The problem with being fake married to Bucky Barnes was that he was very good at being fake married.

Actually, no. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he was good at being married. There was a difference, and you had begun to resent it.

It had been a little over a week since you moved into his townhouse, which was enough time for the house to stop feeling like his and start feeling like a crime scene you had tampered with. You had not hung curtains or rearranged his books alphabetically, though the temptation had been there. But things started appearing. 

Your tea on the middle pantry shelf because he had cleared it without making a production of it. Your blue mug in the kitchen cabinet beside his plain white ones. Your hair ties in a little ceramic dish by the bathroom sink, where Bucky had started placing them when he found them on doorknobs, cabinet handles, his wrist once, though he had insisted that last one happened accidentally.

The townhouse itself had become an issue. You had expected to hate it on principle. You had expected the move to feel like a concession, an inconvenience, another piece of public staging in a week already full of too many soft smiles and controlled statements. 

His house was infuriatingly nice. The locks were good. The windows were better. There was no upstairs neighbor who performed what sounded like tap dance exorcisms at midnight. You slept better there. That was the worst part.

You had told yourself it was because of the security, and that it had nothing to do with the fact that Bucky slept on the other side of the bed like a man trying to make himself less large, or that he always took the side closer to the door without mentioning it. When you woke from old dreams with your hand halfway under your pillow for a knife you had not slept with in years, he never asked. 

You were thinking this while sitting on the bathroom counter, one of Bucky’s sweatshirts swallowing you to mid-thigh, your bare legs crossed at the ankles, a pen between your teeth, and a half-finished crossword folded over your knee.

Bucky stood at the sink shaving. Standard fake-married roommate behavior. 

The bathroom smelled faintly of cedar soap, mint toothpaste, and the tea he had made you before coming upstairs. The mirror was beginning to fog at the edges from the shower he had taken earlier. Morning light came in through the frosted window, softening the lines of his face as he drew the razor carefully along his jaw. 

You watched him for perhaps two seconds too long, then looked back down at the crossword because you had survival instincts. 

“Seven letters,” you said around the pen. “Old-timey word for handsome.”

Bucky’s eyes flicked to you. “Why’re you askin’ me?”

“I’m consulting a primary source.”

He rinsed the razor. “Debonair.”

You removed the pen from your mouth and stared at him. “Of course you knew that.”

He looked unimpressed, going back to shaving. “You gonna write it in?”

“Don’t rush me. I’m deciding if I want to give you the satisfaction.”

His mouth twitched, which nearly ruined the clean line he was shaving beneath his cheekbone. 

You pointed the pen at him. “Careful, honeybun. Wouldn’t want to have to clean up bloodshed in the bathroom before eight.”

“Honeybun?”

You nodded. “Yeah, m’trying out old school pet names. Trying to meet you where you’re at, and all that.” 

Bucky snorted. “Yeah, alright, babydoll.” 

You let it slide, writing in debonair into the little boxes with aggressive pen strokes. 

He rinsed the razor again, then reached for the small towel beside the sink. He had placed your mug near your hip so you could reach it without leaning. You had not missed that. You had also not missed the way he did not ask you to get down from the counter even though you were taking up half the useful space and had moved his aftershave to make room for your crossword. 

That was the worst thing about living with him. Not the bed or the sight of his ring on the sink while he shaved. The worst thing was how easily he made room. Not in a dramatic way, not with a speech. He just shifted until there was space where there had not been space before. 

A shelf. A drawer. A towel hook. A place for your mug. The left side of the bed. The good sightline in the kitchen. 

“Five letters,” you said, tapping the crossword. “Moral failing. Common in powerful men.”

“Pride.”

You glanced up, a cheeky smile playing on your lips. “Speaking from personal experience?”

Bucky gave you a look. “Observation.”

“I gotta tell Sam that one,” you said, writing in the letters. “He’ll think it’s funny.”

“You tell Sam anything before coffee, he’ll hang up.”

“Incorrect. Sam loves gossip. He pretends he’s above gossip because he has a shield now, but in reality? He’s a porch auntie.”

Bucky huffed. “A porch auntie?”

You nodded. “Yeah, he likes to sit, observe, and judge. Offer his opinions. Sometimes he offers snacks.”

“He’s downstairs.”

You froze, the pen stopped over the crossword. You looked at him.

“What?”

Bucky wiped his face with the towel, far too calm for a man who had just mentioned an intruder. 

“Sam’s downstairs.”

“Since when?”

“About twenty minutes.”

You stared harder. “Samuel Wilson has been in this house for twenty minutes?”

“He knocked.”

“I didn’t hear him.”

“You were arguing with the crossword. He came over to go over scheduling for the donor reception next week.”

“And?”

Bucky glanced at you in the mirror. There was a tiny pause that meant he was choosing which parts of the answer to give you.

“And the bill,” he said.

You waited.

He reached for his aftershave, but you reached it first, moving it behind your back. He stared at you. You stared back.

“Give it.”

“No.”

“It’s mine.”

“Then answer me.”

He sighed through his nose. “Security, scheduling, and the bill. That’s it.”

“Which part of the bill?”

“The current part.”

“The current part,” you repeated. “Excellent. Specific. Very transparent.”

He groaned your name. “It’s early.”

“I’m awake.”

“You’re sittin’ on a bathroom counter in my sweatshirt interrogating me over aftershave.”

You lifted your chin. “And?”

His eyes moved over you, enough that something warm slipped beneath your ribs before you could kill it. He looked away first. 

You tossed him the aftershave. He caught it without looking. 

Show-off. 

“I don’t like not knowing things,” you said.

“I know.”

“I especially don’t like not knowing things while wearing a wedding ring connected to a congressional office, an enhanced-persons bill, and your unresolved martyr complex.”

“My martyr complex is resolved.”

“It is not.”

Bucky smiled faintly, rubbing aftershave along his jaw. “Sam’s waiting downstairs with coffee.” 

“Why didn’t you lead with that?”

“You were busy with your crossword.”

You slid off the counter, landing lightly on the tile. Bucky’s hand moved instinctively toward your waist before he caught himself and dropped it. 

You pretended not to notice.

The sweatshirt hem shifted high on your thighs, and his eyes went to the wall with the discipline of a man in church. You brushed past him through the bathroom door, close enough for your shoulder to skim his arm. 

This was absurd. You were a former Widow, you had done worse things than share a bathroom with a handsome man. You had survived handlers, extraction orders, kill rooms, and fake identities. You would not be undone by Bucky Barnes shaving. 

Probably.

Downstairs, the townhouse smelled like coffee and toast, which meant Sam had made himself at home. That was not surprising. He sat at the kitchen island in a dark jacket, your blue mug’s less charming cousin set beside him. 

He looked up when you entered, then looked at Bucky behind you. Then looked at the sweatshirt. Then at your bare legs. Then back at Bucky. 

His eyebrows climbed. 

“Good morning,” Sam said. 

“No,” you said, pointing at him.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You said it with your face.”

Sam took a slow sip of coffee. “Y’all look domestic.”

Bucky came into the kitchen behind you and went straight to the coffee machine. “Don’t start.”

“Oh, I’m starting.” Sam leaned back in his chair. “I’ve been downstairs twenty minutes listening to the two of you argue over a crossword clue like a retired couple.”

You set your crossword on the counter. “We are not retired.”

“No, just married.”

“Fake married.”

Sam lifted one finger. “Not legally. And from the sound of that bathroom, not in spirit.”

Bucky set your mug down in front of you.

You looked down. Not coffee, tea. He had brought your mug down from upstairs and refilled it without making a show of it. 

Bucky leaned against the counter beside you, coffee in hand. “You said you were here for security.” 

You took a long sip of tea and let the warmth settle you. The house was bright in the morning, sunlight catching the edge of the counter and the ring on your hand. Bucky’s kitchen had improved under your supervision. There were snacks now. A bowl of fruit, because Bucky had claimed he liked fruit. Crackers that did not taste like field rations. Jam, honey, and three kinds of tea. 

“Security,” you said. “Talk.”

Sam’s expression sobered, though the humor stayed at the edges. “Donor reception next week. Private house. Half the people in the room got money, the other half want it. Bellamy’s people may be sniffing around.”

Bucky opened his mouth to respond but a sound interrupted him. 

A soft click from the front door. Not a knock, a click. Your hand was under the island before conscious thought finished forming. There was no knife taped there. Of course there was no knife taped there. This was Bucky’s townhouse, not your apartment. You had considered taping one there two days ago and decided it would be too much too soon.

A mistake.

Bucky moved before you did, stepping quietly away from the counter. Sam’s posture changed in the same breath, easy warmth gone, shoulders loose but ready.

The door opened, and a blonde walked into the townhouse carrying a paper bag and wearing sunglasses.

You stared.

She stared back.

Sam slowly lowered his mug.

Bucky stopped in the hall.

Yelena pushed her sunglasses up onto her head and looked around the entryway, taking in the coat over the chair, your shoes by the table, the fact that you were standing barefoot in Bucky’s kitchen wearing his sweatshirt, and the incriminating diamond on your left hand. 

Her mouth flattened.

“Wow,” she said. “Very nice. Domestic. Disgusting.”

You closed your eyes for one second. 

“Yelena.”

“No.” She pointed at you with the paper bag. “Do not ‘Yelena’ me.”

Bucky looked at you. 

You looked at Bucky.

Yelena had always had a talent for entering rooms like a thrown knife. She had been that way since the Red Room fell and the Widows scattered into a world they had not been raised to understand. Natasha had given so many of you freedom, and Yelena had taken that freedom like a personal assignment: find the ones still lost, drag them out, feed them if necessary, and call them family.

You had not been much younger than her. Enough that after Dreykov was dead and the chemical control was gone, Yelena had looked at you like someone had handed her a baby bird with a knife in its beak. 

She had called you annoying, reckless, underfed, and badly socialized. But when you had woken from nightmares in safe apartments during those early months, she had been there. 

Yelena set the paper bag on the entry table and walked into the kitchen.

“I had to learn from internet,” she said.

You winced. “I know.”

“From Tweeter. Not even good Tweeter. Political Tweeter. Everyone there is ugly inside.”

Sam nodded. “That is true.”

Yelena shot him a look. “Don’t agree with me yet. I am still deciding if I dislike you.” 

Bucky cleared his throat. “Yelena—”

“You marry my sister and do not call me?”

Yelena’s eyes moved over Bucky, assessing him. 

You spoke before he could take the blame too easily. “It happened fast.”

Yelena looked at you. “So does gunfire. I still expect update.” 

“That’s not comparable.”

“It is very comparable. Both are dangerous and there are usually men involved.”

“She’s got a point,” Bucky said. 

You turned to him. “Et tu, Robo-Brutus?”

Bucky frowned. “Robo-brutus?”

You lost the fight with your mouth and smiled. 

Yelena saw it. Her face did something. Not softened, Yelena did not soften in obvious ways. But her anger shifted, narrowed, became less theatrical and more hurt.

“You are smiling,” she said. 

You stopped.

“No, I’m not.” 

“Yes, you are smiling in kitchen of secret husband.”

Yelena stepped closer, and for one second, underneath the sunglasses and the sarcasm and the controlled violence of her presence, you saw the woman who had found you after the Red Room and decided, without asking you, that you belonged with her now.

“You did not tell me,” she said. 

You looked down at your mug. “I know.”

“You tell Captain America.” She nodded at Sam and sighed. “I am not angry you married sad congressman.”

“Great,” Bucky muttered.

“I am angry because you do stupid life thing and I am not there.”

Your throat tightened. A normal person might have apologized properly. You were not normal people. 

“There was no cake,” you said.

Yelena blinked.

You continued. “It was a chapel. There was a package called Jazz It Up. You would’ve hated it.”

“Yes, probably.”

“And the rings were terrible.”

“I saw photo. Very terrible.”

“Vending-machine adjacent.”

“Disrespectful to vending machine.” 

You nodded. “Exactly.” 

The corner of Yelena’s mouth twitched. 

Victory. 

Small, but real. 

Bucky moved toward the toaster.

“You want breakfast?” he asked.

Yelena turned to him with suspicion. 

“What kind?”

“Toast. Eggs.”

“Do not use food to make me less angry.”

“I wasn’t.”

“He was,” you said. “He’s from the forties. If a woman is mad in his kitchen, he tries to feed her.”

Bucky looked over his shoulder. “That’s not—”

Sam cut in. “It’s exactly what you do.”

Yelena considered this, then removed her sunglasses completely and set them on the counter.

“This is manipulative,” she said, “but effective.”

Bucky nodded once. “Eggs?”

“Yes, but I remain betrayed.”

“Understood.” 

“And I want toast.”

“Okay.”

“With butter.”

“Got it.”

“And something sweet.”

Bucky looked at you.

You shrugged. “You married into this.” 

He gave you a look. 

Yelena opened the paper bag she had brought and pulled out a pastry box.

“I brought cake,” she announced.

Sam looked at it. “You brought your own cake to confront them?”

“Yes.”

“Respect.”

You leaned against the counter, watching Bucky take eggs from the fridge like this was a normal morning. Like one of the deadliest women you knew had not broken into his townhouse. Like Sam was not sitting at the island with the expression of a man watching premium cable. 

Yelena slid onto a stool and opened the pastry box. “So. Tell me everything.” 

Tonight’s event was at a private house in Kalorama. Some kind of reception for the Enhanced Persons Protections Act, though half the guest list looked like people who wanted to support the bill and the other half looked like people who wanted to learn exactly how much it threatened them.

You had spent the morning reviewing names, spouses, companies, private interests, known grudges, possible Valentina connections, and one man whose entire file was just the word “weasel” underlined twice.

Bucky had asked if that was an official classification.

“It is in my office,” you had said.

Now you were standing in the kitchen, trying to put your earring in while glaring at your phone. 

“Bellamy is sending Eleanor,” you said.

Bucky looked up from the tea kettle. “His wife?”

“His wife, his fundraiser, his most effective weapon, yes.”

“You like her?”

“She once ruined a councilman’s career over brunch without putting down her mimosa. Of course I like her. I’m not made out of stone.” 

“Tea?” Bucky asked, reaching for your mug in the cabinet.

“Yes, please. Something with mint if we have it.”

He nodded and opened the pantry. 

There were actual snacks. Crackers, cookies, a small tin of cocoa. A tiny glass bottle with a handwritten label that said peppermint extract. 

Bucky picked it up. The handwriting was yours. The bottle was small, dark amber glass with a little dropper cap. It looked like something from a health store or one of the strange specialty markets you and Yelena liked. 

He unscrewed the top and sniffed. 

Peppermint. 

Sharp, clean. Normal enough. He added a few drops to your tea. Maybe four. Possibly five. 

You were still glaring at your phone. 

“Do not say anything kind to Senator Vale tonight,” you said.

Bucky stirred the tea. “Wasn’t planning on it.” 

“You sometimes default to polite when startled.”

Bucky handed you the mug. You took it, still distracted, and drank. Bucky watched your face for a second. No reaction. You lowered the mug and finally looked at him.

“What?”

“Nothing.” 

“The tea is fine.” 

“Fine?”

“Don’t get needy.”

He huffed and turned toward the stairs. “Need your dress zipped?”

You turned without comment, presenting him with the open back of your dress.

This was still the part of fake marriage he had not gotten used to. The ordinary things. The things that had no business feeling like trespassing. A zipper. A mug. You standing in his kitchen asking him to close a dress he was not allowed to think too hard about. 

Your skin was warm beneath his knuckles. He looked at the wall over your shoulder and pulled the zipper up slowly. The dress closed along your back, dark fabric settling into place like armor. 

“There,” he said.

You looked back at him. “No lecture about how I should wear a coat?”

“I was saving it for the car.” 

“How gallant of you, soldier boy.”

“‘S cold out.”

“It’s fifty-two degrees.”

“Still cold.”

“You were frozen for seventy years.”

“Yeah, and I didn’t like it.”

That got you to laugh. A quick one. Real. Gone too fast. 

Then you stepped away, grabbed your other earring, and finished getting ready while narrating an assassination of Bellamy’s entire family tree that you claimed was “rhetorical and therefore legal.” 

The car came to pick the both of you up shortly after. You spent most of the car ride quizzing Bucky on the guests that would be attending the event, and to your surprise, Bucky had done his homework.

By the time you arrived, the reception was already loud. The kind of low, polished noise that came from old floors, expensive shoes, crystal glasses, and people laughing in a way that suggested no joke had actually been told. The house was all tall windows and oil portraits and floral arrangements large enough to hide surveillance equipment in. 

Bucky placed a hand at your back as the host approached. You leaned into the touch by half an inch, just enough to sell the picture. Maybe less than half. Maybe he imagined it. 

“Representative Barnes,” the host said, smiling too widely. “And Mrs. Barnes. We’re so pleased you could make it.”

Bucky felt you stiffen at Mrs. Barnes, but your smile did not move.

You moved through the first half hour easily. Better than easily. You were good at this. Better than he was, though you would never frame it that way unless you were trying to annoy him. Bucky could stand and look sincere. He could talk about the bill. He could shake hands, remember names, and answer questions. 

You could make people comfortable enough to reveal themselves. You smiled at a donor’s wife and had her talking within three minutes about who was nervous about the bill. You complimented Eleanor Bellamy’s earrings and got a quiet list of who had arrived together and who was pretending they hadn’t. You spoke French to a Belgian attaché just long enough to make him nervous, then Russian to a private security consultant who nearly dropped his drink. 

Bucky watched it all with a mix of respect and unease. Marriage had changed the way people saw you. That had become obvious fast. 

As his chief of staff, people braced themselves when you walked into a room. They watched their words. They knew you had teeth. 

As his wife, they underestimated you differently. Some still knew better. Women mostly, the smart ones. But men with expensive watches kept making the same mistake. They treated you like an accessory. Like you were there to soften him, decorate the room, translate his silence into charm.

You returned to his side after speaking with Eleanor Bellamy, your smile still in place, your hand sliding into the crook of his elbow with a practiced ease that made several people nearby look on fondly. 

“What’d you find?” he asked under his breath. 

“Eleanor thinks Harrington’s group is nervous.” 

“About the bill?”

“About the subpoenas.”

Your finger tightened briefly against his sleeve, then Mr. Harrington himself approached. 

He shook Bucky’s hand too firmly, then turned to you.

“Mrs. Barnes,” Harrington said. “I imagine married life has softened the congressman.”

Bucky felt you shift beside him. 

“No,” you said. “He was already soft where it matters.”

Bucky went still. Harrington blinked. You blinked too. Then you looked at Bucky with alarm.

Harrington laughed uncertainly. “Well. That’s one way to put it.”

“He makes married life easy,” you admitted. “I couldn’t imagine being married to anyone else.”

Bucky looked at you.

You looked back, eyes wide for half a second. 

Something was wrong.

You apologized to Mr. Harrington, saying you suddenly felt unwell, and Bucky pulled you quietly to the side of the room.

“Are you alright? You seem off,” he asked softly once you were a few steps away.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“It was like I had an inside thought and it became an outside thought.” 

“That happens to you.”

“Not like this.”

Before he could respond, a woman from the veterans’ coalition intercepted the both of you, smiling warmly.

“You two are so lovely together,” she said.  “Is it difficult, working with your husband?”

You opened your mouth. Then  shut it.

Bucky watched you physically fight your own face. 

“Yes,” you said. 

Bucky’s eyebrows lifted. 

You continued, visibly horrified by yourself. “He is stubborn, exhausting, overprotective, and much more attractive than is necessary in a workplace setting.”

The woman’s smile widened. 

“Oh,” she said, delighted. “That’s very sweet.”

You excused the both of you again, your eyebrows furrowing in concern. 

“Bucky, something’s wrong,” you muttered, a wave of nausea rolling over you.

Bucky held your elbow to steady you. “Are you alright?”

Before you could answer, Sam turned the corner and took in the sight in front of him.

“What’s going on here?” He asked, looking between them.

You shook your head. “I suddenly feel sick. Don’t ask me questions.”

Sam’s eyebrows rose. Bucky’s attention sharpened.

“Why not?” Sam asked.

You pressed your lips together. Your eyes went slightly unfocused, like someone holding a door shut from the other side.

“Because,” you said, “I’m having trouble not answering them.”

Sam’s face changed. Delight. Then suspicion. Then delight again. 

Bucky stepped between you by half an inch. “Sam. Don’t.”

Sam looked at you. “You okay?”

You made a small, strangled sound. “No.”

Bucky’s chest tightened. The answer came clearly. You never admitted you weren’t okay that quickly. 

He lowered his voice. “What’s happening?”

You looked at him. Your pupils were not blown, exactly, but your eyes were brighter than they should have been. Your breathing was controlled, but too controlled. Your hand had gone tight around his arm.

“I don’t know,” you said, your face twisting with irritation. 

Bucky turned to you fully now, blocking more of the room from seeing. “Did you eat anything strange?”

You shook your head.

“Drink?”

“Just your tea.”

“My tea?”

“The tea you made me while we were getting ready.” You said. “Did you put anything in it?”

Bucky stared at you. “Peppermint extract.” 

Your face went perfectly blank. Bucky had seen that look before. Not often. Not in safe rooms. It was the expression you wore when your body got to the answer before the rest of you wanted to. 

“What bottle?”

“Small. Amber glass. Handwritten label.”

Your eyes closed. 

“That wasn’t peppermint extract,” you said. 

Bucky went cold. “What was it?”

You looked past him toward the crowd, then back at him. Your voice was dangerously calm when you spoke again.

“Truth serum.” 

The room seemed to narrow around him. Sam made a sound that was probably not helpful. Bucky did not look away from you. 

“Why would you label your truth serum as peppermint extract?!”

Your skin was too warm. Your mouth tasted like mint and metal. The lights in the donor’s foyer had grown hard around the edges, each chandelier throwing bright little blades into your eyes. Every laugh from the reception behind you arrived too loudly, too close, too full of teeth. You could feel your pulse in your throat, in your wrists, under the ring on your finger.

Worst of all, beneath the nausea and the chemical heat, there was the constant pressure of honesty building behind your teeth. 

Not truth, but compulsion. Truth was a choice, and this was not that. This was old Widow chemistry crawling through your veins, dragging answers out like wire through skin. 

Bucky put himself between you and the rest of the reception without seeming to. His hand settled at your back, light enough to pass as husbandly concern, firm enough that you knew he was ready to catch you if your knees gave out.

“You’re sweating,” he said under his breath.

“Thanks, Captain Obvious.” 

Bucky’s hand shifted. “Okay. We’re leavin’.”

“We are not leaving.”

“We are.”

“We are at a donor reception for your bill.”

“You’re sick.”

“I have been sick at much more important events.” 

Sam, from your left, muttered, “That is not the defense you think it is.”

You wanted to tell him to shut up. You also wanted to ask if the wallpaper was moving or if it was just your nervous system trying to flee your body. 

“Get the car, Sam,” Bucky instructed.

Sam pointed toward the front doors. “I’ll pull the car around.”

“Good.”

“I’m helping.”

“You’re grinning.”

You tried to laugh, but the motion made your stomach lurch. Bucky’s hand moved instantly, his palm spreading across the center of your back as you bent slightly at the waist and breathed through your nose. 

The reception continued around you, softened by distance and your own rising fever. Voices blurred. Someone laughed. A glass clinked. 

You pressed a hand to your stomach and let Bucky guide you toward the hallway. The movement was too smooth to look urgent, too intimate to draw alarm. To anyone watching, Congressman Barnes was simply taking his wife outside for air. His hand at your back. His body angled close. A good husband.

A fake husband who had accidentally drugged your tea and now looked like he wanted to throw himself into traffic about it.

You wanted to make fun of him for that. You wanted to tell him that guilt was unattractive, except it wasn’t—not on him. It was terrible. It was familiar. It was also one of the reasons you had trusted him, because Bucky Barnes was one of the few men you knew who was actually afraid of what he was capable of.

The thought tried to come out your mouth. You clamped your lips shut. Your stomach rebelled immediately.

Bucky felt it. “Don’t fight it.”

You glared at him. “Easy for you to say. You’re not currently one stray question away from announcing state secrets to Kalorama.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said, voice laced with guilt.

“Yes,” you said, because the serum grabbed the answer before you had the chance to soften it. “You should be.” 

Bucky stiffened beside you. 

Damn it. 

You stopped walking, which made the nausea worse, but the look on his face was worse than that. You put a hand on his wrist, fingers tightening around the cuff of his jacket. 

“Not like that,” you said.

His eyes found yours. 

The hallway had arrowed around him. Around his face, his mouth, the crease between his brows. The worried set of his shoulders. You could hear the party behind you, but it felt like it belonged to another building.

“I mean you should be sorry in the way people are sorry when they step on someone’s foot,” you mutter. “Not in the way you get when you decide you’re personally responsible for every bad thing that has happened since 1943.”

He blinked. 

“Sorry, too honest.” You swallowed hard.

His hand turned under yours until he was holding your fingers. “Still true?”

“Unfortunately.”

His thumb moved once over your knuckles. 

“C’mere,” he said, pulling you closer to his body so he could support you better. “Car’s here.” 

Sam had pulled the SUV directly to the curb and was standing beside the open back door with the posture of a man who had decided he was both chauffeur and audience.

“Your getaway car awaits,” he said.

You pointed at him as Bucky helped you down the front steps. “Sam, stop enjoying this.”

The cold air outside should have helped. It did not. It hit your overheated skin and made you shiver so hard Bucky’s hand tightened at your waist. 

You hated needing support. You also hated that he was good at giving it. 

He helped you into the backseat with an amount of care that would have been insulting if you had not been trying very hard not to throw up on his shoes. You slid across the leather seat, intending to sit upright with dignity, but the SUV moved half an inch as Sam climbed into the driver’s seat and your stomach dropped through the floor. 

Bucky climbed in before you, taking his jacket off and placing it under your shoulder before you could complain. His metal hand braced against the seat while his right hand guided you down with careful pressure at your upper back. 

“Lie down.”

“Bossy.”

“Yeah.”

“I am your chief of staff.”

“You’re my wife.”

“Fake wife.”

“Sick wife.”

The argument unfortunately held traction.

You lay down across the backseat, your head ending up in his lap because the universe had apparently decided humiliation should arrive in layers. Bucky went very still beneath you. 

For one suspended second, the truth serum, the nausea, the evening, the donor reception, all of it thinned into one clear fact: your cheek was against his thigh, his hand hovering near your shoulder, and you could feel the warmth of him through the fabric of his trousers. 

The SUV pulled away from the curb and your stomach lurched again. You groaned and pressed the back of your hand against your mouth. Bucky’s hand came down immediately, broad and warm against your hair. 

“Breathe,” he said.

“I am breathing.”

“Through your nose.”

“I know how breathing works.”

“Coulda fooled me.”

“You’re becoming quite bold for a man who poisoned his wife.”

Sam made a sound from the front seat. 

Bucky closed his eyes. 

“I deserved that one,” he said. 

“You deserve several. I’m spacing them out.”

Bucky snorted. “Appreciate it.”

Sam adjusted the rearview mirror, which you noticed because even poisoned and nauseous, you were trained to notice people adjusting mirrors. 

He was looking directly at you, not even pretending he wasn’t.

“Wilson,” Bucky said.

“What?”

“Drive.”

“I am driving.”

“Then look at the road.”

“The road is still there.”

“Sam.”

“Fine.” 

He looked forward for approximately four seconds.

“So,” Sam said. “Truth serum.”

“Shut up, Wilson,” you grumbled.

He did not.

“I’m just clarifying the situation.” 

Bucky’s fingers moved through your hair once, almost absent. Maybe he did it to comfort you. Maybe he did it without thinking. Either way, your whole body noticed, which was extremely inconvenient given that your body was already filing numerous complaints. 

“How long does it last?” Sam said.

“Depends on dose, metabolism, training, whether the serum was stabilized properly, and whether your fake husband has a heavy hand.” 

Bucky looked down at you. “I put in five drops.”

You lifted your head just enough to glare at him. Five drops. 

Bucky’s face changed. 

“What?”

“Five?”

“You said you liked mint.”

Sam started laughing.

You dropped your head back into Bucky’s lap and closed your eyes again. “I hate both of you.”

“No, you don’t,” Sam said.

Your mouth opened and your stomach seized. You sat up halfway so fast Bucky had to catch you by the shoulders.

“No,” you said, voice tight. “I don’t.” 

Bucky leaned forward with you, one arm around your back now, steady and immediate. “Don’t answer.” 

“I know that.”

“Then don’t.”

“I’m trying.” 

Sam’s laughter died. “Wait, it makes you sick if you don’t answer.”

You swallowed hard, eyes shut, willing the wave down. “Yeah, bird brain. If I fight too hard. Or try to lie. Yes.”

Bucky’s arm tightened around you.

Sam went quiet for a moment. 

Then in a much more careful voice: “Okay, that part’s not funny.” 

“No,” you said. “But I’ll recover.”

Bucky exhaled through his nose. “Lie back.”

You did, partly because the nausea was fading to a simmer and partly because his hand at the back of your head made it easier to let go. He arranged you with the same maddening care as before, jacket under your shoulder, your head in his lap, his palm resting lightly against your temple as if he could measure your temperature through sheer concern. 

Maybe he could. Maybe it was a feature that came with your super soldier. 

Not  your super soldier. 

The SUV weaved through D.C. traffic, the city lights breaking across the windows in long white and red lines. The backseat smelled like leather, Bucky’s aftershave, and the faint medicinal sharpness of your own poisoned breath. Up front, Sam drove with one hand on the wheel, posture loose, but you could tell he was listening to every breath you took. 

He was having too much fun, yes, but he was also worried. 

“Alright,” he said after a while, too casually. “Safe questions only.”

“No such thing.”

“Sure there is. Widow stuff.”

Bucky’s head snapped up. “That is not safe.”

Sam ignored him. “Could you really kill a man with a paperclip?"

You opened one eye. “What kind of paperclip?”

Sam’s grin returned in the mirror. “Standard office.”

“Yes.”

Bucky looked down at you. “Really?”

“Not quickly.”

Sam nodded in approval. “See? Educational.” 

“Stop asking about murder,” Bucky said, his thumb brushing your temple.

You tried not to enjoy the touch. 

You failed. 

Sam kept going, because mercy was not one of his spiritual gifts.

“Could you beat Bucky in a fight?”

“Yes.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow.

You did not open your eyes. 

“That was fast,” Sam said. 

“It was true.”

Bucky’s voice lowered, amused despite himself. “You think you could beat me?”

“I know I could beat you.”

“Super soldier.”

“Predictable.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Predictable?”

“You fight like a man who is used to being stronger than everyone else.”

Bucky’s hand stilled in your hair. You opened your eyes and looked up at him. His face hovered above yours, upside down from your angle, dark hair falling slightly forward, expression caught between offense and interest. 

“You rely on force when irritated,” you said. “Your left side is overprotected because of the arm. You assume people will avoid it. I wouldn’t. Also, you hesitate when you think you might hurt me.”

The SUV went quiet. Bucky’s throat moved. 

You blinked up at Bucky, realizing what you had said.

Then you added, because you could not help yourself, “I would also cheat.” 

Sam laughed so hard the car drifted half an inch before he corrected it. 

“Road,” Bucky said, looking forward. 

“I got it,” Sam said, still laughing. “I got it.”

You let your eyes close again, heat creeping across your face. You were not sure if it was the serum, the fever, or the fact that Bucky had gone silent beneath you. 

His hand resumed its slow, absent motion over your hair after a moment. 

You wanted to bite him.

Possibly affectionately. You were not going to examine that. 

Sam cleared his throat. “Okay. Next question. What happened to my Valentine’s Day donut?”

Bucky’s brows drew together. “What?”

“Last year,” Sam said, “I brought a dozen donuts to Buck’s office. Special ones from that place in Alexandria. I put a note on the box that said, ‘Do not eat the pink one, Sam is saving it.’ I came back from a call and the pink one was gone.” 

You kept your eyes closed.

Sam said your name again. 

You said nothing. 

Your stomach turned sharply. 

Bucky’s hand pressed lightly to your shoulder. “Hey.” 

“I ate it,” you said, and immediately felt better.

Sam gasped.

Bucky looked down at you with something like amusement.

“You lied to me,” Sam said. 

“I said Bucky looked suspicious.”

“Bucky always looks suspicious. That was low-hanging fruit.”

“Hey,” Bucky interjected. 

“I knew it,” Sam grumbled. “You said you didn’t even like strawberry frosting.”

“I don’t.”

Both men waited. 

You sighed. “It had jam inside.” 

“It had a note.” 

Bucky actually laughed then, enough that you felt it in the muscles beneath your cheek. A warm low vibration. You hated how much you liked it. 

“Alright,” Sam said, shifting gears. “Serious question.”

“No,” Bucky said immediately.

“You don’t even know what it is.” 

“I know your tone.” 

Sam ignored him. “How many aliases have you had?”

You considered not answering. 

The nausea warned you. 

“Thirteen active. More if you count burn names and one very short-lived Belgian art dealer identity.”

Sam’s mouth opened.

Bucky went still again. 

You felt his silence before you saw it. 

He knew things about your past. More than most. Less than all. He had read the sanitized files, heard the stories you offered like jokes, pieced together the rest from old mission reports and the way you woke up when someone spoke Russian too softly behind you. 

But numbers were different. 

Thirteen lives. Thirteen names. Thirteen versions of you created to enter rooms, ruin men, disappear afterward. 

Bucky’s hand settled against your cheek, not forcing you to look at him. Just there. You did not open your eyes.

Sam’s voice was quieter when he asked, “Did you like any of them?”

“One.”

The answer hurt on the way up.

Bucky’s hand stilled. 

You opened your eyes and looked toward the dark window, where city lights blurred against your reflection. 

“She had a dog,” you said. “I mean, a fake dog, but—”

“Still counts,” Bucky said softly. 

You stared up at him, mesmerized by the way you could still make out the blue in his eyes in the dark of the car. Mesmerized by the way he handled you so gently when you knew you didn’t deserve it. Didn’t deserve him. You fought the urge to tell him how gorgeous he was, how much you enjoyed the feeling of his hands in your hair, how you’d like his hands to be—

Your stomach turned so violently you lurched upright again, hand over your mouth. 

Bucky moved with you, arm around your shoulders, his other hand already reaching for the little paper bag Sam had shoved into the seat pocket from some takeout place. He got it open in front of you before you could ask. 

You did not throw up. Barely. 

But your body shook with the effort, and Bucky held you through it, one hand firm between your shoulder blades, his voice quiet near your ear.

“Breathe. That’s it. Don’t fight it so hard.” 

“I’m not—”

You stopped.

Bucky’s fingers pressed lightly against your back.

“You are,” he said. 

You hated that he knew. That he was right. You breathed slowly and the nausea loosened. 

Sam had gone quiet in the front seat, his joking temporarily stripped down to concern. He drove more carefully now. Fewer sharp stops. Slower turns. He was not careless, not ever, when it mattered. 

You sank back down, exhausted now, your head finding Bucky’s lap again like it had been assigned there. 

“Done with serious questions,” Bucky told Sam.

Sam nodded once. “Yeah.”

For about a minute, the car was quiet. 

Then:

“Can I ask a stupid one?”

Bucky sighed. “Sam.”

“She likes stupid ones.”

“I do,” you admitted.

Sam brightened. “See?”

Bucky looked down at you. You looked up at him. 

His expression was soft with worry, but there was a question there too. Permission. 

You nodded once. 

Bucky looked forward. “One.”

Sam grinned. “Worst date you’ve ever been on?”

Bucky’s entire body went still. “You don’t have to answer.”

You smiled despite the nausea. “I do, actually, if I don’t want to redecorate  your lap.” 

His mouth shut, a faint red touching his ears.

“The worst operational date was with a French arms broker who cried after sex and asked if I thought his mother loved him.” 

Sam made a strangled sound. Bucky looked like he had been hit. 

You continued. “The worst real date was with an assistant U.S. attorney who said he liked strong women, but got genuinely scared when I was giving orders in the bedroom later.”

Sam laughed again, quieter this time. 

Bucky’s hand had stopped moving through your hair. 

You glanced up, his jaw was tight. That was very interesting.

“Barnes?” you said softly.

“I’m fine.” He grunted. 

“You’re lying. I can tell because I currently cannot.”

“This is incredible,” Sam whispered. 

Bucky looked toward the front seat. “Ask your last question.”

“I already asked my last one.” 

“Then be quiet.” 

“But now I have a better one.”

“No.” 

“It’s not for you.” 

“No.”

Sam looked at you in the mirror, the grin returning with terrible caution. “Do you think Buck is handsome?”

Bucky’s hand tightened in your hair. You couldn’t stop yourself from thinking about how you’d like to feel his hands in your hair in a different circumstance. 

Your body reacted before your mind could build a wall around it. Heat climbed your neck. Your mouth opened, then shut. Your stomach turned hard.

“No,” Bucky said.

You pressed your lips together. The nausea surged. Bucky felt your body go rigid. He looked down at you, alarm replacing everything else.

“Hey. Don’t answer. Sam, stop.”

Sam lifted a hand from the wheel. “Okay. I’m done.”

But the question was already in the car. 

Do you think Buck is handsome?

Stupid question. 

Easy question.

You could have said yes. You had said worse tonight. But this felt different with your head in his lap, with his jacket under your shoulder, with his fingers in your hair and his whole body bent around the effort not to take what the serum was trying to hand him. 

The answer sat behind your teeth. The refusal sat in your stomach like a blade. 

You turned your face into Bucky’s thigh and groaned. 

Bucky’s hand slid to the back of your neck, warm and steady. “I’m sorry ‘bout him, sweetheart. Just breathe for me.”

“I hate him,” you said.

“I know.”

Sam said, much quieter, “I’m sorry.”

“No,” you opened one eye toward the front seat. “No, you’re not.” 

“I am a little.”

“You’re sorry because Bucky is going to murder you.”

Sam considered this. “That was a factor.”

The serum dragged at the answer, punishing the locked door because it could not get through. Bucky’s thumb moved slowly against your neck, grounding and patient. The kind of touch that made you want to tell the truth for reasons that had nothing to do with chemicals. 

“Objectively,” you said finally, voice muffled against his leg, “yes.”

Bucky stopped breathing.

You kept your eyes shut. “He is very handsome in a very annoying way. It’s irritating.” 

No one spoke. 

The nausea eased at once, which was humiliating. 

You continued, because apparently the door that had been open couldn’t be shut. 

“And his shoulders are a problem. His hair is usually a problem. The eyes are…” You stopped. Tried to stop. Failed. “The eyes are worse.”

Bucky was very still beneath you. 

You opened your eyes and looked up. 

Bucky’s face was turned slightly away, but you could see the red at the tips of his ears. The tightness in his jaw had changed into something else. Something shy, almost. Embarrassed and pleased and guilty for being pleased.

That made your chest hurt.

“Also, he dresses like a widowed history professor.” 

Sam barked out a laugh. 

Bucky looked down at you, and the expression on his face finally cracked. 

A smile. Small, helpless, warm. 

“You done?” he asked.

“I hope so.”

“Feel better?”

“Physically, yes.”

Sam shook his head. “For what it’s worth, I thought that was beautiful.”

“Wilson, drive into the river.”

“See? She’s fine.”

Bucky gave him a look. 

You closed your eyes again, drained from nausea, embarrassment, and the emotional labor of not confessing anything more catastrophic. 

His hand resumed its movement through your hair, slower now.

“You okay?” he asked softly. 

You wanted to say obviously. The lie rose. Your stomach warned you. So you told the truth. 

“No.”

His hand stilled. 

Then, gently, “Okay.”

You opened your eyes and looked up at him. 

His face was still flushed, still worried, still guilty. His ring caught the passing streetlights where his hand rested near your cheek. His fake wedding ring. Your fake husband. 

“You’re very guilty,” you said. 

“Yeah.”

“It was an accident.”

“Still happened.” 

“You are not allowed to self-flagellate in the back of an SUV.”

“That a rule?”

“Is now.”

His mouth curved faintly. “Okay.”

“And if you apologize again, I’ll say something graphic about your arms just to make you uncomfortable.”

Sam made a noise. “Please don’t threaten him with a good time while I’m driving.” 

Bucky shut his eyes. 

You smiled weakly.

The SUV turned onto Bucky’s street. 

Home, you thought, and immediately wished you had not. 

You tried not to think about the fact that the safest place you had been all night was with the man who had accidentally poisoned you. 

By the time Sam pulled up in front of the townhouse, Bucky had already decided he was carrying you inside.

He did not announce this. 

Announcing it would give you time to argue, and you had already spent the last twenty minutes nauseous, honest, and stubborn enough to keep trying to sit up every time the SUV slowed at a light. 

The truth serum had not knocked you out. That might have been easier, in some ways. Instead, it had left you too aware of everything. Too hot, too sick, too sharp around the edges. You kept blinking like the streetlights were too bright. Every so often, your mouth would open like a thought had tried to escape, and you would clamp your lips shut so hard your whole body went tense.

Bucky felt it every time. 

Your head was still in his lap. His jacket bunched beneath your shoulder. One of your hands had curled loosely around the fabric near his knee, like you had grabbed onto the nearest thing during a bad turn and forgotten to let go. 

Sam put the SUV in park and looked at the two of you through the rearview mirror. His face had lost most of the teasing by then, leaving behind concern and something quieter Bucky did not want to name. 

“You need help gettin’ her in?”

“No,” Bucky said.

You opened one eye. “I am not luggage.”

“You’re right,” Sam said. “Luggage is easier.” 

You lifted one hand, weakly, and pointed at Sam. “Your betrayal has been noted.”

Sam turned around enough to look at you properly. “You gonna be okay?”

Your mouth opened. 

You seemed to consider the question. Or maybe fight it. It was hard to tell now. The serum had started to wear at you in waves, dragging honesty up at odd intervals and punishing you when you tried to push it back down. 

Finally, you said, “Probably.”

Sam’s face shifted. “That sounded real.”

“It was.”

Bucky slid carefully out from under you. The second your head left his lap, your eyes shut tighter and your hand went to your stomach.

“Easy,” he said.

“I hate cars.”

“You used to jump out of them.”

“I hated them then, too.”

Bucky got out first, then opened the back door on your side. Cold air slid into the SUV, and you shivered once, hard enough that Bucky stopped thinking about anything except getting you inside. 

He leaned in. “C’mere.” 

“I can walk.”

“Didn’t ask.” 

“Yeah, it’s implied by the way you’re looming.”

“You gonna fight me?”

You opened your eyes and looked at him.

For half a second, he saw the urge. Not a real fight. Not tonight. Just the reflexive objection to being helped. The old, embedded thing in both of you that said needing someone was another way to get trapped.

Then your stomach turned again. Your face tightened, and the fight went out of you with a quiet miserable breath. 

“No,” you said. 

Bucky reached in and lifted you carefully, one arm beneath your knees, the other around your back. You were warm against him, too warm. Your head tipped into his shoulder like you were too exhausted to keep it up. 

The movement made your dress shift against his hand, smooth fabric under his palm. He kept his grip careful. Clinical. Useful. He had carried injured people before. Soldiers. Civilians. Strangers bleeding out in places they never should have been. 

That was not the problem.

You were not a stranger. You were not a mission. You were his wife, except not really. His chief of staff. His best friend. The woman who had spent the last car ride accidentally telling him just how attractive he was.

His ears went hot again just thinking about it.

He adjusted his hold and looked at Sam.

“I’ve got her.”

Sam nodded, but his eyes lingered on Bucky’s face for one second too long.

“Yeah,” Sam said quietly. “I know.”

Bucky carried you up the steps and into the townhouse. Sam followed with Bucky’s jacket, your bag, and the folded paper bag Bucky had kept ready in case you got sick again. 

Inside, the house was dark except for the entryway lamp Bucky had left on before the reception. Your shoes were still near the console table from earlier. Your coat hung over the arm of the couch. A stack of your folders sat on the coffee table, one marked with a color-coded tab system Bucky did not understand but respected too much to disturb. 

His house looked lived in now. 

You shifted against him. “Don’t carry me like I’m consumptive.”

Sam shut the door behind you. “Do people still say consumptive?”

“She’s been using historical terms,” Bucky said. “Says she’s tryna ‘meet me where I’m at’ or whatever. But it’s a good sign. Poisoned and still doing her vocabulary.” 

“I’m not poisoned,” you muttered into Bucky’s shoulder. “Just, ah, chemically inconvenienced.”

Bucky glanced down at you. “You gonna let me take care of you?”

Your eyes opened. The serum was still in you. He saw it in the way your expression flickered, in the tiny pause before you answered. A fight behind your face.

Then, quietly, “Yes.” 

Bucky carried you upstairs. You were quiet against him now, your fingers resting near the collar of his shirt. He could feel the warmth of your breath through the fabric at his shoulder. Every few steps, you swallowed hard, and his grip tightened even though there was nothing more he could do. 

He hated all of it.

The tea. The five drops. The look on your face when you had realized what he had done. The fact that you had spent the last hour fighting your own body because of something he had given you. 

At the top of the stairs, he carried you into the bedroom and lowered you onto the edge of the bed. He meant to step back immediately, give you space, get water, get a towel, get anything useful.

But you swayed.

He caught you by the shoulders.

“Still with me?”

You looked up at him, your eyes were slightly glassy, but focused.

“Unfortunately.”

His mouth softened despite himself. “Yeah, there she is.”

Sam appeared in the doorway with your bag. “You want me to stay?”

Bucky looked at you.

You were already shaking your head. 

“No. I cannot have you asking any more questions near my sickbed.”

Sam put a hand to his chest. “I’m wounded.”

“You’ll live.”

Bucky took your bag from him. “I’ll call if anything changes.” 

Sam’s expression sobered again. “You sure?”

“Yeah.” 

“Drink water,” Sam told you.

You lifted one hand without looking. “Goodbye, porch auntie.”

Sam laughed softly and left. Bucky heard the front door close downstairs. 

Too quiet. 

He stood by the bed, your bag in hand, watching you breathe through another wave of nausea. You pressed your fingers to your mouth, eyes shut, shoulders tight beneath the straps of your dress. 

Bucky moved immediately. 

“Bathroom?”

You shook your head once.

“Bowl?”

You nodded. 

He grabbed the small trash bin from beside the desk, emptied the papers into a pile on the floor, and set it beside the bed. Then he went into the bathroom for a washcloth, ran it under cool water, wrung it out, and brought it back.

When he pressed it gently to the back of your neck, your whole body loosened by a fraction.

“Thank you,” you said.

He sat beside you, leaving space. “You need anything else?”

“My pajamas.”

“Okay.”

“And help.”

Bucky went still. 

You seemed to realize what you had said only after it had left your mouth. The serum had loosened you enough to ask for something before pride could cut it down.

“I can do it,” you said immediately. 

The lie hit you fast.

Bucky reached for the bowl, but you pressed a hand to your stomach and breathed through it.

“You don’t need to lie,” he said. 

“I hate this.”

“I know.”

“I hate asking.”

“I know.”

He did. Better than most. 

He kept his voice low. “I’ll help however you want. You tell me what to do.” 

Your hands went to the side zipper of your dress, clumsy with exhaustion. Bucky looked away at once, but not before he saw the strap slide down your shoulder. 

He turned to the wall, jaw clenching. 

Behind him, fabric shifted. The dress hit the floor with a soft sound. Bucky stared at the paint like it contained answers. 

It did not. It was just a wall. A very lucky wall.

“Barnes.”

His voice came out rough. “Yeah?”

“You can turn around. I’m not naked.”

He turned carefully.

Bad idea.

You were sitting on the edge of the bed in your bra and underwear, one arm wrapped around your stomach, hair mussed from the car ride, cheeks flushed from the serum. The washcloth had slipped from your neck to the mattress. Your dress lay pooled at your feet like it had surrendered. 

Bucky’s brain stopped being useful.

He had seen you in evening gowns, tactical gear, sweats, blood, rain, a hospital blanket, his sweatshirt in the kitchen that morning. None of that had prepared him for this. For the ordinary intimacy of you half-undressed in his bedroom, too tired to posture properly, looking up at him.

He forced his eyes up to your face. 

Your mouth curved faintly. Even sick you noticed. 

“Don’t pass out, dreamboat.”

“I’m fine.”

“Sounded like a lie.” 

“Wasn’t.”

“Mm.”

You leaned back on your hands. “Top drawer on the left. Pajamas.”

“Left dresser?”

“Yes.”

He moved too quickly, crossing to the dresser and opening the top left drawer. He froze.

Not pajamas. 

At least, not only pajamas. 

The top layer contained silk and lace, folded things in black and red and dark blue, fabric so delicate it barely looked capable of existing in daylight. It took his brain half a second to understand what he was looking at.

Then his entire body went hot. 

Bucky shut the drawer halfway on instinct, then stopped because he still needed the damn pajamas. 

“They’re in there,” you said behind him. 

His eyes closed.

Of course they were. Of course your pajama drawer also contained lingerie. Of course he had opened it while you sat half-dressed on the bed behind him, sick and trusting and completely unaware that his mind had just betrayed every decent intention he had. 

He stared at the drawer again. Pajamas. Find pajamas. He moved a black lace thong with two fingers, like it might explode. Before he could stop himself, he was imagining you in it. 

You standing in this room with the lamp low and that sharp little smile on your mouth. You telling him to touch you, and him obliging you instantly. The feeling of the thin lace against your hot skin. Your legs tossed over his shoulders carelessly. 

And then he imagines you wearing it for someone else. Letting someone else see the softness under all that armor. Someone else’s hands at your waist. Someone else pulling the straps down. Someone else making you laugh in a bedroom that was not his.

His stomach twisted. 

Because of course you owned lingerie. You were an adult woman with a life before this fake marriage and a body that did not belong to him. Of course there had been other men. Other women, maybe. Other names. Other rooms. Other hands.

The ring on your finger was not a claim. The house was not a claim. The bed was not a claim. The word wife was not a claim, not the way he wanted it to be, not when you had agreed to stay married because it was safer than the scandal and not because you wanted him in any of the ways that kept him awake at night. 

Still, the thought burned and he hated himself for it. 

He hated that some small, ancient, selfish part of him wanted to know whether any of that lace had been worn for someone specific. Whether you had packed it because you planned to wear it again. Whether you had folded it into his dresser like a normal thing because, for you, it was normal.

“Everything okay?” You asked. 

“No,” he said, because apparently your truth serum had become contagious. 

You laughed weakly. “Find something scandalous, old man?”

He cleared his throat. “Pajamas.”

“Mmhmm.” 

He found them at last beneath a folded slip he refused to examine too closely. Soft cotton shorts. An oversized T-shirt. Not his, thank God, because he was not built for that tonight. He closed the drawer with more care necessary and turned back.

His face felt hot.

You noticed immediately. Your eyebrows lifted.

“Oh.”

”Don’t.” 

“What did you see?”

“Pajamas.”

“You are an abysmal liar. Are you blushing?”

“No.”

“You are.”

“I’m not.”

He held the pajamas out without stepping too close. “Here.”

You took them, fingers brushing his. 

And then, with absolutely no warning and no apparent concern for his survival, you reached behind your back for the clasp of your bra. 

Bucky spun around so fast his metal hand clipped the dresser. 

The drawer rattled.

You started laughing. 

He faced the wall. “What? You’re changing.”

“I was also changing thirty seconds ago.”

“I wasn’t looking thirty seconds ago.”

“You absolutely looked.”  

“By accident.”

“Sure.”

He stared at the wall with the grim focus of a man trying to survive interrogation. 

“You’re very committed to the gentleman act,” you said.

“It’s not an act.”

You made an unconvinced sound.

The bed shifted as you pulled on the t-shirt.

“Decency restored.”

When he turned around, you were in bed, or halfway there, sitting against the pillows in the oversized shirt and shorts. Your hair was loose around your face. Your skin still looked too warm. The bowl sat on the nightstand beside a glass of water. 

He sat on the edge of the bed, far enough away that there was space between you. He wanted to touch your forehead. He wanted to check your pulse. He wanted to keep his hand in your hair until the tight line around your mouth went away. 

“Serum wearing off?” He asked.

You nodded slowly. “I think so. It’s less loud.” 

“Loud?”

“The honesty feels… loud.”

His throat tightened. “I’m sorry.”

You closed your eyes. “You already apologized.”

“Still.”

“I know.”

“You asked me not to self-flagellate.” 

“I did. Very wise of me.” 

“Trying not to.”

Your eyes opened. Softer now. Exhausted.

“You didn’t mean to.” 

“That doesn’t make it okay.”

“No.” You looked at him for a long second. “It was an accident.”

He nodded.

Bucky should have left it there. He should have told you to sleep, turned off the lamp, gone downstairs, called Sam, and spent the next several hours hating himself in the kitchen like a gentleman. 

Instead, he heard your voice in the car again. 

The eyes are worse.

He knew better. Knew you were still under the serum, knew asking near the edges was unfair. But the words had been inside him since the car, pressing against old wants he had spent months burying under strategy and restraint. 

He looked at you.

“Did you mean what you said?” He asked.

Your fingers tightened around the blanket and he regretted it immediately. 

“Sorry,” he said. “Don’t answer that.”

“No.” You swallowed. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not.”

”I can answer.”

“You don’t have to.”

You looked toward the window, then back at him. Your eyes were clear enough now that he let himself hope the serum had eased. 

“In the car,” he said carefully. “You said some things.”

“I said many things.” 

“Yeah.”

Bucky looked down at the ring on his hand. “I know you were dosed. I know it wasn’t fair. I’m not asking because I want to hold you to anything.”

“Then why are you asking?”

Because I love you.  

Because I need to know if there is any part of this that is real for you too. Because every day in this house is killing me a little and I would thank you for it if you asked.

He did not say any of that.

Instead, he said, “I don’t know.”

You watched him for a long moment. Then your expression changed. 

“Bucky,” you said. “We’re friends.”

He held still.

You continued, voice careful. “We’re friends. And colleagues. And we get along better than most people who accidentally end up married for press management reasons.”

He felt something in him begin to shrink.

You gave a small shrug, eyes not quite meeting his now.

“I meant what I said in the obvious way. You’re attractive. That’s just… objective information. Like weather. Or the fact Sam talks too much.”

He tried to smile.

“So that’s all?”

You hesitated a fraction, then nodded. 

“That’s all.” 

The words landed entirely too cleanly. 

Bucky had been shot before. Stabbed. Frozen. Cut open and remade into something else. He knew pain in plenty of forms. 

This one settled heavy behind his ribs. 

Right. Of course. Friends, colleagues, fake spouses. Two people who worked well together and had made a bad decision in New Orleans. That was all it had ever been for you. That was all he had any right to expect.

He nodded once. 

“Right,” he said, “of course.”

You looked at him then. Something flickered across your face, but he was already standing, already turning away because he could not sit there and let you see all of it.

“You should rest,” he said. 

“Bucky—”

“I’ll be downstairs. Bowl’s there. Water too. Call if you need anything.”

His voice sounded normal. That was good. He had practice.

Bucky crossed to the door and paused with his hand on the frame. He did not look back. If he looked back, he might do something embarrassing, like ask again or apologize or tell you the truth when you didn’t want to hear it.

“Try to sleep,” he said. 

Then he left, shutting the bedroom door behind him. 

Bucky Barnes had survived wanting things he could not have before. He would survive this too. 

He went downstairs, not seeing you grab the bowl he had left beside the bed and bend over it, shaking and miserable as your body rejected the words you had forced through your teeth.  

That’s all.

The first thing they took from James Barnes was his name. They called him the Thracian, though at the time he had never set foot beyond the valleys where olive trees grew crooked and stubborn, their roots splitting stone just to survive.

The second was his future.

He had grown up where the land was thin and stubborn, where olive trees twisted themselves into survival and the earth rewarded only those who bled into it. His father taught him how to coax crops from unkind soil, how to mend a fence with rope that should’ve snapped years ago, how to keep his head down when men with polished armor rode through villages like gods who’d forgotten mercy.

When the levy came, they didn’t call it slavery.

They said it was duty.

His father kissed his mother’s brow, pressed a calloused hand to James ’s shoulder, and promised he would return when the season turned. He never did. The silence that followed hollowed their home out from the inside. No letters. No word. Only rumors carried on merchant tongues—men sold to the arenas, branded and broken for sport.

James was sixteen when he became the man of the house. Too young. Too angry. Too desperate.

He learned hunger early after that. Learned how to steal without being seen. How to lie with a straight face. How to stand between his sister and the world with nothing but his own body and stubborn will. It still wasn’t enough.

They caught him lifting grain from a magistrate’s storehouse one winter morning, fingers numb, jaw set. The punishment was swift, efficient, merciless. Chains. Paperwork. A mark burned into his future.

Fit for the pits, they decided.

That was how he ended up here—sun-baked stone, salt in the air, the roar of thousands pressing down on him like a living thing.

The arena smelled of blood and iron and anticipation.

They shoved a sword into his hands that was better balanced than anything he’d ever owned and told him to fight. No lessons. No prayers. Just the sand and another man just as desperate not to die.

James didn’t fight like a hero. He fought like a farmer’s son who knew how to endure.

He stayed low. Conserved energy. Waited for mistakes the way he once waited for frost to break. When the opening came, he took it without hesitation, blade driving home as the world narrowed to breath and heat and survival.

When it was over, his opponent lay bleeding but alive, groaning and dragged away by attendants.

James stood alone in the sand, chest heaving, ears ringing with the crowd’s approval.

He had won. It felt like nothing.

They washed the blood from him quickly, roughly, as if he were livestock. Bound his wrists again. Then came the summons.

His sponsor awaited him.

The magistrate was everything James despised—soft hands heavy with rings, a fine robe draped over a body untouched by labor. This was the man who had signed the order that turned theft into a lifetime sentence. The man who smiled now as though he’d personally cultivated James ’s strength.

“A promising debut,” the magistrate said. “You’ll bring prestige to my name.”

James said nothing.

Silence had become its own kind of armor.

They escorted him through the palace gates, past columns painted in reds and blues that told stories of gods and beasts and victories long past. The air changed here—cooler, perfumed, untouched by the grit of the arena. This was the heart of power, and it made his jaw tighten.

The courtyard opened wide, sunlight spilling over polished stone.

That was when he saw you.

You stood near a fountain, draped in linen the color of fresh milk, hair caught up with gold that glinted when you turned. A princess—not in the way stories made them fragile, but in the way mountains claimed the sky. You looked at him directly, unflinching.

Curious.

“Is this him?” you asked, voice calm, measured.

The magistrate bowed. “My newest gladiator, Your Highness. He fought well today.”

Your gaze lingered on James —not on his chains, not on the scars mapped across his skin, but on his eyes. “You did,” you said. “Your movements were precise. Controlled. You carry great skills in fighting.”

James met your stare despite himself.

“It’s not a skill,” he said, voice rough from disuse. “It’s survival.”

The courtyard went still.

The magistrate laughed awkwardly, as if to soften the edge of it. “They’re an ungrateful lot, gladiators. Don’t mind—”

“I do mind,” you said, quietly.

Your eyes sharpened, not offended but intrigued rather. As though he had handed you a truth no one else dared offer. “Most men thank the gods for the chance to prove themselves.”

“My father was brought here,” James said before he could stop himself. The words burned on the way out. “He didn’t come back. I don't think he was thanking the gods then.”

A beat. Something unreadable crossed your expression. Not pity. Not horror.

Recognition.

“I see,” you said.

The magistrate cleared his throat, already uneasy. “We should—”

“Yes,” you agreed, though your eyes never left James . “We should.”

As they turned him away, you watched him go—this man who refused gratitude, who wore defiance as naturally as scars. You did not know why his disapproval lingered with you longer than the cheers ever had.

But you made a note of him.

And in palaces like this, even the smallest of notes had a way of becoming fate.

Life in the pits was not made of battles. Battles were brief. Loud. Final.

What wore a man down were the spaces between.

James slept on stone with a thin mat that smelled of old sweat and rust. The ceilings were low, the air stale, the light rationed like mercy. Every morning began with the scrape of sandals and the bark of orders, the clatter of weapons dragged from racks by men who pretended they were choosing swords instead of coffins.

He learned quickly where to stand, when to speak, and most importantly, when not to.

That didn’t stop them from testing him.

The other gladiators circled like dogs who sensed weakness in silence. Bigger men with heavier arms, men who laughed too loudly and hit too hard. They shoved him in corridors, knocked his food to the floor, tried to take his space in the yard.

James never started it.

He finished it.

The first time, he broke a man’s nose with his forehead and walked away bleeding from the mouth, eyes cold. The second time, he dislocated a shoulder and left the arm dangling uselessly as a warning. After that, the shoves stopped. The looks didn’t.

He trained harder than the rest. Not because he believed in the games—but because hunger had taught him that effort was the only thing no one could steal from him. He sharpened blades until his fingers split. Ran laps until his lungs screamed. Fought with the same grim patience he’d used in fields that never yielded enough grain.

At night, when the noise settled and the shadows stretched long, he thought of his father.

Of how the same walls might’ve heard his breathing once. Of how the sand had probably drunk his blood just the same.

That was when Steve found him.

Steve Rogers was smaller than most of the men in the pits—narrow shouldered, pale in a place that burned color into skin. What he lacked in size, he made up for in speed. He moved like a thought—quick, clever, always just out of reach.

They met over a shared water jug and a bruised rib.

“You fight like you’re expecting to lose,” Steve said one night, not unkindly.

James snorted. “I fight like I don’t plan to die today.”

Steve grinned at that. A real grin. Unbroken.

From then on, they stuck together.

They sparred in the yard, Steve darting in and out while James learned to adjust, to guard against what he couldn’t overpower. They traded food when one came up short. Shared silence when words felt like too much.

Eventually, they shared stories.

Steve spoke of a village near the coast, of a mother who sang while she worked, of a house he used to sketch in the dirt when he was a boy. “I’m gonna win enough,” he said one night, staring up at a ceiling neither of them could see past. “Buy my freedom. Go home. Build myself a place with a porch. Somewhere quiet.”

James listened.

Then Steve nudged him with an elbow. “What about you?”

James stared at his hands—scarred, strong, already half-owned by the arena. “I think I’ll die here,” he said simply. “Same as my father.”

Steve frowned. “You don’t know that.”

“I do.” A beat. Then, softer, almost embarrassed by the truth of it: “But if I got one wish… I’d burn the coliseum down. With me in it.”

Steve went quiet.

Then he nodded, slow and solemn, like a man agreeing to a prayer he understood too well. Somewhere above them, crowds cheered for blood.

The summons came without ceremony.

A messenger arrived at the magistrate’s residence before midday, breathless and pale, bearing the seal of the palace. The words were polite. The implication was not.

The magistrate arrived an hour later, robe immaculate, hair oiled, confidence carefully arranged across his face like armor. He bowed deeply when ushered into the inner chamber, where cool shadows pooled beneath painted columns and the sound of water echoed softly from a nearby fountain.

You stood near the window, watching the city beyond the palace walls.

“You sent for me, Your Highness?” he asked, smooth as polished stone.

“Yes,” you said, turning at last. Your expression was calm, unreadable. “I wished to ask you about your gladiator.”

The smile came easily to him. “Ah. The Thracian. A fine investment already—”

“From what I was told,” you interrupted, “His name is James.”

The magistrate hesitated. Just a fraction of a breath. Then he chuckled lightly. “If you say so, Princess. As I understand it, he came from nothing. A thief. Strong, but unremarkable beyond that.”

Your gaze sharpened.

“Unremarkable men do not look at the arena the way he does,” you said. “They do not refuse praise. They do not speak of death so plainly.”

The magistrate shifted his weight. “Well… gladiators are a morose sort. The pits do that to them.”

“You sponsored him,” you replied. “You own him. Are you telling me you know nothing of the man who brings you honor?”

A pause.

He cleared his throat. “I know enough.”

The displeasure crossed your face then—brief, but unmistakable. Your lips pressed together, eyes cooling like shaded marble. You turned away from him again, dismissive in the way only royalty could afford to be.

“I see,” you said quietly. “You may go.”

Panic flared behind his eyes.

“—Unless,” he added quickly, words tumbling over one another, “unless Your Highness wishes to know him better.”

That caught your attention.

He straightened, seizing the moment. “I could bring him here. Under guard, of course. A conversation. You are entitled to inspect any property tied to the games.”

Property. You turned back slowly, expression carefully composed.

“A conversation,” you repeated.

“Yes,” he said eagerly. “It would be my honor to facilitate it.”

Your gaze drifted, thoughtful now—not pleased, but considering. You imagined the gladiator again: the set of his jaw, the quiet fury beneath his restraint, the way he spoke of survival as though it were a wound.

“Very well,” you said at last. “Bring him to me.”

The magistrate bowed so low his rings nearly brushed the floor. “As you command, Your Highness.”

As he departed, relief written into every step, you returned to the window. Below, the city moved as it always had with merchants shouting, soldiers marching and the distant echo of cheers from the arena.

They brought James to the palace at dusk.

Chains still bound his wrists, iron links clinking softly as he walked—head high, shoulders squared, eyes sharp with the awareness of men who had learned long ago how quickly curiosity could turn lethal. The magistrate walked ahead, flushed with importance, while guards flanked him on either side, hands never far from their spears.

You waited in the inner garden.

It was quieter here, tucked away from marble halls and echoing chambers. Flowers drooped in the lingering heat, petals curling in on themselves, the air heavy with water and crushed leaves. When James was brought before you, he did not bow.

He did not kneel. He only stopped.

You gestured to the chains, a simple expression that took the breath from the room.“That will be all,” you said calmly.

The magistrate hesitated. “Your Highness, the chains—”

“Remove them.”

The garden stilled.

“My princess,” one guard began carefully, “for your safety—”

“If he wished to kill me,” you interrupted, eyes never leaving James ’s, “he would have done so already. In our first meeting. Or on the walk here. He may even try later, and if he succeeds we shall know what— or who you're truly dealing with. Though I doubt that.”

James’ mouth twitched despite himself.

The magistrate swallowed, then nodded sharply. “Do as she says.”

The chains fell away with a dull, final sound. James flexed his hands slowly, like a man reacquainting himself with his own body. The guards stepped back, but not far. Close enough to intervene. Far enough to pretend they trusted him.

You gestured toward the path winding through the garden. “Walk with me.”

After a beat, he did.

“What is it you wish to know?” he asked, voice low.

“Everything,” you replied lightly. Then softened it. “Where you came from. How you ended up here.”

He exhaled through his nose. “That’s a long walk.”

“We have time.”

So he told you.

Of olive trees and thin soil. Of a father taken under the guise of duty. Of hunger and theft and iron laws written by men who never starved. He did not dramatize it. Did not ask for pity. He spoke as though recounting weather—harsh, unavoidable.

“I am sorry about your father,” you said quietly when he finished. “I never knew mine. Only stories of great victories. Brilliant tactics.”

James glanced sideways at you, something unreadable in his eyes. “They usually clean those up,” he said. “Sounds better that way.”

You smiled faintly. “You think they lied?”

“I think,” he said carefully, “that they probably made him into something easier to cheer for. Easier to swallow. War does that.”

A hush fell behind you. Guards stiffened. The magistrate went pale and braced for your sentence of banishment or beheading.

James continued, unfazed. “Truth is? He was probably a vicious murderer. Died hot-blooded, scared, and forgotten.”

Every breath in the garden seemed to stop. You turned to face him fully.

Then, to everyone’s shock, you smiled.

“Thank you,” you said.

“For…?”

“Not pretending,” you replied. “It’s rare for people to feel the ability to be honest with me. Refreshing.”

The tension loosened, slow and reluctant. You resumed walking.

You spoke then of smaller things. He talked of sweat and stench of the lower pit chambers. You lamented the way flowers wilted too quickly in this garden, as if they resented the palace as much as men did. He told you how the sand never truly came out from under a gladiator’s nails.

Eventually, his disdain surfaced fully, raw and unapologetic as it slipped through conversation.

“The coliseum,” he said flatly. “This palace. The whole of Rome. It’s all built on bodies.”

You studied him. “And if you could leave?”

“I would,” he said without hesitation. “I’d sail until the land stopped knowing my name. Live quiet. Alone.”

“That sounds lonely,” you said.

“At least it would be a life,” he replied. “Not a performance.”

The words settled between you, heavy and undeniable. For the first time since meeting him, you realized something dangerous and thrilling all at once: James Barnes did not belong to the arena.

And he did not belong to your world either. But gods help you, you wanted to know what it would take to change that. They turned back toward the heart of the palace as the light began to fade, shadows stretching long across the stone.

The air shifted the closer you drew to the main chambers—less green, less alive. Duty seeped back in through marble and torchlight. Guards fell into tighter formation, steps more deliberate. The magistrate reappeared like a bad habit, already signaling for the irons.

James didn’t resist when they reached for him.

The chains closed around his wrists again, cold and familiar. He barely flinched. You watched it happen, something tightening low in your chest.

“Wait,” you said.

Everyone froze. You stepped closer, gaze lifting to meet his. “When is your next fight?”

James blinked, caught off guard. “Not for a while,” he answered honestly. “They space them out when a man survives too long.”

Your lips curved—not playful, but intent. “I look forward to it anyway.”

The guards exchanged uneasy glances. You leaned in just enough that only he could hear you. “Stay alive until then.”

For a moment, the world narrowed to the space between you.

“Yes, Princess,” he said quietly.

They pulled him away before either of you could say more.

The pits welcomed him back with heat and noise and the comforting misery of familiarity.

Steve didn’t give him three steps before ambushing him.

“The princess?” Steve hissed, eyes wide as he dragged James into a shadowed corner. “You’re telling me the actual princess summoned you?”

James shrugged, playing it loose. “Wanted to see how well I fought.”

Steve stared at him. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

He left the rest unsaid. The garden. The chains falling away. The way you listened, not like royalty, not like a spectator, but like someone who meant to remember him. Steve eventually shook his head, muttering something about trouble and luck and gods who enjoyed cruelty, before being called away to training.

James lay back on his mat when night came, stone leeching the warmth from his skin.

He told himself not to think about you. Did it anyway.

The way the sun had caught on the gold of your armband, how it pressed gently into the soft of your skin when you moved. The sound of your voice when you smiled—genuine, surprised, unafraid. The look you gave him when you told him to live.

Above him, the arena slept. Below it, a gladiator stared into the dark and wondered when survival had started to feel like hope.

The longer he was there the more life settled into a rhythm, one he never asked for.

Beans boiled down until they split. Barley so dry it scraped his throat going down. Water that tasted faintly of metal. He ate because hunger made a man stupid, and stupidity got men killed. Around him, bodies thinned and thickened in cycles, new fighters arriving full of terror and bravado, old ones leaving carried or not at all.

He watched men learn how to disappear inside themselves. He watched others break.

Sometimes it happened quietly—a fighter who stopped speaking, who stared too long at nothing. Sometimes it was loud and sudden: a scream in the night, a body dragged away before dawn. The pits did not mourn. They replaced.

James endured.

He trained. He slept. He fought when ordered. He counted days by the ache in his joints and the scars knitting over older scars. Through it all, he kept an eye on Steve, quick-footed, stubborn, still smiling more often than sense allowed.

Then one night, Steve didn’t come back walking.

They dragged him in just before torchlight dimmed, blood slicking the stone behind him. His leg was split open from thigh to calf, a deep, ugly gash that bled freely, soaking the hem of his trousers, dripping down to his foot.

James was on him in an instant. He shoved past a gawking fighter, dropped to his knees, hands already working. Tore cloth into strips. Pressed hard, ignoring Steve’s hiss of pain.

“Easy,” James muttered. “You’re not dying yet. Don’t get to be all dramatic now.”

Steve laughed weakly. “You always say that.”

James cleaned the wound as best he could with what little water he had, jaw clenched tight as he stitched skin together with practiced care. He’d learned young from watching his mother sew his shirt shut, forced to practice on himself when he took too deep of a fall, on men who didn’t have anyone else to do it.

When it was done, the bleeding slowed. Steve sagged back against the wall, pale but breathing steady.

“Thanks,” he murmured.

James sat beside him, shoulder to shoulder. “You still owe me for last week.”

Steve huffed. “I know.”

Silence settled, thick but not uncomfortable. The kind earned. As sleep began to pull Steve under, he shifted, voice dropping. “James.”

“Yeah?”

“There’s… something.” Steve swallowed. “I’ve been saving.”

He turned his head. “Saving what?”

“Coin. Little bits. Winnings. Bribes. Stuff men don’t notice.” His eyes fluttered. “I’ve got it hidden under the arena. Been counting it. I think… I think I’ll have enough soon.”

James felt something tight and sharp lodge in his chest.

“If I don’t make it,” Steve continued softly, words slurring as exhaustion took hold, “you take it. Don’t let it rot down there. Use it. For you.”

He shook his head once. “You’re gonna make it.”

Steve smiled faintly, already halfway gone. “Just in case.”

He fell asleep then, breathing even, leg bandaged and mended as much as it could be. James stayed awake long after. Listening to the distant hum of the arena above them. Thinking of freedom buried beneath stone. Thinking of promises men made when they were too tired to pretend.

And somewhere, beyond walls and iron and sand, a princess had told him to stay alive.

So he did. James prepared the way he always did, methodically and without ceremony.

Leather straps tightened around his forearms. Fingers checked the edge of his blade, then checked it again. He stretched until his joints loosened and the familiar ache settled into something usable. Around him, men muttered prayers or boasts or nothing at all. Some laughed too loud. Some stared at the floor like it might open and swallow them whole.

James did neither.

His mind split cleanly in two.

One half cataloged the fight ahead, an unknown opponent, likely heavier, likely slower. He planned his footwork. Counted breaths. Remembered where the sand dipped near the eastern edge of the arena and how blood made it slick.

The other half betrayed him completely.

He wondered if you would be there. Not just present—of course you would be present. The princess always was. But watching. Watching him. Not glancing away when steel met flesh. Not distracted by wine or whispers or spectacle.

He wondered if your eyes would find him the way they had before. James clenched his jaw and pulled harder on a strap.

You had told him to stay alive.

The words had lodged themselves somewhere inconvenient—beneath his ribs, perhaps, or behind his eyes. He had turned them over in the dark more times than he cared to admit, searching for meaning he had no right to want.

Why should you care?

He was a gladiator. A slave. One body among hundreds offered up to the sand. Princes and princesses were taught to mourn in abstractions, to value lives in numbers and victories, not names.

And yet. You had stopped him. Asked him when he would fight again. Looked at him like his answer mattered.

James exhaled slowly.

Maybe it was curiosity. Novelty. A fleeting interest in a man who refused to be grateful. Or maybe—he didn’t let himself finish the thought.

The horn sounded in the distance. Steel rang as gates were tested. The roar of the crowd seeped down through stone, a living thing calling for blood.

James rolled his shoulders and stood.

If you were watching, he would give you nothing pretty. No grand gestures. No heroic flourishes. Only survival, honest and unadorned. He stepped toward the light with one promise clear in his mind, steady as a heartbeat, sharp as steel.

He would do what you asked. He would stay alive. The noise hit first.

Not sound exactly, more like pressure. A wall of voices crashing into him as the gates opened and the light poured in, white and unforgiving. James stepped onto the sand and let it wash over him without reacting. He’d learned early that the crowd was not there for him. They were there at him. A force, not an audience.

He didn’t look up.

He didn’t need to.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Feel the weight of the blade. Feel the sand shift under his feet.

Stay alive.

The thought cut clean through the roar.

His opponent was already moving—bigger than James as he had expected, shoulders thick, weapon heavy. A man who liked to end things quickly. James saw it in the way he advanced, confident, hungry for a decisive blow that would make the crowd sing his name.

James didn’t give it to him. He circled. Let the other man swing first. Steel screamed through air inches from his head. James ducked, rolled, came up with his heart hammering but his mind steady.

Let him tire.

That was the trick. It always had been. Strength didn’t mean much if you burned it all at once. The fight stretched on. The sun beat down. Sweat ran into James’ eyes, stung his scars. His opponent’s breathing grew heavier, steps less precise. Each miss cost him more than it cost James to evade.

Then came the mistake.

A feint too slow. A lunge too eager. James stepped in to capitalize and misjudged by a hair.

Pain flared sharp and bright as the blade kissed his left arm, slicing deep enough to burn. Blood spilled immediately, hot and slick, running down to his wrist. The crowd roared louder at the sight of it.

James staggered back, teeth bared—not in fear, but in fury.

Not today.

He tightened his grip despite the pain, forced his arm to keep working. Endurance carried him where speed failed. He absorbed the next clash, drove his shoulder forward, used his weight and stubborn refusal to quit to shove the other man off balance.

When the opening came, James took it.

One clean, brutal strike. Strength behind it. No flourish. No hesitation.

His opponent went down hard, the wind knocked clean from him, blade skittering uselessly across the sand. James stood over him, chest heaving, blood dripping steadily from his arm.

The signal sounded.

It was over. He didn’t look to the stands as they dragged the other man away to see if he were alive or dead. Didn’t search for gold or linen or familiar shapes. If you were watching, he couldn’t afford to know it. Knowing would make him reckless.

He walked back through the gates on his own feet.

They patched him quickly in the underbelly of the arena—rough cloth, rougher hands. The cut stung like hell, but it wasn’t mortal. He barely registered it.

He was still breathing. That was when he saw his sponsor waiting in the shadows.

“Clean up,” the magistrate said sharply, eyes flicking to the blood on James’ arm. “As fast as you can and better than last time.”

James frowned. “Why.”

“The princess wants to see you again.”

Something in James’ chest went tight and warm and dangerous all at once.

He nodded once. “Yes, δεσπότης.”

As the magistrate turned away, James pressed his palm against the stone wall to steady himself—not from the pain in his arm, but from the echo of a promise that had carried him through steel and sand.

Stay alive. He had done what you asked. Now all that was left was to find out why he had.

James was cleaner this time. Much to his surprise.

Not clean, the pits never truly left a man but his hair was damp, his arm freshly bound beneath linen, blood scrubbed away until only the ache remained. He was brought to you in the outer courtyard, sunlight catching on stone and bronze, the day far too pleasant for the things that happened beneath it.

You looked him over with a familiarity that startled him.

“You fought well,” you said.

James exhaled through his nose. “You know I—.”

“I know,” you interjected easily. “That doesn’t make it less true.”

He shifted his weight, clearly uncomfortable. “Is this another walk through the gardens, then?”

“No.”

You smiled—small, conspiratorial. “We’re going for a ride.”

Before he could respond, you lifted your hand. The command carried.

The carriage arrived in a smooth roll of wheels and leather, drawn by two pale horses, polished and unmistakably royal. Guards immediately stepped forward, already moving to take their places beside you.

“I want James with me,” you said.

The words landed like a dropped blade.

“Your Highness,” one guard said carefully, “slaves walk behind the carriage. Or alongside it. They do not ride inside.”

James stiffened, already preparing to step back. “It’s fine—”

“No,” you said flatly.

The guard tried again. “For safety reasons—”

You turned to James then, eyebrow lifting. “Do you plan to kill me?”

James froze.

“What—no,” he said quickly, hands coming up in surrender. “Absolutely not.”

“See?” you said sweetly, turning back to the guards. “No plans.”

James shot you a look, muttering under his breath. “I don’t think anyone who did would admit it.”

You laughed—soft, genuine. “You survived the arena today. I think you can survive a carriage ride.”

The guards hesitated, visibly torn between protocol and the unmistakable steel in your voice.

“Inside,” you repeated. Reluctantly, they obeyed.

James climbed into the carriage with careful movements, like a man expecting the floor to fall out from under him at any moment. You followed, settling across from him, the door closing with a quiet finality that made his pulse jump.

As the carriage lurched forward, James glanced at you again. “You really shouldn’t trust me.”

“I don’t,” you said calmly. “I trust your honesty.”

He shook his head, a reluctant smile tugging at his mouth despite himself. “That might be worse.”

The carriage swayed as it pulled away from the palace, wheels humming over stone worn smooth by centuries of passing lives. Sunlight filtered through the open slats, catching dust in the air, brushing gold over everything it touched, including you.

James sat stiffly at first, knees drawn in, hands folded like he was afraid they might offend someone if left idle. He kept glancing at the walls of the carpentum, then out at the street, as though committing it all to memory.

“I’ve never been in one of these,” he admitted at last.

You smiled faintly. “No?”

He shook his head. “Didn’t think I ever would be. Still don’t think I will again.”

There was no bitterness in his voice. Just fact.

“They’re overrated,” you said lightly. “If I could, I’d walk everywhere. Feel the road wear me down one step at a time.”

James let out a quiet breath, something close to a laugh. “I’ve felt the earth,” he said. “It’s not kind.”

“No,” you agreed, without hesitation. “It isn’t.”

The carriage rolled on, horses snorting softly as the city passed by beyond the wooden frame—vendors calling, children darting between shadows, life happening at a distance neither of you truly belonged to.

“But it’s real,” you continued, voice lower now. “And I’d trade every jewel, coin, and gilded wall in that palace… for something real and true.”

James turned to you fully then. Really looked at you—not as a princess, not as a symbol, but as a woman sitting across from him in a moving box pretending to be free.

For the first time since he’d met you, he didn’t know what to say. Honesty, he’d learned, was dangerous. In the pits, it got men killed. In palaces, it got them remembered for the wrong reasons. And yet here you were, offering it freely, like it cost you nothing at all.

“I didn’t think people like you were allowed to say things like that,” he said quietly.

Your mouth curved, but there was sadness in it. “People like me aren’t allowed a lot of things.”

The carriage lurched slightly over uneven stone, and for a moment your hands brushed as you steadied yourself. Neither of you pulled away right away. James swallowed. Something shifted inside him, something unsettling, unfamiliar. A crack in the armor he’d built from endurance and expectation. He had known hunger. Pain. Loss.

But this—this was different. The ride grew quieter the farther they went.

Stone gave way to dirt, the city’s noise thinning until it was nothing but wind and the soft creak of the carriage. James noticed it before he understood it, the way the land flattened, the way markers grew scarce and uneven, the way the air felt heavier, older.

When the carriage finally slowed to a stop, he already knew.

Beyond the wheels stretched an open field scarred with shallow mounds and broken stones, some marked, most not. No names. No offerings. Just earth piled back over bodies that had once been useful.

The dead Rome did not bother remembering. Your breath caught, not dramatically but enough that he heard it.

“Stay here,” you told the guards quietly. “Give us a moment.”

They hesitated.

You didn’t look at them when you repeated it.

They stayed back. James stepped down from the carriage slowly, boots sinking into dry soil. His chest felt tight, like something had reached inside and closed a fist around his lungs.

“This is where they bring them,” he said. Not a question.

You nodded. “Those who aren’t claimed. Those who they believe aren’t worth ceremony.”

His jaw flexed. Somewhere out there, beneath unmarked earth, beneath weeds and indifference, his father lay. Or what remained of him. A man who had promised to come home.

You stood beside James, close enough that he could feel the warmth of you, though you did not touch him.

“You should know I think about you more than deemed necessary,” you said suddenly.

The honesty of it hit harder than any blade. James turned his head slightly, but you kept your gaze forward, eyes tracing the horizon like you were bracing yourself against it.

“There’s something about you,” you continued. “You fight to survive, yes—but there’s restraint in you. You’re not merciless. And you’re not merciful either.” A pause. “It’s as if the gods themselves stepped aside and let you decide who lives and who dies.”

James swallowed. He had never thought of it that way. Never allowed himself to.

“I don’t choose,” he said quietly. “I endure.”

Your mouth curved faintly. “Sometimes those are the same thing.”

The wind stirred the tall grass around the graves. The world felt very wide, very small. James knew, knew that he should step back. That he should put distance between you and everything you represented. Princess. Palace. A life he was never meant to touch.

But instead, his hand shifted.

Just slightly.

His fingers brushed against yours, his rough and calloused pinky curling around the edge of yours, soft and slender.

It wasn’t bold. It wasn’t possessive. It barely counted as a touch at all.

But you didn’t move away. You let your hand rest there, close enough that warmth bled through skin and silence, enough to say everything neither of you could afford to speak. Together, you stood before the dead. And for that moment, no matter how brief, forbidden or achingly real—it was enough.

The ride back was silent yet thick with tension. Something had changed between you two that day as you stood with the dead, something unattainable through something as simple as words.

You both told yourselves the same lie.

This is kindness. This is duty. This means nothing more.

And each of you believed the other far more easily than you believed yourselves.

James told himself that you were generous because that was what princesses were taught to be—gentle where it cost them nothing, curious where it amused them. That your interest in him was obligation, or novelty, or a sense of guilt sharpened by proximity. He told himself you looked at him because you were trained to look at everyone that way.

He told himself this every time you sent for him.

You told yourself that James was loyal because loyalty was all he had left. That his quiet attention was habit, not longing. That the way his eyes tracked you when you spoke was vigilance, not devotion. You told yourself he listened because he had learned that listening kept men alive.

You told yourself this every time you found another excuse.

A request to walk the outer gardens—for the air. A summons to observe training—for understanding. A short ride beyond the palace walls—for perspective.

Each time, you freed him from the pit for a few hours at a time, and each time the world seemed to breathe easier for it. You showed him small things.

The fig tree that split the stone and refused to die. The balcony where you hid as a child to watch storms roll in. The servants’ passage where laughter lingered longer than incense.

James watched it all like a starving man offered bread—not touching too quickly, afraid it might vanish if he moved wrong.

He told himself it meant nothing. You told yourself the same. Still, you found yourself thinking of him when he wasn’t there. Wondering if he had eaten. If his arm still ached. If the sun burned too hot in the pit that day.

And James—James lay awake on stone nights, imagining a life that would never be his.

A small house by the sea. A woman who walked barefoot beside him. No chains. No sand. No cheering.

He never let himself imagine your face too clearly. That felt dangerous.

The bracelet came on a morning that felt ordinary until it wasn’t. You held it out to him in the shade of the garden—woven red and white thread, simple and uneven, made by hands that had learned patience instead of survival.

“A martaki,” you said lightly. “For protection.”

James stared at it like it was something holy.

“For me?”

You shrugged, trying to make it casual. “If you want it.”

He took it with careful fingers, like it might dissolve if handled too roughly. When he tied it around his wrist, just above old scars and newer ones, something in his chest tightened painfully.

“Thank you,” he said, and meant far more than the words allowed.

From that day on, he guarded it like his life depended on it. He cleaned around it instead of over it. Hid it beneath wrappings before fights. Checked it after every blow, every night, every return from the sand.

And you, watching him notice when it was visible, watching the way his thumb brushed it unconsciously when he was tired, told yourself it was nothing.

Just thread. Just kindness. Just duty.

But sometimes, alone in your chambers, you let yourself imagine a world where neither of you had to lie. And somewhere beneath the arena, James did the same.

Each of you believing your longing a private sin. Each of you secretly hoping the gods were listening anyway.

The summons comes long after the palace has gone quiet. Not formal. Not written. Just a soft knock at the pit door and a guard who won’t meet James’s eyes.

“She wants to see you. Now.”

James almost says no.

His left side still burns beneath the bandages, stiff with dried blood and healing gone wrong. Every breath pulls. Every step reminds him how close the sand came to keeping him.

But he goes anyway. He always does.

They bring him not to the audience hall, nor the gardens, but to a small antechamber lit by a single oil lamp. No courtiers. No musicians. No guards inside, only the door closed behind him with a sound that feels final.

You’re already there.

Sitting. Wrapped in a simple cloak instead of silk. Hands folded too tightly in your lap. For a moment neither of you speaks. Then your eyes lift and you see the way he’s standing, how carefully, how his weight favors one leg.

“You’re hurt,” you say.

James exhales. “I’ll live.”

That’s when it cracks. Not loudly, not all at once. Just enough. You cross the room before he can stop you. Your fingers hover, uncertain, then settle lightly at his arm, just above the bandage. You don’t touch the wound, only the place where his body learned fear.

“I thought you were dead,” you whisper.

James swallows. He doesn’t know what to do with that. Doesn’t know how to carry the truth of it without letting it show.

“I waited,” you continue, voice unsteady now. “Every time the crowd roared, I thought—this is it. This is when they cheer for his end.”

Something in his chest twists hard.

“I’m sorry,” he says, because it’s the only thing he’s ever been allowed to offer.

You shake your head. “I’m so tired of losing people.”

The words fall between you like a confession already made.

James looks at you then as he always does, as if he had a special lens to looks right at you. At the shadows under your eyes. The tension held too long in your shoulders. A girl raised on marble and gold who has buried more than she’s been allowed to mourn.

“I don’t know how you do it,” you say softly. “Walk back into that place. Over and over.”

He almost laughs. It comes out as breath instead.

“I don’t,” he admits. “I just… survive it.”

Silence stretches. Thick. Fragile. Your hand is still on his arm. James feels the martaki bracelet press warm against his wrist, grounding him. Reminding him he is here. That this is real.

“If things were different—” you begin.

He stiffens. His heart starts to pound so loudly he’s sure you can hear it. You stop yourself, breath hitching.

He opens his mouth anyway, shaking his head in preemptive denial. “You deserve—”

What could've been something almost sacred, almost pivotal and true is quickly tossed aside as duty slams down between you two like a blade, footsteps and voices echoing from the hall. Reality clearing its throat. You pull your hand back as if burned.

“I'm sorry I—” you whisper, more to yourself than to him.

The door opens. A summons for the princess back at the palace.

A reminder that their world that does not bend for almosts. James steps back, every instinct screaming to stay, to say something reckless and true. To claim the moment before it vanishes forever.

But he bows instead. You straighten, the princess again, mask settling into place with practiced ease. There's a quick cross of hesitation on your face, something in your mind pulling your brows together until you cast a small glance behind yourself.

Seemingly sastified with the lack of company you step towards him, the closest you've ever been. The air around you smells like floral and fresh mint, a pale lavender stem twisted in the clip of your hair. James is too enveloped in your proximity to realize what's happening until he feels something pressed into his hand.

The key is small. Ordinary really, iron worn smooth at the edges, no jewels, no crest. It shouldn’t feel like anything in his palm. It feels like everything.

You presses it into his hand when no one is looking, fingers closing over his knuckles just long enough to make the world tilt. Your voice is quiet, steady in that way it always is when you look braver than you feel.

“Before dawn,” you say. “The terrace above the east gardens. You won’t be seen.”

James swallows. He wants to ask why. Wants to ask if this is a mistake. Wants to ask a hundred things that would all sound like hope, and he has learned the cost of hope.

Instead, he nods.

“Yes, my princess.”

Your mouth curves—sad, fond, unreadable. Then you're gone, swept away by guards and duty and the weight of a crown you never asked for, leaving him with a key burning a hole through his fist.

He hides it before they take him back to the pits. Tucks it into the lining of his belt line, beneath the place where leather rubs his waist raw, beneath pain he knows how to live with. He does not tell anyone. He does not look back.

From that moment on, time stops behaving properly.

Every breath tastes like your name. Every clang of iron, every shouted order, every shove into the dirt is measured against the distance between now and before dawn. He fights on instinct alone, muscle memory carrying him through while his mind drifts upward, past stone walls, past torchlight, past the city itself to a terrace where the sky will be paling and you will be waiting.

If you're waiting.

That thought is the cruelest of them all.

He tells himself a hundred reasons you might not come. That you’ll be stopped. That you’ll come to your senses. That this was kindness, nothing more—another mercy you shouldn’t have offered, another wound you’ll carry alone. He tells himself he deserves nothing, expects nothing.

And still, every moment stretches toward you.

When the pits finally quiet and the guards grow lax in that hour before morning, James moves.

He has learned how to be invisible. How to slip through shadows and silence his breath and make his body smaller than it is. He has learned how to endure. Tonight, he learns how to hope without letting it show on his face.

The palace at night is a different creature, hushed and vast, its corridors breathing softly, as if it too is afraid of being caught awake. The key turns with a whisper that sounds far too loud in his ears. He freezes, listens, waits.

Nothing.

He climbs the last stair slowly, carefully, heart hammering so hard he’s certain it must give him away. The door to the terrace opens onto cool air and starlight, the gardens below still dark, the sky just beginning to thin at the edges.

And there you are.

Wrapped in a cloak the color of early morning, hair loose down your back, hands braced on the stone balustrade as if you're holding yourself in place. You turn at the sound of him, and for a moment neither of you speaks.

You just look.

Relief crosses your face first—bare, unguarded, devastating. It hits him harder than any blow ever has.

“You came,” you whisper, like you hadn’t been sure you were allowed to want that.

“Yes,” he answers, because it’s the only true thing he has.

The world narrows to the space between you. To unsaid words pressing at your throats. To the knowledge that when the sun breaks the horizon, this moment will end, and reality will rush back in with all its rules and punishments.

“I owe you an apology,” you begin, hands twisting in the fabric of your sleeves. “For earlier. For the interruption. For leaving things—” Your voice falters, then steadies again, thinner but braver. “For my abruptness.”

He shakes his head. “You don’t owe me—”

“I do,” you say, gently but firmly, the way you do when you aren't speaking as a princess but as a woman who has already decided. “Because I’ve been careful my entire life. And last night, I wasn’t. I won’t pretend I didn’t mean it.”

Silence stretches between you, fragile as glass. You lift your eyes to his at last. There is fear there. And something brighter. Something terrifying in its honesty.

“If choice were allowed,” you confess, words trembling but unbroken, “if the world were even a little kinder than it is— I would choose you. I would choose you over the crown, over duty, over everything I’ve been told I am.”

James goes still. This—this is the moment he never let himself imagine clearly, only in pieces, in half-formed dreams he punished himself for having. He swallows hard, chest tight, and steps closer without thinking.

For the first time, he touches you.

Not boldly. Not all at once. Just the backs of his fingers brushing along your forearms, almost disbelieving. His hands are rough, scarred, calloused from iron and blood and survival. Your skin is warm and soft beneath his touch, like something sacred he was never meant to reach.

He traces upward slowly, as if giving you time to pull away.

You don’t.

His thumb catches on the arm band at your upper arm—the one you wore the day they first met. He remembers it vividly, remembers thinking it was too beautiful for a world like theirs. He traces its edge, grounding himself.

Your breath shudders. Then you lift your hand, hesitant, questioning and places it flat against his chest.

James inhales sharply. Your fingertips are feather-light as they move, mapping him with care, finding a scar near his collarbone. You trace it as if it might speak back to you.

“This one,” you murmur. “What happened?”

“Survived,” he answers quietly.

Her throat works. Her touch lingers.

“I shouldn’t feel this,” you whisper.

He leans in, foreheads touching, breath mingling. “I shouldn’t either.”

A beat. Then, softer—truer—

“But I do.”

Your breath catches. His hands slide higher, thumbs brushing the inside of your arms, feeling the contrast between them, the difference in the lives that shaped your bodies. He holds you like he’s afraid you’ll vanish if he doesn’t.

“I would choose you too,” he says. “Every time.”

Your eyes shine.

He closes them and lets himself speak the dream he’s never said aloud. “Sometimes I think about a house by the sea. Nothing grand. Just stone and wood and open windows. The kind of place where the salt gets into everything.” A faint, almost-smile curves his mouth. “We’d watch the sun set every night. Sea spray on our faces. No guards. No crowds. Just… quiet.”

You're crying now—silent tears slipping free despite your effort to hold them back.

James draws you closer, instinctively, until there’s no space left between you. Your arms come around him suddenly, tightly, like you're afraid to let go. You press your face into his shoulder, breath hitching.

“I would give it all up for you,” you say, voice breaking. “Every jewel. Every title. Every promise I never made for myself.”

He closes his eyes, holding you tight, forehead resting against your hair. You part from each other slowly, reluctantly, like pulling away from warmth into cold air.

You're the first to really look at him. Not The Thracian gladiator. Not the slave. Not the man shaped by blood and survival.

Just James.

“I never noticed before,” you mumble, almost to yourself. “Your eyes.”

He blinks. “What about them?”

“They’re… so blue,” you hum, wonder softening your voice. “Like the sea you dream about.”

Something in his chest aches at that.

He lifts a hand without thinking, knuckles brushing your jaw before his palm settles against your cheek. Your skin is warm beneath his touch, impossibly soft, and you lean into it with a quiet sigh, content and trusting like you've been waiting to do that all along.

James swallows.

He lowers himself slowly, giving you time to pull away. You don’t.

So he presses a kiss to your lips. It’s gentle. Barely there. A question more than a claim. When he pulls back, his forehead still rests against yours. His thumb strokes your cheek once, adoringly.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I just— I needed to. At least once.”

Your breath stutters. Surprise flickers across your face, brief and bright—

—but there’s no disappointment in it.

Only resolve.

You rise onto your tiptoes, one hand fisting in the linen at his chest, and kisses him again. This time, it’s surer. Still soft and careful. But chosen.

James exhales into the kiss like he’s been holding his breath his entire life, hands steady at your waist, afraid to ask for more and unable to want less.

When they part again, their noses brush, foreheads touching once more. The palace looms behind them. The world waits, cruel and unavoidable. But for this heartbeat, for this stolen moment before dawn, they are only two people who chose each other.

You find a corner of the terrace where the stone still holds a trace of warmth from the day, sheltered from the wind by a low column and a spill of ivy. James shrugs off his cloak and wraps it around you without a word, tucking you close until you're pressed against his chest, your cheek fitting just beneath his collarbone like it was always meant to be there.

Above you, the moon hangs heavy and white. Stars scatter themselves across the sky without care for thrones or chains or rules.

For a while, you don’t speak. You just breathe together. Your fingers curl into his tunic, knuckles pale, and he feels the shift before you say anything—the way your body tightens, the way your breath goes shallow.

“This won’t ever happen again,” you whisper. Not a question. A knowing. “Not like this.”

James tilts his head down, pressing his mouth to your hair, then your temple, then the corner of your eye where tears gather despite you trying to blink them away. He kisses each one as it falls, slow and reverent, like he’s committing the shape of your sadness to memory.

“Hey,” he murmurs, voice rough. “Look at me.”

You do, eyes glassy in the moonlight. He kisses you again, deeper this time, pouring everything he can’t promise into the press of his mouth. When he pulls back, he holds you so close it feels like if he loosens his grip even a fraction, the world will tear you away.

“I’ll keep fighting,” he says quietly. “I’ll earn my freedom. I’ll get my rudiarius. And when I do—” his breath hitches, but he keeps going, “—I’ll climb these walls every night if I have to. Just to hold you like this.”

Your lips tremble.

“And one day,” he adds, softer now, almost pleading, “I’ll build our house by the sea. White stone. Salt in the air. We’ll watch the sun set together, every night. One way or another… we’ll be together. I promise.”

You both know. You both understand the lie wrapped gently inside the dream.

You cannot abdicate, not when the bloodline ends with you, not when the kingdom would fracture without a crown. And James, no matter how fiercely he survives will never rise high enough for the world to allow this.

But lies can still be merciful.

You nod, pressing your face into his neck, tears soaking into his skin. “I believe you,” you say, even though your heart is breaking.

So you keep kissing. Slow, aching kisses. Foreheads touching, noses brushing, hands mapping each other like they’re trying to memorize every inch before dawn steals it away. James holds you like he could fuse you together through sheer will alone, like if he grips you tightly enough the gods might look away.

The sky begins to pale.

Stars fade, one by one, retreating from the coming day. A thin line of gold cuts the horizon, cruel and beautiful. They don’t stop holding each other. Not until the sun crests the world and reminds them who they are.

James traces the martáki with his thumb as they wait beneath the arena. The woven thread is already worn soft, darkened where sweat and blood have soaked into it, but it holds. It always does. He presses it to his wrist like a promise, like a prayer.

Just one more night, he asks the gods—not for freedom, not for victory, but for moonlight and stone and your arms around him. For the quiet. For the lie that felt like truth.

The gates groan open. Sunlight crashes down on him as he steps into the arena, heat and sound swallowing him whole. The crowd roars, hungry and thoughtless, but James doesn’t hear them.

He looks up and finds you, yet you're already watching him.

Not the sand. Not the spectacle. Him. Something in his chest loosens. He smiles—small, crooked, just for you. You go still, breath catching, and for one suspended heartbeat you speak without words.

I’m here. Stay alive. I’m trying.

The horn sounds. The fight begins wrong. His opponent doesn’t posture. Doesn’t test. He comes in fast and brutal, blade snapping toward James’s knees instead of his chest. James barely twists away in time, shock flaring sharp and cold.

Again.

Low, fast and cruel. Steel kisses the back of his leg—once, twice, a third time and pain explodes, white-hot and dizzying. James grits his teeth, refuses to cry out. He staggers but stays upright, sand slipping beneath his feet.

This isn’t a bout. This is an execution. Up in the stands, you lean forward with your heart pounding. You've seen hundreds of fights, know the rhythm of them, the unspoken rules. Disarm. Yield. Mercy.

This man shows none. You turn sharply to James’s sponsor, voice tight. “What is this?”

The magistrate doesn’t look at the sand. “His opponent is my slave as well,” he says smoothly. “I require only one of them.”

Your blood goes cold. “You mean to kill him.”

“Whichever survives,” he corrects, almost bored.

Rage flashes bright and blinding. “Stop this,” you order.

He finally looks at you then, lips curling. “With respect, Princess— The Thracian is not your fighter. You have no claim here.”

Silence falls. You don’t raise your voice, hand wrapping around your arm and pulling the metal down in a fierce snap—gold band striking his hand hard enough to echo.

“I do now.”

The box around them goes silent.

“I will pay his debt,” you spit, each word ringing. “Every drachma. Every chain. He is mine.”

The magistrate sputters, scrambling for words, but the crowd has gone eerily still, all eyes snapping between the royal box and the bloodied sand below.

They don’t see it in time. James’s opponent lunges. Steel strikes his side, the impact knocking the air from his lungs, and his legs finally give out. He hits the sand hard, vision blurring, the world narrowing to heat and pain and the echo of your voice somewhere far away.

“James!”

You're already moving. Guards shout. Hands reach for you. Protocol fractures as you break from the box, skirts gathered in your fists, running toward the arena floor without thought for crowns or consequence.

James turns his head weakly, sand sticking to his cheek. And even as darkness claws at the edges of his vision—

he sees you coming.

James comes back to the pits on a stretcher that sags under his weight.

Blood slicks the stone beneath him, dark and shining in the torchlight, trailing from the gashes at the backs of his legs and the ugly wound at his side where the blade struck deep. His breath rattles, too shallow, too fast and every jolt of movement pulls a broken sound from his throat.

You follow like a ghost.

You’ve seen blood before, on armor, on marble floors after executions, rinsed away before it could stain but never like this. Never warm. Never his. Your hands shake uselessly at your sides, your mind lagging behind the reality unfolding in front of you.

This is what the arena does. This is what it takes.

Steve appears out of the shadows the moment they set James down, already tearing cloth, already pressing his hands to wounds with the kind of calm born of necessity. He freezes when he looks up and sees you there—gold and silk among dirt and chains.

“…Princess,” he says, startled. “You shouldn’t—this isn’t—”

“I’m not leaving him,” you say immediately. There’s no command in it. Just truth.

Steve studies your face for a long moment, then nods once. “Alright,” he says quietly, and goes back to work.

James drifts. In and out. His eyes flutter open, unfocused, and he smiles faintly when he sees you, like this is the most natural thing in the world.

“Hey,” he murmurs. “You remember… the sea?”

Your breath breaks. “James, please, stay with me.”

“I am,” he insists softly. “I’m gonna build it. White stone. You said you liked white stone. We’ll hear the waves at night…” His voice fades, then stirs again. “You’ll laugh at how small it is.”

Steve presses harder, jaw tight. “He’s losing too much,” he mutters, hands slick with red. “I can’t— I can’t stop it.”

Panic claws up your chest. You drop to your knees beside James, hands coming to his bare chest like that alone might anchor him here. Tears spill freely now, soaking into his skin.

“No,” you whisper, shaking your head. “No—you promised me. You promised.”

Your voice fractures as you bow your head, forehead pressing to his sternum.

“Please,” you pray—to gods you’ve honored your whole life but never needed like this. “Please keep him. Give him one more chance. I swear—I swear I won’t waste it. I’ll never take it for granted again. Just—don’t take him from me.”

James’s hand lifts weakly. His fingers find your cheek, trembling, smearing it with his blood. You don’t flinch. You lean into the touch the same way you did on the terrace, eyes squeezing shut like you can will the moment to mirror itself.

“I’m here,” he breathes.

You lift your head just enough to see him, and then you kiss him.

It’s not gentle. It’s not careful. It’s desperate and real and defiant—your mouth pressed to his like you can breathe life back into him, like love alone might be enough. You don’t care who sees. Don’t care about the muck or the chains or the rules that say this should never happen.

All that matters is this.

Steve looks away, swallowing hard, and keeps working.

It's not enough.

It happens quieter than you think. Death. It's not something that crescendos all at once, rather it flutters and wither apart in pieces, like the tide pulling back grain by grain.

His breath stutters, shallow and uneven, each inhale a small victory and each exhale a surrender. You feel it before you see it, the way his weight settles heavier against you, the way his grip weakens even as he tries to hold on.

“James,” you sob, rocking slightly, as if motion alone could keep him tethered. “Please—please come back. I’m here. I’m right here.”

His lips part. A sound forms. His brow furrows with effort. A choked up gurgle comes out in place of words and you hush him with a kiss. Salted tears slipped from your lips to his.

"It's okay. You're going to be okay," you say, spit, tears and blood connecting you both. "You can't leave me please, eίσαι το άλλο μου μισό, please."

You cling to him harder, pressing your face into his neck, begging the gods, the earth, the cruel watching world to undo this moment. You promise everything, your crown, your life, your future anything if they would just give him back to you.

"Σ' … αγαπώ…" his voice doesn't sound like his own, like someone had tied strings to his vocal chords and pushed and pulled at them until a sound came out. You'd never unhear it for the rest of your life.

His hand slips from your cheek. You catch it, desperate, pressing it back there, holding it in place so you don’t have to feel it go slack. So you don’t have to see his eyes lose their focus, that terrible glassy stillness creeping in.

“No,” you whisper. “No, no, no—”

But the truth comes anyway. James exhales one last time, soft and soundless, like he’s falling asleep in your arms. And doesn’t wake.

You stay like that for a long time. Long enough for Steve to finish what he can, hands shaking now, tears burning his eyes even as he keeps his head bowed and his mouth shut. Long enough for the torches to burn lower and the pits to feel emptier than they ever have.

When the palace finally comes for you, their voices are sharp with reprimand, with disbelief.

“Princess, what are you doing down here—”

They stop when they see you.

You’re covered in blood. James’s blood. It streaks your hands, your dress, your cheek. And worse than that—your eyes are hollow, like something essential has been carved out and taken with him. You don’t argue. Don’t protest. You gently lay James down, fingers lingering at his jaw, his brow, memorizing him one last time. Then you reach for the martáki still looped around his wrist.

You slide it free. With steady hands, you tie it around your own.

“He’s to be brought to the palace,” you say, voice flat but unbreakable. “Cleaned. Buried properly. With honor.”

No one dares refuse you. You turn to Steve then, finally looking at him.

“He saved him,” you say simply. “He saved him every day he could.”

You pay Steve’s debt in full. Give him enough coin to build the life James once dreamed of—quiet, honest, free. Steve doesn’t know how to thank you. He only nods, eyes wet, and promises he won’t waste it.

As they lead you back into the light, the pits swallow their shadows behind you.

The funeral is quiet.

There is no crowd. No prayers spoken aloud for the sake of ceremony. No magistrates, no banners, no spectacle. Just you and the earth.

You made sure of that.

The grave rests beyond the city, where the air smells of dry grass and salt carried faintly from the sea. The stone is simple but solid, carved by skilled hands you personally paid for. You had stood there while they worked, correcting them when they tried to shorten it, to make it easier.

“No,” you’d said. “His full name.”

And so it reads:

Iákovos Boukanános Bárnis James Buchanan Barnes

Not The Thracian gladiator. Not slave. Not a number etched into records that would rot with time.

His name.

You asked Steve about his family—about his mother, his sister, the farm, the way James used to steal grain so they wouldn’t starve. You listened like a penitent, committing it all to memory so he would not go into the ground alone or forgotten.

You come bearing offerings.

His rudiarius sword, carved of the finest wood and wrapped in linen. A laurel wreath, green and fragrant, its leaves brushing your fingers as you lay it down. Oil, bread, small tokens meant to ease a soul’s journey—things a mother might give, or a lover, or both.

You kneel. Only when you are close, when your breath ghosts over the stone can you see it. Beneath the larger inscription, carved smaller, fainter. Something not meant for the world.

Το άλλο μου μισό. My other half.

Your breath breaks. You reach out with trembling fingers, tracing the letters as if they might warm beneath your touch, as if stone might remember the hand that asked for this. Tears spill freely now, unchecked, blurring your vision until the world narrows to grief and gray.

You curl against the gravestone, cheek pressed to it the way you once pressed to his chest, arms wrapping around cold stone like it might give way and yield him back to you.

“Please,” you whisper into the earth. “Just a little warmth. Just enough to know you’re still… somewhere.”

But the stone is still.

The sun moves higher. And you stay there anyway, holding what’s left of the man who was never allowed to live, but was loved fiercely enough to be remembered forever.

You go to him every day.

Without fail.

Rain or sun, ceremony or silence—you kneel by the stone and trace his name with the same two fingers, lips moving in prayers you no longer directs at the gods. When you marries another royal, you go to James before the wedding and after it, veil still pinned in your hair, eyes already hollow with knowing. When you bear an heir, you bring the infant once, standing back so the child won’t touch the grave.

Years pass. Seasons turn.

Your children grow, two of them now, fast and laughing, chasing one another through the courtyard while you watch from the shade. They have his stubbornness in them, you think. His heart. Not by blood, but by the quiet way love finds its way forward anyway.

One morning, you pack a small bag.

You tell the court you're traveling to the countryside for rest. Says it lightly. Convincingly. That night, your husband finds your crown left on the patio—set neatly, deliberately, like an offering returned. By the time the panic spreads, you are already gone.

You travel dressed as no one important. Plain linen. Dust on your sandals. The road does not recognize you and for the first time in your life, that feels like mercy.

At your destination, a man waits. You pay him without ceremony. A heavy purse. Enough to end questions before they begin.

“It’s done,” he says.

When he steps aside, the world opens. A house stands there—white stone, sun-warmed, simple and whole. Salt hangs thick in the air. The sea breathes in and out like something alive and patient.

You walk inside. Everything is exactly as it should be. Nothing excess. Nothing missing. A table. A bed. A hearth. A life pared down to what is real.

At the back, a door stands open to the water.

You close your eyes.

The salt fills your lungs, sharp and clean—and for the briefest, most terrible, most precious second, you feel him. The brush of calloused fingers up your arm. The press of his damp forehead to yours. The warmth that was never supposed to last.

Tears slip free, but softly now.

You stay there until it's your time to return to the earth. And though the world will go on without ever knowing where its queen truly went, you spend the rest of your days by the sea. In a house born of a promise, a house built for two yet alone—with white stones and salted air, loving him in all the ways time still allows.

Something had shifted. Although the glooming sensation, the smell of death still lingering beneath the cracks of the walls and the faint glow of the city behind the closed windows was still here, still present over the conversation and quiet tinkering. 

The air was lighter. The smile lines on faces were appearing again, faint but here. It was a like breath had been allowed in lungs, and tension had been pried off of shoulders just for a few golden, safe minutes. 

Now the prominent scent was something scientific that you couldn’t quite place if someone asked you to describe it. Iron mixed with a pressurised scent that lingering through your nostrils. Yet it brought back some sense of happiness in everyone in the room, some echo of joy that had been previously swept by the wind. 

You weren’t sciency, Peter knew this, he’d try to teach shit to you, but it just didn’t click. So you watched as beakers were being handed, and webs made. 

You spun in your desk chair, your fingers digging at the hilt of your tactical knife. It had been a gift from Natasha. She had come to surprise you, found you hiding beneath mountains and rivers somewhere in the depth of France. You don’t know how she found you, but she had been there for your birthday with a box wrapped in a blue bow, a faint scar that was still healing on her collar bone and that impossible signature grin on her face. 

Now it was a relic. Your most prized possession and the one thing you couldn’t live without. 

You twirled it between your fingers again. Skilled, precise. The blade and hilt turning between your knuckles in a way only the red room could have taught you. You frowned, barely, and the ghost of a smile appeared on the corner of your lips as your head hit the back of the chair. 

“So,” your voice cut through the classroom, and all eyes were on you. “You’re telling me you all come from a different reality?” You questioned, it wasn’t firm, it wasn’t pressed, mean or tactical. It was your voice, simple, cutting and yet every single person in this room felt like they were being interrogated.  

Your Peter knew you. He knew it wasn’t a threat, and yet it was. The remnant of years of interrogations, years of knowing exactly what and how to get anything from someone. Breached in your DNA. 

“Yeah.” The two other Peter’s replied in unison. They looked at each other from the corner of their eyes, wary, utterly curious and maybe a little confused.

“Alright… Interesting.” You nodded, content and the room breathed again. You leaned further against the chair, looking at the scene before you.

The three Peter Parker’s all had their intention set back on working, MJ and Ned quietly discussing something in the background. 

You fiddled with your knife again, and your Peter’s gaze found yours, giving you the softest smile. 

Your heart leaped in your chest, content with the moment. With the bubble of joy that climbed into the moment, that draped over the grief, the hate and the chaos that unfolded in the fabric of the city.

You watched the two other Peter’s. Each one moving with their own grace, their own ticks, and yet, made of the same universal fabric. Of the same stardust. The same mind that saw the world with almost the same eyes. 

The oldest Peter, short hair and big eyes that peered down to what he was making, softly humming as he unscrewed something. He had a bounce to his step, a lightness in the way he tilted his head, and yet he was utterly grounded. Like the years of service, the years of the spider changing his DNA had settled in a soft way around his bones.

The other one, his face still holding a glimpse of youth, but yet older than your Peter. He looked more wary, more jumpy and yet still. Like a panther in the wild. Always looking, searching, for a threat, for safety, for quietness. You could see it, he held more losses, held more love, it was something you were too familiar with, a glimpse of something you saw in your own mirror everyday. And yet he was still standing with the ghost of a smile on his lips as he tinkered with whatever your Peter had shoved into his hands.

And then it dawned on you. 

What about you?

Were you in their lives? Was another version of you walking by their side? Were you a trained assassin, or were you granted to be the girl next door? Did she get a normal life? A normal childhood, one that wasn’t ripped away with American Pie, gunshots and an aircraft a twelve years old Natasha had to fly over Ohio. Maybe you had a dog, or two. Owned a pink backpack and got shoes for her birthday instead of knives.

Did you dye your hair like you always wanted to try? Had you done that one crazy hair cut Yelena begged you not to try?

You changed the grip on your knife.

“Do you-” Your voice hung in the air again, an unsureness wavering in your voice this time, almost as if you didn’t want to voice it, and maybe you didn’t, but you always spoke your mind. “Do I exist in your realities?” 

The two Peter’s seemed to be taken aback by the question, almost as if this was the most obvious answer on the planet. The older Peter looked at the knife in your hand and started looking at you funny, you almost chuckled if not for the anticipation of the answer burning in your gut. 

Did you even exist in their lives? 

Or was your existence this insignificant? Meant to be controlled and twisted into a monster. A simple pawn with no importance, meant to be collateral damage in this universe. Born only to serve this earth.

“Yeah, of course you do!” the older Peter nodded, eyes smiling as he spoke yet still looking at the way you held your knife like it was a kid’s toy. “But she’s less…” He tried to find the right words, looking at your stance, your tactical gear, the way you spoke, the way your eyes scanned a room like you already knew every exit, every crack and every lie behind it.

“Fisty?” MJ finally caught the word he did. 

“Yeah.” Peter took a second to look at you again, you weren’t phased, just curious, yet with a facade you wore like a second skin that his girl didn’t have. “She’s less… feisty.” He offered.

“Well, that’s because she’s a trained assassin,” MJ raised both her eyebrows and smirked when Peter's face slightly fell. 

“MJ,” You whined. “Stop scaring Peter 3.”

“Peter 3?”

“Well we’ve got to label you somehow.” You pointed at your Peter with your knife. “That’s Peter. You’re Peter 3,” you watched him almost flinch at the eyes landing upon your knife, and you smirked at the idea of him being scared of you. You changed your aim to the third Peter in the room, “and Peter 2.” 

“I’ve always liked the number 3. Thanks,” he smiled, making you smile too. 

“Well, I’m happy for your Y/n,” you put your knife back on your belt, and leaned both your hands on the desk in front of you. “She probably just lives a normal life doesn’t she?” you leaned against your hands.

What would a normal life feel like? 

“Yeah, I suppose so.” Peter 2 smiled, a glint lighting in his eyes as he spoke of the you from another world. “She’s actually really smart. She’s helped me make my new suit.” 

“Oh, so you two are close?” You lifted your head back up and smiled, locking eyes with your Peter, you could almost see him blush at the idea of the two of you being close in another universe. 

“Yeah, we um, we were friends for a while, started dating a few months ago. It’s making me happy to see you two so close as well,” he smiled so brightly it almost ached. “How long have you two been dating?”

“Only a few weeks,” you let your Peter reply, his cheeks burning up as he looked your way. 

You could see it in his eyes, the way they melted a little, thoughts of meeting you for the first time in Venice, how your hair looked under the sun and how your eyes scanned the crowd the second screams appeared from a street corner, always ready for a fight, senses always to their highest potential. 

He remembered you, standing next to Nick Fury while a snoring Ned laid head first into his dingy bed of that stinky place his teacher called a hotel. You were scanning the room as if it had personally hurt you, staring at the mold on the walls as if they had been the reason you got into the red room in the first place.

And yet, when your eyes met, he knew he would never be able to live life without you in it.  

He sighed, not quite believing this was barely a few weeks ago. With everything that happened, it all felt like a thousand life times ago. With the way the two of you fell into place, a routine, if you could even call it that. How the two of you understood each other in ways he couldn’t even comprehend. How you helped him with his powers even though you didn’t know how it felt–you just understood it. You caught when he was feeling down, anxious, or something in between that even he didn’t have the words for. 

You’d confessed you felt the same. That you hadn’t let anyone in in years, and yet, with him, it was like you didn’t even need to. He just knew.

So now, with these two other Peter’s talking about how they, too, knew you. He couldn’t help but believe the two of you were meant for one another on a comic level. That the universe had personally built you for one another. Created you from the same star dust, bound to explode on every planet, on every version of earth. 

“Nice.” Peter 2 smirked, breaking Peter’s thoughts. He blinked it away and continued working on his remedy.

“My Y/n and I have known each other for years. We’re even married and stuff,” at the words of the wise and older Peter 3, every other Peter’s heads lifted, their gazes widening as they stared at him.

Your lips parted, and you felt your heart uncontrollably beat against your chest. You glimpsed at your Peter whose cheeks had turned scarlet red and was looking at Peter 3 like he had brightened up the entire world and personally hung the moon.

“But she’s no trained assassin,” he shook his head, laughing a little bit as he did. “Her dad ended up being a super villain though...”

“Damn,” Peter 2 frowned, “I’m beginning to think my Y/n might be hiding something.”

“I bet she is,” you smirked and winked when your Peter’s gaze found yours. “She’s me. She’s bound to have a little sprinkle of something chaotic.”

“Oh, she’s chaotic."

“Does she brood too?” MJ chimed in, nudging your shoulder.

“I don’t brood!” 

“You kind of do, you're worse than Bucky sometimes,” your Peter couldn’t help but smile as he agreed, nodding along to MJ’s words.

“Excuse me?”

“No, but it's cute, kind of sexy even.”

Your lips parted again, this time not because of a cute confession from Peter 3 about being married to you. Your mind short circuited, and you hoped he would shut up, because right now, his fate looked more like he would be kicked out of this room then becoming your future husband.

“Peter, I think you’re about to get broken up with, you should stop talking.” 

“What did I say?” He defended himself, and you watched Peter 2 try to bite back a smile as he side eyed your Peter, hesitating to actually answer the question.

But he finally confessed, still with a bright smirk and fire across his eyes, knowing he was only adding fuel to the admissions, “oh, my Y/n definitely broods a lot.”

You scoffed, actually scoffed as your gaze found his. You were at loss for words, eyes wild as you stared at the three Peters.

“My wife only broods when I’m being stupid.”

“Well, must be often.” you mumbled, high enough for everyone in the room to catch it.

There was a beat of silence, the three Peter’s eying each other, maybe in recognition, in a silent communication, a wordless understanding of what it was like, to date a you, from whatever reality, or whatever world they were from. 

Then, like clockwork, they all laughed in understanding, like they’d just realised something bigger than them and it would forever seal their understanding of one another, their understanding of you.  

Your face was stuck in disbelief mode, lips parted, and you looked at MJ as if every Peter had grown three heads. 

What was happening right now?

You blinked, and watched as your Peter strutted towards you, a bright smile on his lips. 

His presence engulfed you entirely as he leaned forward, hand resting on your shoulder, and you felt his kiss on your forehead.

“I love you,” he pulled away with the cheekiest grin on his cheeks, amusement and mischief sparking in his eyes.

You grinned back, not being able to spot the smile that struck you too.

“I love you too.” 

Something had shifted. Although the glooming sensation, the smell of death still lingering beneath the cracks of the walls and the faint glow of the city behind the closed windows was still here, still present over the conversation and quiet tinkering. 

The air was lighter. The smile lines on faces were appearing again, faint but here. It was a like breath had been allowed in lungs, and tension had been pried off of shoulders just for a few golden, safe minutes. 

Now the prominent scent was something scientific that you couldn’t quite place if someone asked you to describe it. Iron mixed with a pressurised scent that lingering through your nostrils. Yet it brought back some sense of happiness in everyone in the room, some echo of joy that had been previously swept by the wind. 

You weren’t sciency, Peter knew this, he’d try to teach shit to you, but it just didn’t click. So you watched as beakers were being handed, and webs made. 

You spun in your desk chair, your fingers digging at the hilt of your tactical knife. It had been a gift from Natasha. She had come to surprise you, found you hiding beneath mountains and rivers somewhere in the depth of France. You don’t know how she found you, but she had been there for your birthday with a box wrapped in a blue bow, a faint scar that was still healing on her collar bone and that impossible signature grin on her face. 

Now it was a relic. Your most prized possession and the one thing you couldn’t live without. 

You twirled it between your fingers again. Skilled, precise. The blade and hilt turning between your knuckles in a way only the red room could have taught you. You frowned, barely, and the ghost of a smile appeared on the corner of your lips as your head hit the back of the chair. 

“So,” your voice cut through the classroom, and all eyes were on you. “You’re telling me you all come from a different reality?” You questioned, it wasn’t firm, it wasn’t pressed, mean or tactical. It was your voice, simple, cutting and yet every single person in this room felt like they were being interrogated.  

Your Peter knew you. He knew it wasn’t a threat, and yet it was. The remnant of years of interrogations, years of knowing exactly what and how to get anything from someone. Breached in your DNA. 

“Yeah.” The two other Peter’s replied in unison. They looked at each other from the corner of their eyes, wary, utterly curious and maybe a little confused.

“Alright… Interesting.” You nodded, content and the room breathed again. You leaned further against the chair, looking at the scene before you.

The three Peter Parker’s all had their intention set back on working, MJ and Ned quietly discussing something in the background. 

You fiddled with your knife again, and your Peter’s gaze found yours, giving you the softest smile. 

Your heart leaped in your chest, content with the moment. With the bubble of joy that climbed into the moment, that draped over the grief, the hate and the chaos that unfolded in the fabric of the city.

You watched the two other Peter’s. Each one moving with their own grace, their own ticks, and yet, made of the same universal fabric. Of the same stardust. The same mind that saw the world with almost the same eyes. 

The oldest Peter, short hair and big eyes that peered down to what he was making, softly humming as he unscrewed something. He had a bounce to his step, a lightness in the way he tilted his head, and yet he was utterly grounded. Like the years of service, the years of the spider changing his DNA had settled in a soft way around his bones.

The other one, his face still holding a glimpse of youth, but yet older than your Peter. He looked more wary, more jumpy and yet still. Like a panther in the wild. Always looking, searching, for a threat, for safety, for quietness. You could see it, he held more losses, held more love, it was something you were too familiar with, a glimpse of something you saw in your own mirror everyday. And yet he was still standing with the ghost of a smile on his lips as he tinkered with whatever your Peter had shoved into his hands.

And then it dawned on you. 

What about you?

Were you in their lives? Was another version of you walking by their side? Were you a trained assassin, or were you granted to be the girl next door? Did she get a normal life? A normal childhood, one that wasn’t ripped away with American Pie, gunshots and an aircraft a twelve years old Natasha had to fly over Ohio. Maybe you had a dog, or two. Owned a pink backpack and got shoes for her birthday instead of knives.

Did you dye your hair like you always wanted to try? Had you done that one crazy hair cut Yelena begged you not to try?

You changed the grip on your knife.

“Do you-” Your voice hung in the air again, an unsureness wavering in your voice this time, almost as if you didn’t want to voice it, and maybe you didn’t, but you always spoke your mind. “Do I exist in your realities?” 

The two Peter’s seemed to be taken aback by the question, almost as if this was the most obvious answer on the planet. The older Peter looked at the knife in your hand and started looking at you funny, you almost chuckled if not for the anticipation of the answer burning in your gut. 

Did you even exist in their lives? 

Or was your existence this insignificant? Meant to be controlled and twisted into a monster. A simple pawn with no importance, meant to be collateral damage in this universe. Born only to serve this earth.

“Yeah, of course you do!” the older Peter nodded, eyes smiling as he spoke yet still looking at the way you held your knife like it was a kid’s toy. “But she’s less…” He tried to find the right words, looking at your stance, your tactical gear, the way you spoke, the way your eyes scanned a room like you already knew every exit, every crack and every lie behind it.

“Fisty?” MJ finally caught the word he did. 

“Yeah.” Peter took a second to look at you again, you weren’t phased, just curious, yet with a facade you wore like a second skin that his girl didn’t have. “She’s less… feisty.” He offered.

“Well, that’s because she’s a trained assassin,” MJ raised both her eyebrows and smirked when Peter's face slightly fell. 

“MJ,” You whined. “Stop scaring Peter 3.”

“Peter 3?”

“Well we’ve got to label you somehow.” You pointed at your Peter with your knife. “That’s Peter. You’re Peter 3,” you watched him almost flinch at the eyes landing upon your knife, and you smirked at the idea of him being scared of you. You changed your aim to the third Peter in the room, “and Peter 2.” 

“I’ve always liked the number 3. Thanks,” he smiled, making you smile too. 

“Well, I’m happy for your Y/n,” you put your knife back on your belt, and leaned both your hands on the desk in front of you. “She probably just lives a normal life doesn’t she?” you leaned against your hands.

What would a normal life feel like? 

“Yeah, I suppose so.” Peter 2 smiled, a glint lighting in his eyes as he spoke of the you from another world. “She’s actually really smart. She’s helped me make my new suit.” 

“Oh, so you two are close?” You lifted your head back up and smiled, locking eyes with your Peter, you could almost see him blush at the idea of the two of you being close in another universe. 

“Yeah, we um, we were friends for a while, started dating a few months ago. It’s making me happy to see you two so close as well,” he smiled so brightly it almost ached. “How long have you two been dating?”

“Only a few weeks,” you let your Peter reply, his cheeks burning up as he looked your way. 

You could see it in his eyes, the way they melted a little, thoughts of meeting you for the first time in Venice, how your hair looked under the sun and how your eyes scanned the crowd the second screams appeared from a street corner, always ready for a fight, senses always to their highest potential. 

He remembered you, standing next to Nick Fury while a snoring Ned laid head first into his dingy bed of that stinky place his teacher called a hotel. You were scanning the room as if it had personally hurt you, staring at the mold on the walls as if they had been the reason you got into the red room in the first place.

And yet, when your eyes met, he knew he would never be able to live life without you in it.  

He sighed, not quite believing this was barely a few weeks ago. With everything that happened, it all felt like a thousand life times ago. With the way the two of you fell into place, a routine, if you could even call it that. How the two of you understood each other in ways he couldn’t even comprehend. How you helped him with his powers even though you didn’t know how it felt–you just understood it. You caught when he was feeling down, anxious, or something in between that even he didn’t have the words for. 

You’d confessed you felt the same. That you hadn’t let anyone in in years, and yet, with him, it was like you didn’t even need to. He just knew.

So now, with these two other Peter’s talking about how they, too, knew you. He couldn’t help but believe the two of you were meant for one another on a comic level. That the universe had personally built you for one another. Created you from the same star dust, bound to explode on every planet, on every version of earth. 

“Nice.” Peter 2 smirked, breaking Peter’s thoughts. He blinked it away and continued working on his remedy.

“My Y/n and I have known each other for years. We’re even married and stuff,” at the words of the wise and older Peter 3, every other Peter’s heads lifted, their gazes widening as they stared at him.

Your lips parted, and you felt your heart uncontrollably beat against your chest. You glimpsed at your Peter whose cheeks had turned scarlet red and was looking at Peter 3 like he had brightened up the entire world and personally hung the moon.

“But she’s no trained assassin,” he shook his head, laughing a little bit as he did. “Her dad ended up being a super villain though...”

“Damn,” Peter 2 frowned, “I’m beginning to think my Y/n might be hiding something.”

“I bet she is,” you smirked and winked when your Peter’s gaze found yours. “She’s me. She’s bound to have a little sprinkle of something chaotic.”

“Oh, she’s chaotic."

“Does she brood too?” MJ chimed in, nudging your shoulder.

“I don’t brood!” 

“You kind of do, you're worse than Bucky sometimes,” your Peter couldn’t help but smile as he agreed, nodding along to MJ’s words.

“Excuse me?”

“No, but it's cute, kind of sexy even.”

Your lips parted again, this time not because of a cute confession from Peter 3 about being married to you. Your mind short circuited, and you hoped he would shut up, because right now, his fate looked more like he would be kicked out of this room then becoming your future husband.

“Peter, I think you’re about to get broken up with, you should stop talking.” 

“What did I say?” He defended himself, and you watched Peter 2 try to bite back a smile as he side eyed your Peter, hesitating to actually answer the question.

But he finally confessed, still with a bright smirk and fire across his eyes, knowing he was only adding fuel to the admissions, “oh, my Y/n definitely broods a lot.”

You scoffed, actually scoffed as your gaze found his. You were at loss for words, eyes wild as you stared at the three Peters.

“My wife only broods when I’m being stupid.”

“Well, must be often.” you mumbled, high enough for everyone in the room to catch it.

There was a beat of silence, the three Peter’s eying each other, maybe in recognition, in a silent communication, a wordless understanding of what it was like, to date a you, from whatever reality, or whatever world they were from. 

Then, like clockwork, they all laughed in understanding, like they’d just realised something bigger than them and it would forever seal their understanding of one another, their understanding of you.  

Your face was stuck in disbelief mode, lips parted, and you looked at MJ as if every Peter had grown three heads. 

What was happening right now?

You blinked, and watched as your Peter strutted towards you, a bright smile on his lips. 

His presence engulfed you entirely as he leaned forward, hand resting on your shoulder, and you felt his kiss on your forehead.

“I love you,” he pulled away with the cheekiest grin on his cheeks, amusement and mischief sparking in his eyes.

You grinned back, not being able to spot the smile that struck you too.

“I love you too.”