RAWR xD

Sleep never came easy for Bucky.

Ever.

Most nights he laid with his head on the pillow, hair messed from tossing and turning, keeping his eyes shut until the morning light reflected orange over the lids.

Tonight was more or less the same. Weeks of classes and study sessions with Steve and Sam in the back corner of the library, results unknown, grades totalled up in red marker, sitting on the desk of his professor's desk — all of it accumulates in his head. Even while he's tucked in comfortably, duvet pulled over his shoulders, his face pressed into his pillow and his eyes stayed closed, counting up and up until numbers repeated and jumbled into thoughts of college and classes, and you.

A break was supposed to be nice, just a couple of weeks to let yourself rest — to see family and lie in for a few more hours than usual. Instead, Bucky's brain has been rewired with your presence.

Just a few years after your parents married, his mom had moved both you and your father into his house. Bucky's studies had been too important to let go, meaning the wedding went on without his attendance — he barely even looked at the pictures before he was back home. A home that no longer felt the same.

It felt as though every object had shifted one inch to the left. Bucky went on through the hallways with a furrowed brow, shoes toed off at the door, kicking his bedroom door shut and sliding his duffel bag off his shoulder.

That was the last time Bucky properly got some sleep.

After he had woken up, his mother greeted him with a knock on his door and open arms, making him follow her to the kitchen where she was cooking dinner. He tagged along, sleep still stirring through his movements and words as he recalled the last semester, but once his mother hopped into action beside you, chopping vegetables at the countertop, he paused.

You both looked at each other for a split moment too long before your step-mom held your shoulders and introduced you both, urging you forward to shake his hand. A tight and shy smile on your face, you mumbled a quiet 'hi'. He repeats the greeting, holding out his hand and shaking yours. Bucky knew he was well and truly fucked.

He still is. A few years into his studies, he'd learn about your own course and studies at college, your favourite songs and movies, what shirt you wear more often than others. You both created a bond, something close to friends, only there was an added wall of propriety. Some nights were still spent at the kitchen table, or your bedroom floor, talking about absolutely nothing or listening to you rant about your group project — only they'd linger on into silence, looks that last too long, or just soft musings that get either one of you bashfully shoving the others knee.

During these nights, Bucky would sigh and turn over, and repeat the same routine, so on and so forth. Until his eyes ached with the will of keeping them shut and his ceiling took on a more interesting role. But no, his pillow suffices, as with the speckled blackness behind his eyelids and the soft, warm embrace of his pillow and sheets.

It isn't until a rattled creak of the old floorboards, Bucky realises that the universe had granted him permission to rest, only for it to have been snatched from his hands. He sighed, tired, exhausted, and pressed deeper into the pillow, stretching out his legs and praying that sleep could come before the sun rises and the rest of the world wakes up.

But the sounds press again, footsteps, slow and steady, trying not to press on the faulty wooden boards and wake someone up. They get louder with each pass, and soon Bucky's head connects. It's you, with how close the steps were, how they don't sound like they want to take up space, methodically tiptoeing down the hallway, and closer to his door.

He counts the steps, body locking up and refusing to react when his door quietly creaks open. And he doesn't move at first when your voice sounded.

“Bucky..?” His eyelids twitched, humming under his breath. You itch closer to his mattress, voice mumbling a little louder, “Buck? Are you awake?”

With a groan, he stretches, eyes half closed, cheek pressed against his pillow as he looked up at you. Even blanketed in dusk, he can make out your sweater, worn and stretched over the neck from use and the fabric frays at the wrists where you fiddle. Your legs bare, covered by tartan sleep shorts that dust over your mid-thigh — boxers to be exact, something your ex left behind ages ago, and the more Bucky thinks about that possibility, the more he struggles to stop his eyes from rolling.

“I am now,” he mutters, smiling a little dumbly, involuntary as he stares at your face. “Wha’s the matter?”

“I had a nightmare,” you gulp, stepping back, “it’s stupid, I should go back—“

Shuffling around, he moved to the other side of his bed, holding himself up with an elbow, the other flipping the blanket up for you. “S’not stupid. C’mere.”

Floorboards creek and the mattress dips with your weight, knee first before sliding down and underneath the covers. As Bucky folds the duvet over you, his arm grazes your shoulder before moving back, pressing both hands into the line where his thighs meet.

He watches the silhouette of you getting comfortable. Shuffling, sliding your hand under the pillow, scooting backwards until suddenly it all stops. Midnight never felt more quiet. Fuller in a way. Warmer with bodies in one bed, its nothing like Bucky had known before.

Sleep almost evades him, eyes slitting down, brain dozing off, but your quiet voice catches his chest.

"Buck?" you start, mumbling into your pillow.

"Hm… Wha's up?"

Sighing sleepily, you ask. "Can you… Can you hold me?"

Pausing for a moment, the quietness swells and the only thing he can hear is the trees swaying with the wind, mixed with blood rushing through his body.

"Mmh… What?"

"Doesn't matter."

He follows your orders from before. Protective arm slung around your middle, pulling you into his front and keeping you there. Firm and tight, and so completely warm. Nosing into your hair, he murmurs again, drowsy in newfound tiredness only your comfort can bring.

"Jus' go t'sleep, s'okay, I got you."

Even in rest, your stomach twists at his soft slurs. Jumbled murmurs, something only sleep can make up, his lips pressed too close to the pillow. But his warm breath teeters so close to your ear, and his arm flexes autonomously around your stomach, tighter.

It's warm. It's safe. All the tension from the dream earlier on eases from your shoulders and all that's running through your brain is the tight hold he has around you, body and mind. You seem to drift off like that. Guarded by the safe hands of Bucky and his easing breaths behind you.

Only a few dreamless hours later, the room still silent and dark with midnight, does Bucky's mind wake him up.

Torrid, almost, and warm. A soft body against his that he does not recognise and his subconscious self seems to have awoken him as a result, alarmed at the new sight and feeling of your presence.

His hand now rested on the side of your waist where your sweater had ridden up, and the skin on skin contact got his heart racing in a millisecond. He dared to move even a twitch, forcing his lungs to ease back into a rhythm even as his pulse beat like a drum against your back.

So soft and plush. Your skin soaked in heat and silk so perfect he felt as if he were still hooked beneath his sleepy eyes, stuck in a deep sleep.

It's until you shuffle back into his hot chest with a sound. Light and airy, a soft kind of noise that just pulls out of your throat, unable to hold it back as sleep evades, but Bucky's mind holds it and he feels like a deer who's just heard a twig snap.

Your spine fits perfectly against his front, cradled into him like a puzzle piece, your ass nuzzles into his crotch.

It's not intentional, he has to remind himself, body stiff, mind blank and dumb at the first place of your warm back. You're asleep, leaning into him for safety, a subconscious movement of security Bucky mentally rebukes himself for the initial shock. How his breath stuttered, lungs trembling to a stop. You were so close, so soft and even though the room was dark with hues of black and blue, he thought you were beautiful.

Thoughts after 10 P.M. cannot be trusted. He remembers his friend Nat told him that once while at a group hangout — Steve and Sam laughing with their legs stretched out, Tony whispering something into Pepper's ear, arm on her shoulders, Nat sandwiched between both Bucky and Clint. Empty beer bottles tipped over, dribbling into the already sticky second-hand carpets, truth or dare slowly turning into a group discussion, and Steve gets a little too giggly and mouthy after a couple drinks.

Sobriety has never felt so awful before. Bucky's hand instinctively pulls, tightening over the torrid skin of your side and he regrets it instantly. How plush you are, how soft your skin feels, how you move back into him again and this time theres no hiding the evident twitch in his pants.

"Shit." He hides behind a sharp exhale of breath, a little lunge of noise from sleep. But his hips already begin to move. Shakily, unceremoniously. His movements are uneven, softly unsure and slow, just enough to let his cock swell and perk with interest. Half hard, thickening beneath his sweatpants. Clothes rustle. Your shorts to his pants, making the hem glide down with each uneven drag his cock pulls on the swell of your ass.

"Jesus… fuck." He whimpers as his weeping tip gets caught between your legs. Dragging his chub up from the heat staining between your legs, and through the valley of your cheeks, his cock slaps against his abdomen as he lets go.

The force of the drag has his tip on display, precum catching the damp air from beneath the coverings and he curses himself for wearing sweatpants without underwear that night. The ache that courses through his hips moves him like a marionette.

He keeps moving like that for a couple minutes more — hand firm to yours hip, and his cock dragging across your ass and the hem of his sweatpants, caressing the underside of his head with each hump. His jaw hangs open, only to shut on particular thrusts, hissing through his teeth as the need for more drenches his mind and body.

It isn't long until his pants are hastily pulled off, thighs shaking, body and hands trembling with excitement, need and desire, and immorality.

You asked for safety and he brings you… this?

"I'm sorry." Bucky whispers breathlessly into his bedroom, directed to you, and your content, sleeping self, but the words lose meaning once his dick drags hot and bare across your ass.

A moan cracks through his throat which he quickly catches with a quick snap of his jaw. Heaving breaths and hums caught inside, between his teeth and under his tongue.

Becoming desperate now, his hands slide from your hip and over your middle, holding you tight into his hold, praying the metal wont disturb you from your sleep, and you don't stir fully. Your body grants him a sound, something tiny and almost lost within the deep breaths he expels from his nose, and you shuffle back into him

It hurts. Everything. But all the conscious thoughts about depravity and carnality are quickly drowned out by the newfound rustle of your shorts being pulled down by his thumbs.

Warm, new skin to explore. His hips move away to let the rippled hem slide from the swell of your ass, down to your thighs. He almost keeps it as such, but he's already here.

They pool at your feet, and before he can lean down to shuck them off, your leg moves. Pulling one up to an angle, laying on your front, your foot slides from the leg of the shorts easily for him, only to have your cunt on display.

Bucky's stops breathing. He's close, too close, to your pretty pussy, and he doesn't want to wake you with a sudden air sticking to you.

But you're wet, glistening with the soft light that peeks from outside. He licks his lips involuntarily, and he can almost taste you. He cant, not now, that's too much, you cant wake up with his face buried between your thighs, what if you make too much noise…

His cock twitches against his thigh as if to remind him of where he is, a pulse that stickies his tip, a bead of precum pearling over him. He grips the base of his erection, tightening his fist around his shaft, cutting off an orgasm already, he sits with the scene you present him with.

His free hand gently rubs the globe of your ass, awaiting some kind of response, a push back into his palm, a sound, but nothing rumbles past your lips, so he keeps going. Fisting his cock, squeezing at the tip and dragging down, spreading his arousal across his shaft, he spreads your cheeks. A firm grip tightens over his base again, mouth wide open, and the hand that occupied your ass slaps over his mouth while he forces himself back.

Head back on the pillows, blankets over the both of you as if you both were just merely sleeping, he snakes his arms back around your torso again, hips dragging across your ass with shaky exhales, and his cock finally traps between your thighs. A pause lingers while he lets himself feel, dragging his dick in and out, coating himself with your arousal.

"Please, please, please — holy shit." He whispers and whines against your shoulder. His movements sharpen a touch, forcing your ass to jiggle as his hips slap against it.

A hand snakes between you both, and he can't take it much longer. Both middle fingers find the soft underside of his head as he ruts, softer than before, and pushes in. It takes a few moments. Dragging his cock down, pushing in, only for it to catch at the last second and swipe up to your clit.

His tip juts in, enveloped by your tight, sopping hole. Pausing his movements and easing his breathing, he sighs sighs; pulling out and pushing himself back in, easing his size inside of you in slow, thick, increments.

Bucky holds you through the ordeal. Willing his body not to get ahead of itself and ram his cock inside, to bury himself balls deep and rut inside of you without repercussions. His hips twitch with the need, stretching out without a thought.

The need worsens when you begin to understand.

Around his arms, Bucky feels your ribs stutter and pause, only to breathe out tightly. Your cunt pulses too. Your walls begin to mould around his shaft, now squeezing with the intrusion as if trying to figure out what's going on. Slacking and tightening around him, letting his dick fuck slowly inside of you before finally his balls press to your ass. He lets go of a deep breath, forehead to your shoulder, holding your hips to his, hugging you tight into his back, to keep himself from falling off the edge of relief.

And your noises. Bucky presses his lips to your skin, brows taut, distressed. He had whipped his forehead from your shoulder when his ears perked up with the sound. The gentlest of breaths sharpening against your pillow as pleasure gets the best of you.

"Stop, stop, stop," He mouths his pleas to your shoulder blade, voice lost as he stays inside of your tight heat.

"Can I fuck you?" He hates himself for asking — shaft soaked with your arousal, balls pressing tight against your cunt — but he cant stop himself.

The smallest of humps, a reflex of muscle, a jerk of his hips rips a growl from his throat. The ruts keeps coming, humping his size inside of you, pulling out not even an inch, to keep you stuffed full over and over again. But he keeps asking.

"Please… Please, can I?" His mouth clicks with spit, whispering and dragging his cock through your walls.

Your body moves for you. A wracking heartbeat that Bucky can feel as his lips press on your back, rustling ribs and trembling thighs.

As your unconscious body comprehends, Bucky starts to gain confidence. Moving his cock out and pressing it back in, easing half of himself out just to ram his tip up to your cervix. He begins thrusting his length out, keeping his tip snug and warm inside of you and thrusting back in.

You begin to hum. Melodic and shaky, uneven sounds that shudder out of you with each clap his balls make to the backs of your thighs. Then your arms move. Tight holds to his hands around your stomach, following up to his bicep and shoulder.

"Bucky..?" You whisper, eyes still closed, but your brows pull with question. Your mouth slacks with breaths, and he eases his face closer until you're breathing him in.

"I'm sorry. I'm right here."

It's then your eyes open. Slacked from the sleep he pulled you from, adjusting, blinking in the scenery. You hum again, and gasp as his cock drags over your spot.

"Is it there? Was that it?" He asks, like an excited dog. He pants on your shoulder, grinding himself against you.

It's too much. One minute you're asleep in Bucky's arms, his bed, and the next he's learning how your body reacts from the inside out.

Before you could counteract, trying to move yourself forward, try and gain semblance, his hand pulls you back. Trapping your body with an arm to your chest now. You don't speak, too full from emotions, from his cock. The sensations he's giving you, from his breath that seeps through the fabric of your shirt, and how the hand that palms your breast.

"What're you doing…" Its rhetorical, he knows this, but the night makes him dumb. Or maybe that's just your tight pussy.

"Wanted to make you feel good," he says softly. "You fit so nice on me, backed into me… m'sorry, I couldn't help it."

As his voice dissolved from whispers to moaned mumbles, your back begins to slack. The sudden pressure of his hand to your tit sends shivers down your spine, hardening your nipples. They drag sensitively against your shirt, and your breath gets deeper.

Bucky keeps fucking into you, rocking his pelvis up, only now theres an added pleasure as he tweaks your nipple between his thumb and forefinger, trapping it under your shirt.

You moan, gulping around it, trying to suppress it. It feels so good, you pulse around him.

"Fuck, don't do that," his hips begin to stutter, and dick twitches inside of you. "Gonna cum if you keep doing that, please—"

You do it again. Out of resistance, a weird kick of superiority — you clamp your pussy around his weeping cock and he growls between his teeth. Hands tightening over your middle, fingers trapping your nipple, you convulse around him again with the shock.

Both of your sighs fall into shudders as his hips stutter. What already soaked the inside of your thighs with sticky arousal and humid sweat, now accumulated together with an additional heaviness.

His hands tightened their grip on your waist, humming behind a locked jaw and shut eyes as he came inside of you. Hips pumping up with each spurt, dragging inside of your wet heat desperately thrusting to get every last drop of him inside.

Only when the pleasure subsided — the haze of his orgasm waning and your momentary shock of how full he pumped you, how desperately he held you, and had you — you realised now the heaviness wasn't just his tacky cum coating your walls, dripping from between you both.

He was still hard. Achingly so.

When Bucky's head fell from the clouds of pleasure and ecstasy, he let out the smallest whine of realisation, maybe even embarrassment or fear, of releasing inside of his poor stepsister unprotected. But his hands moved before you could ask.

"You didn't cum…" He whispered against the cool shell of your ear. His soft lips and rough stubble, already growing after a day, had you clenching around his thick cock, pulsing out around his shaft, releasing his stickiness to sit and slide down his balls.

"I…" You swallow around the words, trying to find a fixture to settle, to open yourself from this daze and clean yourself up quick before your dad and his mom wake up. But Bucky still lingered in a foggy shock. Almost as if he knew the damage was done, his dick was still hard and drooling, nestled inside of you like it was made to be there.

Before you could actually speak, one hand moved to the inside of your thigh, opening it up and holding it around his hip to spread you open. While the other moves down and locked to your stomach. Holding you close to his front, he uses his elbow to keep your leg from falling shut.

“Want… Want you to cum.” He mumbles, stroking his fingers down to where you meet to feel how stretched out he has you. To fumble at the slightest touch of his cum drowning your pussy, gliding the release up to circle your clit.

“Bucky—“

“Fuck, please,” his breath skims hot against your neck, nudging his head against your hair. “God, please I need you to cum.”

He kept moving. Even after coming, hard for that matter, his hips kept driving into you and his fingers played deftly. Staying in deep, humping himself against your ass like a dog.

You couldn’t protest, not when his own spend drips out between you, when his cock fills you so fucking good, arms wrapped around your middle to keep you close, fingers tight on your clit, breathing small and quick on your skin — he sounds so good, feels so good, its all too good to let go.

“Buck… What if someone hears?”

He wheezes, “We—We gotta be quiet… huh?"

A sharp thrust hits you closer than expected, making your throat contort in a whine and clench around him involuntarily.

"Geez, wha'did I just say?" He whispers sharply. The hand that splayed protectively against your stomach itched upwards, skimming up your navel, to the edge of your ribs, the plush of your tits, until he clasps around your mouth. Four fingers to one cheek while his thumb strokes the other. Its a contrast with how much force he puts into pushing his palm onto your lips, forcing your head back into the pillows, onto his shoulder, and his hips never let up their grinding, even as the rhythmic squeak of the bed frame begins to flow.

You whine a little more openly now, eyes lazily rolling shut, hoping the covering of his hand blankets the sounds that would have poured loud through the four walls and down the hallways. How much worse the wet sounds of your joint pleasure sounds dull through the duvet, how you clench tighter around him, heartbeat stuttering in your lungs and cunt alike as he draws teasing lines and circles around your slick, puffy clit.

Bucky smiles into your shoulder, enamoured completely with how precious and pliant he has you. He could cum again, he wants to so fucking bad with how soft your walls pulse around him, but he can feel your nub twitch and harden beneath his wet fingers, the pulsing easing faster as you mumble garbled nonsense through the cracks of his fingers.

"You like being shut up… you like this, don't you?"

As a confirmation, added to the validation of a nod, you hand comes up to grab a hold of his hip behind you, fisting at his side, nails digging crescents. Its snakes lower to hold his ass in your hand, a bruising sensation that only has him rutting in deeper, hiding his own noises into the damp skin of your neck. Leaning into your space, wiping his hot breath down your throat, lips dragging up and down, teeth nipping.

"Are you close? You're so fucking tight, I can feel your heart beating… so fast. Did I do that?" He whispers, balmy on your jaw and cheek.

"Can I cum inside you again? I'm sorry, m'sorry I didn't ask before, it was an accident. I didn't mean to cum inside you, didn't mean to fuck you…" Bucky can't stop mumbling. With the tight grip your pussy holds him in, wet and hot, his balls sticky, plapping against your ass, drawing up in pulses similar to your own. It's the only way he can strive off his second orgasm.

It's lucky for you, the sensation of his cock humping inside of you, his fingers stroking your clit and his hot breaths and whiny words have you so, so fucking close.

"Bucky—" you whisper behind his palm. Eyelids drooping, fist still curled into his glute like a vice.

"M'so bad, so, so bad. You jus' felt so good, looked so fucking pretty, I'm so sorry, I love you, I really do an' I'm sorry for that, but… fu-huck, I already did it once."

Your free hand whips up and curls around his wrist as you begin to cum. Hips moving back into his own on their own accord, twitching and shaking as your pussy contorts, choking his cock. You hum shakily into his palm, holding it to your mouth, even though his own hands begin to tighten, teeth sinking into the meat of your shoulder as he chases your orgasm with his own.

It's disgustingly wet. Two creampies, sticky and white, coating your thighs, his own too. A ring of arousal at the base of his cock, laying like honey, dripping down his balls.

He keeps fucking you like that. Already finished, dragging out the last of your orgasms even as you lay there, bare, trembling with aftershocks. Overstimulated bucks of your hips as he keeps dragging his fingertips over your abused nub, the fist that occupied his ass now quickly held onto his wrist, prying it off with a sigh of relief, shutting your legs from around his thigh.

"M'sorry, m'so, so sorry."

Both his hands move to keep you close, wrapped around your middle like a teddy bear. His dick stayed trapped inside of you. Softening, lightly twitching still, and his hips, they keep softly rolling with the smallest of movements. You believe he has no clue he's doing it.

Minutes drag by like that. Breathing evening out, his hips pumping minutely against the soft swell of your ass, easing to a final stop, slipping out with a small, tired sigh. It sounds sad. You can almost see the dip between his brows as he keeps his arms tight on your middle. His cock rests soaked between you both, stuck to the mattress, warm and slick to your ass cheek.

You keep staring into the void of his bedroom. His curtains closed, apart from the tiny slither of outside where trees danced with the wind and stars twinkled. A world moving onward.

"You love me?"

Bucky moves up then, the warmth of his front half lost as his head cocks to, and his hands leave your stomach to instead pull himself up. "What?"

"You," you begin, still not moving from your place, but your voice never wavered from a whispered hiss. "Said you loved me."

He huffs deeply. It swirls against your ear, and lays cold and delicate against the spit slicked area he licked clean on your jaw and neck.

"I'm sorry—"

"You keep saying that like you mean it," your voice hardens slightly. "But I don't think you are."

"Christ, can you at least look at me?" He whispers, a hand falls to your bicep, he squeezes but almost immediately, he tears it away.

"I can't. Your cum will spill everywhere." It comes jokingly, light, a hint of a toothy smile on your face as you say it.

It aggravates Bucky. It makes him groan, palms, still smelling of you, wiping and digging into his eyes before he could find any semblance of himself. But he turns you over anyway. Your hole makes a sound that makes you retreat, shutting your legs and eyes tightly, lips pulled into a line, cringing, but Bucky doesn't register.

He kisses you. Its a soft question at first, his lips touching over yours mid retract. Thinking it's a block, your body unwilling under the weight of sex and sleep, he pulls himself off from you.

Your eyes meet for one second. Pupils wide. His cock swung bare between his legs, against your thigh. One second of your mind telling you to keep joking and irritating him, poking at wounds. But his hairs messy, all rugged from the pillow, and your hand runs over it, straightening it out, only for you find yourself tugging him into your open mouth. Spit slicked and uneven.

His lips are so unfairly soft as they move over yours, his tongue gliding over to taste and explore. Trapping your top lip between his, slowing down to savour the warmth and your soft gasps fanning over his chin.

"If you have a nightmare again, you can always come to me." He mumbles against your lips, kissing and sucking through the words. His hands hold the sides of your face, guiding you through the movements and its intoxicating.

"Okay."

Your own whispers get lost down his throat and into the spit slicked sounds. Bucky's lost in it, mumbling through each press of his wet lips across your skin as if this is the last moment he'd get. Dragging kisses from your mouth to the corners where your lips meet, to your cheeks and nose, your temple where his nose drags across your hairline, the scent of your shampoo and sweat accumulating and messing with his senses.

"An—And if you can't sleep, you can always come to me," he presses the words to your forehead, reverberating across your hairline. "Is that okay?"

There's nothing else for you to do but nod. You can't do anything but nod. Your body still teeters between the now and thirty minutes ago — both of you still bare from the waist down, tingling with sex like supernovas beneath your skin, and you're still wet and sweaty, soaked with fluids now drenching the bed sheets.

But everything's lost under his cherry red, kiss bitten lips, his soft asks and hands, so gentle over your cheeks. Bucky pulls away, enough for the tip of his nose to touch yours and his forehead to brush your own. He makes a sound, strained almost, a sigh.

"It doesn't have to be," he whispers and it glues to your lips. "Okay, that is."

"It isn't," you begin. Feeling Bucky's muscles tighten, and sharp inhale, your hands reach for his face, copying the same movements as him, stroking across your cheeks with the smallest touch of your thumbs. "It's a weird situation. Maybe we can work something out."

"Work something out." He repeats, and you nod.

"When we go back to college, maybe," you whisper, dragging a hand over his hair, stroking it back. "The logistics are…"

"Weird."

"Very," With eyes locked to his, you keep playing with the strands of hair between your fingers, and his own hand follows to yours, stroking a warm palm across your hairline. "We should probably get cleaned up."

"Probably." He repeats.

You lick your lips, nodding. "And put our pants back on."

He nods with you, as if the notion would will you both from the weird sanctuary you created for the night. Savouring the hot feeling of your skin touching one another, his thigh pressed to yours, how natural everything felt, how none of you were shy about the nakedness of your legs and eyes.

"Are you gonna regret it?"

It mulls over your head, sitting on it. It has Bucky's heart beating faster in his chest, tweaking with pangs as the seconds pass by before you answer.

"I don't know, Buck." Its truthful, and Bucky doesn't mind how it calms him down. It's warm here, so stay in the present.

He doesnt have to speak, neither do you. The silence says everything. As does the soft rustle of the trees and the crickets, the creak of the bed when one of you moves that you both don't ask about. His head hits the pillow, and this time you sink into a dreamless sleep with legs tangled and a new excitement for classes to start.

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Every time you roll over and smack the pillow in an attempt to find a more comfortable position, your mind replays memories of the night like images flashing across the silver screen. The crooked, excited smile on his face. His hand tugging yours to the dance floor. The gentle way he held you when the music slowed, his arm wrapping more securely around you. The look in his eyes when he pecked your cheek, like he wanted more but wasn't going to take it.

Your heart stutters.

Bucky wanted more.

The man who is—was?—like a brother to you, who listened to you complain about the way men treat you like you're something to claim, who never actually gave the advice you asked for and offered reassurance instead. He wanted more. But he didn't take it. He didn't even ask for it.

Because despite all the stories people have told about him since his freshman year of high school, despite all the women who have chased him, James Buchanan Barnes is, first and foremost, a gentleman.

Your gaze flicks to the vase your mother set near your windowsill. The flowers he brought specifically for you stand proudly under the soft glow of the streetlights outside, each petal a delicate display of something dangerously close to affection. Knowing he somehow knew exactly what flowers you prefer has something warm settling in your chest.

Years of being around the Barnes siblings, of being Rebecca's best friend. Years of looking at him like he's just Bucky. Now? The world has shifted, tilted on its axis before you could even think to brace yourself for the flood of realizations and subsequent emotions that can only mean one thing: you have feelings for him.

The thought makes your heart race and cheeks burn like a nervous schoolgirl.

Flipping your pillow over for the cool side, you shove your face into it hoping if it doesn't help you fall asleep, maybe it'll smother the thoughts running rampant in your brain.

Because Bucky Barnes is suddenly no longer just anyone.

And Rebecca is going to kill you.

The sun is just beginning to light the sky when sleep finally claims you, only waking at the incessant ring of the telephone down the hall. You're already pulling yourself out of bed and rubbing sleep from your eyes when the warm sound of your mother's voice answers the call. She smiles when you poke your head out the door.

"Phone's for you, dear." She holds out the receiver.

Mind still foggy with sleep and remnants of a dream you can barely recall, you head to the phone.

"Hello—"

"Come over, we're going to Rockaway," Becca's voice comes over the receiver, quick and impatient.

"No greeting?" you tease, leaning against the wall and fighting back a yawn. The house smells of lemon and sugar, making your stomach growl.

She sighs and you swear you hear her eyes rolling. "Hi, hope you're well. Bucky and Steve both have the afternoon off and if we leave soon we might still see daylight. Get over here."

— — —

The door to the Barnes residence swings open almost as soon as your knuckles touch it. A wild-eyed Becca beams the second her eyes land on you, the scent of Winnifred's fresh baked bread wafting out into the street.

"It's about time! That train is going to take us forever," Becca turns, calling to who you can only assume is Steve and Bucky in the living room. "She's here! Let's go!"

Steve's the first to come around the corner, a couple strands of his blond hair falling to the middle of his forehead. He offers a polite smile and a nod in greeting before Bucky rounds the corner, tossing an arm around his best friend's shoulders and meeting your gaze.

He looks unfairly handsome today; dark hair perfectly mussed, a grease smudge lingering near his temple from working at the garage this morning. The easy smile forming on his lips makes your stomach flip.

"Nice of you to finally show up," he says coolly. His gaze trails over your face, like he's searching for something. Or maybe he sees right through you.

Before you can even think to stop yourself, your mouth opens. "Miss me that bad?"

Bucky's eyebrows lift almost imperceptibly, his eyes flashing with something too quick to interpret.

"Maybe I did."

Becca, who is pretending not to watch the interaction and failing miserably, smirks and clears her throat. "Hey, Romeo, can we go now?"

Your eyes widen. Steve bites back a laugh while silently mouthing "Romeo?" and Bucky chuckles, already stepping forward and dragging Steve along with him out the door. Becca grins, clearly proud of herself, the loose curls of her hair bouncing as she falls into step beside you.

The day is bright and warm, bordering on uncomfortably hot as the mid-afternoon sun beats down on the sidewalks of Brooklyn. By the time you step off the train in Rockaway, mild relief comes in the form of a salty ocean breeze as the group walks down the boardwalk.

People sprawl out in all directions along the beach and across the street to Rockaways' Playland, earning a displeased grumble from Becca before leading the way through the crowd. She slips through easily, Steve following quickly behind her. Bucky falls in step behind you. Despite all the people, you can't help but be aware of exactly where he is, the sound of his shoes on the pavement, the low "excuse me" as he brushes past someone to keep up with you.

The crowd inside the park is only slightly less crowded as the beach itself. A line for the park's specialty wooden coaster snakes around in a neat line before ending near the carousel. The scent of fried funnel cakes and popcorn mixes with the salty air. It brings back memories of all the times this same group went to Coney Island growing up, when everything felt effortless for four kids in Brooklyn.

Your gaze lands on Bucky. He's laughing with Steve as they approach the line for the ticket booth ahead, carefree and happy as the afternoon sun highlights his sharp features.

Becca catches you looking and hooks her arm in yours. She leans over and whispers conspiritorially, "How was the date last night?"

Your eyes snap to hers, heart racing. Bucky glances over across the midway.

"Date?" you ask a little too quickly. As if Rebecca Barnes hasn't been able to read you like a book for most of your lives. You hadn't told her yet. You hadn't mentioned any Friday night plans to her, let alone that said plans had involved her older brother.

She gives you a look, all but rolling her eyes as the corners of her lips pull into a knowing smile.

"With my idiot brother, obviously."

Years of friendship, of shared laughter, tears, secrets and jokes have made you as close as any two people can possibly be. Things have changed overnight. You know it. She knows it. Yet she doesn't seem angry. If anything, she sounds relieved, like she's been waiting for the day Bucky finally stepped up.

"You're not mad?"

"Of course not," she scoffs before pressing further, giving you a little shake. "Details, girl, come on."

You swallow and huff a nervous laugh, suddenly finding a nearby pigeon incredibly interesting. "It was fine." Understatement of the century.

"Just fine?" she asks, leaning closer, voice raising in utter disbelief. "He came home practically floating on cloud nine last night. I've seen him go on a lot of dates over the last ten years, but there's only one person I've seen make him smile like—"

"Atom Smasher, ladies, let's go!" Bucky calls, his voice booming louder than necessary and pointing to the coaster rumbling by. People nearby glance at him sideways. Someone spills popcorn. He's staring at Becca with the look of an older brother knowing exactly what's about to be said and silently begging her not to continue.

She looks at you but doesn't finish her statement, turning on her heel and leaving you standing near a hot dog cart processing her words. You follow slowly, stomach flipping from more than just the thought of the roller coaster.

The afternoon moves in a blur of laughter, adrenaline, and too much sunlight for anyone's own good. Bucky attempts to play ring toss, insisting his aim is perfect, before wildly missing two of the three shots.

"What was that?" Becca snorts, doubling over in laughter and wiping non-existent tears from her eyes.

"Distracted, Buck?" Steve asks. His lips twitch with a knowing smile.

"What? No," he says quickly. The tips of his ears turn pink. "My arm's tired from the shop, shut up."

You bite back a smile from the sudden realization that James Barnes isn't always as suave as he appears and is, in fact, human—nerves and all.

He catches your eye before he rubs the back of his neck and clears his throat. "Anyone up for the shooting gallery? A quarter says I can hit the bullseye on the first try."

Steve and Becca glance at each other sideways.

The gallery sits toward the middle of the park, tucked between concessions and skill games against the roller coaster, with scooter cars across the midway. Lights flicker on, the sun beginning to set and casting an orange glow across the various structures. Bucky doesn't hesitate the moment the gallery comes into view. He rushes over and hands a dime to the attendant, wearing a grin that is far more confident than it probably should be.

The moment the gun touches his hand, his demeanor changes. He lifts it with all the seriousness in the world—intense focus and smooth movements that speak of a man who's done this more times than he can count. He pulls back the forend and fires a shot before you even blink. A bulb flashes immediately.

"Bullseye!" The attendant calls, grabbing the photo that just printed and setting it on the counter next to Bucky.

"Lucky shot," Steve scoffs.

"Jealous, Rogers?" he asks, lowering the gun.

"How—" you start.

Bucky glances over at you, his grin back. He grabs the picture and shoves it in his pocket unceremoniously. He shrugs, but the look on his face betrays just how confident he is. "Easier than it looks."

"Liar," Steve and Becca mumble simultaneously.

Bucky ignores them, his focus solely on you. "I'll prove it. Give it a try." He gestures with his head for you to come closer, the gun securely in his hands.

As you step towards him, interest piqued yet moving slower than strictly necessary, you barely register Steve clear his throat. "We're gonna go find something to drink," he announces before dragging Rebecca off somewhere.

"I'm going to embarrass myself," you mutter when you finally reach him.

Bucky's lips curl into a smirk that would be almost infuriating if it didn't make your pulse spike. "Not a chance, I'll help you. Do you trust me?"

"After ring toss? No."

He blinks, looking offended for a moment before a smile spreads across his face. "Oh come on, did I not just prove myself right here?" he laughs. "I'm better with a gun, I promise."

"Fine." With a resigned sigh and a roll of your eyes, you take the gun from him and step up to the counter. It's heavier than expected, the metal cool against the summer air, the wood polished just enough to be smooth in your palms.

Bucky waits for you to nod before he steps behind you. His hands are warm and careful as they guide your form; firm grip on the forend, butt plate braced against your shoulder, elbow just so.

His hands move to your shoulders, fingers squeezing gently. "Relax. Too stiff in the shoulders and you'll definitely feel it tomorrow."

"Easier said than done," you mutter, all too aware of how close he's standing and how heat is radiating from him.

He doesn't respond right away. Instead, he just watches, waiting. Your eyes are locked on the center of the target, finger on the trigger guard, breath coming out a little too quick.

You can feel the weight of his eyes on you, making your heart beat quicken. Then he leans down slightly.

"Do you have any idea how fun it is to watch you try to keep your composure?" His breath is hot against your ear. You shiver. You don't even have to look at him to know his lips are curved into that familiar Barnes grin that means trouble.

"Shut up," you huff, the gun still aimed at the target. Heat warms your cheeks, and the way your heart beats against your chest makes it hard to focus on the target in front of you.

He chuckles and takes a half step back, giving you space to focus.

"Rest your cheek against the wood. Line up both sights and take a breath. You can do it."

You take a deep breath, grateful for the space. The coaster roars by, rattling the ground beneath your feet. Then, with relaxed shoulders and a slow release of breath, you pump the forend and squeeze the trigger.

A bulb flashes.

"Bullseye!"

You stare at the target in disbelief. A beat passes. Two. A low whistle sounds from behind you.

"Would you look at that," Bucky murmurs, tone full of pride. "Careful. With a shot like that, they might send you to Camp McCoy."

A laugh slips from your lips and you shake your head, lowering the gun and handing it back to the attendant who hands you the souvenir photo.

You glance at the picture in your hands and everything stops.

Centered in the image is you, hair slightly ruffled from the afternoon's activities, face focused. Behind you is Bucky. Standing just beneath the Shoot-A-Photo sign, he stands tall. Proud. His eyes aren't on the target; they're on you, with a look on his face you've never noticed before—a soft smile, softer eyes. It makes your breath catch.

Bucky peeks over your shoulder at the picture, your silence making him curious. His gaze lingers on the photo for a moment before flicking up to your face, watching your expression.

"You're overthinking again," Bucky teases softly, pulling you from your thoughts. He nudges you with his elbow for good measure, chuckling when you attempt to swat him away.

"I'm not."

"Your eyebrows say otherwise."

You huff and turn to look at him. He grins before you speak again. "I'm just…trying to make sense of some things."

"Yeah," he sighs, his expression softening with an understanding nod. "I know the feeling."

His gaze drifts down the midway, finding Steve and Becca near the carousel. Steve suddenly finds something interesting in the sky, but Becca doesn't back down from watching the scene unfold.

"Walk with me?" Bucky asks, his eyes finding yours again.

You hesitate for a moment before nodding, the grip on the photo in your hands tightening slightly.

As the two of you walk through the park, each step slow, Bucky lets the silence stretch, allowing the amusement park's general chaos and tinny music fill the space instead. It's comfortable in a way you hadn't expected. Years of friendship now teetering on the edge between possibilities that could make or break everything you've ever known.

Bucky breaks the silence first, his hands shoved in his pockets. His shoulders are tense. "Remember how we used to spend essentially entire summers at Coney Island?"

The reminder makes you smile. "We spent far too much time there. Too much sun."

Bucky laughs. "And too much cotton candy. Becca used to badger me to not eat so much sugar."

"You never did listen. Those poor employees."

"Hey,"—he throws his hands up in surrender—"it's not my fault they offer pure sugar for so cheap and then have the best coaster in Brooklyn directly opposite the stand. It's like they encouraged it."

You both laugh, the nostalgia a welcome distraction for a moment before your thoughts comes crawling back. Bucky gives you a moment before speaking again, his voice low.

"Anything I can help you make sense of?"

You shake your head, unsure where to even begin or how honest to be. Your mind replays the past twenty-four hours and Rebecca's words. The photograph in your hand is physical proof that you aren't crazy.

"I don't even know how to explain it."

"Try."

"I'll sound ridiculous."

"Impossible."

You sigh, shoulders raising with a deep breath to brace yourself. "I thought you asked me out because you pitied me."

He stops in his tracks. His brows pinch in confusion as he looks at you.

"Pity?" The word leaves him like he's not sure he heard right. He says your name with a short huff of disbelief. "Why on earth would you think that?"

You shrug, not quite meeting his gaze. "Because my love life is hopeless. Because you're Rebecca's brother. Because I've watched women throw themselves at you for years. Take your pick."

His mouth opens and closes a couple times, processing your words. When he doesn't answer right away, you finally look at him, and for a moment, he looks torn between being honest or making a joke to ease the tension thickening the air. He picks the former.

"Last night was the furthest thing from pity. That was me finally doing something I should've done several years ago."

That admission hits hard, making your heart skip. "What?"

Bucky hesitates, rubbing the back of his neck. He takes a deep breath, voice low and steady.

"Every smile aimed in my direction makes me feel like I can take on the world. Every time you laugh at one of my stupid jokes…" he chuckles and shakes his head, his gaze falling to the concrete where the toe of his shoe scuffs the concrete. "Then you came over after another bad date asking me for advice with men that don't deserve you, and I had no idea what to say. Because to me, those men are just too blind to see how incredible you are."

The silence stretches between you, your mind and heart racing. His eyes lift to find yours again.

"Every time I look at you, I have to fight not to reach for you, to hold you. I took you out last night because I wanted you to know how I'd treat you if you gave me the chance."

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" you whisper, voice barely audible among the noise.

He sighs. "I was scared—I still am. The last thing I want is to ruin what we have. You mean a lot to me."

The air stills.

"You really mean that?" Your feet move a half step closer.

Bucky looks at you, hoping flickering in his eyes. The tension in his shoulders ease.

"Every word," he murmurs. His hand lifts, his fingers brushing against your cheek. The touch is soft, barely there and different than last night—tentative and full of silent questions.

You find yourself leaning into his touch, warm and familiar in the best way. His eyes glance at your lips before searching your face for any signs of hesitation. His thumb brushes your cheekbone.

Then, slowly, he leans in.

The kiss is short but sweet. A simple press of lips, uncertain, yet enough to forget the noise and people around you as his hand moves to fully cup your cheek.

It ends too soon.

Bucky pulls away just enough to rest his forehead on yours. Opening your eyes, you find his still closed, lips parted with breaths that fan across your face in light puffs, brows drawn together just enough to cause a crease between them. He slowly pulls back again. A muscle in his jaw twitches when he finally opens his eyes, immediately flicking to your lips like he's committing how they feel to memory.

You smile before you can stop yourself, feeling lighter than you have in a long time. He licks his lip and grins back, a soft laugh escaping him.

"That was…" he starts.

"Terrible?" you offer. Bucky laughs again, his free hand lightly touching your waist like he wants to pull you closer.

"Better than I'd hoped, actually."

The admission is soft and makes your heart flutter.

"So…what happens after this?" you ask.

He nods thoughtfully, taking a half step back like he just remembered you're in public, Rockaways' Playland hardly being a place for privacy. His touch lingers for a moment before dropping back to his side.

"I'd like to give us a real chance. If you're open to it."

You don't let him finish before your answer comes tumbling out. "I'd like that, too."

Bucky's blue eyes sparkle under the midway lights. He doesn't say a word as he reaches for the hand not holding the photograph, fingers intertwining with yours like it's second nature.

"Perfect," he says softly. "Come on, I think fireworks are starting soon."

The walk back down the midway feels shorter than it did before. Maybe it's the weight of everything now lifted off your shoulders, or maybe it's the feeling of his hand in yours. Maybe it's the lingering memory of his kiss—an answer to the million questions you asked yourself over the last day. Whatever it is, the crowds heading towards the beach barely register.

Steve spots you first, smiling to himself at the sight of your joined hands before gently nudging Becca's side. Her eyes go wide. Her grin goes wider. No one says a word as the four of you follow the crowd to the beach across the street.

The sand is still warm from the day when you sit down, placing the picture on your lap. Bucky doesn't let go of your hand, his shoulder brushing yours as he joins you, his long legs stretching in front of him.

It's a short wait before the first firework bursts, red lighting the sky and reflecting across the water. Golds and blues join quickly and fill the air with a dazzling display.

You glance at Bucky. He's not looking at the fireworks. He's watching you, lips curving into a soft smile when your eyes meet.

His fingers tighten around yours, and you scoot a little closer, resting your head on his shoulder. He lets out a quiet sigh and gently leans his cheek against your head before finally looking at the fireworks overhead.

A/N: If you’ve made it this far, I just want to extend a massive thank you for reading and supporting this story. It’s been almost a year in the making, which blows my mind when it wasn’t meant to go this far. You’ve also seen me grow significantly as a writer and it genuinely makes me emotional. Anywho…as of now, I’m tentatively calling this the end—but you never know what inspiration might hit me and maybe there will be a sequel someday. Lots of love 💜

⤷ Everything S. Stan: @steelandvibranium @/phoenix-in-writing @syd-vixious @sebastians-love @overwintering-soldier @wintersgirllost @wint3rbarnes @miraclediviner @barnes-babydoll @buckytakethewheel @bucksbby @sheriff-bodecker @wherewinterblooms @dei-dreamz @ladymiseryy @ornateglass @galactict3a @take-u-2-an0ther-w0r1d @alyssinwunderland-blog-blog @blue-eyes-in-august @/juniebjonesin @erina00

⤷ Bucky Barnes only: @phantom-wolf-girl @bartonsparrow25 @biaswreckedbybuckybarnes @highhopes1008 @hagridshaircare @jamesbbcrnes

⤷ Everything Taglist: @sunday-bug @tw1sters @/castielscaplan

⤷ Barnes Knows Best Taglist: @lost-girly-014 @dreamiierose

Neither of you mention the kiss. And he doesn’t press for another, doesn’t mention how your lips had parted beneath his, or the way your fingers had curled into his chest. What he does instead is stay a little longer each time. Not conspicuously, nothing that could be pointed to as a specific thing, but the visits that used to end professionally, with a nod and a see you tomorrow, now end with him lingering by the basin, helping you organize glass vials of antiseptic or wiping down the metal trays without being asked and saying something about the weather or a story about his friend Steve (you have heard a handful of those by now).

You realize, with a faint ache in your chest, that Bucky is letting you set the pace. Doesn’t crowd our space; if you step back, he stays put. If you put on your professional face, he meets you with quiet respect. He’s showing you that he can be trusted with the territory you have given him.

And because he gives you room to breathe, you find yourself loosening your grip on your own secrets.

One afternoon, in the midst of applying a soothing salve to the reddened skin around his healing wound, you start talking. The tent is quiet, and you want to convince yourself that that is the only reason why you say anything all, but you know better.

“My mother used to make a salve out of clover and beeswax,” you whisper, mind wandering before you could stop it. “Whenever I fell out of the cherry tree in the backyard, she’d slather it on. Smelled God awful, like old honey and dirt.”

Usually, you didn’t talk about home. Didn’t talk about your mother, or the life you had left behind in a white-picket box across the Atlantic. Yet here you are now, saying things without being asked, without really meaning to, simply saying them because it feels comfortable to share them with this soldier.

“Sounds like a luxury compared to this government-issued grease,” Bucky says with a soft chuckle, eyes crinkling at the corners. “You tumble out of that tree often?”

“Often enough,” you reply, voice dropping a little lower as you tie off the bandage. “I don’t have any siblings, so I had to invent my own trouble. My parents nearly went gray trying to keep me in one piece before I went off to nursing school. I suppose they’re waiting for me to go back home in one piece, now, too.”

Bucky doesn’t offer a platitude. He knows, better than anyone, the agony of the families left behind, staring at the mailbox every morning. Instead he reaches out, thumb gently catching the side of your wrist and he presses down just enough for you to feel the reassuring warmth of him.

“They’ve got a tough girl watchin’ over an entire regiment out here,” he says, looking up at you with those blue eyes that you’ve already learned are nothing but trouble. “I bet they’re real proud of you. I know I would be.”

The sudden stinging heat behind your eyelids is too much for you to bear, and you have to look way, pulling your wrist back from his hold. The difference is that this time you do it gently; not a rejection, just a retreat to gather your senses.

The second week of August arrives with the kind of heat that has no manners about it, summer turning fully cruel. It settles over the camp by mid-morning and stays, turning the inside of every tent into something very similar to an oven, and even the shade offers no real relief, serving only as a slightly darker heater than the open sun. Nurses have taken to rolling their sleeves as high as propriety allows, and most soldiers have abandoned propriety altogether.

You are in between tasks, a rare lull in a day that was otherwise consumed by heatstroke cases and salt-tablet distributions, moving through the rows of tents in camp. A hand comes up to your forehead to wipe a bead of sweat, and you inhale, looking for a breath of wind that doesn’t exist, when you spot him.

Bucky is in his usual spot, the big tree at the edge of the camp’s quieter side, the one with a root system that makes a reasonable seat if you know how to position yourself. His back is braced flat against the rough bark, one knee hooked up to prop up a small wooden crate he’s using as a desk, the other leg stretched out in the dry grass. In concession to the stifling heat, his uniform jacket is long gone, and his olive-drab shirt is half-unbuttoned, exposing the damp skin of his collarbones and the dark hair of his chest, and his hair is a little disheveled. A sheen of sweat makes his skin glisten in the dappled sunlight filtering through the leaves. There’s a letter in his hands, a few pages long already, and there’s creases in his forehead as he seems focused on reading through what he has already written, stubby pencil held between his fingers.

Despite his absorbed expression, Bucky looks entirely at ease, which is something you don’t see often enough on the faces of the men in this camp, and which does something unhelpful to your already compromised ability to think clearly in his vicinity.

He hasn’t seen you yet.

You stand there for a moment and watch him, an action you allow yourself only because no one is watching, and see him turning a page, and smiling at it. Stepping out of the sun, you finally walk over, boots crunching softly on the ground, a sound that catches his attention when you approach close enough.

Bucky looks up, blue eyes blinking at the sudden shift in light as you step into his shade. The easy smile blooms across his face immediately, cutting through his fatigue. “Look what the breeze blew in.” He shifts slightly, kicking a stray canteen out of the way. “Looking for a spot that isn’t boiling?”

“Yes, but apparently here isn’t it,” you admit with a smile, but you’re already folding your skirt beneath you as you sink down onto the grass beside him. The bark of the tree is rough against your shoulder, but not enough that it becomes uncomfortable. “Who’s the letter to?”

His eyes look down at the page, pencil tracing the edge of the crate. “My ma,” he says softly. “Gotta let her know I’m still eating, still keepin’ my socks dry. The usual lies.” And he smiles when he says it, warm, tinged with a fond sort of longing you recognize easily, then tilts the paper toward you. “Listen to this. ‘Tell Becca that if I find out she touched my book collection while I’m gone, I’m gonna make sure she doesn’t get a dime of my back pay. Especially the copy of The Hobbit. It cost me almost three bucks, plus shipping. If she ruins the spine on that one we’re no longer related.”

You blink, a soft laugh catching in your throat as you look from the paper up to his face. “You have an edition of The Hobbit?” you ask, eyebrows raised in amused disbelief. “Sergeant Barnes… I never expected you to enjoy dwarves and dragons.”

Bucky’s cheeks flush an endearing pink beneath his tan, and he looks away, suddenly very interested in a bush a few feet away. “It’s a good book,” he mutters, though a sheepish grin breaks through his defense. “Cost me some good money. And Becca’s careless, she uses old sandwich wrappers as bookmarks. Can you believe that?”

Finding out that the camp’s resident heartthrob, the man who can apparently charm the stripes off a tiger, is fiercely protective of a fantasy novel is almost too much. Too sweet, too close to tapping into feelings you can’t afford to tap into in a warcamp. Hearing him talk about his family, about ordinary squabbles over books, made the distance between this camp and reality feel a little less vast. Brooklyn isn’t just a place he mentions to be charming; it’s real, waiting for him, and he carries it with him in the neat rows of his handwriting.

Bucky is mid-sentence, gesturing with his pencil as he explains how his sister had once accidentally dropped one of his books in the bath, and how he doesn’t really believe it was an accident to this day, when an overwhelming urge hits you.  

Not quite your usual calculated decisions. It doesn’t come with the usual warnings or your frantic inner monologues reminding you of the war or the dangers of getting attached to a soldier who might not make it to autumn. It is simply an urge that settles in your bones and seeps into your bloodstream, immediately tainting your thoughts: you want to kiss him.

So you lean over and do it.

Bucky goes still. For a fraction of a second, he is genuinely surprised, a rare crack in his usual demeanor, and you find, with a small thrill in your veins, that you like catching him off guard like this.

It’s not a long kiss. Just a press of your mouth against his, warm, over almost before it’s begun, but still giving him enough time to melt the shock and kiss you back, hand dropping the pencil onto the crate and then coming up to brush his knuckles against your jawline and then moving to the back of your neck, head tilting to drink you in.

When you pull back and smooth down your skirt, you look at him, expression perfectly calm as if you didn’t just set his quiet afternoon upside down. He’s looking at you, eyes slightly blown out, cheeks flustered, lips still parted as if waiting for you to chase him again. His tongue licks over his bottom lip in a nervous tick.

“What was that for?” he asks, and you learn that you also like the way his voice sounds slightly different than usual.

“I simply felt like it,” you say.

A beat of silence.

“You simply felt like it,” he repeats.

Another beat, and  Bucky just stares at you as if you just hung the entire sky for him right here in the middle of a blazing August afternoon, completely awestruck by the sudden grace of you. Like maybe you are the most remarkable thing he has encountered in his considerable experience of the world.

You look away before he can see that you are smiling, focusing on the dry grass between your boots.

“‘s warm out today,” you say to the middle distance.

“… It is,” Bucky agrees, and you can hear it in his voice, that his mind is miles away from weather talk. “Real warm.”

The two of you side under the tree for a while longer. He picks up the letter again, reads you one more passage that makes you laugh, and he tries to memorize that sound simply by being right next to you.

It’s late by the time you get back to the sleeping tent that night, later than usual, the camp having already settled into its quiet nighttime sounds by the time you have finished your last round and washed your hands. The heat of the afternoon stayed in the canvas of the tent long after the sun went down, making the night air thick and sluggish. Some nurses were already snorting softly, faces pale in the amber wash of the kerosene lamp hanging from the center pole.

You sit on the edge of your cot after changing clothes, fabric of your nightgown sticking slightly to the small of your back, slowly unpin your hair, and you are almost convinced you have made it through your arrival without incident when Beth’s voice comes from the cot across from you. She’s lying on her side, head propped up on her hand, looking at you with an expression that is considerably more cheerful than her usual careful neutrality whenever she tries to pry. Like she has been waiting all day to have this conversation and has been enjoying the anticipation.

“Something’s different,” she says directly, voice dropping to a late-night murmur.

You don’t look up from your lap, keeping your fingers busy playing with the wrinkles in your skirt before folding it over the foot of the cot. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re almost in a good mood,” she replies with a stubborn smile tucking into the corner of her mouth. “Have been since about four o’clock this afternoon when you came back with dirt stains on the hem of your skirt.”

Your fingers still against the cotton fabric. You had cleaned those stains off with a damp rag the second you got back to the washbasin, or at least you thought you had. Leave it to Beth to notice the state of your skirt’s hem and associate it with anything else happening in your life.

“I’m frequently in a perfectly adequate mood, Beth,” you deflect, voice thoroughly rehearsed. “And the shade by the supply tents is entirely dirt. I remember I tripped near the ditch.”

"Uh-huh, tripped," Beth lets out a dry chuckle that she quickly smothers with her hand so as to not wake the nurses next to you. Shifts closer to the edge of her mattress, eyes open wide. “Nothing to do with a certain Sergeant who's been finding increasingly creative reasons to be wherever you happen to be?”

The memory of Bucky’s face, flustered, lips parted, tongue darting out nervously after you had pulled away, flashes behind your eyelids vividly. You say nothing, which is obviously not enough of an answer for Beth.

“Has something changed?” She asks, and her voice has shifted slightly, less teasing, more genuine. Are you alright? Is this good?

Your eyes find Beth’s and you simply look at her for a moment, at the fond expression of a woman who has watched you maintain your walls for months now and is watching in real time as they begin to crumble.

“We kissed,” you whisper.

The confession slips past your lips before your mind can construct its usual barricades, words dropping into the heavy silence like pebbles into a pond. Maybe the August heat has left you too tired to fight it. Beth freezes, head tilting slightly as if she isn’t entirely sure she heard you correctly. Teasing grin vanishes, replaced by a look of sheer shock.

“You what?” her voice cracks slightly before she catches herself and lowers it to a frantic whisper. “When? Today?”

“Today,” you admit, cheeks flaring with sudden heat that you’re grateful is mostly hidden by the low light in the ten. “And last week.”

Beth stares at you, jaw slightly slack. As a woman who prides herself on always having an observation prepared, she is remarkably empty-handed. “Twice,” she repeats slowly. “And you sat there with your little hair pins and wrinkly skirt, telling me you tripped in a ditch.”

“It was an impulse,” you defend quickly, voice hushed but fierce. “Today, at least. He was reading me a letter he’s writing to his mother, complaining about his sister ruining the spines of his books. He has a copy of The Hobbit, Beth. Paid three dollars for it.”

Beth blinks, smile faltering into an expression of profound confusion. “He… what does a fantasy book have to do with you kissing him under a tree?”

That gives you pause. “…Nothing.” Though you know it has everything to do with it. The absolute lack of war in that moment, the jarring reminder that Bucky Barnes exists outside of field dressings and casualty counts. “It was just… sweet. He was flustered. He’s… cute, when he’s flustered,” you add, admission slipping out quietly.

Beth’s confusion dissolves almost instantly, morphing into a look of of pure warmth. The gossipy edge she usually keeps in this camp completely melts away.

“I’m really happy for you,” she says softly, voice carrying a weight that makes your throat tighten.

Your fingers tangle awkwardly in the cotton of your nightgown, a blush spreading across your cheeks and down your neck, hot enough to rival the midday sun. Looking down at your knees, you are suddenly unable to meet her eyes, utterly flustered by how easily she has seen through you, and how thoroughly Bucky Barnes has managed to scramble your senses.

But beneath the burning heat in your cheeks, and despite the frantic inner voice telling you to pull the walls back up, there is a strange lightness in your chest. You could try to press it down, assume your usual rigid posture, but your shoulders are loose. Beth is right. You are happy, happier than usual. It’s a terrifying thing to recognize in a place like this, but as you sit on the edge of your cot, you can’t deny it.

“So, I suppose all that shameless chasing he did was worth it after all,” Beth purrs, continuing with a wicked spark returning to her tone. “Sergeant Barnes was practically setting up permanent residence in the infirmary just to get you to look at him.”

“He did not chase me,” you huff, trying for a stern tone but failing miserably. Finally, you decide to lay down, and you pull the thin sheet up over your legs, tucking yourself into the cot as if that was enough to shield you from Beth’s knowing look. “And I told you, I’m still not looking for anything in this camp. Men still leave, Beth. Trucks still roll out at dawn and we’ll be back to cleaning wounds.”

“Of course you’re not,” Beth says, with the serenity of someone who is deciding to let you have this particular story you have told yourself as long as you need it.

“I’m not,” you repeat, a little weaker, words as fragile as they have ever been. You know it’s a lie. Beth knows it’s a lie. Territory has been surrendered, ice has broken, and no amount of distance is going to erase the memory of his hand resting against the back of your neck, or the way his lips tasted when he kissed you, or when you kissed him.

“Whatever you say,” she murmurs into the dark, voice thick with an unbearable amount of satisfaction. “But you know… if you ever did want something. You know you can always talk to me, right? For… whatever. Advice. Friendly word. Whatever you need. We’re friends.”

You turn onto your side, facing away from her, and stare at the silver sliver of moonlight on the dirt floor. A hand drifts upward, fingertips lightly brushing against your lips, where the faint, warm taste of him still lingers. Then you close your eyes, heavy thrum of the camp fading into the background, and in the quiet safety of the dark, you let yourself smile.

Next morning, you are heading back from the supply depot, a heavy stack of freshly laundered bed linens balanced against your chest, with fabric smelling faintly of harsh lye and sun-baked canvas, while your mind is wandering some place else, thinking about Beth’s words last night, and the warmth of Bucky near you. You’ve found your mind often drags itself there, these days. While taking the long way around the motor pool, moving quickly to escape the mosquitoes buzzing near the water barrels, you end up hearing voices.

It isn’t an intentional thing. In a camp this crowded, privacy is a myth constructed out of thin cloth, and the rumble of soldiers unwinding is simply the background noise of your life. But as you round the corner of a parked deuce-and-a-half truck, a familiar cadence catches your ear, anchoring your boots to the floor. You don’t mean to stay and overhear, really, you don’t, but you do it anyway.

A cluster of men from the 107th are loitering in the shadow of an armored car, their silhouettes dark against the blue sky. A few of them are smoking, orange-red tips of their cigarettes pulsing. In the center of them, leaning back against the metal bumper with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, is Bucky.

“Come on, Barnes,” a voice jeers, and though you can’t quite see him from your spot, it sounds like Gabe Jones, thick with a camaraderie-laden grit. “You’re slipping pal. We saw you sweatin’ through your shirt under the elm yesterday like a schoolboy.”

A chorus of rough chuckles goes up from the group.

“I was writing my mother,” Bucky’s voice floats back, perfectly smooth. “A man can’t show his Ma some respect without his squad acting like a bunch of hens?”

“You weren’t looking at no letter when the nurse walked by,” another voice, higher and sharper, chimes in. “You always act different with her, Sarge, like you’re trying to remember your manners or something.”

Without meaning to, you settle against the back of the truck, bend a little, trying to prolong how much longer you can hear this conversation without being caught. The stack of linens feels very heavy, pressing against your ribs, trapping the air in your lungs. Or maybe it’s something else taking your breath away. You know you should keep walking. Professional distance, your own sanity, everything is demanding that you step out of earshot. But your feet refuse the order.

“She’s a lady,” Bucky replies, his tone light, deflecting the jab with practiced ease. “Unlike the lot of you, I gotta remind myself what civilized people act like so I don’t turn into a grease-monkey like Dugan.”

“Don’t give us that,” Jones pushes again, tone shifting from teasing to blunt, honest curiosity. “Every time we see you with her, you look like a dog waiting for its owner to give him an order. What’s the story?”

You find yourself holding your breath, rough cotton of the sheets scraping against your chin. You expect another joke. A smooth line that would minimize yesterday’s afternoon under the tree, something to keep his reputation intact among the men who look up to him. You brace yourself for it.

But it never comes.

“I don’t know,” Bucky says, rough edge of a genuine admission in his words. “She doesn’t give an inch. Looks right through the mouth on me. But… there’s something. About her. I think… I think the might be the o—"

With a sudden, violent jolt of panic, you force your boots to move, spinning on your heel and walking away into the afternoon shadows before the next word can leave his mouth. You move quickly, your stride frantic, stack of linens trembling slightly in your grip as you practically flee toward the safety of the hospital tents.

Not because you don’t want to hear it. God help you, it’s because you do. Because you can feel the shape of that unfinished sentence like a hand pressed flat against your sternum and you know that hearing the rest of it would do something to you that couldn’t be undone. Whatever he had been about to put at the end of that sentence, whether it was one, or only, or something else entirely, it would permanently dismantle the fragile fiction you built up to survive this war. That you weren’t looking for anything, still aren’t, and that this thing between you and Bucky is something you can keep perfectly bottled up, buried, controlled.

And you’re not ready for what comes after that. With admitting that wanting Bucky Barnes means admitting you could lose him.

Then the opportunity to continue exploring those feelings that have begun settle arrives on that same week, three days later, on a night carried on by a merciful breeze that breaks the stagnant heat of the afternoon.

You and Bucky find each other not by arrangement, but more by gravitational pull, one that causes you two to end up in the same place way past eleven, when the camp has died down and most people are asleep or awake but quiet in their cots. You are sitting behind the supply tents in the dark, staring up at the stars in the dark sky, back against the wooden slats, when you hear his boots on the dry ground. Bucky drops down beside you without needing an invitation.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he says, by way of explanation.

“Me neither.”

This wedge-shaped pocket of darkness behind the auxiliary supply tents is a spot you found because you weren’t quite ready to head to bed yet and decided that maybe the night air would be good to let you reflect on the last few weeks. A spot completely shielded from the main thoroughfare by a stack of empty wooden crates and a row of inactive water trailers. It is out of the way, and for the first time in weeks, it feels entirely private. Even when Bucky sits there and occupies that spot with you.

The two of you sit together for a while in the comfortable night, talking about small things, nothing consequential. Bucky tells you a ridiculous story about how Steve once tried to fix a bicycle in Brooklyn with nothing but a rusty wrench and ended up with grease behind his ears for a whole week. You tell him about a soldier today who had a clearly broken finger, but still refused to let you set it, until you asked him to try to button his own shirt and he couldn’t. That makes Bucky laugh, and the sound of it settles somewhere in your chest, something slotting into a place it was made for. The unfinished sentence you didn’t allow yourself to hear lingers in the back of your mind, still, but you ignore it.

Then Bucky goes quiet mid-laugh, his eyes catching the silver gleam of the moon reflecting in yours. You wonder, when you look at him and find him already staring at you, if he knows that you know something. If he knows, or suspects, that you heard something that hadn’t been meant for your ears. If he does, he doesn’t say it. Instead, he simply reaches out, large hand coming up to cup the side of your face, thumb smoothing over the apple of your cheek with a tenderness that makes your chest ache.

When he leans in, you don’t brace yourself. Don’t count the seconds, or think about the war. You just meet him halfway.

Bucky lets out a soft breath against your mouth, fingers curling into the hair at the nape of your neck, tilting your head just enough. The kiss deepens naturally, the way a kiss does when neither person is busy pulling back. His other hand finds your waist, and you let it, because you have come to find that you trust him with this part of you, a part no one has reached before.

You feel him shift slightly, turning more toward you, and you turn toward him too, leaning into the heavy heat of his mouth against yours, allowing your body to melt into the cool night air and the sharp scent of his minty soap. Whatever is happening, you are following his lead. His hand on your waist curls softly, tightening his hold on you, and you whine softly into the kiss, the sound immediately drowned by his mouth. But he hears it.

Goodness, he hears it.

His lips pull away from yours, and instead he tilts your head and brings his mouth down to your neck, tracing a burning line down the column of it, tasting your skin as he kisses it softly. On your waist, you feel the fingers moving, hand slowly traveling downward, hesitant in a way that Bucky rarely is, very aware of what he is doing and very uncertain how you will receive it. The action slows down, the air warms. His knuckles brush the hem of your skirt, and then, so slow you begin to question if time has transformed itself, they disappear under it, touching your knee, then moving just a bit up to your leg. Something in you clenches at the sudden, barely obscene touch. You don’t recognize the sensation at all; an entirely foreign language your body has suddenly started speaking without your permission. A tight heat blooms right through your middle, sinking low in your stomach and burning with a strange intensity that makes you want to curl inward. It feels like it hurts. Not the sharp sting of an injury, but an ache-like pressure that takes your breath away and makes your pulse hammer.

Feeling completely unmoored, you pull back slightly.

Not away. Just enough to create a small space, enough to see his face in the dark. Bucky goes still immediately, hand stopping where it is, eyes finding yours with an expression that is already apologetic, already prepared to retreat entirely without being asked.

“Bucky,” you whisper, and then stop, because the words that come next require a particular kind of honesty that you are still assembling. “I don’t… I don’t quite know what I’m doing. I’ve never… there hasn’t been anyone else. Not… not like this.”

Bucky doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t make any kind of easy remark to smooth over the moment, and doesn’t make it feel strange or foolish. Instead, he moves his hand up from your thigh, a loss you mourn immediately, and he settles it on your jaw, fingers tucking under your chin. Very gently, he moves your face until your eyes have no choice but to meet his.

“Okay,” he says. Simply. Like it's the easiest thing in the world.

His expression makes your throat squeeze, and you insist. “I’m not—”

“Thank you for tellin’ me, but you don’t have to explain anything,” he continues. “There’s nothing for me to know. You don’t have to be anything different than you are right now. You can just be here with me. I like you just like this.”

You let out a shaky breath, your forehead leaning forward to rest against his for a fraction of a second, feeling the steady thump of his heart against your chest. Bucky stays perfectly still, letting you find your bearings, hand on your cheek. When he speaks again, his voice is somehow lower, but carrying a quiet reverence that makes your skin tingle.

“Can I make you feel good? Nothing more than you want, my dove. I’ll stop the second you tell me to, I swear,” he tells you, small crease between his brows where he seems to be dedicating all his serious thought to this specific situation. Your hands settle on his chest, over his shirt. He calls you my dove. The world around is quiet for a while.

“Yes,” you say, somehow, not nervously this time. “Yes, Bucky.”

The moment you say it, tension leaves him in a quiet exhale. He doesn’t move fast. Consent isn’t treated like a green light to be rushed into; instead, he shifts his weight, large hands sliding under your arms to lift you up and guide you effortlessly onto his lap. He settles you over one of his large thighs, your skirt bunching between you and the world narrowing down to the broad expanse of his chest and the protective bracket of his arms. One of his forearms winds securely around your waist, anchoring you against him, while his other hand goes back to your hair, fingers tangling gently in the strands to tilt your face back up to his.

When his mouth meets yours again, the kiss is different. Slower, with a new kind of sweetness, his lips parting yours with a patient pressure that seems designed to soothe the agitated beating of your heart. And then it starts. The hand on your waist tightens its grip, fingers pressing into the fabric of your dress, and then he applies just enough force to prompt you, coaxing your hips forward until you are shifting over the heavy muscle of his thigh.

The rough fabric of his trousers presses right against your center, separated only by the fragile barrier of your underwear. As he guides your body to rock against him, the blunt counter-pressure rubs directly against the tight ache between your legs.

A sharp gasp is wrung from your throat, fingers instantly clutching at the fabric of his shirt, bunching the olive-drab cotton into tight fists. The sensation is blinding, the same peculiar heat you hadn’t recognized before flares up instantly, but this time, under the steady pressure of the movement he is helping you make, it breaks into a rolling wave that ripples all the way up to your chest. Your hips twitch against him instinctively, chasing the friction even as the sheer intensity of it frightens you. You slide forward again, entirely driven by his guiding hand, and another gasp slips past you, this time a little louder, something that is definitely closer to a moan, though you have never heard your mouth produce such sound before.

“Bucky—” you choke out against his lips, voice laced with overwhelming sensation. You feel entirely too exposed, even though you are fully dressed, body coming undone in ways you can’t exactly control or predict, the rigid composure you had maintained for months liquefying under the steady heat of his body.

“Shhh, we’ve gotta be quiet, dove,” Bucky murmurs against your lips, his voice strained, too. He keeps his thigh perfectly unyielding beneath you, all solid muscle underneath, and his hand on your waist remains firm, prompting another slow slide that makes your toes curl inside your boots. “Feels good like that?” His eyes track your reaction, and when you let out another desperate whimper in response, he just holds you closer. “Yeah, okay.” And then, before any other noise slips past your lips, his palm presses flat over your mouth to smother the noise.

Your muffled gasp vibrates directly against his skin. Completely at his mercy now, riding his heavy muscle in the dark as the fabric of his trousers relentlessly catches the agonizingly sweet focal point between your thighs, you cry out from pleasure but his palm catches the sound, locking it away between the two of you. “I’ve got you,” he murmurs, just with enough volume that you can hear it. “Keep your eyes on me. Trust me.”

His blue eyes are blown wide as they watch you, memorizing the way your eyebrows knit together in desperation, pleasure, your body hyper-sensitized. Your body moves with his help, chasing pleasure in a rhythm you don’t understand, driven solely by the heat pooling in your lower belly.

Whatever innocence you maintained by keeping your clothes on did nothing to dampen the intimacy of this moment. If anything it made every press of his hard muscle against your aching core feel magnified.

Your fingers curl harder around his shirt, and he smiles, a sight so devastating that it makes your stomach flip. Your hips roll forward again, a clumsy mimicry of the movement, driven by the need to ease the throbbing pressure. Bucky leans up, press his lips against your forehead, faintest stubble scraping pleasantly against your skin. “Just lean into it. Let me do the work.”

His own composure starts to fracture at the sight of you coming undone on his leg. Slowly, he uncurls his palm from your lips, but before you can let out the sob building in your chest, he slides two fingers directly into your mouth.

The intrusion is surprisingly gentle. His knuckles brush against your lips, fingers settling over your tongue and instantly providing a new anchor for your senses.

“Y’can bite down if it’s too much,” he whispers, thumb stroking the side of your flushed jaw.

Your mouth closes around his fingers then, teeth catching the blunt pads of them as another wave of blinding friction hits you from below. You can’t think anymore; can’t calculate the risks of the camp, proximity to the tents, or any other negative thought you have ever had since coming here. All you can do is suck clumsily on his fingers, tongue swirling around them in a helpless motion that only barely matches the desperate rolling of your hips against his thigh. You, entirely inexperienced you, completely oblivious to the way your own biology is surrendering, begin to drool around his fingers as the heat inside your stomach tightens into a sharp ache. Slick, warm moisture slips down the corner of your mouth, wetting his hand.

A jagged breath hitches in Bucky’s throat as your lips tighten around his fingers. For a man with his level of experience, the clumsy heat of your mouth is unexpected, an instinctual reaction from someone who has never been taught how to undo a man, yet is managing to completely shatter his defenses anyway. He hadn’t anticipated the way your innocence makes the unpracticed drag of your tongue feel ten times more devastating than any calculated move.

“Look at you,” he rasps, eyes darkening as he watches you drink him in. “Don’t know what you are doin’? My favorite nurse is a natural.”

Beneath you, Bucky shifts his weight with a short jerk of his hips, jaw clenching as he forces himself to adjust his position. He is getting aggressively, uncomfortably hard against the fabric of his trousers, the movement of your body threatening to rip his ironclad control from his grip. He realigns himself, but deliberately tilts his pelvis back just a fraction, ensuring that the rigid length of him doesn’t demand a single thing from you. His fingers twitch inside your mouth as his hand on your waist presses you down harder, driving you firmly against his leg to meet the crest of the wave.

And then, with a sharp intake of air, the knot snaps. Blinding, golden burst of heat ripples out from your center, a shiver being sent straight up your spine. Bucky recognizes it when your head falls back against his arm, and your mouth tightens around his fingers, eyelids fluttering shut as your body pulses helplessly. “That’s it, dove, let go for me… you’re okay.” The throbbing ache dissolves into a melting sweetness as you ride out the waves against his leg. Muscles clamp down around nothing, a flutter that burns and rips through you, radiating outward from your core until a soft paralysis seems to leave your limbs locked into place only to turn them into liquid right after.

You sit there on his lap for a long time afterward, Bucky keeping up a micro-movement, a soothing rub against your sensitive center to help you ride out the peak of your release until the tremors finally begin to fade. Completely spent, you collapse forward and bury your burning face into the crook of his neck, chest heaving as you try to catch your breath. Night is still warm, the camp still at war, but as you close your eyes and feel the steady beat of his heart beneath your palm, whatever is waiting for you across the Atlantic and whatever is happening in Europe just a few kilometers from where you are matter very little, compared to the universe Bucky has just given you room to breathe in.

“No one can know,” you whisper weakly against his skin, but Bucky is chuckling and wrapping his strong arms around your back, pulling you flush against his chest.

“But I’d love to let every muttonhead in this camp that you’re mine.”

You lift your head from his neck just enough to look at him, and he has the expression of a man who is very pleased with himself, so you just make a face. “That’s a terrible idea.”

“I’ve had worse, haven’t I?”

You scoff. “Sure. Inventing a splinter.”

“And it worked,” he points out. “Besides, I didn’t say I was going to announce it at roll call. I’m just saying I’d like to let everyone know that the prettiest nurse in camp is mine, now.”

Your teeth dig into your bottom lip, dragging it inside your mouth before you lean forward and kiss him, long enough to feel him chuckle into the kiss and the pads of his fingers digging briefly into the muscles of your back, before you pull back. His arms tighten around you slightly then.

“No one can know,” you repeat, but it comes out even less stern than the first time.

“Whatever you say, dove,” Bucky murmurs, and you can hear the smile in it before you see it, warm and unrepentant.

You stay exactly where you are, with his heartbeat under your palm and the quiet in the night camp. Things keep moving between the two of you, tectonic plates shifting and finding new positions until the earthquake comes, except every time it feels significantly less terrifying.

“Bucky,” you say very quietly, leaning against his shoulder again.

“Mm.”

“Don’t make me regret this.”

Warm lips press into your hair, and you feel him inhale slowly. “Will try my best, darlin’. I don’t wanna lose the best damn thing I’ve got now.”

Neither of you say anything else, and you just let the night hold you both.

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You kiss him back, your lips gliding against his wetly in a way that had him moaning into your mouth, had him gripping you by the waist and pulling you closer. You let out a soft sound of surprise against his lips when you feel the undeniable evidence of his arousal pressing against your stomach.

“Buck—” you murmur against his lips before you pull away, eyes flickering over his face that was bathed in warm light from the bedside lamp. “We need to—”

“—please,” Bucky whispers, his breath hot against your skin as he presses his lips to your neck, sending another surge of heat through your body, causing your cunt to pulse with need for the man in front of you. “Please, baby. Need you—need my wife.”

You couldn’t resist because you could never resist your husband, not when his cerulean blue eyes were looking at you like that, not when his cock—thick, heavy and aching for you—was pressed against your body, making your cunt clench around nothing.

And so, your hands reach up to cup either side of Bucky’s face to pull him in for a searing kiss. Bucky wastes no time in kissing you back with a kind of hunger that makes your core ache. His flesh hand squeezes the globe of your ass as the cool metal of his vibranium hand gently tilts your head back in order to deepen the kiss, the wet heat of his tongue licking into your mouth and causing every nerve in your body to come alive.

Even after so long together, even after two years of marriage, you can’t help but melt into him. Your arms wrap around his neck and you press your body flush against his as his flesh hand dances across your skin, goosebumps erupting in its wake before he hooks your thigh over his hip. You whimper against his lips, the feeling of his cock—painfully contained within the confines of his boxers—pressing against your clothed core and sending something that felt almost like electricity shooting through your body.

“Fuck,” Bucky groans against your mouth, pulling away only to take your bottom lip between his teeth and sucking it gently.

All thought about tomorrow, about what could happen almost completely leaves your mind for a moment, as Bucky’s fingers dip beneath your sleep shorts, his lips parting as he thumbs over the damp patch that had collected in your panties.

“You’re drenched, doll,” he murmurs, pressing his fingertips against your clit through your panties and smiling when you moan out loudly, nails biting into the skin of his shoulders. “All from a little kissing? Oh, doll.”

“Buck—” you gasp out, bottom lip pulled between your teeth as his fingers pull your panties to the side to slide the digits between your folds. You let out a noise—somewhere between a moan and a whimper—as your back across off the bed. Bucky groans shamelessly, collecting your slick from between your folds over his fingers before he smears it over your swollen, puffy clit, reveling in the pretty sounds falling from your lips as a result.

Your body jolts, his name falling from your lips in a desperate, wanton moan that your neighbours were surely to complain about in the morning. Not that you cared as your husband was circling your sensitive bud with one deft finger, causing heat to spread from your core to every damn nerve throughout your body.

You mewl, you whine, you were incapable of uttering anything but your husband’s name, especially when you felt the familiar cool metal of the fingers from his other hand prod at your entrance.

“I know, baby—I know,” he hums, pressing soft kisses to your warm cheek as though he wasn’t the one making your body writhe against the sheets. “Just relax f’me, yeah? Let me take care of my wife.”

Those words go straight to your dripping cunt, because despite being married for over two years, hearing Bucky Barnes call you his wife still made you lose your damn mind. 

You hear the sound of Bucky tearing your pyjama shorts off your body, feel him pull your soaked panties hastily down your legs before throwing them unceremoniously to the other side of the room. 

With your bottom half completely bare to Bucky, your body shudders with anticipation, arousal coating your folds that glisten for him in the warm light. Your husband could barely contain himself—both his large hands clasp your knees in order to spread your legs wide open for him.

You don’t notice how his hands shake slightly because his mouth sealing over your wet heat distracts you.

“Buck!” You mewl out, your hands reaching out to grab onto his hair, the longer locks threading through your fingers before you tug at them harshly. Bucky hums against you and the vibration sends shockwaves through your body, right down to your toes. You barely have time to recover however as he swirls the tip of tongue around your swollen clit and suddenly, your mind goes blank.

“Fuck, I love you so much,” Bucky murmurs against you before he starts sucking on your clit with such enthusiasm that your back begins to bow off of the mattress, but your husband’s vibranium hand stops you from doing so. His flesh one was creeping up your thigh, fingertips dancing along the skin and leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake. “Gonna make you feel s’fucking good. Even if it’s—”

He cuts himself off and you don’t have time to question him, not when Bucky was pressing two of his thick fingers deep inside of you. He wastes no time in curling them, in pressing firmly against that spongey spot inside you, in returning his mouth to your clit and making you see stars.

You couldn’t speak, couldn’t even form a vaguely coherent thought, not when the dual sensation of Bucky’s mouth over your clit and his fingers fucking in and out of you with the most obsence noises was all you could focus on. You barely notice how desperate he seemed, the way he was holding onto you like he was scared you might disappear.

“Bu-Bucky,” you gasp, your hands in his hair tugging in a warning as the feeling in your lower gut builds and builds and builds. The sounds he was making between the thighs—the wet sounds, the low moans of his mouth full of your pussy—were pulling you closer and closer to the edge, the sounds falling from your lips were unabashedly loud but nothing else mattered when Bucky Barnes was between your thighs, worshipping you. 

“Please come,” Bucky groans against you, his voice breaking from arousal? From holding back? You weren’t sure. “Please come baby, I need—”

You cut him off with a loud cry as your orgasm crashes over you. It was so intense—it always was with Bucky—and yet, you had never gotten used to the way your body shakes, the way stars burst behind your eyes. Your pussy gushes around Bucky’s fingers, your walls squeezing the digits as though trying to keep him inside of you. His fingers continue to pump in and out of you, his tongue lapping every last drop of your essence greedily as a mix of his saliva and your slick sticks to his stubble.

You felt pleasure in every nerve, every damn cell in your body and the only damn thing keeping you tethered to the earth was Bucky. His fingers that were still inside of you, his metal hand on your hip, his hair between your fingers, the choked sounds he was making and the—

You blink, your body still coming down from the intense high that Bucky had given you but everything comes back into focus as the sounds Bucky was making finally registers. 

“James,” you gasp softly, your hands gently cupping his face as you pull him up to your level, his fingers withdrawing and leaving you empty. His face was wet, mostly with your slick but also with—his tears. Bucky was crying. “Buck—why—”

“—n-nothing, I just—”

You tap his cheek gently, a soft look in your eyes as you feel a sudden weight in your chest. One that reminded you of the mission he was leaving for in the morning, the one he had told you not to worry about.

“—it’s the mission, isn’t it?” You ask him quietly, your voice barely a whisper as your thumb gently wipes away his tears. “You—you’re scared.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything but the way he looks back at you says it all. Your heart tightens in your chest.

“Buck, it’s going to be fine,” you say, unsure of whether you were trying to convince him or yourself. “You guys—you always find a way to pull through and—”

“—it’s different this time,” Bucky interjects, a look on his face you don’t quite recognise, one that makes your stomach turn, makes you feel a sense of dread that you’re not quite sure what to do with.

“It feels different and I—I just—I keep looking at you and thinking ‘what if this is the last time that I’—fuck—”

He pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes snapping shut as he turns his face away from you, not wanting you to see the tear that slips down his cheek.

Your heart feels as though it shatters into a million tiny pieces at the sight of his tears.

“Hey,” you whisper to him gently, your own throat suddenly feeling too tight as you pull him closer, trying to anchor him with your touch. “Don’t talk like that, Buck. You—you’re going to be fine, okay? You and everyone else are going to be—”

“—but what if we’re not?” Bucky asks you, his eyes shining as he looks back at you with an intensity that feels all consuming. “What if I—what if something happens and I—”

“—don’t say it—”

“—and I don’t come home.”

You swallow, your eyes burn and your throat feels too tight to even speak because the thought of something happening to Bucky—to your husband, to the love of your life—it just was too much to even comprehend.

“You will,” you say finally and with such certainty that Bucky’s eyes can’t help but shift over to meet yours. “You will, okay? You always find a way to come home, Buck.”

For a moment, Bucky looks as though he was going to argue, that he was going to let his fear and anxiety win but your hand acts as anchor, warm palm gently pressing against the hard muscle of his chest. Reminding him of why he did this—of why he fought so hard. To come home—to come home to you.

”You’ll come home,” you repeat quietly, your fingertips grazing against his bare skin, leaving his flesh burning beneath your touch, causing a curl in his gut and making him incredibly aware of the fact you were still bare from the waist down, traces of your arousal still smeared across his face, still lingering in his stubble. “You always come home, Buck.”

A fierce kind of determination burns in Bucky’s eyes, so much love and devotion there that it very nearly takes your breath away. A determination to not only survive but to keep you safe because nothing—absolutely nothing—was more important to Bucky than that. 

His metal hand—the one that had once hesitated before touching you—cups your cheek gently. The combined feeling of the cool metal of his palm and his thumb stroking over your skin makes you shudder but you don’t dare look away.

”Always,” Bucky murmurs quietly before he leans in, his lips just barely grazing yours and yet—the barely there kiss reignites the fire burning in your gut. Your hands dance along Bucky’s bare skin, along the sensitive flesh where his shoulder was fused with vibranium before they find home at the nape on his neck, fingers curling in the hair and making him moan against you.

Bucky’s lips soon press more firmly against yours, making your head spin and your heart race. You return the kiss with equal fever as you feel his cock hardening beneath his boxers once again against your thigh. Another groan is pulled from Bucky’s throat, his hands moving to grip the swell of your hips desperately, dragging you closer as his tongue smooths over yours, licking eagerly into your mouth. You swear that you feel fresh slick already oozing out of you as a result.

You feel Bucky’s hand move from your thigh, his destination the wetness between your legs but you place your hand over his before he could press his fingers inside you yet again.

You shake your head, smiling at him as you move your hand to rest on your husband’s abdomen. You watch the way the muscles there twitch, his body shuddering under your touch.

“Baby, please don’t tease me,” Bucky groans, throwing his head back against the pillow and exposing his neck to you. You can’t help yourself—you lean in, pressing your lips to his skin and fighting back a smile as Bucky makes a small noise beneath you, your fingers gently tickling the dark trail of hair that disappeared beneath his boxers.

“I would never,” you murmur, your hands continuing their journey down his body, palming his now rock hard cock over his boxers. Bucky’s response was instant—his muscles tense, he pulls his bottom lip between his teeth as he tries not to let out any more noise. But one squeeze of his cock through the material has him whining beneath you. Because Bucky Barnes may have been a six foot super soldier, but he was always putty in your hands.

“Sweetheart—”

You silence him by yanking his boxers down. His thick, heavy cock slaps audibly against his stomach and you can’t help but marvel at the beautiful sight—at the ruddy tip that was already leaking precum, at the veins bulging along the length. 

Fuck—there was not a better sight than your husband’s cock.

Your hand wraps around him (as best you could given the sheer size of him) and you give him a slow but firm stroke. 

Bucky lets out a strangled sound, his head tipping back against the soft pillow as you speed up ever so slightly, twisting your hand at the head before gliding back down with the help of his precum. Bucky’s hips jerk upwards and you watch—in awe—as his lips part, as his breathing turns ragged, as his hips cant into every stroke—so fucking desperate for you that you could feel the wetness pooling between your thighs. 

“F-fuck,” Bucky groans, his fingers fisting into the sheets as the obsence sounds you fisting his cock fill the room. The schlick, schlick sounds was lewd but fuck, if it wasn’t turning you on even more. “Feels so fucking good, baby. I fuckin’ love you s’much.”

You can’t help but smile at his words, your heart thumping in your chest as your eyes flicker up to look at his face. You don’t dare slow the rhythm of your hand but you take a moment to just look at him. To look at how truly beautiful he was, how much he trusted you to take control, at how there was once a point in your relationship where you didn’t know if that would ever be possible since someone else in control had once meant pain, meant torture for Bucky but now? Now—Bucky was more than happy to let you take control. 

“I love you too, Buck,” you tell him gently, the sweetness in your voice a direct contrast to the way you were pumping his cock, taunting him by swiping your thumb over the slit, spreading the precum over the velvety skin and making Bucky whimper beneath you.

“Baby, please,” he whines, his hand wrapping around your wrist to slow your movements. “Please. If you keep—if you keep doing that, m’gonna cum and I—I want—I need to cum inside you, sweet girl. I need to fill my wife up, need’t see my cum dripping out of you. Need to—”

You shut him up by pulling him into a searing kiss. One that has him pulling you flush against him, groaning into your mouth as he flips you easily onto your back. You let out a small squeal against his lips, one that turns into a whimper the moment that you feel the fat head of his cock nudging at your entrance. 

“Bucky,” you whine, back bowing off the bed as you try to pull him closer, one leg hooking around his hip to try and press his thick cock even further inside of you. But Bucky seems hellbent on taking his time, holding the base of his cock as he guides it teasingly between your folds, coating it completely in your slick. “Buck, please—”

You’re cut off by your own loud moan as Bucky sinks in home. Your husband was always a stretch but god, you loved how full you felt when he was inside of you. How it very nearly felt as though you were being split in half, how you felt him in every damn every in your body.

“You feel s’good, sweetheart,” Bucky tells you, pressing his lips to your forehead in a sweet kiss as he bottoms out, the tip of his cock kissing your cervix and making your toes curl. “Feel s’good, I wanna marry you again. Once wasn’t enough.”

You let out a loud laugh, one that makes Bucky beam down at you, the corners of his eyes crinkling with because god, he loved you. He loved you so, so much and if anything happened to him—

He couldn’t think about that now. He couldn’t even let the thought in. Because he was going to survive. He was going to keep his promise to you. He was going to come home. Because Bucky was always going to make it home. 

His flesh hand slips into yours, fingers intertwining and resting on the pillow beside your head. You don’t miss the way Bucky’s thumb brushes over your wedding band, the small action making your heart suddenly feel two sizes too big.

“I love you,” he whispers, his vibranium hand cupping your face and holding you like you were something more precious than gold. “I love you so much, baby.”

The corner of your mouth twitches, your hands find the plains of his chest and your nails bite into his skin, your throat feeling momentarily too tight.

“I love you more.”

Bucky smiles down at you, squeezing your hand as he pulls his hips back, leaving just the tip inside of you before pushing back in. Your velvety walls pulse around him, making it difficult for Bucky to even form a coherent thought.

“Not possible,” he manages to grits, slamming back into you and hitting that spot inside of you that knocks the breath right out of you, has you holding onto him even tighter.

Your interlocked hands don’t move from their spot on the pillow, not as Bucky begins to pick up the pace, not as the lewd sounds of his cock slamming into your soaked cunt begin to fill the room, adding to the symphony of your moans and Bucky’s low groans.

The headboard knocks against the wall, your moans only get louder as Bucky’s cock sinks into you over and over and over again. It was so intense, so overwhelming and with the thought of tomorrow lingering over you? The heat that was burning through you was near impossible to hold back.

You mewl out, your hand squeezes his as you feel the coil in your gut tightening, so close to snapping that you felt tears well up in your eyes due to the sheer amount of pleasure you were feeling.

“Oh, are you close, baby?” Bucky asks in a teasing voice, despite the fact you could see the sweat glistening on his forehead, the muscles bulging in his arms from the effort of holding back. “You gonna be a good girl and come f’me?”

You wish that those two little words didn’t have an effect on you, wish that you could have held back for even a few more seconds. But Bucky knew you and knew exactly what you needed to tip you over the edge.

A sound tears from your throat, somewhere between a sob and a moan as your orgasm crashes through your body like a damn tidal wave. You felt it in every nerve, every cell, every bone throughout your body. Your thighs shake, your back arches off the mattress and your velvety walls squeeze around him so tight that Bucky can’t help but follow you right over the edge.

Bucky finishes with a loud, needy groan that was in danger of waking the whole damn building. Not that you cared, not when Bucky’s hips stuttered against yours, slamming into your spent pussy a final time before flooding it with hot spurts of his cum, your name falling from his lips over and over again.

“When I get back,” Bucky murmurs, his lips grazing your shoulder gently before he pulls away to look at you. “We’re going to do that every night, deal?”

You let out a warm laugh, your body shuddering slightly as Bucky pulls out of you. You feel his cum oozing out of you due to the sheer amount he had produced, could feel it dripping down your thighs and onto the freshly washed sheets. But that didn’t matter when Bucky’s thumb once again was rubbing over your wedding band, not when he was looking down at you with such reverence in his eyes.

“Deal,” you say with a small smile. “Now, should we go to sleep or—”

You were cut off by your own small shriek as Bucky grabs your waist and rolls over, leaving you sat on top of him, straddling his waist and feeling his thick cock hardening beneath you once again.

“—not yet,” Bucky murmurs, his eyes shifting down to his cum still leaking out of you. “Gonna make sure it sticks, baby.”

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「 puppy love 」

♌︎ August 3rd | by @buckytakethewheel The first time you and Leo met was as seven year olds on a playground. His first words to you? “You’re gonna be my wife”. Almost two decades later, you’ve heard that phrase leave his mouth more times than you can count. But is there a chance it will ever mean something real?

「 take a chance on me 」

♌︎ August 7th | by @phoenix-in-writing It was with great reluctance you showed up to the country club, put on the practiced smile that had sold millions of records worldwide, and braced for the latest celebrity gossip to catch up with you OR The five times Leo Reilly tries to impress a popstar that already has everything money could buy, and the one time he actually does.

「 aye aye, captain 」