kitty

The number sits in his phone for three days before he uses it.

Three days of bad apartments and worse brokers. Places with paper-thin walls and windows that looked directly into brick. Places that smelled like mildew and old cigarettes. Places so expensive they made his jaw lock before the realtor even finished speaking.

He tells himself he's only looking because he has to. Not because he misses hearing another person in the next room. Not because going back to the apartment in Brooklyn every night feels too much like walking into a museum exhibit dedicated to a man he doesn't know how to be anymore.

Louisiana had almost made sense for a second.

He can still picture the dock at sunset, the water catching orange light, the sound of Sam's nephews shouting somewhere down the road. He can still hear Sam leaning against the kitchen counter, arms crossed, pretending not to look too concerned.

“You could stay here for a while,” Sam had said.

“No.”

“You don't even gotta stay with me. The VA's offering assistance out here now. They can help you get your own place.”

“No.”

Sam had looked at him for a long second then, the kind of look people get right before they decide whether or not to push.

“You know, accepting help doesn't mean you're weak.”

Bucky had laughed once under his breath, sharp and humorless. “Not taking charity.”

“It ain't charity.”

“Feels like it.”

Sam had sighed through his nose, digging through a kitchen drawer before pulling out a scrap of paper with a number scribbled across it.

“I know somebody in New York. Friend of mine has a spare room.”

Bucky remembers immediately opening his mouth to refuse, Sam had beaten him to it.

“You won't be coddled or given the sugar treatment,” he said. “You'll pay rent, keep your mess clean, same as anywhere else. I bet you'll like it too.”

That had been the only reason Bucky took the number at all.

Now, three days later, he stares at it again from the edge of a too-small hotel bed in Queens. The room hums around him. Old air conditioner rattling in the window. Pipes knocking somewhere in the walls. The smell of industrial detergent trapped in the sheets.

He types the message before he can talk himself out of it.

Sam Wilson gave me your number. He said you had a room for rent.

The response comes less than ten minutes later, not much text, no small talk. Just a picture. The room is simple. Bigger than he expected. A bed frame without a mattress, a dresser by the wall, a window overlooking the street below. Hardwood floors. Clean lines. Nothing flashy.

Underneath the picture is the address and rent amount. Reasonable, more than reasonable, honestly.

Then another message.

He told me you'd message. If you're interested, you can come look at it tomorrow. I work late tonight.

What would probably seem forward to others Bucky sees as efficient, Sam's recommendation is starting to make sense now. The building is in Brooklyn, far enough from the center of everything to be quiet but not isolated. The brick outside is old, the kind that has survived decades without anybody bothering to make it prettier.

There is a sticky note taped to the front door when he gets there.

Spare key is under the plant. Let yourself in.

He stares at the note for a second longer than he needs to. Something about it feels strangely normal. The kind of thing people do when they trust that the world isn't always waiting to hurt them.

The apartment is quiet when he steps inside, his shoes echoing off the walls. It's not empty per say, just still.

There are a pair of sneakers and loafers by the door lined up neatly on a tray. A light jacket tossed over the back of the couch, s mug sitting in the sink, a blanket folded over the armrest like somebody had smoothed it down before rushing out the door.

The place is nice. Not too fancy, not overly cluttered. There are soft colors everywhere. Cream walls. Warm wood floors. A kitchen with magnets on the fridge and a bowl of fruit on the counter. It feels lived in in small ways, like somebody exists here just hardly.

The bedroom at the end of the hall is bigger than he expected. Master bedroom with a bathroom attached, an amenity he hadn't lived with in too many years to count. Enough room for his duffel bags and the few boxes he still carries from place to place without unpacking.

But it isn't the room that makes him stop.

It's the hallway.

Bookshelves run from floor to ceiling along both sides of it, turning the narrow stretch between the living room and bedrooms into something else entirely. There are hundreds of books. Maybe more. Old hardcovers with cracked spines. Paperbacks with folded corners. New glossy editions wedged beside books that look older than he is.

His eyes catch on familiar titles. The Great Gatsby, A Farewell to Arms, The Hobbit. A worn copy of The Catcher in the Rye sits crooked on a shelf near the middle. Some of the older books have faded cloth covers, titles nearly rubbed away with time. He reaches out before he can stop himself, fingertips brushing the spine of one that looks like it has been opened a hundred times.

It reassures him in a way he can't explain. For the first time in weeks, maybe months, he can picture himself somewhere without immediately wanting to leave.

He pulls his phone out.

Nice place. I'll take it if it's still up for offer.

The reply comes before he even reaches the kitchen.

It's all yours. Lease is on the kitchen counter. Bring your stuff in whenever. I won't be back until late again.

He looks over at the stack of papers sitting beside the fruit bowl. A little strange and fast, maybe. But he isn't complaining. The lease is simple. Month to month, rent due on the first. No smoking inside, clean up after yourself. No coffee grounds down the drain.

That last one almost makes him smile.

He signs his name at the bottom then he goes back downstairs to start bringing his things in. Which, after a century of life, turns out to be less than he thought it'd be. It only takes him three days to move in.

Three days of hauling boxes up narrow stairs and carrying duffel bags that feel heavier than they should. Three days of unpacking only half of his things because there isn't much point in settling too deeply into anywhere anymore.

He never sees you once.

The first night, he hears the front door unlock sometime after midnight, quiet footsteps, the soft rustle of a jacket being hung up. Cabinet doors opening and closing in the kitchen. He stands frozen in the doorway of his room for a second, listening.

Then he hears the bathroom door shut down the hall and waits for some awkward introduction that never comes. By the time he wakes up the next morning, you're gone again.

There is a sticky note on the fridge.

Working late all week. Feel free to use anything in the kitchen except the leftover Chinese food. Learned that lesson already.

He pulls the note off the fridge after reading it, folding it once before sticking it in the pocket of his sweatshirt without really knowing why.

The second note comes two days later, left beside the coffee maker.

Heading upstate for work tomorrow. Back Friday night.

Then another on the kitchen counter.

If the sink in the kitchen makes that awful screeching noise again, jiggle the cold water handle.

It's strange, living with someone he has never met.

You exist in pieces to him. A mug left drying by the sink, a pair of shoes by the door one night and gone again by morning, a blanket folded on the couch in a different way than he remembers leaving it.

The faint smell of shampoo lingering in the hallway bathroom after he knows you've been home.

Sometimes he catches the sound of you moving around at night. The creak of floorboards in the hall. The soft thud of something being set on the kitchen counter. Once, half asleep, he hears quiet music drifting from somewhere in the apartment before it disappears again.

You are becoming something blurry around the edges, more presence than person, a ghost.

Not that he's one to complain. The arrangement works and for the first few weeks, he mostly keeps to his room anyway. He gets used to the attached bathroom. The way the pipes knock whenever somebody runs hot water. The patch of afternoon sun that lands across the floor by the window around three o'clock every day.

He unpacks slowly. One shirt at a time, one book at a time. He leaves most of his things in boxes because it feels safer that way. Temporary. Like if he has to leave suddenly, he can.

He still goes out most nights, he doesn't cook much.

The kitchen feels too personal somehow, like crossing into territory that belongs more to you than him. So he eats at diners, cheap takeout places, little delis with too-bright lights and menus that haven't changed in twenty years.

Eventually he starts stopping at the same hot dog stand three blocks from the apartment. The guy who runs it is older. Loud, talks too much, calls everyone sweetheart regardless of age or gender. The first time Bucky goes there, the guy takes one look at him and says, “You look like you need two hot dogs and a nap.”

By the third visit, he doesn't even have to order.

“Mustard, onions, no kraut,” the guy says, already reaching for the buns. “And a Coke.”

“You're getting too comfortable,” Bucky tells him.

“You keep showing up, that's on you.”

He reminds Bucky of Sam if Sam were louder and somehow even more annoying.

The guy asks questions constantly.

You got a girl? No. Job? Sort of. Why do you always look like somebody just kicked your dog?

Bucky never answers half of them, still, he keeps coming back. Mostly because the hot dogs are decent. Partly because it is nice, sometimes, to have somebody expect you to show up somewhere.

Back at the apartment, another sticky note waits for him on the kitchen counter.

Sorry for basically haunting the place. Work has been insane lately.

He stares at it for a second, then longer than that. A ghost with good handwriting, at least now he knows you know it too.

The first time he sees you, it feels a little like walking into the wrong apartment.

He comes back later than usual, the city already washed in blue evening light, a paper tray from the hot dog stand balanced in one hand and a soda in the other. The apartment door sticks a little when he pushes it open.

He hears your voice before he sees you. It's soft, firm yet an edge of exhaustion to it.

“You can tell them whatever you want, but I'm not driving six hours for a meeting that could've been an email.”

He stops just inside the doorway.

You're standing by the living room windows with your back to him, one arm folded across your middle, phone tucked between your ear and shoulder.

For a second, he just stares. Because he had almost forgotten, not completely, but enough. Enough that your existence had turned into sticky notes and moving shadows in the hallway. Coffee mugs in the sink. A coat that appeared on the hook by the door and disappeared again before morning.

He had built you into something abstract in his head.

Not a real person.

Certainly not a woman.

Not because Sam had said otherwise. Sam hadn't said much at all.

Just because there had been nothing obvious about you in the apartment. No perfume bottles cluttering the bathroom counter. No makeup bags. No floral blankets or pastel throw pillows or whatever other lazy stereotypes his brain had apparently reached for without him realizing it.

The place is sparse, practical. Books and soft lighting and a single plant by the window that looks one missed watering away from death. He mentally scolds himself for the assumptions.

You don't turn around right away, you're still talking and Bucky begins to wonder if he should walk out. Keep to the ghostly sticky notes and mugs in the sink.

“Yeah, well, that's not my problem,” you say into the phone, quieter now. “I sent everything over already.”

Then your eyes flick toward the entryway. Toward him.

You freeze.

It happens so quickly he almost misses it. The slight widening of your eyes. The way your mouth parts for a second before you catch yourself. It's clear you hadn't expected to see him either.

“Hold on,” you murmur into the phone.

For a second, neither of you says anything.

You are not what he expected either. You're standing barefoot on the hardwood floor with your heels kicked off next to you, hair a little messy like you've been running your hands through it all day and a suitskirt that's been smoothed down one too many times.

There are tired shadows under your eyes that make you look… real. Not like the blurry version of you he'd made up from scraps. He realizes, distantly, that this is probably the first time you've really seen him too. Not just the sound of boots in the hallway or the evidence of him in the sink.

The metal arm. The size of him. The way he takes up space without meaning to.

You recover first.

“Sorry,” you say, pulling the phone away from your mouth. “I didn't know you were coming home.”

“Yeah.”Brilliant move.

You blink at him once, then glance down at the hot dog tray in his hand. “Hope that's not dinner.”

He looks down too. “It was the plan.”

You huff a laugh through your nose, small and tired. “You eat like a divorced dad.”

He doesn't know why that almost makes him smile. Into the phone, you say, “I have to call you back,” before hanging up without waiting for an answer.

The apartment goes quiet, not awkward exactly. Well it's a little awkward but it's more unfamiliar than anything. Up close, he notices things he couldn't piece together from the notes. You look younger than he expected. Softer too, somehow. Not fragile, just... warm around the edges, like somebody people trust without thinking about it.

“Sorry about that,” you say, gesturing vaguely with your phone. “Work call, you know. I, uh... didn't expect it to go like this.”

There's something awkward in the air still, that strange lingering feeling of two people trying to fit reality over the outline they'd already made of each other.

“Don't worry about it.”

You shift your phone into one hand and hold the other out toward him.

“I don't think we've actually been properly introduced.” You say, offering your name. He looks down at your hand for a second before taking it carefully.

“No. I don't think we have.” His hand slips from yours after only a moment. “I'm Bucky.”

“I know. I suppose that's mainly my fault.” You give him a small apologetic smile. “I'm sorry. My job is very… time demanding and that won't really be changing anytime soon. But I'm glad to meet you, Bucky.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Good to meet you too.”

Silence settles between you again, not uncomfortable, just unsure. Then both of you speak at once.

“So what do you do?”

“How are you liking the place?”

You stop. He stops.

“Sorry,” he says, motioning for you to go first.

“I was just asking how you're liking the place.” Your arms fold loosely over yourself again. “Have you settled in well?”

“Oh, yeah.” He nods once. “Place is great. Thank you.”

And it is.

He likes the quiet. The neighborhood. The bookshelves. The fact that the apartment feels like somewhere a person could stay for a while without being swallowed by it.

You smile a little at his answer. “Good.”

More silence, then you clear your throat slightly.

“And you? Were gonna say...?”

“Oh.” He glances down for a second like he'd forgotten his own question. “I was just wondering what you do... that's so...” He makes a vague motion with one hand. “Time demanding.”

“Oh. Right.” You shift your weight against the windowsill. “I work in the anthropology division at the American Museum of Natural History.”

He blinks once. “Wow.”

You laugh softly at the look on his face.

“That sounds awesome.”

“It used to be,” you say with a wry little smile. “Now it's mostly a thousand phone calls and endless trips upstate to deal with the collections.”

He leans back slightly against the doorframe.

“If you work down there, why live in Brooklyn?” he asks. “Nasty commute.”

You glance around the apartment like you haven't looked at it properly in a while.

“I got this place before I got that job,” you say. “And I liked it.” Then, quieter, “Still like it.”

Your eyes move briefly toward the hallway. Toward the bookshelves, the kitchen, the little corners of the apartment that feel soft even when no one's in them.

“That's actually why I wanted a roommate,” you admit. “I love this place, and I want it to be loved, but...” You shrug one shoulder. “I just don't have the time to do that.”

Something in his chest shifts a little at that, because he understands. More than he wants to. What it feels like to care about something and still not know how to be present for it.

“Well,” he says, voice quieter now, “I'll... I'll do my best.”

You smile then, not the tired, polite kind you've been giving him all evening. Something warmer. Something that catches him off guard a little, like maybe you believe him.

“I'm sorry I've basically been living here like some weird cryptid,” you say. “Work's been insane.”

“You leave good notes.”

The second the words leave his mouth, he wants them back.

Your eyebrows lift. “That's maybe the weirdest compliment I've ever gotten.”

You open your mouth, like you're about to say something else, then your phone rings. The sound cuts through the room sharply. You look down at the screen and make a face.

“Sorry,” you say, already answering it. “I have to take this.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

You offer him one last apologetic smile before turning and disappearing down the hallway toward your bedroom.

A second later he hears your door close softly, then your voice again through the wall. Professional, calm and little tired. He stands in the entryway for another minute after that, hot dog gone cold in his hand. The apartment feels different now, smaller somehow. Not because there is less space. Just because now, finally, you are real.

The apartment feels different after he meets you.

Not immediately and nothing dramatic.

You still leave before sunrise some mornings, slipping out with your bag over your shoulder and your hair still damp from the shower. You still come home long after dark, moving quietly through the apartment like you're trying not to wake someone even when he isn't asleep.

But now there is shape to your absence. Before, the apartment had just been quiet, now it feels empty. Bucky notices things he shouldn't. Whether your shoes are by the door, whether the light under your bedroom door is on.

The difference between the sound of the upstairs neighbors moving furniture and the sound of you dropping your keys onto the kitchen counter.

He lingers in the kitchen longer now too. Sometimes with coffee growing cold in his hands while he leans against the counter pretending not to listen for the front door. Sometimes he catches himself glancing toward the hallway whenever the building creaks.

You still leave notes. One waits for him on the fridge Tuesday morning, tucked beneath a magnet shaped like a pear.

Upstate again. Back Thursday night. There's soup in the fridge if it hasn't gone bad.

He stares at it for a second, then longer than that. Before he can overthink it, he grabs a pen from the junk drawer and flips the note over.

Soup is still alive. I think.

He leaves it on the counter and immediately regrets it. Wondering if it's too weird, or too familiar. But when he gets back from a walk later that night, the note is gone.

Thursday comes, then Thursday night. He is standing in the kitchen making coffee he doesn't need when he hears the front door unlock. You walk in looking exhausted. Hair messy, tote bag slipping off your shoulder, coat half falling down your arms.

You stop when you see him.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Your eyes land on the counter and you laugh. It's quiet, tired around the edges, but real.

“Soup still alive?” you ask.

“Barely.”

You drop your bag onto a chair.

“Well.” You glance toward the fridge. “Soup can't technically expire if you're brave enough.”

Bucky blinks, you smile a little wider and something warm settles low in his chest.

After that, the notes become something else. Not just reminders but conversations. You leave one on the coffee maker.

Radiator makes weird banging noises around midnight. Ignore it unless it sounds haunted.

He leaves one by the fruit bowl the next morning.

Upstairs neighbors were fighting at 2 a.m. Pretty sure someone threw a lamp.

Another day:

Please water the plant by the window before it starts holding a grudge.

He forgets. Two days later, there is another note waiting beside the drooping leaves.

You had one job.

Bucky snorts to himself, then digs out a pen.

Sorry. It does kinda look like one bad day away from death.

You leave back:

So do I.

He folds that note into the pocket of his jacket and carries it around for three days. Slowly, without either of you meaning for it to happen, the notes stop being practical.

One afternoon he comes home to find one waiting by the sink.

New coffee filters are under the sink. Also, if you ate my leftover pad thai I forgive you because it was probably bad anyway.

He smiles before he can stop himself, then writes back underneath it.

Didn't eat it. Thought about it though.

The next morning there is another note sitting beside the coffee pot.

I appreciate your honesty in this difficult time.

And just like that, the apartment doesn't feel quite so empty anymore.

As great as everything else is, Bucky gets tired of hot dogs eventually.

Not completely. He still goes to the stand a few times a week, still listens to the guy behind the cart talk too loud and ask too many questions, but after a while the thought of another hot dog starts to make him feel vaguely ill.

So one night he cooks, nothing complicated. Just pasta.

Too much of it, because he has never quite figured out how to cook for one person and because some part of him has started thinking in twos without permission.

The apartment smells different afterward, warmer. Like garlic and tomato sauce and something softer underneath it.

He leaves you a bowl in the fridge with a note stuck to the top.

Made too much. There's pasta in the fridge if you want it.

You don't come home until after midnight. He's already in bed when he hears the faint sounds of you moving around in the kitchen.

The fridge opening, a plate clinking against the counter. Silence. Then the microwave.

The next morning, he wakes up to a note sitting beside the coffee maker.

This is the first non-takeout meal I've had in two weeks. Marry me?

He stares at it for an embarrassing amount of time. Long enough that his coffee goes cold. Long enough that he folds the note once, then again, before sliding it into the drawer beside his bed with the others.

After that, you start seeing each other more. Not on purpose exactly. Just in the little spaces between everything else. Six in the morning in the kitchen while the city outside is still gray and quiet.

You standing in one of his sweatshirts that got mixed up in the laundry over leggings, blinking sleepily into your coffee cup while he leans against the counter waiting for toast to pop up.

Passing each other in the hallway at night. Your shoulder brushing his as you move around each other in the narrow space between the dining room and kitchen.

Once, on a rainy Thursday, you both end up home at the same time. You sit on opposite ends of the couch, you with your laptop balanced on your knees, him with a book open in his lap.

The television hums quietly in the background, something neither of you is actually watching. At some point, without looking up from your screen, you stretch your legs out until your socked feet bump lightly against his thigh.

You don't move them away. Neither does he and slowly, you become easier around each other. You stop apologizing every time you leave dishes in the sink. He stops retreating to his room the second he hears you come home.

One night he brings back burgers and fries from a diner down the street.

You appear in the kitchen halfway through, hair damp from the shower, looking at his takeout bag like it personally offended you that he didn't ask if you wanted anything.

“Rude,” you say.

“You weren't home yet.”

“You could've texted.”

He tears the bag open and slides the fries toward you. You grin immediately and steal three before he even sits down.

“You're lucky you're cute,” he mutters.

You freeze for half a second, then keep eating like you didn't hear him. He fixes the sink handle one weekend after it starts making that awful screeching noise every time you turn it.

You come home to find him under the sink with a wrench in one hand and his sleeves pushed up to his elbows.

“What are you doing?”

“Fixing it.”

You lean in the doorway watching him for a second. “You know, normal people usually just call maintenance.”

“Normal people don't have metal arms.”

That makes you laugh. “Fair point.”

Then one evening he comes home and finds you asleep on the couch. The apartment is dark except for the lamp in the corner, there are papers everywhere. Open folders spread across the coffee table. A legal pad on the floor. Your laptop still glowing beside you, your glasses sit crooked on your face, one hand is still wrapped loosely around a pen.

You look exhausted. Like you've simply run out of steam halfway through existing. He stands there for a second longer than he means to, then quietly sets his keys down.

He grabs the blanket folded over the arm of the couch and drapes it carefully over you.

You stir a little, brows furrowing, but you don't wake up. His hand lingers for half a second near your shoulder before he pulls it back. Then he turns off the kitchen light and disappears down the hallway.

The next morning, the blanket is folded neatly over the back of the couch again. And beside the coffee maker, there is a note.

Thanks for the blanket.

Below it, in smaller handwriting:

That was very disgustingly nice of you.

A few nights later, Bucky wakes up thirsty. The apartment is dark except for the light over the stove.

He can hear pages turning before he even reaches the kitchen.

You're sitting at the table in one of your giant sweatshirts, laptop open, papers spread out around you in messy little stacks. There are sticky notes stuck to the edge of your screen, a half-drunk cup of coffee by your elbow, and your glasses are slipping down your nose again.

You don't notice him at first. Your mouth is moving slightly while you read through something under your breath.

He leans against the doorway. “Do you ever sleep?”

You jump a little in your seat, then you look up at him and huff out a tired laugh.

“Sometimes.”

“You sure?”

“Not particularly.”

He moves farther into the kitchen, grabbing a glass from the cabinet. “You know it's two in the morning, right?”

You glance down at your laptop clock. “Oh.”

“You didn't know?”

“I thought it was maybe midnight.”

He shakes his head a little as he fills his glass. “What are you even doing?”

You look down at the folders spread around you and for a second, you seem like you're deciding whether or not to tell him. Then you let out a breath.

“I'm… up for a promotion.”

Bucky looks over at you. “What kind?”

“A curator position.”

He leans back against the counter. “At the museum?”

You nod.

“In the anthropology division.” Your fingers start absently straightening the edge of one of your papers. “If I got it, I'd oversee acquisitions, exhibits, research trips. Most of the collections work too.”

As you talk, something about you changes, your shoulders loosen and your face softens. There is something brighter in your voice than he's heard before. You look almost younger like this, less tired, more like the version of you that exists underneath all the stress and late nights and rushed mornings.

“That sounds...” He shakes his head once. “That sounds awesome.”

“It would be.” You smile a little, staring down at your notes. “I mean, it would be everything.”

You glance around at the papers spread across the table. “I've wanted it for years.”

Then, just as quickly, you pull back from it. You shrug one shoulder like it doesn't matter as much as it clearly does.

“But it's probably unrealistic anyway.”

Bucky frowns. “Why?”

You laugh softly to yourself.

“Because you don't just get the job to be a curator at the American Museum of Natural History,” you say. “It's something holy that gets bestowed upon you with the anointed oil they gave Queen Elizabeth II.”

That gets a surprised laugh out of him. You smile faintly, but it doesn't quite reach your eyes.

“It's just wishful thinking,” you say quietly. “Then you die trying.”

He hates how fast you do that. How quickly you take something you want and turn it into something impossible before anyone else can.

He sets his glass down on the counter. “That sounds like exactly the kind of job you'd be good at.”

You look up at him, really look at him. Like you're waiting for the joke, but there isn't one.

“You know that, right?” he says. “The way you talk about it.”

Your expression shifts a little, because most people do not usually say things to you that plainly. You look down at your hands.

“I don't know,” you say after a second.

“Yeah, you do.”

The kitchen goes quiet, the radiator knocks somewhere in the wall. You sit there with your hands wrapped around your coffee cup, staring at him like he has said something far more important than he meant to.

Then you smile. “Thanks, Buck.”

And for some reason, it feels like being handed something fragile.

A few days later, Bucky finds himself standing in the hallway again.

It happens more often now. He'll be on his way to the kitchen or coming back from the shower and suddenly stop in front of the bookshelves like he forgot where he was going.

The shelves are uneven in places.

Some rows are organized by author, others by size or color or absolutely no logic at all. There are books stacked sideways on top of other books, faded bookmarks sticking out between pages, cracked spines and bent corners and little slips of paper tucked into random places.

It feels lived in, it feels like you.

He stands there for a minute, eyes tracing over the titles. Then he grabs a sticky note from the kitchen and presses it onto the edge of one of the shelves.

You actually read all of these?

He forgets about it after that. Until later that night when he gets home and notices something tucked into the spine of a book halfway down the shelf.

He pulls it free.

Used to. A lot. Some are mine, some were my dad's, some I found secondhand. I used to collect old editions too before work swallowed my entire personality.

He reads it twice. Then, without really meaning to, he starts paying closer attention. Not just to the titles, to the books themselves.

There are old clothbound covers with gold lettering worn thin at the edges. Tiny notes scribbled in pencil in the margins. Bookstore stamps from places all over the city. One copy of a novel has a dried flower pressed between the pages.

Some of them are old enough that even he remembers when they were new. One night he pauses in front of a shelf near the living room and pulls out a familiar green book.

The cover is faded, the spine is worn soft from use. He turns it over in his hands, then glances down at the copyright page. 1942. He stares for a second, then reaches for another sticky note.

You have a 1942 copy of The Hobbit.

The response is waiting for him when he wakes up the next morning, tucked beneath his coffee mug.

I know. Found it in a shop upstate for twenty dollars because the owner didn't know what he had. Second greatest moment of my life.

He smiles despite himself, and there is another note beneath it.

You can read whatever you want, by the way. And if there are books you like, you can add them.

He stands there in the kitchen holding that note a little longer than he should. Because nobody has said something like that to him in a very long time. To make yourself at home, that there's room for you here. It's such a small thing, just books, just shelves.

But it feels like more than that. That night he pulls one of the older novels from the shelf and reads half of it sitting on the couch while rain taps softly against the windows.

A few days later, when he finishes it, he leaves it on the coffee table. When he comes back from a walk the next morning, there is a sticky note tucked inside the front cover.

Well?

He snorts quietly to himself and grabs a pen.

Liked it. Ending was more depressing than I remember.

The next day:

That's because you have bad taste and no appreciation for tragedy.

He leaves another book out after that, then another. And you start leaving notes inside all of them. Little questions in the margins. Favorite character? Did you cry? Be honest, did you skip the boring parts? And without really realizing it, the shelves stop feeling like just yours.

They start feeling like something the two of you are building together.

One evening Bucky comes back from a walk and stops in the hallway without meaning to. Something looks different. It takes him a second to realize what it is. Wedged between two thick hardcovers near the end of the second shelf is one of his books, old and worn.

A history book about the forties that he'd unpacked weeks ago and left sitting on the edge of the end table next to the couch because he never knew where to put it. Now it's there between the others like it has always belonged.

Like you made room for it without asking. He reaches out and pulls it from the shelf. Inside the front cover, there's a sticky note with your handwriting:

Thought this looked lonely.

Something in his chest aches a little. Because it's such a small thing, nobody has made space for him somewhere in a very long time, but it shifts something inside of him. Something warm and soft blooming beneath his ribs as he slides the book back onto the shelf.

After that, you start spending more actual time together. Not just in passing, not just in notes and hallway conversations. Real time. He brings home takeout and the two of you end up sitting cross-legged on the living room floor because neither of you feels like cleaning off the coffee table.

You steal pieces of chicken off his plate. He lets you. You start walking to get coffee together on mornings you're both free, slow and sleepy and still half wrapped in hoodies.

Sometimes you don't talk much, sometimes you talk about everything. The museum. His nightmares. Books. Childhoods. Things that happened too long ago and things that happened yesterday.

One afternoon he comes back from the hot dog stand carrying two paper trays instead of one. You're in the kitchen when he gets home.

“You got me one?”

“You looked tired.”

You smile at him in a way that feels dangerous.

The hot dog guy notices eventually.

“Where's the pretty museum girl?” he asks one day while handing Bucky his usual order.

Bucky frowns. “Who?”

“The roommate you said you have.” The guy grins. “I wanna meet her.”

“No. Not happening.”

The guy laughs. “Oh, so that's what we're doing now.”

Bucky grabs the food and leaves before he can say anything else. You notice his mood immediately when he gets back.

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Mm.”

You take the hot dog from his hand. “You have a very specific face when you're annoyed, you know.”

He mutters something under his breath that makes you smile. That night the two of you are sitting on the floor in front of the couch, books spread around you, some old movie playing in the background.

Bucky glances over at the shelf. “You said finding that copy of The Hobbit was the second greatest moment of your life.”

You look up from your book. “Yeah.”

“So what was the first?”

You smile immediately.

“There was this used bookstore in Queens,” you say. “I was seventeen. They had this old locked case near the register and inside was the first book from a vintage set of The Canterbury Tales.”

He watches your face change as you talk.

“The cover was all cracked leather and gold leaf and completely falling apart. It was beautiful.”

You tuck your legs up closer to yourself.

“I used all the money I had to buy it.”

“And then?”

“And then I spent the next ten years trying to find the rest.” You laugh softly. “That was kind of it. That was the start of the whole problem.”

“You found all of them?”

“Almost.” You shake your head. “Never found the last one.”

There's something quietly sad in the way you say it. Like it's less about the book and more about what it meant to give up looking. Bucky watches the way your face slowly changes, something in the edge of your eyes shifting until you're looking at the floor. It hurts, and it makes him think that he would do anything to see you smile.

In a weak attempt he pushes the last of his fries to you, claiming they're too salty for him. You both know they're not but the small quirk of the corner of your mouth makes it worth it. The rest of the night passes in between condiements and bubbled laughter at the QVC channel, listening in to the televised conversations like they're the next hit reality show.

After a few days Bucky notices the calendar in the kitchen. Not because he is looking for anything in particular. Just because he is waiting for the coffee to finish brewing and his eyes drift to the wall.

The square for next Thursday is crowded with your handwriting.

Dad's birthday. Dentist appointment. Collections meeting. Mine.

Your own birthday is written last. Small enough that it almost disappears between everything else. Something about that sits badly in his chest. Because of course it does. Because even on your birthday, you have managed to make yourself the least important thing on the list.

He knows immediately you're going to forget it.

And you do. The morning of, you're rushing around the apartment before sunrise with one shoe on and your phone wedged between your ear and shoulder.

“I already sent the file,” you say into the phone, trying to shove your arm through the sleeve of your coat. “No, I know, but if they wanted changes they should've said that yesterday—”

Your bag slips off your shoulder and your keys hit the floor making you curse under your breath. Bucky is standing in the kitchen holding a mug of coffee when he says it.

“Happy birthday.”

You stop and blink at him.

“Oh,” you say after a second. “Right.”

You laugh softly, but it sounds tired. “I completely forgot.”

Then the person on the phone says your name and you hurry out the door with a quick apology before he can say anything else. It bothers him more than it should because birthdays are supposed to mean something. Yours especially.

So after you leave, he decides to do something about it. He remembers the bakery on the corner had a strawberry shortcake in the display case. Just something small, nothing flashy, whipped cream and strawberries layered across the top.

It reminds him of you somehow. Soft-looking and sweet to the core. He buys candles too. Then he spends the rest of the afternoon searching for the perfect gift. It takes him a few blocks of wandering around to think of what to get, but when it hits him he knew he found his mission.

He spends hours going from used bookstore to used bookstore. By the sixth one, he's almost ready to give up. Then, in a dusty little shop that smells like old paper and mildew, he finds it. Old leather cover, gold embossing faded at the edges a slight water stain on the back. Perfect.

That night, the apartment is dark except for the kitchen light. Bucky stands awkwardly by the counter with the cake in front of him, candles lit, the wrapped gift sitting beside it.

He has no idea what he's doing. But there's no going back now.

The front door opens a little after ten. You walk in looking exhausted, shoulders slumped, shoes dragging. Your hair falling out of whatever messy attempt you made to keep it back this morning. You stop dead when you see him. Then the cake lit with candles, the small box beside it.

Bucky shrugs one shoulder like he suddenly regrets all of it.

“You forgot your birthday,” he says.

You stare at him for a second too long. Nobody has done something like this for you in a very long time. Maybe ever. You don't look like you know what to do with being cared for.

“Bucky...” is all you manage.

He gets flustered immediately.

“It's not a big deal,” he says quickly, motioning vaguely toward the cake. “I just...” He looks down for a second. “Figured somebody should celebrate you.”

The look on your face almost undoes him. You set your bag down slowly and walk over.

“You got me a cake?”

“Yeah.”

“With candles?”

He glances at the little crooked row of them.

“That's usually how birthdays work.”

You laugh then. A little watery around the edges. You walk farther into the kitchen like you're afraid if you move too quickly the whole thing will disappear.

The candles flicker softly between you.

“You didn't have to do this,” you say quietly.

“I know.”

“But you did anyway. Why?”

He doesn't know what to say to that. So he just shrugs again.

You look down at the cake then back up at him.

“Okay,” you say softly. “Then I guess I should make a wish.”

You lean down and hover there for just a moment, the golden glow of the flames casting a light across your face that highlights features he doesn't think he's ever seen. A small beauty mark tucked under your eyebrow, a slight jagged silver scar down the bridge of your nose. He'll never not see them now, a gift of his own he thinks. You close your eyes and hum quietly to yourself before letting out a short breath to blow out the candles.

The apartment goes dark for a second after the smoke curls up into the air. He flicks the stove light on, then Bucky reaches for the wrapped book beside him and holds it out awkwardly.

“And this is... also a thing.”

You blink. “You got me a present?”

“You don't have to sound so surprised.”

You take it from him carefully, with a growing smirk on your face. The paper crinkles softly beneath your fingers as you unwrap it. Then you go still. Completely still. He watches your eyes move over the cover. The old leather, the faded gold lettering.

Your fingers hover over it like you're afraid touching it too hard will make it disappear.

“The last one,” you whisper. Your voice sounds a little broken around the edges. “The last volume of The Canterbury Tales.”

Bucky shifts awkwardly on his feet as you look up at him. Your face is fallen with a joy he's never seen, as if he just hung the moon and painted the stars.

You shake your head in disbelief. “Where did you even—”

“Just found it.” He shrugs.

“Bucky.”

“Took a couple bookstores. Made a deal with the owner once I found it, he was an old history buff on WW2 so…” he admits.

You look up at him then. And there is something in your face he has never seen directed at him before. Something soft, something overwhelming as a clear line starts to well at your eyes. You clutch the book to your chest like you don't know what else to do with it.

"Thank you, Bucky," you whisper, shaky lip tucked betwen your teeth.

A warm silence blooms between you two and Bucky is stuck under your stare, watching the soft dialtion of your pupils. Entranced by them he didn't even notice you had gotten so close, not until he felt the gentle brush of your lips against his cheek.

Words have never failed him like now, stuck and jumbled in the back of his throat only to come out like a garbled hum.

“What'd you wish for?” Bucky asks abrutly as he starts pulling the candles out one by one.

You smile a little, wiping quickly beneath one eye.

“Can't tell you,” you say. “State secrets now.”

He snorts quietly and grabs two spoons from the drawer. You end up on the couch sharing the cake straight from the container, knees brushing every so often in the small space between you. The television is on, though neither of you is paying attention to it. You eat strawberries off the top first and work your way down and Bucky follows suit.

You stay on the couch long after the cake is gone.

The empty container sits forgotten on the coffee table, two spoons abandoned beside it. The book never leaves your lap. At some point, you curl your legs up beneath you and start telling him about the first time you found one of the volumes. How you were seventeen and awkward and had spent an hour pretending to browse because you were too nervous to ask the owner to unlock the glass case.

Bucky laughs.

“So you've always been weird about books.”

“That's rich coming from a hundred-year-old man who still reads history books for fun.”

“Those are different.”

“They're really not.”

You grin when you say it. That soft, sleepy grin he thinks he could spend years chasing. Eventually the conversation drifts. To old bookstores, to the hot dog guy, to Sam, then to terrible movies. You insist he has never properly experienced bad cinema until he has seen Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

He insists there is no way it can be as ridiculous as you are making it sound. Twenty minutes in, he realizes you were underselling it. By the middle of the movie, you're both laughing. Not polite little laughs either, real ones. The kind that make your stomach hurt and your eyes water and force you to pause because neither of you can hear the dialogue over the sound of the other person losing it.

He can't remember the last time he laughed like this.

By the time the movie is ending, your head is tipped against the back of the couch and your eyes are half closed.

He notices you fighting sleep before you do.

“You're falling asleep.”

“No, I'm not.” You yawn immediately after saying it.

He smiles. “You absolutely are.”

You make a soft noise of protest, but it doesn't have much conviction behind it.And a few minutes later, when he glances over again, you're out completely. Your head has tipped against his shoulder at some point, one hand still loosely wrapped around the book in your lap.

For a second, he just sits there. Listening to the sound of your breathing, the soft hum of the television, the city outside the windows. Then he carefully takes the book from your hands and sets it on the coffee table. He slips one arm beneath your knees and the other around your back.

You stir a little when he lifts you, brows furrowing for a second before you settle again against him.

“Buck?” you mumble sleepily.

“I got you.”

You make another quiet sound and let your head fall against his chest as he carries you down the hallway and into your room. The bedside lamp is still on, there are clothes draped over the chair in the corner and papers stacked haphazardly on your desk, everything is so utterly you.

He sets you down carefully on the bed and pulls the blankets up around you. You don't wake up, not really, you just shift a little beneath the covers and settle. He brushes a piece of hair back from your face and his hand lingers there for a second longer than it should.

Something overcomes him and he leans down, and presses a kiss to your forehead.

“Happy birthday,” he whispers.

As he walked out of you room he saw the book on the table, with a gentle hand he picked it up, brushing a thumb over the pages as he walks down the hall. The rest of the set is on the second highest shelf, lined up together. He slides in the last edition, eyeing the aligned spines with a ghost of a smile before walking off to his room.

The call comes on a Tuesday.

Bucky knows because you walk into the apartment looking vaguely shell-shocked, still clutching your phone in one hand.

You don't even make it all the way into the kitchen before blurting it out. “I got an interview.”

He looks up from where he's sitting at the table. “What?”

“For the curator position.” You blink at him like you still don't believe it yourself. “Next week.”

For a second, all he sees is the excitement on your face. Bright and hopeful, then it disappears almost as quickly as it came.

“Oh,” you say quietly. “Oh no.”

The spiral starts immediately after that. By the end of the week, the apartment is covered in notes. Practice questions taped to the bathroom mirror, flashcards on the kitchen counter, museum reports spread across the couch cushions.

You pace while talking to yourself, you stop sleeping, you definitely stop eating properly. The night before the interview, Bucky finds you sitting cross-legged on the living room floor in sweatpants and one of his old shirts, papers spread around you in uneven piles.

Your glasses are slipping down your nose and your hair is a mess. You look like you're about ten minutes away from a complete breakdown.

“You okay?” he asks, already knowing the answer.

“No,” you say immediately.

He sits down across from you. “What's wrong?”

You stare down at the papers in your lap. “What if I embarrass myself?”

“You won't.”

“What if they ask me something I don't know?”

“You'll know it.”

“What if I freeze?”

“You won't.”

You glare at him a little. “You don't know that.”

He leans back against the couch.

“I know you.”

That quiets you for a second.

Only for a second. Then you start rambling after that. About the anthropology wing. About acquisitions. About field research and exhibit planning and the exact kind of curator you would want to be if anyone ever actually gave you the chance. You talk about preserving history, about wanting people to care. About how every object in the museum used to belong to someone. How every piece of history was once just somebody's normal day.

Bucky listens every time. He listens while you talk yourself into circles. Listens while you explain all the reasons you think you aren't good enough for this.

“I didn't go to the right schools,” you say finally. “I don't know the right people. Everyone else interviewing for this is probably smarter than me and more qualified and—”

“They're gonna be lucky if they get you.”

You stop and the apartment goes quiet around you, scattered notes and pages from your journal fluttering in the air current. Bucky looks at you from across the floor, expression calm like he hasn't just said something that cracked you open right down the middle.

“You mean that?” you ask softly.

“Yeah.” He doesn't even hesitate. “I do.”

You stare at him for a second. Then you move before you can think too hard about it. You lean across the space between you and kiss him. It's quick and impulsive, your hand catches against his shoulder and your mouth brushes his once, soft and startled.

Then you freeze.

“Oh my God,” you whisper, pulling back immediately. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—”

Bucky cuts you off by kissing you again, this time slower. Deliberate. His hand comes up to cup your face and suddenly the whole world narrows down to the warmth of his mouth and the way he is holding you like you're something precious.

You melt into it, your hand tangles in the front of his shirt and a soft hum slipping past your lips against his as his thumb brushes softly along your cheek.

When you finally pull apart, both of you look a little stunned. Like neither of you knows what to do with the fact that this has been here all along.

“Okay,” you say softly.

“Okay,” he echoes.

After that, the air between you changes, not in some huge dramatic way. Just softer. He starts brushing his hand against your back when he passes you in the kitchen. You lean against his shoulder on the couch without thinking about it. He kisses your forehead when you leave for work. You steal his hoodies and stop pretending they're yours.

Sometimes you fall asleep together on the couch with the television still on and your legs tangled beneath the blanket. Somewhere in the middle of all of it, Bucky realizes he's stopped thinking of the apartment as somewhere he lives.

Now it just feels like home.

Bucky tries to wake up before you the morning of the interview.

He fails.

By the time he walks into the kitchen, you're already there in nice clothes, standing in front of the coffee maker with your arms crossed and that thousand-yard stare people get right before something important. You look beautiful, terrified and a little bit sick. Your hair is done. Your makeup is subtle. There is a necklace at your throat he thinks he's seen maybe twice before.

You don't notice him at first. You're staring at the coffee pot like if you look away it'll stop working.

“You okay?” he asks softly.

You blink. “No.”

He smiles a little. “You're gonna do great.”

You snort quietly and reach for your mug. “You legally have to say that because you live with me.”

“No,” he says. “I have to say it because it's true.”

That makes you look down for a second as you take a sip of coffee.

“Still feels like I'm gonna throw up.”

“You'll throw up after,” he says. “Like a professional.”

That earns him a small laugh. By the time you're ready to leave, you're standing by the front door shoving things into your bag with shaky hands.

“Keys,” you mutter to yourself. “Wallet. Phone. Museum badge—”

“Hey.”

You look up. Bucky steps closer and reaches for the necklace at your throat.

“It's crooked.”

“Oh.”

His fingers brush softly against your skin as he straightens it and your breath catches a little. So does his. For a second, neither of you says anything. Then he leans down and kisses you. It's quick and soft but it leaves your cheeks warm when he pulls away.

“You got this,” he says.

You nod once then you're gone.

The whole day, Bucky is restless. He tells himself he isn't waiting for you but he definitely is. He tries reading, and ends up readin gthe same page three times. He almost goes to the hot dog stand twice. He paces around the apartment, reorganizes the fridge for no reason, checks the clock so many times it starts to feel personal.

By the time the front door finally opens that night, he looks up so fast it nearly gives him away. You walk in looking different immediately. Not upset exactly, just strange and quiet. Very quiet. Like your thoughts are somewhere else entirely.

He assumes that means you got it. That you're in shock, that you're already halfway out the door toward whatever comes next.

“Hey,” he says carefully from the couch. “How'd it go?”

You stop in the doorway. You still have your bag over your shoulder, coat still on. You look at him for a second before letting out a slow breath.

“I didn't get it.”

The words land strangely between you, it makes Bucky sits up a little straighter.

“Oh.”

You laugh softly, but there isn't much humor in it. “Yeah. They said they wanted to move in a different direction.”

He doesn't know what to say to that. Because he knows how badly you wanted it, knows how much time and sleep and pieces of yourself you've poured into this thing.

But then you shrug one shoulder.

“But...” You look down for a second. “They gave me a raise.”

He blinks, surpised. “Okay.”

“And they're opening a new assistant position to ‘lessen my workload.’”

That takes him a second to process.

“So...” He leans forward a little. “You still got something?”

“I guess.” You look exhausted more than anything. “I don't know if I'm supposed to be happy or devastated.”

Bucky nods slowly.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I get that.”

Because he does. Because sometimes life gives you something almost-good and you don't know what to do with that. He watches you for another second, then he stands.

“Come on.”

You look up. “What?”

“Let's go get hot dogs.”

You stare at him for a second. Then, finally, you smile.

“Okay.”

The hot dog guy takes one look at the two of you and immediately points his tongs in your direction.

“Uh oh,” he says. “This feels emotional.”

You laugh for the first time all day. Real laughter. Bucky feels something unclench in his chest at the sound of it.

“Don't encourage him,” he mutters.

“Too late,” the guy says. “I like her.”

Bucky rolls his eyes and you smile into your sleeve. He pays before you can argue about it, and when you open your mouth to protest, he just gives you a look.

“You had a bad day.”

“So?”

“So let me buy you a hot dog.”

You don't fight him after that.

On the walk back, you stop for ice cream too. Now you're both carrying melting cones down the sidewalk, the city quieter around you than usual. Streetlights glow gold against the pavement. Somewhere in the distance, somebody is playing music with their windows open.

It feels a little like being kids. Or maybe just people who don't know exactly where their lives are going yet. It warms your chest either way. You walk beside him in comfortable silence for a while.

“Hey, Buck?”

“Yeah?”

“You ever hear that whole ‘rejection is just redirection' thing?”

He glances over at you. “...No?”

You laugh softly under your breath. “It's just this thing people say.”

“Okay.” He nods once.

“But that's not what I was getting at.”

He waits as you look down at your ice cream for a second before looking back up at him.

“You know on my birthday you told me to make a wish?”

“Yeah?”

Your smile is smaller now.

"I think it just came true.”

He frowns a little. “You… wished to get passed up on the promotion?”

“No,” you say with a breath of laughter. “No.”

You look at him then, really look at him.

“I wished...” Your voice goes quiet. “That I could spend more time with you.”

Everything in him goes still.

The city. The sidewalk, the half-melted ice cream in his hand. All of it. For a second, neither of you moves. Then Bucky smiles, small at first then bigger.

He ducks his head, shaking it a little.

“State secrets, huh?” he teases softly.

You blush immediately. “Shut up.”

But you're smiling too. You slip your arm through his as you keep walking and Bucky thinks maybe this is what happiness feels like. Small and warm and a little sticky from melted ice cream.

A week later, you come home before sunset.

Bucky is in the kitchen making coffee when he hears the front door open.

“You're home early,” he says, glancing over his shoulder. You lean against the doorway with your bag still hanging off one shoulder.

“I know. Weird, right?”

He smiles a little. “You get fired?”

“Not yet.” You step farther into the kitchen. “I actually have tomorrow afternoon off.”

“Wow.”

“I know,” you say again. “I'm trying not to be overwhelmed by all the free time.”

He laughs quietly and you watch him for a second, seemingly contemplating.

“Do you wanna come by the museum?”

He looks up. “The museum?”

“Yeah.” You shrug one shoulder, suddenly looking a little shy about it. “I could show you around. My favorite exhibits and stuff.”

He tries to act casual. “Sure.”

But secretly, he's thrilled. Because this is your world. He's seen pieces of it before in papers spread across the table and half-finished stories told at two in the morning, but this is different. This is you handing him something important.

The next afternoon, he meets you outside the American Museum of Natural History.

You're waiting near the steps in your work clothes with your ID badge around your neck. You look different now, more awake than he has seen you in weeks, more comfortable.

Like this place fits around you in a way most things don't.

You smile the second you spot him.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

You take him inside to see the old fossils first. You tell him which dinosaur skeletons kids always lose their minds over and which exhibits people walk right past even though they're some of the coolest things in the building.

You talk with your hands when you're excited.

You move quickly from one thing to the next, almost tripping over your own thoughts because there is so much you want to show him.

“And this one,” you say, pointing toward an old display case, “people never pay attention to, but it's one of my favorites.”

Inside are old tools and worn pieces of pottery. Tiny, simple things. You tell him where they came from, who used them, how old they are. Every exhibit comes with a story.

Bucky spends half the time looking at the displays and the other half looking at you. Because you light up here. Your voice gets faster, your smile gets bigger, you stop apologizing for caring too much. It's the happiest he has ever seen you.

At one point, you take him into the giant blue whale room. The enormous whale hangs suspended overhead, casting soft shadows across the floor below. You tilt your head back to look up at it.

“Every museum employee has a designated crying-under-the-whale moment at least once,” you say.

Bucky looks over at you. “Yours probably happened after a meeting.”

You scoff. “No. Mine happened because somebody mislabeled a Bronze Age artifact.”

He laughs harder than he should an you grin.

“I'm serious. It was humiliating.”

“You cried over a label?”

“I care deeply about accuracy.”

“You're insane.”

“Maybe,” you say, smiling up at the whale. “But I'm right.”

He shakes his head, still laughing quietly, standing there beneath the whale with you smiling beside him, he thinks he has never seen anything more beautiful. Eventually, you take him into the Milky Way exhibit.

The room is dark and cool, lit only by thousands of projected stars stretching across the ceiling and walls. Soft bands of white and blue curve overhead, and everything echoes slightly. Your footsteps, his breathing, the sound of the door shutting quietly behind you.

You lead him to one of the benches in the center of the room and sit together. For a while, neither of you says anything. The quiet feels different here. Not empty but peaceful. Bucky leans back and looks up at the stars overhead.

They're beautiful.

But not as beautiful as the look on your face when you stare up at them.

“I used to come here when I first got the job,” you say softly.

He looks over at you, your eyes stay fixed on the ceiling.

“I'd get so stressed and overwhelmed and convinced I wasn't cut out for it.” You smile faintly to yourself. “So I'd come sit in here.”

You lean back a little farther against the bench.

“It helped me remember how small I am.” A pause. “How insignificant everything is.”

Bucky frowns slightly. “I don't think you're insignificant.”

You glance over at him. He looks down at his hands for a second before looking back up.

“You're probably the most important thing...” He swallows a little. “To me.”

The room goes quiet again. You blush immediately and turn your face back toward the stars and Bucky does too. For a second. Then he looks back at you, the way the light from the projections catches in your eyes and across your face. It softens every edge of you.

You turn toward him slightly, feeling the gaze from him.

“It's pretty, huh?”

He smiles.

“Yeah...”

But he isn't looking at the stars, you realize after a second, and the mood shifts. Like all the air between you changes. He leans in first this time, a soft breath fans across your face before you meet him halfway. The kiss is slow and gentle, the kind that feels like something settling into place. Your hand finds his without thinking about it, his thumb brushes softly across your knuckles.

When he pulls back, you're both smiling a little and he looks up at the stars again, then back at you.

“What are you gonna do now?”

You blink. “With what?”

“No promotion on the horizon. New assistant to keep you free. What's the future have in hold now?”

You let out a quiet breath, thinking.

“You know,” you say, “I have no idea.”

You lean your head against his shoulder. “For as long as I've been doing this, all I've ever wanted was that job.”

He tilts his head lightly against yours. “What do you want now?”

You look up at him and smile softly.

“You.” Then, after a second, "and a hot dog.”

You had been an Avenger for three days.

Technically, you had been an Avenger for longer than that, if he counted the months of files, interviews, mission assessments, and cautious deliberation that had led Fury to finally put your name on the team roster. You had enhanced reflexes, a combat record that even Natasha raised an eyebrow at, and the kind of public image Stark’s media people had described as “valuable but chaotic.” You were a model, an occasional actress when a director could afford your schedule, a fixture at fashion weeks, charity galas, beach clubs, magazine covers, and gossip columns. You were also a very competent fighter with a worrying talent for making people underestimate you until they were already on the floor.

Bucky did not underestimate you.

That was what he told himself, anyway, watching you open every cabinet in the kitchen like you were personally offended by storage.

“Where do rich people hide mugs?” you asked.

Sam, who had been leaning against the counter with a bowl of cereal and the grim, protective posture of a man guarding the last of the Cinnamon Toast Crunch, looked at you over his spoon. “You mean cabinets?”

“I checked cabinets.”

“You checked one cabinet.”

“It disappointed me.”

“There’s a difference.”

“This kitchen has seven ovens,” you said. “That feels excessive for people who eat protein bars like they’re being punished.”

“That’s because we are,” Sam said.

“You poor thing. Do you want me to call someone?”

“God, you’re worse before coffee.”

You gasped. “I haven’t had coffee?”

“You’re standing in the kitchen.”

“I’ve been betrayed by architecture.”

Bucky had not meant to laugh. It escaped him before he could stop it, barely more than a breath against the rim of his mug, but you heard it. Of course you heard it. Your attention snapped to him with terrifying precision.

Your sunglasses slid down your nose.

“Oh,” you said, with the pleased interest of a cat finding a glass too close to the edge of a table. “You laugh.”

“No,” Bucky said.

Sam snorted into his cereal.

You smiled at Bucky as if he had personally made your morning. “That was definitely a laugh.”

“It was a cough.”

“You should see a doctor about that. It sounded handsome.”

Bucky stared at you.

Sam put his spoon down. “And there it is.”

“There what is?” you asked, all innocence, which made it worse.

“The thing you do.”

“I do many things.”

“Yeah, and most of them are illegal in at least three states.”

You drifted closer to the counter, apparently unconcerned by the fact that Bucky had looked less startled the last time a man had pulled a knife on him in a parking garage. You rested your elbows on the marble and propped your chin in one hand, turning the full force of your attention on him.

“What’s your name again?”

“You know my name.”

“I know lots of names.” You smiled wider. “I wanted to hear you say it.”

Bucky took a sip of coffee. It bought him three seconds and no dignity.

“Barnes,” he said finally.

“Barnes,” you repeated, like you were trying it on. “Cute.”

“No.”

“Strong. Classic. Slightly broody. Very marketable.”

“I’m not marketable.”

“That’s what makes you marketable.” You lifted your sunglasses from your face and pushed them up into your hair. “Don’t worry. I’ll win you over one day.”

Bucky blinked.

Sam closed his eyes as if in prayer.

You said it so easily, so brightly, that for a second Bucky did not know what to do with it. People flirted with him sometimes. Not often, not casually, and never with the delighted confidence of someone announcing tomorrow’s weather. The flirting he noticed usually came wrapped in caution, curiosity, or the strange, hungry attention people gave the Winter Soldier when they had read too much, understood too little, and wanted to see what a ghost looked like up close.

This was different. You were not looking at the Winter Soldier. You were not even looking at Sergeant Barnes, the tragedy, the history lesson, the man out of time. You were looking at Bucky, annoyed and under-caffeinated at the kitchen island, with his hair still damp from the shower and his left hand curled around a mug someone had bought as a joke because it said “I survived another meeting that should have been an email.”

“I’m not something to win,” he said.

Your expression changed only slightly. The smile stayed, but something behind it softened with recognition, like you had heard the line he had not said and decided not to touch it in front of Sam.

Then you leaned across the counter, stole Sam’s coffee, and said, “We’ll workshop the phrasing.”

Sam made a wounded noise. “That was mine.”

“You called me ‘worse before coffee.’ This is justice.”

“I called you worse before your coffee.”

“Details.”

Bucky left the kitchen before you could catch the second laugh.

That was where it started.

It should have ended there, but you treated restraint like a rumor and Bucky’s sanity like a hobby. Within two weeks, you had settled into the compound as if you had been born under Stark-grade security lights. You learned where Tony hid the expensive snacks, which elevators were fastest when FRIDAY was not pretending not to judge you, and which training rooms had the best lighting for the occasional sponsored workout post Pepper pretended not to know about.

You were good at being watched. That was the thing Bucky noticed first, even before the flirting became a problem with a schedule. Cameras loved you. Rooms adjusted around you. People tracked your movements before they knew they were doing it, drawn by the easy glamour of someone who knew exactly how she looked and had decided to make that everyone else’s issue. You could turn your head half an inch and change the temperature of a photograph. You could laugh at a reporter’s question and make it sound like an answer.

Bucky understood performance. He had been made into one. The difference was that yours belonged to you. He respected the precision of it. The public saw sparkle, flirtation, lazy smiles, and a model who sometimes saved the world and somehow emerged from the fight with her eyeliner still intact. The team saw more. They saw the hours in the gym, the quick reads you made in the field, the way you listened when Steve gave instructions and ignored him when you had a better plan. They saw that you could play dumb in four languages and threaten someone in six.

Bucky saw all of that.

He also saw the way you looked for him when you entered a room. That was harder to ignore.

At first, he assumed you did it to everyone. You were friendly with Sam, outrageous with Tony, conspiratorial with Natasha, affectionate with Wanda, and shamelessly dramatic with Thor, who adored you after you once told him his arms looked like a horny Renaissance sculptor had carved them. You flirted like breathing, lightly and often, always with enough humor that nobody had to take it seriously unless they wanted to.

With Bucky, you made it personal. You found him in the gym one morning while he was working through a knife sequence alone. The compound was quiet, still blue with early light, most of the team asleep or pretending to be. He caught your reflection in the mirrored wall and kept moving, blade turning between his fingers as he shifted his weight, stepped, struck, pivoted, and reset.

“Morning, future husband.”

The knife stopped in his hand.

He looked at you through the mirror. “No.”

“You’re right. Too soon.” You set your water bottle on the bench. “Morning, future emotionally unavailable boyfriend.”

Bucky resumed the sequence. “That’s worse.”

“Morning, handsome man who definitely missed me.”

“I didn’t know you were gone.”

“That’s hurtful and untrue. You stared at my empty chair at dinner.”

“I was looking at the door.”

“Because you hoped I would come through it.”

“Because I was considering leaving.”

You pressed a hand to your chest. “God, the passion.”

He turned, knife loose in his hand. “Do you ever get tired?”

“Of you? Never.”

“Of talking.”

“Also no.”

Bucky pointed the knife toward the door. “Some of us are training.”

“Wonderful. I love a man with discipline.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re not training in that.”

You glanced down at yourself, as if surprised to discover you had arrived dressed for exercise. “This is athletic wear.”

“That sweatshirt has no back.”

“It has some back.”

“It has sleeves and ambition.”

You grinned. “You noticed.”

Bucky made the mistake of looking. The sweatshirt dipped low between your shoulders, leaving a long line of bare skin above the band of your sports bra. It was impractical, which probably meant it cost more than some cars. It was also distracting, which was clearly the point.

He looked away too late.

You saw it. You always saw it.

“I knew you liked me,” you said.

“I noticed fabric was missing.”

“You noticed my back.”

“Hard not to when half your shirt surrendered.”

Your laugh came bright and easy. “You’re funny when you’re pretending not to flirt back.”

“I’m not flirting.”

“You’re bantering. That’s flirting with plausible deniability.”

“It’s arguing.”

“With cheekbones like yours? Impossible.”

Bucky exhaled and turned back toward the mirror. “Are you here to train or talk?”

“I can do both.”

“I’m devastated.”

You came onto the mat beside him and held out your hand. “Give me a knife.”

“No.”

“Afraid I’ll impress you?”

“Afraid you’ll stab me to make a point.”

“Only a little.”

He should not have given you one. That was his first mistake. His second was forgetting that beneath the designer nonsense and the sparkling public menace was someone Fury had recruited for a reason.

You moved beautifully. Bucky had seen you fight on missions, but missions were dirty and practical, all impact and adaptation. Here, with nothing exploding and no one yelling in his ear, he could see the shape of your training. You were fast, lighter on your feet than he expected, with a dancer’s control and a vicious sense of timing. You let him push you back twice, then changed rhythm on the third pass and came under his guard, stopping the dull practice blade a breath from his ribs.

You looked up at him through your lashes.

“Oops,” you said.

Bucky’s hand closed around your wrist.

You did not pull away.

For a moment, neither of you moved. Your pulse beat steadily beneath his fingers, quick but controlled. You were warm from sparring, a flush high on your cheeks, and a loose strand of hair caught at the corner of your mouth.

Bucky noticed it. He hated that he noticed it.

Your smile softened into something less theatrical. “You okay?”

The question slipped under his ribs more effectively than the knife would have.

He let go. “Fine.”

You tilted your head. “That means yes, or that means stop asking?”

“It means fine.”

“Mm. We’ll workshop that too.”

“There’s no we.”

“There will be.” You spun the practice knife once and offered it back handle-first. “I’m very persuasive.”

“You’re very annoying.”

“Foreplay.”

Bucky choked on air.

You patted his shoulder as you passed. “Don’t worry, Barnes. I’ll win you over one day.”

He watched you leave because apparently he had lost control of his eyes.

From the doorway, without turning around, you called, “I can feel you staring.”

“I’m checking that you’re leaving.”

“Progress!”

After that, Sam started keeping score.

Every compliment became a point. Every accidental smile became evidence. Every time you blew Bucky a kiss across a briefing room, Sam looked personally blessed by the universe. Bucky threatened to throw him off the roof twice. Sam remained unmoved.

It would have been easier to ignore if you flirted with Bucky the way you flirted with everyone else, bright and careless and harmless enough to laugh off. But you saved him seats. You asked him to watch your back even when you did not need watching. You looked for him when you entered a room, and sometimes, when the joke softened at the edges, Bucky caught the dangerous shape of something honest underneath.

He liked your precision. He liked the moments when the smile slipped sideways into something observant. He liked that when you teased, you watched for the line. He liked that you had never once called his left arm cool, had never asked to touch it, had never stared at the place where metal met skin with anything but the same open appreciation you aimed at the rest of him.

He liked you, and that made the flirting dangerous.

Bucky had spent too long as a weapon in other people’s hands to enjoy becoming anyone’s entertainment. He knew that was not what you were doing. He knew it with the part of him that assessed threats and the quieter part that had begun to understand kindness when it wore teeth. Still, knowing did not make it easy.

You were a public person. You had exes whose names still trended whenever you attended the same event. Actors, athletes, heirs, musicians, one princess whose denial in an interview had been so unconvincing that even Steve had understood it. You had a reputation the tabloids loved because it sold beautifully: glamorous, flirtatious, unserious, impossible to keep, impossible not to want.

Bucky did not care about tabloids. He cared that you laughed when other people flirted with you. He cared that sometimes you touched their arms. He cared that you were generous with your attention in a way that made everyone feel chosen for exactly as long as you wanted them to. He cared that he had no right to care. He cared that the idea of being one more person orbiting you, one more name in a gossip column, made something old and defensive curl beneath his ribs.

So he pretended not to want.

It worked about as well as all his other bad ideas.

The mission in Prague should have helped. It did not.

You handled a weapons broker with old Hydra ties in a red dress and heels, broke his composure with a smile, and nearly broke his foot when he touched you without permission. Bucky watched from surveillance while Sam and Natasha pretended not to notice the exact moment his jaw locked.

By the time the mission went bad, you had already put two men down, stolen a handgun from a third, and greeted Bucky in the hallway with blood on your knuckles and a cheerful, “Hi, handsome.”

He caught your chin to check the graze on your cheek before he could stop himself.

“Careful,” you said softly. “A girl might think you like her.”

“Extraction first,” he said.

“Romance later?”

“Move.”

“Bossy,” you said, and then you moved.

After Prague, the teasing changed.

Not enough for anyone else to notice immediately. You were still shameless at breakfast, still dramatic in the gym, still prone to calling him gorgeous in public just to watch his left eye twitch. But sometimes, when the room was empty or nearly empty, you let the joke soften at the edges.

You brought him tea one night without making a big deal of it, setting the mug beside him on the balcony and leaning against the railing with your own. The city glittered below the tower, restless and alive.

“You’re thinking loudly,” you said.

He looked at you. “Didn’t know that was part of your power set.”

“It’s not. You get a line between your eyebrows.”

“Maybe I’m brooding.”

“You do that too, but this is different.”

He huffed, taking the mug. “You catalog my facial expressions?”

“Only the handsome ones.”

“Sounds time-consuming.”

“It is, but I’m committed.”

The familiar rhythm was there, but gentler. Bucky let it sit between you.

After a while, you asked, “Do you hate it?”

“What?”

“All of this.” You gestured vaguely, meaning the tower, the team, the city, the life none of you had chosen cleanly. “The attention.”

He looked down at the tea. “Some days.”

“Yeah.”

“You?”

You smiled without much humor. “Some days.”

It should have surprised him. It did not.

You turned your mug in both hands, rings catching the light. “People think it’s the cameras that get old, but cameras are easy. They don’t want anything you can’t predict. It’s the people who look at you and decide they know what’s there. The ones who think access and affection are the same thing.”

Bucky was quiet for a moment.

Then he said, “You’re good at making them think they got something.”

“I had to be.” You glanced at him. “It’s easier to choose what they take.”

He understood that too well.

Something in his expression must have shown it, because your voice gentled. “I don’t flirt with you because I think you’re easy to embarrass.”

“I am not easy to embarrass.”

“You once short-circuited because I called you pretty.”

“I didn’t short-circuit.”

“You walked into a chair.”

“It was in the way.”

“It was furniture, baby. That’s where it lived.”

Bucky shook his head, but the laugh came easier this time.

You smiled into your mug. “I flirt with you because I like you.”

The air changed.

You did not look away. Neither did he.

“You like everybody,” he said, because old defenses were familiar and his voice still worked around them.

Your smile stayed, but something in it dimmed.

“I’m nice to everybody,” you said. “That’s different.”

He knew that. He had known it for a while, which made his answer crueler than he meant it to be.

You looked back out over the city. “Anyway. Don’t look so scared. I wasn’t asking you to catch up all at once.”

He should have said something then. He knew that later, with a clarity that annoyed him. He should have told you that he liked you too and had no idea what to do with it because wanting things still felt like reaching across a minefield. He should have done anything except stand there holding the tea you had brought him and watching you retreat behind a smile.

Instead, he said nothing.

You did not punish him for it. That would have been easier. You kept being yourself, kept calling him handsome, kept saving him the seat beside you in briefings and pretending it was because you needed “emotional support eye candy.” But you stopped letting the softer moments linger.

Bucky noticed. Of course he noticed. He noticed everything about you now.

Which was why the gala was a disaster before it even started. The event was one of Tony’s, though Pepper had done the actual work and Tony had mostly provided money, branding, and three separate opinions nobody asked for. Bucky tried to get out of it. Steve said attendance mattered. Sam said Bucky needed to stop treating black tie like a war crime. Natasha said nothing, which was worse because her silence contained judgment.

Then you walked into the common room before the cars arrived, and Bucky forgot every argument he had prepared.

You were wearing gold. Not bright gold, not the kind that shouted for attention because it did not know what else to do. This was deeper, warmer, a liquid shade that caught the light when you moved and made your skin look sunlit. The dress crossed over your chest and left your shoulders bare, fitted through the waist before falling in a long line that split high over one thigh. Your hair was styled away from your face. Your mouth was painted soft and glossy. Diamonds winked at your ears like little threats.

The room went briefly, stupidly quiet.

Tony recovered first. “Okay, great. So we’re all underdressed at our own event.”

“You look beautiful,” Steve said.

Wanda smiled. “Very beautiful.”

Sam whistled. “Damn. Barnes, you breathing?”

Bucky looked at him with murder in his heart.

You turned toward Bucky last, which was deliberate. He knew it was deliberate because he knew you now, knew the rhythm of your performances, the way you built a moment and chose where to land it. Your eyes moved over him in his black suit, slow enough to be rude, warm enough to make his spine tighten.

“Well,” you said. “There goes my ability to behave.”

Tony groaned. “Please don’t start before we’re in public.”

“I make no promises.”

Bucky adjusted his cuff because his hands needed something to do. “You ever behave?”

“For you? I could be convinced.”

“Unlikely.”

“Progress,” you said, pointing one manicured finger at him. “You didn’t say impossible.”

Sam leaned toward Steve. “I give him two hours.”

Steve looked confused. “For what?”

“For whatever emotional constipation this is to resolve.”

“I can hear you,” Bucky said.

“I know.”

You crossed the room and stopped in front of Bucky. Up close, your perfume wrapped around him, warm amber and something floral he could not name. Your smile was bright enough for the room, but your eyes searched his face with a quieter question beneath it.

“You clean up nice, Barnes.”

“So do you.”

For once, the answer came without a fight.

Your expression flickered.

Then Tony clapped his hands. “Wonderful. Compliments exchanged. Sexual tension acknowledged by everyone except the two people causing it. Let’s go raise money.”

Bucky was going to kill him.

The gala was worse than he expected. Not because of the security. That was manageable. Not because of the crowd either, though he disliked being surrounded by people who wanted to shake his hand and pretend they were not checking whether the metal one felt cold.

It was you. It was the way you belonged there.

The second you stepped onto the carpet, the cameras found you. Your whole posture shifted, not into someone false, exactly, but into someone sharpened for public consumption. You became the woman from magazine covers and fragrance campaigns, the one whose face sold fantasies Bucky did not want to examine too closely while standing three feet away from you.

Reporters called your name, and you gave them what they wanted. A smile over your shoulder. A laugh when one of them asked who you were wearing. A teasing answer when another asked whether there was anyone special in your life.

“Oh, I’m working on it,” you said, and somehow your eyes found Bucky past the cameras.

The reporters followed your gaze.

Sam made a sound as if he were choking on joy.

“Is that Sergeant Barnes?” someone called.

You widened your eyes with perfect innocence. “Is it?”

“Are you two here together?”

Bucky braced himself.

You only smiled and said, “We’re teammates.”

It was the right answer. The professional answer. The safe answer.

Bucky hated it.

Then you reached back without looking, caught his sleeve, and tugged him forward.

“Come on, handsome,” you murmured, low enough that only he heard. “You look like you’re about to bite someone.”

“You’d enjoy that too much.”

“Depends where.”

His brain briefly stopped producing language.

You smiled for the cameras.

Bucky stood beside you under the lights and tried not to look like a man thinking about teeth marks on your skin.

Inside, the ballroom was all polished marble, tall windows, white flowers, and wealth pretending to be benevolence. The Avengers were strategically scattered around the room, mingling with donors and keeping a casual watch, but Bucky barely paid attention to any of it.

You disappeared into the crowd like light through water.

He tried not to watch. He failed immediately.

Everywhere you went, people leaned in. Men and women, donors and celebrities, people with expensive watches and practiced laughs. You gave them that glittering public smile, touched a forearm here, accepted a kiss on the cheek there, let someone admire your dress with a grace that made Bucky’s hand curl around his glass until he heard the stem complain.

Sam appeared at his side. “You’re gonna break that.”

Bucky loosened his grip.

“You know,” Sam said, accepting a champagne flute from a passing waiter, “for a guy who’s not interested, you sure look like you’re planning to challenge half the room to ritual combat.”

“I’m watching security.”

“Security is not six foot two, British, and trying to make her laugh by the ice sculpture.”

Bucky’s gaze moved before he could stop it.

Sam hummed. “Interesting.”

“I hate you.”

“That has been established.”

The man beside you was exactly the kind of person Bucky had seen in magazines he pretended not to notice on coffee tables. An actor, probably. Handsome in a polished, expensive way, with dark blond hair, a white dinner jacket, and the lazy confidence of a man used to doors opening before he touched them. He was standing too close. You did not seem bothered. That was part of the problem.

You laughed at something he said.

Bucky hated him.

“Who is he?” Bucky asked.

“Oh, we’re doing that?”

“Wilson.”

Sam took a sip of champagne and looked delighted by the entire situation. “Julian Hale. Actor. British. Very famous cheekbones. Dated a princess once, if the internet is to be believed, which it isn’t, but sometimes it gets lucky.”

Across the room, Julian Hale touched your waist.

It was brief. A guiding hand, barely there, the kind of touch that could be explained away by the crowd, by the noise, by the half step he encouraged you to take so someone could pass behind you. You did not flinch. You did not step away. You kept smiling.

Bucky’s vision narrowed.

Sam’s voice changed. “Hey.”

“I’m fine.”

“You look like you’re about to invent a new international incident.”

“His hand’s on her.”

“Yeah.” Sam’s tone was careful now, without the teasing edge. “And she can remove it if she wants to.”

Bucky knew that. The knowledge landed hard because it was true. You were not helpless. You were not cornered. You had broken a weapons broker’s foot in heels and threatened his hand in Russian. If you wanted Julian Hale away from you, he would be away from you.

The problem was not that Bucky thought you needed saving. The problem was that he wanted to be allowed to care.

That was worse.

You looked up then, as if you felt the weight of him watching. Your eyes met his across the room. For half a second, the public smile slipped. Something else took its place, something private and questioning.

Bucky did nothing.

Julian leaned down to say something near your ear.

You looked away first.

Bucky set his glass on the nearest tray and walked toward the balcony. The night air helped, but not enough.

Outside, the music softened behind the closed doors, reduced to bass and strings through glass. The balcony overlooked the city, all lights and distance, and Bucky gripped the stone railing with both hands until the cold settled into his metal palm and the other hand stopped wanting to hit something.

He was being ridiculous. He knew that. He had no claim on you. He had made sure of it, in fact. Every time you had stepped closer, he had stepped back. Every time you had offered him a joke with honesty folded inside it, he had taken the joke and left the honesty untouched.

Except you had never been holding a knife.

You had been holding out your hand.

The door opened behind him.

Bucky did not turn around. “I’m not in the mood, Wilson.”

“Tragic,” you said. “I wore the good dress and everything.”

His eyes closed briefly. Of course.

You came to stand beside him at the railing, close but not touching. For once, you did not fill the silence immediately. Bucky could see you in the corner of his eye, gold dress shifting in the wind, one hand resting on the stone, the other holding your shoes by their delicate straps.

“You left your own party,” you said after a moment.

“Not my party.”

“You’re on the posters.”

“Against my will.”

“You look very handsome on them.”

He glanced at you despite himself. “That why you came out here? To tell me I photograph well?”

“I came out here because you disappeared.”

“You were busy.”

Your eyebrows rose slightly. “Was I?”

“With Hale.”

Bucky regretted it the second it left his mouth. Not because it was false, but because it sounded exactly like what it was: jealousy dressed badly as observation.

Your mouth curved. “Julian?”

“You on a first-name basis with everybody who puts a hand on you?”

The silence that followed was not loud, not dramatic, but it cut cleanly through the air between you.

Your smile faded.

Bucky’s stomach dropped.

“That came out wrong,” he said.

“Did it?”

“Yes.”

“What part?”

He looked at you then. Really looked. Your posture had changed, the playful ease folding away into something guarded. Not hurt, exactly, or not only hurt. Disappointed. That was worse. He had seen you deflect rudeness from reporters, donors, strangers who thought your smile gave them permission. He had never wanted to be counted among them.

“All of it,” he said.

You studied him for a moment, then looked out over the city. “He’s an actor. We did a campaign together three years ago. He flirts because he likes attention, and I let him because attention is half of this room’s currency.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

Bucky’s jaw worked.

You turned toward him, shoes dangling from two fingers, the city light catching in your earrings. “Because that sounded a little like you think I don’t know when someone is touching me.”

His chest tightened. “I don’t think that.”

“Good.”

“I know you can handle yourself.”

“Great.”

“That’s not what bothered me.”

Your expression shifted.

The admission sat between you, more revealing than he had intended, but Bucky forced himself not to retreat. He was tired of retreating. Tired of watching you offer him chances while he pretended they were traps.

Your voice went softer. “What bothered you?”

He looked down at his hands on the railing. Metal and flesh. Past and present. Both capable of holding too tightly if he was not careful.

“I didn’t like him touching you.”

The honesty was rough, but it was honest.

You inhaled slowly.

Bucky made himself meet your eyes. “I know I don’t have a right to that.”

“No,” you said. “You don’t.”

The answer landed where it should.

Then you stepped closer.

“But you could,” you said.

Bucky stared at you.

The city noise seemed very far away.

You smiled faintly, but there was no performance in it now. No cameras, no audience, no easy escape disguised as a joke. “That’s been on the table for a while, Barnes.”

His heart beat once, hard.

“You flirt with everyone,” he said, because apparently some stubborn, stupid part of him needed to hear you say it again.

“I perform with everyone.” Your gaze dropped briefly to his mouth. “I flirt with you.”

He had no defense against that.

“You told me you liked me,” he said.

“I did.”

“I was an ass.”

“A little.”

“I’m sorry.”

Your expression softened. “I know.”

“I didn’t know what to do with it.”

“I know that too.”

The gentleness nearly undid him. Bucky could handle anger. Anger had edges he understood. He could handle teasing because it gave him somewhere to hide. But you were looking at him like you had seen the frightened thing beneath the jealousy and decided not to make it bleed for your entertainment.

He wanted to kiss you so badly it felt like pain.

You seemed to read that too. Your mouth curved, the menace returning just enough to make his pulse jump.

“Careful,” you said. “You’re looking at me like I’m winning.”

Bucky turned fully toward you. “You always this smug?”

“When I’m right.”

“You think you’re right?”

“I think you’re jealous, annoyed about it, wildly attracted to me, and about three seconds away from doing something reckless.”

He stepped closer. “That so?”

Your eyes brightened. “Two seconds.”

“Still think this is funny?”

“A little.” Your voice dipped. “I also think you should kiss me before I start flirting with someone else just to prove a point.”

His hand caught your waist. You went still, but not with fear. Bucky felt the change in you beneath his palm, the quick breath, the way your body answered before you had time to make a joke of it.

“Don’t,” he said.

Your eyes lifted to his. “Don’t what?”

“Flirt with someone else.”

The words should have embarrassed him. Maybe they would later. Right now, with you this close and the city wind moving around you, he could not make himself care.

Your smile faded into parted lips.

“Bucky,” you said, and it was the first time you had used his name instead of Barnes.

That was what broke him.

He kissed you. For a second, it was almost careful. His mouth found yours with all the restraint he had spent months pretending was indifference, one hand at your waist, the other still braced on the railing because touching you with both felt like admitting too much at once.

Then you made a soft, pleased sound against his mouth and everything careful in him snapped. Bucky pulled you closer. Your shoes dropped to the balcony with a quiet clatter, your hands coming up to grip his jacket as he deepened the kiss. You tasted like champagne and gloss, sweet and warm, and you kissed him like you had been waiting to do it for so long that patience had become offensive. Your fingers slid into his hair. He groaned before he could stop himself.

You smiled against his mouth.

He nipped at your lower lip in warning.

You gasped.

The sound went straight through him.

“Still annoying?” you whispered.

“Yes,” he said, kissing the corner of your mouth.

“Still not interested?”

He kissed your jaw, felt your pulse jump beneath his lips, and tightened his hand at your waist. “Don’t push it.”

“Oh, baby,” you breathed, and the endearment hit differently now, stripped of performance and made intimate by the way your voice trembled. “Pushing it is my best quality.”

Bucky drew back enough to look at you. Your lipstick was smudged. Your eyes were dark. The woman who had smiled for a hundred cameras looked at him like she wanted to be ruined somewhere private and had already decided he was the only man in the building qualified for the job.

His entire body went hot.

“We’re leaving,” he said.

Your brows lifted. “Are we?”

“Yes.”

“Together?”

He gave you a look.

There it was again, that wicked smile. “Just confirming. You’re new to this whole admitting-things process.”

Bucky bent, picked up your shoes, and caught your hand.

You laughed as he pulled you toward the door, bright enough that two people near the bar turned to look when you stepped back inside. Sam spotted you first, his face transforming with open delight.

Bucky glared at him. “No.”

Sam’s mouth opened.

“Wilson.”

Sam closed his mouth with visible effort.

You wiggled your fingers at him as Bucky guided you past. “Goodnight, Sam.”

Sam looked as if Christmas had come early. “Goodnight, future Mrs. Barnes.”

Bucky kept walking.

You nearly tripped over your own laugh. “Future Mrs. Barnes?”

“Don’t encourage him.”

“I don’t know. It has a ring to it.”

Bucky leaned closer as you reached the corridor. “Keep talking, and I’ll throw you over my shoulder.”

The sound you made was small, sharp, and not laughter.

Bucky stopped walking.

Your voice softened. “Promise?”

Something dark and hot moved through him.

“Car,” he said.

“Elevator,” you countered.

“We’re not doing this in an elevator.”

“Cameras?” you guessed.

“Cameras.”

You paused. “Right. Sensible. Deeply disappointing, but sensible.”

The ride back to the tower was torture. The partition stayed up. Your shoes lay abandoned on the floor. Your lipstick was ruined, his tie was crooked, and every time your hand drifted toward his thigh, Bucky caught your wrist before you could make the driver’s job any more uncomfortable.

“You’re very strict for a man who just dragged me out of a gala,” you murmured.

“You were going to behave until we got upstairs.”

“I never agreed to that.”

“No,” he said, pulling you across the seat and into his lap with one arm around your waist. “You didn’t.”

Your breath caught, hands landing on his shoulders as your dress rode higher over your thighs.

Bucky’s hands settled at your hips. “This a problem?”

“No.” Your voice came out softer than before. “Definitely not.”

“You wanted attention.”

“I usually do.”

“You’ve got it.”

Your smile flickered, and for the first time that night, you looked almost overwhelmed.

Bucky stroked his thumbs over your hips. “Still with me?”

“Yeah.” You let out a breath and laughed quietly. “Sorry. It’s just…”

“What?”

“You.”

That did something stupid to his chest.

His hands tightened on your hips.

“Me?” he asked.

You nodded. “I’ve wanted you for a long time, Barnes.”

His body reacted hard to the words, but underneath that, something else opened, uncertain and hungry in a way that had very little to do with sex and everything to do with being wanted by someone who knew he was difficult.

“Bucky,” he said.

Your brow creased. “What?”

“My name.” He swallowed. “When it’s like this, use my name.”

The softness that moved through your expression was almost unbearable.

Then you leaned down and kissed him, slow and deep, your hands gentle at the sides of his face.

“Bucky,” you whispered against his mouth.

He held you tighter.

By the time the car reached the tower, both of you looked bad enough that Natasha stopped in the lobby, took one look at your face, Bucky’s mouth, and the shoes in his hand, and smiled.

“So I see,” she said.

Bucky kept walking. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to.”

“Eventually.”

Clint, who had been crossing the lobby beside her with a pastry in hand, pointed at Bucky. “Steve owes Sam twenty bucks.”

Bucky closed his eyes.

You grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the elevator. “Goodnight!”

Natasha’s voice followed you. “Hydrate.”

The elevator doors closed on your laughter. Bucky hit the button for the residential floors.

You leaned against the wall, still laughing. “Hydrate.”

“Don’t.”

“I like her.”

“Everyone likes her. That’s how she gets away with everything.”

“You like me, and I get away with almost nothing.”

Bucky looked over at you. “You think you get away with nothing?”

“With you? Absolutely not. You’re very mean to me.”

“You’ve been sexually harassing me for months.”

“I have been romantically persistent.”

“You called me a slutty Victorian ghost in front of Fury.”

“You were wearing that coat.”

“It was tactical.”

“It had drama buttons.”

Bucky stepped closer. “You like the coat.”

“I love the coat. I wanted to climb you like a tree in the coat.”

His mouth twitched. “At a debrief?”

“It was a very boring debrief.”

“You’re impossible.”

“And yet.” You hooked one finger into his loosened tie and tugged him closer. “Here you are.”

The elevator rose.

Bucky let himself be pulled. Your smile softened when he came near, and he thought, not for the first time, that the worst thing about you was not the flirting. It was the moments after, when the joke stepped aside and left all that wanting visible.

He cupped your jaw. “You sure?”

You blinked. “About you?”

“About tonight.”

The question sobered you slightly, but not in a bad way. You held his gaze. “Yes.”

“You’ve been drinking.”

“Two glasses of champagne over four hours, one of which I abandoned because Julian started explaining his movie to me.”

“Tragic.”

“Deeply.” Your fingers slid over his wrist. “I’m sure, Bucky.”

His name in your mouth still hit like a touch.

“And if I say something you don’t like?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you.”

“If I do something you don’t like?”

“I’ll tell you.”

“If you want to stop?”

“I’ll tell you.” Your voice softened. “I need you to believe me.”

He nodded once.

You leaned in, brushing your mouth over his. “Do you have any idea how much I want you?”

The elevator doors opened.

Bucky caught your hand and pulled you into the hall.

“Tell me,” he said.

Your steps faltered.

He looked back. “You had plenty to say before.”

Your mouth opened, then closed.

Bucky smiled.

It was not a nice smile.

“Oh,” you said faintly. “You’re going to be awful.”

“You like awful.”

“I like you.”

He nearly lost the thread entirely.

His room was closer than yours. He chose his because it was familiar. Controlled. Sparse, though less than it had been when he first moved in. A few books on the shelf. A jacket over a chair. Clean sheets because Steve had once broken into his room, taken one look at the bed, and muttered something about “bachelor despair.”

Bucky unlocked the door. You stepped inside and went quiet. That, more than anything, made him nervous. He watched you take in the room, the low light, the neatly made bed, the absence of clutter. There was no judgment on your face. Just curiosity, and something like care.

“You can say it,” he said.

You turned back. “Say what?”

“That it looks like nobody lives here.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“But you thought it.”

“A little.” You walked to the bookshelf, trailing one finger along the spines without pulling anything out. “Mostly I thought it smells like you.”

Bucky shut the door. “That a good thing?”

You looked over your shoulder. “Very.”

The lock clicked. The sound changed the room.

He crossed the room slowly. You stayed where you were, one hand still on the shelf, chin lifted like a challenge.

“Last chance,” he said.

Your eyes darkened. “For you or me?”

“For behaving.”

That smile again. “I already told you I’m bad at that.”

Bucky stopped in front of you. “I noticed.”

“Still interested?”

His hand lifted to your face, thumb brushing the ruined edge of your lipstick. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Could be a friendly escort.”

“To my bedroom?”

“You’re old-fashioned.”

His thumb pressed lightly against your lower lip. “Open.”

Your lashes fluttered, and for one perfect second, you did exactly what he told you. Your lips parted beneath his thumb, breath warming his skin.

Then your eyes narrowed with returning mischief. You bit his thumb. Gently.

Bucky stared at you. You smiled around it.

He laughed once, low and disbelieving, and the sound seemed to please you until his metal hand closed around your hip and turned you, backing you into the shelf with careful force. Your breath caught. A few books shifted behind you.

“You think you’re cute?” he asked.

“I know I am.”

His mouth brushed your cheek. “You’ve been poking the monster for months, sweetheart.”

The pet name slipped out before he could stop it. He felt the effect immediately. Your breath stuttered, your hand tightening in his jacket. His gaze sharpened.

“Oh,” he murmured. “You like that.”

You looked irritated, which would have been more convincing if you were not flushed to your chest. “Don’t be so smug.”

“You’ve been smug since March.”

“I was charming.”

“You were a menace.”

“You liked it.”

His hand slid from your hip to your thigh, following the open slit in your dress. Your words caught as his fingers found warm skin.

“I did,” Bucky said.

Your eyes snapped to his.

He held your gaze, hand moving higher by slow degrees. “‘S’that what you wanted to hear?”

For once, you did not have an immediate answer.

He leaned in, his mouth hovering over yours. “You wanted to get under my skin so bad.”

“I did get under your skin.”

“Yeah.” His fingers tightened on your thigh. “You did.”

Your lips parted.

Bucky kissed you before you could fill the silence with something clever. He kissed you deep, pressing you back against the shelf until he felt your body yield beneath his. Your hands gripped his shoulders, then slid under his jacket, pushing it down his arms with impatience.

Your fingers went to his tie next.

Bucky caught both your wrists. You stilled immediately, breathless against his mouth.

His eyes searched yours. “Still okay?”

“Yes.”

“You sure?”

“Bucky,” you said, and the impatience in it soothed him more than any soft reassurance would have. “I swear to God, if you don’t touch me, I’m going to become difficult.”

“You’re already difficult.”

“I can get worse.”

“I know.”

You tugged against his grip. “Then do something about it.”

The last of his restraint went very, very quiet. Bucky released one wrist and guided you back toward the bed. You went willingly, though you tried to keep your smile in place. It slipped when the backs of your thighs hit the mattress. He stood in front of you, close enough that your knees brushed his legs.

For a moment, he just looked at you.

Your chin tipped up. “What?”

“Trying to decide where to start.”

Your breath caught.

Then, because you were you, your smile returned. “I can make suggestions.”

“I bet you can.”

“Several.”

“Generous.”

“I’m a giver.”

Bucky’s hand went to your jaw, not rough, but firm enough to quiet you. “You’re a brat.”

Your eyes lit.

He felt that reaction everywhere.

“And you like that too,” he said.

You swallowed. “Definitely.”

“Better.”

Your thighs pressed together.

Bucky noticed.

He lowered himself slowly, one knee touching the floor between your feet.

Your expression changed at once.

“Oh,” you said, much smaller than before.

Bucky looked up at you, his hands sliding over your calves. “Still got suggestions?”

Your mouth opened.

No sound came out.

He smiled again, slower this time. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

His lips brushed the inside of your knee.

You watched him like you were afraid to blink.

“I had a whole speech prepared,” you said.

His mouth moved higher. “Did you?”

“Very persuasive.”

“I’m sure.”

“I was going to tell you how much you want me.”

He kissed the inside of your thigh, just above the slit of your dress. “I know how much I want you.”

Your breath hitched.

“Do you?” you asked.

Bucky looked up at you. “You want me to prove it?”

The answer left you quickly. “Yes.”

He smiled. “Good.”

His hands slid farther beneath your dress, slow enough to make it deliberate, warm flesh and cool metal moving over your thighs with the same careful pressure.

Your fingers curled into the edge of the mattress. “You’re enjoying this too much.”

“I’ve listened to you run your mouth for months.” His lips brushed higher, close enough that your next breath went uneven. “Let me have my fun.”

“Your fun is very mean.”

His mouth curved against the inside of your thigh. “You want me to stop?”

Your answer came too fast to be dignified. “No.”

Bucky’s smile deepened. His hand slipped higher, thumb tracing the edge of your underwear beneath the dress, and your knees tried to close around his shoulders. He let them. He even turned his head and kissed the inside of one thigh.

“You’re quiet,” he said.

You gave a breathless laugh. “I’m being polite.”

“Liar.”

“I am a delight.”

“You’re soaked.”

Your entire body went hot.

Bucky looked up at you with the unbearable calm of a man who knew exactly what he had found. His thumb pressed again, dragging lightly over damp fabric, and your grip on the mattress tightened hard enough that your knuckles ached.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmured. “All that talking, and this is what you wanted?”

You swallowed. “Among other things.”

“Still making suggestions?”

“I’m trying to decide if I hate you.”

His eyes warmed. “You don’t.”

“I could.”

“You won’t.”

You wanted to argue, mostly on principle, but then he leaned in and kissed you over your underwear, and the argument vanished somewhere between your ribs and your throat. The sound that came out of you was embarrassingly soft. Bucky heard it anyway. His fingers flexed against your thighs, and the next kiss was slower, firmer, open-mouthed enough that your hips lifted before you could stop them.

He made a low sound of approval that went through you like heat.

“That’s it,” he said, the words rougher now. “There you are.”

His fingers hooked into your underwear. He paused there, waiting.

You looked down at him. “Bucky.”

That was all you had to say.

He drew them down your legs, taking his time despite the way his breathing had changed, and tucked them into his pocket with a look that made your pulse jump.

“Really?” you asked.

His hands returned to your thighs. “You want them back?”

Your mouth opened, then closed.

His smile was sharp. “That’s what I thought.”

Then he leaned in.

The first touch of his mouth was enough to knock the air from your lungs. Bucky groaned like he had been the one waiting, like the taste of you had answered some question he had been refusing to ask all night. His hands gripped your thighs and pulled you closer to the edge of the bed, and you fell back onto one elbow, the other hand flying to his hair.

“Fuck,” you breathed.

He hummed against you.

His tongue moved over you again, and your hand tightened in his hair.

“Bucky.”

He groaned at the sound of his name, one hand sliding higher to hold your hips down when they jerked toward his mouth. His mouth was hot and merciless, his stubble scraping the inside of your thighs, his metal hand cool against your hip where the dress had bunched around your waist.

You tried to say something. It came out as a broken little sound.

Bucky pulled back just enough to look at you. His mouth was wet. His eyes were dark enough to make your stomach twist.

“You had a comment?”

“I forgot it.”

“Good.”

“Smug,” you accused, but there was no strength behind it.

He kissed your thigh. “Pretty.”

That was unfair.

You made a sound that was half a laugh and half a whimper. “You can’t call me that when you’re down there.”

“I can call you whatever I want when you’re this wet for me.”

Your head tipped back, eyes closing. “Jesus.”

“That bother you?”

“No.”

“Then take it.”

His mouth returned before you could recover, and this time, two fingers pressed against you, spreading slickness before easing inside. Your body took him greedily, clenching around the slow push of his fingers, and Bucky’s groan vibrated against your clit.

Your hand tightened in his hair again. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

He set a steady rhythm, fingers curling inside you while his mouth worked over you with devastating focus. The room narrowed to the scrape of his stubble, the pressure of his tongue, the stretch of his fingers, the soft obscene sounds of his mouth between your legs. Your thighs began to tremble, and his metal hand shifted from your hip to your stomach, pressing you down when you tried to arch away from how good it felt.

“Don’t run,” he said against you.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m preserving my dignity.”

He laughed softly. “Little late for that.”

You would have cursed at him if he had not chosen that moment to curl his fingers again, hitting the place that made your whole body go tight. His name broke out of you, too loud, too needy, too honest, and Bucky made a sound like that alone could have ruined him.

“That’s it,” he murmured. “Come on, sweetheart. Let me have it.”

The orgasm hit hard enough that the room went white at the edges. You came with his mouth still on you and his fingers buried inside you, thighs shaking around his shoulders while he worked you through it. He softened his mouth, slowed his hand, but kept touching until your breath turned into little broken sounds and you had to tug at his hair.

“Bucky,” you gasped. “Too much.”

He stopped immediately.

For a moment, there was only the sound of your breathing.

Then he kissed the inside of your thigh, gentle now, and stood.

You looked up at him through half-lidded eyes. His hair was a mess from your hands, his tie loose, his shirt still buttoned but wrinkled where you had grabbed him. His mouth was wet from you. He looked wrecked and controlled at the same time, which felt deeply unfair when you were sprawled on his bed with your dress around your waist and your ability to speak in complete sentences somewhere on the floor.

He leaned over you, one hand braced beside your head. “You okay?”

You nodded, then remembered words. “Yeah.”

His gaze searched yours. “Too much?”

“No.” Your hand lifted to his face, thumb brushing his lower lip. “Just enough to make me regret every time I let you leave a room without doing that.”

Bucky’s mouth twitched. “Every time?”

“I’m dramatic, not dishonest.”

He turned his head and kissed your palm.

You caught his tie and pulled. “Come here.”

He came willingly, covering your body with his and kissing you deep. You tasted yourself on his mouth and moaned into it, hips lifting against him. He was hard where he pressed between your thighs, thick and restrained by the fabric of his pants, and the feel of him made you impatient all over again.

Your hands went to his shirt.

This time, he let you.

The buttons were more difficult than they had any right to be, mostly because he kept kissing you and partly because your fingers had not fully recovered. Bucky made a low, amused sound against your mouth when you fumbled with the third one.

“Don’t laugh,” you warned.

“I’m not.”

“You are spiritually laughing.”

“Spiritually?”

“Don’t question me while I’m undressing you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The words were dry, but his breath caught when your hands finally pushed the shirt open. You smoothed your palms over his chest, feeling the heat of him, the hard lines of muscle, the scars where skin changed and history refused to be quiet. He went very still beneath your touch.

You noticed immediately.

Your hands slowed. “Okay?”

His eyes flicked to yours.

For a second, the room held its breath.

Then he nodded. “Yeah.”

“You sure?”

A faint smile pulled at his mouth. “Using my lines on me?”

“They’re good lines.”

His shoulders eased, just a little. “I’m sure.”

You sat up enough to kiss his chest, right over his heart. Bucky’s hand came to the back of your head, not pushing, just holding. You kissed another scar, then another, careful not because you thought he might break, but because you wanted him to know you saw him and wanted him anyway.

When you looked up, his expression had gone quiet in a way that stole some of the teasing from your tongue.

“Still with me?” you asked.

His hand slid along your cheek. “Yeah.”

The word came out rough.

You kissed him again. This time, the kiss was slower. His hands moved over your back, finding the closure of your dress, and you let him turn you enough to work it open. The fabric loosened with a soft whisper. He drew it down carefully, and you lifted your hips so he could pull it away.

Then you were in front of him in nothing but jewelry and the ruined remains of your composure.

Bucky stared.

You gave him half a smile. “Careful. A girl might get shy.”

“No, she won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you.”

The answer landed low in your stomach.

He touched you then, both hands moving from your waist to your ribs, thumbs brushing beneath your breasts before he lowered his mouth to follow. Your head fell back as he kissed and licked and learned you with the same terrible patience he had used between your thighs. When his mouth closed around one nipple and his metal hand held your waist still, you arched hard enough that he had to press you back down.

“Sensitive,” he murmured.

“Observant.”

“Smart mouth.”

“You like my mouth.”

“I do.” His eyes lifted to yours. “I’ve thought about it a lot.”

Heat rushed through you. “Have you?”

“Every time you called me handsome in front of half the team.”

“You poor thing.”

“Every time you blew me a kiss across the gym.”

“I was motivating you.”

“Every time you bent over a briefing table like you didn’t know what you were doing.”

You blinked. “I always know what I’m doing.”

His mouth curved. “I know.”

Then he kissed lower, over your stomach, and the laugh that had been forming turned into a gasp.

You reached for his belt. “Bucky.”

He caught your wrist again, but only to bring your hand to his mouth and kiss your knuckles. “What do you want?”

“You.”

“Specific.”

“You are such an asshole.”

He smiled. “Specific,” he repeated.

You stared at him, breathing hard, pride fighting a losing battle with need.

“I want you inside me,” you said finally.

His expression changed.

“I can do that,” he said.

Your smile came back, softer this time. “Competent?”

His hand went to his belt. “Very.”

He stripped without performance, which somehow made it worse, shirt hitting the floor, belt sliding free, pants pushed down with a controlled impatience that told you he was closer to the edge than he looked. When he finally climbed back over you, bare and warm and heavy between your thighs, your ability to joke deserted you entirely.

He noticed.

“Quiet again,” he said, mouth brushing yours.

“Busy.”

“Doing what?”

“Reconsidering all my life choices.”

His smile softened. “Regrets?”

“Mostly that I didn’t try harder.”

Bucky laughed, but it caught when your hand slid between your bodies and wrapped around him. He was hot and thick in your palm, his hips pressing forward before he could stop himself. His forehead dropped to yours.

“Fuck,” he breathed.

“Not so cocky now, are you?” you whispered.

His eyes opened.

You smiled up at him, thumb stroking over the tip of his cock, and watched his restraint fray in real time.

He caught your wrist after another stroke. “Condom.”

It was not really a question, but you nodded toward the nightstand. “Please tell me Steve’s bachelor despair intervention included supplies.”

Bucky huffed a laugh and reached for the drawer. “He’s thorough.”

“Heroic, really.”

He found one, tore it open, then paused. “You’re sure?”

You looked at him then, at the seriousness under the heat, and something in you softened so quickly it almost hurt.

“I’m sure,” you said. “I want this. I want you.”

His jaw tightened.

You touched his face. “Bucky.”

He kissed you as he rolled the condom on, and the kiss was so intimate that it made the next moment feel even sharper. He settled between your thighs, one hand braced beside your head, the other guiding himself to you. The first press of him stole the air from your lungs.

He stopped immediately. “Okay?”

“Yes.” Your hands gripped his shoulders. “Just go slow.”

His forehead rested against yours. “I’ve got you.”

You believed him.

He pushed in slowly, inch by inch, giving you time to adjust even though his breath was rough against your mouth and his whole body shook with the effort of holding back. The stretch was intense, almost too much, then perfect, then overwhelming all over again. You clung to him, nails pressing into his back, and Bucky whispered praise against your mouth until he was fully inside you and both of you went still.

For a few seconds, neither of you moved.

You had flirted with him for months. You had imagined this, wanted this, teased him because wanting him quietly had started to feel impossible. But imagination had not prepared you for the weight of him, the heat of him, the way his body covered yours like he had finally stopped deciding whether he deserved to be there.

Your throat tightened.

Bucky brushed his nose against yours. “Hey.”

You swallowed. “I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” You managed a smile. “You’re just a lot.”

His mouth curved faintly. “I’ve heard that before.”

You pinched his side.

He laughed under his breath, then groaned when the movement made you clench around him. His eyes dropped closed.

“Oh,” you said, interest returning through the haze. “You like that.”

“Don’t start.”

“I think I should start.”

He drew his hips back slowly and pushed in again.

Your words dissolved.

Bucky’s smile was brief and devastating. “That’s what I thought.”

The pace stayed slow at first, deep enough to make your breath catch every time he filled you. His metal hand slid beneath your hip, lifting you slightly, changing the angle until pleasure sparked bright and sudden through your body. Your head fell back into the pillow.

“Bucky.”

“I know.” His voice was rough. “I know, sweetheart.”

You wrapped your legs around his waist and pulled him closer, needing more of his weight, more of his heat, more of the quiet sounds he made when you clenched around him.

He kissed you through it. Messy, breathless kisses that kept breaking when one of you moaned or when his rhythm faltered because you dragged your nails down his back. He muttered your name against your mouth, then against your throat, then into the curve of your shoulder as the careful pace began to slip.

You liked the moment he lost patience.

You liked it more than you should have.

One second, he was controlled, moving like he could make restraint last all night if he had to. The next, your hips lifted into his at the wrong angle or the right one, and something in him broke. He caught your wrists and pinned them above your head with his metal hand, the cool pressure making your whole body tighten around him.

His eyes snapped to yours. “Okay?”

“Yes,” you gasped. “Yes, don’t stop.”

He did not.

The next thrust drove you higher on the bed, hard enough to pull a cry from your throat. Bucky made a low, wrecked sound and did it again, deeper this time, his body pressing yours into the mattress while his free hand gripped your hip. Every thrust pushed the breath out of you. Every drag back made you desperate for the next one.

“Still got something to say?” he asked.

You tried. You really did.

What came out was not language.

Bucky’s mouth found your neck, teeth scraping just below your jaw. “Mouthy little thing until I get my cock in you.”

The words should have embarrassed you. They did embarrass you, which was unfortunately part of the problem. Heat rushed through you so sharply that you clenched around him, and Bucky swore, hips stuttering before he recovered.

“There it is,” he said. “You like being talked to like that?”

“Yes.”

His hand tightened on your wrists. “You like me jealous?”

Your eyes flew open.

He lifted his head, looking down at you with his hair falling loose around his face and his mouth swollen from kissing you. There was vulnerability beneath the possessiveness, something exposed and honest enough to change the shape of the question.

You pulled against his hold, not to get away, but because you wanted your hands on him. He understood after a second and let go.

You touched his face at once. “I like when you want me enough to stop pretending you don’t.”

His expression shifted.

Then he kissed you, and the kiss was almost too much, too deep and too honest for the frantic movement of his hips. You held onto him as he fucked you harder, his body heavy over yours, your name breaking out of him like a confession. Pleasure built again, faster this time, sharpened by the orgasm he had already given you and the steady drag of him inside you.

“Bucky,” you said, voice breaking. “I’m close.”

His hand slid between your bodies.

You nearly sobbed when his fingers found your clit.

“Come for me,” he said. “Let me feel it.”

You did.

The orgasm tore through you, harder than the first, your whole body locking around him as pleasure crashed hot and bright through your veins. Bucky held you through it, thrusting shallowly while you clenched around him, his mouth at your temple and his voice rough with praise you could barely understand.

“Good girl,” he breathed. “Fuck, that’s it. So pretty like this.”

The praise only made it last longer.

By the time you came back to yourself, Bucky was shaking above you, jaw tight, every muscle in his body pulled taut with restraint.

You wrapped your arms around his neck. “Come on, baby.”

His breath caught.

You kissed the corner of his mouth. “I want it.”

That was enough.

Bucky buried his face against your neck and came with a broken groan, hips pressing deep as his body finally gave in. You held him through it, fingers in his hair, your own body still trembling beneath his. For a long moment, he stayed there, breathing hard against your skin, heavy enough to ground you but not enough to hurt.

The room went quiet around you.

Eventually, his arm shifted, bracing some of his weight. “Am I crushing you?”

“A little,” you said.

He started to move.

You tightened your arms around him. “I didn’t say stop.”

His laugh was exhausted and warm against your shoulder. “Brat.”

“Sweetheart,” you corrected.

He lifted his head.

You smiled up at him, softer than you meant to. “You said it first.”

Something flickered through his face.

Then he kissed you, gentle now. “Sweetheart,” he said, quieter, like he was testing how it felt when nobody was hiding.

You felt embarrassingly close to crying, which was rude of your body after everything else it had already done tonight.

Bucky noticed. His thumb brushed your cheek. “Hey.”

“I’m fine.”

His brow rose.

You huffed. “I am.”

“That means yes, or that means stop asking?”

The echo of your own question from months ago made your chest ache. “It means I’m fine.”

“Mm,” he said. “We’ll workshop that.”

You stared at him.

The smile came slowly.

“Oh, you absolute nightmare.”

He kissed you again before you could say anything worse.

Afterward, Bucky cleaned you up with a gentleness that left you strangely quiet. He disappeared into the bathroom for a minute and came back with a warm washcloth, his boxers pulled on haphazardly, his hair a disaster and his expression too careful. He moved slowly, checking your face more than he needed to, watching for any sign that you had changed your mind now that the wanting had settled.

You caught his wrist when he finished.

“Bucky.”

He looked at you.

“I’m fine.”

His shoulders eased by a fraction. His fingers turned in your grip until he was holding your hand.

“Yeah,” he said.

You tugged lightly. “Come back to bed.”

He did.

The bed dipped under his weight, and you shifted toward him immediately, which seemed to surprise him even after everything. You rested your cheek against his chest, one leg thrown over his, the sheet pulled messily around your waist. His arm hovered for half a second before settling around you.

“You’re thinking loudly again,” you murmured.

His fingers moved once over your back. “You’re going to be unbearable now.”

You smiled against his skin. “I was unbearable before.”

“Worse, then.”

“Probably.” You lifted your head enough to look at him. “You can handle me.”

His gaze moved over your face. “Yeah?”

“You’re very competent.”

That got you a small smile.

You rested your chin on his chest. “Are you okay?”

He was quiet for long enough that you did not think he would answer. Then his hand slid slowly up your back, warm and steady.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he said.

There was no self-pity in it. Just honesty, rough around the edges.

You softened. “Do what?”

“This.” His fingers brushed your shoulder. “Wanting someone. Having it. Keeping it without waiting for it to go bad.”

Your heart hurt.

“I don’t need you to be good at it right away,” you said. “I just need you not to punish both of us because you’re scared.”

His eyes met yours.

You held his gaze. “And I need you to talk to me before you start glaring at actors like you’re deciding where to hide the body.”

His mouth twitched. “He had it coming.”

“Bucky.”

“He touched your waist.”

“You dragged me out of the gala and fucked me in your bed. I promise you won that exchange.”

A laugh broke out of him, surprised and real, and you grinned because you had earned that.

After a moment, he said, “I don’t want to be one more person in the crowd looking at you.”

You went still.

Bucky looked away, as if the confession had cost more than he meant it to. Before he could retreat completely, you touched his jaw and guided him back.

“You’re not,” you said.

His eyes searched yours.

“You were never that,” you continued. “That’s why it was so annoying when you kept acting like you were.”

His brows lifted. “Annoying?”

“Deeply. Tragically.” You tapped his chest. “I was doing excellent work.”

“You were harassing me.”

“I was courting you.”

“You bit my thumb.”

“You liked it.”

He looked at you for a long moment. “I did.”

Your pulse jumped, even now.

Bucky noticed that too, and his expression warmed with a darker kind of satisfaction. “Interesting.”

“Behave,” you warned.

His mouth curved. “That’s my line.”

“You’ll live.”

“I might.”

You were smiling when the next words slipped out, too soft to be a joke and too honest to call back.

“I wanted a boyfriend, you know.”

He froze.

For one terrible second, all the warmth in the room seemed to hold still.

Bucky lifted his head.

You tried for a smile, but it felt shaky at the edges. “Emotionally unavailable boyfriend, technically. I’m flexible.”

His expression softened in a way that made your throat tighten.

“Yeah?” he asked.

You could have backed away. Made it a joke. Given him the escape hatch you had always been so good at pretending you did not need. Instead, you looked up at him and let the truth sit plainly between you.

“Yeah.”

Bucky’s hand came to your face. His thumb brushed over your cheek, so gentle it made the rest of him feel even heavier beside you.

“I can do boyfriend,” he said.

Your heart gave a stupid, hopeful little kick. “Can you?”

“I’ll probably be bad at it.”

“I’ll workshop you.”

He huffed a laugh. “Of course you will.”

“I’m very persuasive.”

“You’re very annoying.”

“Foreplay,” you said.

His mouth curved.

Then he kissed you, and this time, there was nothing frantic in it. It was slow and deep and almost painfully sweet, a kiss that felt less like surrender than arrival. You wrapped yourself around him and let him take his time, because Bucky was warm and solid beside you, because his mouth was soft when he wanted it to be, because the man who had spent months pretending not to want you had finally stopped pretending.

Much later, you woke to pale morning light and the smell of coffee.

For one disoriented second, you thought you were in your own room. Then you shifted and felt the pleasant ache in your thighs, the warmth of a body beside yours, and the weight of Bucky’s arm around your waist.

You opened your eyes.

He was awake, propped on one elbow, looking at you like he had been caught doing something private.

“Hi,” you said, voice rough with sleep.

His expression eased. “Hi.”

“You watched me sleep? Very gothic of you.”

“I woke up two minutes ago.”

“Liar.”

“Maybe ten.”

“You’re obsessed with me.”

His mouth twitched. “Apparently.”

The answer was too easy. Too honest. It warmed you all the way through.

You stretched carefully, then winced.

Bucky’s hand moved at once. “Sore?”

“A little.”

His face changed. “Too much?”

“No.” You turned into him, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. “Exactly enough.”

He looked unconvinced, because he was Bucky.

You sighed. “I will accept pampering, though.”

“That so?”

“Yes. I’m very delicate.”

He looked down at the marks his mouth had left on your neck, then back at your face.

You smiled. “Emotionally.”

That got you a quiet laugh. He leaned in and kissed your forehead, then your mouth, soft enough that you melted into it despite the morning breath concerns you decided not to acknowledge because romance required sacrifice.

A knock sounded at the door.

Both of you froze.

Then Sam’s voice came through from the hall. “I’m not coming in because I value my life, but Steve wants to know if you two are alive, Natasha says hydrate again, and Tony says if the bed is broken, it’s coming out of your paycheck.”

You buried your face in Bucky’s chest.

Bucky closed his eyes. “Go away, Sam.”

“I also brought coffee.”

You lifted your head. “Wait.”

Bucky looked betrayed.

You patted his chest. “Baby, I love whatever brooding domestic morning-after thing you’re doing right now, but I need coffee if I’m going to survive the team knowing you rearranged my insides.”

From the hall, Sam made a delighted choking sound. “Oh my God.”

Bucky threw a pillow at the door.

It hit with a soft thump. Sam laughed all the way down the hall.

You collapsed back against the mattress, laughing too, and after a second, Bucky gave in. His arm tightened around your waist, pulling you closer until your laughter softened into a smile against his skin.

“You’re trouble,” he said.

“You knew that on Tuesday.”

“I knew it before then.”

You tipped your face up. “And yet.”

His eyes moved over you, warm and a little helpless, the way they had looked last night right before everything changed.

“And yet,” he agreed.

You smiled, pleased enough that he narrowed his eyes.

“Don’t,” he warned.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to.”

“I was letting the moment breathe.”

“The moment can suffocate.”

Your smile widened. “You’re so romantic.”

Bucky rolled you beneath him before you could laugh again, his body settling carefully over yours, one hand braced beside your head. His hair fell around his face, soft with sleep, and he looked less like a ghost, less like a weapon, less like the man who had spent months standing at the edge of his own wanting.

He looked like yours.

Or almost yours. Enough to make your chest ache. Enough to make you brave.

“So,” you said, touching his jaw. “Did I win you over?”

Bucky looked at you for a long moment, then bent until his mouth hovered over yours.

“Sweetheart,” he said, voice low and warm, “you have no idea.”

Then he kissed you, and because you were a menace, because he was smiling against your mouth, because you had never known how to leave a victory unannounced, you wrapped your arms around his neck and whispered, “Progress.”

No, she struck you more as the encrypted-flash-drive-on-a-park-bench type, the kind of woman who appreciated mysteries with teeth. A custom leather jacket, stitched with the same precision she used to dismantle a glock. One of those sleek, low motorcycles. Not daisies. Not peonies. And definitely not whatever soft, pastel nonsense Bucky was currently handing over cash for.

You stood a few feet away, halfway hidden behind a sidewalk sign advertising oat milk lattes and gluten-free muffins, clutching a cardboard drink tray and a bag full of vegan pastries in a death grip. The barista had spelt ‘Bruce’ as ‘Broose’ again, and under any other circumstance, that would've made you laugh, but now it felt like the most irrelevant thing in the world.

You liked Natasha. You respected her. You just didn’t think she had it in her to giggle over roses like the girls in those sappy rom-coms Clint insisted he hated (right before he would watch three in a row, a beer in each hand). But there Bucky was, brushing pollen off a bouquet of pale pink ranunculus, face soft in a way you’d never seen during mission briefings or sparring sessions.

And suddenly, you were building a list in your head of all the things you were sure Natasha Romanoff would rather receive as a romantic gesture: a knife, balanced perfectly for throwing, an expensive bottle of vodka, a vintage chess set with hand-carved pieces, a bottle of expensive ink and a fountain pen with a sharp nib, cookies—messy ones—overloaded with chocolate chips, or simply just black coffee, straight from the pot, no sugar, no cream. Yet, as Bucky handed it over to the redhead, she smiled. Smiled. And suddenly you felt like you were witnessing a scene you were not welcome to. 

Truthfully, it stung. Maybe it stung a little more than what was appropriate. You’d been harbouring a quiet crush on the dark-haired, sullen supersoldier from the moment he joined the team. Fresh out of Wakanda, new vibranium arm in tow, and god, he was handsome. Not in the polished, television commercial way Steve was, but in a way that made your pulse skip and your thoughts stall mid-sentence. He had the kind of face you didn’t know how to look at for too long, sharpened jaw, stormy-blue eyes, and a mouth that always looked on the verge of saying something he’d regret.

There was something electric about his stillness. Like if you leaned in close enough, you’d hear the hum of danger beneath his skin. He walked like a man who never quite trusted, drifting through the tower like he expected a fight around every corner. He barely spoke, but when he did, his voice was low and gravel-worn, something that settled right in your gut and made its home there.

He never smiled. Not really. But sometimes—sometimes—you’d catch a flicker of it when Sam teased him, or when Steve nudged him just right, and it was devastating.

And yeah, maybe you had a soft spot for broken things trying to heal.

As the Avengers’ personal assistant, it was your job to keep everyone comfortable, informed, and running like clockwork. You were a one-person organisational machine, constantly juggling the chaos that came with managing a tower full of enhanced individuals with the emotional range of a brick wall to a nuclear reactor. Your days were a blur of colour-coded schedules, back-to-back briefings, and the never-ending group chats.

You coordinated mission debriefs, booked international flights with military clearance, and handled press requests that would make most people cry. You endured complaints when Thor overloaded the power grid again, trying to make toast, and even replaced the mugs he shattered before anyone noticed. You wrangled Clint’s kids when they came to visit, sourced obscure snacks from remote parts of the world because Sam liked those protein bars, not the other ones, and Steve wouldn’t touch anything processed. You replaced a record number of coffee machines, hunted down whatever special detergent could get oil out of Tony’s designer shirts. You knew which brand of muscle balm Banner preferred and how to order it without triggering a random Homeland Security check.

And then there was Bucky.

With him, it was always a little extra, whether he noticed or not. His schedule came first in your Monday morning rounds. You made sure the pantry was stocked with the Eastern European tea he liked but never asked for, and remembered the exact setting he preferred on the tower’s training room temperature controls. You adjusted group plans so he’d be paired with Steve or Sam, just in case the crowds and questions became overwhelming. When he disappeared for a few hours, you didn’t ask questions, but you made sure no one came looking. You even swapped out the scratchy tags in his mission gear with soft ones, because he never complained, but you noticed the way he fidgeted with them.

Every day, you’d beam at him like some hopelessly love-struck idiot when you handed over his usual coffee—black, two brown sugars, just the way he liked it—and in return, he’d offer little more than a grunt. A low, barely-there sound that most people wouldn’t even register as a greeting. But you did. Somehow, that grunt became the highlight of your day.

So yeah, maybe seeing him hand over flowers to Natasha broke something in you. Not just a hairline fracture, but a quiet, splintering break that left your chest aching in places you didn’t know could hurt. Still, you understood. Natasha belonged to his world, effortlessly cool, all smoke, shadows and secrets. Yet she was kind. Not cold or unapproachable, just… carved from something rarer than you. The kind of woman who didn’t need to try to be extraordinary, she just was.

And you? You were the sweet, well-meaning assistant who made people laugh in the kitchen, who fetched dry cleaning and remembered everyone’s birthdays. You were the one who labelled tupperware and chased down Clint’s kids with bandaids. You were an afterthought, the background noise in the buzzing hive which was the Avengers Tower. 

So maybe you could justify feeling jealous, but angry? No. Not really. They didn’t know. They couldn’t know. And it wasn’t their fault that you’d let yourself hope.

Two weeks later, and you timed it perfectly, like you always did.

Just as the door to Bucky’s apartment clicked open, you rounded the corner—folder in hand, clipboard tucked tight to your side. The hallway was quiet, save for the low hum of ventilation and the soft thud of your heels against the carpet. Bucky stepped out, his gym bag slung over his shoulder, hair tied back, and his hoodie sleeves shoved up just enough to show the gleam of vibranium. Predictable. It was routine, every morning just before six he would meet with Steve in the gym. On Mondays, you’d catch him just as he exited his apartment, unload the details for the week, a freshly printed schedule and all. 

“Morning,” you said lightly, handing him the week’s itinerary. His reply was his usual, a grunt. Not annoyed. Not grateful. Just Bucky. That gruff, barely-there sound that once felt like a small victory. The kind of grunt that used to warm your chest when he followed it with a question, even if you knew the answer was printed in the folder you’d triple-checked. You always answered anyway. You liked having his attention, even just for a few seconds.

You used to dress the folders up with care, multicoloured sticky notes marking key tasks (blue for meetings, yellow for reminders, red for anything urgent and green for personal events). You’d highlight sections like traffic lights, add stickers you thought might make him smile, sometimes even scribble little crooked cartoons in the margins with cheesy encouragements—seize the day! 

The folder looked rather sad today, just a plain manila folder packed with stapled papers. No colours. No stickers. No effort. Just the essentials. You didn’t let your fingers dawdle when he took it. Didn’t smile like you used to. Just handed it over and kept your gaze somewhere past his shoulder.

Bucky took it slowly, eyes flicking down at the cover like he was trying to spot something that wasn’t there. His brow pinched, barely, but enough for you to notice. His fingers lingered on the edge of the folder, like he thought maybe he’d missed a note tucked inside.

You nodded and turned to leave, forcing yourself to shift your mind to your next chore mentally, restocking med supplies in the Quinjet, cross-checking Clint’s revised travel forms, hunting down the coffee machine Tony had threatened to ‘repurpose as target practice’. You’d have to order a replacement before the morning debrief. Double-check everyone’s dietary preferences. Update Steve on the tech room schedule. Get maintenance to repaint the lines in the training room because someone (probably Thor) had scuffed them again.

You stayed busy. It helped. Kind of.

But the guilt still trailed you like a shadow.

It was probably obvious how abruptly you changed. The way your voice had lost its warmth. The way your gaze dodged his like it might burn you. You wondered if he noticed, if he thought you'd simply grown tired of him. Maybe he had. That was better than the truth that you couldn’t stand to be near him, not when every glance felt like pressing fingers to a bruise you’d caused yourself. 

You had made your choice, professionalism. The kind of cool, curated detachment you admired in Natasha, only it felt all wrong on you, like an ill-fitting coat. You knew it was for the better, not mixing up work and matters of the heart. You’d already let your little crush spiral too far, thinking maybe—just maybe—if you tried hard enough, you’d earn more than a grunt. That he might see you as something more than the charming assistant with her clipboard and her stupid stickers. But he didn’t. And he wouldn’t. And that was fine. It had to be.

You couldn’t afford to fall apart over a man who had no idea he’d broken your heart.

But it was Bucky’s voice, soft and unsure, that startled you from your thoughts. “Hey.”

You paused mid-step and turned, forcing a tight smile that didn’t quite meet your eyes as your fingers curled against the clipboard. “What’s up?”

He shifted his weight, clearly caught off guard by the fact that you stopped walking at all. He was rather devastating to look at when he grew all shy and unsure, fingers fidgeting against the edge of the folder like he didn’t know what to do with them. He didn’t quite meet your eye as his weight shifted nervously, like he hadn’t thought before he called out. 

“Uh. Nothin’. Just—” He raised the folder slightly, an awkward gesture. “You usually give me the rundown. Y’know… what everyone’s doing. Who’s where. Who I’m stuck with.”

You swallowed. Of course, he’d noticed. Of course, he’d grown used to your chatter about meetings and mission rosters, about who was off-world and who was due back, like it was the weather. The casual, effortless way you used to tell him what movie was playing, who cheated at Monopoly the night before, or which team member had stolen the last protein bar. You’d always done it to help, keep him grounded, and make him feel like part of the team, like he belonged. 

But after what you’d seen two weeks ago, you were sure he didn’t need that from you anymore. Natasha would look out for him now. She’d keep him balanced, keep him fed, keep him from slipping through the cracks.

“Nothing interesting’s happening,” you shrugged. “Just the usual.”

He didn’t move. “Well… there’s that dinner. On Friday.”

You gave a curt nod, tone clipped. “Yes.”

“Wanda’s dinner,” he added, as if you hadn’t already acknowledged it.

“Correct.”

He hesitated again, brows drawing together in a faint crease of worry. You could see him floundering, stuck in some internal scramble. It made your chest ache because you knew that look. You’d helped talk him down from that look more times than anyone else in the tower probably realised.

You sighed quietly through your nose, against your better judgment, against every wall you’d tried to build in the past week, you caved. He looked five seconds away from spiralling.

“It’s in there,” you offered gently, nodding toward the folder. “On your schedule.”

“Right. It’s just… for me, you usually…” His voice trailed off, frustration and uncertainty knotting in his brow. “Sorry. You’re probably busy—”

That felt like a punch to the gut. 

You shook your head and, before your pride could stop you, your feet were already moving back toward him. His eyes dropped as you reached into your pocket for a pen, scribbling ‘Wanda’s Dinner – Friday’ on a green sticky note. Green for personal events, always. You hesitated, then added a smiley face underneath. You peeled it off and stuck it neatly onto the folder in Bucky’s hands. 

His eyes dropped to it, finger brushing over the paper like he didn’t quite understand why it mattered so much. “Thanks.”

You just nodded, already stepping back, spine straight, pretending your heart wasn’t hammering in your throat.

“She said…” Bucky cleared his throat, clearly not done with the conversation. “Wanda said she’s going to do curry.”

You paused, unsure what to do with the information. Why was he telling you that? Why was he still talking?

“That’s nice,” you said carefully, not sure what to do with this strange, lingering version of him.

“Are you going?” he asked suddenly, and you frowned.

“I wasn’t invited—” You began, already covering from the invasive thoughts, already working to mask the sting. You didn’t want to imagine them next to each other over curry, leaning close, whispering in the way people did when they thought no one else was watching. It would only make the crack in your chest worse.

“You should go,” Bucky said quickly, cutting across your thoughts. “I’ll tell Wanda you’re coming.”

“That’s not necessary. I’ll be busy that night anyway…” You lied through your teeth, heart thumping hard against your breastbone as Bucky’s face crumpled a bit. You cut in before he could argue any further.  “You’re going to be late. For the gym. It’s nearly six.”

“Right, shit, yeah. Sorry, I just…” He trailed off again, rubbing the back of his neck. “Thanks. I’ll… I’ll see you around.”

You raised an eyebrow at him, unsure if you were more confused or stunned by his sudden jitters.

Before the whole flowers incident, you made it your unofficial mission to ‘accidentally’ bump into Bucky as many times as humanly possible in a day. Now? It was the opposite. Every hallway was a trap to avoid, every room a potential ambush. Navigating the Tower had turned into something between a tactical stealth op and a personal game of hide-and-seek.

Unfortunately, your strategy for quiet withdrawal hadn’t gone unnoticed.

In fact, Bucky had picked up on your sudden cold shoulder almost immediately. The folder debacle had only been the first of many increasingly awkward run-ins.

There was the time you’d practically sprinted away from the elevator when the doors slid open to reveal him standing inside, a brow raised and coffee in hand. Or when you turned a corner too fast and walked straight into him, muttering a rushed apology before disappearing again like you were being hunted. Then there was the silent, painful breakfast you’d shared at the communal kitchen counter, where you busied yourself with peeling an orange for ten minutes straight while he sat beside you, occasionally glancing over like he wanted to say something but didn’t know how to begin.

You’d even pretended to be asleep on the common room couch when he walked in one evening, piles of paperwork scattered, laptop still open, only for him to drape a throw blanket over you before quietly leaving again.

And yet, instead of giving you space like you’d expected and hoped for, he seemed to find any excuse to be around you. He trailed after you like some misplaced puppy whenever he wasn’t buried in a mission or holed up in a meeting.

You’d assumed that the moment you stepped back, he’d naturally gravitate toward spending more time with Natasha. It made sense. Why wouldn’t he want to be around her? They were obviously dating, even if they hadn’t made it official yet. Maybe it was one of those quiet, close things kept just between friends, like Steve and Sam. Who were you to come barreling in and expose their secret entanglement? You expected Bucky to be relieved to no longer be on the receiving end of your babbling, your perfectly-timed coffee deliveries, or the not-so-subtle gifts you littered around. 

But if anything, Bucky seemed determined to figure you out. Like your sudden shift had become his new pet project, and he was personally committed to cracking the case.

You’d taken the back hallway, the long, winding route that steered well clear of the gym on your way to the shared office. High-traffic areas were too risky now—too many chances to run into him. But clearly, Bucky had caught onto your little detours, because as you turned the corner, there he was, headed straight toward you.

You froze for half a second, pulse quickening. Turning around would be too obvious. Suspicious. He’d know exactly what you were doing, and then your carefully-constructed avoidance strategy would unravel entirely. If he suspected anything now, you were one panicked backpedal away from confirming it.

It was a nightmare. And a daydream.

A part of you, some soft, hopelessly romantic piece, ached at the sight of him, at the quiet way he seemed to look for you, worry always etched into his brow like you were some puzzle he couldn’t quite solve. But the rational part of your mind, the part that had dragged you into this self-imposed emotional lockdown, screamed that letting him get closer again would only undo all the fragile healing you’d managed to piece together.

So you steeled yourself.

Shoulders squared. Laptop and paperwork clutched like a lifeline. Eyes locked on an imaginary point just past his shoulder. If you kept walking and moved quickly, calmly, maybe he’d let you go. Perhaps he’d pretend not to notice how your pace picked up and your gaze carefully avoided his.

You nearly made it.

But of course, he noticed.

“Hey, wait—”

His voice was hesitant, just enough pressure to pull you to a stop. Your footsteps faded into the hush of the corridor, your spine straightening instinctively as you turned. Bucky stood a few paces behind, one hand lifted halfway between reaching and retreating, like he’d almost grabbed your arm but lost the nerve. 

He looked sheepish. Timid, even. It killed you.

You swallowed. “Yeah?”

He scratched the back of his neck, boots scuffing lightly against the floor. “Did I… forget to grab my coffee this morning? Or… did you not bring it?”

A pause. Too long. You could feel the beat of your pulse behind your sternum as you forced a casual shake of your head.

“No, sorry. That’s on me. Slipped my mind.”

The lie didn’t sit well in your mouth.

It hadn’t slipped your mind, in fact, it was still sitting on the corner of your desk, cooling beside a stack of unfinished paperwork. You’d brewed it, as always. Even used the brown sugar he liked. But then you’d walked away from it, deliberately, like some idiotic breadcrumb trail you hoped he might follow.

God, you were pathetic.

Your stupid fucking brain couldn’t even decide what it wanted anymore. One half of you was charting escape routes through the tower to avoid him, the other was fantasising about him pinning you to the nearest wall. From the way your thighs pressed together now, breath catching as his voice brushed over you, maybe the answer wasn’t distance at all. Perhaps you just wanted to taste him—

He didn’t move. Just stood there, one brow lifted, faint worry creasing the edge of his expression.

“You’re usually down by the gym by nine,” he said, his voice low. “It’s eleven.”

“I’m running a bit behind today.”

“You usually text me if you’re running behind.”

“Well,” you said, shrugging like it didn’t matter, “I didn’t this time.”

He paused, the silence between you laced with something dangerously close to concern. “Is everything alright?”

You forced a small laugh, trying to shake off how his low, worried voice made heat pool in your gut. “Yeah. Why?”

“You seem off.”

There it was. Soft, plain and far too knowing. He said it in that maddeningly sincere way that only he could manage. Like he actually gave a damn. Like this wasn’t unravelling you by the day.

Your shoulders tensed. “Off?”

“Yeah,” he said gently. “Just… I dunno. You’ve been quiet lately.”

He didn’t know. He couldn’t know about the hours you spent spinning in your head like a lunatic, trying to compartmentalise this crush until it shrank into something survivable. About the way you’d stared blankly at Tinder profiles, your phone clutched in your hand, wondering why no one else ever came close, why none of them were him.

Why you couldn’t stop thinking that if you’d just told him—confessed that stupid crush before Natasha did—maybe you wouldn’t be standing here now like some stray mutt, sniffing around for scraps of attention.

Maybe then he’d be yours.

Maybe then you wouldn’t be fantasising about quitting just to put yourself out of your own misery like some lame racehorse.

“I’ve just got a lot on my plate,” you finally mustered, tone strained. “Tony’s soirée. The fittings. Admin crap. Didn’t even have breakfast today.”

His brows furrowed further. “That’s not good.”

“I’ll survive.”

Would you, though?

Would you survive the heat that flared low in your stomach every time he got too close? Would you survive the ache that gnawed behind your ribs every time he glanced over at Natasha like you didn’t exist? Would you survive the constant, desperate craving to be touched by him? To be looked at like she was looked at?

He didn’t speak for a second, and for a moment, you were sure he could smell the reek of desperation on you.

“The oranges in the fridge are gone.”

You blinked. “What?”

“And the tea. The fancy one,” he added. “The one with the dried raspberries in it. You’re the one who always restocks them, aren’t you?”

You looked down, fingers clenching around your folder. “I’ll add it to the list.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said quickly, stepping forward a half-inch, enough to make your breath hitch. “I just… I didn’t realise it was you. Doing all of that.”

Of course, he hadn’t because you’d made it invisible. Seamless. That was the kind of care you practised—silent, anticipatory, never asked for, never returned. You had cared for him with a thousand tiny efforts, but he never noticed until you stopped.

You looked up, and the hallway felt suddenly too narrow. His face was open in a way you hadn’t seen in a long time. Gentle, confused, like he was trying to work you out and couldn’t quite bear not knowing.

You dropped your gaze. “I said I’ll do it.”

He paused. You could feel him thinking again.

Then, to your disappointment, he slowly nodded. “Okay.”

But he didn’t move. Not right away. He lingered like someone who hadn’t yet decided if leaving was the right call, like he was caught between concern and curiosity. 

“I’ll leave you to it, I guess.”

You didn’t answer. Couldn’t. You just nodded and turned, walking away quickly before he could see your face fall, before he could catch the naked want in your expression, the way your heart was clawing against your ribs, screaming for you to turn around and ruin everything.

If time travel were an option, you'd gladly launch yourself into a wormhole and strangle your past self for being stupid—no, lovesick—enough to organise this little errand. You deserve it, really. A swift kick to the gut from future-you for being this hopeless.

It had all started a month ago, when you, like a fool, volunteered to collect the tailored suits and dresses for some little soirée Tony Stark had decided to throw. Of course, in true Tony fashion, what was pitched as a ‘casual get-together’ had evolved into a full-blown, black-tie spectacle. The first warning sign? Tony footing the bill for everyone to have custom outfits made to their specifications. Translation…this was going to be a thing.

You’d spent weeks wrangling Avengers into fitting appointments, helping them choose fabrics and cuts, managing last-minute alterations and tracking shipments. It was exhausting but under control…until the catch. The aggravating, absurdly attractive, brooding catch currently sitting across from you in the tailor’s waiting room, his knee bounced like it was transmitting a detailed morse code manifesto on every possible way he planned to ruin your day.

The plan had been simple: grab an Uber, pick up the garments, pressed, stitched, and boxed to perfection and head back to the tower. But then you got the call. The one that told you Bucky Barnes had missed his final fitting, and that his suit needed some last-minute adjustments...

Of course he did.

Of all your perfectly laid plans, it only took one missed appointment to bring it all crashing down. Now here you were, stuck waiting beside the man who occupied far too much of your brain lately, silently praying the tailor would finish quickly so you could escape before your sanity, or your dignity, completely unravelled.

“I really am sorry,” Bucky said for what felt like the fiftieth time.

Between the brooding and the nervous leg tapping, he’d spent the last five minutes watching the side of your face with an expression so guilty it was practically carved into him.

“Like I said, it’s fine.” You replied, though it came out a little too tight, a little too forced, like you were speaking through clenched teeth. Which, maybe you were. Not that it mattered. Not when you could smell his cologne from how damn close he was sitting. God, you wanted to lean over and bury your face in his chest and just inhale—

You straightened abruptly, shoulders stiffening as the tailor entered the room, and mentally reacquainted yourself with the concept of boundaries.

It had been an hour—sixty minutes of waiting while Bucky’s suit got its final adjustments. An hour of you trying to distract yourself with work emails and unanswered texts, pretending the man beside you wasn’t single-handedly causing your emotional stability to nosedive. At least when he’d stepped away to get re-measured, you could breathe without risking spontaneous emotional combustion.

This wasn’t like you. You weren’t usually this wound up. Maybe it was the exhaustion, days of juggling your regular duties with Tony’s ever-growing list of soirée demands. Perhaps it was the heartbreak. Or the missed meals. Or the fact that you genuinely had no idea what day it was anymore.

“Would you like to try it on before we package it up for travel?” the tailor asked, her voice gentle. A measuring tape hung loosely around her neck, her pinned bun fraying slightly at the edges.

Bucky looked at you again, eyes flicking toward yours like he needed permission. You swallowed what was left of your pride and gave him a slight, strained nod.

“It’s okay,” you said quietly. “Go on.”

“I’m sorry—again—this is probably eating into your whole afternoon, I know how busy you are—”

“It’s fine. Really. Just go.”

He offered a sheepish smile before disappearing behind the velvet curtain, tugging it closed with a rustle. You pressed your fingers to your temples, let your head drop into your hands, and exhaled through your nose like it might stop your heart from trying to break out of your chest.

Across the counter, the tailor glanced up at you with a sympathetic look as she readied the boxes for the other garments. “Long day?” she asked gently.

You lifted your head, managing a tight smile that didn’t quite reach your eyes.

“Only going to get longer.”

You were still nursing the tail end of your sigh when the velvet curtain swished open again.

And then your brain stopped working.

Bucky stepped out in full formal attire, sharp navy suit, tailored within an inch of its life. The cut of it hugged his frame perfectly. Broad shoulders, tapered waist, long legs. A deep navy waistcoat peeked out beneath the jacket, the subtle sheen of the fabric catching the light just enough to look expensive without being flashy. His tie was already perfectly knotted, like he’d done this a hundred times, and the sleeves of his shirt revealed just enough of the polished metal edge of his vibranium arm to make your mouth dry.

He cleared his throat softly, tugging at one cuff. “How’s it look?”

You blinked. Opened your mouth. Closed it again.

Words? No. Words were gone. Your vocabulary had packed up and left the building.

Bucky shifted his weight, clearly mistaking your slack-jawed silence for disapproval. “It’s weird, right? The waistcoat maybe doesn’t work, I told her I wasn’t sure about it—”

“No,” you said quickly—too quickly. “No, it’s… It’s perfect. You look… great. Seriously.”

His brows lifted slightly, a flicker of something you couldn’t quite place crossing his face. Relief, maybe? 

“Yeah?” he said, glancing down at himself, tugging slightly at the jacket hem. “I feel better about it now. The sleeves fit properly this time. Thanks for waiting.”

The tailor beamed from behind the counter, clearly proud of her work. “Wonderful. I’ll box it up immediately once you’re out of it.”

Bucky nodded, but the tailor turned to you with a friendly smile before he could disappear again.

“And for you, would you like to try your gown on as well before I pack it away?”

You blinked, suddenly snapped out of your holy-shit-Bucky-hot-hot-hot haze. “My what?”

She gestured toward the row of garment bags. “Mr. Stark sent over your measurements earlier this month. There’s a gown here for you.”

You frowned. “That must be a mistake. I’m just the assistant. None of those are for me.”

The tailor hesitated. “I don’t think so… He was very clear. Your name was attached to the order.”

Before you could argue, Bucky cut in smoothly, like he’d seen this train coming and stepped in to redirect it.

“Tony probably just wanted you to look the part, too,” he said, voice low and casual. “You’ve done all the work, he probably figured you deserved to enjoy the night a little. Might as well try it on, just in case.”

You glanced at him, but he didn’t look smug or teasing. Just… earnest. Calm. Like he meant it. Which made it all the harder to protest.

“Fine.” You sighed, scrubbing a hand down your face. “Just to check it fits.”

The tailor clapped her hands together. “Wonderful. It’s a beautiful gown, I promise.”

You gave Bucky one last side-eye before following her toward the changing rooms, the fabric bag already in her hands.

From behind, you could hear him chuckle under his breath.

“Just wait 'til you see her,” the tailor murmured to herself, and you weren’t sure whether to be flattered or deeply, deeply nervous.

The gown was heavier than you expected. Luxurious fabric slipped off the hanger like water, pooling in your arms as she handed it over with the kind of reverence usually reserved for wedding dresses.

“I’ll give you a minute,” she smiled, disappearing to finish boxing up the suits.

Left alone in the changing room, you peeled out of your clothes, letting the gown slide on over your hips, your waist, up past your ribs. It clung like it had been sewn directly onto your body, the bodice snug, the neckline just daring enough to make you blush. 

You twisted to try to reach the zipper at the back, fingers fumbling and straining, but the angle was impossible. You spent the better part of five minutes twisting in the mirror like a lunatic, trying to reach the zipper that refused to budge. Your arms ached. The corset bodice was half-fastened. You were flushed, annoyed, and far too aware of the sliver of bare spine still exposed.

You were about to peek your head out and ask the tailor for help when a low voice cut in behind the curtain.

“Need a hand?”

You flinched, fabric clutched to your chest. “Jesus, Bucky! Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

“Didn’t mean to scare you.” His voice was rougher than usual, like he’d just cleared his throat. “Heard you cursing. Tailor said she’d be a minute out back.”

You hesitated, and your voice came out thin. “Yeah. I—I can’t get it up.”

“Okay,” he replied, oddly determined. “Turn around.”

You cracked the curtain open a pinch. He ducked inside, too broad for the narrow space, his frame practically filling it. He was careful not to look at you directly, at least at first.

You turned slowly, presenting your back. “Just the zipper,” you murmured, barely trusting your own voice.

“Sure,”

A single fingertip, cold metal, dragged up from the base of your spine to the dip between your shoulder blades. It barely touched the skin, but you shuddered from the sensation. Bucky wasn’t even fastening yet, just tracing the line the zipper would follow. The sound you made was too soft to catch. 

The zipper came up slowly. Agonisingly. His knuckles brushed your skin every inch of the way, not by accident. No, this was too slow, too precise, to be innocent.

He was savouring it.

His other hand steadied you, palm ghosting just over your hip. His breath fanned warm against your shoulder.

“You’re trembling,” he commented.

You swallowed hard, unable to muster a response. 

When he reached the top, his hand didn’t fall away. Instead, he swept your hair off your shoulder completely, fingertips grazing the line of your throat as he let it fall over one side.

He leaned in. Not touching, but close. Mouth just behind your ear. The heat of his breath against your neck. 

“Should’ve let me help sooner,” he whispered, voice like a purr. “Would’ve had you dressed in seconds.”

You didn’t answer. You couldn’t. Your lips parted slightly, breath caught somewhere halfway as your lungs deflated in shock. And maybe it was the gown. Or the silence. Or the way your thighs pressed together of their own accord, but you didn’t move. You didn’t step away.

You leaned in.

Only a fraction. Just enough.

He noticed.

You could feel it in the slight shift of his stance. The faint sound of him exhaling a chuckle through his nose. The way his hand brushed ever-so-slightly along the small of your back before falling away.

And then he was gone.

He stepped back like nothing had happened. Like the tension wasn’t choking the air between you. You turned toward the mirror in a daze.

The dress shimmered in the soft light. Deep, elegant, form-fitting. The neckline exposed the curve of your breasts, the slit at your thigh scandalous enough to make you self-conscious.

You caught his reflection in the mirror. He was watching you, but not with the restrained professionalism you were used to. It was only the sudden reentrance of the tailor that made him hesitate in whatever words were forming on his tongue. He stepped aside, finally giving you space to exit. And you did—legs shaky, palms sweating—like a deer walking straight back into the forest fire, pretending it wasn’t about to burn.

Your plan to avoid Bucky after the tailor incident had gone off without a hitch, maybe a little too well. You'd buried yourself in helping Tony pull together the final touches for his ‘soirée’ (which, if you were honest, was less soirée and more ‘black tie circus in a penthouse’).

You'd been so laser-focused on your tasks that you'd almost managed not to think about Bucky in that goddamn changing room. His fingers ghosting up your bare spine like a spark setting fire to dry kindling. You’d folded instantly. Your body betrayed you instantly while your brain screamed to keep it together. Pathetic.

The moral implications of whatever that moment had been were filed away for another day. Were you the other woman? Was Natasha going to slit your throat in your sleep? What was Bucky doing, touching you like that—in a public changing room, no less—when he had a bombshell redhead waiting for him back at the Tower?

No time for that now. Not when Tony’s precious ‘soirée’ was already in full swing upstairs and the caterers had somehow forgotten an entire section of the food. You’d scrambled together an emergency order from some overpriced restaurant Tony swore he was ‘basically family’ with, and by some miracle, they came through in the nick of time.

Now you were in damage control mode, hauling three boxes of overpriced canapés up to the penthouse. Your heels bit into your feet with every step, your dress clung too tightly to bend properly without your tits spilling out, and your patience was hanging on by a single goddamn thread.

You pressed the elevator button with your elbow and exhaled as the doors slid open.

Drop off the food. Grab a free drink. Drown your Bucky-related sorrows. Maybe, just maybe, keep the beast between your legs from waking at the mere sight of him.

The doors began to close. You shifted your weight, careful with the boxes balanced in your arms—

Then someone slipped through at the last second.

Him.

Bucky fucking Barnes.

Tall and devastating as usual in his dark navy suit, his tie loosened just enough to suggest mischief, or maybe carelessness. You weren’t sure which one made you feel worse.

Your breath hitched. Instinctively, your gaze dropped to the floor, feigning sudden, all-consuming interest in the stability of your precarious tower of hors d'oeuvres. But teetering stacks of overpriced finger food or not, Bucky didn’t seem inclined to play along with your avoidance act. Not now. Not when the elevator doors had sealed you in together, finally, and you were without escape.

You winced at the sound of his sharp inhale, the question already pressing past his lips before the elevator even jolted into motion.

“Did I do something to piss you off?”

You didn’t look up. Eyes fixed firmly on the floor, you muttered, “What?”

“I just…” His voice was rough. Tired. “It feels like you’ve been avoiding me.”

Shit.

He stepped forward slightly. Not enough to be invasive. Just enough to make your stomach flip.

“You hardly talk to me anymore,” he continued. “Won’t even look at me unless it’s about work. And even then, it’s like you’re somewhere else. Did I do something to offend you? Hurt you? Just tell me what I did so I can fix it.”

The elevator hummed to life beneath your feet, gliding upward smoothly. You shifted your weight, bracing against the cool metal rail, eyes stubbornly fixed on the buttons, anywhere but his maddeningly perfect face.

“You haven’t done anything,” you said quietly, the words tasting sour the second they left your mouth.

“Then why are you doing it now?” he asked, eyes searching yours. “Why won’t you even look at me?”

“Bucky…”

“Please. Just tell me.”

You hesitated. His hand twitched like he meant to reach for your arm, then faltered, falling back to his side. Your grip tightened on the containers, your fingers slick with sweat. “It’s not you,” you murmured. “It’s me… I just…”

He didn’t move. Didn’t even blink.

“Please,” he said again, quieter now. “Tell me the truth.”

And that was what did it. The tremor in his voice. The way his brow creased like he couldn’t stand not knowing. Something broke open inside your chest, raw and unhealed. The dam cracked, split, then gave way completely, and the truth came spilling out before you had the chance to swallow it back down. You were exhausted. Wound tight. Running on fumes and nerves and far too many feelings. You’d tell him, you decided. Then drop off the canapés, quit on the spot, and flee the country if necessary. Stark would write you a killer reference. You’d survive.

“Okay,” you said, breath hitching as a nervous laugh bubbled out, half-bitter, half-resigned. “You want the truth? Fine. You’re going to think I’ve completely lost it.”

He stayed quiet, letting you spiral.

“This is so stupid,” you muttered. “I like you, Bucky. There. I said it. I like you. And it was fine—manageable—until it wasn’t. Until I started imagining things. Thinking maybe… maybe you liked me too.”

His eyebrows lifted, surprised but unreadable.

“I’ve had this massive, embarrassing crush on you since the moment I met you. And I know it’s weird, and probably unprofessional because you’re kinda my boss, but not. Technically, Tony’s my boss, but I basically manage everything around here, and—ugh, I’m rambling.” You squeezed your eyes shut. “I like you. And I’ve been avoiding you because it was getting out of hand. I couldn’t stop thinking about you. And it felt wrong. Especially since you’re dating Natasha, which just made everything worse—”

“What?” he interrupted, voice sharp. “I’m not dating Natasha.”

Your eyes snapped open. “That’s what you took from all of that?”

“No, I—wait. You think I’m dating Natasha?”

“Yes!” you burst out, cheeks flaming. “I saw you! At the Sunday market about a month ago with the flowers—”

His brow furrowed. “What flowers?”

“The bouquet you gave her.”

“I didn’t give Natasha flowers.”

You let out a dry, disbelieving laugh. “I saw you. It was that dumb little market Tony makes me go to for those overpriced vegan pastries Pepper loves—”

Bucky stared at you, confused. And then, slowly, understanding clicked into place. His face contorted like he’d just remembered he’d left his stove on.

“Oh my god,” he muttered, dragging a hand down his face. “The flowers. Those weren’t for Natasha. They were for Wanda.”

Your heart stuttered. “What?”

“Vision,” Bucky groaned. “It was their anniversary. He was stuck on the phone trying to get a fancy reservation and begged me to pick them up. Natasha tagged along because she was hunting for jewellery for Maria’s birthday. That’s all it was.”

You blinked at him. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not,” Bucky replied earnestly. “I didn’t know you thought that. I swear, I’m not with Natasha. I never was.”

Your stomach dropped. “Oh god.”

“Hey—”

“No. No-no-no.” You squeezed your eyes shut, wanting to sink straight through the floor. “This is mortifying. I literally thought you were in a secret relationship. I’ve been avoiding you like the plague. I’ve been thinking about moving cities. I googled how hard it is to change your name legally.”

He snorted. “You’re not serious.”

You opened your eyes, and the horror must have been plain on your face because Bucky’s expression melted into something far too amused. “Oh, you are.”

“I might never recover from this,” you mumbled. 

“Hey, c’mon. It’s not that bad.”

“I confessed my undying crush and accused you of being in love with someone else in the span of like, sixty seconds.”

His mouth twitched, lips threatening a smile. “You’re kind of adorable when you’re spiralling.”

“I’m going to chuck these hors d'oeuvres at your head.”

As if mocking your attempt at dignity, the elevator gave a slight mechanical whirr, nearly at the top floor. The distant hum of the party pulsed just beyond those sleek doors.

You straightened suddenly, panic creeping into your chest. “Okay, I’m going to deliver these and then I’m leaving. Possibly forever. Please never speak to me again.”

But Bucky, ever faster than you, stepped in.

And before you could react, he pressed the emergency stop button.

The elevator jolted to a halt. The tower of overpriced hors d'oeuvres wobbled dangerously in your arms. “Oh my god,” you gasped, teetering.

Bucky was already moving, steady hands catching the top box before it could topple, plucking the rest from your shaking grasp. He crouched to stack them on the floor carefully, then rose slowly, smirking as you stood frozen, mouth agape in pure horrified disbelief.

“Bucky, what the hell are you doing?”

“No more running,” he said simply, as if that explained everything.

You could barely breathe. “You stopped the elevator?”

“Didn’t want to risk the doors opening and you disappearing into the night,” he said, a little too pleased with himself.

“I hate you,” you whispered, eyes wide.

He leaned in, just close enough for you to feel his breath. “No, you don’t.”

You were going to die right here in a metal box. With your dignity in ruins and the man of your dumb, desperate daydreams giving you that look.

And somehow, somehow, you didn’t even want to stop him.

“I’m serious,” he said, stepping closer. “Don’t shut down. Please.”

You glanced up at him, finally meeting his eyes and immediately wished you hadn’t. They were dark. Hungry. That gaze alone could melt you to the floor.

He stepped closer again. And again. Until his frame caged in you, his arms braced on either side of your head, the heat of his body swallowing you whole.

“I like you too,” he said, low, rough, like it was pulled from deep inside. “Christ, I was so blind. I didn’t see it. It didn’t click until that day at the tailor, until I saw you in this damn dress.”

Your breath hitched.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he murmured. “I’ve been looking for excuses just to be near you. I keep the notes you leave me with the stupid little drawings. I like looking at them. Thinking about you.”

Your heart felt like it might crack your ribs.

“I smelled every shampoo at the store one day,” he confessed, almost sheepish, almost proud. “Hoped I’d find the one you use. Because you smell so fucking good. It’s been driving me crazy.”

“Bucky…”

“I don’t know. You make me feel special. Seen. Like I’m not some monster, like I’m normal. And then one day you were just… gone. I didn’t realise all the little things you did for me that I never noticed.” He groaned, somehow pressing closer. “I missed the sound of your voice… and it made it hurt even more… I lie awake at night, every night, thinking about you and how much I want to kiss you—”

“Bucky.” You interrupted, and he looked back at you with a barely contained hunger. “Are you going to kiss me or not?”

And then his mouth was on yours.

Hot. Messy. Desperate.

You gasped into it, and he swallowed it whole, groaning as he pressed harder, deeper, hands sliding down to your thighs as he grabbed one and hitched it up around his waist. You clung to his shoulders, lips parted as he slotted himself between your legs, guiding you up until your ass was perched on the elevator’s handrail bar.

“Fuck,” he breathed against your mouth. “Tell me that you want this, tell me that you want me.”

Your head fell back against the wall, lips swollen, breath shaking. His mouth travelled to your jaw, your throat, hands digging into your hips.

It was dizzying. Chaotic. Perfect. 

“I want you, Bucky.” You panted.

“Fuck,” Bucky muttered again, but this time it was different, lower. Hungrier.

His hand slid along your thigh, fingertips brushing beneath the hem of your dress. You panted as he kissed across your collarbone, his breath hot against your skin. His hands settled on your knees, then slowly, deliberately, he spread them apart.

“Bucky—” your voice was barely more than a whisper, a tremble of anticipation and disbelief.

But he didn’t answer. He dropped to his knees.

Right there. In the goddamn elevator.

You almost came on the spot at the sight, lips swollen and slick with saliva, pupils blown, the slight smudge of your lipstick on his chin. His hands slid up the back of your calves, kneading into the flesh like he was savouring the shape of you. Your dress inched upwards, his mouth suddenly pressing a kiss to the inside of your knee.

Your breath hitched. Your hands shot to the railing behind you, clutching tight.

“You have no idea,” he said, voice wrecked with want, “how long I’ve thought about this.”

His eyes flicked up to yours, dark with something dangerous. Devotion, desire, something molten and drowning. Then his mouth moved higher.

Another kiss. Inner thigh this time. Then another, and another, slow, lingering, like he was memorising you. He disappeared until the fabric of your skirt, only the back of his head, dark locks messy peaking out from between the slit. 

You moaned, soft and involuntary, your hips twitching at the heat of his breath through the thin fabric of your panties. He nuzzled in close, his nose brushing against you, and his hands pressed firmly to your thighs to keep you spread.

“I’ve thought about how you’d taste,” he muttered, lips grazing the soaked lace. “How you’d sound.”

You whimpered.

And then, he peeled your panties to the side.

The groan that tore from him was obscene.

“Jesus,” he hissed, voice muffled. “You’re fucking perfect.”

And then, his mouth was on you.

Hot. Wet. Relentless. You cried out, one hand flying to his hair, tangling in it as his tongue licked into you with precision, with hunger, with something close to worship. He devoured you like he was starving. Slow circles, then quick flicks, his mouth dragging across your clit with maddening rhythm. You writhed against the rail, your leg still wrapped around his shoulder, the other trembling against the elevator wall.

“Oh my god—Bucky—fuck—”

Your words slurred together, breath coming in ragged gasps as he groaned into you, the vibration shooting straight through your core. One of his arms snaked around your thigh, pinning you in place, as if he thought you might try to escape. As if he’d let you.

His tongue slid down, dipping into you, then back up, his mouth latching onto your clit with a filthy, wet sound that made your spine arch. You were unravelling, fast, dizzy, overwhelmed.

He pulled back just enough to pant. “I could stay here all night.”

His mouth was merciless. His grip was unrelenting on your thighs, mouth working you over like a man possessed—

Bzzzzt.

A shrill, sudden buzz sounded from the elevator’s emergency panel, followed by a crackling voice.

“Hello? This is Tower Maintenance. We’re registering an emergency stop on lift three. Is there an issue?”

You froze. Every muscle in your body went rigid, as if someone had cracked open your spine and poured ice water down it. Dread spread like frost through your veins. Your heart thudded painfully in your throat, threatening to climb up and out entirely.

You could barely breathe. Could barely think.

This was it. This was how you died—legs spread, Bucky between them, and Tower Maintenance on the fucking line.

Bucky, in sharp contrast, did not freeze.

He groaned softly with wicked glee, his mouth still very much between your legs. The sound vibrated against the most sinful part of you, and then he doubled down. Mouth and hands working with infuriating, diabolical precision, like he’d just taken the intercom as a challenge.

You clamped a hand over your mouth, the other shaking as you reached blindly for the emergency call button, trying not to sound like you were seconds away from being ruined.

Your voice came out like a panicked squeak. “Hi! Uh—h-hi, yes, sorry! Must’ve been a—a small electrical fault. I’m fine! Everything’s… fine!”

Bucky nipped at your thigh in response.

There was a pause. You could feel the suspicion through the line.

“Ma’am, we’re not showing any electrical inconsistencies in that shaft. Did you press the stop button?”

You shot a wide-eyed glare down at the man currently devouring you.

Another wave of pleasure threatened to knock the air from your lungs. You were barely holding it together, every nerve ending aflame, skin flushed, thighs shaking. The cool metal of the elevator wall against your spine did little to ground you.

You cleared your throat, struggling to piece together something—anything—resembling human speech. “Oh. Oh, that—um, I must’ve bumped it. With my elbow. While holding a tray. It’s, uh—crowded. In here.”

Bucky chose that exact moment to suck hard, and you slapped your hand over your mouth to muffle the helpless sound that nearly escaped.

A longer pause. You could practically hear them frowning.

“…Right. Well, we’re releasing the stop now. Please remain calm.”

The line disconnected.

The elevator jolted slightly as it roared back to life.

Bucky gave a dark chuckle. “Crowded, huh?” Then—with zero mercy—he sped up.

“Bucky,” you gasped, head falling back against the wall, “I’m—I’m gonna—”

You shattered.

It hit hard, hot and blinding. You cried out, thighs clamping tight around his head as he groaned against you, mouth not stopping for a second, drawing it out, milking every twitch, every whimper. You barely had time to breathe, let alone moan, your hands flying to steady yourself just as the elevator dinged cheerily and the doors slid open.

Right into the penthouse. Packed full of people, who by some miracle, were utterly oblivious to your predicament. 

You staggered slightly as Bucky stood smoothly, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, one arm slipping around your waist to steady you while the other casually reached down and grabbed the stack of forgotten canapés off the floor like he hadn’t just—

“Evening,” he greeted a passing staff member, utterly unbothered.

You were glowing crimson, pupils blown, lips parted, trying hard to fix your face. Bucky guided you forward, his hand warm on your back, keeping you between him and the crowd as your legs trembled. You barely managed to set the tray on the nearest table before someone whistled.

“Well, damn,” came Sam’s voice from the drinks bar. He gave you both a once-over, a wicked grin spreading. “Buck, next time you’re gonna eat face in the elevator, maybe wipe the lipstick off your chin first.”

Bucky only smirked and licked his bottom lip slow, on purpose, you were sure of it.

You nearly combusted on the spot.

“Bathroom?” he murmured into your ear, low and gravelly.

You nodded quickly and wordlessly.

He guided you with all the smugness of a man who had no regrets, his hand just a little too low on your back to be innocent.

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The first time you came in, he’d handed you over to Shen. You were a sprained wrist and a BAC that explained the wrist, sixteen other things were louder, and Shen was free then. 

He’d clocked you for half a second on his way to a GI bleed in bay nine: girl on the gurney, one heel too high on, and one somewhere in the greater metropolitan area, some little pink lace-trimmed thing sliding off one shoulder, telling Shen with enormous seriousness that she was so sorry, she didn’t usually do this, she’d had a singular margarita. Only.

Singular. He’d categorized it under the thousand other single margaritas he’d sworn to in this department and forgotten you before he’d reached the bleed. 

The second time, he didn’t take you either, but he noticed the wrist. 

Same wrist. Different night — a Saturday, three weeks in, the sort of shift where the waiting room sounded like a kennel — and he caught it sideways while he reviewed another chart. It was the same left wrist, taped this time, the nails on that one hand done in some soft pinky color gone chipped at the tips as though the week itself outlasted the manicure, somebody walking you through the discharge paperwork you clearly were ignoring. Something thought for him instead of him thinking much for it, some pattern-recognition thing buried under twenty-some years of reading bodies fast, the same instinct that made him glance twice at something almost normal. A wrist that kept coming back, he supposed. A thread snagging on a nail, there and gone. 

The third time, it was Shen, breezing past the station with his Dunkin, saying over his shoulder, “Frequent flyer’s back.” 

He shrugged, not yet placing that you were the frequent flyer, and went to bed four.

And that — somewhere between the third time and a number he stopped keeping an honest count of — was where it stopped being a chart and became some sort of thing. A bit, he’d say. The nights the bars let out and the board lit up, he’d find himself reading the incoming names a half-second longer than triage required, and feeling something wrong in his chest when yours wasn’t in them. 

Pittsburgh was notoriously interesting, Jack learned through you, in that it apparently contained an infinite supply of ways a girl could get herself in trouble. He was convinced he could’ve drawn a map of the city by your injuries. There was the ankle, of course, a recurring grievance, always the shoes, never your fault. There was one time you’d burned your hand on a curling iron getting ready tipsy and come in more upset about the makeup you’d had to redo (because of crying it off) than the blister. The night you’d gone over in a parking lot because you refused to look at the ground while walking — looking at the ground, while drunk, you informed him, was how you trip — and the time you sliced your finger open trying to shotgun a White Claw with a key because someone had bet you couldn’t. You were really proud of the last one, you’d won the bet. 

You were never the same disaster twice, he had to give you that. A little too keen on busting yourself up here and there, sure, but at least it was the wrist once, then a knee that met a curb, then a memorable evening involving a fence you’d been certain you could clear. You came in apologizing — always apologizing, to him, to the nurses, once, memorably, to the wall — and you came in sweet, which was the part that got under him, because drunk people in this ER were a lot of things and sweet was rarely one of them. 

“Mmm,” you hummed the fourth or fifth time, the second your eyes found him through the gap in the curtain, going boneless with relief like Jack was the cavalry and not the man who was meant to flash light into your eyes for thirty seconds. “The pretty one.” 

Jack let out a huff. “Thanks, doll.” 

“Doll,” you repeated, the word going gummy in your mouth. “He calls me doll.”

“Eyes open. Follow the light.” 

“You call everyone that, Dr. Abbot?” you said, his name coming out in a cluster like you were losing thread of it, the Abbot dissolving into something closer to a hum. 

“Sure do,” he lied. “Track the light.”

You looked at his mouth, then his hands, then back up, a slow uncoordinated sweep because your eyes had stopped reporting to anything in particular, much less what they had to. Pupils blown wide and lazy. He thumbed your eyelid up a fraction to get the light where he needed it; your lashes were clumped and starry with whatever mascara had survived the night. 

He held the penlight steady and waited you out. He had nowhere to be. That was the thing about the dead hours after bars closed; the bleed had been signed up to the floor, the chest pain turned out to be a panic attack and a large energy drink, and there was just you, and the saline ticking into your arm one slow drop at a time. 

“What’d you get up to tonight?” he murmured, thumb finding the pulse at your wrist, counting without meaning to.

“S’fast ‘cause you’re here,” you said, sounding very pleased with yourself.

“Sure it is. Where’d you hurt yourself tonight?”

“... stairs,” you said after a moment, like your brain had to run a few laps to get to the word. 

“Oh, yeah?” He hummed. You lifted your free hand a little off the mattress, lost track of it, and dropped it back down. “How many?” 

“Mm. Four?” You squinted at the ceiling. “Maybe three. I dunno. Not the Great Wall or somethin’. Promise.” 

“I believe you.” He nodded, then turned your forearm to the light, finding the scrape you’d come in with. It was gravel-burn, raw, the heel of your hand and a stripe up your wrist. Nothing that needed more than cleaning. You watched him do it with your head tipped against the pillow, gone quiet so the talking had run out for a second, which never lasted.

“Should I get a better first aid kit?” you asked, then clenched your jaw for a second like you felt something was wrong with it. “S’I don’t have to bother you all the time?” 

“Might be a good idea to invest,” he said. He pulled the swab through the gravel-burn slowly, and you hissed and tried to pull back the hand on reflex. “Easy.” He kept it, his grip light yet unmoving around your fingers. “Almost done. Don’t fight me.”

You hummed, like you wanted a different answer.

Jack wet his lips, shaking his head slightly. He worked the grit out of the scrape, a fleck of it catching raw skin, and he tilted your arm to the light, getting it on the second pass, and wiped it on the gauze. Your hands twitched in his, and he pressed your fingers flat to the mattress with his thumb, and they stayed.

“You’d have to do it yourself, though,” he said. “Bathroom sink at three in the morning with one hand.” He reached for fresh gauze. “You’d make a mess of it.”

You frowned at the ceiling, nodding. “Sounds a little bad.”

“It’s a lot bad.” He laid the gauze over the scrape, thumbed the tape down at the edge of your wrist slowly, smoothing it flat where it wanted to lift. His knuckle dragged once over the thin skin there, and he felt your pulse jump under it. “You’d scar, probably.” His thumb passed the chipped polish, the chunky gold ring you’d kept on, even for this. “You’ve got nice hands. Shame to wreck ‘em over the sink.”

It took you a second. “You think so?”

“Don’t wreck ‘em.” 

“You like when I come in,” you said, delighted. 

“What I’d like,” he said, flat, lifting his eyes to yours, “is you off the stairs and down to the one drink.” His thumb settled over the back of your hand again. “But if you’re set on flinging yourself down, then you come here. Deal?”

Your fingers had curled around two of his somewhere in there loosely, without you noticing. He felt them settle, and he held very still so as to not spook you. He chose to not acknowledge it or look at it.

“Deal,” you mumbled, somewhere far off, probably forgetting the front half of the terms. 

He let it go at that, taping down the last edge and turning over your wrist once more to be sure of it. Then he set your hand back on the mattress, yours still loosely hooked through his, going nowhere.

“Anyone out there to get you home?” he asked. 

“Dunno.” Your nose scrunched. “Was gonna Uber.”

He sighed through his nose. “Where’s that girl — the one you came in with last time? Why don’t you call her?” 

“That’s annoying, Dr. Abbot,” you said, almost in a whine. 

“Yeah?” He kept looking at the wall behind you. “What’s annoying about a ride home?” 

“Calling people. Making it a thing.” Your free hand flopped vaguely. “Then they gotta come get you, and they’re all — have to be nice about it, but you can tell.” Your nose scrunched. “It’s a whole production.”

He pressed his thumb flat back over your hand where your fingers were still caught in his. 

“Oh? Nothing annoying about it, sweetheart. You call, she comes. Simple as that.” He turned to face you. “But if you insist on it, I’m not signing you off until you’re good enough to go home alone. So you call your girl, or you sit right here and keep my department company till you’ve cleared enough that I’ll sign off on it.” 

Your eyes narrowed as you looked at him as though he’d spoken a different language. “Second one?”

“Obviously you pick that one,” he said. 

He pulled the stool over and sat. For a few minutes, he had nowhere to be, and now, apparently, neither did you.

It wasn’t that you simply didn’t let people help you, either. Jack had never seen anyone so committed to being simply fine. Jack had met the stoic kind before; construction guys who walked in with rebar through a forearm acting like it was a small inconvenience; old ladies who’d been having a heart attack since last Tuesday and didn’t want to be a bother. But Jack had always believed those people to be suppressing, and you were just convinced, somewhere down in the foundation, that needing anything was an imposition. 

That was also why the shoes confused him so much. 

“This is the same damn ankle,” Jack said, turning your foot in his hands, watching the swelling outside of it. 

“You don’t have to remind me. Most men buy me a drink before they get this familiar with my ankles,” you said, then groaned as you looked at his eyes going over the swelling. 

“No drink.” He pressed along the bone. “Not my fault you keep handing your ankle to me.” 

You tipped your head back against the pillow, groaning again. “Dr. Abbot, they look so bad. I feel like I’m pregnant.” 

“I can do a quick blood draw and we can rule it out.” His palm flattened on the mattress beside your feet, leaning over to meet your eyes again. “But I think it’s those heels of yours, doll.” 

Your eyes snapped to him. “Don’t be a dick, Dr. Abbot.”

He tilted his head, then pointed at the laminated paper stuck to the wall. “Aggressive behavior of any kind toward healthcare workers is a felony.” 

“Then arrest me, doctor. I’ll die on this hill — and they’re not heels.” Your lips pursed, and the corner of your mouth kicked up. “Cuffs may be a little forward for a date, but I won’t stop you.” 

“Aren’t you just so sweet,” he muttered. “What are they, then?”

“Bottega Lido Mules.”

The words meant absolutely nothing to him — could’ve been a pasta dish, a town in Italy, a wine — but they clearly did to you, so he remembered them. 

“That’s nice, doll. They’ll be the reason I see you again.” 

“Maybe, ‘cause I’ll never stop wearing them.” 

You said the words your whole face, hands coming off the mattress to make the point with a drunk theatrical conviction as you argued something that genuinely mattered to you. Jack thought, not for the first time since he’d met you, that you’d have been magnetic stone-sober at a dinner party, the kind of girl that made a table lean in. It was just that he only ever got the 3am version.

At least you had a hill you’d die on and didn’t apologize for, Jack supposed. 

“You married, Doctor?” you asked as he started icing your ankle. 

“No,” he said, holding your eyes for a second. “Why — you got a boyfriend I should know about, then?” 

He almost wished you did have one. He wished that there were somebody whose name you’d have said just now who’d be in the waiting room with his jaw tight because you’d gone and hurt yourself again. Somebody who’d take care of the ankle when you walked out of here in crutches, who took the keys when you had too many. He wished there was a person in the world whose job you were. 

And you weren’t his first patient who he’d understood to not have someone taking care of them. He knew that if he carried them all, he’d drown inside a month if he tried to be the person nobody else had been. He’d never once had it turn into a wish, standing here with an ice pack in his hand going slack in his hand because he was too busy resenting someone who didn’t exist for not being in the waiting room. 

He wondered when down the line you’d stopped letting the people in your life around you be the ones you could call, became a girl who said sorry for bleeding and had nobody, nobody, and looked at him like he was the warmest place she’d been in all week.

You laughed. “If I had a boyfriend, would I be laying it on so thick?” 

He let out a breath through his nose, despite himself. “Stop wearing the heels, doll. Not nice to not have a foot.”

The next time you came in, it was a Thursday. With some pileup of bad luck, you came in somewhere past one with a split lip and a story about a dance floor he only half got the shape of. Jack hadn’t even been assigned to you yet, he’d just seen your name on the board, and reassigned himself quietly enough that dared anyone on shift to comment. Nobody did. 

“Lip’s not bad,” he said, tilting your chin up under the light, thumb at your jaw. The split was already going fat and shining at the center of your lower lip, and he found his eyes stayed on your mouth a second past the part that was his job, on the soft unhurt swell of it under the hurt. He moved his thumb. “Doesn’t need anything. You bit it when you fell down. That’s all.”

“S’throbbing, Doctor,” you mumbled, the word coming around muffled around the split. 

“It’ll throb. You’ve got a swollen lip.” He let go of your jaw and reached for the penlight. “Eyes on me.” 

“I was so cute before this,” you said through a groan. 

The huff that came out of him was almost a laugh, dragged out against his own will, and he shared a fleeting look with Bennet — a fairly new nurse — who had tilted his head briefly and was too afraid to meet your eyes.

“Alright. Still the prettiest girl I’ve treated tonight,” Jack said when your brows had furrowed together.

“You treat other girls?” 

“It’s a hospital,” he said. “Few hundred a week.”

Your face looked wounded. “Few hundred.”

He leaned in slightly, faking a whisper. “You’re my top three.”

You were further gone than usual tonight. He’d noticed it the second he came around the curtain, the way your head was having a hard time holding itself up, the loose unmoored swim of your eyes that took longer than it should to find his finger. A piece of hair had come loose and stuck to the gloss at the corner of your mouth and you hadn’t the coordination to deal with it, and he had the unprofessional impulse to, and didn’t. 

Bennet kept working the blood pressure cuff up your arm, half an eye on you, half on his own work. 

“Track the light,” Jack murmured. “Slowly.”

“Too bright.”

“Tough.” The corner of his mouth moved up slightly. “You can bat your lashes at me when we’re done. Right now, I need ‘em open.” 

You batted them anyway, slowly and theatrically, just to be a problem about it. They were long, and the theater of it was so ridiculous, and Jack had to bite down the inside of his cheek to keep his face flat to wait you out, until you gave up and tracked the finger. Your pupils were reactive, equal, and lagging half-a-beat behind. He clicked the light off. 

“Too bright,” you said again. 

“It’s off,” he drawled, chuckling. 

Bennett thread a line into the back of your free hand, and you watched him sink it with a drowsy focus. 

“Why’s it go in the back of the hand?” you mumbled. “More nerves there. Hurts more. Why not the — inside. By the elbow.” You tilted your head slightly to let your eyes wander to the crook of your arm. “Bigger vein. The antec—antecubital,” you said carefully, sounding out each syllable, afraid of messing it up. You wet your lips and turned to face him, then Bennet. “Why’s nobody use the good one?” 

Jack pursed his lips and looked at you for a moment. 

“Saves the good one,” he said, catching up, eyes going back to your chart. “AC vein blows easily when somebody’s moving around, and you —” He tipped his head at you, raising a brow, the squirming drunk of you. “ — Are gonna move around. Back of the hand’ll hold. I’d rather you be sore than re-stuck twice ‘cause you couldn’t sit pretty for thirty seconds.” He paused as he saw your eyes glaze over. He sighed. “Ask me how I know that about you.” 

You’d gone busy, lips moving slightly like you were repeating it back to yourself so it’d stick, and Jack felt something in his chest shift a degree as he watched you do it. 

He sighed, dragging a palm over the lower half of his face. “Where’d you learn that, then?” 

“School,” you said to the ceiling, a small hint of pride taking over your voice. “M’gonna become a nurse. Gonna be good at it.”

Bennet snorted, finishing the tape. “Gonna be patching up drunk girls just like you then, huh,” he said. “Full circle.”

Jack watched the pride go out of your face slowly, like a house losing its power. Your chin dropped and your eyes slid from Bennet to the curtain as your hand fisted in your lap. 

“Yeah,” you said, almost curiously. “Guess so.” 

Jack’s jaw clenched involuntarily. It wasn’t the guy’s fault, not really. It was a nothing joke, the sort the whole department tossed off a hundred times a shift, the gallows shorthand that kept you sane at two in the morning. Jack had made worse about patients who’d never know, about drunks who wouldn’t remember, about exactly this, exactly girls like you. He’d just never had one of them go quiet before, watched the bright thing fold itself up and get tucked away. 

“Bennet, you done?” 

“Yeah, line’s good — ”

“Then go take vitals on six. I’ve got her.”

Bennet went, and it was just the two of you again. 

Jack pulled the stool over with his foot and sat — lower than he had to, level with you, taking himself out of the column of people standing over you tonight and telling you what you were — and waited until your eyes came up off the curtain and found him.

“There she is,” he said when your eyes found him. He turned your taped hand over under the light like there was still something to do with it. There wasn’t, he just wanted his hands on something of yours while he undid what the room had done. “Look at me. Nothing good on the curtain.” 

“How’s school treating you then, doll?” he asked, aiming for offhand and not steering you off whatever Bennet had knocked loose.

“Hard,” you said, but a small smile had crawled up your lips. “But I like it.” Your shoulders came up loosely.

“Yeah?” He kept his thumb moving over the back of your hand slowly, like he could press the bright thing back up to the surface where it belonged. “I think you’ll be good at it.” 

It was such a strange feeling, Jack distantly noticed, to feel this utter conviction. He was rarely sure of anything good anymore. Sure of plenty else; sure within ten seconds of a bad rhythm which way the night was going to break, sure of which of the kids wheeled in at 2 am he’d see again and which he wouldn’t, a grim accumulated certainty that had nothing in it he’d ever wanted to be right about.

The job had made him an expert on the downslope of things. He could read the exact moment a body wanted to quit better than he could read most of what people said to his face. And here you were, and he was so sure of the other direction, and he felt the same weight of it behind his sternum, except it had swung and pointed at something good for once. You were going to be excellent at this. 

It bothered him a little, how much he wanted to be there to see it, whoever you were going to be once you stopped washing up on his floor on the worst nights of your week. He’d known you, what, a handful of shifts as a frequent flyer, a bit, a name his eyes unconsciously caught on. He had no business feeling certain of anything about you, and he was, and he’d let himself feel it. 

Your eyes found him properly again. “Liar.”

He huffed out a short laugh. “Tell you what. You finish that program, you get through all that mess where they try to drown you.” His thumb smoothed over the tape. “Then you come find me here and we’ll see if we can get you here with me on nights. Clearly you’re at your finest then.” 

It was maybe something silly to say, and Gloria may have his head for it. He had no actual standing to say anything like it, even though you’d never remember it. He knew better; hope was a controlled substance in his field and he was stingy with it on purpose, because he’d seen the withdrawal.

But God, he’d love to see the part of you he could only catch glimpses of through the wreck like a light under the door. He’d love to be the one who taught you which arrogance to keep and which to let the job take away. He’d love, plainly and without anywhere to put it, to watch you become who you’d just told him you were going to be. 

It was a lot of loving for a girl who’d been in his department and wouldn’t recall his face or a word of this by tomorrow morning. He was getting sentimental, or old, or both; the years stacked up behind his eyes until he started mistaking everything for a second chance at something. 

Your lips moved. “So I can patch girls up like myself?” 

“Nah.” He kept looking at your hand. “You can patch up old bastards like me, too.” Then, he pointed his index finger of his free hand at you, mock-stern. “Gotta make sure you’re not at point three BAC, though. Will have to do that work to get you working with me.”

“Mm.” Your eyes flickered up to the ceiling, weighing it with the enormous gravity of the very drunk as though he’d posed a very real proposition to you. “Okay. For you, I’d stop.”

“For me?” he repeated, mostly to buy himself a second.

“Mm-hm.” You turned your face to him and said it with such ease, no glance away to leave yourself an exit. “You’re worth not drinkin’ over.”

Your words went in clean, the way the best and worst things do, under the ribs where he kept nothing armored because nobody ever aimed there. Jack felt the back of his neck go warm and was abruptly, intensely grateful for the light that wouldn’t display it. 

Jack huffed, having to look away at the floor then. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all year, and you’re not gonna remember it. Hell of a thing.” 

When he made himself look back up, you’d tipped your face into the pillow, watching him from the side with your eyes gone soft and heavy, the smile arriving unguarded across your mouth. The split tugged one corner of it, that small wince folded right into the sweetness, and you seemed to not feel it. 

He had the sudden, idiotic wish to have met you on a night you’d remember. To have perhaps caught you when you fell at the bar, to have been the stranger whose arm happened to be there, not the doctor it eventually routed you to. Perhaps he could’ve been a man in your night instead of a stop in it.

He shook his head. “You’re trouble, you know that, right? Saying all these nice things. What’s a man supposed to do with that?” 

He’d have liked to have been remembered, was the bottom of it. By you specifically. He’d spent decades being the man people were grateful to and glad to forget.

“What’s your name, Doctor Abbot?” you asked, drowsy.

He looked down at his badge, then back up at you. “Take a wild guess?” Then, he added, “You never looked at my badge?” 

“Sorry. Didn’t read.” 

“Don’t apologize to me. It’s Jack.”

Jack was doing his usual rounds this Friday, on a rush from a chest pain in two that turned out to be a panic attack and a kid in five who’d put a kitchen knife through the meat of his own palm trying to halve a frozen bagel when Ellis caught him by the elbow at the board.

“Heads up, Abbot,” she said, grinning. She nodded toward triage, toward the doors. “Bed three. Your, uh—” The grin tipped over, delighted with itself. “Girlfriend’s got a boyfriend.” 

It was a running thing now. Somewhere around the fourth or fifth time you’d washed up on his shift the staff had started on it — your frequent flyer, your stray, your girl’s back — and Jack had stopped bothering to deny it because that’d only feed it, and he’d learned not denying it had a way of starving the joke faster. 

He looked, and was immediately able to notice what you weren’t doing more than what you were; you weren’t grinning at the ceiling, weren’t doing that boneless sweet-relief thing. You were sitting up too straight on the bed, hands folded in your lap, and there was a guy fitted to the chair beside you with one arm slung along the back of yours and a hand resting on your knee like he’d put it there to mark the spot. He was saying something low to the side of your face, and you were nodding at it, and not looking at anybody.

Jack felt a muscle tick in his jaw, immediately not feeling anything nice about the situation. “I got it — you mind taking six for me? I’ll come in a couple minutes.” 

By the time he’d made it to you, he’d settled his face into something unbothered. You could read it, he’d realized at some point during your frequent visits, and that only meant he had to be on his better behavior around you. 

“Evening.” He pulled the curtain half-round behind him, glanced at the chart clipped to the foot of the bed, then at you. “What’d we do tonight?”

“She caught an elbow,” the guy answered. “Some asshole on the dance floor. It’s nothing — she’s fine. She’s just a lightweight, aren’t you — ” A little squeeze on your knee. “ — didn’t even really need to come in, but y’know. Better safe.” 

You weren’t a lightweight, he immediately wanted to correct. He’d seen you put away enough over the months to know your tolerance better than this guy apparently did; he knew the difference between the nights you were genuinely wrecked and the nights you came in clearer than you let on, and looking at you, tonight, you weren’t anywhere near the state implied. 

“You,” he said, tipping his chin in your direction. “Not him. Where’d it get you?” 

You lifted your hand up from your lap and touched your cheekbone, movement slow, and Jack stepped in and tipped your head up toward the light with two fingers under your chin, thumb resting just shy of the scrape. The skin had gone dark along the bone, tender, an elbow’s worth of it. Nothing that needed more than an ice and a night, but you were still holding still under his hand and not meeting his eyes, and that he didn’t like at all. 

“It’s okay,” you said. “Really. S’not even — ”

“Let me be the judge of that, sweetheart. Gettin’ paid for this.” His eyes flicked down to yours and caught, holding it there a second with a small question in the rise of a brow, before he went back to the bone, thumb tracing the edge of the bruise so light you barely felt it. A small frown pulled at the corners of his mouth at the sight. “Follow my finger. Eyes only.” 

You followed, pupils fine and equal. No concussion in it. 

“She’s fine, I told you,” the guy said from the chair, a little laugh under it like he was inviting Jack in on something. “Hardly. She bounces back.”

Jack clicked the penlight off and turned to the side. “Gonna need the room.”

“I’ll stay.” The hand went back to your knee. “I’m all good here.”

“Can’t clear a head strike with people in the room. You get it.” Jack tilted his head to the side, raising a shoulder. “Liability. Coffee machine’s down the hall. Give me two minutes with my patient.”

The easy smile on the guy’s lips went thin around the edges, looking for a thing to push against and not finding it. He stood up slow, making a show of it, squeezing your knee and letting you know he’ll be back in a minute, babe, a hand trailing your shoulder on the way past, all of it aimed less at you and more at Jack holding the curtain. Jack pressed his lips in a thin line as he met the guy’s eyes. 

The second the curtain closed behind him, a breath left you, tiny and involuntary, and your shoulders came down in the empty room. 

“Sorry, Dr. Abbot,” you murmured. “I keep being a mess at this place.” You took in a short, almost shaky breath. “Sorry.” 

“None of that,” he almost grumbled, penning your chart. “Your folks down here, sweetheart?” 

“No,” you said to your lap, picking the edge of the blanket. “Back home. A few states over.” You let out a laugh. “Just me out here. S’nice.” 

Jack forced a small smile, having to look at the ceiling while you looked down at your lap, shaking his head, more of an action for himself than for you. He pulled the stool over with his foot and sat, getting level with you. 

“What’s goin’ on with you, huh?” he asked quietly, making sure there was nothing sharp in his tone at all. “Honest. I like seeing you but not like this bruised up with a guy who talks for you.” His thumb found your wrist. “So talk to me. What’s going on?” 

“He’s fine,” you said. “Just likes being around.”

Jack tilted his head, dipping his head to meet your eyes that were still facing down. “Not the important part of the question, and you know it.” 

You sighed. “Sorry, Jack.”

“Quit it. The only thing I want from you tonight is some honesty, alright?” 

A corner of your lip kicked up, even though the dimness in your eyes held. “Your eyes look really pretty tonight.” 

“Heard that one before,” he drawled. “Had ‘em fifty years. Try a new one.” 

“Your neck’s going red,” you mumbled, fingers reaching up to press flat to the warm of his skin, right there below the jaw, like you just had to feel whether it was true.

Jack stilled. Your fingers were cold on his neck. He distantly registered his pulse was probably going under your fingertips, and you’d feel it if you held there a second longer. And then you caught yourself, hand snapping back to the blanket.

“Sorry. Sorry — I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have done that — ” you said, the words coming out in a taut string. 

“Easy,” he said, voice coming out rough. He swallowed. “Got me all flustered and now you’re gettin’ all shy?” 

You huffed a small laugh, your hand still fisted in the blanket where you’d snatched it back. “I’m not allowed to do that. I don’t think.” 

“Had no idea you knew how to behave,” he leaned a little back from the stool, crossing his arms. “Should I be worried about that guy out there?”

“Jealous, Doctor?” 

He rolled his eyes slightly, not responding. 

You sighed when you realized he wasn’t taking the bait. “He’s fine. He just likes being around.” 

He stood off the stool and reached for the discharge clipboard at the foot of the bed.

“Whatcha doing there?”

“My job.” He clicked the pen. “Clearing you. You’ve got no concussion. You’re not dying tonight.” He scrawled on the paper. “And I’m writing you a script for the bruise and a code for an Uber — ”

“No, no,” you said immediately. “Please don’t do that.” 

He raised his hand with the pen, palm open. “You never let me Uber you back when you’re alone. At least have this.” Your face scrunched up, and he could practically feel the guilt building in you. “Don’t need to use it now. Or ever. You can keep it for whenever.” He set the slip on your lap before you could push it back at him, the matter completely closed on his end. “Goes in your phone case. You can forget it exists until you need it.”

“You can’t keep handing me stuff — ”

“Department’s got a whole stack. You’re not special.” He capped the pen, though the corner of his mouth made it slightly visible that his words were false. “Don’t flatter yourself, doll.”

You looked down at the slip, your thumb worrying the edges of it. “I don’t like taking things.” 

“I noticed. A few hundred times now.” He tucked the pen back in his scrub pocket, and his voice came down a notch. “If it really makes you feel so bad, though, then maybe we can start taking care of ourselves so you don’t have to keep ending up here?”

Jack was in the middle of hand-off, Robby doing his thing before Robby left and did whatever the hell he did. They were at the board, Robby running down the floor. It was six-fifteen in the ugly hour, the in-between where the day shift was dragging itself toward the door and the night hadn’t started biting yet, the light through the ambulance doors gone gold and slanted and almost decent for once.

And then the doors slid, and you came through them. Jack’s attention peeled to you the second your shape entered the room, except this was wrong, he distantly registered. It was daylight and six in the evening and you were on your own two feet, upright and, assumedly, sober and walking in through the front like a person as opposed to a patient. You were wearing a jacket that swallowed you, and he assumed underneath it was shorts of some sort. He could see a stripe of navy cotton peeking from under the collar of your jacket as you adjusted a tote bag on your shoulder. 

You looked, frankly, like a completely different species from the one he scraped off bed four on weekends. The jacket was too big — his first thought was that it was a man’s, and his second thought, which he didn’t care for, was about whose — sleeves shoved up to your forearms, a stripe of soft navy cotton on the collar, and below it bare legs and shorts and sneakers that had likely never seen the inside of a club. Your hair was up and a little damp at the temple and your face was scrubbed clean.

You looked like somebody’s whole good day, he thought. You looked around around the waiting room with slightly widened eyes, a lost expression coating your features like you’d built up a lot of nerve to walk in here and had no idea what to do with it. 

“ — and the tox screen is still pending, so don’t let them,” Robby was saying. 

“Mhm,” Jack said, attention already halved. 

And Bennet, breezing past the triage desk with cheerful obliviousness, caught your figure and said, out loud, “Don’t tell me you’ve started day drinking. It’s barely past six, you gotta pace yourself — ” He let out a small laugh at his own joke, and kept walking, and didn’t see the way it landed. 

Your body stiffened, and you looked like a deer in headlights. Your mouth opened, some sort of flustered apology forming, he was sure. 

Jack let out a short groan, shaking his head. He set the tablet on the counter, already moving to cross the floor toward you. “Finish the hand-off with Shen. I gotta go deal with something.” 

Robby said something at his back — deal with what? — but Jack was already gone, crossing the floor slowly but somehow still eating the distance fast, and he watched you spot him coming and watched the relief crash over your face. Except you were sober now, in the daylight, and your whole face was going soft and grateful and just slightly wrecked at the sight of him.

He stopped a couple feet short of you, closer than a doctor, further than he stood to you at night. He wasn’t sure what to do with his hands — there was no chart to hold (he should’ve brought the tablet) or wrist to take or a penlight to shine — so he clasped them behind his back, and tilted his head to get a better look at you. 

“Hi,” you breathed.

“Hey,” he said, eyes doing a quick once-over to make sure you really didn’t have any new injuries.

You shifted the tote under his gaze and clutched whatever was in the bag a little tighter.

“Jack —” you started, stopped, like the name had come out wrong. “ — Dr. Abbot.” You winced, pinching your eyes shut for a second. “Jack?” you tried to say again, smaller, your eyes flicking up to check his face to check if you’d overstepped. “Sorry, I don’t know which — ”

“Jack’s great.” His mouth tugged up, despite himself. “You’ve called me a lot worse. Jack’s a step-up.” 

You let out a startled little laugh, your mouth coming over your mouth like you could catch it, as your body eased a degree. 

“I’m sorry — I don’t — God, this is so embarrassing. I’m sorry.” 

“You know how many times you’ve apologized to me? Quit it.” He rubbed a finger over his lips. “What’s got you here today, then?”

“Um, I came to see you.” He raised a brow, and you let out a short breath, then continued, “I might not remember a lot of it, but I remember you took really good care of me. And my friends who came in with me sometimes said you took really good care of me.” The words came out softer now, flowing, more earnest. “Even though I was a mess. Especially when. So I just wanted to —” You shrugged, smiling slightly. “ — come say thanks.”

Jack felt the complete warmth of you land somewhere he kept no armor. “It’s the job,” he said quickly, before he could stop himself. “You didn’t have to come down here for that. That’s — it’s what we do. Anybody on shift would’ve done the same.” 

Your expression faltered for a moment, and your eyes dropped to the tote at your side as your shoulders came in. You shook your head, a small motion, then smiled again. 

“Right. No — yeah, of course.” You chuckled. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make it a — I know it’s your job.” You shifted the bag, then shifted your weight from one foot to another. “Still, though. You did, so I wanted to.” 

Jack already wanted to take his words back, but he couldn’t, so he just shook his head. “Hey, you’re my problem, though. So thank you. For the thanks. We’re even.” 

Your shoulders eased and you nodded. “Well, I also have something for you.” You hauled a container out of your tote and held it out to him with both hands before you could chicken out. “It definitely doesn’t make up for all of the times you helped me.” You looked down at the container. “And I don’t know if you’re lactose intolerant, or have a peanut allergy or anything. I’m sorry if you do — I can — ”

“I’ve got a cast-iron everything. The cookies won’t kill me.” When you pushed the container further to him, he took it off your hands, eyes quickly scanning the round chocolate chip cookies, forcing a smile down. He swallowed whatever had lodged in his throat. 

“These are homemade?” He weighed the container in both hands, absurdly. You nodded. He swallowed whatever on earth had lodged in his throat at that.“Didn’t have to do all that for me.” 

“I wanted to,” you said quickly. “I wasn’t sure how the food here is, so thought it might be a nice change.” 

“Worse than you’re imagining,” he said, then tipped his head to the side as the memory crawled into his brain, uncalled for. “You’ve actually thrown a sandwich across the room.” 

Your palm came up to your mouth, and you let out a muffled, “I’m so sorry.” 

Jack snorted, shaking his head. Then, after a moment, he cleared his throat before it could get away from him. He looked back toward the board, then at you, knowing time was slipping and he’d have to go back to work and you’d have to go somewhere else, most likely. 

“You got finals or anything coming up soon?” he asked. 

Your lips curved down, and you nodded. “Yeah, in a couple weeks.” 

“Am I gonna be seeing you getting wheeled in wasted?” 

“I want to say no,” you said, smiling a little crooked. “I’m working on it. But I’ve said that before and ended up here. So.” You shrugged, lips jutting out like you were also unimpressed with yourself. “Ask me again in a couple weeks, I guess. I’d like it if you didn’t, though.” 

“Then quit doing the hard nights alone,” he said, leaning in just slightly. “You keep yourself off the stairs, and you can come bother us instead here with a textbook.” He raised a brow as he held your eyes. “We’ve got a family room that’s almost always empty at night.” 

“I couldn’t — ”

“Won’t be a bother. Trust me. You’d be silly not to use people’s help when they’ve clawed through the same exams to get the badge. You get stuck, somebody’ll know it cold.” He shrugged. “Half of ‘em are bored out of their minds some nights. You’d be doing us a favor.” 

You let out a breath, brows pinching together. “That’s — yeah.” You let out a short laugh, looking away for a second. “I’d like that. A lot. Thank you, really. As long as you don’t mind.”

“This is a teaching hospital, doll. I don’t mind, so long as you don’t mind the company. Might be nice for me, too.”

You smiled and for a moment, neither of you moved to end it. Then you shifted the tote back up your shoulder, and Jack felt the pull to keep you here one more second before he could stop himself. 

“Go home,” he said gruffly. “And I’ll be looking for you. So actually turn up, don’t make me look for nothing.” 

The whole sun of you came up at that, stunned, like you hadn’t expected to be looked for by anyone. Jack felt the ground go quietly out from under him, the vertigo of having reached for a person’s happiness on purpose and connected, of being, for once, the cause of a face doing that. He’d gotten so used to delivering news that took the light out that he’d forgotten it ran the other way, too.

“I’ll turn up. I promise.” 

He nodded, clearing his throat and turning for the board, bidding you a throaty goodbye. 

“She’s the girl that everyone on night talks about?” Robby asked immediately, falling into step beside him. 

Jack looked at him sideways, shaking his head. “You got something to say, too?”

“No,” Robby said, rubbing his palm at his chin like he was holding something in. “You like her or something?”

Jack halted for a second, pointing his index at Robby as he lowered his chin. “You shut up. She’s gonna be a nurse.” 

“Oh, yeah,” Robby laughed. “Looks like she’s gonna be your nurse, old man. You’ll need it soon enough.”

Thank god you did turn up. Jack had the sense that maybe he’d scared you off altogether by his offer, and the line he’d toed had two very alternate spectrums: you’d find a new hospital altogether to go to in the metropolitan area after your falls or poisonings, or you’d be here a lot more often, which he still wasn’t sure would’ve been often enough. 

The first time you came in, it was well past midnight and Jack had unfortunately not been able to catch you off the bat because he was in an emergency surgery. He’d walked out of it with his blood-stained surgical gown still on to be met with the sight of you by the nurse’s station, writing something down on the back of a discharge form for Lena, with another Tupperware laying on the table. He made the guess that you’d brought the whole floor something and were three minutes from having Lena eating out of your hand. 

You’d found a corner of his department and made yourself a small soft home in it inside of ten minutes, and you were leaning in, and Jack stood there for a moment with the bad night still ringing in his ears and felt something unclench in his chest by a fraction.

“ — no, but you gotta,” you were saying to Lena in earnest as Jack approached closer. “If you put the brown sugar in while the butter’s still hot, it’s just — it’s a different cookie.”

“You taking the recipe, Lena?” Jack asked then, fully submerging into the knot you’d made with his charge nurse. 

You turned to face him, a smile forming on your lips almost immediately, and then your eyes dropped over him, to the gown, the rust-brown stain dried dark across the front of it, the set of his shoulders. 

“I am,” Lena replied. “Gonna make these for the kids.” She punctuated her sentence by holding up one of the cookies. 

“Gonna make some for us, too, then?” Jack asked, raising a brow, and settled his elbows over the table. He turned his neck to face you properly, putting on his best smile.

Lena laughed shortly. “I don’t like you enough.” She pushed off the counter with some forms in hand. “Her, maybe. You can have whatever she leaves behind.” She shot you a look that was almost warm before she went and disappeared down the hall. 

“Could be you someday,” Jack said, tilting his head in the direction of Lena’s chair. 

You shook your head, then pushed the container in his hands. “I’ve got to graduate first. And pass pharm, which is currently — ” You patted your tote bag, textbooks heavy. “ — trying to kill me.”

Jack nodded toward the family room, placing the container on the table for a second beside him. “C’mon, then, doll. Let’s see what the pharm’s doing to you.”

“You don’t have to — ” Your eyes flicked down the gown again. “You just came out of surgery. You don’t have to help me study.”

“Actin’ like I’m the one who got the surgery,” Jack muttered, chuckling slightly. He was already peeling off the gown one-handed, balling it up to toss. He started walking, and you followed behind him. “C’mon. It’s pretty empty right now.” 

It’d been pleasant that night and the few after to have five to ten minute increments of sitting with you helping you study in between doing his actual job. He’d duck in between things — a lull after discharge, the dread stretch while he waited for a CT scan, the ten minutes a trauma took to roll in once the call came — and you’d be there in the family room with your stack of cards on the couch. He’d drop on the chair across you or the couch beside you and pick up wherever you’d left off like he hadn’t left at all. Then his pager would buzz and he’d be gone, and you’d still be there an hour later when he came back, and he’d sit back down, and both of you’d pretend this was a completely normal way to study.

It’d annoyed him the first night how badly the flashcards were failing you; he’d seen you stare at the words and your eyes would glaze and slide right off it like they were greased. You’d memorized or retained nothing. And then he’d said, half to himself, a story for the why to click, and he’d watched it lock in you. 

So he’d stopped quizzing you primarily off the cards and started telling you stories instead and you’d talk it back to him, reasoning out loud, getting there in the saying of it the way you never got there on the page. 

The nights stacked up. The first week, you’d sat at a table across from him. By the second, you’d migrated to the chair beside him. Your coffee, the one by the far end of the table, was right by his elbow. Lena started leaving a second cup at the station when she saw you come in, his and yours, and never commented.

You’d stopped apologizing for taking up his time somewhere in there. He noticed when you’d started saving him the worst looking cookie on purpose because he’d once told you he liked the ugly ones. He’d noticed when you learned the rhythm of his pages; you’d go quiet and just hand him the next card when his eyes drifted to the board through the window of the door, would have it ready when he came back, like you’d kept his place for him while he was off keeping someone alive. 

He noticed that he more than looked forward to it. Somewhere in the dead middle of a bad shift, his feet would take him toward the family room before his brain could catch up on the why of it all. An empty table on a night you didn’t come in sat wrong with him, a tiny disappointment he didn’t have anything in him to figure out why.

Sometimes, like now, you’d get distracted. Jack had learned. He’d walked into the family room to see you and Ellis folded into opposite ends of the couch, the flashcards abandoned in a fanned mess on the cushion between you, both of you mid-argument and enjoying yourselves too much.

“Poaching my study hall, Ellis?” he said, finally moving in. 

Ellis pointed one stern finger in your direction as she pulled herself off the couch. “Do the crossword, not the sudoku.” 

“She’s gonna make you a worse student,” Jack said to Ellis’s back.

“She’s making me a worse doctor,” Ellis said cheerfully, already at the door. “I’ve been here twenty minutes. I have patients.” She turned to you one final time. “Crossword. You’ll thank me later.” 

She gave Jack a knowing look on her way out, one he didn’t want to read too much into, and she was gone, the door swinging shut behind her in one slow plunge. 

You watched the door settle, and the entire wattage of your attention turned to him. He hadn’t gotten used to that, and he didn’t think he ever would. “Looks like I’ll never be a nurse.” 

“Don’t say things like that.” He came around and lowered himself onto the couch beside you. “What’re you stuck on? Hit me.”

Your palm met his upper arm, a small smack. 

He narrowed his eyes at you. “Hit me all you want. You’re not getting out of this.” 

“But Jaaaack,” you drawled, tipping your head back on the couch. “Not here to study today.”

His eyes flickered over to your form briefly as he gathered the cards and squared them. “Oh, no? What’re you here for then?”

“Dunno.” You pulled your knees up to the couch. “Didn’t wanna be at mine. And work was a lot and boring.” You turned to face him then, a small smile growing on your lips. “Thought I’d bother yours instead.” 

He set the squared deck on his knee. “Lucky me.”

He’d caught it, though, how you’d folded the sad thing in the middle of the sentence where it’d draw the least attention and moved on before it could sit. He let it move on, but he kept it. The image of you on a Tuesday, work behind you, and the choice you’d made was to drive to a hospital rather than go home to your own quiet. He was getting a picture of what that quiet looked like and learned that he didn’t like it very much.

“Work was boring, huh,” he said, though he couldn’t imagine what a fun day looked like as a waitress. “You working more?”

“Mm. Saturday girl quit, so now I’m on Saturdays, too.” You picked at your sock. “S’okay. Tips are good. I learned that old guys tip better when you call them ‘sir.’” 

He huffed. “Do they?”

“Huge. It’s a cheat code.” You tilted your head at him, smiling shyly. “You’d tip well, I think. You’d overcompensate.” 

“I’m not gonna sit here and get profiled by you in the only few minutes where I can catch my breath.” He held the card up, front to himself. “And I tip twenty-five percent like every functioning adult, thank you.”

You groaned. “Where can I get tipped more than that?” 

“You don’t want me to answer that.”

“I do. I do. I’m a broke student. Point me to the money — where should I apply?” You shifted on the couch, fully facing him now, the cards apparently abandoned for the moment. “C’mon. You’ve lived a hundred years. You’ve gotta know where I can make some quick cash.” 

“You’re sweet to me, doll,” he muttered, rolling his eyes. He set the cards down and looked at you, genuinely considering it now. He tried to ignore the fact that you likely had money troubles and tried to think about how he could actually help. “Define quick.” 

“Like — by next Thursday.” 

“Legally?”

“No.” 

“Legally, you can sell plasma. Twice a week, they pay you, you sit there with a juice box.” 

Your nose scrunched. “I don’t love needles in me sober.”

“You’re gonna be a nurse.”

“In other people. That’s totally different.” You waved it off. “Next. What else?”

“Sleep studies pay you to sleep. Egg donation pays a whole lot but it’s a whole process, not a Thursday deal.” He was ticking them off on his fingers, now fully committed. “Medical research’ll pay you to test things. Phase-one trials. You take an experimental drug and they watch you for side effects.”

“That’s the one.” You sat up. “How much?”

“No,” he said immediately, shaking his head. “Absolutely not. I bring you in here to keep you from blacking out. I’m not gonna have you volunteering to get poisoned for a quick four hundred bucks.” He pointed at you. “Maybe start laying on the ‘sir’ a little too thick from now on.” 

“Sir.” You tested on him directly, dropping your voice, leaning in an inch, lashes going slow. “Could you help me out, sir? Tips have been so slow, sir.” 

He turned his face away from you, now making himself look out the window. “I’m not entertaining this.” 

“Oh, but sir.” You’d fully abandoned the cards now, scooting closer, a hand under your chin, the picture of innocence. “I’m just a girl. A poor, hardworking girl trying to be a nurse. Don’t you want to help me out, sir?”

“I am trying.” He pulled up the flashcards. “If it’ll help, I’ll bring my SWAT buddies into your place and they can run up a tab.” He waved a card in front of your face, trying to get your attention back to it. “You do this, I’ll have eight cops eating mozzarella sticks in your section by Friday, overtipping ‘cause I saved their lives. Won’t even have to call ‘em sir.” 

“Right. No, that’s — ” You let out a little laugh too quickly, eyes widening at his words, and you took the card out of his hand mostly to have something to do with yours. “You don’t have to do that. Obviously. I was kidding — ” You batted the whole thing away with a shake of your head. “God. No. I’m okay, I promise. I was kidding.”

“I’m half-kidding,” he said, raising a brow. “I do know those guys. It’s no skin off me. But it’s okay.” 

He let the offer sit like that, and he saw you pinch your eyes shut. He watched the whole thing happen on your face, the small involuntary recoil you always had when anyone offered you real kindness. You were bad at it. For a girl who lied so charmingly about how much she drank and how her night went, you had absolutely no poker face for being cared about. You had not the first idea how to hide it.

He found it unbearably endearing.

You opened your eyes and looked a little caught, a little sheepish as your thumb worried the corner of the card.

“You’re a strange girl,” he mumbled, fond, before he could stop it. “You know that?”

“Shit — Jack,” you said through a small laugh, shaking your head. “I don’t — I’m — ” You pressed your lips together and your shoulders came up almost to your ears in a stiff shrug. “Is there anything I can do for you? I can’t just accept — all your help.” 

He snorted. “What help? I give you a study room and review flash cards.”

“Let me do something. I’m a good cleaner — ”

His head went back slightly, shaking his head. “You’re really not.”

“Okay,” you continued, rallying. “A dog? Guys like you always have dogs they don’t walk ‘cause of their hours. I can walk dogs.” 

“No dog.” He raised his hand when he saw your mouth move again, stopping you. “You pay me back by passing your boards. You can pay me back plenty if you end up working here, doing good at the job.”

You went quiet for a second. “That’s just me doing my own thing. That’s not real.”

“That’s real to me.” He shrugged, like he hadn’t just made your whole future the price of his kindness. “I get a good nurse out of it someday.” He pulled himself off the couch. “And now I gotta go. Floor’s not gonna run itself.”

“Boo,” you said, pulling the entire deck on your lap now. “You’re the worst study partner. You leave constantly.”

Tonight, Jack had come into the family room after leaving you for a longer stretch of time than usual — a multi-vehicle situation that had eaten two hours and most of his patience — and found the studying had long since lost.

You’d migrated to the couch at some point. The textbook was open face-down on the cushion beside you like a small tented roof, your flashcards fanned across the middle seat, and you were folded in the corner with your knees pulled up and cheek mashed into the worn armrest, fighting your eyes and losing completely. You’d dimmed the overhead lights, lighting the lamp in the corner, the one nobody used, throwing everything low and gold.

He paused in the doorway. “You awake?” 

“Mhm. Need a cat nap, though,” you murmured.

Jack snorted, shutting the door behind him as he walked closer to you. “How far’d you get?”

“Far enough.” Then, you added, “Cat nap.”

“Sayin’ it like I’m gonna not let you have one.” 

Your eye cracked open a sliver, tracked him, then fell shut again. “Feel like you’re gonna make me do more cards.”

He toed the leg of the coffee table aside, reached down, and started clearing your mess off the cushions. He lifted the textbook and shut it around the receipt you’d jammed as a bookmark; gathered the flashcards and squared them in his palm; capped the highlighter and pocketed it. You watched the cleanup through one half-open eye, not lifting a single finger, your cheek staying flat to the armrest. 

“There. No more cards. You’re done for tonight, doll.” 

“Hooray,” you mumbled. 

He nudged your socked foot where it had crept up across the cushion. “C’mon. Budge up a second. Don’t want you wrecking your neck sleeping like that.”

You made a small sound of protest but you went, peeling your cheek off the armrest with reluctance. There was a crease pressed into your skin where the fabric seam had been and your hair was flat on one side and mushed on the other. You blinked up at him, swaying where you sat, eyes glassy and unfocused in the gold lamplight.

He sank into the space he’d cleared, the cushion dipping, tipping the two of you a fraction into each other. That was all the invitation your body apparently needed, because you folded into him without a beat of thought — too tired to second-guess it, he supposed — your temple finding the warm of his shoulder, your whole side melting against his. You drew your knees up and tucked them against his thigh. Your hand came to rest on his chest, palm flat, fingers spreading once before they went still. You exhaled after a moment, long and slowly, and burrowed your nose into his neck. 

Jack stilled. 

“Ten minutes,” you murmured, the words barely coming out as words.

He took his arm off the back of the couch and settled it around your back, broad hand spanning between your shoulder blades and drawing you that last fraction deeper into him. You went boneless with it, a small contended hum slipping out of you. 

Because he couldn’t help himself, he tipped his head down a fraction to say into your hair, “Been doin’ really well, y’know that, sweetheart?” 

You hummed, the sound of it vibrating against his throat, your fingers curling the faintest bit in his scrubs. “Thanks, Jack.”

“Gonna be a good nurse,” he murmured, thumb moving once along your shoulder. 

“Gonna work with you,” you mumbled, three-quarters gone. “You said.”

“Mhm.”

“Holdin’ you to it.” 

“Yeah, I know you are.” The corner of his mouth flicked up where you couldn’t see it. “Go to sleep. You can hold me to it in ten minutes.” 

When you didn’t answer for a second, Jack realized you were already gone. You were warm and trusting at his side, your hand slack over his heart, your breath sinking deep and even into his neck. 

Jack let his head tip back against the couch, pinching his eyes shut at the feeling of you, at the feeling you caused. His hand spread slowly across your back, feeling the breath go through you — the proof of you — and he let his thumb find the curve of your shoulder and rest there, keeping his eyes shut. He sat with the enormous fact of you, the girl he’d not seen anyone circle back for, gone soft and so pliant in his arms like she’d always belonged there, and he stopped pretending he wasn’t already lost. 

The ten minutes came and went. He let them. He’d have given you the whole night, the whole shift, the whole of whatever this was turning into. There wasn’t one place on the earth worth standing up for, and he’d known it for weeks, and only now, with your breath slow against his throat, did he let himself sit all the way inside of the knowing.

Jack came out of the OR and signed — albeit distantly, mind running a meter a minute about nothing good — what needed signing and said the things he was meant to, feeling the familiar piece of his own damn soul rotting away in the place those things went to rot. He knew the spot by now. It’d been decades of depositing them into the same place, and the place didn’t fill, exactly, but it never emptied, either. It just sat there, getting heavier, like things usually do when you keep adding to it and never take anything out.

This one would sit a while. Jack had started to sense it around the first year in this job; the ones that stayed had a weight, and you knew on the table whether you were getting one of those or whether it’d wash off by morning. This one wouldn’t.

He stripped his gloves, and somebody said something he answered without hearing, and then his feet simply walked past the board, carrying him down the hall toward the one door on the whole floor that wouldn’t have somebody else’s catastrophe behind it. 

His hand was flat on the door. He was still wearing the gown, and he looked down and registered it too late. He should’ve changed it, left the thing in the dirty bin with the rest of what the shift had taken, the way he always did before he came to you, kept the two halves of the floor separate on purpose. 

He opened the door. You were on the couch, one leg tucked under you and the other foot on the floor and a half-empty cup of coffee on the table going cold. You’d been doing something on your phone, or nothing, when the door opened, and you looked up with the easy expectant expression on your face you always had before it dropped. He watched it melt.

“Hey,” you said, making your voice soft.

“Hey.” His voice came out rough, and he almost winced as he heard it himself. 

You set your phone face-down on the cushion and unfolded yourself from the couch and stood, crossing the room to close the gap between you. You stopped in front of him and looked up, your brow doing a small worried thing, and he let himself be looked at.

“Sit down,” you said. “You look like you’re gonna fall through the floor.”

He distantly registered you walking him to the chair — your hand finding his forearm, a light touch — and he let you. He folded into the chair like the strings of his own body had been cut, his elbows finding his knees and head dropping.

He heard you move, small domestic sounds of you filling a cup, the tap somewhere down the hall turning on then shutting off. Then your socks were back in his eyeline, toes pointed to him.

“Here.” You crouched, came into his lowered field of vision, and pressed a cup into his hands — water, cold — and folded his fingers around it when they were slow to close. “Drink it all.”

He drank because that was the path of least resistance. The water caught something he hadn’t registered was bone-dry. You took the empty cup out of his hands when he was done, setting it on the table behind you, and then he felt your hands find his shoulders.

He flinched just slightly, the smallest involuntary thing, for nobody touched him like that. Nobody put their hands on him that weren’t shaking one of his or needing something from him. You settled your thumbs into the iron base of his neck and pressed slowly, working the knots the night, the days, the weeks, and probably the year had wound there.

Your thumbs were unsure of themselves — you weren’t good at it, you weren’t trying to be, you were simply trying — and that was somehow worse because it got further to him than skill would have; there was the unpracticed earnestness to it, like you’d simply decided his shoulders had been holding too much and you wanted to put your hands there to take some of it down. 

He felt his head drop lower, coming forward on its own, the tension bleeding out of his neck by degrees under your hands. Your thumbs found a place at the top of his spine that had been clenched so long that it had stopped registering as pain, and you pressed there, and a fraction let go. He felt his shoulders drop the inch they’d been holding up all night, and an uneven breath went out of him.

You kept your hands moving, your thumbs working the meat of his shoulders through the cotton, occasionally finding a knot and leaning your weight into it until it gave. 

His head tipped a little forward after a stretch of time — chasing, or simply falling — and it found the soft of your stomach. His forehead rested against the front of you, where you stood close in the gap between his knees. He hadn’t intended for it, or maybe he had, somewhere under where the intention happened, his body had chosen to stop holding its own weight and give it to the nearest thing that felt like it’d take it. His eyes were already shut, and he stayed there, hands coming up on their own to rest at the sides of your waist. His fingers anchored into the fabric of your shirt.

“Shitty job sometimes,” he mumbled after a moment.

“Yeah,” you said softly above him. “I bet it is.” 

Your fingers had found his hair, threading through the curls. Then, you added quietly, “But you’re really good at it.” 

His fingers tightened a fraction at the fabric on your waist as he let out a short huff. 

“Didn’t help him,” he said finally, the words coming out muffled behind his own mouth. “Whatever I’m good at didn’t help him.” 

“Maybe not.” Your fingers scraped carefully at his scalp. “I think you were the best shot he had.”

He breathed you in, choosing to let the words rest in his skull for a while instead of fighting them. 

“I’m — ” He heard you take in a breath and felt it go through your whole body. “I’m really grateful I met you, Jack.”

For some reason, he waited for you to take it back. There was a primally fast thing in him that told him that you’d take the words back, and he’d have understood.

“You don’t have to say anything,” you added. “I just wanted you to know. While you’re here being all — ” Your thumb moved at the back of his neck, tender and so gentle. “ — Figured it was a decent time to tell you I’m glad you exist.” 

He took in a shaky breath against you, fingers tightening again. 

“Thank you, sweet girl,” he said, and it sounded like it’d been punched out of him. “Likewise. More than you know,” he finished, his arms wrapping around the rest of your waist now, pulling you in like he could just fold himself smaller if he held hard enough.

Your fingers kept moving slowly in his hair, your other hand coming around the back of his head to hold him there. He couldn’t think of the last time he’d let anybody do this; as far as he could remember, he’d decided in some wordless permanent way that he’d carry his own weight from then on, that it was cheaper, that needing somebody was a bill that came due eventually and he’d rather not run the tab. 

“You should sit,” he said after god knows how long without letting go. “Selfish, keepin’ you standing here.”

“It’s okay.”

He hummed, thumb moving once at your waist. “Two more minutes then.”

“Whatever you need, Jack,” you said, voice quiet. “I’m not going.”

Jack’s phone lit up on the arm of the couch at 10:52, face-down, buzzing itself a quarter-inch off the leather before he caught it. 

He’d been working his way, with grim completionist patience, through an iceberg video you’d sent him three days ago with the message ‘THIS rabbit hole i need you to fall down.’ You’d followed it up by telling him, ‘do Not skip tiers!!’ He hadn’t skipped tiers. He was, in fact, ninety minutes deep and only about two-thirds down the pyramid, somewhere in the tier where a young man with a serious voice was explaining internet folklore he couldn’t believe was real. 

He was fairly sure it’d been invented by some teenager, but Jack only shrugged, distantly wondering why on earth anyone would spend the labor — the diagrams, alone — hoaxing a thing this elaborate for an audience of complete strangers. He also wondered why on earth you were so interested in this. As quickly as the thought arrived, he realized that he was working down the iceberg himself.

Working down a thing you’d handed him felt adjacent to sitting next to you, and his apartment had become the sort of quiet that made adjacent worth ninety minutes of contemporary folklore. He’d sooner have chewed glass than admitted it out loud.

It was a good apartment and an unwitnessed one. He’d realized somewhere in the past year it was untouched by any hand but his. Every object was exactly where he’d last set it down, for there was no second person to nudge the remote three inches or leave a hair tie on the counter or ask why there was a mug in the sink and no bowl. His leg was off for the night, propped against the arm of the couch, the whole standing weight from his night shift to SWAT calls finally set down somewhere it was allowed to stay.

So, the phone going off, went off loud in the silence that had become almost-permanent. Your name lit across the screen, and the picture with it (one you’d set yourself, commandeering his phone to do it). It was already strange that it was a call. You never called; you texted in floods, six messages deep before he’d gotten to the first, but the ringing meant the thing had gotten past the point where typing it out would hold. 

He looked at your laughing face buzzing on his phone for a second too long, the cold little instinct, and thumbed it green.

“Hey,” he said. “You know it’s almost eleven on my night-off. This better be good.”

You stayed silent for a second, and he could hear your breath and the hollow of a call connected in a car, the cooling engine’s tick and automotive acoustics. 

“Hey,” you said finally, and Jack felt it wrongly. The back half of the word had gone soft and unsteady at the end.

Jack was already sitting up. “Hey, yourself,” he said. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” He heard you swallow quickly. “Sorry. God, this is so dumb. You — were you asleep?” 

“I was almost through with your iceberg, if you want the truth.” 

You made a sound that tried to be a laugh but didn’t clear the runway, breaking apart halfway. “You watched it?”

“Almost.” His fingers were drumming against his prosthetic leaning by the couch now. “Are you out?”

“I’m —” You paused, then hummed like you were debating. “I’m kind of near your place, actually?” Your voice rose toward the end, like you were embarrassed or questioning it all yourself. “I know. It’s creepy. But I think I need to — talk to you.” 

“Yeah?” He tried to keep his voice light, though he could already feel something in his body start racing, panicking. “You break something?”

“No. No. Promise. It’s nothing like that.”

For some reason, that put a deeper hook in him. If it wasn’t a wrist, an ankle, or your body doing something it shouldn’t, then it was the other kind, and he had no idea how to hold something like that. He wasn’t sure what he could do with a sprain he couldn’t ice.

“Okay — ”

“Wait,” you interrupted, voice pitching higher, and he could see you were psyching yourself out. “I could just say it now, honestly. It’d probably be easier over the phone.”

Jack’s eyes widened a fraction at that. His stomach suddenly felt cold. 

“No,” he said, voice rougher than he’d intended. “I won’t make it hard. Whatever you want to say, I promise. Just — not like this, okay? Come here.” 

He listened to you breathe as you weighed it and knew, with bone-deep certainty, that he wouldn’t like what you were going to say. “Okay,” you breathed. “I’ll be there in fifteen.” 

Jack opened the door after the first knock, unembarrassed of waiting. You’d come as you were, a coat thrown open over sleep clothes, good wool hanging loose over a thin cami with lace at the collar and soft shorts and bare legs down to the sneakers you hadn’t laced properly. The second fact that registered to Jack was that you’d been crying; there was a soft ruin around your eyes, the mascara long gone, wiped with a sleeve somewhere back in the evening. Your hair was up and losing, a claw clip hanging looser than he believed it was meant to.

“Hi,” you said, eyes raising to meet his. “Thanks for letting me come by.”

Jack felt his shoulders rise to his ears just slightly at the formality. He felt like a bucket of ice had been dropped upon him because somewhere in the past few weeks, you’d stopped apologizing to him as much, which had felt like a small victory he never told you he was counting. And here it was again, your stiff little courtesy, the door swung back shut on a thing that had been open. Jack didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all. 

“You don’t thank me for coming by,” he said gruffly, opening the door wider.

You came in, but only just. Before he could steer you to the warmth of his apartment, you were already reaching into the bag on your shoulder — hands shaking, he realized, with a fine tremor — and pulling out a folded piece of paper, creased hard down the middle and then again like you’d tried to bundle it up into a fist.

He unfolded it and smoothed out the edges, eyes looking for yours briefly, but you’d already looked away. Your bottom lip was between your teeth and you were looking at the ground. He forced himself to look down.

It was your pharmacology exam. Your cramped looping handwriting scattered the margins, a star drawn to one question because you starred everything. There was red pen all down the side and a number circled on the top. The number, Jack saw immediately, was not catastrophic, not a failure even. It was a low pass, the sort of grade that would’ve stung for Jack in his school days and evaporated by the next exam. He’d expected worse from the way you’d been shaking holding it. 

He looked back at you, confused more than anything. “Congratulations, you passed.” 

Your jaw tightened, and he could see your eyes go bright and wounded. “It’s a seventy-one.”

“That’s a pass.”

“Barely. Barely.” You took the paper out of his hands, folding it away like you couldn’t stand looking at it anymore. “And you helped me with this so much and I still couldn’t. I’m so tired of — ” You stopped, looking up at the ceiling as you pressed your lips flat. “It’s not about the test.”

“Okay.” He leaned back against the counter, giving you the whole floor of the room. “Talk, then.” 

You looked at him, and he watched you gather it all up, deciding, as it settled into your face, your mouth, whatever you’d come here to say.

“I don’t wanna waste your time anymore,” you said, tugging your bottom lip between your teeth as your eyes landed on the wall behind him. “I can’t — it’s not fair.” 

Jack felt the whole floor shift under him and felt his brows go up an inch as he tried to keep his face seem collected. 

“You’re you,” you continued. “You’ve got a whole life, a hard one, and I’ve been just — dumping mine on you. Making you sit there and hold my hand through studying and I’m — ” You shook your head, face going grim as you said the words. “It’s not fair to you. You’ve been carrying me for so long, and it’s not fair. None of this is yours to carry. I’m not yours to carry.” 

His nose scrunched just slightly, something like burning blooming at the center of his face. Something in his chest had cracked along the seam he had no idea was there, because he’d never had to look at it once straight on. It was easy to carry your own weight when there was no one asking to take some. It was easy to call solitude a principle when nobody had ever made the alternative real. And you had. You’d made it real for months, and here you were proposing — no, telling — to take it back, to hand him his loneliness again because of some measurement of fairness. 

The horror of how much Jack didn’t want it — how badly, how completely he didn’t want to go back to how it was before you — was the first honest look he’d taken at himself in longer than he could stand to count. 

“That so?” was all he could say, voice roughening as his brows narrowed at you. 

“Yes.” You mistook the roughness for agreement, or maybe you just needed to do so, because you kept going. “You don’t have to help me. The only thing I can think is you’re — you are a good person and I was there. And you help people, it’s what you do.” Your hand waved in the general direction of him as your voice cracked. “So help someone who’d actually make it worth it. Who won’t barely pass and keep getting too drunk and — ” You laughed slightly, and it was all wet and terrible, the sound. “I’m a bad use of you. You’re this — you are so much, Jack, and I’m a bad place to put it. So put it somewhere better.” 

Jack had to force a swallow when you ended your words with a sharp intake of breath, the pool behind your eyes slipping free slowly down your cheeks. You’d run out of anything that’d make you wipe it away now, and that undid him worse than the crying itself, that you were standing there and letting it fall, done hiding, wrung all the way out. 

“I’m sorry — ” he started.

“It’s okay,” you said immediately, shaking your head.

“For making you think that’s what it was,” he said, lowering his voice. “That’s on me, that you talked yourself into thinking this has been some sort of charity.” He cocked his head to the side then, wishing you’d look up at him. “But you’re gonna quit shaking your head for one minute, and hear the rest, ‘cause you got it wrong. All of it, backwards and upside down.”

He came off the counter and closed the space himself, until you had to lift your chin to keep his eyes. 

“I’m not a man who spends his nights on a stray out of the goodness of his heart. Ask anyone I work with what I’m like. I don’t have that lying around spare.” His jaw tightened. “So take the halo off. That’s not what this was.”

“Then why — ”

“You,” he said plainly, for he learned it cost him nothing to do so, and a lot if he didn’t. “I wouldn’t do this for just anyone. There’s nowhere else I want to put it.”

He watched everything in your face tighten at his words, the disbelief and reflex to argue all curdling underneath. 

“If you don’t want this.” Me. Me, he wanted to say. “Say it. I’ll leave you alone. You don’t owe me anything.”

“That’s not — ”

“But don’t act like it’s some favor for me.” He was closer now than he’d been. “Don’t tell me you’re leaving for my sake. That’s a lie.”

“It’s not — ”

“It’s a lie,” he said, voice going flat and so final, as he slowly nodded his head. He looked at you a second, lips coming between his teeth, then looked away as he felt something physical seize over his entire body.

Jack himself had to process the words as he said them, because he was only just realizing how much truth they held.

“You make it good.”

He forced himself to look back at you, and you had tilted your head now to look up at him, caught and still as stone, the arguing gone completely off your face now and replaced with something more frightened.

“Don’t — ” One of Jack’s shoulders came up in a half-hearted shrug. “You’re the one part of my day that doesn’t take anything out of me. Just — get that straight, sweetheart.” 

You were just looking up at him with your whole face undone, the tears gone still on it, as though his words had knocked your own clean out of you.

“I don’t know what to do with that,” you said quietly. “People don’t — that’s not a thing that happens to me, Jack. Being — ” Your sentence broke apart and your hand had come up and fisted loosely in front of his shirt without either of you deciding it should, holding on, holding him there. “I don’t know what to do with it.”

“Nothing.” His hand came up slowly and covered yours where it fisted in his shirt, holding it flat there against his chest. “It’s just true.”

You made a small, pained sound and dropped your forehead against his sternum, right where his hand held yours, and he felt the whole strung-tight weight of you gave at once and settled into him. He felt you breathe against his shirt at the same time he felt his own pulse going too fast on your knuckles; he wasn’t bothered enough to try and slow it, because there was no point now. You’d already found out. 

“Very grateful for you,” he murmured, his other hand pulled up to rest over the back of your skull. “Told you so earlier. Meant it more than you let yourself hear.”

You huffed against his shirt — half a sob, half a laugh, maybe the ruined cousin of both — and he felt it go through the cotton and land warm against his skin, felt your fingers uncurl a fraction from the fist they’d made then re-fist, like even now some part of you was checking he was still there to hold onto. 

Jack held still for it, same as you had in the family room for him. He was good at holding still, it was half the job, but this was a different kind — he supposed — where there was a plain animal willingness to be a wall for as long as you needed one and not move a muscle that might spook you out of it. 

He rested his chin at the top of your head, murmuring, “I don’t have to tutor you anymore, if that’ll help.” He swallowed, closing his eyes as he breathed in your faint perfume. “We can scrap the whole thing, if that’s what’s making you feel so bad.”

You stilled for a second, then made a small sound against him. 

Despite himself, despite it all, he let out a short chuckle. “S’okay. I’m the reason you got a seventy-one. You’re allowed to switch.” 

“You’re the reason it’s a seventy-one and not a thirty,” you said, and it came out muffled and immediate. You almost sounded cross, like you didn’t want the slander against him to stand even now.

After a moment against him, you added, “I don’t want to be just someone you help, I think. I don’t want to be somebody — I guess — that you’re just good to.”

When Jack hummed, you continued, “I don’t know what I wanna be instead. Just — a friend — or, I don’t know. Something that goes both ways.”

Jack’s chest swelled at the words. He felt that he’d have been anything you asked of him, simply because it had just become how it was. It was almost outrageous how, if you’d asked, he’d have handed it over, the whole rest of it, whatever you wanted the name to be, whatever box you needed him in.

A man his age was supposed to be past this. He was supposed to have calcified somewhere in the second decade of the job into something that didn’t reorganize himself around what someone he’d known properly only for the better part of the year had asked him.

“Consider it done,” he murmured, letting the word settle. Friend.

You breathed against him, and Jack felt himself want to remain exactly here and knew that he shouldn’t. He knew that the kind thing now was to give you somewhere to put your face that wasn’t his chest, some ordinary ground for you to set your feet back down on. 

“C’mon.” He got a hand on your shoulder and eased you off him gently, a slow, slow reclaiming of the eight inches of air between your body and his. He dipped his head to catch your eyes, which were pink-rimmed and swollen and doing their utter best to avoid his now that the worst was out of you. “Do you want me to order food?”

Your neck rolled back slightly as you met his eyes, caught slightly off-guard at the shift of tone. You blinked. “That was a lot, and now you’re asking about food?”

“It was a lot,” he agreed. He reached up and thumbed a smudge of leftover mascara from under your eye briskly, and you let him. “And now it’s done. So, food, and we can watch the stupid video you sent me before you head home.”

It had been six days since you showed up at his apartment, and Jack had embarrassingly counted every single one of them. You’d left his apartment somewhere past two with your eyes finally dry and a paper bag of his leftover Thai you’d protested and taken anyway, and he’d walked you down to your car and stood in the lot like some idiot in a movie until your taillights turned off his street, and then he’d gone back up to a quiet that felt, for the first time in years, like something had been in it.

Since then it had gone like it always had and nothing like it; you still turned up with flashcards and left a graveyard of half-drunk coffees on every surface. But he’d noticed how you started letting him sit closer now, let a compliment land without flinching off, and once, mid-story, had reached over and fixed his scrub top where it had folded under, casual as breathing. 

Friend was the word you’d settled on. Jack was thinking about that when Shen dropped into step beside Jack with a cup of fresh Dunkin sweating in his hand. 

“You know it’s not standard to let your girlfriend occupy the family room for three hours of your shift, right?” 

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Jack immediately clarified. It seemed more important to do now than it was earlier, when people only knew you when you came in as an emergency. Still, it felt wrong, like a key going in the wrong hole. “And you got a problem with it?” 

Shen lifted the coffee in surrender, unbothered. “You know we’ve grown to her. She and I do the Wordle every midnight.” Then, he spread one hand. “Administratively, she’s not staff. She’s not a patient. She’s not family of a patient. Which leaves the category I’d have to call —” He tilted his head, faux thoughtfulness. “ — Abbot’s girlfriend, and I don’t think that’s in the handbook.” 

“Try again,” Jack drawled, thumbing a form he wasn’t reading that didn’t need to be read. “She’s a nursing student getting hours of free tutoring off a board-certified attending. Put that in the handbook. Teaching hospital. I’m teaching.”

Shen shook his head, letting out a small laugh. “Alright. Alright. She’s not your girlfriend. Mind if I ask her out, then?” 

Jack snorted. “If you could only be so lucky.” 

“Clearly she has a type for attendings,” he pressed, grinning. “Or is it just the ones with gray hair?”

Jack looked at him sideways. “This is getting a bit weird, even for you.” 

“I’m happy for you, man. Even if you’re gonna make us all watch you not do anything about it for the next six months.”

“Mind your own damn business.”

“Sure,” he turned, lifting a hand over his shoulder as he went. “Close the blinds anyway. There’s a window on that door. Everyone can see her making you dumb.” 

Jack looked down the hall and set the form down before going there to close the blinds — telling himself it was for the window, for Shen’s real talk — and knowing, somewhere under that, that he was really just going to you. 

He could see you through the window in the door before he reached it, which was, he supposed, exactly Shen’s point. You had a textbook open in your lap and you were chewing the end of your highlighter, brow pulled in, mouthing something to yourself, working a card over your head. You’d pulled the sleeves of one of his old sweatshirts down to your hands, the one you’d swiped from his locker two weeks ago and never given back and that he’d never once asked for, because he’d found he didn’t want it back, found he liked seeing it swallow you.

You gave him a smile when he walked in. He reached up and tipped the blinds shut on the window with two fingers, the floor outside tipping away. 

“Why’d you close them?” you asked, slightly bored.

“Apparently the whole department’s been getting a show.”

You furrowed your brows then. “A show of what? Me failing?”

“Somethin’ like that.” He let it go at that, coming around and lowering himself onto the couch beside you, the cushion dipping and tipping you toward him a degree, what it always did that neither of you ever corrected. “How’s it going? Honest.”

“Honestly?” You blew out a breath, closing the highlighter. “I’d kill for a drink.”

“Oh?” Jack settled back against the couch, his arm coming up along the top of it behind you. “Telling that to the one man who’s seen what you look like at the bottom of the bottle.”

“Jaaaack,” you said, almost in a whine. “Let’s go to a bar.”

He snorted, dragging a hand down his face. “Now I’m wondering what’s pushing you toward the edge.”

He picked the flashcard you had set on the textbook, the one you’d been studying. He read the front of it without much intention — your handwriting was cramped and looping, a star drawn next to it — and turned over and checked the back. He did the same thing he always did, the story, the image; he’d done it a hundred times by now. He could do it half-asleep, and most nights he half was. 

You thought about it for a second, your bottom lip tugged between your teeth, then walked yourself to the answer. 

“Mhm. See. Good,” he murmured. He flipped the card to the back to check you, and you’d had it. Of course you’d had it, you’d had more of this than you ever gave yourself credit for. “Tell you what. Get the next three right, and I’ll get us a drink once your exams are done.” 

Your brows narrowed. “Bribe?”

“It’s an incentive.” He held up the next card, eyes on you. “Don’t think. Just answer me.” 

You did. One, then the next, then the one after. You were quicker now that there was something on the end of it, your lip caught between your teeth as you walked yourself there each time. He noticed you worked when there was something to earn. After all three, he hummed. “See. Good girl, there you go.” 

He felt you go still beside him, and his eyes flickered up to you to see your eyes dropping to your textbook. He stayed silent a second, eyes raking over you, your thumb running the worn edge of a card back and forth. 

Jack knew better than to point out how you being flustered was almost silly when he’d said the same words many times while taping you up or shining a penlight in your eyes. He let his arm stay where it was along the couch, hand not quite touching your shoulder, and watched the side of your face.

“You wanna do some more?” he said finally, voice coming out rougher. “Or are we done for the night?”

You held up a finger, as if telling him to wait.

“Okay, then,” he mumbled, leaning back further against the couch. “Take your time.”

After a second, he turned to say something dry to break the silence. You’d turned your head, too, and were closer than he initially realized, your eyes coming up off the card and finding his, near enough that whatever he had bubbling in his throat died there immediately. 

Jack hummed involuntarily. You closed the sound by pressing your mouth to his, the feeling of the plushness so very featherlight, there and barely there, the softest press. 

He went still as stone, every system in him locking at once. His hand was still along the back of the couch and his mouth hadn’t answered yours, not because he didn’t want to — God, he did — but because the entirety of him had gone still with the disbelief of it, with the you, here, choosing this — him — and the half-second of nothing stretched into a second, too damn long. 

He’d seized on you, the fact you’d nearly walked, had stood in his kitchen finding the kindest way to disappear, and here you were, closing the last of the distance yourself.

You pulled back like you’d touched a stove, a gasp leaving your mouth, replacing where his own had been. 

“Oh god.” Your hand flew up to your mouth, your eyes going wide before pinching shut completely. “I’m sorry — I’m so sorry, Jack. I read that so, so wrong. You’ve been so nice and I — fuck, I’m sorry.”

Jack made a pained sound that was lost somewhere in your ramble, at the sight of you snatching it back. Nothing had gone wrong. Jack knew you’d read nothing wrong, and that the only thing that had happened was that he’d been too slow, too stunned, too thirty-years-rusty to catch what had been handed to him in good reflex.

His hand came off the back of the couch and he caught your jaw, thumb on your chin as he pushed slightly against your skin. He was distantly aware that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so afraid about leaning in to kiss a woman, and went in to try and give you back the second he lost, mouth finding yours the exact way every bone in his body knew he should’ve the first time. 

You made a startled sound against him before the entirety of you melted. His mouth worked against yours, thoroughly, making sure not to fumble it twice. His thumb stayed on your chin, tilting your face the half-degree he wanted it, and when your lips parted on half a breath, his entire upper body leaned in to follow it, deepening it. 

It was you who moved first. Of course, it was you, always you. You followed it, the kiss pulling you up and forward, your knee coming over his thigh, and then you were settling over him. Jack let out the throatiest of a chuckle, still intent on keeping your mouth, as your hands slid from the front of his scrubs to his jaw. 

Jack’s hands caught yours on instinct — one at your waist, one at your hip — steadying you down to him, your hips still slightly in the air like you weren’t sure you could close the last of the distance, your weight held in the suspended air in the ache of almost, thighs braced on either side of his. 

Jack pulled back just enough to look at you, letting his head fall back against the back of the couch, dragging his eyes up the length of you poised over him. He blew out a short breath, the corners of his lips kicking up as his palm glided up and down on the side of your waist, catching onto your tank top on accident to show a sliver of skin at your lip — warm, soft, the band of your shorts sitting low — and he watched his own hand do it before he dragged his eyes back to your face.

“Nothing halfway with you, huh?” he said, the words practically coming out from his chest. His thumb rested against that bared sliver of you. “Climbing me at my work.”

You lowered your head, and your nose grazed against his. “You started it.”

“I did?”

“You closed the blinds.”

He let out a surprised laugh. “I can promise you I didn’t expect this when I did that.” 

Your lips ghosted over his for a second, and his chest swelled at the sight of you trying to tamp down the sweetest smile. “Problem?” 

“No.” The words came out immediately, because apparently somewhere in him, there was still something insatiable and teenage that had lurched up at the sight of you. “No. No problem.”

His hand spread flat and warm against the small of your back, fingers slipping under the hem of the top to your warm skin there, and he drew you down, finally, that last suspended inch collapsing as he settled your weight flush over him. 

He had to pinch his eyes shut a second, then open them again to take in the whole sight of you. His hand came up to your jaw. The light caught the loose hair at your temple, the bare line of your shoulder where the strap had slipped. Your mouth was full and flushed from his, parted slightly, your breath coming. The skin under his hand at your back was hot to the touch, and he spread his fingers wider against it just to feel more of it. 

You were trying not to smile. Your lip caught between your teeth, the corners pulling anyway. 

His finger perched against your jaw moved to your lips, dragging slowly across the lower one, parting it under the pad of his thumb. He watched it give, your breath warm against his skin. 

Your eyes flicked up to his as your lip closed around the first knuckle, your tongue hesitantly pressing flat against the pad, the wet heat of it catching him so completely off guard that the air went out of him in a rough exhale. His other hand fisted at the small of your back, turning over to gather the hem of your tank in his grip. 

“Oh.” His eyes had dropped to your mouth and fixed there, his jaw slack as his head cocked to the side. “Pretty.” 

His gaze was locked on the sight of his thumb disappearing past your lips, no hesitation in it, that same no-halfway boldness turned filthy and sweet all at once. The tired man in him went down all at once. 

His thumb dragged free, catching on your bottom lip and tugging it down before it slipped loose. His chest heaved harder now under the warm weight of you. 

“Where’d that come from?” he muttered gruffly, almost to himself, thumb pressing the slick of your own lip back against you. His palm moved to cradle your face, tapping your cheek softly once. “Can’t be doing things like that here, doll. I’m on call.” 

“Then don’t make it so easy.” Your lips brushed his thumb, then you moved down to press your mouth to the line of his jaw, the stubble catching your lips, then lower to the warm of his throat.

“You callin’ me easy?” he said through a chuckle, letting his head tip back. You scraped your teeth over the cord of his neck and felt the whole of him go tight underneath you, his fingers flexing hard into the bare skin of your back. 

“Alright.” His voice had dropped to stone. “You’ve had your fun.. No more of that,” he said, though made no move to stop you.

You peppered a line of pecks down his throat down to where his collar had started, your lips dragging over the jut of his collarbone through the thin cotton. He swallowed. One of your hands slid up to the back of your neck, fingers pushing into the soft gray at his nape, scratching light, and the other flattened over his chest, over the steady-then-not rhythm, fisting slow in the fabric just to feel him breathe wrong because of you.

You sat back an inch to look at him. His head was still tipped back against the couch, his throat bared where you’d left it momentarily pink and glossy, his eyes half-lidded. His hands had gone heavy and possessive at your hips, giving up pretending he wanted them anywhere else, you anywhere else.

You dragged your thumb over his bottom lip, watched it give, the same way he did to you. 

“Can I ask you something?” you asked, quietly, your hips settling more firmly into his lap. 

“Mm.” His hands spread wide, settling you down harder against him. “My social security number is — ”

You laughed. 

“Two-two-six — ”

“Jack — ” You swatted at his chest, the seriousness dissolving into something giddier. “I’m being serious. Stop.” 

“Okay, okay.” The corners of his mouth lifted up, and his hands squeezed slightly at your hips. He pulled his head up off the couch to meet your eyes properly. “Shoot. Doubt I could stop you.” 

“Are you seeing anyone?”

He let the question sit, humming. His thumbs moved idly at your hips, head tilting against the couch like the question required any real thought. “There’s a few women,” he said, lowering his voice as he looked at you, like he was letting you in on a secret. “There’s a nice lady who brings me fruit baskets.”

Your hand, on the flat of his chest, slid up slow to his throat and he kept talking like he didn’t notice.

“ — there’s this nurse on days who keeps leaving me her number at the station — ”

You leaned in and closed your teeth slightly on his earlobe. He let out a short laugh, one that was dragged out of him, his head tipped to give more of it to you without permission. 

“Alright. Okay,” he said as your nose dragged the line of his jaw. “Stop doin’ that. I don’t wanna explain teeth marks to the whole floor.” 

Your hips set firmer into his lap. “Jack,” you warned. “I can’t do this if you’re seeing fifty other women.” 

He sobered a degree, his thumb going still at your waist, his eyes coming up to actually hold yours. The joke drained out of his face as he realised the edge of seriousness you tried to tamp down, and he momentarily short-circuited at how it was even possible for you to wonder. 

“Hey.” His hand came up off your hip, pushed the hair back from your face and stayed there, cradling. “Until five minutes ago, there were zero women. Forget fifty.” 

Your only response to that was a smile and your cheek leaning further against his palm. He let his thumb move once across his cheekbone, watching the way your cheek turned into his hand. Your eyes drifted half-shut. There was a speck of dried highlighter ink on the side of your finger where it curled against his throat. The strap of your top had slid off your shoulder again; he looked at all of you and stopped bothering to pretend, even to himself, that he was looking at anything other than the only thing in the room he wanted.

“What about you? You seein’ anyone?” His thumb stayed where it was, but his voice had gone quieter. “‘Cause I’ve seen people bring you in. And I never liked one of ‘em.”

You huffed a small laugh, your nose grazing his. “Jealous, Doctor?” 

“Yeah.” He watched the laugh stall on your face at how easy he gave it up. “If there is, he should be worried. I’d like to take you on a nice date to change that.” 

“Ohhhh,” you drawled through a laugh. “There’s no one, but I won’t say no to the date.”

“Then you’ve got yourself one, doll.” He kissed you on it — short, sure, his hand still cradling your face — sealing the thing as the corner of his mouth caught yours before he pulled back. He let his forehead rest against yours for a second and breathed you in. 

Then, with a short groan, he tipped his head back off of yours. 

“I gotta get back out there.” His thumb was still moving at your jaw, clearly working against the very thing he was saying. “My work ethic’s going wrong and my residents might actually report me.” 

Then, his hands found your waist and he lifted you off, setting you off his lap and onto the cushion beside him where the entire thing had started. You landed with a small affronted sound, your hand fisting in his collar a beat longer before he had to let it go. 

You flopped back into the cushion where he’d deposited you, one hand pressed flat to your chest, the picture of wounded. “I guess it’s true what they say about old men. They use you. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.” 

He stood up and scrubbed his palm down his face like he could wipe the last ten minutes off it before he had to walk out and be a doctor again. He could still feel the heat sitting at the back of his neck and even though he’d tried to scrub your gloss off, he was sure there was a remnant somewhere the worst possible person would notice. 

“Yup, got exactly what I wanted. Thank you, ma’am.” His hand came down to rest at the top of your head and gave it a slow, condescending pat, ruffling the wreck of your hair worse than it already was. “I’m a terrible man. You’re welcome to stay here while I go be one somewhere else.” 

He made himself step back and snagged his pen off the table, the badge, the small armor of the job clipping back into place piece-by-piece. The whole time his eyes kept catching on you, sprawled and rumpled where he’d set you down, looking up at him like the night had gone exactly where it was supposed to. He’d seen this room a thousand nights. He’d never once not wanted to leave it. 

“Mm. Gotta go home. S’almost three,” you mumbled. “And you get off at seven.” 

“I do.”

“So.” You pushed yourself off the cushion, slow, gathering your hair back off your face and pushing up your strap, putting yourself back together piece by piece the same way he was, the night closing in on both ends. “I’ll go and let you be a doctor. You’ve been very neglectful.” 

“Don’t I know it,” he muttered. He watched you reach for your textbook, your highlighter, the flashcards, and sweep it all back into your bag, feeling the small stupid pull of not wanting the room to empty out. 

He stepped in before you finished, catching your jaw, tilting your face up to kiss you once more. You went still under it, the bag forgotten halfway zipped, your hand coming up to rest light on his chest. He pulled back an inch to look at you.

“Text me when you get home,” he said, thumb dragging along your jaw. 

You chuckled, brows pulling in. “It’s a ten minute drive.”

Three squad cars were angled badly out front because patrol had arrived first. Now there were barricades, news vans sniffing at the edges, uniforms pushing civilians back, radios talking over each other, and a command post being built out of wobbly folding tables. 

Usually, this was the part where everyone got grim. People knew that one bad word, one twitch, one wrong movement could turn a lobby full of frightened people into a massacre.

And then you arrived carrying two coffees and three boxes of pastries.

“Okay,” you said, stepping under the tape and handing two boxes to the nearest tech like you had just walked into an inconvenient staff meeting, “I brought croissants! If this goes horribly, at least we’d all have had a decent last meal.”

Three people turned and nobody laughed.

You looked around at the armoured vehicles, the blocked street, the negotiator phone being unpacked, the SWAT team moving into position across the road, and sighed. “Tough crowd.”

Your supervisor shot you a look. “Agent.”

“I know, I know.” You tucked the pastry bag under your arm and started shrugging into your vest. “Hostages, firearms, massive public safety issue. I’m taking it very seriously. I’m also saying you all probably haven’t eaten since six.”

“That’s not relevant.”

“It will be when I start making decisions with low blood sugar.”

That got half a smile out of one of the younger agents.

Good.

That was why you did it.

You weren’t careless. You understood what was happening behind those doors. You knew there were women and children inside lying on marble, trying not to cry. You knew someone had a gun in their hand.

But panic did not need more panic, and fear did not calm fear.

“Where’s my line?” you asked, clipping your radio into place.

The commander pointed toward the opposite building. “Fifth floor. SWAT sniper position has the best view into the front lobby. You can set up with them if you need eyes while you’re on the phone.”

“I do need eyes,” you said, nodding at him.

“Suspect one’s name is Eddie Marlow. Twenty-nine with prior for armed robbery. No confirmed fatalities today, but a guard took a round to the shoulder, still moving as of two minutes ago.”

You nodded, taking that in as you looked back at the bank.

“Right,” you said, almost too calmly. “So, normal Thursday.”

“Agent.”

“What?” You took a sip of coffee. “It’s Thursday.”

You took one last look at the bank, grabbed the phone, then crossed the street with two tactical agents shadowing you toward the building opposite.

—

Dex was stationed across the street on the fifth floor of an empty office building, flat behind his rifle with the blinds cut just enough for a sightline.That was where he belonged: above from the noise, above the mess. His scope was steady, breathing steady.

He could hear command in his ear. Entry team holding. Negotiation line was being established. Sniper one in position?

Dex didn’t answer until he needed to. “In position.”

The room behind him was dim and mostly empty, littered with grey carpet, abandoned desks, and a tactical gear set. His spotter murmured updates into comms as someone on the ground, a junior agent probably, dropped something metal. Sirens pulsed red and blue against the ceiling.

Then the door opened.

Dex didn’t look away from the scope at first.

People came in and out all the time during operations. Sometimes it was commanders, other times it was spotters or techs with updates, maybe agents carrying folders. Dex ignored them, usually.

That’s when you said,  “Oh. Hi.”

He knew that voice. His eyes lifted from the scope.

You stood in the doorway with a vest half-zipped over your blouse, a negotiator phone tucked under one arm, and a pastry box balanced against your hip like you had wandered into the wrong brunch and decided to make the best of it.

Your eyes brightened. “Special Agent Poindexter.”

His spotter glanced over. In that moment, Dex forgot how to be normal about his own name. “You know me?” 

Your smile widened.  The New York office was big, but not that big. “Your reputation precedes you.”

His spotter looked down at his clipboard as if it became very interesting all of a sudden.

Dex knew you, too, though not personally.  But he had seen you around the office forever. In elevators, at the coffee machine, walking through glass-walled conference rooms with files against your chest. You were always moving, always talking, always being pulled into conversations because people liked you.

Agents smiled when you passed and techs forgave you for stealing pens. Your supervisors pretended to be annoyed but really, they loved you. Even Ray Nadeem had spoken highly of you, said that his wife liked having you over for tea and that his kid liked you because you brought sweets to brunch. Dex had wanted to talk to you after that. So many people admired you, he just needed to see for himself, right?

He had stood in the same hallway as you, watching you laugh with a clerk from crisis response and thinking that he could say something. Anything. Nice work with the Port thing. Ray mentioned you. Are you training the new HRT recruits?

But there had never really been a clear reason to talk to you. And without a reason, there was no script. Without a script, there was only the blank space where courage was supposed to go. So Dex had never said anything.

“Is this the best view?” you asked.

Dex nodded. “Yes.”

“Can I?”

He shifted, even though there was barely enough space for two, which meant when you lowered yourself beside him, your knee pressed against his thigh and your shoulder brushed his arm. 

“Sorry,” you murmured.

Dex looked at the place your knee touched his, then at you. “It’s fine.”

You leaned toward the cut in the blinds, careful not to touch the rifle. Your cheek came close to his shoulder, close enough that he caught a whiff of fragrant coffee on your breath, sugar on your fingers, and city air clinging to your uniform. Dex decided not to think too much about that.

“Talk me through it,” you said.

He looked back into the scope. “Suspect one in the green jacket is Eddie Marlow. Right hand dominant, pacing near the teller counter.”

“Is he scared?”

“Agitated,” Dex corrected.

“Mm.”

Dex glanced at you. “Suspect two,” he continued, “with the red cap. He had a shotgun and had been sitting behind the manager’s desk.”

Your face changed, only slightly. “And suspect three?”

“Not visible. He was last seen by the west wall with hostages.”

You leaned in closer, trying to see through the narrow slice of the lobby. Your shoulder pressed more firmly into his arm as hip bumped his side. “Sorry,” you said again, absentmindedly.

“You’re not,” he said.

“No,” you admitted. “But I keep doing it cause’ it sounds right.”

His spotter made a tiny laugh, and Dex ignored him.

Finally, you opened the pastry box. The smell of butter and sugar swirled into the dusty room, absurd and warm. You pulled out a croissant like there were not three armed men across the street. 

His spotter stared. “Are you eating?”

You took a bite as the pastry cracked softly between your teeth. “I’m preparing.”

A few crumbs fell onto your vest. One landed on his sleeve. Both of you looked down at it. “Oh,” you said.

Before he could move, you reached over and brushed it away with your thumb. It was a tiny touch, almost nothing but your knuckle grazing the inside of his wrist.

Still, Dex’s fingers tightened once against the rifle.

Your gaze dropped to his hand, then rose back to his face. Your smile changed, smaller now. 

“Sorry,” you said, quieter. This time, it almost sounded sincere.

Dex didn’t know why, but his mouth had gone dry. “It’s fine.”

You held the pastry box toward him. “Croissant?”

“No.”

“You sure? You look like a plain pastry kind of guy.”

Dex tilted his head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Instead of answering, you only shrugged and took another bite. Dex noticed your vest was crooked because you had clearly zipped it in while walking. You looked entirely too kind for a sniper’s nest.

You settled closer again, eyes returning to the bank. “Eddie looks reasonable.”

“They’re criminals,” Dex scoffed, unimpressed. “When are they ever reasonable?” It was really just a line he repeated from his coworkers.

“Hey,” you joke-scolded, nudging his arm lightly with your shoulder. “We’re all people here.”

Dex didn’t look convinced. 

Downstairs, command crackled in your ears. “Negotiation line almost ready. Stand by.”

You exhaled once and set the half-eaten croissant carefully beside his gear bag like it belonged there. Then you wiped your fingers on a napkin and stood up, reached for the phone on the table in the middle of the room.

Before lifting the phone, you glanced at him. “ Poindexter?”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to need your eyes.”

For one second, he understood why people liked you. You made people feel wanted, needed. Then, briefly, he thought about telling you he already knew your voice. He already heard your laugh. He knew he had wanted to speak to you for months and never managed it because wanting was not the same as knowing how. 

Instead, he lowered himself back to the scope. “You have them.”

You smiled at him one last time as you picked up the phone and the line clicked alive. 

Pressed the receiver to your ear, one hand braced on the table, you said, “Hi, Eddie, I’m Special Agent—”

“I’m not talking to feds!” The shout cracked down the line loud enough that even the spotter looked up.

You didn’t flinch. You didn’t pull the phone away from your ear. You didn’t take offense to being screamed at by a man with a gun and a room full of innocent civilians.

You only nodded, like Eddie could see you.

“Okay,” you said. “That’s okay.”

“I said I’m not talking to you!”

“I heard you.”

“Then shut up!”

Dex’s jaw tightened.

Across the street, through the scope, Eddie Marlow was pacing so hard he almost tripped over his own foot. He could take him out so easily, Dex thought, but that wasn’t why he was here. 

Because if he did, the other two suspects would probably open fire. There would probably be a bloodbath. That was why you were holding the phone, not him. 

You leaned against the table like this was a normal phone call. 

“You sound really upset,” you said thoughtfully.

“No shit!”

“Yeah,” you chuckled. “Fair.”

Dex blinked. His spotter stared at you for half a second, then remembered his job and murmured into comms, “Negotiator has contact. Suspect one highly agitated, still engaged.”

Eddie was breathing hard into the phone and you let him. 

You were… patient. It was tender. You were letting this man be loud and terrified, and you weren’t punishing him for it. Dex had never understood that kind of kindness.

“Eddie,” you said, after the worst of his breathing settled, “what did you have for breakfast?”

Dex looked up from the scope. The spotter mouthed, What?

On the phone, Eddie went silent. “What?” he finally snapped.

“What did you have for breakfast?”

“What the fuck does that matter?”

“It might not,” you said. “I’m just trying to figure out if you’ve eaten today.”

“I’m in the middle of a fucking robbery.”

“I know. But you’re also a person with a body, and bodies make stupid decisions when they’re hungry.”

Dex’s mouth parted slightly. Oh, you were charming.

He understood what you were doing with that stupid, sweet little question, that was really a thread to his humanity. Just to calm him down, get him to think about something else other than the crime he was committing. 

“I had coffee,” Eddie muttered.

“Okay. Just coffee?”

“Yeah.”

“No food?”

“I don’t know. A cigarette.”

You winced faintly. “Eddie.”

“What?”

“That is a terrible breakfast.”

For one bizarre second, Dex’s spotter made a strangled noise into his fist. Even Eddie went quiet, confused out of his panic. “You judging me right now?” He asked.

“A little,” you admitted.

Dex almost smiled.

Then Eddie’s voice cracked back into anger. “You think this is funny? You think I’m stupid?”

“No.”

“You think I’m some junkie idiot with a gun?”

“No, Eddie.”

“You don’t know me!”

“You’re right,” you said. “I don’t.”

That stopped him again. Then, you lowered your voice. “But I know you don’t really want to kill anyone, do you now?”

Through the scope, Dex saw that Eddie’s pacing has slowed down. It… worked.  “You don’t know what I want,” Eddie said, smaller this time.

“No,” you said. “But you fired into the ceiling.”

“It was a warning.”

“I know.”

“I had to.”

“Okay.”

“I had to make them listen.”

“I hear you.”

Dex’s throat tightened. I hear you.

It was such a simple thing, and yet it sounded so easy coming out of your mouth. It was as if you were giving him a blanket, as if you were lowering yourself beside him on the floor instead of standing over them with a clipboard and a gun.

He wondered, suddenly, what it would be like to have your voice turned on him like that. And not your jokes or bright comments you tossed across rooms full of coworkers. This voice. 

Dex wanted it so badly it almost made him angry.

The thought hit him hard enough that his finger twitched beside the rifle. He forced his eye back to the scope.

Eddie had stopped near the teller counter. His gun hung at his side now, loose in his hand.

“Green jacket has stopped pacing,” Dex said, “Weapon still in hand.”

The spotter relayed it immediately. “Suspect one stationary. Weapon lowered. Negotiator has him slowing down.”

You glanced at Dex and he held onto it like an idiot.

“Eddie,” you said, “the guard needs medical attention.”

“He’s fine.”

“Is he?”

“He’s moving.”

“That’s good,” you said. “Moving is good. But he’s bleeding, right?”

No answer.

“Eddie?”

“I didn’t shoot him.”

Your face changed into a compassionate frown. Dex hated how beautiful it looked on you.

“I know,” you said.

“He went for his gun. Rob panicked.”

The spotter’s head snapped down to his notes. “Second suspect possibly Rob. Pass to command.”

You didn’t react to the name. You didn’t make Eddie feel like he had made a mistake, or make him feel like he was snitching on his friends. You only said, “That must have scared you.”

Eddie laughed, but it came out ruined. “Scared me?”

“Yeah.”

All you got back was silence, longer his time. Dex watched Eddie through the scope and saw the second the your words got under his skin. His shoulders moved, head dipping. The gun lowered another inch.

You kept going, careful as hands over broken glass. “People make worse choices when they’re scared. That doesn’t mean you have to keep making them.”

“You don’t get it.”

“Then tell me.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Okay,” you said. “Then breathe with me for a second.”

Eddie scoffed. “Fuck you, lady.”

“C’mon, man,” you said mildly. “Just… breathe.”

Dex’s eyes flicked to your mouth before he could stop himself.

You smiled faintly, not because it was funny, exactly, but because you were giving Eddie somewhere to put the panic, somewhere that was not a trigger. “Breathe in,” you said.

“I’m not doing that.”

“That’s okay. I’m doing it anyway.”

Then you did. Slow inhale. Slow exhale. Once. Twice.

On the other end of the line, Eddie cursed under his breath. But after a few seconds, his breathing started following yours. Dex heard it. Without realising it, Dex started to follow it too.

There was something hypnotic about your calm. The whole room had frozen around it. Even the radios seemed quieter, like the world was leaning into your warmth. Then, through the phone, you heard someone crying out inside the bank.

Eddie snapped away from the phone. “Shut up! Shut the fuck up!”

Dex was back in the scope immediately. “Weapon coming up,” he said.

The spotter relayed fast. “Weapon rising. Suspect one agitated. Hold positions.”

Your hand lifted slightly, saying Wait.

Dex saw it and went still.

The shot was clean. Eddie was turned three-quarters away from the hostages, arm visible, head exposed. Dex knew exactly where the bullet would go. He knew what it would do. But your hand was up, so he waited.

“Eddie,” you said, firmer now.

No answer.

“Eddie, come back to me.”

The shouting on the other end cut off. 

Come back to me. Dex gripped the rifle harder.

“Eddie,” you repeated, softer. “Come back to me. Don’t follow the noise. Follow my voice.”

He heard ragged breath. Then Eddie, frustrated now, said, “She won’t stop crying.”

“They’re scared.”

“I didn’t want this.”

“I believe you.”

“I didn’t want it like this.”

“I know.”

And somehow, you made it sound true, even though you weren’t forgiving him. You were not excusing him. You were simply giving him one human corner to stand in before the whole day swallowed him.

Dex had seen people beg. He had seen people lie. He had seen people pray. He had never seen someone be talked back into themselves.

“Eddie,” you said, “I think you can still keep this from getting worse.”

“It’s already worse.”

“It is,” you said. “But worse has levels. We don’t have to go lower.”

Eddie breathed hard.

“The guard,” you continued. “If he dies in there, this gets so much harder for everyone.” You paused. “You included.”

Eddie made a sound that was almost a sob, except he swallowed it too fast. “I’m fucked anyway,” he whispered.

“Yeah,” you said, so gently it hurt. “But not as fucked as you could be.”

Dex’s spotter blinked at you, but you kept your eyes on the bank.

“You can make one good decision,” you said. “Just one. I’m not asking you to become a different person in the next thirty seconds. I’m asking you to help the guard.”

“If I open that door, they’ll shoot me.”

“No.”

“They will.”

“They won’t unless there’s an immediate threat.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m not going to lie to you, Eddie. There are guns outside.”

Dex’s teeth tightened again.

“There are snipers,” you said, glancing at the nest.

Dex blinked. What the hell were you doing?

“But they are there because people need to live,” you continued. “Not because anyone is excited to kill you.”

Eddie said nothing. You looked at Dex, knowing he wouldn’t hesitate to kill him if you gave the command. 

“So,” you said, “put the gun down. Tell Rob to stay back and let the guard out slowly. You help me keep everyone calm, and I promise no one shoots unless there is an immediate threat.”

“You promise?”

Dex heard it, and Eddie almost sounded like a child.

“I promise,” you said. “But you have to help me keep that promise true.”

Across the street, Eddie turned toward the guard.

“He’s looking at the guard,” Dex said.

The spotter relayed, “Suspect one looking toward injured guard. Possible compliance. Medical team stage.”

“That’s it,” you whispered. “That’s good, Eddie. Stay with me.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to die!”

“You’re not going to die, this isn’t The Town,” you said, gentle and absurd, “It’s real life, not a Ben Affleck movie.”

Eddie let out a broken little laugh.

Dex closed his eyes for half a second. Jesus Christ. You were going to ruin him.

“Okay,” Eddie said shakily.

Your hand tightened around the phone. “Okay?”

“Okay. I’ll send him out.”

The spotter straightened his posture. “Possible hostage release. Guard extraction. All units hold.”

Dex went fully still behind the rifle.

“Calm,” you told Eddie. “Nice and calm.”

Through the scope, Eddie moved like his bones had turned to water. He bent toward the guard, said something Dex couldn’t make out, then flinched when the guard recoiled from him.

“He’s helping the guard stand,” Dex said. “Left hand on guard’s arm. No immediate threat.” The spotter repeated every word.

You nodded as if Eddie could see you. “You’re doing good.”

The door opened. Every rifle outside seemed to hold their breath. Dex tracked Eddie’s face in the crack of the doorway. He was pale, wet-eyed, terrified. A criminal, yes. But for the first time that day, he was not beyond reach, be you had put your hand into all that fear and pulled until what was left of his humanity surfaced.

“Send him out,” you whispered. “Then step back.”

The guard stumbled forward and medical moved in.

“Guard is clear,” Dex said, though his own voice sounded distant to him. “Medical has him.”

The spotter echoed, “Guard clear. No shots fired.”

You exhaled, and it was so small nobody else would have noticed. But Dex did.

“Eddie?” you said into the phone.

He let out a shaking breath. “Yeah?”

“You did the right thing.”

“I’m still going to prison.”

“Probably,” you said.

Eddie gave another broken laugh, almost crying now.

“But not for murder,” you said. “Not today.”

Dex looked at you then, like he couldn’t help it. You were standing in a dusty room, and down an armed man like kindness was not weakness, And Dex wanted to be spoken to that way.

He wanted your patience, your belief that there was something worth saving even in people who had done unforgivable things. Especially in people who had done unforgivable things.

Then you breathed in and kept going. “Okay,” you said. “Now I’m going to want some of the people out too.”

Eddie went quiet.

You gentled your voice even more. “Women and children first, okay?”

“I can’t just—”

“I know.”

“Rob’s going to lose his shit.”

“I know, Eddie.”

“And David, he’s—” Eddie stopped abruptly, like he had realised he had given you another name, before continuing, “I have to talk to them.”

“That’s okay,” you said, looking at the spotter to relay the third suspect’s name. “Talk to Rob. Talk to David.

“They think I’m folding.”

“You’re not folding,” you said. “You’re thinking. You’re making sure everybody, including them, makes it out of there alive”

Dex watched Eddie through the scope. The man had backed away from the doors, one hand over his mouth, gun at his thigh. He looked less like a criminal now and more like a man finally realising the size of the hole he had dug.

You leaned closer to the phone. “I’m going to let you go for five minutes,” you said. “Okay?”

Eddie’s breathing hitched, as if you were his one and only life support right now. “You’re hanging up?”

“Just for five minutes. You need to talk to them, and I need to talk to my people.”

“What if—”

“I’ll call back,” you said. “And you’re going to pick up.”

Eddie said nothing.

“Eddie.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re going to pick up.” It wasn’t even a question anymore. 

After a while, you heard a small and frightened, “Okay.”

“Good,” you whispered. “We’re counting on you.”

Dex felt it like a hand around his throat. We’re counting on you.

You gave that trust to Eddie like a burden and a gift at the same time.

On the other end of the line, Eddie exhaled shakily. “Five minutes,” he said.

“Five minutes,” you promised.

Then the line clicked dead. Then, you glanced at Dex over the phone, and he felt the look land directly under his skin.

“You still with me, Agent Poindexter?” you asked, sighing. 

Oh, so this did take a toll on you, however much you try to hide it.

Dex lowered his eye back to the scope because looking at you was becoming a distraction.

“Yeah,” he said, voice rougher than he meant it to be. Then, because he couldn’t help it, he repeated your tone, “I’m with you.”

—

Afterward, everyone kept calling it a success.

The guard had gotten out. Three hostages followed twenty minutes later, two women and a little boy with one shoe missing, shaking so hard the paramedics had to guide them by the elbows. Eddie had picked up every time you called. He had argued with Rob, shouted at David, disappeared from the phone twice and come back both times breathing like he had run through a wildfire.

But he came back. By the fourth call, his voice had started to sound empty. By the sixth, he was crying and pretending he wasn’t. By the end, the remaining hostages came out with their hands over their heads, Eddie was the one who told Rob to put the shotgun down.

It wasn’t perfect, but it ended without another shot fired. So people congratulated you.

Your supervisor clapped a hand on your shoulder. The commander called it “excellent work.” Someone from crisis response said, “That was textbook,” even though it hadn’t felt textbook. It felt like pressing your palm to a cracked dam and smiling while water pushed through your fingers. You smiled anyway.

You accepted the praise and filled in the early notes. You let people tell you how good you were, how calm you were, how you had saved lives.

And for a while, you let yourself believe them, because the only injured person— the guard— had been alive when they loaded him into the ambulance.

He had been breathing. So it counted. It had to count.

Four hours later, you heard a knock on your office door.

You were halfway through typing your report when your supervisor stepped in with sweat beading on her forehead.

Your hands went still over the keyboard. “No,” you said.

She didn’t answer fast enough then, and that’s how you knew the guard had died at the hospital.

Not from the bullet, exactly. That was what she told you, as if the distinction mattered. It was a mix of vascular complication and too much blood loss, which in your head translated to: too much damage already done by the time you had convinced Eddie to open the door.

Still, you nodded like a professional. 

“Okay,” you said.

Your supervisor watched you carefully. “Agent.”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to be.”

But you smiled anyway, because if you didn’t smile, you were going to cry, and a full grown woman was not supposed to cry for doing her job well. “I’m fine,” you repeated.

She didn’t believe you, but she left anyway.

For a while, you just sat there. The HRT floor was quieter at night, reduced to the hum of printers, distant phones, the occasional murmur from junior agents walking past with a folder tucked under one arm. Your office smelled faintly like cold coffee.

Your report blinked on the screen, trying to finish it up: Guard extracted at approximately…

You stared at the sentence until it blurred. You pressed the heels of your hands against them hard, like you could shove the tears back where they belonged. Like grief was just a reflex you could discipline out of yourself.

What a fucking joke. You didn’t even know the guy!

Then, a knock came at the door.

You inhaled quickly, wiped under one eye with the side of your thumb, and sat up in your chair. “Come in.”

To your surprise, Dex opened the door.

He was out of the tactical gear now, in his dark quarter zip with his badge clipped at his belt, hair slightly mussed like he had dragged his hand through it too many times. He stood in the doorway awkwardly, too tall for a room this small.

“Special Agent Poindexter,” you said, and your voice came out almost normal.

“I wanted to check on you,” he said. It was a lie. Or not a lie exactly. This was just an excuse to hear your voice again.

In truth, he had rehearsed the sentence and hated every version of it. He had walked past your office twice before gathering enough nerve to knock.

You tried to smile and it almost worked. “Oh,” you said. “I’m okay.”

Dex looked at you, seeing your smile trembled at the corner.

His eyes dropped to your hands, clenched too tightly together on top of your desk. He knew the anatomy of a smile. Yours was not real. 

“You’re not,” he said.

Your smile stayed on because it had nowhere else to go. “I…” you started. Fuck. What was the point in lying? He had been there. He had seen the injury. He deserved to know, too, if he didn’t already. “The guard didn’t make it.”

Dex froze. “Oh.”

You nodded once, a bit too quickly. “Complications or something, I don’t know. They said a lot of words and I retained absolutely none of them.”

Your laugh came out wrong. Dex hated it immediately. He hated the way you were trying to make the room easier for him. Even now, with your eyes threatening to spill with tears and your mouth trying not to shake, you were still smoothing your own hurt down so he else would not have to feel awkward around it.

You looked exactly like you had on the phone with Eddie towards the end of the call. 

Dex stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He was in the room with you, mission accomplished. What was he supposed to do now? “You got him out alive.”

You nodded. “And it still didn’t matter.”

Dex only looked down, unsure of what to say.

You shook your head, smiling harder now, which was worse than crying. “I know. We saved the hostages. We de-escalated the situation.” Your voice thinned. “All things considered, it was a good outcome”

Dex didn’t know what to do with his hands. He wanted to touch you, though he didn’t know if that was the right call.  Maybe he should put a hand on your shoulder. But he didn’t know if that would help. He didn’t know if he was allowed. He didn’t know how to comfort you without making it strange.

So he stood there uselessly, watching you try not to fall apart.

“Poindexter, I…,” you said, quieter, “I talked to him for hours.”

Dex swallowed. “Dex.”

You blinked at him. “What?”

“My name.” His voice came out rough. “Call me Dex.”

For some reason, that was the thing that broke your smile, just enough for the tears to gather properly.

“Dex,” you repeated.

His name in your voice was catastrophic. He had wanted you to say it all day. He had it in that warm, coaxing tone you had given Eddie through the phone. Now you said it like you were standing at the edge of crying. And he would have given anything to fix it.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he admitted.

That surprised you, maybe because people usually tried to fill grief with more grief. But Dex only stood there, honest and stiff and visibly uncomfortable with his own helplessness.

“I don’t either,” you whispered, and your face fell for half a second. You turned it away immediately, pressing your fingers under your eyes. Your smile was still trying. Dex had never seen anything braver or more painful in his life.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“Do what?”

“Smile.”

For a second, you forgot you were an agent in her office, staring at a report waiting on the screen. There was only you, too full of grief to keep pretending it was professionalism.

The first tear slipped before you could stop it. You looked furious with yourself, so Dex did the only thing he could think of.

He pulled the chair from the corner of your office, sat down across from you, and stayed.

You looked down, laughing under your breath as another tear fell. “You’re accidentally very nice, Dex.”

He swallowed. It was probably the nicest thing anyone had ever said to him. “I’m not trying to be accidental.”

You laughed again, and this time, it sounded a little less ruined as Dex sat there, listening to your voice tremble and come back to itself, pretending he had only come to check on you. Pretending he hadn’t come because he wanted to hear you again.

That night, after he walked you to your car, Dex didn’t go home right away.

He wandered back into the building instead, into your supervisor’s office. Dex knew where the recordings were kept. He knew the system, he knew the labels, he knew exactly how to make it look like nothing had been touched. The hostage negotiation tape was logged under case number, time, location.  His hand hovered over it for one second, before he copied it into his private drive.

At home, he sat on the edge of his bed with his headphones on in the dark and listened to your voice, steady and impossibly kind.

“Eddie,” your recording voice said, gentle as a hand against a fevered forehead. “Come back to me.”

Dex closed his eyes, jaw tightening. His hands curled over his knees. He knew it was wrong. He knew normal people didn’t steal recordings just to hear a woman speak kindly before bed. But then your voice came again. “Come back to me, Eddie.”

And in the dark, with his breathing gone shallow, Dex let himself change it in his mind: Come back to me, Dex.

For the first time in days, he slept well.

—

Dex kept finding reasons to talk to you. 

At first, they were almost believable: A clarification for the report. A detail about Marlow’s prosecution. A question about the hostage order, even though he had heard every word of it through comms and then, later, through the stolen tape in his apartment.

Then the excuses got worse. Apparently, he found one of your pens near the fifth-floor sniper position and returned it. He asked whether you wanted a copy of the incident timeline, then stood awkwardly in your doorway while you told him you already had three. He brought you a file that belonged to someone else entirely.

You looked at the name on the tab, then up at him. “Dex,” you said carefully. “This is for Agent Alvarez.”

He tried to look confused, which failed. “Right.”

“Different floor,” you smiled. He hated how much he liked that you were kind enough to pretend not to notice.

For two weeks, he learned the sound of your laugh. He learned that you clicked your pen when you were thinking. He learned that you always forgot your coffee until it went cold, then drank it anyway. He told himself it was harmless. It was most definitely not. 

Then one morning, he showed up at your office holding a paper bag.

You looked up from your desk tiredly, hair a little loose around your face. “Morning.”

Dex stepped inside and the bag crinkled in his hand. “I got you breakfast.”

You blinked. “Oh.”

He placed the bag on your desk like it might explode. “A croissant,” he said.

Your mouth into a small smile. “You remembered.”

Of course he remembered the crumbs on your sleeves and the sugar on your thumb. He remembered everything about that day. “Yeah,” he said.

You opened the bag and looked inside, then back at him. “Thank you, Dex.”

He nodded too quickly. “You’re welcome.”

He should have left. This was the normal time to leave. Instead, he stood there in the doorway, hands empty now, heartbeat hard in his throat.

You tilted your head. “Was there something else?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

He paused, then turned back“Yes.”

Your eyebrows lifted, and Dex looked briefly furious with himself.

Then he said, all at once, “Do you want to have dinner with me?”

You went very still. He immediately wanted to die.

“Not professionally,” he added.

Your lips parted. Did he… make it worse?

“I mean, it can be professional if that makes it less—” he stopped himself now, sighing to himself, “No. I don’t want it to be professional. I’m asking you on a date.”

You stared at him. Dex stared back, rigid and  catastrophically earnest.

Then you looked down at the croissant, before looking back up at him. “Did you bring me a pastry as a bribe, Special Agent Poindexter?”

His face fell slightly, and you chuckled a little. “Dex,” you corrected gently.

His breath caught in itself.

You smiled properly then, almost merciful. “I’m just teasing.”

“I know that.”

“You don’t look like you know that.”

“I’m… processing.”

A sweetlaugh slipped out of you before you could stop it. There it was, the sound he had been trying to earn for two weeks. Dex’s shoulders loosened by a fraction.

You leaned back in your chair, still smiling, when you looked up at him through your lashes and said, “Okay.”

His face went blank. “Okay?”

“Yes, Dex. I’ll have dinner with you.”

For one second, he looked almost boyish and stunned. Little did you know, he had prepared for rejection, confusion, pity, maybe even HR involvement, but not you saying yes.

“Oh,” he said.

You bit back a smile. “That’s usually the desired outcome when you ask someone on a date.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“I think so.”

You laughed again and reached for the croissant.

“Tonight?” he asked, a little too fast.

You raised an eyebrow.

He swallowed. “Or another night.”

“Tonight is good.”

He nodded once, then turned like he was going to leave before either of you could ruin it.

“Dex?”

He stopped immediately.

You held up the croissant. “Thank you for breakfast.”

His eyes lowered, barely. “You’re welcome.” Then he left your office with his heartbeat still pounding.

Behind him, you took one bite of the croissant and smiled into your coffee. Absolutely terrible at flirting. Very good pastry, though.

—

The date was cute, even though it had every right to be awkward. You were both still in work clothes, making it feel less like a date at first and more like two agents walking down the street after a long day, badges tucked away.

When you sat down at the restaurant, you noticed that Dex looked… nervous. “You look like you’re about to be interrogated,” you chuckled.

“I’m not.”

“Dex.”

“Am I?” He looked concerned for a second, because he knew you handled interrogations sometimes.

That made you laugh, and his shoulders loosened slightly, like he had survived the first round of af a boxing match.

When the waiter came, you ordered first. Dex closed his menu immediately. “I’ll have that too.”

You blinked at him. “You don’t even know what I ordered.”

“I heard.”

“You can order something else.”

“I want what you’re having.”

You looked at him for a second, then smiled into your water glass, thinking that’s either very sweet or very concerning.

And then, it got easier. It didn’t go smooth, exactly. Dex answered questions like he was afraid there was a correct version and he had missed the briefing. But he listened like every word out of your mouth belonged carved in a stone tablet.

You told him about terrible tea on the HRT floor. He told you about a sniper qualification day where a rookie threw up behind a barricade. You laughed so hard you had to press your napkin to your mouth, and Dex looked at you like he had just learned a new way to breathe.

By the time the food came, the candle between you had burned golden. You took one bite, hummed happily, and pointed your fork at him. “Okay. Can I tell you a secret?”

Dex stilled, a little more alert. “…Yes.”

You leaned forward over the table. “I went to Quantico a year after you.”

His eyebrows drew together. “You did?”

“Mhm,” you grinned. “Our shooting instructor mentioned you all the time.”

Dex froze.

You sat back, delighted. “Oh my God. You didn’t know how much he loved you?”

“No.”

“Dex.” You put your fork down. “You made my life a living hell.”

“I wasn’t there.”

“You were spiritually there”

His lips parted slightly, offended and confused. “How?”

You dropped your voice into a gruff instructor impression. “‘Poindexter could do this with his eyes closed.’ ‘Poindexter cleared this drill ten seconds faster.’ ‘Poindexter didn’t need three tries.’ Poindexter this, Poindexter that.” You pointed at him. “Fuck, man.”

Dex stared at you before  the corner of his mouth lifted. “You were bad at shooting?”

You gasped. Was that… a joke? “I was not bad at shooting.”

“Sounds like you were.”

“I was excellent,” you swallowed your food, “I was just not you.”

His smile got worse, almost smug.

“Our instructor once said, and I quote, ‘Poindexter could hit this target in a blackout with a concussion.’”

Dex looked down at his plate, but you saw the smile pull at his mouth anyway.

“He was exaggerating,” he said.

You raised an eyebrow, unconvinced, before laughing. And there it was again — that look on his face. He didn’t know how to hide his adoration fast enough.

“You made my target practice time a living hell,” you admitted. “Agent Benjamin Poindexter. Destroyer of confidence. Patron saint of aiming at moving targets, apparently.”

The restaurant noise blurred around the two of you. The cutlery, conversation, music from the speakers, all of it bled into the background.

“But then I saw you in New York,” you continued. “and thought, oh. That’s him.”

Dex’s throat moved. “And?”

“And,” you said, gentler now, “I thought you looked lonely.”

Dex glanced down at the table, fingers curling once near his glass. For a second, you worried you had gone too far, too honest.

Then he said, very quietly, “I noticed you too.”

You lowered your eyes a little, suddenly shy in a way you had not expected to be. “Yeah?”

Dex nodded once. “Yeah,” he said. “Ray talked about you a lot after that Wall Street blackmail corruption case you both worked on together.”

Your face softened at the mention of him. “Ray’s lovely.”

Dex nodded.

“I get along with his wife better, actually,” you added, glancing back up. “Seema gave me a really good chole recipe and now we’re bonded forever.”

Dex looked faintly confused by that detail, but he listened anyway, like he was storing it somewhere important.

“She said I was doing the spices wrong,” you continued, your smile widening. “Which, to be fair, I was. That, and I handled the chickpea wrong, apparently.”

That got a small laugh out of him, eyes flicked from your mouth back to your eyes.

“I’ve… wanted to talk to you for a while,” he admitted.

Your smile faded into a furrow of your brows. “You have?”

Dex looked down at the table, at his untouched water glass, at the candle between you, anywhere that wasn’t your face. “I just never had reason.”

The words sat there, painfully honest. He didn’t even try to be charming in the way guys usually tried to be with you. Still, it was sincere enough that it made your heart ache.

The candle flickered between you, gold light catching along the sharp line of his cheekbone. For a second, Dex looked almost panicked by the silence, like he had accidentally handed you a confession and had no idea what you were going to do with it. So you reached across the table and touched your fingers lightly to his wrist.

“Well,” you said softly, “good thing you finally brought me a croissant.”

Dex looked at your fingers, then back at you. And this time, when he smiled, it was not an imitation of anything or anyone. 

—

You agreed to a second date. That was the easy part. The hard part was actually having one.

The next week turned into a mess before either of you could do anything about it. HRT got pulled into a fugitive barricade situation in Queens. Dex got sent out on a protection detail that lasted two days longer than expected. Your supervisor dumped three active threat assessments on your desk.

So the second date kept moving. Tuesday became Thursday. Thursday became Saturday. Saturday became, “I’m so sorry, Dex, I might actually die under this paperwork.”

Dex, who had appeared in your office doorway with his jacket still on, only looked at the files stacked across your desk and said, “That would be inconvenient.”

You stared at him before laughing so hard you dropped your pen.

After that, you started finding time to take your lunch together.  The first time, Dex showed up with two coffees and a paper bag from the place down the street.

“I was passing by,” he said.

“On the HRT floor?”

“Yes.”

You let him in, obviously. Then it kept happening.

Sometimes you ate in your office with the blinds half-closed and your shoes kicked off under the desk. Sometimes you found him in the break room already sitting at the corner table, pretending not to wait for you while leaving the chair beside him empty. Sometimes he brought you pizza because you had forgotten to eat again. Sometimes you brought him coffee because he drank his like punishment and you had made it your mission to introduce him to flavour.

So the second date never officially happened, but he knew your lunch order. Still, Dex kept appearing during your break, and you kept pulling the extra chair closer to your desk until eventually he was sitting beside you instead of across from you, both of you hunched over paper bags and plastic containers and case files like this was a normal blossoming relationship.

One afternoon, you were both sitting so close your chairs were practically conspiring. Dex had brought sandwiches and one pain au chocolate “in case,” which made you stare at him until his ears went faintly pink.

“You really know how to treat a girl, Dex.”

Dex looked down at his pastry. “I’m being practical.”

You laughed and bumped your shoulder into his.

He looked at you then, and the whole office seemed to shrink. You were close enough to see the little shift in his breathing, close enough to notice his pupils  drop to your mouth and shoot back up like he had been caught committing a federal offence.

“Oh,” you said, grinning. “That’s what’s happening.”

Dex went very still. “What?”

“You’re trying not to kiss me.”

“I’m not.”

“Dex.”

“I…” he trailed off. What was the point in lying anymore. “I’m trying not to do a lot of things.”

That startled a laugh out of you so badly you had to cover your mouth. And then he smiled.

You leaned closer, still laughing a little. “You can, you know.”

His face changed. All the awkwardness turned… stunned. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He leaned in like he was afraid you might disappear if he did it too quickly. One hand came up, careful against your cheek, and then his mouth was on yours, almost polite at first. It lasted maybe three seconds before you smiled into it, grabbed lightly at the front of his shirt, and kissed him properly.

Dex made a tiny sigh against your mouth.

The kiss went from sweet to a little desperate all at once, like both of you had been starving for weeks and then remembered you both kinda fell too much too quickly. His hand slid from your cheek to the side of your neck. Your chair squeaked as you shifted closer. His knee pressed between yours and you laughed into his mouth because the whole thing was ridiculous, hot, and happening in your office beside a half-eaten sandwich.

Dex pulled back just enough to breathe.

You both stared at each other, “Hi.”

He looked utterly ruined. “Hi.”

You laughed again, breathless, and his forehead dropped lightly against yours.

“This is not lunch,” he said.

“No,” you agreed, still holding his shirt. “It's not.”

—

The second date happened two months after the first.

By then, calling it a second date felt ridiculous. You had eaten lunch together a dozen times. He had kissed you in your office, in the stairwell, once against your car with his hand braced on the roof.

Dinner was a little awkward, still, because Dex would probably be a little awkward until the end of time, but sweet. He listened to you talk about your week like it was testimony under oath. He remembered tiny things you had said offhandedly weeks ago. So, when he took you home that night, it didn’t feel sudden.

He was sweet about it at first. His hands hovered before they touched, his mouth kept coming back to yours like he was checking he was still allowed, and every time, you sighed.

Then he got braver and messier.  His shirt was half-open, your hands were in his hair, and he had you pressed back against his pillows when he suddenly leaned close to your ear, voice serious, and said, “You like that, sweetheart? Tell me you’re mine. Tell me nobody else gets to make you feel this good.”

It might have been fine if it hadn’t come out of nowhere, weird and aggressive, zero to a hundred with absolutely no warning. Hell, your trousers weren’t even off yet. So what the fuck?

You went still. Dex went still too. There was a little pause before you slowly turned your head to look at him. “Dex.”

His eyes widened. “What?”

“What was that?”

His face fell. “Was it bad?”

“It was…” You pressed your lips together, trying not to laugh. “It was very committed.”

“Was it bad?” He insisted.

“I just…” you held back a chuckle, “Where did you learn that?”

Dex looked like he didn’t want to answer. He eventually did, though. “I… researched.”

You stared at him. He stared back, very embarrassed, and very clearly hoping the word researched would be enough of an explanation.

“You researched sex?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my God,” you whispered. “Dex.”

“I wanted to be prepared.”

“That sounded like it came from a man named Stepbrother Number Four.”

His ears actually went red. You covered your mouth, but the laugh escaped anyway.

Dex looked wounded, almost confused. “I thought it was appropriate.”

“It was… something.”

“It worked in the video.”

You stopped laughing and raised your eyebrows. “Video?”

His teeth locked. He had said too much.

Little did you know, a week earlier, Dex had gone through your phone in the office while you were in the bathroom.  He had found your browser history, your saved tabs, your filthy little private collection. He sent them to himself and deleted all evidence of it, of course. He wasn’t an amateur.

And then he had watched six hours of porn, studying it like a psychopath. It was not pleasure or fun. It was Dex in the dark, dead serious, analysing the links you saved, what you watched, even if some of them might have been an accidental click. He was taking notes in his head, trying to become a sex symbol you would want.

Now he was above you, flushed and mortified, realising that pornography was apparently not a good idea to imitate.

“Dex,” you said carefully. “Is this your first time?”

His whole body went tense under your finger. “Yes,” he admitted, barely a breath.

Your heart folded in on itself. “Oh, baby.”

His face tightened like your kindness hurt. “I should have told you.”

“Yeah,” you whispered. “You should’ve.”

“I didn’t want you to change your mind.”

You reached up and cupped his cheek. “C’mere.”

He hesitated, so you said it softer. “Come here, Dex.”

He came down to you, like your voice had hooked into his ribs and pulled. You kissed him again, slower this time. Your hands smoothed over his shoulders until he stopped waiting to be corrected.

“No more lines,” you murmured against his mouth.

As you wished, he stopped performing. He stopped trying to be the man from whatever awful tab he had studied too seriously. He touched you like himself instead: careful, intense, a little overwhelmed, listening to every sound you made as if it mattered more than anything. And fuck, that was better.

His mouth against your skin, your fingers in his hair, his name leaving you in sighed until he started to understand that was what you liked.

Afterward, he lay beside you in the dark, warm one arm tucked carefully around your waist like he was still asking permission to exist in your vicinity.

You brushed your thumb over his wrist. “Good job, pornstar,” you teased.

Dex groaned into your shoulder, but struggled to hide his smile at the praise. “Please don’t.”

“You were so brave.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

He went silent, arm tightened just a little. “No,” he admitted with his lips against your skin. “I could never.”

It was quite the opposite, actually. 

He would tell you that for years after. Sometimes with his words, sometimes with his hands, sometimes with the way he looked at you like you were the only fixed point in a world constantly trying to move away from him.

But you were a federal agent who argued and calmed down very bad men for a living. Of all people, you should have known better. You should have known good things rarely ever lasted.

—

Ten Years Later...

You came home with blood on the heel of one shoe and a headache lodged so deep behind your eye it felt like someone had driven a nail into your skull.

You weren’t a federal agent anymore. You hadn't been one for a very long time. There were still people who talked about what happened ten years ago like it had just been one bad year. One scandal, one chapter the Bureau could close with a press conference and a few resignations.

If you closed your eyes, you could see everything clearly. 

It happened three years after your started dating. Wilson Fisk in a white suit. FBI agents on his payroll. Dex told you, in confidence, that he had killed the remaining Albanians on the motorcade. You told him that you needed to go on a break because of that. You put in your annual leave to visit family because your boyfriend had just confessed to using lethal force after the enemy surrendered. Apparently, that’s why and when his spiral started, because when you came back, Ray Nadeem had a bullet in his head. Daredevil was framed and hunted while your boyfriend wore the suit. The Bulletin. The church. Father Lantom, who you didn’t know of but learned of later.

After that, faith in anything became difficult. Faith in institutions, faith in badges, faith in men who said they were protecting people while selling their souls behind closed doors.

So you left and built your own private security company from spite, savings, and sheer exhaustion.

You did everything from executive protection to crisis negotiation. Threat assessment, asset recovery, and corporate extraction. All very nice words for work that often felt like pulling teeth. And the thing about running your own company was that the job didn’t stop when you clocked out. 

You still had payroll to approve and contracts to review. Clients to placate, insurance renewals, background checks, three missed calls from your operations manager, and junior associate who had accidentally offended la Russian client’s nephew. Just yesterday, you had a driver who quit over text as you received invoice from an arms consultant that made you genuinely consider crime in a more administrative capacity.

Sure, sometimes less-than-ethical people hired you. Triads, Russians, Italians, Irish. But at least, unlike the bureau, they never pretended to be saints. Monsters, you had learned, were never the real danger. It was hypocrites.

Tonight, you had spent fourteen hours in the back room of a private club, brokering a deal between a triad member and a client too rich to be as stupid as he was. Everyone had been polite. Everyone had been armed. You had spent the whole night dragging grown men away from their own worst impulses one careful sentence at a time.

No one died, and the client paid double. By your current standards, that was almost a success.

Still, by the time you got home, you were so tired your body felt like it was running on borrowed time. Your blouse clung damply to your back and your feet were screaming. Your phone had not stopped buzzing once, and you had started fantasising about throwing it into the river.

You unlocked your front door in the dark.

You stepped inside your apartment, dropped your keys into the ceramic bowl by the door, and kicked it shut behind you with one exhausted foot.

You stood barefoot in your own hallway and sighed. 

You had listened to the radio the whole way home, a force of habit, really. Its just today, you found out that your ex-boyfriend had broken out of prison and tried to shoot Fisk at some gala.

Wow. Shocker.

Honestly, you would rather shut all of it out and go to bed. Thinking about him, about the man you had loved more than anything in the world, would only break your heart all over again.

Then you saw the paper bag on the kitchen table with your favourite bakery’s logo stamped neatly on the front. Your favourite croissant was inside.

For one long second, you only stared at it and a Post-it stuck to the paper bag, written in a familiar, careful handwriting: You haven’t eaten today.

You stared at the croissant for a long time, long enough for your phone to buzz itself toward death inside your bag.

You didn’t touch the paper bag, and not because you thought it was poisoned. Dex didn’t need poison. If Dex wanted you dead, which he almost certainly did not, you would already have a knife in your throat. 

You were thinking more about how Dex had been inside your apartment. It wasn’t surprising, unfortunately. You exhaled, using the name you reserved only when you were mad at him. “Jesus Christ, Benjamin.”

You moved through your own home like you were clearing a client’s building. First the hall closet. Then the bathroom, bedroom, ensuite, guest room, and kitchen. You checked under the bed because you weren’t stupid, behind the shower curtain just in case, and the balcony because Dex had always been incapable of using a normal door when being unhinged would do.

Nothing. 

Still, you found the kitchen window open three inches. You stood in front of it for a second, staring at the gap before you shut it and locked it. Then, you checked the lock twice.

Then, because you were tired and petty, you went around the apartment and did every other lock too. You even checked the little latch on the tiny laundry room window that no full-grown man should have been able to fit through, although Dex had a history of doing things no full-grown man should be able to do anyway. 

Eventually, you took the croissant out of the bag, held it for one long second, then put it back.

“No,” you told the empty kitchen. “I have standards.”

You made it exactly five minutes before you came back, tore off one angry bite, and ate it standing over the sink because he had been right. You haven’t had a proper meal today.

What were you going to do now? Call the cops? And say what? Hello, officer, my ex-boyfriend broke out of prison, tried to kill the mayor, apparently swung by my apartment, broke in, and left me a croissant because he noticed I skipped dinner. Yes, that Benjamin Poindexter. No, I am not currently being held hostage. Yes, I own a private security company. No, I don’t need medical attention. Yes, this is going to jeopardise my brand and I’ll probably never get a client ever again. 

Ha!

You threw the Post-it into the kitchen drawer then you went to bed.

You slept badly. Once, half-asleep, you thought you heard your name in the hallway, and your hand slid under the pillow before you remembered you had put the knife in the bedside drawer because apparently some part of you still believed in “healthy boundaries.”

By morning, you were still exhausted. Your alarm went off at six-thirty. You slapped it silent, lay there for ten seconds, then dragged yourself upright with the suffering of a woman who had payroll, a prison break, and a quarterly review of her employees all waiting for her before breakfast.

The city outside your window was grey and wet. New York rain hit the glass in thin lines. Your head still hurt. Your phone had nine missed calls, four news alerts, and one message from Seema that simply said: Please tell me you’re alive.

You typed back: Unfortunately.

Then came the three firm knocks on your door and you froze in the middle of tying your robe.

You moved to the door, silent on the wood floor, and checked the peephole to see an empty hallway.

You undid the locks one by one, slow enough to make a point to nobody, and opened the door with the chain still on.

There was no one there. Only a coffee cup sitting neatly on your doorstep. Beside it, a burner phone.

You stared. The coffee was from your favourite place. Extra shot with, because you had once mentioned a decade ago that nutmeg tasted like dust and cinnamon was better.

On the cup, in careful black marker, were three words: Can we talk?

You stared at it for so long the neighbour’s door opened at the end of the hall.

Mrs. Banerjee from 4B peered out, hair wrapped in a scarf, eyes immediately dropping to the coffee, then to the burner phone, then back to you.

“Morning, love,” she said.

“Morning.”

She looked at the cup again. “Secret admirer?”

You looked down at the burner phone. The screen lit up to one message.

Unknown Number: Please.

You closed your eyes and Mrs. Banerjee made a small, interested noise. You picked up the coffee and the phone. “Ex-boyfriend.”. 

—

You really did think about turning in the burner phone. Or maybe you should call your lawyer. You could call your operations manager, who was a former private investigator. You could walk it straight to 15th precinct, drop it on Brett’s desk, and say, congratulations, you have one prison escapee’s attempt at courtship. You even considered crushing it under your heel and leaving the pieces in the hallway like a very clear, very mature message: Get the fucking hint.

But because you were an idiot, because apparently ten years of therapy, firearms training, and owning a private security company had not cured you of Benjamin Poindexter, you did not crush it.

You brought it inside and locked the door.

Then you sat at your kitchen table, took the back off the phone, and found the tracker chip in under twelve seconds. Of fucking course the burner phone he left like some pathetic little peace offering was also a locator. Of course Dex could not simply say can we talk without also making sure he knew where you were when you ignored him. You should have expected nothing less of him. 

You held the tiny chip between your fingers, looked at it under the kitchen light, and felt both rage and nostalgia twist behind your ribs. “Romance really is dead,” you muttered.

When you dropped the chip into a glass of water, the phone buzzed in your hand almost immediately.

Dex: Did you take it out?

You stared and sent nothing back, shoving it into your bedside junk drawer beneath batteries, old keys, a tape measure, and three expired pepper sprays.Over the next week, Dex kept finding ways to leave things for you.

On Monday, you found a paper bag with your favourite chocolate bar between an invoice and a threateningly glossy real estate flyer. You stared down at it in the lobby while Mr. Kowalski from 2A walked past with his pug. “Breakfast?” he asked.

“I think so,” you said.

On Tuesday, there was a carton of chocolate milk waiting on your window sill. Outside. Four floors up.

You opened the curtains and nearly had a stroke.The carton was balanced there neatly, like New York wind, gravity, and basic human decency didn’t exist. 

You opened the window, grabbed it, and looked down at the street and found no sign of a psychopath in a tactical black suit making eye contact from across traffic like this was a part of the healing process. You drank it anyway, because you were angry, not wasteful.

On Wednesday, you found a book on your balcony.

That one actually pissed you off, and not because it was on your balcony. You had accepted, against your will, that Dex was apparently treating your apartment like a very emotional obstacle course. It pissed you off because it was a first edition of the stupid out-of-print novel you had complained about not being able to find for years. You had mentioned it once, maybe twice, back when you were still together, curled into the corner of his couch with your feet under his thigh and your hair wet from his shower.

There was a note tucked inside the front cover: I saw it and thought of you.

You looked at the note. Then at the sky. Then back at the note. “Are you kidding me?”

You brought the book inside. You didn’t read it. You put it on the kitchen counter, facedown.

On Thursday, there was a pastry box on your office desk.

Your actual locked private security office with cameras, keycards, a receptionist, two former Marines on the morning shift, and a very expensive alarm system you had installed.

You walked in at eight-fifteen, stopped dead in the doorway, and stared at the little white box sitting beside your keyboard.

Your assistant, who had followed you in talking about insurance renewals, went quiet. “Is that yours?” she asked.

“No.”

“Do we need to evacuate?”

You opened the box. Inside was one pain au chocolat and a folded napkin. You unfolded it: You forgot lunch yesterday.

You sighed, “no.”

You spent the next hour reviewing security footage and getting progressively more furious because, of course, there was nothing useful. There was nothing more than a camera flicker and a ten-second blind spot. The side door alarm that had been disabled and re-enabled so quickly it looked like a system error.

By Friday, you were in a mood so bad people started physically moving out of your way when you walked down the hall.

You went home late, half hoping there would be nothing and you were right. For once, your hallway was empty. Your mailbox was empty. Your windowsills were empty. Your balcony was empty. You checked all of them twice anyway, because apparently this was your life now. Nothing.

You made actual dinner out of spite: rice, protein, vegetables. You ate it standing in your kitchen because sitting down felt too intimate. Then you showered, changed into sleep shorts and an old quantico T-shirt, and tried not to think about the fact that you were kind of disappointed by the lack of gifts.  Which was humiliating.

You were a grown woman. You ran extractions for millionaires and negotiated with armed mob bosses before breakfast. You were not going to have feelings because your escaped-convict ex-boyfriend skipped one day of stalking.

Then, at eleven at night, you heard tapping against your window.

No one was there when you opened it, but there was an envelope stuck to the outside of the glass.

You stared at it, then walked over, opened the window, and peeled it off. Inside was a note: Why are you mad at me?

You blinked and read it again.

For a second, you genuinely thought you were hallucinating. Then you looked down to your fire escape below your window to see a bouquet of daisies, the ones he used to buy from the deli down the street because you said you always like them.

“Oh my God,” you whispered to the empty apartment. “He actually thinks I’m playing hard to get.”

You picked up the flowers. And, because you were a very reasonable person, you leaned out the window into the damp New York night and shouted, “DEX!”

Somewhere below, in the dark, a car alarm chirped. A dog barked. Someone yelled, “People are sleeping, lady!”

You ignored them. You held up the flowers like evidence at trial. “‘WHY AM I MAD AT YOU?’ IS THIS A FUCKING JOKE?!”

Nothing, for a moment. Then your burner phone buzzed from the drawer. You stormed over, yanked it open so hard the batteries rattled, and dug the phone out from under three dead pens.

Dex: Are they the wrong flowers?

You stared and slowly  sat down on the kitchen floor, because if you didn’t, you were going to throw the phone through a wall.

Because surely, surely, you had misread that. Surely the man you once had thought of as the love of your life, had not just asked if you were mad after he killed your mutual friend seven years ago.

The phone buzzed again.

Dex: I can get different ones.

You closed your eyes. For a moment, you thought you could feel your soul physically leave your body, look down at the situation, and decide it wanted no part in this, because he kept acting as if the issue was floral. As if this whole thing could be solved by a better bouquet and not, for example, an apology, a therapist, a complete understanding of privacy, and maybe not breaking into your apartment.

“Fuck,” you muttered. 

Whatever, you thought. I don’t give two shits

You very much gave two shits. You gave several shits. You gave a whole municipal waste facility’s worth of shits. 

In truth, you cared so much it made you furious. You had spent seven years telling yourself Benjamin Poindexter was not your problem anymore. Seven years building a life from the ruins he left behind. And now he was back in your life!

The phone buzzed again 

Dex: Please talk to me.

You stared at the screen before you stood up. “No,” you said aloud.

You were not doing this through a burner phone. You were not typing out a long, literate paragraph about boundaries to a man who had apparently decided stalking was a valid love language. You were not texting your fugitive ex-boyfriend the basics of human decency. If he wanted to talk, he could talk face to face.

And because you knew Dex better than anyone should know a man like Dex, you knew exactly how to make that happen without sending a single message.

You went to your bedroom and changed, pulling on jeans, boots, a warm coat, and the black scarf with hidden pockets because practicality was important, even during emotional breakdowns. You hid a knife in your sleeve and a compact pistol at your back.

You walked back into the kitchen and looked at the burner phone on the floor.

Dex: Are you there?

You picked it up, turned it over once in your hand, then dropped it into the fruit bowl like it deserved to be punished among the bananas.

“I’m going for a walk,” you said to your empty apartment, before grabbing your keys and left.

—

Central Park at midnight was, objectively, a stupid place to go. You knew that. You literally charged people money to know that.

You had written entire security briefs for clients with more cash than survival instinct, and half the advice boiled down to: do not go into isolated places at night to meet emotionally unstable violent criminals.

Still, there you were, walking through the park under a wet black sky, boots clicking against the pavement, the city humming behind the trees like it was pretending not to watch.

Every instinct you had spent the last seven years wanted to look back: look at the tree line, benches, shadows. Check reflection in puddles and windows across the street. But you didn’t look, because looking meant admitting you cared whether he was there.

The path curved ahead of you, slick with rain and scattered leaves. A few lamps burned gold through the mist. The park was not empty, exactly, but it felt emptied out. You could hear footsteps and cyclists passing too fast. You kept walking. Past the fountain. Past the little bridge, until you reached the bench.

It had the same black metal arms, same damp wooden slats, same stupid plaque dedicated to someone’s grandfather who had loved chess and spring mornings.

You and Dex had found this bench years ago after a date went wrong because work interrupted dinner. He had been stiff beside you, still in his work shirt, tie loosened. You had shared cold fries out of a paper bag. You stole one from his carton and he let you.

After that, the bench became yours in the stupid unofficial way things became yours when you were in love. After late shifts and bad days, arguments you both pretended were not arguments. You kissed here stolen under orange lamplight, hand hovering near your lower back before finally touching. 

You sat down anyway. The bench was wet. “Perfect,” you muttered. 

You crossed one leg over the other and leaned back, looking straight ahead.

For one minute, nothing happened. Then two. Then three.

You almost laughed. Maybe this was it. Maybe you had finally overestimated him. Maybe Dex had left the flowers, sent the texts, and vanished into the night.

Maybe you had dragged yourself into Central Park at midnight for nothing. Maybe you were the unwell one.

Then, a sound came from the trees behind you, barely anything at all.

You didn’t turn around. 

From the darkness behind the nearest tree, Benjamin Poindexter stepped out of the shadows. He looked older, bigger, still beautiful in that awful, inconvenient way that made you want to throw something at the sky.

Dex stopped a few feet away from the bench. For once, he didn’t come closer.

The mist clung to his shoulders. The lamplight caught the scar on his cheekbone. Then, he said, “Hi.”

Your mouth felt dry. “Hi,” you said back. Stupid. Pathetic. Human.

Dex looked at the empty space beside you, then at your face. “Can I sit?”

You almost laughed. Now he wanted permission? “Sure,” you said, voice flat. “Why start respecting boundaries now?”

He flinched like you’d rub salt in a wound. He sat anyway, carefully, as if the bench belonged to you now and he was only borrowing the edge of it. His thigh was too close to yours, so scooted away.

Dex noticed. His eyes dropped to the wet space you’d put between you, then lifted again.

For a while, neither of you said anything. The park filled the silence: dew ticking through leaves, traffic muttering.

Dex’s hands rested between his knees, visible, like he knew you were checking and armed.

“How are you?” he asked.

Of all the things he could have asked. Of all the impossible, cruel, stupid things.

How dare he ask like  this was a coffee run. Like seven years had not happened. Like he had not crawled back into your life through windows and burner phones and pastry boxes, leaving little proofs of memory everywhere, every single one saying, I still know you, I still know you, I still know you.

You smiled and it was fake, Dex could tell. 

“Oh,” you said brightly. “Great. Coping. The last seven years have been very normal and relaxing for me.”

Dex looked down.

You kept going because if you stopped, worse thingswould come out.

“I built a company. Paid taxes. I learned how to read insurance contracts without wanting to walk into traffic. Got eight hours of sleep, never. Oh, and I developed a fun little stress headache that lives behind my right eye.” You looked back at the path. “You know. Girl stuff.”

“That must have been hard,” he said quietly.

Your eyes closed. Fuck off. That one repetition you knew Dr. Mercer gave him that you told him was cute once. You opened your eyes and rolled them instead. “Don’t sound sad on my behalf.”

“I am sad.”

“That’s the fucking bare minimum. Catch up”

He took that, and you almost wished he wouldn’t. You almost wished he would snap back like you had always expected him to. 

But seven years had changed parts of him. Dex, whose anger had been manipulated, had sat down on the prison floor and trained himself not to succumb again. Then he said, “I saw your apartment.”

You looked at him. “What about it?”

He hesitated, and you could see him trying to choose the right words, which was almost funny, considering he had broken into your home without needing words at all.

“It’s.. modest,” he said.

For a second, your brain refused to process it. Then you turned toward him fully. “I’m sorry?”

Dex’s eyes flickered. “That came out wrong.”

“You’re insulting my apartment?”

““I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Oh, please.” You laughed once. “Go on, Bullseye. Tell me what the fugitive home inspector thinks.”

His face changed at the moniker. “I meant,” he said carefully, “you always talked about more.”

Your throat tightened before you could stop it.

Dex looked past you toward the path, like maybe the memory was sitting there too.

“You said you wanted a house in the suburbs,” he said. “You said you wanted no less than five bedrooms and big windows. A kitchen with the blue tiles you liked. A bathroom with a copper bathtub that would’ve been hard to clean.”

You had been half-asleep when you told him that. Years ago, your legs in his lap, his thumb moving over your ankle bone, the TV murmuring some terrible late-night movie neither of you were watching. You had been talking nonsense because you were tired and happy and safe. 

You swallowed the memory down hard. “I can’t afford more,” you said.

Dex frowned. “You can.” You owned a private security firm. You should be able to. Dex had seen the numbers you were bringing in. 

“You don’t know anything about my life anymore,” you said, and your voice cracked just enough to make you furious. 

His eyes stayed on you.

“I can’t because I… I pay two mortgages,” you said, words coming out quieter than you meant them to.

Dex’s brow furrowed.

“One for my apartment.” Your hand curled against your knee. “One for Seema.”

He stopped breathing for half a second.

You kept your eyes on the wet path because if you looked at him, you would see exactly when he understood, and you didn’t want him to see that. 

“And I…I’m putting Sami through college, too,” you added, proud of the boy he had become. “He’s going to be a structural engineer.”

You thought of visiting Seema once in a while. You folded bills into drawers and pretended it was nothing. Seema pretending she didn’t notice. You were just two women building something survivable out of the wreckage men left behind.

Dex stared at his hands. “Oh.” 

You smiled without looking at him. It hurt. “Yeah,” you whispered.

He looked smaller, though not physically. Dex still took up too much space. But he was folding inwards, like he had finally stepped on a loose floorboard and realised there was a whole room underneath the house.

“I didn’t know,” he said.

“No.”

“I would have—”

You turned to him then, anger saving you from the softer thing trying to crawl up your throat. “Don’t tell me what you would have done,” you said. “Don’t sit here and offer me imaginary help from prison like that does anything for anybody.”

Dex wanted to say the right things so desperately, you could tell. 

You held up a hand before he could speak, “Stop.”

He knew that voice, that tone. He had stolen it from evidence and slept to it in the dark.

You saw the moment it hit him, so you hardened again. “Why are you here?” you said. 

Dex looked at you for too long. “I wanted to see you.”

“Cut the shit,” You leaned closer, not because you wanted to be near him, you told yourself, but because you needed him to hear you. “Why are you here, Dex?”

Barely above a whisper, he said, “I wanted to see my girlfriend.”

For one second, you couldn't move. Girlfriend? 

You stared. “I’m not your girlfriend anymore.”

Dex looked genuinely confused, not pretending or  manipulating.

“We never broke up,” he said.

Your stomach turned. “Oh, fuck.”

“We didn’t.”

“We were on a break when you got arrested! I never visited you in prison, either, Dex!” you snapped. “Take the fucking hint.”

His face went sout first. Then his eyes changed, helplessness flashing there, quickly buried, but not quick enough. He was hurt, almost boyish in its disbelief, like it had never occurred to him that your absence was a hint at all.

“No, no,” he insisted, and you could almost see the story he made up in his head. “You didn’t visit because it wasn’t safe,” he said.

Your mouth opened slightly.

He kept going, voice gaining force desperately. “Because of the Bureau and your firm. Because if anyone saw you with me—”

“No.”

“I know why you didn’t visit,” he said “You had to protect yourself. I understood that.”

“No, Dex.”

“You needed time.”

You scoffed. “I needed more than time.”

“You were angry.”

“I was grieving.”

“You loved me.”

“Yes!” you snapped, and the word tore out of you so violently both of you went silent. It was the ugly, irredeemable truth. You swallowed, but it did nothing.

“Yes,” you repeated, smaller. “I loved you. I loved you so much I almost ruined my life because of it.”

His face broke open for half a second and You couldn’t look at him

“I sat outside that prison once, after you killed Nelson,” you said.

Dex let out a deep breath. 

You laughed under your breath, but it came out nearly ruined. “I drove there after work. I parked across the street. I was in my car for forty minutes like an insane person.”

“You came?” he whispered.

“I didn’t go in.” you said, finally looking at him. Your eyes burned so badly it made the lamps blur. “Because I knew if I walked inside, I was done. I knew if I saw you, if you looked at me, if you said my name in that voice, I would forgive things I had no business forgiving.”

Dex was breathing shallowly now.

Oh. 

He reached for you, too quickly, when he realized he was losing your attention. His fingers closed around your wrist and pulled, hard enough to hurt.

“Don’t,” he said.

For half a breath, you froze. Seven years ago, you might have let him. Seven years ago, you might have let him pull you close because he was hurting and Dex hurting had always made you stupid. You might have said his name. Might have touched his face. Might have coaxed him back to you gently, patiently, like he was one of your frightened men with a gun and a locked room full of hostages.

But you were not that girl anymore.  Your wrist turned, thumb pressing to a weak point. You twisted down, stepped in, and pivoted, making him release you.

His eyes flashed, more surprised than hurt. 

You caught his arm, moved behind his shoulder, and slid the knife from your sleeve with one clean motion, pressing the blade on the curve of his neck .

Dex went still, some part of him, some sick part of him, had been waiting seven years to be close enough for you to hurt him, if that was all you would ever give to him. 

Your mouth was near his ear. “Don’t,” you said, “grab me like that again.”

Dex swallowed. You felt it against the blade. His eyes were fixed forward, dark in the lamplight.

Even now, you could feel yourself trying to regulate the room. Keep him calm. Keep yourself calm. No sudden moves. Name the feeling. Give him a choice. Bring him back to his own.

You almost laughed. Once a hostage negotiator, always a hostage negotiator. Even when you were brokering arms deals most of the time now.

“I left you alone,” you said. “For seven years, I left you alone. That was the kindest thing I could do for both of us.”

“No,” he said. “It’s not.”

Your hand tightened around the knife. For a second, you couldn’t speak, because you knew what he meant. You had not given him closure. You had not given yourself closure either. You had simply walked out of the burning building and refused to look back in case he was still inside screaming.

He said your name, like he still had the right to use it. “You don’t want to kill me,” Dex said.

Your eyes burned so badly it made the park blur at the edges. You laughed once, but it came out broken. “Don’t be so sure.”

Dex didn’t flinch. He looked at the knife in your hand, then back at you, and his voice dropped.“If you wanted me dead,” he said, “I would already be dead.”

Fuck. Fuck.

Your heart broke again, and this time you almost heard it.

“Leave me alone,” you whispered. You stepped closer, teeth clenched, tears hot on your face. “Leave me alone, or I’ll fucking kill you.”

Then you flipped the knife in your hand, turned the butt of it toward him, and struck him hard under the temple to knock him out.

You stood over him for one second too long, breathing like an animal, waiting for yourself to regret it. You did, but you left anyway.

When Dex woke up, you were gone.

—

For the next couple of months, Dex actually left you alone. Which was good, right? You had to remind yourself that you did tell him to leave you alone or you’d kill him. It was a very clear instruction, a very reasonable boundary. It was very mature of him to respect it.

So why did it make you feel insane? 

You told yourself this was healthy. You told yourself that, actually, most women would be thrilled if their escaped-convict ex-boyfriend respected a boundary after years of moral devastation. But apparently, you were not most women. Apparently, you were a fucking idiot.

At work, people started noticing. One of your freelancer caught you staring at a blank wall for too long and said, carefully, “You okay, boss?”

“Hm?”

“You’ve been holding that folder upside down for five minutes.”

You looked down. Ah.

Seema called twice asking you to come over for dinner. Both times, you said no. “It’s not safe,” you told her.

Then Seema sighed, and that hurt worse than yelling. “You always say that when you are punishing yourself.”

You hung up after promising to call again. You didn’t call, even though you kept the checks going.