I don't like a gold rush

He loved you when it was easy, when you fit neatly around whatever version of him he wanted to be that month. He loved you most when he thought you might finally leave for good.

This time had ended outside your apartment building in the cold, with his hands shoved in his pockets and his mouth set in that familiar wounded line.

“You’re overreacting.”

You had laughed then, short and ugly, because what else was there to do? He had said that after the girl at the tailgate, after the texts you were never meant to see, after the weekend he disappeared and came back with a hickey low on his neck like you were stupid enough to miss it. Overreacting. As if heartbreak could be dramatic if it happened often enough.

You had told him it was over. He had said, “You always say that.”

And maybe he’d had reason to believe you didn’t mean it.

But for once, you had.

Now it was Thursday, classes were dragging, your chest still felt hollow in a way that made you angry at yourself, and Wanda was done entertaining your grief like it was some kind of sacred ritual.

“Move on,” she said bluntly. “Please. For the love of God. Hook up with somebody hot and emotionally unavailable. Cleanse the palate.”

Across from her, Natasha snorted into her drink. “That is terrible advice.”

“It is excellent advice,” Wanda shot back. “She doesn’t need another relationship. She needs a distraction. Preferably one with shoulders.”

You rolled your eyes, but the corner of your mouth twitched despite yourself. “A distraction.”

“Yes,” Wanda said, leaning in like she was about to share state secrets. “A campus-approved, low-commitment, high-orgasm distraction.”

Natasha grinned. “I can think of one.”

The three of you went quiet in unison.

Because, of course, you all thought of the same person.

James Buchanan Barnes.

Bucky to everyone on campus, because nobody who looked like that should be allowed to have a name that sharp and old-fashioned without softening it somehow.

Star forward. Campus legend. Hockey team golden boy with a mouth made for smirking and a reputation so thoroughly established it barely needed repeating. He was good for a good time, not a long time. Everybody knew it. Girls came and went from his apartment above the pizza place off campus. He flirted shamelessly, skated like violence could be beautiful, and had the kind of face that made poor decisions feel reasonable.

In other words, exactly the kind of man you should avoid.

Which was probably why you heard yourself ask, “You think he’d go for it?”

Wanda barked out a laugh. “Honey. Bucky Barnes would go for a girl in a potato sack if she looked at him the right way.”

Natasha pointed at you. “That’s not the point. The point is, would you go for it?”

You thought of Ryan’s smug certainty. You thought of the ache in your chest every time you caught yourself reaching for your phone. You thought of how badly you wanted to stop feeling chosen only in parts.

And then you thought of Bucky’s hands.

You'd never touched them before, but you'd seen them often enough. Wrapped around a hockey stick. Curled around a beer bottle at parties. Tugging the collar of his shirt after games, skin flushed, hair damp at the nape of his neck, looking like sin in broad fluorescent light.

You took a sip of your coffee and said, with all the false casualness you could muster, “Maybe I’m due for a bad decision.”

Wanda raised her plastic cup. “That’s my girl.”

It turned out you didn’t even have to go looking for him.

Friday night, the campus bar was packed shoulder to shoulder after the home game, half the crowd still in school colors and buzzing from the win. Somebody had dragged a table close to the jukebox and was trying to lead a chant that kept dissolving into drunken laughter. The whole place smelled like beer, fried food, and melted snow from the boots piled by the door.

You were there because Wanda refused to let you rot in your apartment and because there was something deeply satisfying about putting on a tiny black top and jeans that made your ex regret ever making you feel ordinary.

You were three drinks in, warm and pleasantly untethered, when the hockey team came in.

The room shifted when they did. Not dramatically. Just enough for you to feel it.

Loud voices, easy confidence, the kind of collective attention only comes from being young and adored in a college town. You saw Sam Wilson first, laughing at something Steve Rogers said. Then Steve himself, all broad shoulders and impossible earnestness. And then Bucky, a step behind them, black henley stretched over his chest, hair pushed back from his forehead, mouth already tipped in a half-smile like the whole world had been built mostly for his amusement.

He saw you before you could look away.

You knew it because that smile changed.

Not bigger. Not brighter. Just different. Sharper. Interested.

“Uh-oh,” Wanda murmured into your ear.

You kept your gaze on your drink. “What?”

“Don’t what me. Barnes just clocked you from across the room.”

You made yourself glance up again, because pretending you hadn’t noticed would’ve been ridiculous. Bucky was still looking at you. He lifted his chin in greeting, casual and self-assured.

Your pulse jumped.

“Maybe he’s looking at you,” you said weakly.

Wanda laughed in your face.

Three minutes later, he was in front of you.

“Hey,” he said, like the two of you had been halfway through a conversation already.

Up close, he was worse. Better. Bigger than he looked on the ice somehow, shoulders filling the narrow space between tables, jaw shadowed with the start of a beard. He smelled like cold air and clean soap and whatever cologne made your brain go embarrassingly blank for a second.

“Hey,” you managed.

His eyes flicked over you once, not leering, just appreciative enough to make heat rise under your skin. “Did you come to celebrate me?”

You let out a laugh before you could stop yourself. “I don’t know. Did you do anything worth celebrating?”

He pressed a hand to his chest in mock offense. “Scored the game-winner.”

“Mm. Seems pretty self-serving to throw yourself a party.”

“Who said it was for me?” His mouth tilted. “Could be for the people who like watching.”

That should have been corny. On anyone else, it might have been. On him, it landed low in your stomach and settled there, warm and dangerous.

You could feel Wanda watching you with barely concealed delight.

Bucky leaned an elbow against the high-top. “You want another drink?”

You should have said no. You knew you should have said no if only to preserve some illusion of self-control.

Instead you said, “Depends.”

“On?”

“What you think this is.”

His brows lifted slightly, and for the first time since he walked over, the air between you changed. Less playful. More direct.

He looked at you for a beat too long, like he was recalculating.

Then he smiled again, slower this time. “That depends on what you want it to be.”

You appreciated that. More than you expected to.

No pretense. No fake gentleness. No lying about intentions because he thought it was what you wanted to hear. Everybody knew what Bucky Barnes was. You had practically come here counting on it.

You set your empty glass on the table. “I’m not looking for anything serious.”

The smile didn’t leave his face, but something in his eyes sharpened with interest. “Good.”

“I mean it.”

“So do I.”

You folded your arms, trying not to look too affected by how easy this was. “I just got out of something messy.”

“Then messy’s the last thing I’m offering.”

That surprised you enough to make you laugh softly. “That your line?”

“No.” He tipped his head. “My line would be something a lot smoother than that.”

It was ridiculous how much you liked him right then.

Maybe because he was exactly what everyone said he was, and exactly not. Cocky, yes. Beautiful, undeniably. But he wasn’t slimy or pushy like you would assume. He seemed to understand that there was a difference between wanting and taking. A difference you had become intimately aware of over the last two years.

“So what are you offering?” you asked.

His gaze dropped to your mouth, then lifted again. “One night,” he said. “No pressure. No promises. You wake up tomorrow and decide it was a bad idea, I’ll survive.”

Your heart kicked once against your ribs.

Maybe it was reckless. Maybe it was textbook rebound behavior. Maybe Wanda would never let you hear the end of it.

But maybe, for once, you wanted something simple. Something honest. Something that began and ended exactly where both people agreed it would.

You held his gaze. “One night.”

Bucky smiled like he knew exactly how temporary promises like that could be.

“Come on, then,” he said.

His apartment was warmer than you expected.

Not physically, though that too. The heat clicked in old pipes and the whole place smelled faintly like cedar and laundry detergent and whatever takeout he’d eaten before the game. But also in the way it looked lived in. There was a hockey bag by the door, textbooks stacked on the kitchen table, a coffee mug in the sink, a framed photo of him with the team on a shelf near the couch. You had expected something more anonymous, more designed for quick exits and easy forgetting. Instead it felt distinctly his.

Which was unfortunate, because humanizing him made this harder.

You dropped your coat over the back of a chair while he locked the door behind you. Suddenly the silence felt loud after the bar.

“You want water?” he asked.

The question was so normal it almost undid you. “Sure.”

He handed you a glass from the kitchen, then leaned against the counter while you drank, studying you with a patience that felt at odds with every rumor you’d heard about him.

“What?” you asked.

“Nothing.” His gaze moved slowly over your face. “Just making sure you’re here because you want to be.”

The warmth that spread through you had nothing to do with vodka.

“I’m here because I want to be.”

He nodded once, like that mattered. Like he wasn’t going to touch you until he was certain.

Then he set his own glass down and crossed the room.

His hand came up slowly, giving you every chance to step back, and settled warm against the side of your neck. He kissed you like he’d been thinking about it longer than the last forty-five minutes. Not rushed. Not greedy. Just deep and deliberate, his mouth parting over yours until your fingers tightened around the edge of the counter and every good intention you’d brought with you dissolved.

You kissed him back harder, because if this was going to happen, you wanted it to happen all the way.

He made a soft sound in the back of his throat when you opened for him, one hand sliding to your waist, the other bracing on the counter beside you. His body was all heat and weight, big enough to make you feel crowded in a way that thrilled instead of trapped. When his tongue brushed yours, you made a helpless little noise and he smiled against your mouth like he’d won something.

“Oh, you like that,” he murmured.

You dragged him back in by the front of his shirt instead of answering.

That got a real laugh out of him, low and delighted, and then the kiss turned rougher. Hungrier. He backed you along the counter until your hip knocked the corner and you hissed, but he only used it to lift you onto it, stepping between your knees like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he said against your mouth.

“I won’t.”

His eyes flicked up to yours. “Tell me anyway.”

You swallowed. “I’ll tell you.”

“Good girl.”

The words hit you low and immediate.

He must have seen it happen, because his smile turned devastating. Then he kissed down your neck, open-mouthed and unhurried, and you forgot every defensive speech you’d rehearsed on the walk over.

He took his time with you. That was the thing you hadn’t expected. A man with Bucky’s reputation should have been selfish. Efficient. Skilled, maybe, but with the clear sense that he was working toward his own satisfaction.

Instead he kissed you until you were breathless and touched you like he had nowhere else to be. He slipped your top up with a pause for permission that made your chest ache for reasons you didn’t want to examine. He looked at your body like he liked what he saw, no hesitation, no false flattery. When he got you out of your bra, his hands were reverent enough to be dangerous.

“Jesus,” he said softly, like he hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

You laughed, shy despite yourself. “What?”

“Nothing.” He kissed the top of one breast, then the other, eyes half-lidded as he looked up at you. “Just think maybe I’m the luckiest guy on campus.”

“That definitely is a line.”

“Maybe,” he said, mouth at your skin, “but it’s also true.”

By the time he dropped to his knees in front of you, your head was spinning.

“Bucky—”

“Let me.”

It wasn’t really a request. More like a promise. His hands slid up your thighs, easing them wider, and when he pressed a kiss to the inside of one knee you nearly came off the counter from that alone.

He looked up at you before he pushed your jeans down, giving you one more chance. You nodded, breathless, and he smiled into your skin.

Then he put his mouth on you, and any remaining thought left your body.

He was obscenely good at it. He paid attention. He learned you almost immediately, like your reactions were clues he intended to solve with his whole body. His tongue moved with slow, merciless precision, and every time your hands tightened in his hair he groaned like this was for him too.

It became impossible to stay quiet.

Your head knocked lightly against the cabinet when you tipped back, one hand over your mouth because the sounds coming out of you felt mortifyingly loud in his kitchen. Bucky only took your wrist and pulled it away.

“No,” he murmured, not stopping. “Let me hear you.”

When you came, it hit you so fast you barely had time to realize you were falling. His hands held you steady through it, his mouth never letting up until your thighs shook around his shoulders and you were gasping his name like a prayer.

He stood only long enough to kiss you with the taste of yourself still on his mouth, which should not have been as hot as it was. You made a desperate sound and reached for his belt.

His laugh was rougher now. “Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

“Not even a little embarrassed.” He helped you with his zipper. “I like that.”

You liked that he was already hard. You liked the sharp inhale he took when you got your hand around him. You liked the way his forehead dropped briefly to yours, composure slipping for the first time that night.

“Bedroom,” he muttered.

You hooked your legs around his waist. “Efficient.”

He grinned, wide and boyish and filthy all at once. “You’re gonna kill me.”

“Get used to it.”

He did, over the next several weeks, in every possible sense.

The first time really was only one night. You left in the morning wearing yesterday’s clothes and his mouth on yours in the doorway, and it should have ended there.

Instead he texted you that night.

Had fun. Hope you’re hydrating.

You stared at the message for a full minute before replying.

Is this your aftercare routine with all your hookups?

His answer came almost immediately.

Only the ones I’m worried might have died in my bed.

You snorted, then typed back before you could overthink it.

Still alive. Barely.

Good, he sent. Would’ve hated the paperwork.

You told yourself it was harmless.

Then you saw him a week later at a party thrown by one of the baseball guys, and he kissed you in a dark hallway with one hand under your skirt and the other braced above your head while music pounded through the walls. You told yourself that was harmless too, right up until he dragged his mouth down your throat and said, “Come home with me.”

You did.

After that, it became a pattern.

Sometimes one of you texted first. Sometimes neither of you had to.

You’d see him across campus outside the athletic center, hair damp from practice, duffel slung over one shoulder, and he’d look at you in that way of his that made your stomach flip over. You’d run into him at the library and end up making out with him in the stairwell between floors, your textbooks forgotten on the landing while his hand slid up under your sweater. He’d show up at a party and somehow always end up with you pinned to a bathroom door, your fingers in his hair, his mouth moving over yours like he knew exactly how much pressure it took to make you dizzy.

Every time, afterward, you would gather whatever shreds of your self-control remained and say, “This is the last time.”

And every time, Bucky would look at you with a laugh hovering at the corner of his mouth.

“The last time, huh?”

“I mean it.”

“Sure you do.”

The third time, he said it while lying shirtless beside you, one hand spread warm over your stomach like he belonged there. Your body was still humming from the way he’d made you come on his tongue first and then again with his fingers buried in you while he kissed you deep enough to swallow every sound.

You turned to glare at him, though it was hard to maintain any righteous indignation while completely naked in his bed.

“Why do you look so smug?”

“Because you say it every time.” He brushed his thumb over your skin absently. “And then you come back.”

“You come back too.”

“Yeah,” he said easily. “I never said I was leaving.”

That lodged somewhere under your ribs and stayed there.

Because that was the dangerous part. It wasn’t the sex, even though that was increasingly difficult to think about without losing your train of thought in public. It was everything around it. The way Bucky started feeling less like a mistake and more like a habit. The way you learned his class schedule without meaning to. The way he’d tug you between his knees in his kitchen while waiting for the microwave to finish and kiss you until your lips tingled. The way he’d murmur, “Stay,” after sex in a voice too sleepy to be performative, and sometimes you actually would.

He wasn’t supposed to be considerate.

He definitely wasn’t supposed to be funny.

And he absolutely was not supposed to listen.

But he did.

He remembered you hated mushrooms and picked them off the pizza before handing you a slice. He noticed when you were quiet and didn’t pry, just pulled you against his chest and let you breathe until the tension eased from your shoulders. He asked how your exam went and actually waited for the answer. Once, when you mentioned in passing that your apartment radiator never worked right, he showed up two days later with a space heater balanced on one hip and said, “Don’t make a thing out of it. I got it from Steve’s mom.”

You had looked at him like he’d started speaking another language.

“What?”

“This isn’t very down for a good time, not a long time of you.”

Bucky had shrugged, but his ears went a little pink. “Maybe I contain multitudes.”

He kissed you until you forgot how to make sense of him.

The hookups got better, which honestly felt unfair.

They should have plateaued. Should have become routine. Instead every time with him felt like he’d found some new way to undo you.

There was the night he came over after an away game, still riding the high of a win, and fucked you against your apartment door so slowly you could barely stand it, one arm wrapped around your waist to keep you upright while he told you exactly how pretty you looked taking him. There was the Sunday afternoon at his place when you ended up on your knees between his spread thighs, your cheek brushing the worn denim of his jeans as you took his cock into your mouth inch by inch. He had gone so still, fingers tight in your hair, like he was one wrong movement away from losing it. When you looked up at him, he made a wrecked sound and said your name like it had surprised him.

You liked making him come apart.

Maybe too much.

After that, he had pulled you into his lap in the shower, water steaming around both of you while he kissed you with lazy, reverent hunger. By the time he slid a hand between your legs, you were already shaking.

“There she is,” he murmured when your forehead fell to his shoulder. “Been waiting for that.”

You should not have liked hearing him sound proud of you. But you did. God, you did.

Afterward, with your legs tangled and his damp hair curling at the ends, you had said your line again because you didn’t know what else to do with the softness of that moment.

“This has to be the last time.”

Bucky propped himself up on one elbow. “You gotta stop saying that when I’m inside you five minutes earlier.”

You shoved at his chest, laughing despite the sting in your own voice. “Shut up.”

He caught your wrist and kissed your palm. “You’re the one who keeps lying.”

“I’m not lying.”

His expression changed then, something quieter moving under the teasing. “Maybe not on purpose.”

You went still.

That was the first time you saw it clearly, the thing you’d been avoiding by pretending this was all body and no consequence. It was there in the way he was looking at you. Not just wanting. Not just amused. Something heavier. Something that made your pulse turn strange.

So you did what you had become very good at doing.

You pulled away first.

“You’re reading too much into it,” you said lightly, climbing out of bed to gather your clothes.

Bucky didn’t argue. Which somehow made it worse.

By March, your friends had stopped pretending this was a rebound.

“You’re basically dating,” Wanda informed you one afternoon as you sat cross-legged on her bed avoiding your reading assignment.

“We are absolutely not.”

“You spend four nights a week at his apartment.”

“That is not a relationship. That is convenience.”

Natasha looked up from her laptop with the exhausted patience of someone dealing with a child who refused to identify basic shapes. “He walked you to class in the rain yesterday.”

“Because he was already going that way.”

“He does not have class in the humanities building.”

You opened your mouth, then shut it again.

Wanda pointed dramatically. “Exactly.”

You flopped back against her pillows. “I just got out of something awful. I cannot do another relationship right now. I can barely think about next semester, let alone commitment.”

Natasha’s voice softened. “Nobody’s saying you have to.”

“He’s not either,” Wanda added. “At least, not that I’ve seen. But you can’t keep acting like this means nothing.”

You stared at the ceiling.

The truth was, you didn’t know what it meant. You only knew that when Bucky texted, your day changed shape around it. That you had started watching his games because you liked seeing him lit up by something he loved. That sometimes, in the half-second before you remembered to protect yourself, you caught yourself imagining what it would be like if this were allowed to become something real.

And that terrified you.

Because real things could hurt you.

Casual things were supposed to end clean. That had been the whole point.

Then came the fundraiser.

The hockey team and a bunch of other campus organizations had teamed up to raise money for a local youth center, and the bar just off campus—The Lantern, with its warped stage and sticky floors and surprisingly decent fries—was hosting the whole thing. There were raffle baskets and signed jerseys and a local band playing covers in the corner while students crammed too close to the tables and shouted over each other.

You went because Wanda had helped organize half of it and because staying home would have felt suspiciously like avoidance.

Bucky was there because where else would he be? The star athlete in a henley that hugged his chest like a prayer answered by someone with questionable morals. He was working the room with the rest of the team, taking pictures, charming donors, signing a little girl’s hockey stick with solemn concentration while her mother beamed.

It should not have done things to you, watching him kneel to the kid’s level and ask what position she played.

“This is sick,” Wanda muttered beside you. “He’s hot and good with children? Honestly offensive.”

“Please stop talking.”

“Can’t. I’m a truth teller.”

Bucky looked up from across the room and saw you.

His whole face changed.

There it was again, that awful, lovely thing where the crowd seemed to blur at the edges. He handed the hockey stick back, said something to the girl that made her grin, and then he was moving toward you with that easy confidence that made everybody part for him without realizing they were doing it.

“You came,” he said.

“You invited half the campus.”

“Still.” He smiled. “You came.”

You hated how much warmth those two words carried.

“You clean up nice, Barnes.”

He leaned down just enough for only you to hear. “You trying to flirt with me in public?”

Your stomach dipped. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Liar.”

Wanda made a very pointed noise. “I’m going to go do literally anything else.”

She disappeared before you could glare at her.

Bucky took your drink from your hand, had a sip like it belonged to him, then offered it back. “Come upstairs with me for a second.”

“The Lantern has upstairs?”

“Office. Quiet hallway. Couple of storage rooms. Endless possibilities.”

You should have said no.

Instead, because apparently you had no survival instinct where he was concerned, you followed him through the back corridor past the restrooms and stacked kegs to a narrow stairwell. He only got as far as the landing before turning and pulling you into him.

You hit his chest with a breathless laugh. “Subtle.”

“You came in wearing that skirt. You don’t get to talk to me about subtle.”

“I’ve worn this skirt before.”

“Yeah,” he said, mouth brushing yours, “and I thought about it for three days.”

The kiss stole the rest of your reply.

He backed you gently against the wall, hands finding your waist with the ease of someone who had done this often enough to know exactly how your body fit against his. Below you, the bar pulsed with music and voices muffled by floorboards. Up here it was dim and private, the kind of hidden space college towns are built on.

He kissed like he meant it and that was the problem. He kissed like he’d spent weeks learning the shape of your mouth and still hadn’t gotten over it.

When he pulled back, you were breathing hard.

“Come home with me tonight,” he said.

You blinked. “I probably was.”

He smiled a little, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “No. I mean come home with me. Stay. Stop pretending this is casual when it isn’t.”

Everything in you went still.

The music downstairs shifted to another song. Someone laughed too loudly. Somewhere nearby, a door banged shut.

You stared at him. “Bucky.”

He rubbed his thumb along your hip. “You don’t have to freak out.”

“I’m not freaking out.”

“You are a little.”

“Because you’re doing exactly what we said we wouldn’t do.”

His jaw flexed. “Did we? Or did you?”

You opened your mouth, then closed it again.

His voice stayed gentle, which almost made it worse. “I liked this being easy. I did. But it stopped being just sex for me a while ago, and I think you know that.”

Your pulse thudded in your throat.

“Don’t do that,” you said quietly.

“Do what?”

“Make me answer something I’m not ready to answer.”

He looked at you for a long moment. “I’m not asking you for forever.”

“That’s how it starts.”

The words came out sharper than you meant them to. You saw him feel the edge of them and hated yourself immediately.

You dragged in a breath. “I just got out of something awful. I am not doing this again. I’m not throwing myself into another thing because it feels good right now.”

His hands loosened at your waist but didn’t leave. “You think that’s all this is to me?”

“No,” you said, because lying would’ve been insulting. “That’s what scares me.”

He was quiet.

Then, very softly, “You think I’d hurt you like that?”

The answer should have been no. It was no. You knew it.

But fear doesn’t care what you know. Fear only cares that once, you were stupid enough to trust somebody who treated your heart like a revolving door, and now even kindness felt like a setup.

“It doesn’t matter,” you said. “I can’t do this.”

His face closed off in small, careful increments. Not anger. That would have been easier. Just hurt, managed so tightly it made your chest ache.

“Can’t,” he repeated. “Or won’t?”

You stepped out of his hold.

“Please don’t make this ugly.”

He laughed once without humor. “I’m not the one making it ugly.”

That stung because it was true.

You folded your arms, protecting yourself from the look on his face. “We had an agreement.”

“Yeah,” he said. “And then we kept breaking it.”

“Because of sex, Bucky.”

“That is not why you know my coffee order.”

You went silent.

His eyes searched your face like maybe, even now, he could find something to hold onto. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

You couldn’t.

And because you couldn’t, because the truth sat living and dangerous between you, you did the only thing you knew how to do.

You fled.

Not literally at first. You walked downstairs with as much dignity as you could gather, heart beating too hard, skin still warm from his hands. The noise of the bar hit you all at once. Wanda saw your face and stood immediately.

“What happened?”

You picked up your drink from the table with fingers you hoped didn’t shake. “Nothing. I’m done here.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Done as in leaving or done as in arson?”

Before you could answer, the band onstage wrapped up their song and the lead singer leaned into the mic. “Anybody got requests?”

You looked up.

Bucky had followed you down. He was standing near the back hallway entrance now, one hand braced on the edge of a chair, watching you with a stunned, wounded kind of focus that made it hard to breathe.

He was gorgeous even when miserable. Which felt deeply inconvenient.

Maybe it was petty. Maybe it was defensive. Maybe it was the only way you knew to grab control of a moment that had started slipping out of your hands the second he asked you for something real.

You crossed to the stage before you could think better of it.

The singer bent down to hear you over the crowd. You leaned up, said the title into his ear, and his eyebrows shot up in delighted recognition.

“Oh, that’s evil,” he said, grinning.

“Can you play it?”

“For you?” He glanced toward the band. “Absolutely.”

The opening chords rang out less than thirty seconds later.

Wanda made a strangled noise of disbelief as the first unmistakable bars of “U + Ur Hand” cut through the room.

You turned.

Bucky was still by the hallway, one hand over his mouth now, eyes wide with something that looked dangerously close to laughter despite everything. Around him, Sam doubled over against Steve’s shoulder. Steve himself looked like he was trying very hard not to smile. Half the team had clocked what was happening and were reacting with open, delighted horror.

You should have felt guilty.

Instead, to your own surprise, you felt a slow curl of satisfaction.

Because if he was going to push, if he was going to try to crack open the part of you that still felt raw and healing and unready, then he was going to have to accept that you had claws.

You lifted your glass to him in a tiny salute.

His eyes met yours across the crowd.

Then, finally, his mouth curved. The worst part was he didn't look smug or mocking. He looked impressed, like he couldn’t quite believe you had the nerve, and liked you more for it.

That, more than anything, nearly made you falter.

Wanda grabbed your arm. “You insane, beautiful menace. We are leaving before this becomes a public incident.”

You let her pull you toward the door, Natasha right behind you already laughing. The cold hit your cheeks the second you stepped outside, music still thumping through the walls behind you.

“Holy shit,” Natasha said. “You requested that song?”

“I had to make sure he knew what he was going home with.”

Wanda stopped under the awning and looked at you with wild admiration. “I have never been prouder of anyone in my life.”

You laughed, breath fogging in the air, though there was a crack running straight through the center of the sound.

Because underneath the adrenaline and the petty thrill and the relief of escape, you could still feel the shape of him on that stairwell. The way he’d asked not for forever, but for honesty. The way you had refused him because honesty might have undone you.

“You okay?” Natasha asked more quietly.

You shoved your hands into your coat pockets. “Ask me tomorrow.”

Wanda linked arms with you and started tugging you down the sidewalk. “Fine. Tonight we’re getting fries and overanalyzing every detail.”

Behind you, the song swelled louder as someone opened the bar door, a burst of laughter spilling out into the night. You didn’t turn around.

Keep your drink, just give me the money It's just you and your hand tonight

Inside The Lantern, Bucky Barnes stayed exactly where you left him for a few seconds longer, staring at the door like it might open again.

Sam clapped him hard on the shoulder. “Man.”

Steve, traitor that he was, looked openly entertained. “You gotta admit, that was pretty good.”

Bucky let out a breath through his nose, eyes still on the door, and finally laughed.

Not because it didn’t sting. It did. He could still feel the ghost of her stepping out of his hands upstairs, all fear and stubborn pride and defenses stacked so high he hadn’t known how to climb them without making everything worse.

But Jesus.

Requesting that song before walking out on him in front of half the athletic department?

That was brutal.

That was funny.

That was so completely, infuriatingly her.

He tipped his head back, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. “I’m gonna get that girl.”

Sam barked a laugh. “After that? You still think you got a shot?”

Bucky looked back toward the door, toward the empty space where she had been, and smiled slowly.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Now I know I want one.”

And if getting her meant patience, then he’d be patient. If it meant proving he could be more than a rebound, more than a warm body and a safe kind of almost, then he’d do that too. If it meant standing outside every barricade she put up until she was ready to let him in, he could do that. He’d spent months learning the difference between the lines she said and the things she meant. He could wait a little longer.

Because she had walked out tonight with her friends and her chin up and that wicked, bright spark in her eyes, and instead of making him give up, it had only made him admire her more.

The band played on. His teammates kept laughing. Somewhere out in the cold, the girl who had sworn over and over that each time was the last time was pretending she hadn’t just blown apart whatever was left of casual between them.

Bucky took a pull from the beer somebody handed him and grinned into the bottle.

He was in trouble.

The best kind.

And for the first time in his life, James Buchanan Barnes was more than willing to do whatever it took for the long game.