last night, in his brand-new uniform with his duffel bag slung over his shoulder, he knew the truth.

He was running.

Not from the war but from you. From the weight of everything he'd never said. From the unbearable pressure of wanting and wanting and never taking. He thought distance would make it easier. He thought if he couldn't see you, couldn't smell your perfume on his jacket, couldn't hear your laugh echoing through his apartment, maybe the ache would fade.

He was wrong, of course. But he wouldn't figure that out for another eighty years.

“Don't go,” you said, and you were crying. You never cried. You'd punched Lance Baizen. You'd held Bucky's hair back when he'd gotten sick off cheap whiskey at sixteen. You'd stared down your father when he'd called you a disappointment and hadn't flinched.

But you were crying now, tears tracking down your cheeks, and Bucky wanted to die.

“I have to,” he said, and his voice cracked. “You know I have to.”

“I know.” You wiped your face with the back of your hand. “I know, I just —” You stepped forward, grabbed the front of his uniform, and pulled. “Come back. Promise me you'll come back.”

“I'll come back,” he said, because it was the only thing he could say. “I always come back,”

“Don't you dare die over there, James Barnes. Don't you dare.”

“I won't, honey.” He gave you that infamous smile that was reserved for his special woman. You.

“You better not.” You were crying harder now, and he pulled you into his arms, held you so tight he could feel your heartbeat against his chest. You smelled like rain and coffee and something else, something that was just you, and Bucky closed his eyes and tried to memorize it.

Say it, he thought. Tell her now. Before it's too late.

But you were crying, and he was leaving, and it felt cruel somehow, selfish, to burden you with his feelings when you were already hurting. When you might not feel the same. When it might ruin everything.

So he didn't.

“I love you,” he said instead, and it was true — it was absolutely, devastatingly true — but it wasn't the whole truth. It wasn't the I'm in love with you that sat in his chest like a second heart.

“I love you too,” you said, because you always said it, because you'd been saying it since you were children, because it was safe and familiar and meant everything and nothing all at once.

Bucky kissed your forehead. Your hair. The corner of your mouth, almost, nearly, not quite.

Then he let you go, and he walked away, and he didn't look back.

He would regret that for the rest of his life.

The next four years were a blur of mud and blood and men screaming. Bucky lost pieces of himself in the snow of the Ardennes, in the rubble of Naples, in the face of a boy from Ohio who died with his eyes open, asking for his mother.

He wrote you letters. Dozens of them. Hundreds. He told you about the constellations he could see from the front lines, about the terrible food, about the Italian family who'd taken him in for a night and fed him real pasta. He told you about Steve, about the serum, about the impossible things he'd seen.

He never told you he loved you.

Not the way he meant it.

He wrote the words a hundred times, scratched them out, started over.

"Honey, I've been thinking...", "Honey, there's something I should have said...", "Honey, I promise that when I get home—"

He never finished the sentence.

Because what if he didn't get home? What if the letter was the last thing you ever heard from him, and it was full of words that would only make it hurt worse? What if he survived and came back and nothing had changed, and he'd put all that weight on your shoulders for nothing?

So he signed every letter the same way.

Yours, Bucky.

And if you read something else into it, if you held the paper a little longer than necessary, if you pressed it to your chest like a promise — well. That was between you and the silence.

-

He fell from the train in early 1945.

He didn't die — not really — but he might as well have.

Everything that made him James Buchanan Barnes — the boy who won you a stuffed bear, the man who walked you home in the rain, the fool who never kissed you when he had the chance — was stripped away, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but the Soldier.

Hydra did not want his memories. Hydra did not want his heart. Hydra wanted a weapon, and a weapon cannot love, cannot regret, cannot sit awake at night wondering what might have been.

So they took it all.

He forgot your name. He forgot your face. He forgot the sound of your laugh, the curve of your smile, the way you looked at him like he was the only person in the room.

He forgot that he'd ever been loved at all.

In Brooklyn, you waited.

For weeks. For months. For years.

You went to his funeral. There was no body, just a flag and a photograph and his family’s tears. You stood at the back of the church, dry-eyed, because you'd done all your crying in private, and you refused to let anyone see you fall apart.

Steve was gone too couple weeks later. They'd told you about the plane, about the ice, about the heroic sacrifice of Captain America. You'd sat in stunned silence for a very long time, trying to comprehend a world without both of them in it.

They were ghosts now. Both of them. And you were alone.

Not completely. You had Bucky's sisters, who held you like a sister themselves. You had your own family, your mother's worried phone calls, your father's gruff attempts at comfort. But the two people who had known you best — who had seen you at your worst and loved you anyway — were gone.

You didn't date for three years. You couldn't. Every man who looked at you reminded you of what you'd lost. Every hand that reached for yours felt wrong.

Then you met David.

David was a veteran too — he'd served in the Pacific, come home with a limp and a quiet sadness that matched your own. He wasn't handsome in the way Bucky had been. He didn't make your heart race. He didn't look at you like you hung the moon. But he loved you. He was kind. He was steady. He made you laugh, sometimes, and he never asked about the photograph you kept in your nightstand — the one of you and Bucky at Coney Island, his arm around your shoulders, both of you young and beautiful and so unbearably full of hope.

He didn't ask, and you didn't tell.

You married him in 1951. It was a small ceremony, just family and a few friends. You wore a white dress and carried peonies and smiled for the camera. You loved him — not the way you'd loved Bucky, not the consuming, devastating, world-ending way — but you loved him. Enough. In a different way. In a way that was safe. David wasn’t the love of your life.

In a way that didn't destroy you when you realized it wasn't enough.

You had three children. Charles, named for no one in particular, just because you liked the sound of it. Joseph, after David's father. And then, when you were thirty-seven and sure you were done, a surprise — a little girl with dark hair and bright blue eyes who looked nothing like you and everything like the ghost you'd never stopped carrying.

You named her Jane. It was the closest you could come to saying his name out loud without breaking.

David never asked why.

The decades passed.

You watched your children grow up, get married, have children of their own. You held your first grandchild in 1978, a squalling boy with his father's nose and his mother's temper, and you loved him with the fierce, protective love that only grandparents understand.

You lost David in 1985. Heart attack. Sudden. He was gone before the ambulance arrived.

You cried at his funeral, but your grief was different from what you'd felt in 1945. It was quieter. More resigned. You'd had almost thirty-seven years with him. You'd built a life. You'd done the best you could.

And still, sometimes, late at night, when the house was quiet and the moon was full, you thought about a fire escape and a rainstorm and a boy who kissed your forehead like it meant something.

You thought about all the words you'd never said.

You told yourself it didn't matter. You told yourself you'd made the right choice. You told yourself that if you'd said something, if you'd been brave, you might have had a few years — a few months — a few days — before the war took him anyway.

You told yourself a lot of things.

Some of them were even true.

-

In 1994, your granddaughter, Sarah, found the letters.

She was seventeen, curious, going through the boxes in your attic. You'd forgotten they were there — the letters Bucky had sent from overseas, tied with a ribbon, yellowed with age.

“Grandma,” Sarah said, coming downstairs with the box in her hands. “Who's Bucky?”

Your heart stopped.

For a moment — just a moment — you were twenty-five again, sitting on your bed with a letter in your hands, tracing the shape of his handwriting like it might bring him back.

“Nobody,” you said. “He was just a friend.”

Sarah looked at you with her mother’s eyes —his eyes— and you saw in her face the same sharp intuition that had always made you uncomfortable.

“You're lying,” she said. Not meanly. Just matter-of-fact. “You get this look when you lie. Grandpa used to say it was your tell.”

You laughed despite yourself. “Your grandpa said too much.”

“He also said you never loved him the way you loved someone else.” Sarah sat down on the couch, the box in her lap. “I always thought he was being dramatic. But now I'm wondering.”

You were quiet for a long time.

“He was from the neighborhood,” you said finally. “Bucky. We grew up together. He went to war. He didn't come back.”

“And you loved him.”

It wasn't a question.

“Yes,” you said, and the word came out like a confession, like a relief, like the first breath after drowning. “I loved him. I loved him, and I never told him, and by the time I was brave enough, it was too late.”

Sarah was quiet for a moment. Then she opened the box, pulled out the first letter, and began to read aloud.

Honey, I saw the most beautiful sunset tonight. It made me think of you. Not because it was beautiful, nothing could ever reach your beauty, but because it was the kind of thing you'd want to see. You always did love the sky.

You closed your eyes and listened to your granddaughter read the words of a dead man, and you let yourself remember.

-

You died in 1999, just as the world was getting ready for a new century.

Lung cancer. You'd smoked for forty years, and you'd known the risks, and you hadn't cared. Some things were worth the cost.

Your children were there — Charles, Joseph, Jane — and your grandchildren, and even a few great-grandchildren, the youngest just a baby, born three weeks before you went into the hospital.

They gathered around your bed, holding your hands, telling you they loved you. And you believed them. You'd done something right, after all. You'd built something that would last.

But just before the end, when the room was quiet and your breathing was shallow, you whispered a name.

Not David's. Not your children's.

Bucky's.

“I should have kissed you,” you said, to no one, to everyone, to the ghost you'd carried for fifty-four years. “I should have kissed you anyway.”

And then you were gone.

-

You were buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, Section 12, under a tree that your husband had planted the year you bought the plot. The inscription on your headstone, chosen by your children, read

Beloved mother, grandmother, and friend. She loved deeply, and she was deeply loved. Always in our hearts.

-

In 2017, Bucky Barnes came home.

Not to Brooklyn — not at first. He went to Wakanda first, to heal, to learn to be a person again. The process was slow and painful, full of setbacks and nightmares and days when he couldn't get out of bed.

But eventually, slowly, he started to remember.

He remembered his mother's voice. His little sisters' annoying pranks. His father's lessons. He remembered Steve's laugh. He remembered the smell of rain on hot pavement, the taste of cheap beer, the feeling of a fire escape under his hands.

He remembered you.

Your face came back to him in fragments — your smile, your eyes, the way you'd looked at him the night before he left for the war. He remembered the letters he'd written, the words he'd never said, the kiss he'd never given.

And he remembered that you were gone.

Steve told him when he was stable enough to hear it. They were sitting on the porch of Bucky's hut, watching the sun set over the Wakandan hills, and Steve's voice was very quiet.

“She died in '99,” Steve said. “Cancer. She was seventy-nine.”

Bucky stared at the horizon. His metal hand was clenched in his lap. His flesh hand was shaking.

“Did she —” He stopped. Swallowed. “Did she have a good life?”

Steve hesitated. Then he pulled a photograph from his pocket — one he'd found in the archives of the Smithsonian, of all places, donated by a woman named Jane who'd written a note explaining who the people in the picture were.

It was you. Older, grey-haired, laughing at something off-camera. You were standing on a porch, surrounded by children — three of them, grown, with children of their own. A baby was in your arms. Your eyes were bright.

“Yeah,” Steve said. “She had a good life. She got married. Had kids. Grandkids. She was happy.”

Bucky took the photograph. His thumb traced the curve of your smile.

“Good,” he said, and his voice cracked. “That's good. I'm glad, she deserved nothing less than pure happiness.”

He was lying. He was glad — he was — but there was a part of him, a selfish, ugly part, that wished you'd waited. Wished you'd pined. Wished you'd been as broken as he was.

He hated that part of himself.

“She wrote you a letter,” Steve said. “At the end. Her granddaughter found it in her things and sent it to the Smithsonian, along with your letters. Someone there tracked me down after I came out of the ice. Jane said she still don't know why she wrote it, maybe just to finally let go all those feelings, even if she thought you were dead.”

Bucky's head snapped up and Steve handed it to him — old paper, soft with age, your handwriting shaky but recognizable.

Bucky unfolded it with trembling hands.

Dear Bucky,

I hope you remember.

I hope you remember the fire escape, and the rain, and the night we fell asleep in the movie theater. I hope you remember the stuffed bear and the terrible Chinese food and the way you used to walk me home even when it was three blocks and I told you I didn't need an escort. I hope you remember that I loved you.

Not the way I said it, all those years. Not the easy way, the safe way, the friendship way.

I loved you the other way. The big way. The forever way.

And I never told you.

I had a hundred chances. A thousand. Every time you looked at me, I thought: this is it. This is the moment. And every time, I let it pass. I was scared. I was so scared of losing you that I lost you anyway, not all at once, but a little bit every day, until there was nothing left but the ghost of what we could have been.

I should have kissed you, Bucky.

I should have kissed you when we were seventeen and you fell asleep when you were supposed to help me study . I should have kissed you when we were twenty-one and you walked me home in the rain. I should have kissed you the night before you left for the war, when you held me so tight I couldn't breathe, and you looked at me like you were trying to memorize my face.

I should have kissed you anyway.

I know it wasn't an invitation. I know it wasn't convenient. I know there were a million reasons not to, and only one reason to try. But that one reason — you — should have been enough.

I'm dying now. That's the truth of it. I'm old, and I'm tired, and I've spent fifty-four years wishing I'd been brave and I’ve been knowing since I got the news that there's never enough time.

Find someone. Love them. Tell them.

And if you can't — if you're still the same stubborn idiot I fell in love with — then just know this.

Yours (always, always yours),

Honey

P.S. I got married. His name was David. He was a good man, and I loved him, but not the way I loved you. I don't think I was capable of loving anyone that way after you left. My children are beautiful, and my grandchildren are brilliant, and my life was full. But there was always a you-shaped hole in it. I just learned to live around it.

-

Bucky read the letter three times.

Then he folded it carefully, the way he'd been trained to fold maps and orders and things that mattered, and pressed it to his chest.

“She had kids,” he said. It wasn't a question.

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Three. Her oldest, Charles, is in her sixties now. He lives in New Jersey. Her son Joseph passed away a few years back — heart problems — but his kids are still around. And her youngest, Jane — she's in her early sixties. Lives in Brooklyn, actually. Not far from where we grew up.”

Bucky's breath caught. “Brooklyn?”

“She's been trying to get in touch with you,” Steve admitted. “Through the Smithsonian. Through me. She wants to meet you.”

“Why?”

Steve shrugged. “She said her mother talked about you. Not often, but enough. She said she's got questions. And she said—” He paused. “She said you might want to meet them all, maybe.”

Bucky looked down at the photograph again — at you, older and happy and surrounded by the family you'd built. Then he looked at the letter, at the postscript, at the words you-shaped hole.

“When?” he asked.

“She's free Saturday,” Steve said. “I can give her your number.”

Bucky nodded slowly. He tucked the letter into his jacket pocket, next to his heart, and stared out at the Wakandan sunset.

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay. Saturday.”

---

Saturday came faster than he expected.

Bucky had spent the intervening days in a strange state of suspension — not quite anxious, not quite calm, just waiting. He'd read your letter so many times he'd memorized it. He'd looked at the photograph until the details were seared into his brain, in the way you held that baby, the laugh lines around your eyes, the strand of grey hair that had fallen across your forehead.

He wondered if you'd thought about him at the end. If you'd regretted it. If you'd wished, just once, that he'd been braver.

He'd certainly wished it. A hundred times. A thousand.

The coffee shop was in Park Slope, a place Jane had chosen because it was quiet and private and had a back room where they wouldn't be disturbed. Bucky arrived early, ordered a coffee he didn't drink, and sat in the corner with his hands flat on the table so they wouldn't shake.

The door opened at 2:03 pm exactly.

A woman walked in — early sixties, grey-streaked dark hair, bright blue eyes, sharp features that reminded him of someone. She was wearing a simple dress and sensible shoes, and she was holding a photograph album under her arm.

“Mr. Barnes?” she said, and her voice was firm and kind, very much like yours.

“Just Bucky,” he said. “Please.”

She sat down across from him. For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then she set the album on the table and opened it to the first page.

“That's my mother,” she said, pointing to a photograph — a wedding picture, you in a white dress, a man he didn't recognize beside you. “She was thirty-one there. Three years after she gave up waiting.”

Bucky stared at the photograph. You looked beautiful, of course — you always had — but there was something in your eyes that made his chest ache. A sadness, maybe. A resignation.

“She loved him,” Rebecca said, and her voice was soft. “My father. She really did. But it wasn't — it wasn't the same.”

Bucky nodded. He couldn't speak.

“She kept your letters,” Rebecca continued, turning the page. “All of them. Even after she got married. Even after she moved out of Brooklyn. She kept them in a box in her attic, tied with a ribbon, and she never let anyone touch them.”

She turned another page. More photographs — you holding a baby, you at a birthday party, you at the beach with three small children.

“Charles,” Jane said, pointing to the oldest. “Joseph. And me.” She touched the smallest child, a girl with dark hair and bright eyes. “I'm named after someone, you know. Not from a movie star or something like that. Someone else.”

Bucky's throat tightened. “Jane,” he said. “Don’t want to overthink but perhaps your mother thought about James? about me?”

“Yes,” Rebecca said. “She told me. When I was fifteen, I asked her why she chose it. She said it was because she wanted to name me after someone brave.” Jane’s eyes glistened. “She said you were always there trying to protect everyone in the neighborhood from the bullies and all. And your sister, Rebecca, is my godmother. Mom used to say how much Becca used to tease you two all the time.”

Bucky closed his eyes. He remembered those moments— sitting on the fire escape, sharing a cigarette, talking about nothing and everything. Becca passing by and making some kissing sounds just to annoy you two and him saying she’s always a pain in the ass.

“She loved you,” Rebecca said quietly. “My whole life, I knew she loved someone. Not my father — not the way she loved him. There was always this — this absence. This ghost. She never talked about it, not really, but we all knew. And when I found the letters, when I read them —”

She stopped. Swallowed.

“I'm glad you're alive,” she said. “She would have been, too. She would have been so glad.”

Bucky opened his eyes. He looked at Jane— at her face, at the small echoes of you he could see in her features, even though he still don’t get why she reminds him of himself somehow— and felt something crack open inside him.

“Can I —” he started, then stopped. Cleared his throat. “Can I see more?”

Rebecca smiled. It was your smile, the one you'd given him a thousand times, and Bucky had to look away.

“I brought everything,” she said. “There's a lot.”

---

They spent three hours in that coffee shop.

Jane showed him photograph after photograph — your wedding, your children's births, your grandchildren's graduations. She told him stories: about the time you'd chased a raccoon out of the kitchen with a broom, about the way you'd taught her to make pie crust, about the summer you'd taken all three kids to the beach and lost Joseph in the waves for a terrifying ten minutes before you found him building a sandcastle with a stranger.

“She never stopped,” Rebecca said. “Even when she was tired. Even when she was sad. She just kept going.”

Bucky thought about the girl he'd known — the one who'd punched Lance Baizen, who'd cried on his shoulder and laughed in his face and looked at him like he was something special. He could see her in all of it. The same stubbornness. The same warmth. The same refusal to give up.

“Did she ever —” He hesitated. “Did she ever talk about me? Specifically?”

Jane was quiet for a moment. Then she nodded.

“When she was dying,” she said. “At the very end. She was in the hospital, and we were all there, and she was drifting in and out. And at one point, she opened her eyes and looked right at me while I was holding her hand and she said, 'Tell him I should have kissed him.'”

Bucky's breath left him in a rush.

“I didn't know who she was talking about,” Jane continued. “Not then. I thought maybe it was my father. But later, after she died, my Sarah told me about the letters. And I realized.”

She reached across the table and covered Bucky's hand with her own. Her fingers were warm, solid, real.

“She should have,” Jane said. “And so should you. You both should have.”

Bucky looked down at her hand — at the resemblance to yours, at the life that had continued without him — and felt tears prick his eyes.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

-

He met Charles the next weekend.

He was older than Jane, sixty-four, with grey hair and a kind face and a sharp tongue that made him think of you. He didn't cry when she saw him, which honestly didn’t him. Instead, he just looked at him for a long moment, “You're shorter than I expected.” He said and Bucky laughed. It was the first genuine laugh he'd had in weeks.

“She said you'd say that,” he said. “In one of her letters. She said you always told people they were shorter than you expected, even when they weren't.”

Charles’ expression softened. “She told you about me?”

“She told me everything,” Bucky said, and it was true — not in the letters, not explicitly, but in the way you'd written about your children, the pride and love and exhaustion and joy. He'd read between the lines. He'd always been good at that with you.

“She was a good mom,” Charles said, sitting down across from him. “Not perfect. She had her sad days, her quiet days. But she was good. She loved us.”

“I know she did.”

“She also loved you.” Charles’ voice was matter-of-fact. “I figured that out when I was about twelve. She had this photograph of the two of you at Coney Island, and sometimes I'd catch her looking at it when she thought no one was watching. She'd get this look on her face — like she was seeing something we couldn't see.”

Bucky swallowed hard. “I had that same look,” he admitted. “When I thought about her. For years. Even after —” He gestured vaguely at his metal arm, at everything he'd become. “Even when I couldn't remember her name, I remembered the feeling. That missing. That ache.”

Charles studied him for a long moment. Then she nodded, satisfied.

“Good,” she said. “She deserved to be missed.”

Joseph's children came to see him too.

His son, Marcus, was forty-two, a high school history teacher with a dry sense of humor and his father's kind eyes. He brought his daughter, Elena, who was seventeen and surly and looked at Bucky like he was a museum exhibit.

“You're really him,” Elena said. “The Winter Soldier.”

“That's not something I'm proud of,” Bucky said quietly.

Elena shrugged. “My dad says you were brainwashed. That it wasn't your fault.”

“It wasn't,” Marcus said firmly. “And it's not something we're going to talk about right now, Elena.”

They sat in a park in Brooklyn, on a bench overlooking a playground. Children were screaming, laughing, running in circles. Bucky watched them with a strange ache in his chest — at all the things he'd never have, at all the moments he'd missed.

“She talked about you,” Marcus said. “My grandmother. Not often, but sometimes. On certain days — your birthday, mostly. The anniversary of when you —” He stopped, cleared his throat. “She'd get quiet. Distant. My grandfather used to say she was visiting someone in her head.”

“Did that bother him?” Bucky asked. “Your grandfather.”

Marcus considered the question. “I think so,” he said finally. “But he loved her anyway. He understood, I think, that some loves don't go away just because someone dies. They just — change. Become something else.”

Bucky nodded slowly. He thought about you and David, about the life you'd built together, about the way you'd made room for him even after he was gone.

“Your grandmother was extraordinary,” he said. “She deserved more than I gave her.”

“She gave herself plenty,” Marcus said. “She had a good life. A full one. Don't diminish that by wishing it had been different.”

Bucky looked at him — at this man he'd never known, this descendant of a life he could have had — and felt something shift inside him.

“You're right,” he said. “I know you're right.”

“Of course I'm right,” Marcus said, and grinned. “I'm a history teacher. It's my job to be right.”

They talked for a long time and then it was Elena who broke him.

Not on purpose. She was just — there. Sitting on the bench next to her father, scrolling through her phone, occasionally glancing up at Bucky with that teenage mix of boredom and curiosity.

And then she looked up at exactly the wrong moment — the sun caught her face, and she tilted her head, and she smiled at something Marcus said, and Bucky's heart stopped.

Because she looked exactly like you.

Not just similar. Not just reminiscent. Exactly.

The same dark hair, the same bright eyes, the same curve of her lips when she smiled. She was fourteen — the same age you'd been when he'd first realized he was in love with you — and the resemblance was so uncanny, so devastating, that Bucky couldn't breathe.

“Are you okay?” Elena asked, frowning. “You look like you've seen a ghost.”

“I have,” Bucky said, and his voice came out strangled.

Marcus looked between them, understanding dawning on his face. “She looks like Grandma, doesn't she?”

Bucky nodded. He couldn't speak.

Elena looked confused. “Do I really look like her? I mean, people say that sometimes, but I never really —”

“You look exactly like her,” Bucky said. “When she was fourteen. I remember —” He stopped. Swallowed. “I remember her standing in the rain, holding my jacket over her head, laughing at something I said. She looked just like you.”

Elena was quiet for a moment. Then she reached into her bag and pulled out a photograph — one she'd brought with her, maybe, or one she'd been carrying for years.

“That's her,” she said, handing it to him. “That's her around that age.”

Bucky took the photograph with shaking hands.

It was you. Young and beautiful and so full of life it hurt to look at. You were standing on a fire escape — his fire escape — in a sundress, your hair blowing across your face, your smile wide and real and his.

He remembered this day. The summer of 1934. You'd come over unexpectedly, and he'd been in a mood, and you'd made him laugh somehow — he couldn't remember how — and you'd said, “Take a picture, Barnes. This is the best I'm ever going to look.”

He'd laughed and told you that was ridiculous. You'd always be beautiful.

He'd been right.

“She kept this,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “She kept this for sixty years.”

“She kept everything,” Elena said. “We have boxes of it. Letters, photographs, ticket stubs. My mom says she was a hoarder, but I think she just — she couldn't let go. Of any of it.”

Bucky looked at the photograph again — at your smile, at your eyes, at the ghost of the girl he'd loved and lost and never stopped loving.

“She couldn't let go of me,” he said. “And I couldn't let go of her. And now —” He looked up at Elena, at the impossible echo of your face in hers. “Now it's too late.”

Elena reached out and touched his hand. Her fingers were warm, light, nothing like yours — but the gesture was the same. The comfort. The solidarity.

“It's not too late,” she said. “She's gone, yeah. But you're not. And we're not. You have us now, if you want us.”

Bucky stared at her. At the girl who looked like a ghost, who sounded like an angel, who was offering him something he'd never expected to have.

A family.

“I'd like that,” he said. “I'd like that very much.”

-

He went to Green-Wood Cemetery the next day.

Section 12. The tree. The headstone, weathered by almost twenty years of rain and snow.

He stood in front of it for a long time, just looking. Your name. Your dates. The inscription your children had chosen: Beloved mother, grandmother, and friend. She loved deeply, and she was deeply loved.

Then he walked around to the back of the stone and saw the words Sarah had added — the ones he hadn't known about until Marcus mentioned them in passing.

She should have kissed him anyway.

Bucky Barnes fell to his knees in the grass and wept.

He stayed there all day. He brought flowers, your favorite flowers and a stuffed bear that was looking so much like the ones he used to win for you at Coney Island. He set them against your headstone and sat with his back against the tree and talked.

About the war. About Hydra. About the things he'd done, the things that had been done to him. About the years he'd spent as a ghost, a weapon, a shadow.

About you.

“I met your granddaughter,” he said. “Elena. She looks just like you. It's uncanny. It's —” He laughed, a broken sound. “It's a little cruel, if I'm being honest. But also beautiful. She's beautiful. Like you were.”

He paused, looking up at the sky. The sun was setting, painting the clouds in shades of orange and pink and gold.

“She told me I'm not too late,” he continued. “She said I have them now — your family. And I think — I think I'd like that. If you're okay with it. If David is okay with it. If it wouldn't be — I don't know — weird.”

He pressed his palm flat against the grass, against the earth that covered you.

“I loved you,” he said. “I love you, and I was scared, and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I didn't —”

He stopped. Swallowed.

“I should have kissed you,” he said. “I should have kissed you anyway.”

The wind blew through the trees. Somewhere, a bird sang.

Bucky closed his eyes and let himself imagine it — the other world, the other timeline, the one where he'd been brave. He saw himself leaning across the couch at the cheap cinema theater, kissing you before the film ended. He saw himself on the fire escape, pulling you close, finally, finally saying the words he'd been holding back for years.

He saw a life — a wedding, a house, children. He saw himself growing old with you, watching the lines appear on your face, holding your hand in a hospital room as you both took your last breaths.

It was beautiful.

It was unbearable.

It wasn't real.

But maybe — maybe it didn't have to be. Maybe the love was real. Maybe the regret was real. Maybe the family he'd found — your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren — was real too.

Maybe that was enough.

He opened his eyes. The sun had set. The stars were coming out.

“Yours,” he whispered to the headstone. “Always, always only yours.”

And somewhere — in the wind, in the stars, in the space between what was and what could have been — he swore he felt you smile.

-

He came back the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that.

He came to holidays at Charles’ house, where he sat in the corner and watched your family laugh and fight and love each other. He came to Sunday dinners at Jane's, where he learned to make your pie crust recipe and burned it three times before he got it right. He came to Elena's high school graduation, where he sat in the back and cried when she walked across the stage, because she looked so much like you it hurt.

He became part of the family — not replacing anyone, not filling the hole you'd left, but adding something new. A strange, broken, impossible addition who loved you still, after all these years.

Sarah's youngest, a boy named James asked him once why he'd never married.

“I did,” Bucky said. “In another life. But in this one, I was too late.”

James, who was fifteen and wise beyond his years, nodded thoughtfully.

“That's sad,” he said.

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed. “It is.”

“But you're here now,” James said. “That counts for something, right?”

Bucky looked at the boy — at the echo of you in his eyes, at the future stretching out before him — and smiled.

“Yeah,” he said. “It counts for everything.”

The thing about Bucky Barnes is that he doesn't cry. It's not a point of pride, not some rusted-on remnant of the 1940s masculinity that Steve sometimes still wears like a too-tight suit jacket, though God knows Steve has tried to talk to him about it. It's not that he thinks less of men who do, or that he's swallowed some poison pill about real men not shedding tears. It's simpler than that, and infinitely more devastating. The part of him that knew how to cry has been broken for so long, he's not sure it ever existed in the first place.

Or maybe it did. Maybe once, a very long time ago, in a brownstone in Brooklyn with chipped wallpaper and the smell of his mother's pot roast bleeding through every floorboard, he cried. He has a fragment of a memory—sharp and strange, like a piece of glass he's afraid to touch—of a lollipop. A green one. Apple-flavored, he thinks. He wanted it at the corner store, the one with the bell on the door that always made him feel like a grown-up when he pushed it open. His mother said no. Her voice was tired, not cruel, but he was four, or maybe five, and the injustice of it had been a burning, cosmic wrongness. He'd cried then. Big, gulping, snotty sobs that had made his father look up from his paper with something like alarm before his mother had scooped him up and laughed, actually laughed, and kissed the top of his head and said, "Oh, my beautiful boy. The world will break your heart so many times. Save your tears for the things that matter."

He doesn't remember if he got the lollipop. He suspects he did. His mother had a soft heart under all that starch.

He didn't cry when the recruiter came to the door. He wasn’t a naive young boy but he sure as hell was scared stupid, and his stomach was clenched so tight he thought he might vomit. His mother had stood behind him, her hand a warm, steady pressure on his shoulder blade, and he'd signed the papers with a dry-eyed terror that felt like swallowing broken glass. He didn't cry during the war. Not when Dugan took a bullet to the shoulder, not when the Howlies sang raunchy songs around a fire in some frozen French forest, not even when he held a dying man's hand—a kid from Ohio who couldn't have been more than nineteen—and lied to him about the war being almost over. His eyes had burned, his throat had closed up like a fist, but the tears hadn't come. They'd retreated somewhere deep, some subterranean vault where he locked away everything too heavy to carry.

And he certainly didn't cry during the Hydra years.

He doesn't remember much of those decades in a clean, linear way. It's more like a collage of pain—electricity and ice and the particular, soul-flaying horror of watching his own hands do things he would never, in any universe, have chosen to do. He was scared. God, he was so scared. He was scared in a way that went beyond the body, beyond the screaming nerve endings. It was a metaphysical terror, the slow, grinding erasure of himself. But he never cried. He couldn't. They wouldn't have let him, even if he'd tried. The chair didn't care for tears. The chair just wanted compliance.

After Wakanda, after the thawing and the slow, brutal work of untangling the barbed wire in his head, he thought maybe the tears would come. Shuri had told him, gently, that emotional release was part of the healing process. She'd said it like it was a good thing, a sign of progress. And he'd sat in his white-walled room, staring out at the lush, impossible green of the Wakandan forest, and he'd tried. He'd thought about Steve. About the way Steve had looked at him after the whole Thanos’ fiasco, after everything, when they'd finally had a moment alone and Steve had just grabbed him by the back of the neck and held on like Bucky was the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth. He'd thought about the ice. The fall. The long, silent years of nothing before Hydra fished him out.

Nothing. Not a single drop. His eyes had felt like two stones in his skull.

So he'd stopped trying. He'd accepted it as part of his new shape, the way he'd accepted the metal arm. He was a man who didn't cry. It was a fact, like gravity or the undeniable truth that Steve Rogers still made terrible coffee even after a century of practice. He didn't examine it. He just lived inside it.

Then he moved into the apartment across the hall from you.

The apartment itself was a victory. Not a hard-won one—those kinds of victories he was used to. This was a different kind of victory, the quiet, mundane kind that Sam insisted he needed to learn how to celebrate.

"It's got a dishwasher," Sam had said, standing in the middle of the empty living room with his hands on his hips, looking around with an approval that was almost comical. "And in-unit laundry, Buck. Do you understand what a privilege that is in this city? I've been fighting the basement washing machine in my building for three years. THREE YEARS. It eats quarters like they're peanuts and then just... stops. Mid-cycle. With all your clothes inside. You have no idea how good you have it."

Steve had been there too, leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed, that particular softness in his eyes that only ever appeared when he was looking at Bucky in a domestic setting. Like he couldn't quite believe they'd made it here, to a place where Bucky could have his own apartment with a dishwasher and a view of a small courtyard instead of a view of a battlefield.

Natasha had been the one to find it, actually. She had opinions about real estate—strong, specific opinions that she wielded like weapons. "No basement units," she'd said, scrolling through listings on her tablet while perched on the edge of Bucky's temporary couch. "No ground floors. Nothing with a fire escape that connects to the roof. And for God's sake, Bucky, get a place with decent light. You've spent enough time in the dark."

So he had. The apartment was on the third floor of a solid brick building in a neighborhood that had been quietly up-and-coming for about fifteen years and had finally, grudgingly, arrived. The building wasn't fancy—no doorman, no elevator that worked consistently, no gym or rooftop terrace with a grill. But it was well-maintained, with clean hallways and windows that actually sealed against the winter draft and someone who responded to maintenance requests within forty-eight hours, which Natasha had assured him was practically a miracle.

His apartment had two bedrooms—one for sleeping, one for the punching bag and the small collection of weights that Sam had insisted were 'essential for mental health'—and a bathroom with a shower that had excellent water pressure and heated floors that Bucky still wasn't over. The kitchen was open to the living room, with dark granite countertops and stainless steel appliances that had come with the unit and made him feel vaguely like a person who had his life together. The living room was big enough for a couch and his grandmother's armchair—the one piece of furniture he'd had shipped from storage, the one that still smelled faintly of her lavender sachets even after all these years. There were windows on two walls, facing south and west, and in the afternoons, the light came in golden and thick, pooling on the hardwood floors like honey.

It was more than he'd ever expected to have. More than he deserved, probably, but Steve had given him that look—the one that said don't even start—and Bucky had signed the lease without arguing.

The building was quiet. Respectable. Full of people who had normal jobs and normal lives and no idea that the Winter Soldier lived three floors up from the laundromat. There were young couples with strollers, a retired librarian on the second floor who left baked goods in the hallway during the holidays, a graphic designer on the fourth floor who played video games at full volume until 2 AM but always apologized profusely the next morning.

And there was you. 3A. The one with the coconut shampoo and the terrible singing voice and the inexplicable, devastating lack of fear.

He noticed you the second week. Not in a romantic way, not at first. He noticed you because you were loud. Not aggressively so, but you existed with a kind of cheerful, oblivious volume that grated on his hyper-vigilant nerves. You sang while you cooked—terrible, off-key renditions of pop songs from the last decade that you clearly sing every single word, even the guitar sounds. You watched movies with the bass turned up, and the low thrum of explosions bled through the walls. You had friends over sometimes, and their laughter was a bright, jarring thing that made his jaw clench and his fingers twitch toward a knife he no longer carried.

He told Steve about you, sort of. Not in so many words. They were having dinner at Steve and Natasha's place—a brownstone in Brooklyn that Natasha had decorated with ruthless efficiency and surprising warmth—and Steve had asked how the new building was treating him.

“It's fine,” Bucky had said, poking at his pasta. “Quiet.”

Steve had raised an eyebrow. Steve had known him for over a hundred years. Steve could read the lie in his voice the way other people read headlines.

“But?” Steve had prompted.

Bucky had shrugged. “There's a woman across the hall. She's... loud.”

Next to Steve, Natasha had smirked into her wine glass. “Loud how?”

“I don't know,” Bucky had said, irritated by the question and by his own inability to answer it. “She just... exists loudly. She sings. She laughs. She leaves her groceries for quite some time in the hallway like she's not worried someone's going to steal them.”

Steve and Natasha had exchanged a look. A long, meaningful, infuriating look that Bucky had pretended not to see.

“That sounds terrible,” Natasha had said, deadpan. “A woman who laughs and sings and isn't afraid of her own shadow. How do you survive?”

“Shut up,” Bucky had muttered. But he hadn't been able to stop thinking about it. About you. About the way you'd smiled at him that first time in the hallway, holding your too-heavy grocery bag, like he was just a guy and not a weapon.

The first time you talked to him, he almost didn't respond.

You were coming out of your apartment just as he was coming out of his. You were wearing a dress and your hair was down, and you looked so startlingly pretty that he forgot how words worked for a solid five seconds.

“Hey,” you'd said, locking your door. “You're the new guy, right? I heard 3B has a bigger kitchen somehow.”

He'd nodded. His mouth had been dry.

“I'm your neighbor,” you'd said and let him know your name and then you'd laughed—that bright, unguarded laugh he'd heard through the walls—and stuck out your hand. “I'd say I'm friendly, but honestly I'm just nosy. I like to know who's living within screaming distance.”

He'd shaken your hand. Your grip had been firm, your palm warm and dry. You hadn't flinched at the metal. You hadn't even glanced at it.

“Bucky,” he'd said. His voice had come out rougher than he'd intended.

“Just Bucky?” you'd asked, tilting your head. “Or is there a last name you're holding out on me?”

He'd hesitated. “Barnes.”

You'd nodded, like that was a perfectly normal thing for a man who looked like he'd walked out of a World War II documentary to say. “Well, Bucky Barnes, welcome to the building. Fair warning, the walls are thin, I cook real Mexican food at least three times a week, and I have absolutely no shame about singing along to ABBA at full volume. If any of that is a problem, you should probably request a transfer now.” You were clearly joking.

And then you'd winked at him. Actually winked. And walked off down the hallway toward the stairs, leaving him standing there with his keys in his hand and his heart doing something strange and irregular in his chest.

He'd closed his apartment door, leaned against it, and texted Steve.

Bucky: I think I'm in trouble.

Steve: Define trouble.

Bucky hadn't answered. He hadn't known how.

Over the next few months, you became something he couldn't explain. Not a friend, exactly—not yet. He kept you at a careful distance, the way he kept everyone, because letting people in meant giving them the power to leave, and he wasn't sure he could survive another goodbye.

But you were persistent. Not in a pushy way—you never demanded his time or his attention or his story. You just... existed. You said hello in the hallway. You knocked on his door when you'd made too much food, pressing tupperware containers into his hands with instructions to return the container, not the food, because the food is a gift and gifts don't come back. You invited him to building events—the holiday party in the lobby, the impromptu rooftop gathering when the weather turned warm—and when he declined, you just shrugged and said, "Maybe next time," like you actually believed there would be a next time.

You told him about your life in bits and pieces. Your job at the marketing firm, which you liked well enough but didn't love. Your parents, who lived three hours away and called every Sunday without fail. Your black cat, a grumpy rescue named Anakin Skywalker who had opinions about everything and was currently on a hunger strike because you'd switched his food brand.

“I'm being held hostage by a twelve-pound grumpy baby,” you'd told him once, sitting cross-legged on your kitchen floor while Anakin glared at you from atop the refrigerator. “This is my life now. I've accepted it.”

He'd laughed. Actually laughed—a real one, not the hollow, automatic sound he usually produced when someone said something vaguely amusing. You'd looked up at him with wide eyes, and for a second, he'd seen something flicker across your face. Surprise. And then something softer. Something that looked like hope.

He'd looked away first. He always looked away first.

Steve noticed. Of course Steve noticed. Steve noticed everything, and he had no compunction about pointing it out.

“You're different,” Steve said one afternoon. They were at a diner, the kind of place that served breakfast all day and had waitresses who called everyone "hon." Bucky was pushing scrambled eggs around his plate. Steve was watching him with that steady, patient gaze that had always made Bucky feel like he was being X-rayed.

“I'm not different,” Bucky said.

“You are.” Steve leaned back in the booth, stirring his coffee. “You're calmer. More present. You actually looked at me when I walked in instead of scanning the room for exits first.”

“I always scan for exits. That's not going to change.”

“No, but you used to do it like you were expecting someone to come through the door with a gun. Now you do it like you're just... checking. Like it's a habit, not a survival mechanism.”

Bucky put his fork down. “What's your point, Steve?”

Steve's mouth twitched. “No point. Just an observation. I'm allowed to observe things.”

“You're allowed to mind your own business, too.”

“Where's the fun in that?” Steve took a sip of his coffee, made a face—it was too hot, or too bitter, or too something, because Steve's relationship with coffee was complicated and mostly unhappy—and set the cup down. “Natasha thinks you're in love with your neighbor.”

Bucky's hand froze halfway to his water glass. “Natasha doesn't know my neighbor.”

“Natasha knows everything. It's her thing.” Steve shrugged. “She says you get a certain look on your face when you talk about her. She says it's the same look you used to get when you talked about that girl from the USO. What was her name?”

“There was no girl from the USO”

“Lorraine. That was it. The brunette with the long legs.” Steve was grinning now, the bastard. “You were gone for her. Completely gone. And you've got the same look now. Well, Nat says now it’s even worse, you know?”

Bucky stared at him. “I don't have a look.”

“You have a look. It's a very specific look. Slightly constipated, mostly lovestruck. It's a whole thing.”

“I'm going to kill you.”

“You've been saying that for a hundred years. I'm still here.”

Bucky picked up his fork again, mostly so he wouldn't throw it at Steve's head. But Steve's words rattled around in his brain for the rest of the day, and the day after that, and the day after that. In love. He wasn't in love. He didn't even know you. Not really. He knew that you took your coffee with oat milk and a splash of vanilla. He knew that you cried at some videos in that app you like a lot—not the sad ones, the happy ones, the ones were kids are adopted or parents teaching their kids to ride bikes or any kind of animal being in a happy home. He knew that you had a birthmark on your left wrist that looked like a tiny heart, and that you always, always knocked three times before opening a door, like some kind of ritual you'd never explained.

He knew that when you smiled at him, the world got quieter. The noise in his head—the static, the memories, the endless loop of everything he'd done and couldn't undo—it all faded to a low hum, manageable, almost peaceful. You make the world quiet. So quiet.

That wasn't love. That was just... comfort. Safety. The feeling of being seen without being judged.

It was love. Of course it was love. He'd known it for months, probably. He just hadn't been brave enough to name it.

The crying doesn't happen on a significant day. That's the thing about grief, he'll learn later. It doesn't wait for anniversaries or milestones. It doesn't knock. It just shows up, sits down on your couch, and refuses to leave until you've bled out every last drop.

It's a Tuesday. A normal Tuesday, the kind of Tuesday that has no business being the setting for a man's emotional undoing. He's been to therapy that afternoon—a mandatory thing, arranged by the government, with a nice woman named Dr. Simmons who asks him how he's "feeling" as if feelings are something you can just reach into your chest and pull out like loose change. He'd sat in her office for an hour, staring at the framed picture of her and her husband Fitz and their golden retriever on her desk, and he'd told her he was fine. Fine. The word felt like a lie wrapped in a shrug.

He's not fine. He hasn't been fine since 1943. But fine is a language he knows how to speak. Fine keeps people from looking at him with that particular brand of pity that makes him want to put his fist through a wall. So he'd said fine, and she'd nodded, and he'd left her office with the taste of decaff on his tongue and a headache blooming behind his eyes.

He stops at the grocery store on the way home. Not because he needs anything—his refrigerator has eggs, yogurt, the sad remnants of a rotisserie chicken he'd bought three days ago and mostly forgotten about—but because the thought of going straight to his empty apartment makes his chest feel like it's caving in. He wanders the aisles like a ghost. He doesn't buy anything. He just looks at things—the bright packages, the gleaming produce, the families picking out cereal together. A little girl, maybe five years old, is crying because her mother won't buy her the sugary cereal with the cartoon mascot. Her face is red and blotchy, her little fists balled up in helpless fury, and her mother is trying not to smile as she kneels down to her level and says something too quiet for Bucky to hear.

He has to leave. He abandons his empty basket by a display of discount Halloween candy and walks out of the store with his hands shaking.

He doesn't remember the walk home. He doesn't remember unlocking the front door of his building or climbing the stairs. He doesn't remember standing in front of his apartment door, key in hand, unable to turn it because the silence on the other side is suddenly too loud, too much, a vacuum that will suck him in and leave him floating in the dark. But he’s a grown man and goes inside.

It's late—almost nine. The news has been on in his apartment, some anchor droning about political scandals he can't bring himself to care about. He's been sitting on his floor, back against the wall, staring at nothing, for two hours. The headache has spread to his whole body, a dull, pervasive ache that feels like it's coming from somewhere deeper than his muscles. He's been thinking about Steve. About the bench at the compound, about the quiet conversation they'd had after Thanos, when Steve had looked at him with those old, tired eyes and said, "I'm not going anywhere, Buck. Not ever. We're a package deal, you and me. That's never going to change."

He'd believed Steve. He still believed him. But belief and fear were not mutually exclusive, and somewhere in the deep, dark part of his brain that Hydra had carved out and filled with cement, there was a voice that whispered that "Everyone leaves. Everyone. It's only a matter of time."

He'd pushed the voice down for months. Years, maybe. But tonight, sitting in the dark of his living room with the sound of your muted television bleeding through the wall (a laugh track, then a commercial jingle), he realizes he's been lying to himself. The voice isn't gone. It's just been waiting. Patient. Inevitable. And now it's here, and he's alone, and the apartment that usually feels like a sanctuary suddenly feels like a cage.

He quickly walks out of his apartment and knocks on your door. You open mere seconds after. You're in sweatpants and an oversized sweater with a photo of your Anakin wearing sunglasses. There's a smear of what looks like tomato sauce on your cheek. Your hair is in a messy bun, and you're holding a wooden spoon, and behind you, he can see the steam rising from a pot on your stove. Anakin is perched on the back of your couch, watching the hallway with the haughty disdain that only felines can truly master.

“Bucky?” Your voice is confused but not alarmed. You've learned, over the months, that he shows up at odd hours sometimes. You've stopped asking why. “Everything okay?”

He opens his mouth to say fine. It's right there, on the tip of his tongue, a reflex so ingrained it's practically a tic. Fine. I'm fine. Sorry to bother you. Good night.

What comes out is a sound. Not a word. Just a small, broken thing, a gasp that cracks in the middle like old ice.

Your face changes. The confusion softens into something else, something careful and gentle, and you set the wooden spoon down on the little table by your door. You step back, widening the doorway. “Come in,” you say. Not an invitation. A command, but a kind one. “I'm making soup. It's not good soup—I forgot to buy vegetable and I hate the frozen ones, so it's mostly just water and hope—but it's hot. You look like you need something hot.”

He steps inside. His legs feel disconnected from his body, like he's piloting a meat suit from a great distance. Your apartment is warm and lived-in, the kind of space that feels like a hug—books stacked on the coffee table, a pink blanket crumpled on the couch, three different mugs with small bouquets on the side table. There are framed photos on the wall, pictures of people he doesn't know but assumes are your family, and a small plant on the windowsill that is either thriving or dead; he can't tell which. It's so aggressively, beautifully normal that it makes his chest ache.

“Sit,” you say, pointing at the couch. “I'll get you a bowl.”

He sits. The couch is soft, and it smells like you—coconut and laundry detergent and something vaguely spicy, like the candles you burn sometimes. He sinks into it like it's swallowing him whole. His hands are still shaking. He folds them together in his lap, metal and flesh, and tries to breathe.

You come back with two bowls of soup. You set one on the coffee table in front of him, then sit on the other end of the couch, tucking your feet under you. You don't say anything. You just start eating your soup, making small, appreciative noises that seem entirely performative, given your earlier description.

He stares at the bowl. The soup is orange-ish, with sad little flecks of parsley floating on top. There are noodles that have gone soft and bloated. It looks terrible. It looks like something his mother would have made on a night when money was tight and the cupboards were bare, and she'd called it "experimental" and made everyone say thank you before they took a bite.

Something hot and horrible rises in his throat. Not the soup. Something else. Something that's been living in his chest for so long he'd forgotten it was there.

“I can't,” he says. His voice is wrecked, scraped raw. “I can't eat.”

You set your bowl down. You don't look at him with pity. You just look at him. Present. Steady. Like you're saying, without words, I'm here. I'll stay here. You don't have to perform for me.

He doesn't know why that's the thing that breaks him. Maybe it's the soup, or the cat, or the way the light from your kitchen turns everything soft and golden. Maybe it's the little girl in the grocery store, crying over cereal. Maybe it's Steve, alive and well and in love with Natasha, living his life without Bucky's demons dragging him down. Maybe it's all of it, seventy years of all of it, finally pressing down on that hairline fracture until the whole vault shatters.

The first tear surprises him. It's hot, almost burning, as it tracks down his cheek. He blinks, and then another one falls, and another, and then he's crying—really crying, the way he hasn't cried since he was five years old and the world's greatest injustice was a green, apple-flavored lollipop. His shoulders shake. His breath comes in ragged, ugly hitches. He tries to stop, tries to shove it all back into the vault, but it's too late. The dam has broken, and everything is pouring out—the war, the fall, the chair, the faces of the people he killed, the names he can't remember, the ones he can't forget, the endless, screaming loneliness of being a man out of time, out of place, out of hope.

He's making sounds now. Actual sobs, raw and animal, tearing out of his chest like they've been clawing to get free for decades. He's hunched over, his face in his hands, and he can't breathe, can't think, can't do anything but sit here in this warm, cluttered, impossibly normal apartment and fall apart.

And then you move.

You don't say "It's okay," because it's not okay, and you're smart enough to know that. You don't pat his back awkwardly or offer him a tissue. You just shift closer on the couch, slow and deliberate, and you wrap your arms around him. Not tight. Not confining. Just... there. A solid, warm presence against his side. You rest your head on his shoulder, and your hand finds his flesh hand, and you hold it. He feels your fingers that are very soft, and warm, and so, so gentle.

He cries into the crook of your neck. He cries until his throat is raw and his eyes are swollen and his whole body feels wrung out, empty, like someone has reached inside him and pulled out every organ. He cries for his mother, who died while he was on ice, who never got to see him come home. He cries for his father that probably tried to be strong for his wife that lost his son and his three girls that lost their old brother. He cries for his sisters, Becca and the two younger ones whose names he sometimes forgets on bad days, and then he hates himself for forgetting, and then he cries harder. He cries for Steve, for the friendship that has spanned a century and survived war and ice and brainwashing and time travel, for the fact that he loves Steve like a brother and that love is the only thing that has never been taken from him. He cries for himself, for the boy who wanted a lollipop, for the man who was unmade, for the ghost who is still trying to figure out how to be a person again.

And then, buried under all of that, he cries for Maggie.

The thought comes out of nowhere, sharp as a blade. Maggie. His baby sister. The one who used to follow him around like a shadow, who used to climb into his bed after nightmares and whisper "Jamie, I'm scared" into his shoulder until he woke up and held her. The one with the gap-toothed smile and the endless questions. The one who, by every law of time and nature, should be an old woman now. Or worse.

But she's not. He knows she's not. Because after Wakanda, after the snap, after everything, Sam had done the research. Quietly, carefully, without making a big deal of it. He'd handed Bucky a folder one afternoon, thick with papers and photographs, and said, "Your people, Buck. They're still out there. Some of them, anyway."

And Bucky had opened the folder with shaking hands and learned that Maggie was alive. Ninety-four years old. Widowed twice. Mother of four, grandmother of eleven, great-grandmother of six. Living in a small town in upstate New York, in a house with a porch and a garden that her grandchildren apparently fought over who got to tend. Ruth had passed away in the eighties—cancer, quick and merciful, according to the obituary. Becca had made it to ninety-one before her heart had given out, surrounded by children and grandchildren and, if the photos were to be believed, an absolutely ridiculous number of cats.

But Maggie was still here. Maggie, who had been almost ten years old when Bucky left for war. Maggie, who had sent him letters covered in crayon drawings of stick figures and hearts. Maggie, who had waited for him to come home, who had probably mourned him, who had lived an entire life without him in it.

He knows where she lives. He knows her phone number. He knows the names of her children—James, and Deborah, and David, and little George who wasn't so little anymore, who was sixty-seven years old with grandchildren of his own. He knows all of it. The information sits in his brain like a stone, heavy and immovable.

And he hasn't done a damn thing about it.

Because what would he say? "Hi, I'm your brother. The one who died eighty years ago. Surprise, I'm actually a brainwashed assassin with a metal arm and a century of trauma. Can I come to Thanksgiving?"

He imagines showing up at her door. He imagines the look on her face—confusion first, then recognition, then something else. Something that might be joy or might be terror or might be the particular, gut-wrenching grief of seeing a ghost made flesh. He imagines her children, her grandchildren, all those strangers with his family's blood in their veins, looking at him like he's an intruder. Because that's what he would be. An intruder. A specter from a past that should have stayed buried.

He's seen the photos. Maggie at her wedding, young and radiant in white, standing next to a man with kind eyes and a strong jaw. Maggie holding her first child, her face transformed by a love so fierce it makes his chest ache. Maggie at fifty, at seventy, at ninety, her hair gone silver and her face lined with years he wasn't there for. She looks like their mother. She looks like a stranger.

He doesn't know her. That's the worst part. He loves her—of course he loves her, she's his baby sister, she was born when he was fourteen years old, holding that tiny baby as if his life depended on it, she's the little girl who used to hold his hand when they crossed the street—but he doesn't know her. He doesn't know what makes her laugh now, or what she's afraid of, or whether she still hums when she bakes. He doesn't know if she thinks about him. He doesn't know if she's made peace with his death, if she's built a life that doesn't have a space for him in it.

And he's terrified that if he shows up, if he opens that door, he'll find that the space has been filled. That she's moved on. That she's happy, and his return would only complicate things, would only drag up old wounds and old grief and old questions that no one can answer.

So he hasn't gone. He's told himself he will. Someday. When he's less broken. When he has words that make sense. When he can look at her without falling apart.

But someday keeps not coming. And Maggie is ninety-four. And time, which has been his enemy for so long, is running out.

He's sobbing now, harder than before, his whole body shaking. He's not sure if he's said any of this out loud. He's not sure if you can hear the thoughts screaming inside his head. But your arms are still around him, and your hand is still holding his, and you're not going anywhere.

He chokes out your name. Just your name. And then, because he can't hold it in anymore, because it's bursting out of him like everything else, he says, “She's still alive. Maggie. My baby sister. She's still alive and I haven't—I can't—”

He can't finish the sentence. The tears are too thick, the shame too heavy.

But you understand. Of course you understand. You've always understood, even when he didn't give you the words.

“Bucky,” you say softly. Not pushing. Just saying his name like it's a lifeline. “How old is she?”

“Ninety-four,” he whispers. “She's ninety-four and I'm wasting time. I'm wasting the only time I have left with her because I'm scared. Because I feel like—” He stops. Swallows. Forces the words out. “Like I'm an intruder. Like I'm some stranger showing up at her door, demanding a place in her life when I don't deserve one. She has children. Grandchildren. A whole life she built without me. What right do I have to walk back in and—”

“You're her brother,” you interrupt. Quietly. Firmly. “You're not a stranger, Bucky. You're her brother. She grew up with you. She loved you. She probably spent decades wishing you'd come home. And now you can. You can actually go home. And I know it's scary. I know it feels like you're crashing a party you weren't invited to. But you were invited. You were invited the day she was born. That invitation doesn't expire.”

He shakes his head, a jerky, desperate motion. “You don't understand. I've missed everything. Her wedding. Her children. Her whole life. I wasn't there. I wasn't there for any of it.”

“No,” you agree. “You weren't. And that's awful. That's a grief I can't even imagine. But you're here now. And she's still here. And you have a choice, Bucky. You can keep staying away, and you can keep regretting it, or you can go. You can show up. You can let her see you. Even if it's hard. Even if it's messy. Even if you cry the whole time.”

“I will cry the whole time,” he says, and it's almost a laugh, broken and wet.

“Then you'll cry the whole time,” you say simply. “And she'll probably cry too. And then you'll hug, and you'll talk, and you'll figure it out. Because that's what family does. They figure it out.”

He looks at you. At the tears on your cheeks, the steadiness in your eyes, the way you're holding him like he's something precious instead of something broken. And he thinks about Maggie. About her gap-toothed smile. About the way she used to say his name—Jamie, Jamie, Jamie—like it was the most important word in the world.

“I don't know if I can do it alone,” he admits. It's the hardest thing he's said all night. Harder than the crying. Harder than the confession.

You don't hesitate. “Then don't do it alone. I'll go with you. If you want. I'll hold your hand the whole way. I'll sit in the car while you're inside, or I'll come to the door with you, or I'll stay here and make soup and wait for you to come back and tell me everything. Whatever you need. I'm here.”

He closes his eyes. The tears are still coming, but they're different now. Lighter, somehow. Less like drowning and more like rain.

“Okay,” he whispers. “Okay.”

He doesn't say when. He doesn't make a plan. But something shifts in his chest, something loosens, and he knows—he knows—that he's going to call Maggie. That he's going to drive upstate and knock on her door and let himself be seen. That he's going to meet his nieces and nephews, his great-nieces and great-nephews, the whole sprawling, impossible family that carries his blood and his name.

He's going to do it. Because you're right. Because the invitation doesn't expire and because Maggie is ninety-four, and time is the one enemy even he can't defeat.

He doesn't know how long it lasts. Time has never been a straight line for him; it's a tangle, a knot, a loop that folds back on itself. He cries for a while longer, but the sobs are quieter now, the edges softer. You hold him through all of it, your fingers tracing patterns on his hand, your breath warm against his neck. Anakin has given up on dignity and is curled up at his feet, purring like a tiny motor, and somewhere in the kitchen, the soup has gone cold on the stove. His breathing evens out. He's left with a kind of exhausted stillness, a post-storm calm that feels almost sacred.

He pulls back, just enough to look at you. His face is a mess—tears, snot, the whole ugly package. He's never felt more pathetic in his life. Not when he was strapped to a table, not when people looks weird at him, not when he looked in the mirror and didn't recognize the face staring back. This—being seen, truly seen, at his most broken—this is worse. He’s never felt more exposed in his life. But when he looks at you, you’re not looking at him with pity or discomfort or any of the things he fears.

You’re looking at him like he’s the only person in the room. Like he’s worth the mess. You don't look away. You look at him with those soft, ordinary, extraordinary eyes, and you don't flinch. You don't recoil. You just wait.

“I'm sorry,” he chokes out. His voice is a ruin. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—”

“Don't,” you say. Quietly. Firmly. “Don't apologize for that. Ever.”

He shakes his head, a jerky, desperate motion. “You shouldn't have to see this. I shouldn't—I'm not—” He doesn't know what he's trying to say. He's not safe? He's not worth it? He's not human enough to cry without it being a sorry spectacle?

You reach up and wipe a tear from his cheek with your thumb. The gesture is so tender, so achingly intimate, that his breath catches all over again.

“Bucky,” you say, and it's the way you say his name—not like a question, not like a diagnosis, just his name, like it belongs in your mouth—that finally, finally makes him feel like maybe he's not drowning. “You're allowed to be sad. You're allowed to be a mess. You've been holding this in for so long, and I can't even imagine what it is you're holding, but you don't have to do it alone. Not with me. Okay? Not with me.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, because old habits die hard.

You press a finger to his lips. “What did I say about apologizing?”

He huffs out something that might be a laugh. “Not to do it.”

“Correct.” You pull your hand back, but you don't move away. You stay close, your knee touching his, your shoulder brushing his arm. “So what are you going to do instead?”

He thinks about it. About Maggie. About you. About the terrifying, exhilarating prospect of a future that includes both.

“I'm going to call my sister,” he says. His voice is still rough, but it's steady. “And then I'm going to make you better soup. Because that stuff on the stove is a war crime.”

You burst out laughing. It's bright and loud and so utterly you that his heart clenches. “It is NOT a war crime. It's rustic.”

“It's an abomination.”

“It's innovation, Bucky.”

He shakes his head, but he's smiling. Actually smiling. The tears have stopped, finally, and there's a strange lightness in his chest, like the vault has been cracked open just enough to let in some air. And you just hold him. You don't let go. Your thumb traces small circles on the back of his hand, and your breathing is slow and even, and you smell like coconut and soup and home.

He thinks about his mother. About her hands, which had been rough from washing clothes and scrubbing floors, but had always been so gentle when she touched his face. He thinks about the way she'd hummed when she cooked, off-key and cheerful, and how she'd never once made him feel like his feelings were too much. He thinks about his sisters, about Becca braiding his hair those times his parents let him grow it a bit, about Ruth teaching him to dance on the roof of their building, about little Maggie who used to follow him around like a shadow, asking a million questions he never got tired of answering.

And he thinks about his father. George Barnes. A serious man, by all accounts. Reserved with strangers, stern with salesmen, the kind of father who believed in a firm handshake and a hard day's work. But at home, with his family, he'd been different. He'd laughed at Bucky's terrible jokes. He'd carried Becca on his shoulders through the park. He'd sat up with Bucky one night when he was eleven, after a nightmare, and he hadn't said much—just sat there, a heavy, warm presence, and hold him until everything was gone. And when Bucky had apologized, mortified, for being such a baby, his father had just looked at him with those steady, serious eyes and said, "You're my son. You don't have to be anything but yourself in this house."

He'd never said I love you. Not in so many words. But he hadn't needed to. It had been in every action, every quiet moment, every time he'd pulled Bucky aside to teach him something—how to throw a punch, how to tie a tie, how to be a man who wasn't afraid to feel.

Bucky opens his eyes. He's still looking at you—at the small, worried furrow between your brows, at the way your lower lip is caught between your teeth, at the utterly ordinary miracle of your face. And he knows, with a certainty that terrifies and exhilarates him in equal measure, that he loves you. He's been loving you for months, probably, in the quiet, incompetent way that he does everything these days. He loves the way you leave your groceries in the hallway. He loves the way you sing off-key. He loves that you invited him in without hesitation, that you held him while he cried, that you're looking at him right now like he's not a weapon, not a ghost, not a cautionary tale. Just a man. A sad, broken, beautiful man.

“I need to tell you something,” he says. His voice is still wrecked, but it's steadier now. “And you don't have to say anything back. I just… I need you to know.”

You tilt your head. Waiting.

He wipes his face with the back of his flesh hand. It comes away wet. He doesn't care anymore.

“My mother,” he says. “She would have loved you.”

Your eyes widen, just a fraction.

He swallows. The words are coming now, spilling out of him like the tears did, like they've been waiting just as long. “She was a force of nature. Winnifred Barnes. She didn't take crap from anyone, and she had this laugh—this big, loud, unladylike laugh that she only let out when she was really happy. And she would have taken one look at you, at the way you are—the way you're so unafraid, the way you just… exist, without apologizing for it—and she would have pulled you into a hug so tight you would have felt it in your bones. And then she would have fed you. That's what she did. She fed people she loved. She would have made you her pot roast, the one with the carrots that were always a little too soft, and she would have asked you a million questions and actually listened to the answers, and by the end of the night, she would have been calling you her lost daughter.”

Your eyes are shining now. Not with pity. With something else. Something that looks suspiciously like the way he feels when he looks at you.

“My sisters too,” he continues, because now that he's started, he can't stop. “Becca—she was the oldest, the one closest to me in age. She was smart. Smarter than me, that's for sure. She would have cornered you in the kitchen and gotten all your secrets out of you in ten minutes flat, and then she would have told you every embarrassing story about me from when we were kids. The time I climbed a tree and got stuck. The time I tried to shave for the first time and cut my chin open. The time I—” He laughs, a wet, broken sound. “The time I cried because Mom wouldn't buy me a lollipop. She would have told you that one. She never let me live it down even if she wasn’t even alive when that shit happened.”

You smile. It's a small, watery thing, but it's real.

“And Ruth,” he says. “She was quieter. She was the one who taught me to dance. She would have liked you because you're not loud about it, but you're steady. You're the kind of person who stays. She would have noticed that immediately, and she would have trusted you for it. And Maggie—God, Maggie. She was the baby. She would have followed you around like a puppy, asking you to do her hair or play cards or just… talk to her. She was lonely, sometimes. The age gap was hard. But she had the biggest heart. She would have loved you because you have a kind face. That's what she always said about people she liked. 'They have a kind face.' And you do. You have the kindest face I've ever seen.”

He pauses. His throat is tight again, but it's a good tight now, a tight that feels like the beginning of something instead of the end.

“And my dad,” he says, quieter. “George. He was… he was a serious man. That's what everyone said about him. 'George Barnes, he's a serious and somehow scary man.' And he was, to people he didn't know. He had this wall up, this way of looking at strangers like he was measuring them, trying to figure out if they were worth the effort. But once you were in, you were in. He wouldn't have hesitated with you. He would have taken one look at the way you make me—” He stops. Swallows. “The way you make me feel like I'm not broken. And he would have pulled out a chair for you at the dinner table so fast your head would have spun. He would have made you part of the family. Not because he was soft—he wasn't, not with anyone outside our door—but because he could see. He saw things. And he would have seen you, really seen you, and he would have known that you were one of the good ones.”

He's crying again. Not the ugly sobs from before, just a quiet, steady stream of tears that he doesn't bother to wipe away. You're crying too—he can see the tracks on your cheeks, the way your lips tremble. But you're still holding his hand. You haven't let go. Beans has jumped down from the couch and is winding between your ankles, meowing plaintively for attention that neither of you is giving him.

“They're all gone,” he whispers. “My whole family. Every last one of them. I've outlived everyone I ever loved, and I don't—I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to keep losing people and still get up in the morning. I don't know how to let new people in when I'm so scared of watching them leave. I don't know how to be anything other than this—this broken, pathetic, crying-on-his-neighbor's-couch version of myself. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you have to see this. I'm sorry that I'm dumping all of this on you when you never asked for it. I'm sorry that I—”

You kiss him.

It's not a grand, cinematic kiss. It's soft, almost chaste, just the brief press of your lips against his. It's messy. You pull back after a second, your face inches from his, and you're crying and smiling at the same time, and you look so impossibly, devastatingly beautiful that he forgets how to breathe.

“Stop apologizing,” you say. Your voice is shaky, but your eyes are steady. “Stop apologizing for being a human being who feels things. You're not broken, Bucky. You're not pathetic. You're a man who has been through hell and back, and you're still here, and you're still trying, and that is the bravest thing I have ever seen. And I don't care if you cry. I don't care if you fall apart. I don't care if you show up at my door at three in the morning and stay until sunrise. I just—” You exhale, a shaky, laughing breath. “I just want to be here. With you. If you'll let me.”

He stares at you. His heart is pounding so hard he can feel it in his throat. Beans, defeated by the lack of attention, has flopped onto his side in the middle of the floor and is washing his face with an air of profound indifference.

“I don't know how to do this,” he says again. But this time, it doesn't sound like a confession. It sounds like a question. Like an outstretched hand.

“Me neither,” you say. And you smile—that wide, unguarded smile that he fell in love with somewhere between the broken buzzer and the pickle jar. “We can figure it out together. If you want.”

He thinks about Steve. About the bench at the compound, about the quiet promise that had passed between them—not a promise of forever, because neither of them was naive enough to believe in that, but a promise of now. Of showing up. Of not leaving. He thinks about Natasha, who had pulled him aside after a mission gone wrong and said, "You're not alone anymore, Barnes. I know it feels like you are, but you're not. We've got you." He thinks about Sam, who annoyed him into feeling human again, one sarcastic comment at a time.

He thinks about his mother's hands, his father's steady gaze, his sisters' laughter. He thinks about seventy years of silence, of tears unshed, of a vault so full of grief he didn't think there was room for anything else. He thinks about Maggie, waiting for him upstate, unknowing and beloved, with a porch and a garden and a lifetime of stories he's desperate to hear.

And then he thinks about you.

He thinks about the way you look in the morning, your hair messy and your eyes still heavy with sleep, holding out a cup of coffee like it's a peace offering. He thinks about the way you laugh, bright and unguarded, like you've never learned to be quiet, like the world hasn't taught you to be afraid. He thinks about the way you said his name—Bucky—like it was the easiest word in the English language, like it cost you nothing to trust him.

“I want that,” he says. His voice is barely a whisper. “I want to figure it out. With you. If you'll have me.”

You don't answer with words. You just lean forward and kiss him again—longer this time, softer, your hand coming up to cup his jaw, your thumb brushing over the sharp line of his cheekbone. He kisses you back like a man who's been starving, like a man who's forgotten what it feels like to be held, like a man who's finally, finally allowing himself to want something good.

When you pull back, you're both breathless. Your forehead rests against his, and your breath is warm on his lips, and somewhere in the background, Anakin has given up on dignity and is loudly demanding dinner.

“Your cat is judging us,” Bucky murmurs.

“Anakin is always judging us,” you say. “It's his primary form of entertainment.”

Bucky laughs. It's a real laugh, full and surprised, and it feels so foreign in his chest that he almost doesn't recognize it. But you're laughing too, and then you're both just sitting there on your couch, crying and laughing and holding onto each other like you're the only two people in the world.

Later—much later, after the soup has gone cold and Anakin has been fed and the two of you have migrated to the kitchen to make new soup, better soup, soup that involves chopping vegetables and standing close enough that your shoulders brush—Bucky will think about how strange it is, how impossible, that a Tuesday night in a normal apartment in a normal building could be the start of something new. Not the end of his grief, not the erasure of his past, but something else entirely. Something that looks like hope.

He'll think about calling Steve tomorrow, about telling him that maybe Natasha was right. About the look on Steve's face when he says the words out loud: I think I'm in love with my neighbor.

He’ll think about Maggie. He’ll imagine picking up the phone. He’ll imagine hearing her voice—old now, probably, weathered by time, but still hers, still the voice of the little girl who used to hold his hand. He’ll imagine driving upstate, knocking on her door, standing on her porch with his heart in his throat. He’ll imagine her opening the door, and the look on her face, and the way she’ll say his name—Jamie—like she’s been waiting to say it for eighty years.

He’ll imagine all of it, and his chest will ache, but it won’t be the bad kind of ache. It will be the kind that means something is healing.

And he’ll think about his mother, and he’ll wonder if she’s watching, wherever she is. He’ll imagine her smiling that big, unladylike smile, her hands on her hips, saying, Finally. It took you long enough.

And he’ll think about you, standing at the stove, stirring the soup with that wooden spoon, your hair falling out of its bun, your feet bare on the heated floor. You’ll turn and catch him looking, and you’ll smile—that smile, the one that undoes him every time—and you’ll say, “What?”

And he’ll say, "Nothing." And then, because he’s learning, because you’re teaching him, he’ll tell the truth. "I’m just glad you’re here."

And you’ll cross the kitchen and wrap your arms around him, and you’ll hold on, and he’ll hold on back, and for the first time in seventy years, he won’t be afraid of what comes next.

Because you’re here. And he’s here. And maybe—just maybe—that’s enough.

Time After Time has been on repeat for forty-seven minutes.

You know this because you’ve checked your phone three times, not to see the time, but to watch the timestamp on the song crawl forward like a confession. Cyndi Lauper has been giving you a lovely serenade for quite some time. You hadn’t heard it in years—not since college, maybe, when you used to play it on cheap headphones while staring out a rain-streaked window, romanticizing your own loneliness like a trophy.

But he sent it to you.

You don’t even remember how it started. A stray comment on a mission debrief many months ago. A joke about vibranium and chafing. A late-night text that was supposed to be about logistics—"Did you see the intel on the Odessa file?"—that spiraled into something else entirely. Something that now lives in your chest like a second heartbeat, something that has grown roots so deep you’re not sure anyone could surgically remove it without killing you.

You’re lying in your bed at your apartment, the sheets tangled around your ankles, one arm thrown over your eyes. The room is dark except for the blue glow of your phone screen. The song swells, that lush, aching synth washing over you like tidewater, and you think… am I allowed to cry?

Because your boredom is bone-deep. This cage—this life of safe houses and sanctioned missions and endless propriety—was once just fine. You chose it. You signed the nondisclosure agreements, took the psych evaluations, swore you could handle the gray areas. And you have. For years, you've been a model operative. Steady hands. Clean conscience. A reputation for being the one who doesn't crack under pressure, who doesn't get attached, who can walk away from anything.

But that was before he started looking at you like you were the only soft thing left in a world made of only the purest things allowed here.

The song builds. That gorgeous, aching crescendo. The lyrics drift through your skull like smoke. Maybe you’re seeing vision. Maybe you’re bad. Or mad. Or wise. Yeah, you think. That’s the question, isn’t it?

Your hand drifts to your thigh. Just below your hip, where the sheet has fallen away. You don’t mean to do it—it’s not a sexual thing, not exactly—it’s just that you’ve been thinking about the word mine so often lately that you swear you can feel it branded into your skin. Like he’s already claimed you. Like your body knows something your brain is still too cowardly to admit. Him writing 'mine' on your upper thigh. Not in a possessive, toxic way but in a way of being that exactly. His. You press your palm flat against the spot, and your eyes sting.

You scroll through your messages with him. You tell yourself it's a terrible idea. You do it anyway.

Bucky: Can't sleep.

You: Same.

Bucky: What's keeping you up?

You: Everything. Nothing. You?

Bucky: The usual.

The usual. You know what that means. The dreams. The memories. The faces of people he can't save, even now, even after all the amends and apologies and years of therapy. You know because he's told you. Because somewhere along the way, you became the person he tells at 2 AM when the weight of his own history gets too heavy to carry alone.

Bucky: Do you ever think about how different things would be if we'd met before?

You: Before?

Bucky: Before everything. Before I was... this.

You remember staring at that message for a long time. Your thumbs hovering over the keyboard. All the things you wanted to say—I like who you are now. I like the person you've chosen to become. I don't want a version of you that hasn't survived the things that made you gentle—but you don’t say them.

You: All the time.

He'd sent a voice message after that. Just a few seconds. When you played it, all you could hear was your name in his voice, the way he was breathing. Slow. Steady. Like he was trying to prove to you that he was still there, still real, still breathing in the same world as you.

You'd saved it. You'd told yourself it was for professional reasons—in case he needed backup, in case something happened and you needed to verify his voice—but you knew the truth. You listened to it when you missed him. Which was always.

Your phone buzzes now, and you nearly drop it.

Bucky: You listening? The song, I mean.

You swallow. Your throat clicks. You press your fingers to your pulse point and feel it rabbiting under your skin, and you think about hedge mazes and ocean rocks and all the ways a person can die without ever touching the thing they want most.

You: Yeah.

Bucky: And?

And what? you think. And I'm drowning. And I've imagined the weight of your metal arm across my ribs approximately six hundred times. And I keep recalling things we never did—messy top lip kisses, how I long for our trysts without ever touching your skin...

You type, "It's good." and delete it.

You type, "Makes me feel sad." and delete that too.

You type, "I think about you every time I hear it, which has been almost fifty times now." and if course, delete it before your thumb even lifts from the screen.

You: Come over.

The three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again. You hold your breath for so long your vision starts to spot.

Bucky: That a good idea?

You laugh, but it comes out wet. You press the heel of your palm to your sternum, like you can physically hold yourself together, like you can keep the cracks from spreading.

You: Probably not.

Bucky: I'll be there in ten.

The complex where you live is quiet at this hour. The kind of quiet that amplifies everything—the hum of the HVAC, the creak of floorboards, the frantic rabbit-thump of your own heart. You get up. Pace to the window. Look out at the dark trees swaying in the breeze. The moon is half-full, hanging low and yellow like a bruised fruit. You press your forehead to the cool glass and try to remember how to breathe like a normal person.

You’re already regretting it. Already rewriting the text in your head, imagining a version of yourself with better judgment, someone who would have typed, "Actually, never mind, I’m fine, forget I said anything", and rolled over and gone to sleep like a normal person. But you’re not normal. You haven’t been normal since the first time he’d brushed past you in a hallway and you’d felt the static jump between you like a live wire, like a warning, like a promise.

You push off from the window and start tidying. It's a nervous habit—straightening the stack of books on your nightstand, smoothing the already-smooth duvet, fluffing a pillow that doesn't need fluffing. You catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and wince. Dark circles under your eyes. Hair that looks like you've been running your hands through it all night. Lips chapped from biting them.

You run your fingers through your hair, then immediately mess it up again because you don't want to look like you tried. You pull on an oversized sweatshirt—his, technically, though he doesn't know you stole it from the time he came over to watch a movie three weeks ago—and wrap your arms around your knees where you settle back on the bed.

The sweatshirt smells like him. Cedar and gunmetal and something underneath that's just Bucky. You've worn it four times. You've washed it twice, but the smell lingers, or maybe you're imagining it, maybe you've imprinted the memory of him so deeply onto the fabric that you can't tell the difference anymore.

The knock comes soft. Two taps. A pause. One more.

He’s learned to knock like that because you once told him you hate sudden noises. Because he remembers everything. Because he’s a paradox—all sharp edges and brutal history wrapped around a center that’s still, impossibly, gentle.

You stand, feeling your legs unsteady, like you’ve been asleep for a hundred years and are only just learning to walk again. You walk out of your bedroom, walk in your living room and then put your hand on the doorknob. You close your eyes and think that, once again there’s a slip and falling back into the hedge maze. Oh, what a way to die.

You open the door.

Bucky stands in the hallway, backlit by the emergency lights, and you forget how to breathe.

He’s wearing a henley. Gray. Sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and there it is, that difference in flesh and metal, that impossible union of soft and hard that your brain has catalogued like scripture. He’s been letting his hair grow a bit, curling at the nape of his neck. His jaw is shadowed with stubble. His eyes are the color of a winter sky just before snow, and they’re looking at you like you’re the only warm thing in a frozen world.

“Hey,” he says. His voice is low. Rough with sleeplessness. It scrapes along your skin like a physical thing.

“Hey,” you manage. It comes out breathy. Pathetic. You clear your throat.

He shifts his weight. “You okay? Your text sounded…”

“Sad?” you offer.

“Yeah.” He searches your face. “That.”

You step back, letting him in. The door clicks shut behind him, and suddenly the living room feels half its size. He moves like he’s afraid of breaking things—a lifetime of restraint baked into his bones. Then starts walking freely towards your bedroom and sits on the edge of your bed, not quite settling, like he’s ready to bolt.

You stay standing. Lean against the dresser. Put furniture between you like a coward.

“I’ve been thinking,” you say.

He chuckles. “Dangerous.” His wink makes your knees weak.

A laugh escapes you. “You have no idea.”

He watches you. Patient. That’s the thing about Bucky Barnes—he’s learned to wait. Decades of waiting. What’s a few more minutes while you try to find the words for something you can barely admit to yourself?

“The song,” you start. “You sent it for a reason.”

He looks down at his hands—flesh and metal, both still now. “Yeah.”

“What reason?”

He’s quiet for a long moment. Time After Time has ended. Your room is silent except for the sound of two people breathing too carefully, too deliberately, like they’re both afraid of what might happen if they let their guard down.

“I heard it,” he says finally, “and I thought of you. That’s all.”

That’s all. As if that’s not everything. As if that’s not a declaration of war on the walls you’ve both spent months building. As if that’s not the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to you, and he probably doesn’t even realice it.

“James.” His name comes out wrong—too soft, too raw. “I need you to be honest with me.”

His head snaps up. Something flickers behind his eyes. Fear, maybe. Or hope. They look the same on him—a widening of the pupils, a slight parting of the lips, a tension in the shoulders that could go either way.

“I’m always honest with you,” he says. “You’re the only one I can be honest with. Always honest.”

“Are you?”

He flinches. Just a fraction. But you see it. You see everything when it comes to him. You’ve made a study of his micro-expressions, the way his jaw tightens when he’s lying, the way his metal fingers twitch when he’s nervous, the way he looks at the floor when he’s about to say something he’s afraid of.

You push off the dresser. Take a step closer. Then another. Until you’re standing in front of him, close enough to count the scars on his knuckles, close enough to smell the soap he uses—something plain, something military, something that shouldn’t make your knees weak but does.

“What are we doing?” you whisper.

He looks up at you. Swallows. “I don’t know.”

“We text every day. You send me songs at two in the morning. You remember things I've told you—things I've never told anyone else.” Your voice cracks on the last word, and you hate yourself for it, hate how needy you sound, hate that he's seeing you like this. “You look at me like I'm something, and then you leave, and I spend the next three days trying to convince myself it didn't mean anything.”

“It means something,” he says quickly. Too quickly. Like the words are escaping without permission, like they've been trapped behind his teeth for so long that they've finally broken free.

“Then what?”

He stands.

Now there’s no furniture between you. Now there’s just the heat of him, the solid wall of his chest inches from yours, and you have to tilt your head back to hold his gaze. His jaw is tight. His left hand—the vibranium one—curls and uncurls at his side, a nervous tic you’ve learned to read.

“You wanna know what I think about?” he says, voice low. “When I can’t sleep?”

You nod. Because you can’t speak.

“I think about your hands.” He says it like an accusation. “The way you hold your coffee mug. Both hands, like you’re warming them. I think about the sound you make when you laugh—not the polite one you do in briefings, the real one, the one that’s kind of ugly and snorty and makes me feel like I’ve done something right.”

Your eyes sting. You blink rapidly, trying to hold it back.

“I think about what you'd look like in my shirts,” he continues, and now his voice is rougher, scraped raw, like he's pulling each word out of his own chest with a hook. “In my bed. With my name—” He stops. Shakes his head. A muscle jumps in his jaw. “Doesn't matter.”

“It matters,” you echo his own words back at him.

He makes a sound. Something between a laugh and a groan. “Jesus.”

“No,” you say, and you’re crying now, you realize, tears sliding hot and silent down your cheeks. “Not Jesus. Just you. Just me.” A weak smile is plastered in your face.

He reaches up. Slow. So slow. Like he's asking permission with every millimeter, like he's giving you every possible chance to stop him. His flesh hand cups your face, thumb brushing away a tear, and the gentleness of it breaks something inside you. Something you've been holding together with duct tape and denial for months.

“I’ve already done it,” you confess. “In my head. A thousand times.”

“Done what?”

“Everything.” The word comes out shattered. “I've kissed you. I've—God, Bucky, I've imagined what you sound like when you fall apart. I've imagined it so many times I can't tell the difference between fantasy and memory anymore.”

His breath catches. You feel it—the sharp inhale, the way his chest expands against yours.

“I’ve imagined your hands on me. Your mouth. The things you’d say.” You’re sobbing now, ugly and uncontrollable, and you can’t stop. “I’ve imagined waking up next to you. Making you coffee. Arguing about whose turn it is to do the dishes. Normal things. Things I’ll never have because I’m too scared to reach out and take them.”

“Hey,” he says, and his voice is wrecked. “Hey. Stop.”

“I can’t. I’ve been keeping these longings locked in lowercase inside a vault, and I can’t—someone told me there’s no such thing as bad thoughts, only your actions talk, but my actions are screaming, Bucky, every time I look at you, every time I don’t kiss you, every time I let you walk away—And I keep telling myself it’s wrong,” you go on, the words spilling out now, unstoppable. “That we’re colleagues. That we’re just friends. That you’re recovering. That I shouldn’t want you like this because wanting you like this makes me selfish, makes me bad, makes me—”

He kisses you.

It’s not gentle. It’s not tentative. It’s the kiss of a man who’s been holding himself back for so long that the dam has finally cracked, and now he’s drowning too. His metal hand comes up to the back of your neck, cool and sure, and he pulls you into him like you’re the only solid thing in a world that’s been trying to drown him for seventy years.

You make a sound against his mouth. Something desperate. Something that tastes like salt and want and finally.

His lips are softer than you imagined. That’s the first thing you notice. You’d expected them to be rough, chapped, but they’re not—they’re warm and yielding, and he kisses like he’s trying to memorize the shape of your mouth. His flesh hand slides into your hair, tangles there, holds on like you might disappear.

You grab his shirt. Fist the fabric at his chest. Pull him closer, closer, until there’s no space left, until you can feel the steady thump of his heart against your own racing pulse.

When he pulls back, you’re both breathing hard. His forehead rests against yours. His eyes are closed. His lips are reddened, wet, parted.

“I’ve done it too,” he murmurs. “In my head. You and me. A hundred different ways. A thousand.”

“Then why—” You can’t finish. The words stick in your throat.

“Because I’m afraid.” He says it simply. Honestly. Like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Because everyone I’ve ever loved gets hurt. Because you’re the best thing that’s happened to me in a lifetime of bad things, and I can’t—I can’t fuck this up by wanting it too much, wanting you too much, honey.”

You frame his face with your hands. Feel the stubble, the warmth, the solid realness of him. He’s here. He’s real. He wants you.

“What if,” you say slowly, “the way you hold me is actually what’s holy?”

His eyes open. Search yours.

“What if all those years of suffering, of propriety, of doing what we’re supposed to do—” you continue, “what if it was just keeping us from this? From each other?”

“You don’t believe in those things,” he says, but it’s not a question. He knows you. He knows everything.

“I don’t know what I believe in,” you admit. “But I believe in this. I believe in you.”

Something shifts in his expression. The last wall, maybe. The last lock. The last barrier between the two of you and something that feels terrifyingly close to forever.

He kisses you again. Slower this time. Deeper. His hands find your waist, and he walks you backward until your knees hit the bed, and you go down together in a tangle of limbs and sheets and the sound of your own heartbeat in your ears.

“You sure?” he asks, pulling back just enough to look at you. His pupils are blown. His lips are wet. He looks like a prayer you forgot you were saying.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life,” you say.

And when he smiles—really smiles, the kind that reaches his eyes and softens every hard line of his face—you think, "Oh. This is what they meant. This is what all the songs were about".

Later, you lie in the dark with your head on his chest. His metal arm is cool against your bare shoulder. His flesh hand traces lazy patterns on your spine. Time After Time is playing again, because you’d queued it up on a loop, and neither of you has bothered to turn it off.

The sheets are a disaster. Tangled. Twisted. Half on the floor. Your hair is a rat’s nest, and there’s a mark on your collarbone that you’re going to have to explain tomorrow, and you don’t care. You don’t care about any of it.

“Hey,” he says.

“Mm?”

“That thing you said. About the way I hold you being holy.”

You tilt your head up and look at him. The moonlight filters through the blinds, striping his face in silver and shadow. He looks younger like this. Softer. Like the weight of the world isn’t pressing down on him for once.

“I think you’re right,” he says quietly. “I think I’ve been looking for something sacred my whole life. I just didn’t know it had your face.”

You bury your face in his neck. Smile against his skin.

“That’s the cheesiest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

He does.

When you come up for air, you’re both laughing—real laughter, the kind that comes from somewhere deep and surprised. His eyes crinkle at the corners and his nose scrunches. He looks happy, and the sight of it makes your chest ache in a completely different way.

“I have a confession,” you say.

His eyebrows lift. “That sounds ominous.”

“I stole your sweatshirt. Three weeks ago, when we had that movie night.”

He blinks. Then he looks down at the floor—the oversized gray sweatshirt, the one that drowns you, the one with the tiny hole in the cuff. His sweatshirt laying there along with your and his clothes.

“I know,” he says.

“You knew?”

“You really think I casually forgot that thing here?” He’s grinning now. Actually grinning. “I wanted something mine here, in your safe space. And then yeah, when I was walking away that night, saw you taking the sweatshirt and simply putting it along with that fluffy blanket you have.”

“Then why didn’t you say anything?”

He shrugs, the movement jostling you gently. “Looked better on you anyway.”

You punch his chest. Lightly. He catches your hand, brings it to his mouth, kisses your knuckles one by one.

“I have a confession too,” he says against your skin.

“What?”

“I’ve been sending you songs for six months. Every single one of them was about you.”

Your heart stutters. “Every single one?”

“Every. Single. One.” He meets your eyes. “I just didn’t know how to say it out loud.”

“Bucky.”

“I know. I’m an idiot.”

“No.” You sit up, propping yourself on your elbow so you can look down at him. “You’re not an idiot. You’re just—” You search for the word. “—careful. And I get it. I do. But you don’t have to be careful with me. I’m not going to break.”

His expression flickers. Something raw and vulnerable surfaces before he can hide it.

“I know,” he says. “That’s what scares me.”

“Scares you?”

“Because if you’re not going to break, then I have no excuse. No reason to keep my distance. No reason not to—” He stops. Swallows.

“Not to what?”

“Not to love you.”

The word hangs in the air between you. Love. You’ve been dancing around it for months, using every synonym, every euphemism, every careful avoidance. But here it is. Naked. Unavoidable.

“Too late,” you whisper.

“What?”

“I already love you. I’ve loved you for a while. I just didn’t want to say it first.”

He stares at you. For a moment, he doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe. Then he pulls you down, rolls you both over until you’re underneath him, and kisses you like he’s trying to pour every unsaid word into your mouth.

When he finally pulls back, his eyes are bright. Wet, maybe. It’s hard to tell in the dark.

“I love you,” he says. Like he’s testing the weight of it. Like he’s amazed it’s true. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

“You’re going to wear it out,” you tease, but you’re crying again, and so is he, and it doesn’t matter because you’re both laughing and crying and kissing and it’s the most beautiful mess you’ve ever been a part of.

You wake to sunlight and the sound of someone moving around your kitchen.

For a disorienting moment, you don't know where you are. The light is wrong—too bright, too golden. Then you feel the ache between your thighs, your body covered by your fluffy blanket and everything comes rushing back.

You turn your head and the space beside you is empty, but the sheets are still warm. You sit up, pull on his sweatshirt—your sweatshirt now, you're never giving it back—and pad barefoot toward the kitchen.

He's standing at your counter, shirtless, hair still sleep-mussed, making coffee with the focus of a man defusing a bomb. His metal arm catches the morning light, the vibranium shimmering like liquid mercury. The scars on his left shoulder—where flesh meets metal—are pale and puckered, and you want to kiss every single one of them.

“Morning,” you say.

He looks up. His eyes soften. “Morning, honey.”

“You made coffee.”

“You said you can't function without it.” He pours a mug, slides it across the counter toward you. “Cream, no sugar.”

You wrap your hands around the mug—both hands, just like he said—and take a sip. It's perfect.

“Thank you,” you say.

He nods. Leans against the counter. Crosses his arms over his chest, and god, the way his muscles shift when he does that should be illegal.

“What?” he asks, catching you staring.

“Nothing.” You take another sip. “Just thinking.”

“About?”

You set the mug down. Walk around the counter until you're standing in front of him. Reach up and push his hair out of his eyes.

“I'm thinking,” you say slowly, “that I don't want this to be a one-time thing.”

His hands find your hips. Settle there like they belong.

“Good,” he says. “Because I was thinking the same thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He ducks his head, presses a kiss to your forehead. “I was thinking I don't want to sleep in my bed alone ever again. I was thinking I want to wake up next to you every morning. I was thinking—” He pulls back, meets your eyes. “—that I'm tired of being afraid.”

“So don't be.”

“It's not that simple, baby.”

“It can be.” You frame his face with your hands. “We can make it simple. We wake up. We make coffee. We go to work. We come home. We fall asleep. Repeat. That's it. That's all it has to be.”

He searches your face. “You really think it's that easy?”

“I think,” you say, “that nothing about us has been easy. And maybe that's why we deserve this. The easy part.”

He's quiet for a long moment. Then he pulls you into his chest, wraps both arms around you—flesh and metal, soft and hard, everything he is and everything he's trying to be—and holds you like you're something precious.

“I love you,” he says into your hair.

“I love you too.”

And somewhere in the distance—or maybe just in your head—the song swells one last time. You think about hedge mazes and ocean rocks and all the ways you almost died before you ever got here. You think about locked vaults and lowercase longings and the sheer, terrifying miracle of being seen.

All those nights you spent dreaming about him writing 'mine' on your upper thigh, your waist, your collarbones… They’re not just in your mind. Not anymore.

You feel him smile against your hair, and you know—with absolute, bone-deep certainty—that you are not guilty of anything except wanting something good. Something real. Something that—finally, impossibly—wants you back.

You were very sure it was the lighting. It was the way your apartment looked. There was something in the air.

It was a Thursday. A grey, drizzly, deeply unremarkable Thursday. Bucky had been home for exactly four hours between a subcommittee hearing on veterans' affairs and a closed-door session about infrastructure spending. He'd stumbled through the door in joggers and a henley, looking less like a century-old super-soldier and more like a very tired, very pretty man in desperate need of coffee.

“Hey, honey.” he'd mumbled, dropping a kiss on your forehead before shuffling toward the kitchen.

You'd been on the couch, checking some things from your work and taking some notes and you'd felt the usual warm, placid affection. The same affection you felt when he left his socks on the coffee table or hummed along to 1940s jazz off-key. It was comfortable. It was yours.

Then, two hours later, he'd emerged from the bedroom and the world tilted on its axis.

He was wearing the suit. Not the tactical gear, not the leather jacket, but the suit. A deep charcoal grey, almost black, with a crisp white shirt and a tie the color of a winter sky. The jacket was tailored within an inch of its life, pulling just slightly across his shoulders when he reached for his cufflinks. The trousers fit like they'd been painted on his thighs.

You'd dropped your pen and it rolled under the couch, abandoned.

“What?” he'd asked, frowning at his reflection in the hallway mirror as he straightened his collar. His metal fingers gleamed against the silk of his tie. “Is the knot crooked?”

You opened your mouth to say no, it's fine, you look very professional, honey. What came out instead was a strangled, “Jesus Christ.”

He'd turned, one eyebrow raised. That familiar, infuriating little smirk that was just for you twitched at the corner of his mouth. “That bad, huh?”

“No,” you'd breathed, still staring. Your brain had apparently short-circuited. All the usual data—we don't want kids, we've discussed this, we have a plant that's dying because we keep forgetting to water it, we are not parent material—had vanished, replaced by a single, primal, deeply embarrassing thought.

I would let him put a baby in me right now.

You'd blinked. Shook your head. The thought had vanished as quickly as it came, replaced by horror.

What the fuck.

“Nothing,” you'd said, a little too quickly. “Go. Do your congressman thing. Make bad laws or whatever.”

He'd laughed—a low, warm sound—gave you a profound kiss, “Good to know I still make you so weak at the knees after all these years together, baby,” he whispered against your mouth and left.

You'd spent the next three hours lying face-down on the couch, interrogating your own biology. You didn't want kids. You'd built a life around not wanting kids. You'd had the conversations—the long, late-night, wine-soaked conversations about freedom and sleep and money and the fact that you both valued your sanity more than a hypothetical future human. Bucky had been so relieved when you'd said it first. Thank god, he'd said. Not cut for raising someone when I am such a disaster, he'd murmured after.

So why had you, for approximately 2.7 seconds, imagined Bucky holding a tiny, dark-haired baby while wearing that suit?

Hormones, you'd told yourself. It's just hormones. It's the lighting. It's a weird Thursday. You'd resolved to forget it.

Friday was worse.

Bucky had a press conference. You'd made the mistake of watching it on C-SPAN while eating a sad desk lunch in your home office. He was standing at a podium, his posture straight, his expression serious and focused. The suit was different this time—navy blue, pinstriped, with a pocket square that matched his eyes.

He was talking about clean energy infrastructure. You didn't hear a single word.

You watched his hands instead. The way they gripped the edges of the podium. The way his metal fingers flexed slightly when a reporter asked a pointed question. The way he leaned into the microphone, his jaw set, his voice steady and authoritative.

And that thought was back. Louder this time. More insistent.

I want his babies. I want to have his babies. I want to be pregnant with his child while he wears that suit and talks about appropriations bills.

You'd slammed your laptop shut so hard the screen cracked.

“Fuck,” you'd whispered.

Then you'd texted your therapist.

You: Is it normal to have biological clock urges specifically triggered by tailored clothing?

Therapist: Let's discuss in our session on Monday.

You’ll have the weekend to die thanks to your boyfriend in a suit.

By the third week of Bucky's congressional term (which showed no signs of ending, given that he'd just been reelected and seemed, against all odds, to actually enjoy the work), you had gathered enough data to confirm your hypothesis.

It wasn't just the suit. It was everything about the suit.

It was the way he rolled up his sleeves after a long day, revealing those thick, vascular forearms, the metal plates of his left arm gleaming under the warm light of your living room. It was the way he loosened his tie, pulling the knot down with one finger, looking exhausted and powerful and fuckable in a way that felt almost illegal.

It was the way he carried himself—different from the Bucky who lounged on the couch in sweatpants and ate cereal out of the box. That Bucky was soft, teasing, yours. But Bucky wearing a suit was competent. He answered emails with a furrowed brow. He took phone calls in that low, serious voice. He looked at you over the rim of his reading glasses (he'd started wearing reading glasses, oh god) and said things like, "I'll be in a hearing until six, don't wait up."

And every single time, your uterus staged a mutiny.

You'd started avoiding him when he came home in the suit. Not because you were angry, but because you couldn't trust yourself. You'd hide in the kitchen, chopping vegetables with unnecessary violence, while he wandered in, still in his dress shirt and trousers, and asked what was for dinner.

“You okay?” he'd ask, leaning against the counter, arms crossed.

“Fine,” you'd grit out, not looking at him.

“You've been 'fine' a lot lately, honey.”

“I'm just very passionate about these carrots.”

He'd watch you for a long moment, his eyes narrowed. Then he'd push off the counter and walk away, and you'd let out a breath you didn't know you were holding.

But Bucky was a super-soldier. He had enhanced senses, enhanced perception, and—most dangerously—enhanced awareness of you. He noticed when your breathing changed. He noticed when your pupils dilated. He noticed when you looked at him like you wanted to climb him like a tree.

He just hadn't figured out why yet but that changed on a Friday night.

It was late. Almost midnight. Bucky had been in back-to-back meetings since seven in the morning, and he'd finally come home looking like he'd been wrung out and hung to dry. His tie was gone. His jacket was draped over his arm. His shirt was untucked, the top two buttons undone, revealing a bit of his collarbone and the edge of his dog tags.

He'd collapsed onto the couch next to you, his head falling back against the cushion, his eyes closed.

“I think I'd rather fight Hydra again,” he muttered.

You'd laughed, closing your laptop. “That bad?”

“Senator Fowler asked me, with a straight face, if 'wind power is just a liberal conspiracy to sell more wind.'” He opened one eye. “I had to use all my training not to walk out.”

“Poor baby.” You'd reached over and brushed a strand of hair off his forehead, a gesture so automatic, so yours, that you didn't think twice about it.

But then he'd turned his head, caught your wrist, and pressed a kiss to your palm. His lips were warm. His stubble scraped against your skin. And his eyes—those stupid, beautiful, steel-blue eyes—were fixed on yours.

“You've been weird.” he said, not a question.

“I haven't.”

“You have.” He sat up, still holding your wrist. “You've been avoiding me. Not all the time. Just when I come home dressed up. You hide in the kitchen. You don't look at me. And you keep—” He paused, searching for the word. “You keep smelling different.”

You froze. “Smelling?”

“Heightened senses, remember?” His thumb traced a slow circle on the inside of your wrist. “You smell like… honey and something else. Something hot. You smell like that when we're in bed.”

Your face went nuclear.

“I do not,” you hissed.

“You do.” He was smirking now. That bastard was smirking. “So I'll ask again, honey. What's going on?”

You could lie. You could deflect. You could say it was nothing, you were just stressed about work, your period was coming, the planets were misaligned.

But you'd been together for almost five years. You'd seen each other at your worst—him shaking off nightmares, you sobbing over a broken coffee mug at 2 AM for no reason. There was no point in hiding.

You took a deep breath.

“It's the suit,” you said.

He blinked. “The suit.”

“The suits in general, Bucky. The whole… thing. The congressman thing. The tailored trousers and the cufflinks and the way you talk to people on the phone like you actually know what you're doing.” You were rambling now, words tumbling out like a dam had broken. “It makes me want to have your babies.”

Silence.

Absolute, ringing silence.

Bucky's expression cycled through about fifteen emotions in two seconds. Confusion, surprise, dawning comprehension, a flash of pure male smugness, and then something softer, more vulnerable.

“You want kids?” he asked, his voice quiet.

“No!” You yanked your wrist back, running both hands through your hair. “I don't want kids. We don't want kids. We agreed. We have a list. We have a spreadsheet of reasons why we don't want kids. Reason number one: we like sleeping in. Reason number two: we like money. Reason number three: we like being able to have sex on the kitchen floor on a Tuesday or Monday or Saturday.”

“Those days are really good,” he murmured.

“But then you put on those suits,” you continued, ignoring him, “and my brain just… short-circuits. I look at you and I can't help but think, that man could fix the infrastructure of this country and also my ovaries. It's not rational. It's not even real. It's just—it's just—”

“Hormones?” he offered.

“Traitorous biology,” you corrected.

Bucky was quiet for a long moment. Then he laughed—a real laugh, surprised and delighted, his whole face lighting up. He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, and looked at you like you'd just told him the funniest, most endearing thing he'd ever heard.

“My love,” he said, “you get horny for my civic duty?”

“That's not—I'm not horny—”

“You said you wanted my babies.”

“I said my brain wants your babies! There's a difference!”

He was grinning now, wide and unrepentant. “So if I put on the suit right now, you'd—what? Drag me to the bedroom? Start picking out crib patterns?”

“I would not—”

“Because I have a clean one in the closet. The grey one. The one you stared at for a full minute the other day.”

You buried your face in a throw pillow and screamed like a maniac.

Bucky pried the pillow out of your hands, still laughing, and cupped your face in his hands—one warm, one cool—tilting your chin up so you had to look at him.

“Hey,” he said softly, all the teasing gone. “I'm not making fun of you. I just… I didn't know. You never said anything.”

“Because it's embarrassing,” you mumbled. “We have a whole life together. A whole child-free life. And I love that life. I love you. I don't actually want to change anything. But every time you put on that suit, I feel like I'm losing my mind.”

He studied you for a moment, his thumbs brushing your cheekbones. Then he said, very seriously, “Do you want to know something?”

“What?”

“When I see you in that navy blue dress—the one with the low back—I think about buying a house in the suburbs. I think about white picket fences and a dog and—and matching Christmas pajamas.” He winced, like the words cost him something. “I don't want those things. I think I know I don't want those things. But for about thirty seconds, when you're wearing that dress, I want to give you everything you've never asked for.”

Your heart stopped.

“You're lying,” you whispered.

“I'm not.” He leaned in, pressing his forehead to yours. “We're both idiots. We have a perfectly good thing, and our brains keep trying to sabotage it with—what did you call it? Traitorous biology?”

“Traitorous biology,” you confirmed.

“So here's what I think.” His breath was warm on your lips. “I think we don't want kids. I think we're happy. I think we're going to keep being happy, and child-free, and we're going to keep having sex on the kitchen floor on random days.”

“Okay,” you breathed.

“But.” He pulled back just enough to look at you, his eyes dark and warm. “The next time I come home in that suit, and you feel like you want to have my babies? You tell me. And I'll remind you, in very explicit detail, why we're probably not having babies. But we'll have a lot of fun in the process.”

Your mouth went dry. “That's—that's a very generous offer, Congressman.”

“I'm a public servant,” he said, deadpan. “It's my job to serve.”

You burst out laughing, shoving at his chest. He caught your hands, lacing his fingers through yours, and pulled you into his lap. The position was familiar—you'd sat like this a hundred times—but something felt different now. Lighter. Like you'd both been carrying a secret you didn't need to carry anymore.

“So,” he said, settling his hands on your hips, “just to be clear. You don't want my babies.”

“No,” you said. But the word came out smaller than you intended. Quieter.

He noticed. Of course he noticed.

“Honey?” His brow furrowed.

“I do not not want them,” you whispered, the confession scraping its way out of your throat. “I don't know what I want. That's the problem. I thought I knew. I had the spreadsheet. I had the reasons. And then you started wearing that suit and talking about infrastructure and—” You laughed, shaky and raw. “And now I don't know anything.”

Bucky was very still. His metal hand had stopped moving on your hip. When he spoke, his voice was careful, almost fragile.

“Do you want to know something else?”

“What?”

“Sometimes, when I'm standing at that podium, and I see you in the crowd—when you come to watch me—I think about what it would be like to have you there. Not just you. Us. A little us. Someone with your nose and my stubbornness.” He swallowed. “And then I tell myself I'm being an idiot. Because we have the plant. And the sex on the kitchen floor. And the sleeping in.”

“But?” you prompted.

He was quiet for a long, long moment. Then he said, so softly it was almost a breath, “But maybe the plant is dying anyway.”

You stared at him.

He stared back.

And neither of you said anything for a very long time.

A week later, you were in the kitchen, making dinner when you heard the front door open. Then close. Then the familiar rhythm of Bucky's footsteps heavy, deliberate, slightly dragging from exhaustion.

“Hey,” you called over your shoulder. “How was the—”

You turned.

And stopped.

He was wearing the suit. Not just any suit—the charcoal grey suit. The one with the perfect shoulders and the trousers that made his legs look like they went on forever. His tie was loosened. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows. His hair was slightly disheveled, like he'd been running his fingers through it.

He was holding a folder of papers in one hand. And he was looking at you like he knew exactly what he was doing.

“Long day,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “The subcommittee on agriculture is trying to kill the farm bill. Again.”

You forgot how to breathe.

No, you told yourself firmly. We don't want kids. We have a spreadsheet. Reason number four: we like being able to travel internationally on short notice. Reason number five: we have a plant that is currently dying because we forgot to water it for three weeks. We are not parent material.

But the spreadsheet felt flimsy now. The reasons felt like sand slipping through your fingers.

And Bucky was leaning against the doorframe, one ankle crossed over the other, the folder tucked under his arm. His metal fingers tapped a slow rhythm against the wood.

“You're staring,” he said.

“I'm not.”

“You're holding a wooden spoon like you're about to commit a crime.”

You looked down. You were, in fact, gripping the wooden spoon so hard your knuckles were white.

“I'm fine,” you said.

“You're not.” He pushed off the doorframe and walked toward you, slow and deliberate, his dress shoes clicking on the hardwood. He stopped when he was close enough that you could smell his cologne—something clean and expensive, a gift from you on his last birthday. “You're thinking about it right now, aren't you?”

“Thinking about what?”

“Babies.” He said the word like it was a dirty secret, his voice dropping low. “My babies. Little dark-haired monsters with my eyes and your stubbornness.”

Your knees went weak.

“I hate you,” you whispered.

“No, you don't.” He set the folder on the counter, then reached out and took the wooden spoon from your hand, setting it aside. His hands settled on your waist, thumbs brushing the hem of your shirt. “You love me. You love me so much that my civic duties makes you ovulate.”

“That's not—you’re an idiot, that’s not how ovulation works—”

“Mmhm, honey.” He pulled you closer, until your chest was flush against his, and dipped his head to speak directly into your ear. “I'm going to remind you why we're probably not having kids. Right now. On the kitchen floor. And then I'm going to make you dinner, and we're going to watch that documentary about penguins, and tomorrow morning we're going to sleep in until ten.”

You shivered. “You and your obsession with that documentary but that's—that's a very comprehensive plan.”

“I'm a congressman,” he murmured, his lips brushing the shell of your ear. “I'm good at planning.”

“You're really a congressman now.”

“Then we have time.” He pulled back just enough to look at you, his eyes dark and searching. “We have time, sweetheart. To figure it out. To change our minds. Or not. There's no deadline. There's no rush. There's just—”

“Us,” you finished.

“Us,” he agreed. “And the suits. And the kitchen floor. And a very confused plant.”

You laughed—a wet, startled sound—and he kissed you. Deep and consuming, his metal hand sliding up to cup the back of your neck, his other arm wrapping around your waist. You melted into him, all your rational thoughts scattering like startled birds. The suit jacket was rough under your palms. The tie was silk. The man was everything.

And when he lowered you both to the kitchen floor, his body covering yours, his mouth trailing down your throat, there was just some thoughts running around your brain.

Maybe we don't want kids.

Maybe we do.

Maybe we'll figure it out tomorrow.

Tonight, you had this. The suit and the man and the question mark hanging between you like a promise you weren't ready to make—but weren't ready to break, either.

Three months later, there was new more suits, the plant is still dying on the kitchen but someone has started watering it more often. Neither of you has admitted who.

It was late. Almost midnight. You were curled up on the couch, your head in Bucky's lap, his metal fingers playing with your hair. A horror movie that was playing on the TV was now paused halfway through because you'd both gotten distracted.

“Hey,” you said.

“Hmm?” He didn't look up from his book.

“Do you ever think about what we talked about? The… you know.”

He marked his page and set the book aside, giving you his full attention. “The baby thing?”

“The maybe baby thing.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Sometimes.”

“Me too.”

Another silence. Longer this time.

“What do you think?” you asked, your voice small. “Like, really really?”

Bucky looked at you for a long, long time. His thumb traced the line of your jaw, back and forth, back and forth. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and careful, like he was handling something fragile.

“I think,” he said slowly, “that I don't know. And for the first time in a very long time… I think that's okay.”

You turned your head, pressing a kiss to his palm. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He smiled—soft, uncertain, beautiful. “We have time. We’re still young. We have each other. And we have a very nice kitchen floor.”

You laughed. “First of all, you’re like a thousand years old and the kitchen floor is not a reason to have a baby.”

“No,” he agreed and chuckled, ignoring your comment about his age. “But it's a reason to keep talking about it. To keep—” He searched for the word. “To keep wondering. Together.”

You sat up, twisting to face him, and took his face in your hands. His stubble was rough under your palms. His eyes were the color of winter sky. He was yours. Completely, impossibly yours.

“Together,” you repeated.

“Together,” he said.

And when he kissed you—soft and slow and full of unspoken questions—you let yourself sink into it. The horror movie played on, forgotten. The plant sat on the windowsill, slightly less dead than it had been months ago.

Somewhere in your closet, his suits were waiting. Those same ones that started the controversy. And so did the question.

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe someday.

But not tonight.

Tonight, you had this. The man, the couch, the pause in the conversation. The permission to not know.

And that, you were beginning to realize, was its own kind of answer.