#biker!marvel

His voice is quiet, the word spilling from his lips shakily. The sound of his voice after so long and him being so close has you closing your eyes. You don’t find comfort in his cologne in the air, warm body so close to you that you can feel him radiating against you through your shirt. Instead, you feel the same thing you felt staring at your phone screen months ago, face burning as your heart catches up with your mind.

Sick. 

The only man you ever loved makes you feel sick. 

“Just stop running.” He begs, breath heavy in his chest. “Please.”

He doesn’t move his hand, body caging you in in a way that used to make you feel thrilled. Now, the feeling of him so close, when that is all you have been running from doesn’t cease the panic in your chest. You can feel your airway closing, head feeling light as your body trembles with adrenaline.

His other hand reaches up, burning you as it cups the back of your elbow. You jump with the contact, front of your body connecting with the car. You spin around, eyes wide as you press you back against the car, but you don’t let your gaze move to his eyes. Instead, you look at the abandoned lot, loose pieces of gravel, or anything else. Anything to keep you away from falling apart for a man you never should have allowed to hold you together in the first place. 

“Doll.”

The name catches your breath, chest heaving as you struggle to breathe. It tumbled from his lips the same way as before, setting your heart ablaze. A name mumbled into your ear in the quiet of the night. A name that would find you at the receiving end of a big smile, being gathered in his arms after a long week of not seeing each other. A name that nobody else had ever called you, and you had never heard him say to anyone else. 

Yours.

Or maybe it was just another thing his wife had unknowingly lent you. 

His hand finds your jaw, bending his knees as he gently tugs your jaw up, searching for your eyes. Once his blue eyes lock on yours, you feel the world stop. If you were delusional, you would almost think you could see tears in his eyes as he finally catches your eye, dropping his head back in belief before his forehead falls to land on yours. 

“I thought you were dead.” His thumb brushes across your ear as he breathes you in, rubbing the side of your face soothingly, calming the pounding in your head. The statement doesn’t even register in your mind, the smell and feel of him on your skin after so long consuming you. “Bucky said you quit your job and you weren’t answering your phone.”

It’s in his fit of rambles that you forget why you had left him in the first place. He only ever rambled when he was worried, anxiety eating at him and making him open his mouth and all his thoughts just spewing out. It was something you had thought was so endearing, knowing that he trusted you enough to let you into exactly how he felt about your dinner plans, what you planned to do with your apartment, or your relationship. 

Gold glitters in the corner of your eye and your stomach drops, causing his eyebrows to furrow together as he stares at you. He told you everything under the sun about what he was thinking and always failed to mention the very ring on his finger that had strangled your heart for months now. 

“You’re married.” 

You watch his face fall, but even when you try to shuffle yourself back as far into the side of the car as you can, he won’t let you go. Not after he just got you back.

“I’m sorry.”

The word feels so misplaced after you drop the reasoning for you disappearing in the middle of the night. Wrong. Sorry. His eyes looking at you like that. His hands on your face. It’s all wrong. He is wrong.

You try to pull away, but he just ticks his jaw, hands keeping your head locked right in front of him as he looks down at you, blue eyes blazing with every emotion you can think of, yet not enough to make you foolish enough to fall for it again.

“Sorry?” 

You finally find your voice, ignoring the stabbing pain in your throat as you squeak out the question. Your voice trembles in the slightest, and you watch it register in his eyes. You aren’t sad. Flames are growing in your eyes as you stare back at him, finally allowing yourself to get past the feelings of sorrow and deceit. 

“You apologize for leaving your socks on the floor,” You poke at his chest, the impact not even knocking him back in the slightest. “You apologize for being late for dinner. You don’t apologize for not telling someone you were married.”

Your voice breaks on the last word, the reality of the situation coming back to you at once. What you feel no longer mattered, and you were here to do one thing and then disappear again.You have no intention of letting him rope you into whatever game he is playing any longer. 

He, on the other hand, stares at where your finger is poking his chest and ticks his jaw once again. He swallows before he looks back at you, thumb brushing the side of your cheek as if he can ease the tension away. Like the truth will vanish with the swipe of a thumb or the way his eyes find peace in yours.

“I never meant for this to happen-”

“What?” 

Your voice bursts out of your chest exasperatedly. You look up at him in disbelief, trying to see if he could possibly be joking, but you know him. Or at least, you know who he wanted you to know. 

“You didn’t mean for this to happen?” You swat his hand away with force this time, and he looks between his dropped hand and you, allowing you the space to continue, but doing nothing for your personal space. “You knew. You were there when you made your vows and I know you were there when you fucked me.”

You don’t miss the way he seems to cringe at the way your voice raises, the word choice obvious to him as being chosen carefully. He had always hated the way the word sounded coming from you. Anytime you had said it before, he was quick to remind you that wasn’t what it was. That you meant more to him than just that.

His hand finds your elbow once again and you shove at his chest. Hard. He takes a step back and you can practically feel the air rush into your lungs. He had let you move him, you knew that. Yet, your anger just seemed to grow. 

“Do you even care who you have made me become?” You ask, eyes ablaze as you stare at him, expression hard as you throw your hands in the air. “Or did you like having your cake and eating it too? A wife and a whore on the side?”

“Enough.”

His voice booms, eyes narrowing as he looks back at you. He isn’t pleading with you anymore, frustration taking over his own face. His shoulders are now pushed back, standing tall as he glares at you instead of cowering around your frame to make you feel like his equal. Instead, his jaw is set, eyes blazing as he towers over you, every bit the same wall of a man that you knew scared the shit out of anyone who crossed his path. He had never squared himself with you. Until now. 

For a second, he seems to realize it, shoulders slumping just the slightest as he scans the flustered look on your face. His palms unravel at his sides, a breath falling out of his lips as he tries to take his intimidation back. He knows it won’t work that way. You don’t work that way. You, who always took notice of everything and always knew when he was upset just by the twitch of an eyebrow.  

His lips part and your arms cross over your chest, waiting for him to say anything, but you know he can’t. There is no argument that he could make that wouldn’t make the situation worse, and you think that he knows it too.

“Steve.”

You jump at the sound of another voice, heat immediately rising to your cheeks. There is no way that they hadn’t heard you. The weight of your confessed affair to the man in front of you was one thing, but having someone else know? Shame burns, face hot and ears burning as you drop your gaze to the ground, trying your best to hide in an open space. 

“Peggy asked if you were on your way to get the boys,” Bucky’s voice cuts through the air, and you can feel Steve’s eyes burning the top of your head. “I told her you had already left.”

Peggy.

Hollow. That’s the only word that might begin to capture how you are feeling. You knew what coming here would be. You had seen the name ‘Margaret Carter’ glaring you in the face for months, but a nickname? Her real name? A real face? She was a real person.

Steve Rogers has a wife. A family.

You had been sleeping with Peggy Carter’s husband. Envisioning a future with the father of her children. Falling in love with the same man who belonged to her. 

“I’ll head out right after I-”

“You are going to go pick up your kids,” Bucky cuts him off, and you close your eyes at the sound of Bucky scolding the man in front of you. “And I will take care of this.” 

You look up at that, eyes fluttering between the two men who are now looking right at each other. Bucky’s arms are crossed, leather tightly woven around his arms as he glares at Steve, who stands in front of his best friend with slumped shoulders and a look on his face that is new to you. Defeat.

“Just don’t go anywhere,” Steve’s voice breaks through your mind, and you find your eyes snapping back to his. “Please.”

You both knew the second he walked away you would be gone again. Coming here had been a fool's errand, and while you thought it was the right thing, seeing him hurt way more than you thought. Standing and staring at the love of your life while he begs for you to stay and talk to him, but he wasn’t yours. He couldn’t be. He already had a family. A wife. Someone to call home. The thought of it had hurt enough, but you had confirmation now. You were a homewrecker. You had waltzed right in and tore the walls down, and his wife didn’t even know. 

“Steve.” Bucky’s voice cuts through again, motioning with his head for his friend to get out of there. 

Steve clenches his jaw before looking back at you, offering you the closest thing to a silent apology a person could give, blue eyes begging for you to wait for him to return. He knew it as well as you that you weren’t going to be here when he came back, the reasoning for your visit long pushed down in your mind. You needed to get out of here and back to your life and Steve needed to get back to his. 

He glances over your face as if he is silently committing it to memory, eyes lingering on your mouth before his eyes meet yours just once more before he is turning and brushing past his friend with a quick pat on his shoulder. Bucky just gives him the slightest nod, acknowledging him before turning back to you.

Your feet stay planted as you watch him walk away, part of you begging him to turn around and the other part of you cursing the day you ever laid eyes on Steve Rogers. You bend down to grab your keys once he re-enters the building you had run from, hand finding the handle of your car easily before Bucky clears his throat.

“I know why you are here.”

Bucky’s voice is solid. Firm. No emotion in it, but his face says something different. To him, you are public enemy number one as he stands with his arms crossed, eyes narrow and jaw set as he glares at you. 

Your heart pounds, hands sweating as you look at him dumbfoundedly. There’s no way he could know. You had made sure to not be obvious, and after the fight you had given yourself once you had gotten here, it had been pushed so far back that you hadn’t even remembered it until he is standing in front of you, facing you with the reminder of why you had even showed your face in the first place. 

You thought you had been doing the right thing. You had argued with yourself for weeks over it, locking yourself in your room for days as you tried to decide what you should do. As much as you loved Steve, your heart ached. Coming today was a horrible decision. You wanted to see him again. You had wanted to be wrong. Even with all the evidence in the world, the tiniest piece of your heart was holding out hope that you were wrong. That maybe you had misconstrued everything and that maybe, he had really loved you. That you could all work this out before it got out of hand. You knew it had been a bad idea, and now Bucky knew. He knew you were the other woman. He knew what you had done. He knew-

“He’s married,” Bucky says, “You need to let him go.”

Your shoulders drop, eyes closing for just a second in relief as you let your shoulders drop. Steve Rogers was married. You had slept with him. You were hopelessly in love with him. Bucky could know that you were a horrible person. You could live with that. He probably just thought you were some obsessive side piece. That, you could accept and get out of here without a scratch and go back to your life that you had been rebuilding. 

“I’ve done that,” You say.

He raises an eyebrow immediately, cocking his head to the side almost in amusement. Embarrassment seeps into your cheeks, eyes burning at the smug look on the biker in front of your face. You clench your jaw, squaring your shoulders as you glare back at him.

 “I’m doing that.”

Bucky takes a step forward, and you take one back, back bumping against the side of your car again. He looks at you in what you could only describe as mockingly before he places a hand on the hood of the car you are leaning against, knee almost bumping the side of yours as he looks down at you. He stands there for just a moment, searching over your face before a slight smirk graces his face.

“Doesn’t look like you are doing too good a job, Doll.”

“Don’t call me that.”

It flies out of your mouth immediately and he drops his head with a chuckle. That wasn’t his name to call you. If you ever heard that name again it would be too soon. It was tainted by Steve Rogers who had whispered it in your ear a million times. The next person to call you that was getting the drop kick of a lifetime, and while you would like nothing more than to knock that smug face off of Bucky Barnes, you needed to get out of there before Steve returned with his empty promises and puppy dog eyes. 

Your eyes glare up at him, and he leans down, closer to you this time. He’s trying to taunt you, you know that. However, you have set your walls in your mind and heart fully with the view of a leather jacket turning away from you only moments ago. He can pick all he wants, but you are not weak. Not for Steve Rogers. Not for him. There’s nothing he can say to you that you haven’t already said to yourself.

“He has a wife,” Bucky reminds you, blue eyes set intently on yours, “He has three boys.”

You clench your jaw at the unwanted reminder. You didn’t need him standing in front of you, throwing the life you had missed in your face when you had been doing it to yourself every day for two months. No matter what Steve had told him about you, he didn’t know you. You weren’t looking to sleep with a married man, and if you had known, you never would have. You left the second you had pieced it together. He didn’t get to act like you were pining over Steve Rogers when you were just nursing a broken heart. You hadn’t set out to do anything wrong. You had fallen in love with someone you thought loved you back. His stupid smirk could fuck off for all you care. 

“I didn’t know-” Your finger flies up to poke at his chest to get him to back up. You don’t need to make him believe you, but he doesn’t get to act like you are some floozy who was prowling around after a family man. 

“And a fourth isn’t going to change that.”

Your face falls, heart plummeting to your feet and all Bucky can do is look at you, steel blue eyes smiling victoriously. Your hand falls limply at your side as your lips part, the shock giving Bucky every bit of acknowledgment that this was what you had come for. 

Before you had noticed that he always seemed to meet you right at work, quick glances thrown over his shoulder before he would smile brightly at you. Before your sister had tagged you on a Facebook post for the first time in ages and you went on to find someone new in your ‘people you may know’ browser. Before you noticed the tan line that made you disappear at 3am, without so much as a glance in his direction. 

Before you knew that you were sleeping with a married man. 

The pads of your fingers rest on the knob of the office door, ‘Howling Commandos Auto Garage’ plastered right over the window in front of you, a wolf in stripes screaming at you to turn around before you do something you can’t take back. Instead, you take a deep breath, pushing the door opening and ripping the band-aid off before you can convince yourself to turn around. 

The ding of the bell above your head makes you jump, hand flying off the handle to cover your mouth and the metal behind you slams closed. So much for a quiet entrance.

A head pops up into the check-in window, long red hair piled up into a bun on the top of her head, pen tucked behind her ear. The woman smiles at you sweetly, waving you over as she hand knocks over a cup of pens, earning a quiet curse as you step forward cautiously, offering her a shaky smile in return.

“Hi, is there something I can help you with?”

Her name tag reads ‘Wanda’, and the name suits her. Her smile is genuine as she stares at you, waiting for you to list off what trouble has brought you into her landing. 

“I’m actually looking for someone-”

“Oh, wonderful, who are you looking for?” she asks brightly, hands clapping together as she cuts you off. She’s sweet. A little too sweet, and when you furrow your eyebrows, she tilts her head. “If someone referred you, it usually helps get you a discount.”

You shake your head, biting the inside of your lip as you realize she thinks that you are still looking for a mechanic. Well, maybe you are. You aren’t sure what his actual job is, just that he lived above the garage and this is where he worked. The two of you never really talked about specifics in his work life. 

“Um, his name is Steve.” you say, cursing yourself for how unsure you sound. 

She keeps on smiling at you, looking away only for a second to type something into the computer. You twist your fingers around in front of you, rocking slightly on your feet as you wait for her to say something. 

“Did you have an appointment or were you looking for a quote because Bucky may be able to help you-”

“We are old friends,” the word feels like rocks in your mouth, but you continue, “And there really isn’t anybody else I would want looking at my car.”

For a second, Wanda’s green eyes scan over your face and you think she knows. You think that she can see the screaming red A painted across your face. The lying, the cheating, the sneaking. It has all caught up to you, ears burning as you struggle to keep eye contact.

“I’ll try to call him down for you, give me just a sec.”

Wanda pushes out of the chair she had been sitting in with a loud creak, disappearing behind the glass and around a corner. You close your eyes, letting out the breath that had been screaming in your chest in an attempt to calm your racing heart. 

Wiping the sweat from your palms on your jeans, you glance over the counter, eyes flying over strewn office supplies, piles of printed out receipts, and orange Starburst wrappers that had all accumulated on the desk. Nothing to help you talk yourself out of this, no picture or scribbled note to make you remember why you had run out on him in the first place. Just a burning secret and a tell-tale heart.

Footsteps echo, shoes scuffling closer as you jump back away from the ledge, cursing yourself for actually coming in at all when it is too late to make an escape. Maybe Wanda will be returning without him, life too busy and easily focused on without your presence clouding his judgment. That false hope shatters when you hear someone responding to Wanda’s sickly sweet voice and your stomach churns with dread, spinning on your toes to make an exit. If your face isn’t visible, you might be able to get away.

“She said she was looking specifically for him, Bucky.” 

Your fingers barely have grazed the door knob when Wanda’s voice returns, small feet being followed by pounding boots. You are twisting the knob when you hear the footsteps stop.

“Our owner is currently out, is there anything I can help you with, ma’am?”

Bucky’s voice is deeper than you thought it would be in all of the stories and pictures you had seen around Steve’s apartment. It rumbles through your chest, planting your feet on the ground and stopping you from turning the knob. 

If you are lucky, maybe Steve was capable of keeping one secret from his best friend. After all, he had been pretty damn good at keeping them from you. Maybe Steve had never brought up the fact that he was sleeping around behind his wife’s back, in what was at one time considered a serious relationship with someone other than the brunette that he had stood beside Steve with as his best man for the wedding. If you were lucky, you could spin around, plant a dumb smile on your face, have the love of your life’s best friend look for a non-existent problem in your car and get out of here with a little bit of your dignity and you wouldn’t even hear the name Steve Rogers again.

Luck had never been on your side.

The second your eyes meet the blue ones of a stranger who you know better than your own sister, you know you are screwed. The genuine, eager to help smile drops from his face and you both are frozen. Bucky Barnes is standing right in front of you, expression completely blank, and all you can do is stare back.

“Hey, Wanda,” the voice that enters the room next is not yours, despite your attempts to have anything come out of your slack jaw, and your body immediately goes fuzzy. Everything feels so warm, your neck flushing at the familiarity of it. “I’m about to go get the boys, have you seen-”

Water burns as the tears swell in your eyes, panic flooding your body when your eyes meet the same blue ones you see every time you close your own. You are practically choking on air as you stand there, hand pressed against the door knob, but legs unable to move as you scream at yourself to run.

“Darling, are you okay?” Wanda’s voice asks, eyes flitting worriedly between the two men standing in front of you, and you, who is a deer in headlights. “You look about ready to pass out.”

“Y/N.”

It’s barely a whisper, the pounding in your ears almost making you miss it. Your name, tumbling out of his mouth like it has a million times before, only this time it isn’t providing you comfort after a long day. It doesn’t make you feel safe, warm and wrapped up as you watch some ridiculous movie on the couch. It makes your heart twist painfully, mouth gasping for air before you do the only thing your brain can process.