#buckybarnes

He only shakes his head, some of his hair falling into his eyes as he follows behind you. You swear you hear him mutter, “Not a shy thing at all,” but you don’t say anything because your nerve has worn off and you actually can’t believe you really kissed his cheek.

Bucky hadn’t spared an expense on your picnic. He had gotten peaches, plums, two different cheeses, apples, grapes (black ones; your favourite) and even a bottle of sparkling wine.

You had brought sandwiches and salt and vinegar potato chips (those became Bucky’s new favourites), a sketchbook and your camera.

“Were picnics something you did a lot?” you ask Bucky as he makes you a plate - crackers, cheese, some of the fruit and half the sandwich you packets.

Bucky squints at you as he slices a wedge of the plum free from the stone. “If it was, would you be jealous, doll?”

You shake your head, some of the peach juice dribbling down your wrist. Bucky’s quick but gentle as he thumbs it away and presses his thumb to his lips. You’re so grateful that his hands aren’t on you to feel how fast your pulse hammers.

“I’m just curious what the dating customs of the 40’s looked like.” It’s a miracle your voice remains even.

Bucky nods like he doesn’t really believe you. “I think I went on one, but there was never really a good time for more.”

You wince, you had forgotten that he’d gotten drafted.

Your reaction makes Bucky laugh, “I’m glad I get to find out if I really like them now though. There’s a lot more to enjoy about picnics now without all the smog.”

His teeth snap through the wedge of the plum before he continues, “I can see my date better, which feels like an incredible plus.”

Damn Bucky’s flirting.

You spend all evening at the park, and it’s so fun because Bucky poses for some of your pictures and then takes some of you and when you pose for a few together and Bucky stares at you there’s a sort of stillness that overcomes you.

His eyes bore into yours, the blue of them stopping you where your finger is poised over the button to snap the photo.

“Take the photo doll,” he whispers, his lips hovering near yours as he reaches up and presses your finger down just before leaning all the way in, pressing your lips together.

Bucky’s quick to take the camera from your hand after, setting it on the blanket and cupping your cheek to deepen the kiss.

It’s not too long, but it’s more than a peck and when he pulls away you can barely open your eyes.

“Was that okay?” Bucky whispers, the hand still cupping your face warm where it rests.

“Where did you learn to kiss like that?” his laugh rocks you as you press your forehead into his shoulder. “I don’t think you were really frozen in ice all that time, James Barnes.”

Bucky cups the back of your head as his laughs die down. “Whatever you want to believe, honey.”

Bucky gets to your house just after sunset, and you let him walk you to your front door. You don’t really want the date to end, but you’re tired and you have to imagine so is he.

“I had a really nice evening, Bucky.”

He smiles, a hand on your lower back as he stands in front of you. “So did I,” you turn to open the door but he stops you.

“I’ve gotta go out of town for a little bit, so we’re gonna have to rain check next Friday’s date.”

You hold onto the sleeve of his Henley before he can step back, “Is everything alright?”

Bucky nods, “Yeah just some stuff I have to deal with.”

“Winter soldier stuff?” You nearly whisper the words, not wanting to upset Bucky. He only nods with a soft smile. “Be careful okay?”

“You don’t want to be my nurse if I get hurt, doll? That’s harsh.”

You laugh, shaking your head at him. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

Bucky’s chest aches at your care for him. It’s been a long while since he’s been given that kind of affection.

“I’ll be careful, doll.”

“Good.”

Bucky leans in and presses a kiss just at the corner of your mouth, “Goodnight doll, lock your doors.” He reminds you like you’re not a woman in New York City, but it still makes you smile and your chest goes a little gooey.

Bucky doesn’t move from your doorstep till he hears your locks click into place.

-

Bucky’s been gone for a week and a half already and you can’t help but miss him.

You’ve been chatting back and forth and you’ve even started sending him songs to listen to. He’s got a very limited list of favourites that you’ve made it your mission to resolve.

You find another note in your handbag when you decided against texting Bucky and cleaned your cupboards instead.

It was in your bag from the picnic date, and you smiled when you noticed his handwriting on another receipt from the grocery where he got the cheese.

I hope you find this when I’m gone and you’re missing me; I know you are, doll, it’s okay.

I miss you too and I haven’t left yet.

When I get back I’ll make it up to you, I swear. Maybe we’ll go somewhere quiet again? Or I saw they’re reopening one of those antique places with all those retro trinkets; I could show what I used to have at home. Show you what I prefer now.

Keep locking your doors, honey. I should send you new flowers, the old ones will be dead soon.

Yours,

James.

Bucky’s very good at these, these little notes that leave you smiling and giddy like a fool.

You pull out your phone, you have to text him now.

I got your note. What was your favourite ‘trinket’?

Bucky answers only three minutes later.

My sister used to have a silver jewellery box that I had the pleasure of filling every month.

You smile at that, he’s always been a provider it seems.

Another chime comes from your phone.

We also had a gramophone that played the clearest music I’ve ever heard.

You roll your eyes.

You’re such an old man.

I’m not offended, doll. A pretty girl I’m seeing told me recently I’m not old at all.

Even miles away he’s got you grinning like an idiot with a racing pulse.

You can’t say anything to that and your thoughts take you to what a perfect gentleman he’s been to you. Bucky opens your doors, drives you home and waits till you get into your house before driving off. You think you might be falling for him, and rapidly.

He’s still gone by Monday and you’re missing him hard, only for the girls you work with to giggle before coming to find you.

“These were dropped for you,” they hand you a huge bouquet of red and white tube roses and a card.

It’s not Bucky’s handwriting but it’s from him,

Sorry I’m still not back, doll. I should just be gone for another day. Don’t miss me too much, yeah? I need a few kisses when I get back to make up for all this time away. I listened to that song you recommended, it was good. How do I make a playlist?

Yours,

James.

The note had you blushing and extremely flustered. Your coworkers noticed it immediately.

“Are you two going steady?”

You regret telling them who you’d been going out with. When they leave, you’re stuck with the realisation of how different Bucky is to the men you’ve dated before.

It’s a small thing, but you hardly think any of them got you flowers as consistently as he does, and you don’t think you’ve ever received such thoughtful bouquets.

You called Bucky when you got home, happy to hear his voice.

“Thank you for the flowers, Bucky.”

“You’re welcome, doll.”

You have the bouquet from today on your bedside table and smile when you spot it after changing into your pajamas.

“You caused quite a scene when they got delivered.”

You can hear the amusement in his words. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, the girls I work with brought them to me. They were very impressed by the size of the bouquet, Barnes.”

“I’m just concerned about what you think of me.” Was his answer and after that you couldn’t get a full sentence out of you.

He’s so open with his feelings towards you it’s scary, it makes your heart race but you also know he’s not just saying it. He means it and that makes you fall just a little more for Bucky.

“You’re sweet.” Is all you can manage, your face heated with a blush.

“Sam and I are finishing this up tonight, so I should be able to see you when we get back.”

You don’t know if you’re reading into his words, but Bucky sounds relieved at the prospect of seeing you soon.

“Isn’t it going to be a day’s long flight?”

“And I can see you right after I land, honey. So long as it’s not midnight or while you’re gonna be sleeping.”

Bucky Barnes isn’t good for your heart with the way he just wholly shows you how much he wants to spend time with you.

“Do you still need help with your playlist?”

He huffs, “Sam showed me. He’s not a good teacher though, was snippy the whole time; you’d think he’d remember I was in ice.”

You laugh, “I’ll show you when you get back, babe.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything about the pet name, but for the rest of the phone call he doesn’t respond unless you use it.

It’s two days before he’s back and Bucky drives straight over to see you.

He’s at your door a few hours after you get home from work, and when you open the door to see him, he’s there with a single rose in his hand and a tired smile on his face.

“Is it possible you got prettier while I was gone?” He leans against your doorway.

“You look dead on your feet, Bucky. Come inside.” you lead him to your sofa, watching him move with heavy but careful steps all the way through your living room.

Bucky’s movements are measured, not a single action wasted as he takes off his boots and socks and detaches his metal arm.

“I really missed you,” he sighs as he lays on your sofa, eyes shut as he takes a long breath.

“I really missed you too,” you brush back some hair from his face. “You could’ve gone home to sleep first, you know?”

Bucky opens his eyes and it takes great effort to do so, the whites of his eyes shot through with streaks of intense red.

“I wanted to see you,” he yawns. “But you’ve trapped me into laying on your sofa.”

You laugh, your fingers still knotted in his hair. “You can take a nap Bucky, or you can sleep the night here. I’m not really excited by the idea of you driving back tired.”

“I won’t doll,” he shuts his eyes again, the feel of your fingers on his scalp lulling him into a peacefulness he’s missed. “Tell me what you got up to while I was gone. I know you weren’t just counting down the days till I got back.”

You roll your eyes as you recount the last two weeks of your life, Bucky’s not even awake to hear what you did on the second day of him being gone.

You cover him up with your throw blanket and dim the lights of your living room. You make the playlist for him while he sleeps, putting all the songs you’ve sent him on the memory stick so he can leave with it.

Bucky doesn’t spend the night, but as he’s leaving he holds your cheek, “I didn’t come with an ulterior motive, just to see you. If you want, we can go have dinner tomorrow. I have something I want to ask you, doll.”

“That’s ominous,” you’re a little nervous by that phrase. No one likes being told that someone has ‘something to ask them’ in a day. There’s anxiety crawling up your chest before Bucky kisses your lips.

“It’s a good question baby, don’t overthink it. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

You grab the memory stick off the table before you could forget, “Here, I put all the songs I’ve sent on here.” Bucky kisses you again.

“You’re an angel,” you steal a kiss before he pulls away. “Lock your doors.”

“Sir yes sir.”

You hear him laugh all the way to his car.

Despite Bucky’s well meaning, ‘Don’t overthink it.’ That’s all you did when you woke up and started sifting through dresses to wear.

You’re ready at six and that makes you even more anxious. There’s too much time to do nothing but sit and overthink it.

You’re working yourself up to outright calling Bucky when there’s a knock at your door.

A quick peek at the clock on your stove let’s you know you’ve been overthinking it for forty five minutes.

When you open the door, Bucky’s standing in front of you in a pretty blue shirt that makes his eyes pop, and black dress pants.

He’s not got flowers this time, but he is holding a box of what you think are chocolates.

“Oh my god,” he breathes as he takes you in. You’re in a pretty pale purple dress, white heels and your hair is down in loose curls. You hadn’t gone for heavy makeup but just enough where there’s purple glitter on your eyelids and your lips are a deep red.

“You look handsome.” You say as you fight the blush creeping up your chest at the way Bucky’ stares at you.

“You look,” he trails off like he really can’t find the right words. “Breathtaking.”

You feel as though the blush explodes in your chest and heats your entire face.

Bucky hands you the box of chocolates, “They’re all dark chocolate.” You smile as you take it; that’s another thing Bucky’s remembered you like.

“Do I get to know where we’re going?”

You ask as you slip the chocolates into your purse and shut your door.

Bucky smiles as he watches you lock your door before turning to him. Immediately he links his hand with yours.

“We’re going for dinner somewhere nice,” the entire ride to the car Bucky has you talking. About the last book you read, work, if you think about him every night before bed (the last one was just to make you laugh, but the truth is you do.)

“What about you Bucky? Do you think about me before bed?”

You ask as he parks and he turns to you.

“Oh yeah,” that’s all he says before coming out of the car to open your door. “Think about you more than I think about anything else, doll.”

You manage to hold back your question just before dessert, “Can you please ask me? I’m freaking out and I think my heart might explode from the anxiety.”

There’s a laugh that bubbles from you and Bucky tuts.

“Honey,” you press a hand to your chest. Your anxiety really is at an all time high. You have so many questions rattling around your head that Bucky could want to ask you and you may throw up the lovely pasta you just had if he doesn’t ask you soon.

He leans across the table and holds onto your wrist, feeling the erratic beat of your pulse.

“I’ve been torturing you, haven’t I doll?”

You nod as you try to calm your racing heart.

“I didn’t mean to,” Bucky’s thumb strokes short lines across your wrist. “I had it all set up to come with dessert but I’ll put you out of your misery.”

“Thanks,” you mutter and he smiles.

“I know we’re only going steady,” that gets a smile out of you. He really is an old man, “but I wanted to ask you if I could be yours? Saying boyfriend makes me feel older so I won’t say it.”

You laugh, letting your head fall on his hand where it holds yours.

“Not the other way around?” You ask and Bucky huffs.

“You’re not property, honey.”

You look up with a smile and Bucky’s smile gets a little brighter. “Yeah you can be mine.”

“C’mere,” he tilts your chin a little higher and kisses you; slow and just long enough for it not to be a full make out. “You really missed out on the whole cheesecake with chocolate drizzle writing.”

He says as he pulls away and you laugh.

“Oh, are they not bringing it anymore?”

Bucky shakes his head, mischief in his eyes. “After you just latched onto me in the middle of their establishment? I don’t know, doll.”

“You’re ridiculous.” They still bring the cheesecake and Bucky feeds you the first bite, and like the flirt and menace he is, he gets a little just to the corner of your mouth.

“Let me get it for you,” and steals another kiss, ‘cleaning it off.’

You should’ve known better the moment you stepped inside. The facility was too quiet, too intact. Dust settled thick on the floors, but the lights still flickered dimly overhead, and the security systems were half-alive, humming low like they were waiting.

You were the one who found the sealed door- reinforced, heavily protected, and drawing power. It was locked down tight, tucked at the end of a corridor where the flickering lights didn’t quite reach. You called the others over.

"You think it’s storage?" Bucky asked, frowning at the biometric pad.

"Locked and powered," you muttered. "Could be data. Or maybe just a lab they forgot to scrub."

"Let's not poke the bear," Steve said, but he stepped up beside you anyway, scanning the door. "Looks like it's sealed for a reason."

That should've been the moment you backed off. But your fingers were already dancing over the keypad, overriding the old security system. The panel blinked. Clicked.

"I’ve almost got- "

The door hissed. Not wide- barely a few inches.

A soft spray hit you all in the face.

It came fast. Silent. A puff of pressurized mist like compressed air, followed by the faintest scent- ozone, chemical sweetness, almost floral.

You stumbled back, coughing once.

"What the hell was that?" Bucky barked, wiping his face with his sleeve.

Steve grabbed your arm, pulling you away from the door. "You okay? Did you breathe it in?"

"Yeah, but- I don’t feel anything."

"We’re all covered in it," Bucky snapped, glaring at the faint sheen settling over Steve’s shoulders. "Fucking hell."

"Close it," Steve ordered.

Bucky slammed the door shut, sealing it again with a growl. "Old security measure. Shit."

"We’ll report it," Steve said, but his jaw was clenched.

The spray clung to your skin. Sweet. Heavy. And whatever it was, it was in all three of you now.

~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~

By the time the jet touched down back at the compound, you were already flushed and aching, your heart thudding too fast in your chest. Whatever had come out of that door- it clung to your skin, settled in your lungs, and made everything inside you feel off. You weren’t the only one affected. Bucky was pacing the perimeter of the quinjet like a caged animal. Steve hadn’t spoken for the last twenty minutes, but his white-knuckled grip on the back of a seat said everything.

You’d hoped the decontamination shower would be the end of it. But blood was still taken. Swabs run over your skin. Scans. More questions. Until finally, they left the three of you in the quarantine room- one sterile space, no outside contact, and cameras in every corner.

You wanted to apologize. This had been your mistake. But Bucky’s expression was pure storm as he continued to pace like a tiger in a zoo. Steve’s face was unreadable- steely, distant, controlled. So you kept your mouth shut and tried not to scratch at your skin like you desperately wanted.

Soft static crackled, and then Tony’s voice filled the room over the speaker. "It’s biochemical bonding serum," he said. "Looks like it's engineered to push subjects into a state of hyperarousal and submission, designed to override inhibition and drive instinctual behaviors."

Your stomach dropped. What kind of mess had you landed yourself in?

"How long?" Bucky snapped, voice sharp.

"We'll have to check back on the decay and metabolic rate, and we- "

"What Bruce means is- we don't know," Tony cut in. "For you guys, it might be a matter of hours. Little Miss Curiosity might be stuck with it in her system a little longer."

You flinched and shied away from the speaker, burying your face in your hands.

"We're working on it, don't stress. It shouldn't kill you," Tony added casually.

"Big fucking whoop," Bucky growled, pressing a fist into the wall. Steve shot him a look of disproval. 

"Buck.." His tone warning. 

"Just, try and stay calm, guys," Bruce said, trying to sound optimistic. "It'll be alright."

"Don’t make a mess," Tony said, his voice laced with sarcasm. "We’ll keep you posted."

And just like that, you were cut off again. Biochemical- engineered arousal.

"Well, you heard him," Steve sighed, leaning back against the wall, scrubbing a hand over his face. "We just have to keep our heads. It can’t last forever."

That was easy for him to say. Both Steve and Bucky had super soldier serum in their veins- enhanced bodies that could regulate, adapt, maybe even resist. You… you were human. And you could already feel your body reacting in ways that made your skin itch and your blood feel like it was boiling.

You didn't say anything. Just shifted your weight, trying not to squirm. The heat beneath your skin pulsed steadily now, like it was alive.

"This is fucked," Bucky muttered, pacing again. "They just dumped us in here like we’re some kind of experiment."

"They’re doing what they can," Steve said, tone calm but tight. "We don’t know enough yet. Getting worked up won’t help."

"Worked up?" Bucky turned on him, eyes flashing. "You don’t feel that?"

Steve’s jaw flexed. "Of course I feel it."

"Then quit acting like you don’t."

You glanced between them, heart racing. The tension in the room was building again, only this time it wasn’t from anger- it was something heavier. Thicker. Clinging to the air like smoke.

And under it all, that hum beneath your skin only grew louder. 

Hours had passed.

You'd started pacing a little while ago, unable to sit still. Movement helped. Not much- but it was something. You were going through the water they'd left in the room like you were dying of thirst. You were hot, sticky, your tank damp and clinging to your body, and you were doing everything you could to ignore the throbbing pulse between your legs.

You kept moving. Pacing. Trying to shake it off.

Steve watched from the far cot, jaw tight. His shirt was damp, his breath shallow, but he was sitting like he was trying to pretend everything was normal.

Bucky was pacing again, eyes locked on you more often than not, his jaw clenched so tight it looked like it might crack. “She smells different,” he muttered. “Fuck.”

His words made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. The rough, raw sound of his voice made your head twitch like it was a physical thing pulling at you.

"Gonna try and sleep," you muttered, not looking at either of them.

Maybe you'd be able to sleep through the worst of it. Maybe if you were lucky, your body would calm down. You slipped behind the thin curtain, stepping into the tiny corner of privacy around your cot. Laying down, the heat of your body only seemed to intensify. Your skin felt suffocated, and with a frustrated sigh, you peeled your tank top over your head, leaving you in just your bra, hoping the exposure would help you breathe easier.

It didn’t.

You curled onto your side, arms around your stomach, thighs pressed tight together. The ache between your legs was a constant, heavy throb now. Maybe… maybe you could just handle your own needs. Just enough to take the edge off. Anything to ease the ache.

Your hands trembled as you pulled the thin blanket around you and lay on the cot. There was a small curtain for privacy, but it did nothing to muffle the sounds when your fingers slipped beneath your waistband.

You tried to be quiet. Tried to hold your breath. But your body was on fire, and even the gentlest brush of your fingers sent you bucking.

A whimper escaped, broken and desperate.

And then you heard it- Steve’s voice. Low. Strained.

“Don’t- don’t do that.”

You froze. “I- I can’t- ”

Still, you didn’t stop. You rubbed faster, then slower, your fingers diving inside of you, pressing deeper, trying every angle- but nothing worked. Every shift of your hand sent sparks across your nerves, your breath hitching with each pulse of pressure, but the fire wouldn’t break. Your legs trembled, your toes curled, but it all stayed out of reach.

You changed angles, tried circling your clit with trembling fingers while your other hand held onto the edge of the cot like it could ground you. You rocked your hips up, whispered pleas into the dark, but it wasn’t enough. Not even close. You needed more- needed them- but all you had were your own shaking hands and the unbearable ache growing between your legs.

Your breath hitched again as frustration bloomed hot and frantic in your chest. You were soaking, your thighs slick, the air sticky with the scent of your arousal. Your skin was flushed and clammy, your body locked in this endless loop of need- and yet you still couldn’t fall over that edge. Not like this. Not alone.

"You gonna keep pretending you don’t want her?" Bucky asked, voice low and rough, growling on the other side of the curtain.

Steve didn’t move at first, but his voice followed, strained. "I can smell her arousal from here, Buck. You think I’m not affected?"

"She’s whimpering, Steve. Sounds like music to me."

"We’re not doing this. We can’t- "

"Fuck this. She needs someone."

"Don’t you fucking touch her," Steve snapped.

"Then you do something," Bucky fired back.

Silence followed. You pressed your fingers deeper, hips rocking, but it wasn’t working. You were going to explode- your body was wound so tight it hurt.

Your fingers weren’t enough. You begged, voice cracking, desperate and broken.

"Please... please someone- "

Someone pulled the curtain back. Bucky’s eyes were dark. Blown wide. He didn’t speak. It hurt. “I can’t…” you whimpered, barely able to speak. “It’s not working…”

Your hips shifted again instinctively, your fingers still caught between your thighs, but the tension was unbearable. You were so wet, so swollen with need, it was maddening- and yet release stayed just out of reach. Your body craved more than your own touch could give.

They both appeared, stepping past the curtain without a word. You could see it in their faces- this was affecting them just as much. Steve’s eyes were dark, jaw clenched. Bucky looked wrecked, barely human with how sharp and hungry his expression had become.

You writhed again on the cot, body shaking, and Steve moved first- his weight shifting over you as he pressed your shoulders down into the mattress with steady, unyielding hands.

"Stay still," he said, voice gravel-thick.

At the same time, Bucky grabbed your wrist and gently pulled your hand away from you.

You whined, hips arched up, as Bucky’s gaze dropped to your slick fingers. He looked transfixed. Obsessed. His mouth parted before he dragged his tongue along your digits, groaning low in his chest at the taste.

Then- without breaking eye contact- he brought your hand to Steve.

"Tell me again we shouldn’t do this," Bucky said, voice rough and knowing.

Steve hesitated, staring at your hand, your eyes, then your body.

"...Steve?" you pleaded, chest heaving. A bead of sweat slid down your ribs, slicking your skin as the heat inside you pulsed like a second heartbeat. "Help... please."

Steve’s jaw flexed. His eyes raked over your flushed, trembling body, lingering where your bra had ridden up from the way you were squirming, the curve of your thighs glistening in the low light.

Bucky didn’t speak. He just stood there beside him, wild-eyed and rigid, chest rising and falling with short, shallow breaths. The scent of you filled the air. Thick. Sweet. Desperate.

Steve exhaled through his nose, heavy and slow like he was trying to exhale restraint. It didn’t work.

"You’re going to regret begging so pretty, sweetheart," he murmured, finally moving closer, the promise behind his words like thunder rolling through your veins.

~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~

They were both on you.

You didn’t know who moved first- Steve’s hand slid up your thigh, firm and sure, while Bucky’s mouth was suddenly at your neck, teeth grazing the sensitive skin just below your ear. The tension shattered. Clothing came off in frantic tugs- your joggers peeled away, your bra unclasped and discarded. Steve’s tank was tossed aside. Bucky’s sweats hit the floor with a low rustle.

Heat and skin and breath surrounded you. Their bodies pressed in, solid and hot and overwhelming. Steve's chest pinned you down as he kissed you- hard and consuming- his tongue sliding against yours as he groaned into your mouth. His hands cupped your jaw, fingers splayed, tilting your head how he wanted it.

Bucky moved lower, lips trailing down your throat, teeth scraping along your collarbone. His hands gripped your hips, dragging you down the cot toward him with a roughness that made you moan. He kissed your stomach, your ribs, your inner thighs, worshipping each inch like it belonged to him.

You gasped, arching into the touch of both of them. Their mouths- wet and demanding. Their bodies- slick with sweat, grinding against you like they couldn't get close enough.

You'd all held out for so long. Now there was nothing but the letting go.

Every nerve ending in your body sparked like live wires with every touch- every graze of skin against skin sent jolts of unbearable sensation through you. It was impossible to stay still. Your limbs twitched, your hips rocked, your breath came in short, gasping pulls as your body tried to process too much, too fast.

“Don’t move,” Steve growled, voice rough but laced with something gentler beneath. “Too sensitive? No. You’re just not used to being handled right.”

Bucky pushed your legs open wider, guiding your knees apart until your calves hung off the edge of the cot, completely exposed, completely theirs. “She’s soaking,” Bucky breathed. “Fucking hell- she’s dripping down her thighs.” The cool air kissed your slick folds and made you shiver. Then his hand slid between your thighs again, and fingers plunged into you- two, maybe three. You didn’t even know whose they were anymore.

Steve’s mouth found your chest, teeth grazing over the top curve of your breast before his lips closed around your nipple. You sobbed, your body already arching upward from the overload.

The blonde growled against your skin, one hand gripping your jaw while the other tangled in your hair, yanking your head back just enough to bow your spine upward. You gasped, helpless, writhing between them, your body trembling from overstimulation.

“You’re taking it so well,” Steve murmured, voice low and rough. “Just like that. Good girl.”

“Look at her,” Bucky snarled. “That’s it, sweetheart- ride my hand. Come on. Take what you need.”

His fingers worked deep inside you, curling and thrusting, hitting that spot that made your legs twitch and your hips lift off the cot. His palm pressed against your clit with every motion, grinding you into the edge of bliss, holding you there with cruel precision. You could feel everything. Every ridge of his knuckles, every flex of his wrist. It was too much and not enough all at once.

You whimpered, your hands scrambling against the sheets, seeking something to hold onto as your body rocked with each relentless stroke. Steve bit gently at the underside of your jaw, his hand still twisted in your hair as he whispered praises that barely reached your ears over the rushing roar of need building inside you.

Steve’s mouth was on your chest again, sucking one nipple into the heat of his mouth while his hand massaged the other, groping you with a needy rhythm that only made it harder to breathe. His other hand had tangled itself in your hair again, gently tugging until your spine arched up off the cot, your body straining toward both of them.

Bucky’s metal thumb pressed into your clit, circling with just enough pressure to make your thighs jerk. Your breath hitched, head tipping back as you let out a broken moan.

"OH FUCK." you cried, fingers clawing at the side of the cot, knuckles white.

He didn’t stop. His fingers pumped into you, slick and steady, coaxing the sound out of your throat again and again. You felt like you were vibrating- nerve endings lit up with fire, each touch sparking through you like electricity.

“You hear that, punk?” Bucky’s voice dripped with ego. “That’s the sound of my fingers making her cry.” Steve shifted beside you, sitting up to watch, his eyes locked on where Bucky's fingers slid in and out of you. One of his hands moved down, low and out of sight, and you could see the tension in his jaw as he fought to keep control.

Bucky glanced back at him, grinning as he curled his fingers just right and made you cry out again.

"Look at her, Stevie," Bucky growled, his voice rough and ragged with arousal. He didn’t even look up, just watched his fingers slide in and out of you like it was the most important thing in the world. "She’s writhing just from my fingers. What happens when I put my cock in?"

"You’ll wait," Steve snapped, voice sharp, strained with barely checked control. He was flushed, jaw tight, clearly fighting the same battle Bucky was already losing.

"God, look at her," Bucky muttered again, breath coming faster. "Fuck, I want her mouth. I want every part."

You couldn’t answer. Your vision blurred. Every nerve in your body felt like it had snapped tight, vibrating with unbearable pressure.

And then it broke.

You came- hard.

Your whole body convulsed as the orgasm tore through you. Your legs kicked against the cot, arms flailing blindly for purchase. Steve had to hold you down, one hand braced across your chest, the other still tangled in your hair as your back arched and a strangled sob tore from your throat.

It didn’t end quickly. The drug made it last- your climax dragging on and on, crashing over you in waves so powerful they left you gasping, wrecked.

You felt Bucky’s fingers slow inside you, easing off just enough to let you ride it out without breaking. But they didn’t stop touching you. They didn’t let you go.

And worst of all, the haze in your head didn’t clear like you hoped it would.

You were still shaking. Still needy.

Still burning.

You were a panting mess, your skin still hot and your chest tight when one of them scooped you up and lay you out on the cool floor. The shock of it made you gasp, the chill a sudden relief against your fevered skin. You blinked your eyes open, dazed, limbs slack and breath ragged.

"You’re such a mess for us, baby," Bucky murmured, crouched above you now. His voice was low, ruined with hunger. "That sweet little body of yours wasn’t made to handle all this, was it?"

Your eyes found him- Bucky, kneeling near your face now, his cock hard and leaking, so close it blurred your thoughts. He looked feral, undone, lips parted like he was barely restraining himself.

Your tongue slipped out to lick your lips without thinking. The taste of your own sweat clung to your skin, but all you could focus on was him. The way his chest rose and fell, the way his fist clenched at his thigh.

Your mind narrowed to a single point of clarity.

You wanted him in your mouth.

You leaned forward slowly, licking the bead of precum off his tip before taking him in fully- hungry, needy, your lips stretching around the thick, velvet length of him. Bucky’s breath stuttered, and he let out a ragged groan as your mouth sealed around him.

“Fuck, that’s it,” he gasped, one hand flying to your hair, not to guide but to anchor himself. “So fucking pretty like this- taking me so deep. Look at those lips- look at that mouth.”

You moaned around him, the vibrations making him hiss. He was hot, heavy, pulsing against your tongue, and you hollowed your cheeks to take him deeper, until your nose pressed against the base and he swore low under his breath.

“Messy little mouth,” Bucky panted. “So eager. You needed this, didn’t you? Needed something to suck while we ruin the rest of you.”

You were lost in it- the taste of him, the heat, the way he twitched when your tongue flicked just right. Spit gathered at the corners of your mouth as you worked him with sloppy desperation, gagging slightly as you bobbed your head in a steady rhythm.

Just then, you felt Steve’s hands at your hips, steady and sure. He shifted your lower body, pulling your legs open and up until you were spread out for him on the floor.

“You liked Buck's fingers? Let’s see how you do on my cock,” Steve growled against your ear, his voice dark and thick with restraint.

You gasped around Bucky’s cock, the moan caught in your throat turning into a garbled sound of pleasure as Steve aligned himself behind you. His fingers dug into your thighs, holding you wide as his tip pressed against your entrance- already slick, fluttering, aching.

He pushed in slow, filling you inch by inch, and every nerve inside you lit up in electric spasms. Your muscles fluttered around him, clenching and pulsing as he stretched you open, the thick drag of him stealing your breath.

The pressure, the fullness, the stretch- it was overwhelming. You sobbed around Bucky, the vibration of your moan making him groan above you, his hips twitching as he fought not to thrust.

Steve bottomed out with a hiss, his hands gripping tighter like he needed the anchor. Inside you, he throbbed, deep and perfect. You felt stretched to the edge of your limits, your inner walls fluttering in frantic spasms around him, struggling to adjust and clench all at once. Your body didn’t know what to do- pull him in deeper or push him out.

It was too much. It was everything. Your head was spinning.

They started to move- slow at first. Steve dragging back only to sink in again, deliberate, controlled, while Bucky’s cock bumped the back of your throat as he rocked forward with a groan. You gagged, whined, clung to them both with your mouth and body.

You were stuck in it now. The lust. The drug. The heat. There was no thought left, only sensation. Only how it felt to be stretched open in two directions, trembling and gasping.

They didn’t talk to you anymore. They talked about you.

“She’s so sensitive,” Bucky growled. “Poor thing doesn’t know what to do with herself.”

Steve grunted, his pace picking up. “Tight as hell. She’s pulsing like she doesn’t know whether she wants to come or cry.”

You tried to moan but it came out a broken, garbled sound around Bucky’s cock. Your tongue dragged along the underside of him as he pushed deeper, your throat fluttering as you swallowed around the stretch. Spit dripped from the corners of your mouth, tears tracking down your cheeks, but you didn’t stop. You couldn’t.

Bucky’s hand tightened at the back of your head, not forcing, just holding you there, gazing down into your wet, dazed eyes. “That’s it, baby,” he groaned. “Fuck, look at you drooling all over me. You love it, don’t you?”

Your hips rocked back into Steve without meaning to as he thrust forward again, harder this time, grinding deep. Your nerves fired like sparks, the friction of his cock dragging against hypersensitive flesh sending bursts of pressure low in your belly. Your insides coiled, pleasure building with every thick, deliberate thrust, your body wound so tight it felt like you might snap apart.

“You’re doing so well for us,” Steve grunted, leaning down, his mouth hot at your ear. “Such a good girl, letting us use you like this.”

He hooked one of your legs over his shoulder, changing the angle, driving in deeper. The stretch made you cry out around Bucky’s cock, throat flexing as your moan turned to a sob.

"That's it," Steve growled, pace quickening. "Fuck, so fucking wet and warm... you gonna cum, sweetheart? Gotta feel you squeeze me while you swallow Bucky."

Your body arched, heat crashing through your spine as Steve hit that perfect spot again and again, each thrust sending a jolt through your core. Your throat tightened around Bucky's cock, the vibration of your desperate moans making him curse under his breath.

“Fuck- she’s so close,” Steve panted, driving harder. “You feel that? She’s fucking pulsing.”

You sobbed around Bucky, tears streaking your cheeks, the pressure in your belly a coil tightening with no escape.

“She’s gonna lose it,” Bucky panted, watching the way you writhed. “Look at how she’s trembling. She needs cock.”

And then it snapped.

Your climax hit like a bolt of lightning, seizing your body with white-hot tension as your inner walls clamped down around Steve’s cock. You wailed around Bucky’s length, the cry vibrating through him as he let out a guttural groan.

“Fuck, that mouth- ” Bucky growled, watching your teary eyes roll back. “I’m gonna- shit- ”

He spilled down your throat with a grunt, his cock twitching between your lips, his hand holding you steady as you swallowed every drop of him while he pulsed. 

The clenching spasms of your climax milked Steve mercilessly, dragging his own orgasm from him with a ragged curse. He slammed in deep, staying buried as he came hard, filling you with warmth that only made the pleasure burn hotter.

“Take it,” he groaned, his breath broken against your shoulder. “Take it all. Good fucking girl.”

Bucky sat back on his heels, pulling himself from your mouth with a wet pop, still hard, his cock glistening with your spit. “"Fuck... you’re unreal..." he panted, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing..pupils blown as he looked down at you.

Steve finally pulled out with a groan, the loss of him sudden and jarring, making you whimper. His cum followed, warm and slick as it dripped from your stretched pussy, pooling between your thighs.

His gaze dropped between your legs, transfixed. His eyes went heavy-lidded as he watched it leak from you, dripping down to your slick, twitching rim. Slowly, his fingers moved to your core, smearing the mess down lower, spreading it deliberately to your other entrance.

You gasped, twitching from aftershocks, your body still sensitive everywhere. His fingertip teased your tight hole, rubbing softly, slicking it with a practiced ease. You whimpered, already overwhelmed, but the moan that spilled from you was pure need.

“Damn, Stevie- you didn’t fuck her right if she’s still aching like this,” Bucky drawled, voice hoarse and edged with a smirk, watching the way your hips shifted restlessly on the floor.

You whimpered, the heat still rolling inside you, every nerve ending alive and twitching. The aftershocks made your muscles flutter, your body too sensitive and still so hungry. Steve didn’t bite back. He was too focused- his fingers slick with his own cum as he spread it lower, smearing it over your pussy and then circling your tight, twitching rim.

And then one thick finger pressed inward.

You gasped, whole body jolting, a broken sound catching in your throat as your body tried to clamp down instinctively. But Steve worked slowly, steadily, easing the finger deeper, the stretch sharp and slow as he began to work you open.

You felt your core clench around nothing as Steve worked his finger deeper. “I need- please, I need more, I can’t- ” you gasped, voice trembling. Your head was a mess, fogged with lust and the aftershocks still sparking under your skin. Steve kept up the slow pump of his finger, pushing in deeper, working more of his cum into your ass to keep you slick and open.

“Hear that, Steve?” Bucky said, voice thick with amusement, already fisting his own cock in lazy, slow strokes. “She wants more.”

Steve’s gaze didn’t waver, his finger sinking deeper, curling. You whimpered again.

“Can’t say no, can we?” Bucky added, grinning.

“Oh, I think I know exactly what our girl needs...” Steve muttered, voice thick with heat and control, as his hand disappeared between your thighs.

Steve pulled his finger from your ass just as Bucky got down onto the floor, reaching out to haul you up into his lap. Steve’s arms hooking under yours, supporting your limp, boneless body as they moved you together like you weighed nothing.

“Let’s get you on Buck now...” Steve purred near your ear, voice thick and smooth, a slow heat curling down your spine.

Bucky’s cock was already there- thick, hard, and waiting. They guided you together, Steve steadying you from behind while Bucky angled his cock to your entrance.

As Steve lowered you, your legs wrapped weakly around Bucky’s hips, and you felt the first stretch as his tip slid inside. A guttural groan ripped from Bucky’s throat, his hands tightening on your thighs.

“Fuck, baby,” he gritted out, voice rough and reverent. “You always take me so damn good. Still so fucking tight- even after Steve blew you open? Shit.”

“That’s a girl,” Steve murmured, voice low with praise. “Nice and slow... Want you to feel every inch of him, don’t you?”

You just whimpered and nodded, the need to be filled consuming, overwhelming, as the pair of them helped you sink down onto Bucky’s cock, inch by perfect inch.

Your head fell back against Steve’s shoulder as you settled fully onto Bucky, who thrust up into you with steady pressure. The heat and stretch made your whole body tremble. You could barely breathe, still twitching from your earlier climax. Then Bucky's hands gripped your hips tight.

“Oh fuck,” he hissed, hips rolling upward as he began to move you, guiding you into a rhythm. “Look at you. Still aching. Like how I feel doll?”

The moan that spilled from your mouth didn’t even sound like you anymore- wrecked, raw, and desperate.

You were unraveling under Bucky’s rhythm- the way he filled you had your mind slipping, your thoughts scattering with every deep, slow thrust, how every thrust hit deep, high inside, brushing against that spot that made you shudder. Your head lolled back onto Steve’s shoulder, eyes fluttering, lips parted around desperate little gasps.

“She bites her lip when I go deep. You see that?” Bucky said with a rough chuckle, voice wrecked but smug. “She likes my rhythm.”

You didn’t even notice the way Steve bent you forward over Bucky, hands guiding your body like you were something precious and fragile and already ruined.

You didn’t have time to think too much before you felt Bucky’s hands grip your ass, pulling you open as Steve shifted behind you. It wasn’t until the thick, spongy head of his cock pressed against somewhere you’d never let anyone touch that your eyes snapped open in surprise.

The first inch pushed into your ass slowly, carefully, but it still stole your breath.

“It’s too much- I can’t- wait- ” you gasped, voice cracking with overwhelmed panic as your body instinctively tried to jerk away.

But Bucky rocked his hips upward, pushing deep into your pussy again, and the shockwave of pleasure was enough to paralyze your resistance.

“Shh... it’s okay,” Steve murmured, arms wrapping around you from behind as he continued to press in. His voice was thick and coaxing, his control iron-tight. “I’ve got you. You’re doing so good for us.”

You sobbed, your whole body fluttering around them as Steve sank in deeper, the thin wall between your holes trembling with every inch he took. The two of them groaned in unison, voices rough and reverent as they filled you together.

You were caught between them now. Two super soldiers, all three of you lost in lust and need. Your face twisted with sensation as they held you there- one thick cock filling your pussy, the other spreading your ass open inch by inch. Both sunk to the hilt. You were impossibly full. You were shaking. Overwhelmed. Unable to process the stretch, the heat, the drag of their bodies inside you. It was too much. And you needed more.

“You’re both so… big- I’m gonna- fuck- ” you sobbed. You couldn’t believe how sensitive you’d become- how just being filled, just being stretched, could reduce you to this. You weren’t even moving, yet your body was already bracing to come undone again. There was no going back. No holding on. Just surrender.

You came without moving, the sensation of fullness alone tipping you over. Your body seized in the middle, core clenching violently, squeezing down on both of them at once as pleasure ripped through you like a lightning bolt.

Your voice cracked into a scream. You were gone- shaking, convulsing, burning from the inside out as your orgasm dragged through you with devastating force.

Both of them groaned at the way your body squeezed them- tight and hot and trembling.

“Fuck,” Bucky grunted, rocking his hips once more. “Didn’t even have to move. Just had to be inside you.”

Steve chuckled darkly, voice low and wrecked in your ear. “She’s that sensitive. That fucking perfect.”

You couldn’t even answer. Your lips parted in a silent gasp as Steve’s hands slid up to cup your breasts, thumbs brushing across your stiff nipples as he started to move again. Slowly at first, easing back before pressing forward, dragging against that thin wall with every thick stroke.

Bucky's grip returned to your hips, steady and possessive, guiding you to rise and fall on his cock. Your body jolted with every motion, your moans soft and slurred.

“That’s it,” Steve cooed, hips snapping gently. “We’ll start slow…”

“I-I can’t- ” you whimpered, but your body was already moving, driven by instinct and need.

“I know you can take more,” he murmured. “Look how beautiful you are when you come apart. It'll feel better- just gotta keep going.”

And it did. It felt better than the denial. Better than the ache that came from holding back. The pleasure rolled through you like a drug, heavy and all-consuming.

Your hips started to move again, slowly grinding into Bucky as your walls fluttered around him. You didn’t know if it was need or instinct- maybe both- but you couldn’t stop. You were cock-drunk. Barely aware of anything except how good it felt to be filled this way.

“Breathe,” Steve whispered. “Just like that. Hold it- good girl.”

Then Steve pulled your hips back into him and pressed all the way in.

“You think you’re fucking her deep?” Steve growled at Bucky, voice low and wild. “Watch this.”

Bucky shoved his hand flat to your lower stomach and lifted his hips with a brutal thrust. You cried out, the stretch making your eyes roll back as he ground up into you. It was obscene how deep he reached, how thick he felt. You pawed at his chest, clinging to him with trembling fingers.

“..fuck fuck fuck...” you gasped, the breath knocked out of you before he eased his hips again, smug and steady.

“Told ya,” Bucky muttered with a grin.

But it didn’t stop there.

Bucky answered your gasps with harder thrusts. Steve listened for his name and answered with praise. His mouth latched to your neck, nipping and licking along your skin as he squeezed your breasts roughly, molding them in his palms.

“Did you hear that one? That was mine,” Steve muttered against your skin when you gasped his name.

Bucky answered with a sharp thrust that made your breath catch. “She moaned louder for me, sweetheart. Don’t get cocky.”

Each of them was locked into the game- testing reactions, adjusting pace, trying to claim the sounds that spilled from your lips. One made you cry out, the other drew a gasp. They used your body like a live wire for their competition, and you were helpless in the storm.

“She whimpers when I kiss her right here,” he growled, biting just beneath your ear.

Bucky’s hands gripped your hips tighter, fucking up into you hard enough to rock you against Steve’s chest. “She clenched around me when you said that,” he rasped. “Bet she’s trying to pick a favourite.”

You couldn’t keep up. Couldn’t think. You only managed to gasp whatever name escaped your lips first, and they both heard it- every time. And they responded with sharper thrusts, filthier praise.

“You’re so cock-drunk, you don’t even know who’s making you come anymore, do you?” Bucky said, voice rough.

“She’s beautiful like this,” Steve murmured, licking the sweat off your throat. “All wrecked. All ours.”

Then Bucky’s metal hand slid between your thighs again. His fingers brushed your clit, the coolness of steel a shocking chill of metal against your heat made you jolt, gasping as sparks danced up your spine.

“Oh- god - fuck- ” you sobbed, trembling uncontrollably as sparks shot up your spine.

“Breathe,” Steve ordered again. “Just like that. That’s our girl.”

They started to move faster now- driving into you in sync, pistoning in perfect rhythm. The slap of skin echoed, the slick sounds of your soaked cunt and the obscene wet pressure of being filled from both ends breaking whatever was left of your mind.

“You want to make her come, punk?” Bucky growled. “You gotta fuck her harder than that.”

“Shut up, jerk,” Steve snarled, thrusting harder. “We don’t need to break her. Just ruin her a little longer.”

“She’s shaking so bad. You keep her steady, Steve- I wanna see her face when she comes again.”

Your next orgasm ripped through you with a small wail, your features contorting as your body locked up tight. You clawed at them both- gripping Steve’s forearm, Bucky’s shoulder- as your walls fluttered around their cocks, milking them, begging for more without a word.

They didn’t stop. Didn’t give you time to come down. Steve groaned, his thrusts picking up as he rolled your nipples between his fingers. Bucky cursed, gripping your hips tighter, lifting and dropping you into him with growing urgency.

You felt them both losing control- felt their restraint slipping with every second you squeezed around them, heat and slickness pouring down your thighs.

“Fuck- fuck, she’s doing it again,” Bucky grunted.

Steve’s voice was a low growl in your ear. “She wants it. She’s not done. Not till we are.”

Then the pace shifted- harder, rougher, deeper. Their moans grew louder, matched only by the slap of skin on skin. Your head spun, your vision blurred.

And then they were coming again- Steve first, pulled tight to your back, his groan muffled in your shoulder. Then Bucky, buried deep beneath you, eyes locked on yours as he spilled inside you with a strangled moan.

You collapsed between them, limp and boneless, your body a trembling wreck held up only by their hands. You didn’t even try to move. There was no fight left in you- only the slow hum of satisfaction and overstimulation. Somewhere in the haze of your mind, a flicker of disbelief passed through you- how had you endured that? How had you survived the storm of them inside you? But there was no room for shame or second thoughts. Only surrender. And the quiet, overwhelming hum of being utterly, deliciously wrecked. You were too dazed to understand what was happening at first, the haze still thick behind your eyes. The humming under your skin hadn’t stopped, but it had dulled- muted to a low thrum that echoed in your bones. They were careful, even if your overstimulated body didn’t register it that way.

You whined, squirming, as they slowly pulled out of you. The stretch reversed, the heat slipping away, leaving you empty and raw. It wasn’t pain, but your body protested the loss with soft whimpers.

Someone pressed a water bottle to your lips, coaxing you to sip. You obeyed without thought, the coolness trickling down your throat a small mercy.

Another set of hands gently wiped you down. A cold, damp cloth slid between your legs, easing away the slick mess with slow, tender strokes.

Then your head was lowered into someone’s lap. Fingers carded through your hair.

“You did so well,” Steve murmured. “Look at you- perfect.”

You blinked slowly. Steve’s voice again, closer now: “Easy, sweetheart. Just breathe. I’ve got you.”

Your limbs twitched weakly, still responding to phantom pleasure. A quiet laugh came from Bucky.

“Still twitching. Still fucking gorgeous.”

You felt him kissing up your leg, mouth trailing along your calf, your knee, your inner thigh.

Then your legs were being moved again- lifted, spread with a gentleness that contrasted starkly with the earlier frenzy. There was no rush now, no urgency- just the soft reverence of Bucky's hands as he cradled your thighs like something precious, something breakable, as though he hadn’t just wrecked you minutes ago. You blinked, barely aware, as Bucky settled himself between them, laying flat, his breath hot against your oversensitive core.

He pressed a kiss there, soft and reverent, and your whole body jolted in response.

“And I’m not done tasting her,” he muttered, voice thick with need.

“Buck- she needs to recover,” Steve warned again, but his voice had softened to something indulgent.

“I’ll be gentle…” Bucky promised, his mouth already lowering, tongue dragging slow and careful over your aching folds as your head lolled back into Steve lap, eyes fluttering closed, lost to the warmth and the wetness and the impossible pleasure building again

You surely are about to taste your own blood on your tongue any second now if you keep biting your lip so hard. But all you do is tighten your grip on those messy, dark hair your fingers are knotted into, and you can’t fight the reflex to shift your hips away an inch so that the embarrassing sob that is growing in your throat won’t make it out.

Though you should have known that that would make him stop. His mouth pauses against your clit, and you squeeze your eyes shut.

His hands remain firmly at your thighs, thumbs soothing those slow and drowsy circles against your skin. But his eyes lift to yours, the usual bright blue of them gone dark and concentrated in the dimness of his bedroom. His gaze is fierce enough to make your breath hitch, but melted into its depths is that softness you know is there just for you.

With his gaze still on yours, he begins to kiss a languid path up your stomach, pausing just beneath your ribs and letting his eyes flutter when worshiping your breasts with his skilled tongue. Your mind and soul are soaring up to his high ceilings.

Your teeth are imprinted upon your bottom lip, and you hope you can continue keeping your breathing as even as possible, though you’re not managing all that well.

His hands move slowly across the skin of your hips, pinning you to the mattress. He doesn’t use all his strength but enough for you to feel stuck in his hold.

He crawls further up your body with that deliberate drag that leaves you shivering and panting. He hovers over you and his bare chest brushes your heaving breasts.

His face is now inches from yours, his stubble grazing your cheek, smelling like vanilla and something like cardamom, and you breathe it in automatically. His pupils are blown as they sear into yours.

“Stop that,” he orders, though his voice is a warm whisper. He reaches up, his thumb catching your bottom lip and tugging it out from between your teeth. He soothes the imprint. “Don't you hide those pretty sounds from me.”

“Bucky, the guards,” you breathe out, your voice trembling, still weak from the way he used his tongue on you. Your face burns. The room feels enormous again, full of listening walls. “Your people. They will hear. They will think—”

Something flits across his expression. It seems to be something proud, even possessive. You could say it looks dangerous, but being the person that you are, and considering the sweet albeit intense person that he is, it turns you the hell on and makes you sigh.

“I don't care what they think. I want them to know.” He leans down, his lips hovering over yours, his breath hot and smelling of you. “I want every man on my payroll to hear the way you sound when I’m the only thing on your mind. I want them to hear who I’m answering to tonight. And every other night from now on.”

With a stunned shake of your head, you stare up at him, a huff of embarrassment trying to bubble up and fall out of your mouth but it fails because his mouth is on yours, kissing you aggressively before he dives back down, not waiting for you to argue. You’re entirely overwhelmed, but damn, not in a bad way at all.

His hands lock you into place, and the way he’s eating you out has you flying straight to heaven with a one-way ticket. He’s being greedy. He’s using his tongue with a blunt, feverish sort of worship that makes your head hit his pillow with a thud.

He’s a businessman, that’s what he told you. But as his mouth works over you with all that bottled-up intensity he carries around all day, you feel the latent power he usually keeps veiled behind a tie. He’s a man who takes what he wants, and right now, what he wants is to hear you break, and you might actually, because god is he good, so incredibly good, you could definitely get used to it. Maybe you already are, but who’s to blame you for it.

The first real moan tears out of you, and you cringe internally at how loud and breathy it sounds, the way it vibrates in the cavernous room, landing in the farthest corners of the high ceilings.

Bucky grunts against you, and it sounds so purely satisfied, it even seems to rumble within your own body. You gasp, trying to suppress another moan, and he only presses harder, licking and sucking and slurping, and it makes you feel like you’re the only meal on his plate.

His thumbs dent the soft give of your hips to make sure you’re pinned the way he wants you, the way he has the best access to all of you. It’s dizzying, it makes your gut lurch in the best possible way, and you feel like a queen and a ruin all at once. He’s gentle, yeah, but it seems to be the gentle kind you would use on a porcelain heirloom right before testing its breaking point.

Your hands don’t know what to do with themselves. Gripping the sheets or pillows, touching yourself—it all doesn’t feel like enough, so you go back to sliding your fingers into his hair and basically watch them disappear in it. You feel powerful and helpless, and oh god you should really keep those noises down or you won’t be able to look at his people anymore.

He is a mountain of a man, intimidating in ways you don’t understand yet, full of secrets; and yet here he is, kneeling for you and eating you out as if that’s all he’s been waiting for his whole life.

Damn, you’re a lucky girl.

He is drinking you in, his mouth molding to you with a suction that feels like he’s trying to draw your very soul to the surface.

It feels as though each individual bristle of his stubble is caressing your inner thigh, and it's abrasive and burning but also so damn good. It makes the gliding heat of his tongue feel so soft and vivid, and it pulls the tension right out of your bones.

He tracks you through his lashes, and you’re careful not to meet his eyes or that dark gaze of his would surely make you come already. But he doesn’t stop documenting you and the way you react to him. He thrives on it, so very much that it doesn’t seem to embarrass him in the slightest.

Then he dives past your entrance, his tongue finding that soft, sharp intake of your breath. And your spine bows upward out of pure blinding pleasure. The sound that leaves you is startled, too loud for your liking and so you try to clamp your hand over your lips.

He catches your wrist.

He’s not harsh with it, but he brings your hand down to the mattress and pins it there decisively. His fingers lace through yours.

“What’d I say,” he warns, voice low, husky.

You swallow, your eyes are fluttering. “Bucky—”

“Make the noise,” he whispers as he kisses along your inner thigh, eyes on you. “All of it.”

His free hand slowly wanders upward and it almost feels possessive how he ascends your heated skin. You glimpse that little hint of something feral, something prehistoric in the trail of his eyes. You’ve seen it before, and as always, it pulls you under completely. His ferocity isn’t some thrashing kind of wild, honestly, he seems perfectly comfortable with his position, as though he’s already done the math but there’s no clear solution and he just has to keep calculating. Has to keep going.

He lunges back and buries his face in your heat, his tongue flat and broad, applying a rhythmic pressure that whites out your vision and has you moaning without thought. It’s thorough and hungry, his mouth drawing you in eagerly, and it feels like he’s trying to pull the very center of you into his throat.

“Bucky—,” you gasp, your fingers tightly clamping around his, knuckles white.

He growls, and it rattles his entire chest, it vibrates against your sensitive skin. He uses his teeth—just a graze, a tiny, sharp nip that sends a scalding current straight to your core. Your hips jerk reflexively, his hands are pinning you open, and you are forced to take every unsparing lap of his tongue.

He shifts his weight, his nose dragging through your wetness as he focuses his attention on the very top of your nub. He works his tongue in a cadence so constant it sends the pressure straight to the back of your skull until the room dissolves behind your eyelids. It feels almost like a breaking point, but hell, you would throw yourself out of those high windows if he were to stop now.

He’s fast and skilled and you’re made to take it.

“Open up,” he commands against your skin, his voice muffled and wet although you couldn’t possible open up more for him.

There is no more warning before he fills you with two fingers, sliding them deep inside you and stretching you while his thumb maintains that dizzying pressure, and the friction burns a hole through your focus. The two sensations fight for room in your head, effectively demolishing whatever was left of your pride and it makes you let out the highest moan. You’re straining upward, seeking the release he’s dangling just out of reach.

He looks up at you, his face flushed, his breathing ragged against your thigh. A stray, damp shimmer glistens on the curve of his lower lip, and he licks it clean. You watch mesmerized and utterly overdrawn. His gaze is stripped of any pretense, it’s dark and appeased and entirely fixed on the way your face is breaking.

"That's it," he coos, watching your chest heave. "Scream for me, sweetheart. I'm not stopping until you do."

He dives back in, his tongue swirling deep inside you before curling back to hook against your clit, and suddenly there is no perspective on anything anymore, and the floors are walls and the walls are floors, and—

And then his phone begins vibrating against the mahogany nightstand. It’s a sharp and intrusive sound and it’s stripping the air of its heat.

Bucky doesn’t seem to care, though. He doesn’t so much as glance over at it. His gaze stays welded to yours, his pupils taking up the beautiful blue. His thumb continues trailing your heat, collecting your slick, and he turns to watch in amazement, as he licks a long stripe up your center, making you choke on your spit.

The vibration of his phone still ringing grates against the wood, loud enough to feel like a physical itch.

Bucky is a man who has built an empire on timing, yet he seems perfectly content to let the world outside the bedroom door spontaneously combust.

The phone dies.

He keeps sucking, you keep moaning.

Then, it begins again, more insistent this time. His phone is pulsing. It seems urgent.

You feel his jaw tighten against you. Feel the shift you’ve come to recognize but never quite know what to do with. The air around him thickens by a single degree. The temperature of him changes, not in heat but in authority. Somewhere beyond these walls, the world is knocking its head against his patience.

“Bucky,” you breathe, the word leaning on the dryness in your throat. Your chest is still heaving, your skin flushed a beautiful pink. You softly pull at his hair to make him look at you, a weak gesture that feels like trying to move a mountain. “You should get that.”

His eyes meet yours. There are galaxies in them and something darker orbiting behind them. He leans in and presses a slow, devastating kiss to the inside of your thigh, all calm and relaxed while the phone continues vibrating angrily.

“It can wait,” he decides, voice an octave lower and threaded with promise as he trails a line of punishingly soft kisses along your skin.

Another buzz, the sound now an impatient thrum that seems to vibrate the very legs of the bed. It feels like a summons, a reminder of the business that pays for the guards and the maids and the high ceilings.

He exhales through his nose and lets out a rumble of annoyance. His thumb strokes a calming line along your hip, as if reassuring you that his irritation belongs elsewhere. He looks like some wild animal being interrupted mid-meal.

“Bucky—,” you start, carefully, your hand sliding to cup his face, feeling the heat of his skin, but he clicks his tongue to interrupt you.

“My girl deserves to get off first,” he hums, not letting his lips off your skin, his stubble a deliberate, intoxicating scrape against your thigh.

And when his tongue drives home, flat and strong against that hyper-sensitized knot of nerves, it doesn’t take long for that jolting pleasure to cloud your vision and bleach the dark corners of his bedroom into a searing, blinding white.

Your spine arches and snaps and leaves you suspended between the silk sheets and the cold air, held down only by his weight.

The embarrassing sob you were trying to hide earlier finally tears free, but it isn’t a sob anymore. It’s a melodic wail that echoes off the shadows-drenched ceiling. It climbs high and rings out with a clarity that makes the idea of guards and business feel like a fever dream from another life.

Your body is trying to crush his fingers in a desperate pulse that feels like a heart beating where it shouldn't.

And Bucky drinks it all in. He keeps his head down, jaw locked against you, refusing to let the moment end. That rough graze of his stubble is brutal but it keeps you somewhat in the room. He is taking the time with the mess he made, leaning into the way you are trembling, his mouth ensuring that every last bit of your control is gone.

By the time your vision starts to clear at the edges, and the room starts to solidify back into reality, you feel hollowed out, as if he’d reached inside and pulled the very soul of you to the surface. You slump into the mattress, your limbs too heavy to even twitch, your lungs burning with the effort of remembering how to breathe.

When you begin to squirm in his hold, Bucky finally pulls back, his expression bluntly victorious. He is breathing hard, his lips stained, his eyes trained on the way your ribs are still hitching with those dying tremors. His hand tightens at your hip.

Then he rises over you in one fast movement, bracing himself above you with his weight carefully balanced. You don’t need any more physical proof that he wants you, considering how hard and ready you can feel him against your leg, with his control barely in check; and it makes your lungs seize up.

Wordlessly, he leans down to pull you into a slow kiss that goes so deep, your thoughts evaporate and your fingers tangle in his hair. He groans against your lips, breathing your name. You feel him twitch against you as he lets his hand slide back between your bodies—when the door rattles with a knock.

Bucky stills with his forehead on yours, eyes still closed, jaw a block of ice. “Boss?” a slightly hesitant voice comes through the door.

His nose presses into the crook of your neck. For a long second, he just breathes you in, a deep, possessive inhalation as if he is trying to pull in all of your scent to survive the coming interruption.

With a low curse that is more a growl than a word, he rolls onto his side and promptly pulls you with him, tucking you into his chest. His body angles slightly toward the door, building an instinctive shield. His arms remain draped over you, his left hand splayed protectively across your back.

“What,” he calls, voice suddenly stripped of warmth. There is a pause on the other side.

“Sorry, boss,” The voice is male. Sounding even more hesitant now. And definitely embarrassed. “But, uh— it’s important. You are needed.”

You want to let out a heavy sigh. But you’ve seen this coming, really.

Bucky closes his eyes briefly and there is something pinched around them. He’s not usually a short-tempered man, at least not with you, but right now he looks ready to snap at the door.

“I’m busy,” he replies flatly, and you believe his voice is only calm for your sake.

Another pause. The poor man outside is probably staring at the door waiting for it to shoot him.

“It’s Sam,” he explains carefully, seemingly afraid to say too much.

You know Sam. Or, you have heard Bucky mention Sam. Sam, the colleague. The one your boyfriend refers to with a mix of irritation and reluctant brotherhood. A pain in the ass, he told you with a half-smile. But loyal. Does good work. One of the few men he trusts to argue with him and live. You had laughed at the way he said it so seriously. He hadn't really laughed with you, but he kissed you stupid afterwards and so you no longer thought of it.

Bucky gives a long exhale.

“Give me five.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hurried footsteps retreat down the corridor.

And Bucky doesn’t make a single attempt to leave your side. He just peppers your neck with tiny kisses.

You try to turn to his face. “Bucky, you should go.”

His eyes meet yours, and the stoicism buckles immediately. Back is the softness.

“You come first,” he hums, and his thumb brushes your cheek. There is something apologetic in the gesture, though he hasn’t done anything wrong.

You smile faintly and let a slow pout form on your lips. “I don’t want to hold you back from work.”

“You’re not,” he reassures you softly, leaning down to kiss you with a lack of the urgency he should probably be feeling right now.

But then he’s shifting away, sitting up on the edge of the bed, and the loss of his heat is a stinging chill. The chandelier light spills over his naked back, over the breadth of his shoulders. Your eyes glide down the tiny pink scars on his left shoulder with a sinking feeling in your stomach—those scars are another mystery he hasn’t let you into yet. But all you want to do is kiss them and hope to make it better, even if just a little.

You watch the way he runs a hand through his hair, reassembling himself piece by piece. By the time he stands, he has edges. He always seems different when he’s no longer touching you.

He pulls on a pair of dark trousers and doesn’t bother with a shirt. The phone is in his hand now. He checks the screen, jaw grinding briefly before he glances back at you. And the hardness that stepped into his eyes softens again, dissolving the moment they meet your face. It’s almost ridiculous, how quickly it happens. Like watching a knife remember it was once a piece of silver meant for candlelight.

You’re still half-sunk into the bed, hair falling around your shoulders, limbs loose, and sheets wound around your naked body. Around you, it smells of cedar, expensive soap, and Bucky himself, which is somehow warmer than both.

“Stay here,” he says gently. “I’ll handle it.”

Handle it.

The words mean spreadsheets and contracts in your mind. Annoying colleagues. Late- night negotiations.

He walks back to his bed to press a tender kiss to your forehead.

You push yourself up slightly on your elbows, the blanket sliding down your side. And you definitely see the way his gaze drifts for an appreciative and unashamed moment before it returns to your eyes. There is a small smile tugging at his mouth, and it’s the one you always get to see when you’re the only audience.

“Make yourself at home while I’m gone, yeah?” he whispers, nodding toward the massive wardrobe along the far wall, keeping his attention on you. “If you get cold, grab a shirt of mine. Top shelf on the left.”

You smile at him, nodding softly.

His eyes move over you slowly, and there is something warmly adoring in them that makes your chest tighten in a strange, bright way. He reaches out to brush his fingers along your jaw. The touch is thorough, absentmindedly tender, soothing out something only he can see.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he adds, voice rougher now. Reluctant. “Didn’t plan on having to step out. Told Sam he better handle his own ass today. Should’ve known better, though.”

“You’re the boss, Bucky,” you ease lightly. “I assume dramatic interruptions are part of the brand.”

His mouth curves.

“Unfortunately.”

He kisses your forehead once more, lingering long enough to make your lashes flutter.

“I’ll make it up to you,” he murmurs sweetly. “Soon as I’m done with this.” His thumb traces your cheek. “I’m coming right back. Gonna give you my full attention.” His eyes darken slightly, voice dipping just enough to send a warm shiver through you. “Cuddle you properly. Maybe take things a little further.”

Your stomach does a small, excited flip. “Maybe?”you tease, leaning into his touch.

He presses his smirk against yours. “Definitely.”

With that, he pulls back and straightens, that sovereign steel slipping back over him piece by piece. It’s almost visible, the way he steps into whatever role the rest of his world knows him for. The man who answers phones about Sam and things that sound suspiciously more complicated than spreadsheets.

At the door, he glances back once more. Same softness, just for you. “Lock it behind me, doll.”

The door opens. His phone lifts to his ear.

His voice changes instantly as he steps into the hallway.

“Get Wilson on the line,” he demands, tone clipped. “Now.” And then the door shuts.

You’re left in the echo of him and his scent in the sheets, his warmth still imprinted on your skin.

You don’t get up immediately to lock the door. He can get just a little too protective sometimes, so you don’t deem it necessary to lock the door when he’s just out taking a call. And you’re sure his guards would be in much worse trouble if they were to enter and see you nakedly spread out in his bed.

So you flop back into the mattress—that certainly was expensive too, due to the way it feels—and stare at the ceiling for a moment.

Then you laugh, incredulously. A quiet little wheeze of disbelief escaping into the big room.

Because really. What on earth.

You roll onto your side, pulling the blanket with you, and glance around the bedroom again like maybe you hallucinated the last two hours. Or the last two months.

The place is obscene.

And not in a tacky-rich, or gold-fountain rich kind of way. This is the quiet kind of wealth. Everything is polished wood and deep colors and furniture that probably has a historical backstory longer than your résumé.

There’s a fireplace bigger than your entire first apartment. A chandelier that looks like it was handcrafted by depressed angels.

And somewhere downstairs, there are actual maids.

Maids.

And guards.

Actual human beings whose job description probably includes phrases like protect the property and stand menacingly near large gates.

Meanwhile, you used to eat instant noodles on a couch that leaned slightly to the left like it had given up on life.

And somehow—how the fuck—you have ended up in the bed of a man who owns more suits than you own pairs of socks. A man who is tall and broad and so absurdly handsome, who steps into those razor-sharp tailored suits as though they were invented solely for him. Who wears that self-confident authority in his voice that makes the people around him straighten without realizing why.

And yet, he was on his knees for you just moments ago.

The thought sends heat creeping up your neck again. But in a giddy way.

You bury your face briefly into the pillow with a muffled groan. Because honestly, how did you pull that.

A man like Bucky should logically be dating a diplomat. Or a CEO. Or some terrifyingly poised woman who drinks champagne for breakfast and owns fifteen languages.

Instead, he found you.

You.

Who once tripped over a grocery store display and apologized to the oranges. And yet he looks at you like you hung the moon with questionable hardware.

You grin into the pillow.

Also—objectively speaking—the man is incredible in bed. Like, it’s crazy.

Biting your lip and staring up at the ceiling, you wonder if the chandelier is as baffled by your luck as you are. It’s like winning the lottery without buying a ticket, and you’re silently pleading with the laws of probability to stay bent in your favor just a little while longer; at least until he realizes you’re a mere mortal and not the goddess he’s treating you as.

It’s weird that a man like him noticed you. Weird that he’s so sharp with the world but so gentle with you. Weird that he lives in this fortress of wealth and power and still tells you to steal his shirts if you’re getting cold.

Your eyes drift toward the wardrobe.

Top shelf on the left, he said.

You imagine one of his massive shirts swallowing you as a whole, and snort softly.

Yeah.

You definitely pulled a mob-boss-looking, suit-wearing, ridiculously attentive gentleman who apparently worships the ground you lie naked on.

Weird. Very weird. But you’re not complaining. You’re just mentally haggling with the universe, offering to never ask for another favor again if it just promises not to reclaim its prize or realize he’s a solid ten and you’re way out of his league.

He told you he runs a company.

You imagine glass walls and long tables and men in suits who nod too quickly while he stands in front of them all in his suit, looking all delicious and hot. You imagine paperwork, meetings, a name etched into metal on an office door. He never corrects you. He only smiles in that small way of his—enigmatic, a little asymmetrical, a little careful, as if the smile is something he built from spare parts and polished until it gleamed.

You’ve been dating for a short time. And considering the mystery he surrounds himself with, you guess it’s going to take a while until you truly get to know him. Until he truly starts telling you how his day has been and what he has been up to—and what taking a call means in his business.

But he kisses as though he’s been starving in a snowstorm. As though warmth is an endangered species and your mouth is the last sanctuary. His hands are large and soothing, and they never wander without purpose. He touches and handles you like the first blossom of a century-plant, something that has spent a hundred years preparing to bloom for a single day. And he looks at you as if you are that miracle. As if you are the only soft thing in a life built of stone.

And so, you tell yourself, you can wait for him to be ready to talk.

You don’t know what he does after midnight. You only know he sometimes steps onto the balcony to take calls. His voice changes there. It drops. He doesn’t smooth over his words and instead lets the corners stay pointy. You just never catch his words. The only thing you can do is admire the way the city lights flicker behind him like they’re afraid of him. Or in awe.

And when he comes back inside, he presses his forehead to yours as if he’s returning from war.

Contemplating, you lie there for a moment longer, staring at the ceiling. Then you sit up.

It’s not cold, the room is perfectly climate-controlled in that rich-people way where seasons are merely decorative suggestions outside the window; but you suddenly want one of his shirts.

Not for warmth, but for him, for the smell of him, for the proof that this is all actually happening and you are actually here with him somewhere out there in this huge mansion, waiting to get his mouth back on you. For the possibility that his detergent—whatever luxury forest-scented nonsense it probably is—might trick your brain into thinking he’s still right there.

You glance toward the wardrobe.

It’s enormous, who would have guessed. Cathedral enormous. Dark wood doors that probably cost more than your childhood bedroom set. It suggests that Bucky owns multiple versions of the same devastatingly expensive suit.

You slide out of bed and pad across the carpet, which is so soft it feels apologetic for touching your feet. Putting on your underwear for comfort, you make your way over to his wardrobe. The doors open without making a single sound.

You step inside and it feels like even the air is filtered for perfection. It’s a humbling difference to your own apartment, where the dresser functions less like furniture and more like a high-stakes game of Tetris, with your favorite sweaters perpetually losing the battle against a jammed bottom drawer, and where finding a matching pair of socks requires the luck of a seasoned treasure hunter.

There are rows of shirts, jackets, trousers. Everything spaced just enough apart to breathe. Everything immaculate. A faint scent of sandalwood and something clean and expensive drifts forward to greet you.

You tilt your head up.

The shirt shelf is ambitious.

You stand on your toes but you don’t reach anything. You reach higher, basically for nothing. Your fingers waggle uselessly in the air, far away from touching anything.

You sigh.

Because obviously, the man built like a six-foot-something war monument thinks a shelf near the ceiling is perfectly reasonable.

You walk out of the wardrobe and glance back toward the bed. Then toward the chair near the window.

His jacket is draped there. It looks like it belongs at the head of a mahogany table, brokering peace or declaring war with a single sharp lapel. And in between there’s the shirt he’s tossed aside as soon as you both entered his room, with an untidiness that feels like a glitch in his otherwise perfect Matrix.

It’s the shirt he didn’t bother to put back on when leaving you here. You grin.

Well.

That works too. Perfectly, even.

You wander over, the carpet not letting any sound free. The chair sits near the tall windows, moonlight cascading across the floor in long silver rectangles. It looks graceful somehow. His jacket catches the light along its seams, and you shiver at the thought of how elegant and powerful it makes him look.

You reach for it, intending to lift it aside and claim the bunched shirt.

But the moment you grab the jacket, something feels off. It’s heavy. Not normal-jacket heavy. Weighted. You frown faintly, adjusting your grip. You pick it up fully, wanting to fold it neatly, when something slips out of it.

There’s a short, dense thud against the floor. It makes you freeze.

The object lands on the dark carpet inches from your toe; a short, metallic punctuation mark in the silence. It drinks in the chandelier’s glow and spits it back out with a cold, silver arrogance. It ignites an unmistakable shimmer that makes the air in the room feel ten degrees colder.

Your brain takes a second to translate the shape.

It’s a gun.

You stare at it.

The word sits adamantly on the floor of your mind and turns the room into a crime scene before anything has even happened. It’s a sharp fracture in the timeline—there is the version of you from five seconds ago, and the version of you staring at a hunk of lethal metal.

This thing is real. Very real. Not movie-real. Not plastic-prop-real. More like heavy-metal-object-that-could-alter-the-entire-direction-of-a Tuesday-real.

Your knees grow weak and you crouch down so very slowly. Who knows, maybe sudden movements can already trigger it. You’ve never seen a real gun. You never expected you would, not like this, at least. This feels pretty surreal.

The jacket still hangs half off the chair behind you. The shirt you wanted is crumpled innocently beneath it, but you’re not grabbing it.

Your attention remains on the gun. You don’t touch it.

It’s not like your heart is racing noticeably, but there is a new tightness in your chest and it’s making you feel as though your thoughts all have quietly stood up at once.

Because. Right. Of course.

You know Bucky runs a company.

You know he’s wealthy enough to own a mansion that probably requires a map and a tour guide.

You know he has guards. Actual guards. You knew all that.

But with this gun sitting there on the carpet, it feels like looking through a new lens that snaps the blurry facts you know of this man into a slightly different focus.

If it’s frightening, you’re not sure, but it’s definitely clarifying.

You sit back on your heels for a moment, staring at it. He carried this in his jacket pocket. Casually. Just around. Like a wallet. Or keys.

Your mind tries to rewind through the past weeks. The way he watches exits. The midnight phone calls. The men who seem oddly respectful around him. The commanding note in his voice when he tells someone to do something.

You bite your lip, a hectic internal editor trying to bridge the gap between the little you know about the man and the metal you’ve found. You tell yourself not to panic, because panicking won’t give you any answers. And there’s no need to panic, because he’s just a man with power, a man who’s a boss and bosses tend to have people who don’t like them.

That’s no reason to use a gun on anyone, but it’s probably just a formality. A piece of insurance stored away like a fire extinguisher you hope to never use. Maybe it’s not meant for violence at all, just for peace of mind.

He’s protective. You’ve seen and felt it. Just last week, he was absolutely livid, after one of his guards stepped out of line with one of his maids, who’s this sweet old woman who had been with his family since his father’s time. He was in such a blind tailspin over it, and your soothing touch was the only thing that was able to pull him back to earth.

He would build a wall around everyone he cares about just to keep the wind from blowing too hard. Perhaps this gun is just part of that wall, a safety he keeps close so he never has to feel helpless. It doesn't have to mean he’s dangerous. It just means he’s prepared. It’s a precaution, a tool, a just in case that will likely collect dust until the end of time.

You try to settle the thought, but it feels like trying to pin a map against your chest in a storm; the harder you flatten your palms against the paper, the more wind tunnels through the gaps, ballooning the center and snatching the corners from your grip. If you manage to squash one section still, the air pockets behind the rest, turning the whole thing into a thrashing thing that fights to fold itself back up or fly away entirely. No matter what you do, no matter how much you lean into it, the wind will always be a second faster. The wind will always have the upper hand, hollowing out the space between your hands and the whole truth you are trying to read.

You just have to believe that the man who touches his girl so carefully is the same man who would only ever use that steel to keep the world at bay.

Your gaze lingers on it.

You don’t know much about guns. Your knowledge is mostly assembled from movies, news articles, and the vague understanding that they belong firmly in the category of things you should probably treat with respect. And it definitely belongs to a world you’ve never really stepped into before.

But apparently, Bucky lives there.

You glance toward the door he disappeared through. This is the guy who permitted you to steal his clothes, who pressed a kiss to your forehead with the softest lips. When he looks at you, it’s with that specific focus, that startled sort of wonder that always makes you feel so over-exposed, but also exponentially adored.

Your chest softens despite yourself. Still.

You eye the gun again, and one thing has become very clear in the last thirty seconds. You might be dating a man you know less about than you thought.

And that realization sits in the room with you now, waiting for you to act on it.

But you don’t know how. You simply keep staring. The chandelier light kisses its metal edges until they gleam faintly, indifferent to the fact that your brain is currently eroding into a new shape.

You swallow, and even that sounds strange in the imposing space, like it wandered too far from home.

Leaving this thing on the floor feels wrong.

And if Bucky comes back and sees it there... You don’t know why, but the thought makes your stomach tighten.

So you reach down, only now seeing that your hands are slightly wavering. Your fingers close around the grip, and the first thing you notice is the weight. It’s heavier than it looks, solid in a way that makes your palm immediately aware that this object was designed with very serious intentions.

You lift it slowly. Nothing happens, obviously. The world doesn’t explode. The chandelier doesn’t shatter. The mansion continues breathing its wealthy breath around you.

But holding it still feels like stepping one inch deeper into a room you didn’t know existed.

You turn it slightly, meaning only to orient it so you can slide it neatly back into the inside pocket of his jacket, but you spot an engraving, small letters carved into the dark handle.

JBB

Your brow furrows. You stare at them for a moment, tracing the edges with your eyes.

The metal around the letters looks softened. Not scratched exactly, but worn in the way objects get when they’ve lived in someone’s hand for a long time. Like a favorite pen. Or a well-loved watch.

If guns can look old, this one does. It’s not antique-old, but familiar-old.

You tilt your head. JBB. You try to assemble a name around the letters. The only name you know for the man currently pacing somewhere in this mansion making serious phone calls is Bucky.

Just Bucky.

You don’t know his last name, you realize suddenly, and you don’t like that.

You know his favorite whiskey. You know the exact shape of the scar on his shoulder. You know the way he presses his nose into your hair when he tries to calm himself down.

But his last name leaves a blank space in your mind. You glance down at the gun again.

JBB.

Maybe it belongs to someone else. Someone with a J. Jake? James? John? Jacob?

Maybe it’s a family thing. Maybe it belonged to his father. Maybe it’s one of those rich-man- heirloom objects that get passed down through generations alongside cufflinks and complicated legacies.

You exhale quietly.

That explanation sounds reasonable enough that you decide to borrow it for the moment.

Very carefully, and with explicit intent, you slide the gun back into the inside pocket of his jacket. The fabric settles around it like it knows exactly where it’s needed.

You smooth the lapel automatically.

There.

No evidence.

Your fingers linger on the jacket for a second longer than you want.

It still smells like him. Clean soap. Dried tobacco. Something stronger beneath it that you can’t put a name to but always recognize immediately as Bucky.

You step back, and suddenly the room feels different. Not threatening, but it does feel larger still.

Because now your brain is busy counting the things you don’t know.

You don’t know his last name.

You don’t really know what his company does.

You don’t know why men knock on his bedroom door looking nervous.

You don’t know why he carries a gun like it’s just another accessory.

You rub your arms lightly, because now there is a faint prickle of awareness crawling along your thoughts and it is spreading throughout your body.

You’ve been dating for six weeks. Is this long enough to demand answers? To justify interrogations? Gosh, you’re not sure. You’re not sure about a lot of things right now, really. You’ve been floating through the beginning part—the sweet, dizzy, honeymoon fog where the only facts that matter are the ones you feel.

But now there’s a small string of sunlight sliding through the fog. A string of curiosity. You turn back toward the bed where your clothes lie in a small, careless pile.

Maybe you’re overthinking this.

Maybe.

Still.

You pull your shirt over your head, the fabric rustling softly in the quiet room. Your jeans follow, and then your fingers reach automatically for the necklace resting on the nightstand.

The pearls catch the light when you lift them. Bucky gave it to you two weeks ago.

It’s delicate. Real pearls, because he just can. Everything about him seems to come with an expensive quality attached.

You remember the way he looked when he gave it to you. Almost shy, which was deeply unfair considering how the man is built.

Saw it and thought of you, he’d said. Think about you all the time, he’d added.

Which had melted approximately seventy percent of your internal structure. You fasten the necklace and touch it lightly now.

Gentleman.

Ridiculously good in bed.

Mysterious.

Possibly carrying engraved guns.

You sigh.

You feel a little guilty. Because what you’re about to do is technically snooping. And snooping is not great. Your mother would absolutely deliver a lecture about boundaries if she could see you right now.

You glance around the massive room again. The desk by the window. The bookshelves. The curated neatness of everything.

You bite your lip. You’re not looking for secrets. You’re just looking for context. A clue. A name.

Something that tells you who Bucky is when he isn’t kissing your forehead and telling you to raid his closet.

Your feet move before your conscience can finish filing complaints.

Your steps make no sound as you move across the carpet, wandering deeper into the room and scanning the shelves and surfaces with a caution that can’t suppress your intrigue.

You don’t need all the answers. Just one or two. So you start with the obvious places.

Drawers.

It feels less intrusive somehow; opening something that was clearly meant to be opened. You move slowly, like a guest in a museum after hours, careful fingers, quiet breath, a mild sense that the walls might be watching.

The first drawer slides out with a wooden noise and even that sounds rich. Inside, there are watches. Several of them, lined neatly in velvet compartments. Dark metal, silver, leather straps. You don’t know brands, but you know enough to guess that each one probably costs more than your car.

You close the drawer.

The next one holds cufflinks. Rows of them. Small polished things that look important and serious and entirely uninterested in your investigation.

And it only goes on this way. You open drawer after drawer, and there is nothing strange. Nothing suspicious. Just the belongings of a very wealthy man who liked things neat.

Your shoulders loosen a little. Maybe you overreacted. Maybe the gun is just a rich man's security thing. The guards downstairs carry them too, probably. It doesn’t automatically mean anything bad.

You open another drawer.

Paperwork. Boring looking things. A passport tucked neatly inside a leather sleeve. You hesitate for half a second before closing it again.

That one definitely feels like crossing a line.

You step away from the wardrobe and wander toward the nightstand instead.

The wood gleams darkly under the chandelier.

You pull open the top drawer.

More ordinary things. Wallets. Sunglasses. A small tray of rings.

Further back in the drawer, you find a small stack of Polaroids. You fish them out, because you recognize the first picture. It’s a picture of Bucky and you from a few weeks ago. You had found an old Polaroid camera and wanted to try it out, practically levering him into the frame while he grumbled about how he wasn’t photogenic which was total bullshit in your eyes. But he isn’t even looking at the camera in the photo. He is looking at you with a fond little half-smile.

Looking at a few others, you realize they are of you. All of them. One is a shot of your back as you walk toward a sunset, another is a blurred profile of you sleeping on his shoulder.

There is a warmth prickling at the back of your neck and you feel something slacken inside your stomach as you slowly lower the photos back where they were.

Nothing about all of this screams crime lord. Your nerves ease another notch.

You almost laugh at yourself. Your brain likes to get dramatic. Bucky is archiving your relationship, he is sweet and protective and tender and just—

As you are about to pull your hand out, your fingers brush against something cold and metallic near the back of the drawer.

You pause.

It’s partially hidden beneath a folded black cloth. Just the faint glint of a chain catching the light.

Curiosity taps gently on your shoulder.

You slide the cloth aside and notice the silver chain. It’s thin and tangled loosely like it’s been dropped there without much thought.

You hook your finger under it and lift. Something heavier at the end slips free. Two small metal plates fall against each other with a quiet clink.

Dog tags.

You blink.

That’s not strange, exactly. Lots of people keep sentimental things. Maybe Bucky served in the military. That would even make him hotter, to be real. But it does feel a little hurtful that he didn’t share this information with you.

You turn the tags over idly, expecting to see a name you don’t recognize. However, though, you do recognize the name that’s neatly spelled out on the metal plate. And it has the air in your lungs turn to stone, refusing to move a single inch.

James Buchanan Barnes.

Your stomach drops in such a harsh way, there is no ending to the fall. Your internal organs are unmoored and everything about you feels dizzy and weightless. It’s like stepping down a staircase that isn’t there. You’re still gripping the metal, but the connection between your brain and your hands has been cut, and now your fingers feel distant and wooden, filled with a needling sensation you know comes right before they start to shake.

And they do shake.

A thin tremor at first, then worse, until the tags begin to chatter against each other. Each sharp nick of the steel feels so biting and loud, broadcasting the exact moment you are losing it.

Your mind flips through memory like rifling a deck of cards too fast.

News headlines.

Conversations overheard in cafés.

Podcasts about organized crime.

New York’s most notorious mob boss.

The man whose name floats through the city like a ghost story told after midnight. James Buchanan Barnes.

JBB.

Heat rushes up the back of your neck while the rest of you goes ice-cold. It feels like standing in two climates at once—your skin clammy, your spine rigid, a cold sweat blooming between your shoulder blades.

Every breath you pull in is labored and metallic, coating your lungs in a film of disbelief that makes your chest ache. You can almost hear the gears of your reality grinding to a convulsive, screeching halt, stripping the teeth right off the life you thought you were living.

Your pulse is a furious SOS tapped out against the underside of your throat; a muddled, thrumming reminder that you are standing in the epicenter of a storm you didn't even know was brewing. You feel thin, translucent, like a sketch of a person that someone could erase with a single, hard look.

Your fingers tighten around the dog tags. No.

No no no.

Your brain scrambles to reject it. Because that’s outrageous.

That man—the one people call dangerous in all kinds of languages, the one whose operations stretch across half the city, the one who apparently runs things so carefully that no one has ever managed to pin a crime on him—

That man is a myth.

A shadow.

A name in newspapers. No photos. No confirmed identity.

Just whispers.

James Buchanan Barnes.

JBB

You stare at the letters again. You recall the way his initials were engraved in the gun.

Your mind scrambles for explanations—wrong tags, coincidence, someone else with the same name—but every attempt at reason breaks apart in your hands.

Bucky. James. Bucky. James.

James Bucky Barnes.

Your eyes drift slowly across the room.

The suits.

The mansion.

The guards.

The midnight phone calls.

The seriousness.

The gun.

Your hands are shaking tremendously. JBB.

James.

Buchanan.

Barnes.

Your mind repeats it over and over again. The math is suddenly very simple.

He kissed your forehead fifteen minutes ago. He told you to steal his shirt if you get cold. He gifted you present after present because he simply could. He spoke your name as if he had ingrained it on his tongue.

He is the most dangerous man in the city.

Something uncomfortably glaring and stinging climbs up the back of your neck, and it’s making you feel watched by a predator you once mistook for a protector.

You’ve heard the stories. Everyone has. Illegal shipments. Rival gangs disappearing overnight. Entire businesses quietly changing ownership after one meeting with Barnes.

And yet there is no evidence. Never evidence. Just the name. James Buchanan Barnes. The general public doesn’t know what he looks like. There are no confirmed photographs. Just rumors.

But you know exactly what he looks like. You know the way his hair falls into his eyes when he’s tired. You know the scars on his body, know his reactions to your lips on them. You know the exact sound he makes when you laugh unexpectedly.

You are standing in the bedroom of the most notorious mob boss in New York. Wearing the pearl necklace he gave you.

Sleeping in his bed.

Dating him.

For fucks sake, he’s been inside you. You came on the most wanted dick in this city.

The walls of his seemingly huge room, so pristine and elegant, now seem to turn from a sanctuary into a beautifully curated cage.

You have been falling for the most dangerous man in the entire city and until two minutes ago, you had absolutely no idea.

Your hand moves to put the dog tags back in their place, but it’s like you’ve switched to autopilot. Your fingers operate with a sense of detachment while your mind is still a mile behind, screaming.

You lower the chain back into the velvet-lined dark with a tremble you can’t shake. You should crush it in your fist, should throw it at the ground and stomp around on it, should spit on it for what this man did—to the world, to you—but all you can do is handle it with a carefulness that is usually reserved for unexploded ordnance.

The metal hits the bottom with a tiny clink. The sound is so small, yet it feels like a heavy iron gate slamming shut between who you were five minutes ago and who you are now.

You slide the drawer shut, the wood-on-wood glide sounding like a long, slow exhale of a secret that’s finally been caught. You do it with agonizing slowness, as if by moving quietly enough, you can trick the universe into rewinding the last sixty seconds, or rather the last months so you could have avoided stumbling into his strong but deceiving arms.

And immediately, your brain begins doing what brains do best when frightened—it rewrites the past with fresh ink.

Everything changes. Everything. You look around the bedroom again. But it’s not the same room anymore. It’s not a beautiful space where you spent evenings laughing and tangled in sheets with a man who handled you like he was scared to hurt you.

Now it’s a room belonging to James Buchanan Barnes. Mob boss. Ruler of the underworld. The man people whisper about like saying his name too loudly might summon him like the devil.

Your stomach is curled into a hard stone, your fingers still numb. And suddenly every memory of the last few weeks starts recoding itself.

You remember the first gift he gave you. Not the pearls. The flowers. Three dozen white lilies delivered to your apartment door a day after your first date.

You’d laughed at the absurdity of it, calling him to tell him that this is too much, way too much, but he had smirked over the phone, so soft and unabashed, only replying that you deserve it, that you deserve way more than that.

At the time it felt romantic. But now your mind shears the memory, leaving the colors bled and the angles wrong. You turn all the memories of him over in the light until the shadows fall differently, until they take on shapes that start to build a picture.

Maybe it wasn’t romance. Maybe it was a strategy. Because that’s what men like him do, right? They buy people. They build golden cages out of small, glittering gestures.

You rub your arms slowly.

Another memory surfaces. The restaurant. The one with the insane skyline view where the waiters treated him like visiting royalty.

You’d joked about it. Do you secretly own this place?

He’d smiled that slow, mysterious smile of his and simply offered you more wine. He had looked so pleased.

Tension coils behind your ribs, but your mind keeps going.

The necklace. The pearls. One month together and he gives you something that probably cost more than your entire wardrobe.

You had protested. He’d looked almost offended. He pouted at you. He looked so adorably soft, so hopeful you would take this gift from him, that you thought it to be sweet.

Maybe a little over-the-top.

But that was just Bucky, is what you thought. A little intense. A little larger than life.

However, now the thought hatches, its spindly legs prickling against your focus.

He wasn’t spoiling you, he was buying you. Buying your affection. Buying your trust. Buying your silence.

Heat floods your face. Shame webs across your heart in a dark lace of regret. You feel so embarrassed. It spreads across your whole chest and even stains the air around you.

Because you fell for it. You idiot fell for it.

Hook, line, and embarrassingly enthusiastic sinker.

You believed the soft way he looked at you. The way his voice dropped when he said your name. The way he kissed you like he had been wandering the desert and you were the first water he’d seen in years.

You believed the way he listened to you ramble about dumb things like your coworkers, your favorite movies, the stupid podcast you liked.

You believed the way he touched you. Gentle and devoted, and it all seemed so loving.

Your throat is tight, turned into parchment, the soft tissue shrinking and hardening until it feels ready to crack. Because all that might have been a performance. A simple performance to fool you.

Of course, he would know how to act. Of course, he would know how to charm someone. Men like that survive on manipulation.

But you don’t understand why it’s you. Why you of all people? You’re not wealthy. Not powerful. Not connected.

Which somehow makes it all the more humiliating because maybe that’s exactly why. You imagine the possibilities, and each one feels worse than the last.

Maybe he needed someone clean. Someone with no ties to his world. Someone who could unknowingly hold something for him. Transport something. Sign something. Test something.

Maybe you were never a girlfriend, but a tool. A pawn. A convenient, smiling civilian. Someone harmless enough that no one would suspect anything.

Your hand flies to your mouth to stifle a sound that hasn’t even formed, but you cannot lock out your mind, and a keener thought pushes through.

What if he didn’t need you for anything practical at all? What if you were just entertainment?

A normal girl to play house with for a few weeks. A soft distraction between grating business meetings and dangerous deals.

Your eyes and cheeks burn at the thought that somewhere behind those soft eyes and tender hands, he might have been laughing at how easily you melted. How quickly you trusted him.

You feel sick. Your stomach heaves in a frantic attempt to purge the very air you breathe. It drags liquid heat up from your gut to your searing cheeks.

Your gaze drifts to the chair by the window. His jacket still hangs there. Inside it, the gun rests quietly.

Your stomach flips again.

Because suddenly it feels impossible that the man who carried that gun tonight was the same man who tucked the blanket around you earlier, who swiped his tongue against your pussy this deliciously and stopped you from hiding your reactions.

It was simply a power play, and god, are you a stupid girl.

You hear his voice in your head again. Stay here. Lock the door.

A shiver runs down your spine. Because now the words sound different. There is none of that protective and caring cadence. All you hear is a command. Containment. Showing you he is the one with the power, he is the one dealing the cards.

Oh, god. What have you gotten yourself into. This is definitely the worst thing yet.

You know you have to get the hell out of here. High-tail it. Let your panic lend wings to your feet to carry you the fuck out of the devil’s quarters.

You absolutely cannot still be in this room when he comes back. Pretending you didn’t notice the gun was one thing. Pretending you didn’t discover who he actually is, is another thing entirely.

The lie would be too large. It would sit between you like a loaded weapon much deeper and more fatal than that damned gun.

Your pulse is a vibrating scream inside your throat, your chest, your whole body, because what happens when he sees that you know?

What does a man like James Buchanan Barnes do with loose ends?

Fear and dread pin your lungs against your ribs and make the hairs on your arms stand up.

You don’t want to find out. You grab your phone from the nightstand with shaking hands. Inside your mind, your thoughts are colliding and yelling at one another, memories reshaping themselves into something darker.

He was so worshipful. So attentive. So careful with you.

And it hurts. It hurts so fucking bad.

He really is the best actor you’ve ever met.

You glance once more around the room. The bed. The wardrobe. The luxury of everything.

Then you head for the door. Because whatever this was, whatever he was, you need to be gone before James Buchanan Barnes comes back.

There is that low, now seemingly threatening rattle vibrating through the wood of the door. Somewhere down the long dark of the hallway, a mess of voices spills out—too muffled to catch the words, just a low drone. Then there’s the sound of footsteps on the marble, over and over, like a pendulum, until it gets softened by the rugs.

It’s eerie how this place just functions. No clanking, no friction. Just the invisible, midnight grinding of a house that knows exactly how to keep itself running while everyone else is dead to the world.

Bucky's house.

No—your mind corrects strictly.

James Buchanan Barnes’s house.

You inhale slowly, steadying yourself, and turn the handle.

The door gives a tiny, smug click, and you step out slowly, looking around to see nobody.

Ahead, the hallway just stretches out forever, all that dark, expensive wood shimmering under these wall lamps that just stare at you, glowing like something waiting for its turn to speak.

It’s wide enough that you expect a massive echo, but the carpet is so thick it just eats your footsteps. It’s unsettling. The whole place feels like it’s sucked in its gut, just holding its breath, waiting to see if you’ll decide to jump through the floor-to-ceiling windows to your right in your desperation to leave this place.

The door closes behind you, and even though it doesn’t really make a sound, you flinch so hard, your little jump through the window plan might be accidental.

Your heart begins to pound harder now that you’ve left the safety—no, the illusion—of the bedroom.

Because this house feels much larger and colder out here. Maybe you should have taken the gun with you. But you don’t know how to use such a thing, because you’re a normal person, and normal people don’t carry those things around like an innocent handbag.

You take a few unsure steps and it feels like you’ve stepped backstage at a theater and suddenly realized the play you were enjoying might actually be a crime scene.

You know the way to the front door.

He walked you through the mansion when you first visited, his hand resting lightly at the small of your back, guiding you through endless rooms and hallways with an easy familiarity that felt charming at the time.

But you know better and realize he was just showing you the cage. But at least you were paying attention. Every turn, every hallway he bragged about is burned into your head. That charming tour just became the only map out of here.

Two hallways down. Past the staircase. Through the long gallery with the ample paintings.

Then the front entrance.

Simple.

Except for the fact that his mansion is apparently populated by a small army.

Maids. Guards. Staff who move through the house like quiet satellites orbiting the gravity of one man.

These were all signs you simply overlooked because he’s handsome. You bite the inside of your cheek out of frustration with yourself. How can one person be so fucking blind.

You start walking.

Your footsteps are soft, but your heartbeat is anything but.

A maid appears at the far end of the corridor just as you round the corner, and everything inside you locks up.

She pauses when she sees you, instantly throwing you a smile that genuinely looks pleasant. She recognizes you. You don’t recognize her. Your stomach turns and turns until it is knotted too tight to even be able to move.

“Miss,” she starts politely. “Aren’t you feeling well?”

You force a smile that you hope doesn’t look like it’s made entirely of nerves and the urge to run down this hall, disappearing out of sight.

“Hi,” you say, keeping your voice light, a little apologetic. “Sorry— I just... I think I need some fresh air. I have a bit of a headache.”

The lie comes out smoother than you expected. Maybe panic is a good acting coach.

The maid’s expression softens immediately. She even looks a little too concerned for you for whatever reason.

“Of course,” she says sweetly, and you actually feel bad for lying to her. Does she know who she’s working for? Does she know who you are supposed to be for the man who is her boss? Maybe you could ask her. Maybe she would shoot you for it, who knows. Maybe everyone in this godforsaken building owns a gun, ready to use it. “Would you like me to call the boss—”

“No,” you interrupt quickly, then soften the urgency with a small laugh. “No, it’s fine. He’s busy with work, right? I don’t want to bother him.”

You hate how natural the sentence sounds. How easily you can say work when you now know that word hides a thousand darker things.

The maid nods, but she does seem a little hesitant. “Of course.” Thankfully, she leaves it at that.

With the wish for you to feel better soon, and an awkward thank you from your side, you continue walking.

One corridor.

Then another.

Your mind keeps racing ahead of your body, building plans like emergency scaffolding.

It all suddenly looks so terrifyingly menacing. Especially in the dark. It feels so much like a trap. The lights are down and the shadows feel like they’re actually reaching for you. There’s this dreadful, suffocating weight pressing out from the walls, like the house itself is holding a grudge. Your skin is crawling, and the air feels too thick to actually get into your lungs. It’s stale, as though it’s been sitting in a basement for a hundred years, and now the building has finally stopped pretending to be a home and turned into a giant cave with only dead ends so you will never have a way out and will end up as a rotting corpse in some forgotten corner.

The dark walls feel like they are crowding your shoulders. Those deep red carpets are laid out just a little too perfectly, too insistent on keeping you in the center of the floor. Walking down those corridors feels like being threaded through a needle.

And it’s not that the place is ever actually quiet, it’s just that every sound here is on a leash. There is the clink of glass coming from somewhere deep in the gut of the mansion. The dry, dusty thud of footsteps on rugs that are probably more worth than your life in the eyes of the mob boss. Voices that stay low and thick, never quite hitting the walls. It’s too disciplined. It’s a silence that’s been trained to keep its mouth shut.

He probably won’t notice you slinking out of his home. However, what he will definitely notice, is that you will never see him again, or answer his texts or calls. So that will be a problem.

The man owns a gun, and whatever else he can kill people with. So you can’t go home, is what you think as you descend the wide staircase. When you get out of here, you can’t flee to your apartment.

Because he knows where you live. He picked you up there. Dropped you off there. Walked you to your door like the perfect gentleman.

You almost laugh at the bitter irony.

The most dangerous man in the city knows your address. He played the perfect gentleman just to find out where and how you live.

Which means going home would be like walking back into a trap you’ve just barely escaped.

But you know just who is badass enough to help you out of this situation. Natasha.

Natasha lives across town. Natasha answers calls at ungodly hours. Natasha once helped you move apartments at two in the morning with nothing but her wry commentary and a borrowed truck.

You could stay with her. For a few days, weeks, maybe even longer. You know she won’t mind. She’s just that kind of friend.

You could figure things out from there.

Your hand tightens slightly around your phone as you reach the bottom of the stairs.

You’ll text her once you’re outside.

Not before.

Because paranoia is part of your bloodstream now, and who knows who might glance at your screen, who might casually mention later that they saw you messaging someone.

So you keep walking until the entrance hall opens before you like the lobby of a five-star hotel. It’s extensive, with vast floors and tall ceilings and capacious doors at the far end like the exit to another world, a world you want so desperately to be a part of again.

You wipe your clammy hands on your thighs and try to mentally prepare yourself for this last step.

You cross the obsidian floor toward the doors with what you hope resembles casual determination.

Not too fast. Fast looks guilty. Not too slow. Slow looks hesitant.

You aim for something in between—the walk of a woman with a mild headache and absolutely no catastrophic revelations fluttering around inside her skull.

God, everything about the place seems so much darker now. The darkness even slinks upward into the walls, which are paneled in matte-finished ebony that drinks the light before it can reach the corners. There is no glow, not the one you imagined when you first walked in here, hand in hand with a man you thought you could fall so deeply for and would be safe with. But everything now feels iterative and cold and to feel safe means to leave and never return.

The guards notice you immediately.

Two of them stand beside the colossal front doors, tall shapes in dark suits, shoulders squared in that particular way men stand when their job description includes the possibility of violence. They’ve always been polite to you before. Quietly respectful. The way staff are supposed to be with someone important to the man who owns the house. You only now know the direction this importance takes.

They both straighten slightly when you approach.

“Ma’am,” the left one says with a deep voice that gives nothing away.

You offer another careful smile, layering it with just enough exhaustion to make your earlier excuse believable.

“I’m heading out,” you say, keeping your tone breezy, like this is the most normal thing in the world to do in the middle of the night after spending hours in their boss’s bed. “I have a headache, and don’t want to interrupt Bucky while he’s working.”

Your voice nearly stumbles over the name.

Bucky.

The harmless version.

The one that belongs to the man who kissed you like you mattered. Not the one attached to James Buchanan Barnes.

The guard on the left side of the door glances at the other one. It’s subtle, but you see it. A quick trade of communication.

Then he looks back at you.

“Boss aware you’re leaving, ma’am?”

The way he uses the word boss makes bile rise up your throat. You are actually getting a headache.

You force yourself to keep smiling.

“Oh, he’s busy,” you say lightly, waving a hand as if this entire situation is mildly inconvenient but otherwise harmless. “I would feel bad for bothering him while he’s working. And I could use some fresh air and a little rest. So I thought I would just head home.”

Neither guard moves. The doors remain closed.

You swallow tightly, and it feels like there’s a stone coming down your throat along with it, which makes your limbs feel heavier.

“I will call him,” the second guard offers, already reaching toward the small device clipped at his belt.

“No,” you blurt too quickly.

Both men look at you again, and your pulse tumbles when you feel a subtle shift sliding into place, into the invisible perimeter around this house, the machinery of control that keeps things exactly where James Buchanan Barnes wants them.

Your throat feels dry. Your voice tries to find a hiding place inside the hallway of your throat. You pull yourself together as best you can. “That’s really not necessary,” you add, softer this time, trying to patch over the crack you just made in your own story. “It’s just a headache. I don’t want him to be distracted by that. You can just let him know I left once he is done.”

The first guard studies you more closely now. He doesn’t seem suspicious exactly, but he does seem cautious.

And suddenly the hallway behind you feels very long. Too long. Because if they call him, and he walks in here while you’re standing at the door trying to escape his mansion—

Your thoughts spiral into vile possibilities faster than you can control them.

What does a mob boss do to a girl like you when he realizes she has discovered his identity? Certainly no good things.

Your heart pounds so loudly, it’s a single roar all around your skull. You feel hot, so hot, you could burst into flames.

The second guard lifts the radio slightly, eyes on you. “Sir—”

“Baby?”

The voice comes from behind you and it sounds so soft. Confused.

Your insides startle into a panic so bright, you turn blind for a second.

Your entire body freezes up.

Baby.

A freezing shiver breaks loose at the base of your skull and slides all the way down to your heels.

Baby.

The word traces the line of your back, making every hair stand up.

Baby.

You know you have to react in other ways than fear to your so-called boyfriend, so you turn around slowly, trying to unpin your strained expression.

He’s standing halfway across the hall.

Except, now he looks like a stranger.

While he was gone and taking that business phone call, he had changed into one of his perfectly tailored suits. The charcoal wool is stiff and sits snugly, and it would have ignited a heated flutter in your lower belly just an hour earlier, but now it just makes him look malevolent. He looks terrifying in his elegance. So symmetrical, your lungs are wheezing out of sheer fright.

The sweat on your skin, once warm from him, has now turned into a layer of ice. You look at him and think that no, this man doesn’t love you. All you have been to him is a soft room he stepped into to wash off the smell of whatever he does in that suit.

The business he talked about isn’t spreadsheets and meetings. It’s the way the two guards behind you have gone absolutely still, like dogs waiting for a whistle.

He looks dangerous. You have never associated Bucky with direct danger, only with protecting you from danger. But this is not a boyfriend’s posture, it’s a king’s. Even that softly confused frown he is giving you doesn’t make him seem less threatening. It’s just the look of a man who owns everything he sees and knows what to do with it.

Bucky.

Except now your brain whispers the other name.

James.

Every inch of that expensive tailoring screams that he could have you erased before his morning coffee, and he wouldn’t even get a crease in his trousers.

While you were falling in love, he was just managing a distraction.

Your heart is breaking all over again.

“What are you doing down here?” His voice sounds the same as always, and yet it doesn’t.

The guards immediately straighten although he is talking to you, though you wish he wouldn’t.

“Sir,” one of them starts, but Bucky lifts a hand slightly without even looking at them, silencing whatever explanation they were about to offer.

His eyes are on you. Only you. Concern tightens his face almost immediately.

There is a cold needle threading through your nerves. You feel like a deer that has been eating out of a hunter’s hand, only just now noticing the rifle leaning against the tree.

“I—” Your voice nearly betrays you, cracking halfway through the first syllable. Act. You have to act. You drag in a breath and force your shoulders to loosen, shoving your face into something resembling mild embarrassment rather than existential terror. “I wasn’t feeling well,” you lie, carefully smoothing your tone. “I didn’t want to interrupt you. It seemed pretty important.” You look toward the door, turning your body slightly with it in a gesture of longing. “So I planned on just heading home.”

His brows only pull further together, his expression turning deeper, and it doesn’t make this better at all. “You’re the only important thing, sweetheart. You know that.” His voice is low, but how does he manage to make it sound this gentle? Even soft.

Oh god, he’s coming closer. Of course, he’s coming closer, he’s your boyfriend, pretending to be your boyfriend, pretending to be worried, because his girl allegedly has a headache and wants to leave when he promised earlier to continue pleasing her in bed and asked her to stay and lock the door behind him because he doesn’t expect her to leave in the middle of the night.

But that doesn’t make it any easier for you to handle, doesn’t make your body react less in the horrifying way that this scary man is moving toward you, and he doesn’t know you know what kind of scary he is.

You feel your body fight against itself. You want to swirl around, run, bolt, fly through the door outside into the night, never to be seen again. Or at least not by him and his people. But you can’t. You have to stay, you have to remain planted to the floor. Even taking one step back would be a fatal mistake.

And suddenly he’s right there with all his tallness and built, and he still looks warm, but so much more intimidating.

You feel your insides shrink into themselves, your heart slipping into a corner somewhere deep.

The sheer scale of him in that suit makes your stomach drop. He is not a man, he is an entire system of brutality hidden behind a charming smile and gold cufflinks.

You shiver at the fact that your boyfriend could end a life with a nod of his head, and then come home and press his face into your neck as if his hands were clean.

“You’re not feeling well?” His voice drops into a frequency that is meant to be gentle and soothing, but for you, it just sounds like the rumble of an engine. The furrow in his brow grows shadows on his forehead. His eyes shift between yours so fast and piercing, with such a concentrated focus, scanning for the source of your pain as if he could kill it for you.

His hand comes up instinctively, the same way it always does when he’s worried about you, or when he’s not. It’s just normal for him to touch you. But watching his hand move toward you this time makes your back stiffen and a ring of alarm sounds out in your skull, shrill and poignant.

His fingers brush your cheek.

Your skin crawls of its own accord, and you flinch. You force your reaction to be small, but you can’t suppress it entirely. Your brain blanks, and your heart strikes high.

His hand stills, and so does your heart as it feels like.

Bucky notices everything. You guess it comes in handy with being the most wanted crime boss in the city.

His eyes sharpen slightly, and his concern turns more piercing. He looks at his hand still hovering awkwardly, then at you. His eyes are distraught, hinting at something deeper that just broke in two. And he looks so deeply puzzled.

“Hey,” he lets out, and it sounds a little raspy. You scramble.

“I’m sorry,” you breathe quickly, forcing a small laugh that sounds thin even to your own ears. “I’m just a little dizzy, I think.”

He studies you for a long moment.

The guards are silent now and you feel them watching from behind your back.

The house feels too quiet, too attentive, too alert.

James’ hand lowers slowly, though his gaze doesn’t leave your face.

“You’re pale,” he acknowledges, his voice grainy. He sounds like he is holding his breath.

You shrug weakly. “Yeah, well. Not my best look.”

He’s not smiling, and you start sweating. How did you never notice just how scary this man looks.

He’s thinking. You can see it. Pieces moving behind that stormy gaze. Your heart hammers harder.

Please don’t see it.

Please don’t see that you know.

He exhales slowly, then reaches for your hand, and he doesn’t do it possessively, nor roughly, just tenderly closing his fingers around yours.

“Come with me,” he says quietly, and it could sound like a plea if he weren’t the man that he is.

Your skin is a furnace. You might explode. You force a shaky breath, praying he doesn’t hear the way your heart is trying to kick its way out of your ribs.

“Bucky, I really just—”

“I know,” he cuts in softly, but there is something thick and hunted in the way he talks. “Just a minute.”

He looms over you with his whole presence and those intensely fevered eyes and he sucks the oxygen clean out of your lungs.

He nods toward the hallway behind him.

“My office is right there. We’ll sit down for a second, make sure you’re okay. And if you think I’d let you go home alone with a headache you can think again, doll.”

Doll.

God, you really have been stupid. Doll.

This is not a sweet endearment. This is literal. You are a thing made of porcelain that he is scared of dropping—or since a man like him isn’t scared of anything—you’re a thing he realized he can break.

Your pulse spikes.

Office.

Private.

Closed door.

Every alarm bell in your body begins ringing at once.

In his office, the rules of the outside world—the rules where you are safe—don’t apply. It’s where the blood gets mopped up.

But the guards are watching. The exit is behind them.

They aren’t moving a muscle and stand there like gargoyles, guarding your only hope for escape.

And Bucky—James—is standing right in front of you, his thumb brushing lightly across your knuckles.

“You’re shaking,” he murmurs, concern weaving through his quiet tone.

Well, you’re shaking because you can feel the callouses on his hands, the strength in his grip that suggests he could snap your wrist without his expression changing. He knows you are vibrating with nerves, but he has misdiagnosed the fever.

You force yourself to breathe. To smile. To pretend. Just like he has all these weeks. Just like he does now.

“Just the headache,” you whisper, and it’s tasting like bile.

He studies you for another long second, and for a moment you think he might see the truth. You think the mask is going to be ripped away right here in the hallway.

Then he squeezes your hand gently. “Come on, sweetheart.”

He turns you away from the door that would bring you to safety, moving his hand to the small of your back, and it is the gentlest thing in the world. But that somehow makes it so harrowing, because there is nothing rough in the gesture, nothing that could be called force by anyone watching, nothing but warmth and assurance, leading you into the heart of his house with the grace of a protector, and yet your whole body reads it like a sentence being handed down.

You are now thoroughly trapped, you realize while swallowing down the rising tide of bile. It feels like a master painter adding the final, darkening stroke to a portrait you can no longer step out of.

But there is nothing you can do. You let him steer you away from the door because what else are you supposed to do? Rip away, run, scream? That seems impossible in a house that breathes his name through every vent and doorway. A house where even the air seems employed by him.

The mansion appears to lengthen as you walk through it, as if corridors are being pulled like taffy just to spite you, just to show you how laughably far the front door already is, how absurd it was to think you could simply walk out with a polite excuse and a swallowed scream in your throat, hoping nobody heard it rattling behind your teeth, pretending you were still a girl who had a choice in where she slept tonight.

You try to pay attention. You try to mark the route the way people do in movies when they’re kidnapped or hunted or trying not to fall off the edge of the earth—left at the long console with the black granite top, right at the staggering painting in the gilded frame, straight past the alcove with the antique lamp and the white flowers that smell expensive and funereal at once.

But panic is a vandal and it is paralyzing and it comes in and smashes every useful thought with a chair.

Your heart is beating too hard, your blood too loud, your mind too busy manufacturing horrors to do something practical like remember turns. Foyer, hall, archway, staircase, another hall. No—was it staircase first? Was the office past the library, or past that room with the dark green walls?

Oh god, this is horrible. You're really starting to feel lost and this might be a catastrophic blow to your faith.

You try to pin each detail to the inside of your skull, but they slide off slick as fish, and every second spent trying to memorize the geography of this place only makes you more conscious of the fact that you are being walked farther and farther from the only exit you knew.

Why would he take you this far? The question lets sweat collect at the base of your neck. Why not the room just off the main hall? Why not one of the closer offices? Why not let you leave if you are only dizzy, only pale, only under the weather the way you claimed?

Does he suspect something? Has he already seen it, the wrongness in your face, the recoil you were too slow to hide, the way your voice came out laced too tight? And worse than that, more awful than suspicion because it drips with intention—was there always going to be a moment like this? Had he always been walking you here in one way or another, from the first date, from the first gift, from the first time he looked at you as if you were worth the chase?

Maybe this is what men like him do. Maybe he had a plan long before you ever had a clue. Maybe there has never been a single unarranged second between you, and you were just too lovesick and dazzled to notice the rails under your feet.

His hand stays at your back the entire time, broad and warm, but it makes you want to shove him away from you. When you hesitate, the pressure spikes just enough to remind you which way the door isn't. He is leading you forward and it would have felt gentle, but it doesn’t. No longer.

His thumb-strokes across your back don’t feel comforting at all and more like he is smoothing out a wrinkle in his own sleeve or the way he might polish a piece of silver he has decided to keep.

You suppress a chilling shiver he surely would have felt.

When you glance at him, because some abhorrent part of you still does, still wants to; you find concern in his face and it nearly brings you to the floor. You can’t glimpse any coldness, no strategic thinking whatsoever. At least not the kind you expected to see. His eyes aren’t narrowed and sharpened with discovery, there is no clipped impatience, no telltale crack in the mask.

He looks at you the way he has always looked at you when something seemed off, with his little frown and that determination, as if your problems are things he would like to drag outside and beat to death with his bare hands.

His gaze moves over your face with the same intimate concentration that once made your stomach warm for all the right reasons. It does not help. It makes everything worse.

Because if this is performance, then he is monstrous at it. If this is an act, he’s lived in the skin of it for a lifetime.

A lie shouldn’t feel this solid, shouldn’t have a thumb that knows exactly where your tension hides.

If he is acting, then he deserves a stage and an audience and perhaps a crown.

You can barely stand it, this collision between what you know and what he appears to be. A man can’t look at you like that and still be the most feared name in the city. Except apparently he can. Apparently, men can be two things at once. Apparently, the universe is vulgar enough to make both true.

You pass a maid coming the other way—a small, neat woman in a crisp uniform. She is carrying folded lines in her arms, and Bucky acknowledges her with nothing more than a curt nod, and she responds with a warm little smile aimed at you and the faintest dip of her head—something halfway between greeting and curtsey, so practiced it is almost invisible, but not invisible enough, not to you, not now.

It makes your breath hitch, how he doesn’t swell with importance, or doesn’t put on a show of his control.

He’s so comfortable in his power that he doesn't even need to show it off; he just steers you onward, knowing nobody will do a single thing to stop him.

And your stomach lurches so suddenly it feels as if your bones have missed a step. Because there it is. There, in one small exchange, is the whole persona of him. He is not loud or cartoony with his power, he just has it. It’s real. It doesn’t need to announce itself because everyone in its radius already knows where to bend.

The maid’s smile is kind, almost affectionate, and that somehow shames you more, because it suggests this has been obvious to everyone but you.

They all know what he is. The guards know. The staff knows. The men at the gate, the drivers, the strangers in tailored suits who always nod to him with instant stillness in their spines—they all know.

And you, meanwhile, had been floating around this house in your pretty little ignorance, accepting tea on silver trays, accepting jewelry in velvet boxes, accepting his mouth and his hands and his delicious attention as if you had simply stumbled into the arms of an intense, rich man with old-fashioned manners and a dangerous face completely by accident.

You would like to face palm yourself, but this is a bad moment.

Natasha will definitely do it for you once you get out of here and manage to escape to her apartment.

You had looked at the signs and called them charm. You had looked at vigilance and called it romance. You had looked at fear arranged into etiquette and thought that wow, he really runs this company proficiently.

The embarrassment of it blooms hot under your skin, nearly as painful as the fear. You have been blind. Worse—willingly blind. Blind not by accident but by appetite, by wanting. Love, or whatever this early ferocious thing is, has wrapped a hand-woven scarf around your eyes and led you smiling into a cathedral built from warning signs and decorated with red flags.

And the humiliating part, the part that makes you feel like you could peel yourself out of your own skin from sheer mortification, is that you had even congratulated yourself for being so unbothered by his world.

Look at you, cool girl extraordinaire, dating the beautiful, mysterious executive in his deluxe mansion, pretending not to notice the guards and the driver and the way everyone waited half a beat too long for his approval before moving.

You had thought you were being mature. Sophisticated. Unruffled. Meanwhile, you were essentially a decorative houseplant with a pulse, sitting in the sun of his attention and calling it insight. It would almost be funny if it weren’t your life currently doing a slow and terrible cartwheel off a cliff.

How could you have ever believed that a guy like him would be interested in that naive, silly girl that you are.

Honestly, if you survive this ordeal, you will end up in some corner of your small, meager apartment, bawling your eyes out, and keep living that unlucky life of yours.

He glances at you again as you walk on that burgundy red carpet deeper into the hole that is another hallway, and his hand presses a little more firmly between your shoulder blades. It’s protective rather than possessive to anyone looking in from the outside, but the gesture sends another flare of panic through you anyway.

You wonder if he can feel the fear on you, if it comes off your skin. You wonder if men like him are trained by experience to smell a lie the way dogs smell storms. You wonder whether he is leading you to comfort or containment. Every room you pass seems too opulent to be real with those chandeliers like frozen explosions, rugs plush enough to kill the sound of literally anything, the dark wood twinkling creepily under low gold light, paintings in heavy frames, looming over everything, looking down their painted noses at anyone not born into the frame.

The place no longer looks luxurious so much as fortified. You see the thickness of doors now. The depth of corridors. The strategic sightlines. The subtle placement of people. This house is not merely beautiful. It is defensible. It is a kingdom in disguise.

And you had been letting yourself be loved in it. You stupid girl had let him come way, way too close to you.

But it’s what makes every step hurt more than it should. Because despite everything, despite the gun and the initials and the name on the tags and the avalanche of terror crushing common sense into powder, there is still some small perfidious corner of you that keeps stumbling over the memory of how gentle he was, how attentive, how he watched your face as if your feelings were weather and he meant to learn every season.

You hate that part of yourself right now, and that it even exists in the first place after everything you found out about the man and what knowing him entails.

You want cleaner fear, simpler fear, fear without ache in it. But your fear is contaminated by affection. By memory. By the wrenching possibility that whatever else he is, whatever blood has dried invisibly on his hands, the softness he’s shown you may have been real. And if that is real, then the rest is not easier to understand. It is harder. Infinitely harder. It means the monster did not wear a mask. It means the monster kissed your forehead and tucked blankets around your legs and remembered how you take your coffee. But your brain can’t follow all of that.

Another turn. Another corridor. Another room you cannot catalogue fast enough.

You try again to memorize the path, because panic may be a vandal but desperation is stubborn.

The wall here is paneled more deeply. There is a bronze wolf on a pedestal. A narrow window at the end of the hall. A runner rug patterned in deep red, almost the color of old cherries, almost the color of dried blood if your mind is in the mood to be cruel, which it surely is.

Your thoughts keep darting ahead of you and slam themselves against every worst-case future they can find. If he knows you know, what does that mean? If he does not know you know, what then? Which is safer? Is there a safer version of this at all?

You imagine phones taken gently from your hand. Doors locked with apologetic clicks. Promises made in that low warm voice while your life narrows to the width of his will.

The terrible thing is that none of your imaginings need to be loud to be horrifying. A man like him does not need spectacles. He has infrastructure.

By the time he slows in front of a set of double doors farther inside the mansion than you have ever been allowed, or invited, to go; your nerves are so frayed they feel almost luminous, every sound oppressive, every movement enlarged.

He looks down at you, his face still threaded with worry, and sweeps his hand from your back to your elbow in a gesture so careful it would be beautiful in any other universe. In this one it only makes your chest tighten until breathing feels like work. He leans slightly closer, and his voice drops, intimate as a hand at your throat, though there is nothing harsh in it.

“What’re you thinking about, baby,” he asks quietly, searching your face.

Well, you’re thinking about the front door.

It’s where you left your mind.

Or maybe it was lost in his room already. Maybe it stayed with the gun on his carpet.

And the other, the more rational part of your mind, the one that told you this couldn’t have been true anyway, because you are you and he is him, lingers in every news story you ever half listened to.

You are inside the tormenting, glittering realization that you have not just fallen for a dangerous man, but for the dangerous man, and that all the softness you took as sanctuary may have only been the most exquisite blindfold ever tied.

“Nothing, Bucky,” you reply weakly, trying to ease, but your voice is shaking just that tiny bit, and judging by the uncomfortable twist of his mouth, he caught it.

You’re too lost in your stupidity that you’re hardly present when he opens his wooden office door and ushers you inside, again with the most tender movements.

The office is warmer than the hall, quieter too, and it makes goosebumps rise on your arms and the hairs stand tall at the back of your neck because this room is built to keep any sound inside and secrets fat and sleeping in the walls. Everywhere you look there is dark wood and low amber light and books lined up in stern, handsome rows as if knowledge itself has been drafted into his service.

You feel the world shrink from cathedral to chamber, from public performance to something confined, more dangerous, more indiscreet, because now there are no guards, no maids, no witnesses to help keep either of you inside your assigned role.

There is only him, only you, only that soft snick of the door as he shuts it behind him; and that small, tidy sound feels like it’s happening inside your own chest. You watch his hand leave the brass knob, and the logic in your head just gives up. There’s only a hysterical, messy scramble of thoughts, all of them howling at once and all of them useless.

He turns back to you immediately, all his attention gathering around you with that familiar chilling completeness, and before you can decide whether to stand very still or bolt like a startled animal with nowhere sensible to run, he is guiding you toward the couch near the fireplace with one hand steady at your waist and the other brushing over your arm, then your back again. He’s never forcing or gripping hard, but he’s just not letting go of you and it makes you want to jump against the wall in hopes it’ll crack and you’ll land on the other side because his touch is making you more and more nervous.

He treats you as if he thinks you might faint at any second.

It is infuriating, that gentleness. It feels like a kind of torture that’s impossible to fight because your skin has a longer memory than your head. Your body still knows him first as safety. It still recognizes the heat of his palm and the strength of him, the way he moves as though you’re the center of the room.

And now every instinct is splitting at the seams. All you want to do is run, you want him away from you, you want to be far gone from all of this, you want to scream and scream some more, but the other half of you is remembering how carefully he tucked a blanket over your legs last week when you fell asleep during a movie or the way he has checked you for bruises after literally making love to you with that distressed frown upon his face, scared he’s been too rough with you.

The collision makes you dizzy enough that, absurdly, he may not be wrong. You might actually faint. Just from the sheer vertigo of finding out that the man who kissed you so devotedly has a name the whole city says with a tremble in their voices.

“Sit down for me,” he coaxes, and his voice is low, soft, carrying none of the steel you used to hear when he dealt with his men, and that contrast nearly makes your skin crawl.

You lower yourself onto the couch because your knees are not reliable enough to argue with him. The room seems to have acquired a faint sway, because the blood in your veins feels thin and feverish, and he stays right there, close enough that his thigh nearly brushes yours before he drops into a crouch in front of you.

The sight of this dangerous man folding all that height and breadth down to your level, gaze lifted to your face with plain concern would have melted you an hour ago.

But all it does now is frighten you some more. It feels too intimate, too earnest, too much like care, and care from a man like him is no simple thing. It is not a ribbon. It is a chain in softer clothing.

You swallow hard and that alone almost makes you flinch.

His eyes move over you with increasing worry, taking inventory in little silent increments. Your face is pale, you feel the damp shine of stress at your temples, you can’t keep your fingers still in your lap, and you can’t quite tame the uneven hitch in your breath.

He reaches up and lays the back of his hand against your forehead, then your cheek, his brows knitting tighter, and his mouth presses into a serious line. “You’re sweating,” he murmurs, more to himself than to you, as if he would like to issue orders to your body until it starts behaving properly.

His thumb grazes the curve of your jaw, feather-light, and you have to stop yourself from jerking away too sharply. You have to refrain yourself from slapping his hand away.

He notices even the version of restraint. You guessed, he does. A man like him has to. A man like him would. But it does worsen your situation.

A chill spreads along the base of your neck.

His eyes sharpen, not with suspicion exactly, but with apprehension deepening into something more searching, more troubled. “Talk to me, baby,” he pleads, softer still. “Did something happen? Did I do something?”

You stare at him.

For a moment the question does not make sense, your mind too busy running in circles with sirens in its hair, but you notice the shadow in his face, the hunch, the way his gaze jumps to your mouth, your throat, your posture curled too tight, and it seems bizarre because he honestly looks as though he might dread he pushed you too far, touched you too much, misread your body, took a liberty you weren’t ready for.

The absurdity of that nearly splits your head open because earlier when he—god, when he had his criminal tongue on your pussy—he acted so attentive, he seemed genuinely careful and devastatingly patient, and yet now, knowing what you know, even that lightness now hardens into a new breed of atrocity.

Because if this is him being careful, if this is him holding himself in check, then what does rough look like in a man built the way he is, in a man whose name can make grown men go quiet? What shape does cruelty take when it belongs to someone with this much power and this little need to raise his voice?

“No,” you answer too fast, the word skidding out of you. “No, you didn’t— nothing like that.”

Well, he did do something. A lot, really. Things that would put him in a cell never to be let out.

But he didn’t do anything to you yet. Yet. He might, if you don’t get your shit together.

His shoulders loosen by a fraction, but not enough. Not nearly enough. He still looks wound up. He still looks a little perturbed.

“Are you sure?” he asks, and there is something sincere in his voice, it is disorienting. “Because, honey, you can tell me if I was too much. If I missed something. If I—” He stops, swallows, and the hand at your cheek gentles further, as if he is trying to make himself seem safer. Funny. “I need to know. Need to know if there was ever a moment when you didn’t feel good.”

Something is dipping in the air around you, and everything feels distorted. Your head is hazy and a complete maze, because how is he even doing it this well?

You pull back then, small at first, because having his hands on you for longer will surely drive you insane. You don’t shove him off, or smack his hand away, you simply move out of his palms enough to break the line of his touch, but even that has him looking at you more closely.

You gather your hands together in your lap so he won’t see them tremble and shake your head with a smile that feels stapled on, brittle and thin, and one wrong breath away from snapping in half. “I’m okay,” you say, aiming for sheepish, for embarrassed, for normal. “I just need some sleep, I think. That’s all. It’s probably stupid. I’m probably just a little exhausted and overreacting.”

He doesn’t buy it.

You can tell immediately, and you hate that you can tell, but you notice how his whole face changes in that subtle way his face does when he has decided something is amiss and he is not going to stop until he gets to the bottom of it.

He shifts closer, forearms braced loosely on his thighs, his attention absolute. “Then sleep here,” he deadpans. As if this is simply the answer to all the problems in the world. “You don’t need to go anywhere tonight. 'Specially when you’re not feeling well.”

Your stomach contracts into a hard, cold knot, and it feels like there’s a displacement in your chest. It’s the sensation of a staircase ending one step too soon and you didn’t notice so now you’re hitting air instead of floor with a heart-shaking jolt. It is jarring. It is petrifying, because it means you’re not getting out of here that easily. You might not be getting out of here at all if he continues to look at you like that.

Sleep here.

Stay here.

In his house. In his reach. In the center of the web.

Your pulse stutters so hard it hurts.

“I should go home,” you try, and even to your own ears it sounds small, unconvincing, more instinct than argument.

His frown deepens, utterly baffled by your insistence in the face of what he clearly sees as a solvable problem. “Why?” he asks quietly, and his voice sound a tad hoarse. “If you feel bad, why would I let you leave?”

Your lungs can’t seem to catch any air although it’s all around you.

Why would I let you

He didn’t say why would you leave, no he said why would I let you.

Good god, you really have been a stupid girl. The signs were all in front of you, weren’t they? They were literally speaking to you.

He’s talking in a tender tone, making his voice all soft and gentle, even soothing and so concerned, but that’s just the outside. You never paid attention to what lay underneath, hidden deep inside, because the outside was pretty and alluring enough. And maybe you are imagining it now, the gravelly implications in his tone, maybe your body’s just trying to see and hear things that aren’t there, but perhaps it truly has been there all the time and you were too wrapped in him to notice it.

You stand up quickly.

And you shouldn’t have done that because he will think what the hell you’re doing now, but your body decided and now your body is doing it.

The room sways, your vision going soft at the edges for one humiliating second, and his hands are on you—one at your elbow, one at your waist, and there is no shaking them off.

You flinch despite yourself and he stills as if you have struck him. You know he doesn’t understand your reactions, how could he.

“Hey,” he coos, his voice lowering even further, and there is definitely something thick in his voice. “Easy.”

“I’m fine,” you insist, too breathless, too papery, trying to peel his hands off you without making it look like peeling, which is impossible, because every move feels too fast or too urgent, every instinct either too frightened or too telling. “Really, Bucky, I’m just tired. I’m probably being ridiculous.”

His gaze searches yours with such intensity it feels almost physical. “You’re trying to get away from me.”

The words are quiet, and although there is no anger in them, no threat at all, it has your mouth go dry.

“No,” you answer, and it is not a good lie. “No, Bucky. Of course not. My head’s just really hurting.”

Something in him clicks into a higher gear—not a lack of trust or anything like that, but a kind of piercing, automated focus. Something in his eyes snaps into high definition. All that soft, vague concern is gone, replaced by an attention so bright and infiltrating it feels like being pinned to a board under a microscope.

Carefully, he makes you sit back down on the couch and lands right beside you. You feel the heat of him pressing into your side, though he does give you a bit of space.

His hand comes to your upper arm, stroking once, and you hate your own pulse for noticing how familiar it feels despite it having lost its appeal. “Look at me,” he presses, and it almost sounds like an order. His voice seems serious enough to make you shiver in fear.

You look at him because you have to and refusing would be louder than screaming.

His eyes are so damn blue in this weirdly dim light, clear and intent and lined with such deep worry. He’s definitely denser, his concern losing its fluff, but not its patience. There still is no trace of coldness, no roughness, nothing that is overly intimidating despite the man he is.

Just that same irksome softness, that same look like your distress is something he wants to fix with both hands, with all of himself if necessary.

It rattles you more than if he had come in hard and sharp and monstrous. A monster would be easier. A monster would let your fear stand up straight. But this man looking at you like your pain pains him is a labyrinth with no clean exits.

And it feels foreboding. It has you more on edge. It’s the way the woods go quiet right before something heavy steps out of the brush; a sudden, absolute alignment of intent.

Maybe he knows you know and now he’s waiting for the right moment to pounce. You do your best to keep your fright behind your eyes.

“You can sleep here tonight,” he offers again, gentler now, and it seems as though he believes repetition might soothe you into agreement. “I’ll stay with you. Or I won’t, if you want space. I’ll get you water, food, whatever you need. But I’m not sending you home like this.”

Not sending.

Again that wordless, soft-toned authority.

Again that sense that his care and his control are fused so tightly together they share a bloodstream.

You are running out of room inside your own face. Running out of expressions that can pass for normal. Running out of ways to keep the panic from drawing its blade.

So you do the only thing you can think of, the stupidest thing, the most desperate thing—you lean in and kiss him.

It’s short and small and only meant to reassure, to smooth over, to redirect. Your lips meet his and every cell in your body revolts.

And it’s not at all because he kisses badly, god no. Even startled, even worried, he receives you with immediate tenderness, one hand lifting to cradle your jaw, his mouth warm and careful and heartbreakingly familiar but also so, so foreign, a cold shiver seizes your back.

It is what makes nausea roll through you so suddenly you nearly choke on it. Because this is James Buchanan Barnes.

This is the name on the dog tags, the name on the news, the name people lower their voices around as if it might hear them and turn its head.

This is the most feared man in the city and his mouth is still the same mouth that kissed the corner of your smile with one of his own.

Your stomach turns so sharply you have to concentrate not to pull away in disgust too soon, not to betray yourself with the wrong kind of urgency.

You kiss him once, twice, tasting dread under the memory of want, and every instinct in you screams that you are pressing your lips to a loaded weapon and pretending it is a rose.

When you ease back, you make yourself smile.

It feels gargantuan, the effort of it.

“I’m okay,” you whisper, like that explains anything, like that proves you are only tired and not terrified, only overwhelmed and not trying to survive. “I promise. I can go home like this.”

His thumb brushes under your eye so lightly, and you run your tongue over your lip, trying to get that uncomfortable tingling to go away.

But he still looks unconvinced.

More than unconvinced, actually. Plagued. As if the kiss reassured him of your affection but not your state, and now that mismatch is bothering him in ways he can’t make sense of.

His gaze lingers on your face, then your mouth, then your hands clenched too tightly in your lap. He takes one of them and turns it gently palm-up, his fingers closing around yours. You can feel how much bigger his hand is. You can feel how easily it encloses.

And all at once the room feels narrow as a throat, the walls leaning in, the lamplight too gold, the air too warm, and you are sitting inches from a man who could ruin your life before breakfast and is looking at you like the only thing he wants in this world is to make you feel safe.

“What’s going on, doll?” His voice could even be pleading, just a little bit. It’s definitely croaky. “I— I get the feeling—”

“I told you, Bucky. It’s just a headache.” He sighs to that, but all you can think about is how completely his hand closes over the bones of your own. How easy it would be for those fingers to tighten from comfort into command, from tenderness into something unarguable.

His other palm is at your arm, and your body does this awful arithmetic without your permission, subtracting your strength from his and arriving, every single time, at the same answer—none.

There is none. Not enough. Not nearly enough.

You notice things you never let yourself notice before because before they were part of romance, of safety, of the warm relief of being cared for by someone larger and more grounded than you.

Now those same details come back rearranged into something atrocious. The width of his shoulders. The thickness of his thighs where they bracket the edge of the couch. The controlled way he moves, never wasted, never sloppy, suggesting he has long ago become intimate with force and no longer needs to flaunt it.

Even the gentleness feels frightening because it is so deliberate. You can feel, in every cautious touch, that he is handling you lightly not because he must, but because he chooses to. And choice is a nightmarish thing when done by a man like him. Choice means there are other versions of him. Choice means there are rooms in him you have never seen. Choice means the tenderness is not the whole house, only one lit window.

You sit very still because being still feels safer than moving, and panic has made your limbs feel both too heavy and too ready to misfire. While he studies your face with that immensely worried crease between his brows, your thoughts keep slipping sideways into grotesque little visions of what would happen if he decided to stop being soft.

Not even dramatic visions. That would almost be easier. Nothing so loud as being thrown or shouted at. Your fear is smarter than that now. It imagines quieter things. A wrist caught before you can pull away. A door closed with no visible hurry. Your name said in that low voice while every route out of the room gently, politely disappears.

You hate yourself for thinking it, hate the way your pulse kicks harder with each new image, hate most of all that his touch remains careful through all of it, remains incessantly kind, so that your fear begins to feel almost counterfeit in the face of what he is actually doing, and then the next thought corrects you suddenly—no, not counterfeit. Instinct. Instinct finally dragging itself awake after weeks of sleeping with its face turned to his chest.

He must notice something fresh pass through you, some new tremor or tightening, because his jaw flexes and then he reaches into his pocket for his phone.

He is glancing at the screen and some shutter drops behind his eyes. It doesn’t slam, it just falls shut, as simple as that. Just sliding into place as neatly as a blade returning to its sheath.

He lifts the phone, says a name you don’t catch because your ears are too loud with your heartbeat, and when the person on the other end answers, his voice changes so completely that a chill runs over your skin.

“Bring cold towels to my office. And painkillers. Water too.” That is all.

Simple words. Ordinary words.

But the voice that carries them is stripped clean of softness, and that is what makes your blood curdle. There is no gentle edge worn smooth for your benefit. It is a voice pared down to function, to expectation, to command. Not loud, not theatrical, not cruel in any obvious way, it is just cold the way a simple black stone is cold. Cold the way a locked gate is cold.

There is no room in it for hesitation, no room in it for mishearing, no suggestion that obedience is a favor rather than the natural order of things. Whoever is on the other end responds immediately, and he ends the call without another word, already moving to set the phone aside, already turning back toward you, and your whole body has gone thin with dread because all you can think, stupidly, helplessly, is this is how he speaks when he is not pretending to be gentle.

And if this is his ordinary command voice, then what would he sound like if he knew? If he looked at you and saw recognition staring back, saw the name James Buchanan Barnes fully formed in your eyes, saw that you had found the gun and the initials and the tags and had welded them all together into the truth? Would his voice sharpen? Flatten further?

Would he say your name with that same smooth authority and turn it into a thing that could pin you in place?

The thought is a beaded sweat of ice trailing down the ladder of your back.

You try not to react. You fail a little. He sees the shiver, he sees, because he is James Buchanan Barnes for goodness sake, and immediately his focus softens again as he leans a fraction closer, anguish returning to his face as if the colder version of him never existed at all.

The door catches your eye over his shoulder.

It is simply there. Closed, but not locked, at least not that you can see. Dark wood, brass handle, a square of possibility in a room rapidly losing oxygen.

And once you look at it, you cannot stop.

Your gaze keeps darting back like something hooked. You begin to map the distance with desperate measurements.

If you stood up now—no, not stood, launched—if you shoved him hard enough to buy yourself one puzzled second, maybe two, could you make it? Out the office, into the hall, left or right—God, which one had you come from?—and then what? Down one corridor, past another, through that impassable warren of pragmatic but pristine floors and expensive silence and armed loyalty, praying that your body would remember what your mind failed to memorize?

You picture it anyway. You can’t help it. You picture yourself bolting, slipping on gleaming floors, turning wrong and wrong again, heart exploding in your throat while the mansion multiplies around you like a bad dream, each hallway birthing three more, each staircase leading not to freedom but to another floor full of his money and his people and his reach.

Still, the image won’t leave you. It grows instead, takes on velocity. You imagine the first breath of motion, the clean scary choice of it. The couch under you unweighting. The door handle cold in your palm. The sudden crash of everything becoming honest.

You don’t have a lot of choices here. So maybe fate would take pity on you. Maybe panic would become a compass. Maybe your body would remember a route your mind cannot hold. Maybe the front hall would be merciful and simply appear in front of you, all that dark wood and those massive doors and the guards too startled to stop you before you ripped yourself out into the night. It is preposterous. It is probably impossible. It becomes, nevertheless, the brightest thought in the room. Bright enough to burn.

You are too poised on the edge of movement now, too taut, every nerve drawn tight as wire.

“Baby,” Bucky starts, a little alarmed, and he shifts closer again, one hand lifting instinctively, probably to touch your face, your shoulder, your wrist, some place he thinks he can soothe.

But the sight of that hand coming toward you almost does it. Almost tips you over from imagining escape into choosing it. You can feel your muscles gathering without permission, your body preparing itself in secret, a rabbit under the hawk’s shadow. Run, run, run. For one crazed second you are already halfway gone in your mind—up off the couch, around the table, through the door, don’t think, just move, just run, run, run—

And then his fingers brush your arm, so lightly, so soft, but it breaks something inside you because you want his sweet touch, you want him to hold you, to soothe you, to love you, but you don’t want it to be James Buchanan Barnes, you want it to be Bucky, but he’s no longer Bucky, he won’t ever be anymore, and so you simply react.

You jerk, shoving his hand away before you can stop yourself, not enough to really hurt, but enough that the gesture hangs in the air between you like a shattered glass note.

Your breath is now gone entirely.

There are a few beats where simply nothing happens.

Then his hand drops back.

You stare at him, your own hand hovering stupidly in midair as if all you have to do is snip your finger to turn back the time.

And Bucky—James—just looks at you. For a small moment, he simply looks startled, like a deer in the headlights of your rejection. He looks so tremendously confused, his face totally unglued, but then his eyes shift gears, shift into alarm, shift into a concern so much deeper than before. It seems as if your recoil has unhinged him. As if it has frightened him for an entirely different reason than the one clawing its way through your chest. As if it has confirmed something he’s only lived in a nightmare before.

His features warp into something resembling desperation, his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide and asking, and it is nauseating to watch—the way he’s already cobbling together a version of reality where he isn’t the monster you’re trying to run from.

He is misinterpreting your panic and it makes you sick.

He isn't thinking She knows what I am. His mind is sprinting in the exact opposite direction to protect itself.

He thinks the headache is actually a migraine that has you reacting strangely, or it’s a panic attack, or some hidden trauma he didn’t know about, and he is already frantically building a scenario where he gets to fix it. His mouth stays slightly open, his breath hitching as if he’s about to choke on his own breath. He looks around the empty office with this desperate, wild squint, his eyes darting to the corners of the room as if he expects to find a physical monster standing there—something he can actually put a bullet in to make you stop shaking.

“Alright,” he lets out, and his voice is completely broken, a rough, dry scrape that sounds like it is tearing his throat.

He doesn’t lunge for you or do something big. Instead, he actually hitches his weight backward, trying to make himself smaller, which is harrowing because he is still twice your size and wearing a suit that could be sprinkled with blood in under an hour. His hands stay out in front of him, palms up, fingers twitching with this jittery, helpless energy. He is looking at you with this forlorn begging in his widened eyes, practically pleading with them for you to blame it on the lights, or the noise, or anything else in the world—because the alternative is that he is the thing making you look at him like he’s an executioner.

You might be running out of time to pretend.

“I’m sorry, Bucky, I— I’m so sorry, I don’t—” You don’t even know what explanation you are going to give him now, only that you are suddenly full of the clumsy need to fill the room with words before the room fills with something worse, and so your mouth opens on instinct, on panic, on the miserable little scraps of sanity still fluttering inside you. You hear yourself stammer out some thin, transparent nonsense about feeling strange, about maybe being overwhelmed, about maybe needing air, maybe needing to go home, maybe nothing, because every excuse sounds flimsy the second it leaves you, and every sentence makes your spirit mulch and dissolve into a gray slurry that won’t hold a shape.

And Bucky is still so close and still so beautiful and still so racked with his brows pinched into a severe, pained knot. His eyes are full of shadows, and this is all so bad.

His softness somehow makes all of this worse, not better, because if he were cruel already, if he were cold already, if he gave you even one clean villain’s grin, one sharp look, one thread of honest menace, maybe your fear would have somewhere proper to sit.

But he only examines your features as though it truly physically aches him to see you like this, as though your panic has reached inside him and laid a dirty hand around his heart.

“Don’t apologize, sweetheart,” he starts, and he says it so quietly, with so much care, still, but also with a mounting unease that is just about to reach its peak. “I just wanna know what’s going on. Talk to me, baby. Please. I—” he breaks off with a sigh, his jaw grinding. “If something’s wrong, if something’s going on, then I gotta know.”

You swallow hard in hopes that anything might help soothe the sting behind your eyes. You don’t believe him, not fully anymore, but some humiliating, hopelessly romantic part of you still recognizes the cadence of the man who kissed your forehead this morning, the man who tucked a strand of hair behind your ear with the most tender hands, the man who remembered how you take your tea and which side you prefer to sleep on and the fact that you hate when socks twist inside your shoes.

It is unimaginable, it is desolating how tenderness can survive in the same body as terror, how your heart can continue making a fool of itself even while your mind is setting the whole house on fire.

“Bucky, really, I’m just...” Your voice hitches, the words sticking like thistles in your throat. You look down at his hands and they are so huge and capable, currently flexing with an empty urge to hold you. You know those hands have held weapons. You know they’ve ended lives and carried blood. But right now they are trembling because you won’t let them touch you.

You can feel yourself growing sharper and shakier by the second, every nerve in you pulled too tight, every breath arriving shallow and unhelpful, and still he keeps speaking to you in that quiet and gentle tone, asking whether it was something earlier, whether he pushed too far, whether he missed something, where exactly it hurts. You can’t tell him it’s your heart and not your head that is currently in shambles.

The concern in him seems real. That is the terrible part. It seems real enough to bruise. You shake your head too quickly. You try to smile and feel it crack before it even fully forms. You say you are just tired. You say you do not know. You say you are fine with the kind of desperate brightness you would use when standing on the edge of a roof insisting you are only admiring the view.

His gaze drops to the space you are slowly clearing between you, and his expression hardens. Gears are grinding behind his eyes and suddenly he looks like the man in the hallway, filled with command and so fucking terrifying, your pulse spikes to unhealthy numbers. He doesn’t look at you, he turns his head to look in the direction of the closed door, his posture squared.

“Did someone say something to you?” He asks, his tone dropping into a low, scraping register that makes the hairs on your arms stand up. “In the hall? Before I came out?”

You blink at him in disbelief. Does he think someone threatened you? Does he think one of his own men, or some interloper in his kingdom, stepped out of line with you? The fact that that would cause such an intense reaction in him makes you want to be catapulted straight out of here because this is genuinely just getting all too much. He seems about ready to tear his own house down to find the monster that scared you, completely unaware that he is the one wearing the monster’s skin.

You are about to open your mouth to improvise your way to freedom, when there is a brisk knock on the oak door and it makes your entire body jerk.

Bucky turns toward the noise, but not before you catch the brief, hot flare of irritation that darkens his features. He rises with all his coiled grace and contained force, and for half a second you just stare at his back, seeing even that differently now. He really is a tall man. He is immense. Broad. Space seems to make room for him as he steps to the door. God, what the hell did you walk yourself into. The only thought that gives you a tiny bit of ease is that there surely have to be other girls out there who would have fallen for it all, looking at him.

He cracks the door open. A man stands in the corridor holding a tray balanced with a folded stack of damp, cold towels, a bottle of water, and a blister pack of painkillers. And it’s weird how this would have struck you as absurdly thoughtful just hours before but now it feels sinister. It is purely ominous. It is comfort orchestrated by absolute authority; a display of care that only exists because of total, unquestioning submission.

Bucky, or James, or the most wanted mob boss of all time; thanks him, quickly, absently, not unkind but distracted, his thoughts still hooked to you so visibly that even the man at the door registers the tension.

And that man glances inside just enough to catch sight of you on the couch, sitting there sweating, pale, rigid as a hunted thing.

A manic urge strikes you to scream for help. You want to yell at this stranger to run, to call the precinct, or to simply throw you over his shoulder and get you the hell out of this building. But the impulse dies in your throat. It would be entirely useless. Every single person under this roof operates on his frequency. This man wouldn't take a single order from you even if it would be more of a plea than anything else. All of these people in this damn building listen to his every word. He wouldn’t do a thing to help you.

And before you can even let go of the fantasy, the man immediately drops his eyes again and leaves, because everyone in this house seems trained in the art of not seeing too much.

But you see too much now. That is the problem. That is the irreversible thing.

Because while Bucky’s back is turned, while he takes the tray and shuts the door with his shoulder and crosses toward the sideboard, your gaze begins to snag on the office around you with new eyes, and suddenly nothing is only furniture anymore.

Nothing is only decoration. All the wood in here is dark and expensive, perhaps even that is getting paid to stay silent, and there are details you would once have filed away as masculine and stylish.

But now everything is imposing. Everything reads as evidence.

Like that locked cabinet that is too reinforced to hold unimportant paperwork. There is a map pinned behind glass with inked markings that look less like commerce and more like a tactical grid. A stack of files sits bound with a suspicious kind of neatness. Then there is a heavy antique letter opener glinting on the desk like a civilized version of a threat.

Even the art on the walls seems changed, the frames too severe, the subjects too stern, everything in here curated by a man who does not simply possess things but controls them. He dictates outcomes. He governs people. His office is a single spider web woven from all this darkened wood and his suits, and you are the only thing inside it that is still vibrating, sending signals straight to the center where he stands, and it is making your skin grow cold in patches.

He is opening the water bottle for you.

That tiny, stupid gesture nearly does it—the torturous way he makes this all so normal and so intimate when he says, “Here, baby,” without turning yet, as if this is still salvageable, as if you are merely unwell and he is merely worried and the world has not already split clean down the middle.

Something primitive detonates inside you, and perhaps if it were a conscious thought or a decision or just some other thing in a civilized sense, maybe you wouldn’t do what you are doing, but your body is revolting before your mind can dress the fear in language, and you’re up.

Oh god, you’re up.

You’re off the couch, you’re on your feet, and now there’s no going back, now there’s no sitting down because now you sprang up and now you will run. You will run because the suddenness of your own movement has chosen the path for you.

Without looking back, without another word, your feet move you to the door and they move so fast, the room is moving with you, your vision is filled with streaks. Your hand fumbles blindly before finding the door handle, wrenching it open, and then you are sprinting.

“You love me, you say. You love me, you say. You love me, you say. Then why are you shaking?”

- Richard Siken

A/n: I know this is basically one single scene and I truly don’t know how I managed to make it this long. I always add unnecessary details and emotional spirals wherever possible but I worry that I sit in the emotions for too long sometimes.

So please feel free to let me know if the emotional introspection and all those feelings got to be a little too much at any point because I know I tend to ramble and take a while getting to the point in my writing and it’s getting a little frustrating. Hearing what you guys think would be really helpful 🫶🏻

And if you enjoy my writing and would like to support me, please feel free to consider my ko-fi

''I'm fine.'' He flexes his fingers, testing the weight of it, the glow of the Wakandan tech reflecting the low light on the jet. Another stutter, another spark, and the arm slams against the wall beside him with a loud clang. The whole jet seems to echo the sound.

Your eyes widen. ''Bucky—''

''It's fine.'' The words are clipped, as if the sheer force of his denial could override the reality of malfunctioning circuitry. He holds the limb tightly against himself like he can pin it into submission, like it's just a wild animal that needs restraining.

You raise an eyebrow. ''Uh-huh. Because most people's arms throw tantrums like that.''

The corner of his mouth almost twitches, but then another wave of sparks hisses, scattering in the dark like fireflies, and his whole body stiffens. His fingers uncontrollably curl into a fist, not budging even when he uses his flesh hand to pry it open.

''Okay,'' you say slowly, keeping your voice light. ''Are we going to ignore the fact that your arm's auditioning for The Exorcist?''

He shoots you a look that should've been withering but is softened by the desperation hiding behind it. Bucky Barnes, master of stoicism, sitting there like a man betrayed by the one part of his body he trusted not to betray him. He mutters something under his breath, you catch only fragments, the cadence sharp with frustration.

''Don't think Steve would approve that kind of language, Buck.''

Bucky exhales hard through his nose, dragging a hand down his face. For a moment he just sits there, still and rigid, until the next spasm jerks through the arm. He curses, low and bitter, then finally digs into his pocket for the slim Wakandan communicator he carries like a lifeline he never wants to admit he needs.

He stares at it too long, thumb hovering. You lean forward, elbows on your knees. ''If you don't hurry up, that thing is going to become sentient and kill us all. Like M3GAN. By the way, did you know that Sam almost cried watching that? Joaquin told me.''

His glare flicks up, but there's no real bite in it, just staring at you with a defeated fondness before pressing the button, and the holo-screen blinks to life with the golden image of Ayo's face.

''White Wolf,'' she greets. No wasted words, as usual.

Bucky clears his throat. ''The arm's… not working right. Glitching. I think it needs to go back. Is Shuri in?''

Ayo's gaze flicks over him, reading him more than he feels comfortable with. ''She will be shortly. It will have to be brought back to Wakanda for reparations.''

''How long?'' His voice is casual, like asking how long dry cleaning might take.

''Three days.''

He stiffens. Three days. You see it hit him like a punch to the gut. The hesitation, the way his hand curls tighter around the faulty arm like a child might clutch a stuffed animal. Three days without it.

Ayo doesn't wait for his reply. ''We will send someone to collect it. Be ready.'' And then she's gone, the communicator dimming, leaving only the quiet rumbling of the Quinjet again.

For a moment, neither of you say anything. You watch him carefully as he stares at the dark screen, shoulders tense, jaw set so tightly you half-expect to hear his teeth crack.

You try for levity. ''Hey, look on the bright side. That means you get to watch me struggling with every stubborn jar in the house for three whole days. You always say you find that very entertaining.''

It earns you a huff of air that might've been a laugh if it weren't laced with something heavier. He shakes his head, glancing at you, corners of his mouth subtly twitching. ''Not funny.''

''Kinda funny,'' you counter. ''Maybe we can train your left hook while we're at it. Get you ambidextrous. That's a real party trick these days.''

His eyes finally flick to yours, and there it is, that hint of self-consciousness you don't usually get to see, raw and almost boyish. Under the soldier, the retired assassin, the survivor, he's still just a human being terrified of being seen as less than he is.

You want to press. Want to tell him it doesn't matter, that he's not defined by a piece of tech, no matter how sleek and advanced. But instead you sit back, let the hum of the Quinjet fill the silence, let him enjoy the comfort of having his walls up for now.

If there's anything you've learned these past two months of being by his side, both in battle and at home, it's that Bucky always retreats into himself after a mission, a haunted look on his face, like he's struggling to separate the violence he commits for a good cause and his past with ruthless violence for all the wrong reasons.

You cross your arms, let your eyes close against the drone of the engines, and decided to let him have his silence. For now.

...

Bucky doesn't tell you when the Wakandan courier arrives. You only realize because his texts go quiet, and when you call, you can hear the faint static of silence before he mutters that he's busy. You give him a day. Out of respect. Out of love. Then another morning, though it gnaws at you. By the second night, you're pacing your living room like a caged animal, phone heavy in your hand, wondering if he's just sitting alone in the dark pretending the world outside doesn't exist. It wouldn't be the first time you found him in such a state.

Sam's words echo in your head. If he gets stubborn, you've got the spare key. You just hadn't thought you'd ever need it.

The stairwell leading to Bucky's apartment smells faintly of dust and old plaster. His door is closed, the hallway dim except for the sputter of the single overhead bulb.

You knock once, soft. No answer. You knock again, harder. Nothing.

So you fish out the key from your back pocket. The lock clicks too easily, and you realize you could've definitely picked it with a hairpin. Not that it ever had to come to that, of course. You have the key. If Bucky even lets you keep it after barging in like this.

Inside, the air is stale, heavy with stillness. He hasn't turned on the lights, but the faint glow from streetlamps outside spills in from the kitchen window, painting the room in shadows. You spot him on the couch instantly. Back to you. Shoulders hunched. He doesn't startle when you enter, and you know he heard you. He always hears you.

''Breaking and entering,'' he says, attempting humor, his voice rough. ''That's a crime, you know. I'll have to arrest you.''

''Kinky,'' you retort, corners of your mouth tugging upward. You set your bag down by the door, toe off your shoes, trying to sound casual when the atmosphere feels anything but.

His right hand is curled on his knee, his left side angled away from you, the broad curve of his shoulder leading down to the blunt edge of metal where his arm should be attached. The plate gleams a little in the dim light, bare and exposed, and you realize that's why he hasn't texted you back, and why he doesn't look at you now.

You move closer. He shifts slightly, like he's trying to make himself smaller.

''Bucky.'' Your voice is soft, careful.

''Don't.'' It's quick, sharper than he intends, but his body is tight with shame, every muscle wound like a spring. ''Just not right now.''

You crouch beside the couch anyway, grounding yourself on the carpet, so he can't avoid you unless he walks away. ''I was worried about you. You're not answering my texts. You're not answering the door. And now you won't even look at me?''

He still doesn't move. ''It's better this way.''

''Better for who?''

The silence stretches. You study him, the hard line of his jaw, the way his right hand grips his knee like he's holding himself together. And then, gently, you rest your palm against his cheek, coaxing his face toward you. His stormy eyes shift to yours, hesitant.

You let your hand drift lower, thumb grazing along the line of his jaw, tracing the stubble that always grows faster than he bothers to shave. His chest rises and falls unevenly, like the simple act of being seen like this is too much weight to bear.

''Don't look at me like that,'' he mutters, voice breaking at the edges.

''Like what?''

''Like I'm—'' His throat works. The words snag. ''You don't have to pretend like I'm not missing something.''

Your heart aches. He thinks the absence makes him less, when to you it only makes him more human. ''Bucky,'' you whisper. ''You're not broken because your arm is.''

His jaw clenches, looking away, but you don't let him hide. You keep your hand steady, warm against his skin. ''You're not half a man when it's gone. You're not less. You're still you. All of you.''

The silence that follows is heavy, charged. You can almost hear the thoughts spiraling in his head, the doubts, the insecurities he won't admit, the endless ledger of things he thinks he's lost.

So you lean in closer, pressing your forehead to his, grounding him with the simplest touch. ''I don't care about the arm. I care about the man who holds the door open for me, and teases me relentlessly when I cook another terrible dish, but still eats it because it makes me happy. The man who holds me when I've had a nightmare, and stays up to watch over me until I fall asleep again. If all of that hasn't changed just because you don't have the arm, then you haven't changed either. Then you're still the man I—'' You pause, searching his eyes, steady and unflinching. ''The man I love.''

His breath catches like you've yanked it from his lungs. ''I didn't want you to see me like this,'' he says finally, voice raw.

''Too late,'' you murmur, brushing your nose against his.

And then, because the conversation could use some lightheartedness, you let a small smile tug at your lips. ''Besides, I kind of like being the one with all the upper body strength for once, which is, like... as rare as a solar eclipse.''

That earns you a hoarse laugh, his forehead pressing against yours like he's anchoring himself to you, to the sound of your voice.

Your hand drifts lower, across his chest, lingering over the steady thrum of his heart beneath your palm. ''You're still you. All of you. And I wouldn't change a thing.''

He exhales shakily, tugging you a little closer until your knees bump the couch. His lips brush yours, tentative.

You tilt your head, catching his gaze in the low light. ''You don't have to hide from me. I love you like this, too.''

And maybe it's the way you say it, simple and sure, but something eases in him. He leans in, slow and cautious, until his mouth finds yours. The kiss is soft, almost tentative, but it sparks like kindling catching flame, spreading warmth through your chest.

When you pull back, you rest your hand on his shoulder, near the metal plate his vibranium arm would usually be attached. His brows pinch, breath stalling, but he doesn't move away.

''You're still a hundred percent man to me,'' you whisper against his lips, smile curling. ''Maybe even a hundred and ten.''

This time his laugh is real, deep, shaking loose some of the shadows clinging to him. He kisses you again, firmer now, his hand sliding to the small of your back and pulls you onto the couch beside him, holding you closer than he's allowed himself in days.

...

thank you so much for reading! i appreciate any and all support so remember to like, comment and reblog. requests are open! 💕

Instead, she'd stepped closer, drawn by a curiosity that had kept her alive this long and was about to be her downfall. The portal's edges rippled like water, casting shifting shadows that made her eyes water. She'd reached out—not to touch it, just to test the air around it, to see if she could feel whatever impossible force was tearing through dimensions.

The puddle was small. Insignificant. The kind of thing she'd normally step over without thinking. But positioned exactly where it was, at the precise edge of the portal's influence, it became the pivot point on which her entire world turned.

Her foot slipped. Physics took over. And suddenly she was falling forward, through liquid light and the space between heartbeats, through the golden throat of something that shouldn't exist.

The landing knocked the breath from her lungs and the sense from her head. When the world stopped spinning, she found herself sprawled on familiar concrete, staring up at the same brick walls, breathing the same stale alley air. But the portal was gone, sealed shut like it had never existed, leaving only the faintest afterimage burned into her retinas.

And somewhere in the distance, she heard the murmur of a city—familiar, but not the same. The cadence of traffic sounded off-key, like a song she knew played in the wrong tempo. The low thrum of voices carried different accents, different rhythms. Even the distant wail of a siren seemed to rise and fall in patterns her ears didn't recognize.

The wrongness revealed itself in layers, each one more unsettling than the last.

She discovered the first crack when she went to what should have been her station. At first glance, it looked identical—same brick facade weathered by decades of city grime, same cracked concrete steps where she'd sat during her lunch breaks, same scuffed double doors that stuck in humid weather. But the moment she walked inside, the air felt different. Heavier. Foreign.

The desk sergeant looked up with mild curiosity rather than the usual grunt of acknowledgment. Officer Martinez walked past without his customary nod. Detective Chen emerged from the break room with coffee and didn't so much as glance in her direction.

"Excuse me," she said, approaching the front desk with her badge already in hand. "I need to check in with Chief Barnett."

The sergeant—Henderson, his nameplate read, though she could have sworn his name was different yesterday—looked at her like she'd asked for directions to Mars.

"Ma'am, there's no Chief Barnett at this precinct. Never has been. You might be looking for the 12th? They got a Captain Barrett over there."

Her badge felt suddenly heavy in her palm. She held it up, the shield catching the fluorescent light. "I'm Detective—"

"Ma'am." Henderson's voice sharpened, and she saw his hand drift toward his radio. "I'm going to need you to step back from the desk."

That was when things went bad. Fast.

Within minutes, she was surrounded. Familiar faces wearing unfamiliar expressions of suspicion and confusion. She knew these people—had shared coffee with them, complained about paperwork, celebrated arrests. But they looked at her like she was a stranger wearing a stolen uniform.

"I work here," she insisted, even as they guided her toward the interrogation rooms. "Check my locker—it's number 47. Check my desk. I've been here for six years."

But when they checked, locker 47 belonged to someone else. The desk she thought of as hers was occupied by a detective she'd never seen before. And when they ran her prints—her own goddamn fingerprints—the room fell silent.

"That's impossible," she heard Chen whisper to Martinez. "These prints... they match a woman who died three years ago."

The words hit her like ice water. Died. Three years ago. The version of her that had lived in this world was dead, and now they were staring at her like she was either an imposter or a ghost.

They moved her to Interview Room 2—the one with the broken chair leg that she'd always avoided. The irony wasn't lost on her. Here she was, finally sitting in the damn chair, but as a suspect instead of a detective. She tested the chair before she sat down in it. The broken leg was stable. 

The one-way mirror reflected her pale face back at her, and she found herself staring at her own features as if seeing them for the first time. Same eyes, same scar on her chin from falling off her bike at age seven, same stubborn part of her hair that never stayed flat. But somehow, she looked like a stranger to herself.

Detectives came and went—Patterson, who'd taught her how to read blood spatter patterns; Rodriguez, who always brought donuts on Fridays; Williams, who'd been her partner for two years. Each one studied her with the same mixture of confusion and suspicion, as if her very existence was an insult to someone's memory.

She gave them everything—her name, badge number, social security, the names of every case she'd worked, every partner she'd had, every scar and story that made up her life. All of it true, and all of it sounding like elaborate fiction when filtered through their disbelief.

Hours passed. Or maybe days. Time felt fluid in that windowless room, marked only by the steady hum of fluorescent lights and the occasional rattle of the ancient air conditioner. She'd long since stopped pinching herself, accepting that whatever this was, it wasn't a dream.

When the door finally opened again, she expected another detective with the same tired questions and skeptical eyes. Instead, a stranger walked in.

He moved with the careful control of someone accustomed to being watched, though tension coiled in his shoulders like a spring wound too tight. Not a cop—his clothes were too casual, too lived-in. Civilian, but not ordinary. The way the desk sergeant had practically saluted when he'd walked past suggested someone with serious pull.

He was a handsome black man, probably mid-thirties, with intelligent eyes that seemed to catalog everything they saw. When he looked at her, those eyes went soft with something that might have been recognition, or hope, or grief. Maybe all three.

The silence stretched between them like a held breath. She watched him settle into the chair across from her with the careful movements of someone carrying invisible weight. His hands rested on the table, knuckles pale with tension, and she found herself studying the calluses on his palms—the kind that came from gripping something regularly. Reins, maybe. Or rope.

Finally, he spoke. His voice was steady but quiet, like he was afraid of the answer before he asked the question.

"Do you know who I am?"

The hope in his voice was so naked it made her chest tight. She wished she could give him what he was looking for, but honesty was all she had left.

"No," she said, then added more gently, "Should I?"

Something inside him crumbled. She saw it happen—the way his shoulders sagged, how his breath left him like he'd been punctured. The careful composure slipped, revealing grief so raw it made her want to look away. But he held her gaze, managing a smile that was equal parts bitter and fond.

"Maybe not this you," he murmured, and there was a world of loss in those four words. "Was worth a shot, though."

Her brows drew together, frustration sparking hot beneath the confusion. "What do you mean, 'this me'? Look, I don't know what kind of game this is, but I'm a detective. This is my station—or it's supposed to be. I don't know what happened, but one minute I was processing a crime scene and the next there was this... portal, or whatever the hell—"

"Portal?" He leaned forward so fast his chair creaked, urgency replacing the gentle sorrow in his voice. "What did it look like? Exactly where were you when it appeared? Did you feel anything before it opened—heat, electrical charges, any kind of distortion in the air?"

The rapid-fire questions made her head spin. "I don't know! It just... appeared. Like someone had torn a hole in reality and filled it with golden light. It was humming, vibrating the air around it." She shoved back from the table, the legs screeching against linoleum. "Look, I don't know who you are or why you're asking, but I've had enough mystery for one day. Just tell me what the hell is happening to me."

He studied her for a long moment, his jaw working like he was chewing on words too big to swallow. When he finally spoke, his voice was careful, measured—the tone of someone delivering news that would change everything.

"You're not wrong. About this not being your world."

Her heart stuttered. "What?"

"You came through some kind of dimensional rift. It happens—rarely, but it happens. Sometimes the barriers between realities get thin, and things slip through the cracks." He spoke gently, but each word felt like a small betrayal of everything she thought she knew about the universe. "You've crossed into a parallel dimension. A world that's similar to yours, but not the same."

She stared at him like he'd started speaking in tongues. "Parallel dimensions? Are you out of your mind? You expect me to believe I just... fell through a crack in reality like some kind of science fiction nightmare?"

"I know it sounds impossible." His voice remained calm, patient—the way you'd talk to someone standing on a ledge. "But I've seen enough impossible things to know they're usually just improbable. And..." His eyes softened as he looked at her again, really looked, like he was trying to memorize her face. "You're not the first version of you I've met."

The room seemed to tilt. "Excuse me?"

"There was another you. Here, in this world." He paused, choosing his words with surgical precision. "She was... important. To a lot of people. To me. She was a good friend."

Something in his tone—reverent, aching, carefully controlled—made her stomach clench with dread. She swallowed hard, her voice barely above a whisper.

"What happened to her?"

For the first time since he'd entered the room, he looked away. His hands flexed against the table, tendons standing out like bridge cables. When he spoke, his words were weighted with the kind of grief that never fully heals.

"She died. Three years ago."

The words hung in the air between them like smoke, acrid and choking. She felt the world shift beneath her feet, reality reshuffling itself into patterns she didn't recognize. The fluorescent lights seemed too bright suddenly, the air too thin.

"No." The word came out sharp, defensive. She shot to her feet so fast her chair crashed into the wall behind her. "No, that's not possible. I'm right here. Alive. Breathing. You don't just get to have another version of me conveniently die before I show up. That's—" She barked out a laugh that sounded more like a sob. "That's fucking insane."

He didn't flinch, didn't move, just watched her pace the small room like a caged animal. His patience only made her angrier.

"Do you hear yourself?" She spun to face him, fury and terror warring in her voice. "Parallel dimensions? Different versions of me? That's comic book bullshit. I'm a detective, not some interdimensional traveler. You think you can feed me this story and I'll just... what? Accept it? Stop asking questions?"

She slammed her palms against the table, leaning over him. "Tell me the truth!"

He met her gaze without wavering, and his voice when he spoke was rock-steady, implacable as gravity.

"I am telling you the truth."

The conviction in his tone cut through her spiraling panic like a blade. She froze, chest heaving, studying his face for any sign of deception. But there was none—just bone-deep certainty and a grief so profound it seemed to have worn grooves in his features.

He rose slowly, closing half the distance between them—close enough to be reassuring, far enough to avoid seeming threatening. "I know how insane this sounds. I know every instinct you have is screaming that it's impossible. But I've lived through stranger things than you being here right now. And I'm not trying to trick you or manipulate you. I'm trying to help."

Her jaw clenched, but some of the fight leaked out of her voice. "Why should I believe you?"

He was quiet for a moment, seeming to weigh his words. Then he extended his hand—palm up, an offering rather than a demand.

"Because my name is Sam Wilson. And if you let me, I'll do everything I can to make sure you're safe."

Something in the way he said it—solid as bedrock, unshakeable as sunrise—made her anger waver. There was a quality to his voice that spoke of promises kept, of responsibility accepted and never abandoned. Without meaning to, she found herself believing him.

Sam Wilson was clearly someone important. She could tell by the way the precinct transformed around him. Officers who'd treated her like a curiosity or a threat suddenly straightened when he appeared, their voices taking on the particular tone of respect reserved for true authority. They clapped him on the shoulder, thanked him for unspecified favors, and more than one called him "Cap" as they headed out for patrol.

She studied him as they walked to his car, noting the way he moved—confident but not cocky, alert without being paranoid. Military bearing, but softened by civilian life.

"Cap?" she asked as they settled into his black sedan. "As in Captain?"

Something flickered across his face—amusement mixed with something heavier, more complicated. His smile was warm but tinged with melancholy, like a song played in a minor key.

"Something like that."

She didn't press, but the title lodged itself in her mind like a splinter. Captain. The kind of rank that came with weight, with responsibility, with the expectation that you'd carry other people's burdens as easily as your own.

He drove her through the restless pulse of New York, and she found herself cataloging the differences. The skyline was almost identical, but not quite. A building here that shouldn't exist, a street there that curved the wrong way. Like someone had rebuilt her city from memory but gotten some of the details wrong.

They stopped at a building that seemed to hum with unseen energy, its architecture somehow more alive than the structures around it. The man waiting inside introduced himself as Doctor Stephen Strange, the air around him shimmered with barely contained power.

Strange studied her with eyes that had seen too much, and she caught the flicker of recognition—and pain—when his gaze met hers. Another person haunted by a ghost she was apparently wearing the face of.

His examination was thorough, involving incantations in languages that hurt her ears to hear and geometric patterns of light that made her vision water. When he finally delivered his verdict, his voice carried the weight of cosmic authority.

"She's a dimensional variant. Another world's version of the woman you knew." He paused, his expression growing grave. "And the portal that brought her here... it wasn't random. She was meant to come through. Meant to stay."

The words hit her like a physical blow. "What?" She lurched to her feet, the chair scraping against polished marble. "No. No, I don't belong here! This isn't my world, my life. That portal was an accident. You have to send me back."

Her voice cracked on the last word, desperation bleeding through the careful control she'd maintained all day. She turned to Sam, searching his face for any sign that Strange was wrong.

"You said the other me is dead. But I'm not her. I have my own life, my own world. People who'll miss me. You can't just... you can't just expect me to replace her."

Sam flinched like she'd struck him, his gaze dropping to the floor. The grief carved into his features was so raw it made her chest ache with sympathy she didn't understand.

Strange's voice softened, but his words remained uncompromising. "I'm sorry. If there were a way to send you home, I would. But the forces that brought you here... they don't make mistakes. You're here because this is where you belong now."

The pronouncement settled over her like a funeral shroud. She stood frozen for a moment, every muscle tense with the urge to run, to fight, to somehow undo the cosmic joke that had torn her from everything she knew. Instead, she forced herself to breathe, to think, to survive this moment the way she'd survived every other impossible thing life had thrown at her.

"I need air," she managed, and walked out before either of them could respond.

The hallway beyond was lined with artifacts that seemed to hum with their own inner light. Ancient books, crystalline sculptures, weapons that looked like they'd been forged in other dimensions. She leaned against the cool stone wall, closing her eyes and trying to find her center.

That's when she heard their voices drifting from the chamber she'd just left.

"Have you told Barnes yet?" Strange's voice carried clearly in the empty corridor.

A long pause, then Sam's reply, heavy with reluctance. "No. Not yet. I don't even know how to begin that conversation."

"She's here for a reason," Strange said firmly. "The universe doesn't place people where they don't belong. He'll need to know. The sooner the better."

Another silence, longer this time. When Sam spoke again, his voice was barely above a whisper. "Yeah. I just don't know how either of them will handle it."

The conversation ended with the sound of chairs scraping, footsteps moving. She pushed herself off the wall and composed her face just as Sam emerged, looking like he was carrying the weight of the world.

"Let's get out of here," he said gently, as if she hadn't overheard every word.

His brownstone was a refuge from the chaos of the day. Warm wood floors, lived-in furniture, bookshelves that actually held books instead of just decoration. Photographs covered the mantle and side tables: Sam with various people she didn't recognize, group shots that looked like they'd been taken after successful missions, candid moments of laughter and camaraderie.

She sank into his couch, exhaustion finally catching up with her. The adrenaline that had carried her through the day was fading, leaving behind a bone-deep weariness that went beyond physical fatigue.

Sam settled across from her, elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped together. He studied her for a long moment before speaking.

"I guess it's time I told you who I am. My full story." He took a breath, as if steeling himself. "My name is Sam Wilson. I used to go by the Falcon—had a pair of mechanical wings, worked with the Avengers. But a few years back, Steve Rogers, Captain America, passed the shield to me. So now people call me Captain America."

The revelation should have shocked her, but somehow it fit. The deference at the station, the way Strange had treated him as an equal, the weight he seemed to carry…it all made sense now.

“Yeah, we…had a Steve Rogers in my world,” she murmured, playing with some loose threads between the cushions of the couch. “Had the Avengers. Mutants, too.” 

"The version of you that lived here," he continued, his voice growing softer, more careful, "she was part of that world too. An intelligence specialist who helped us track down dangerous people. She fought beside us, bled with us. She was..." He paused, searching for words. "She was family."

Family. The word hung in the air between them, loaded with implications she wasn't ready to unpack.

"And she's gone," she said quietly.

Sam's nod was barely perceptible. "Yeah. She's gone. But you're here now. And maybe—"

"There's no maybe." The words came out harder than she'd intended, sharp with frustration and fear. "There's no cosmic plan or grand design. Sometimes shit just happens. Bad luck, wrong place, wrong time. You're telling me that if you suddenly woke up in a different reality where everyone expected you to be someone else, someone dead, you'd just accept it? Roll over and play the part because strangers called it fate?"

Sam's expression hardened, but not with anger. With understanding that cut too deep. "You think I don't know what it's like to have everything you thought you knew about the world get turned upside down? To lose people who mattered more than your own life?" His voice carried the weight of hard-earned wisdom. "I've wanted to wake up in a different world more times than I can count. One where the people I've lost are still alive, where the choices I made turned out different."

He leaned forward, his gaze intense. "But that's not how it works. We don't get to pick the reality we land in. We just get to decide what we do once we're there. And right now, you're here. That's not negotiable. The only question is what you're going to do about it."

His words hit harder than she'd expected, cutting through her anger to something more vulnerable underneath. She wanted to argue, to maintain her fury because it felt safer than the alternative. Accepting that her old life was truly gone.

"So what, you expect me to just slide into her place? Live in some dead woman's shadow?"

"No one's asking you to replace her." Sam's voice was firm, brooking no argument. "You're not her, and we both know that. But like it or not, you're here now. And pretending this isn't happening won't change that fact."

"I don't belong here," she said, but the words felt hollow even as she spoke them.

"You don't belong there anymore either." The gentleness in his voice made it worse somehow. "If that portal brought you here, maybe it was because this is where you need to be. You can be angry about it—hell, you should be. But anger won't change reality."

The fight drained out of her slowly, like air from a punctured tire. She turned to stare out the front window at the head of the room at the unfamiliar-familiar city beyond, her reflection ghostlike in the glass.

Sam showed her to a small guest room with the same quiet efficiency he'd displayed all day. It was simple but comfortable. Clean sheets, soft pillows, and a window that looked out on a tree-lined street that could have been from her world.

"You can stay here as long as you need," he said, lingering in the doorway. "I'll work on getting you set up with your own place, new identity, whatever you need to build a life here."

The casual way he mentioned building a life here made the reality of the situation crash over her again. This wasn't temporary. This was her new existence, whether she wanted it or not.

"Sam?" Her voice was smaller than she'd intended. "Tell me about her. About... me. The one you knew."

Something in his expression shifted, pain flickering across his features like shadows cast by firelight. He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, his gaze growing distant.

"She was brilliant," he said finally. "Sharp as hell, with instincts that could cut through any lie or deception. She specialized in intelligence work—tracking people who didn't want to be found, uncovering connections others missed. She came into our world during the hunt for the Winter Soldier, back when he was still... when he was still HYDRA's weapon."

Her stomach clenched at the mention of the Winter Soldier. A killer in her world, same as in this one, it seemed. 

"She was the one who helped Steve and Natasha track him down," Sam continued, his voice growing softer. "And when we finally found him, when we realized he could be saved instead of just stopped... she fought for that. Fought to bring him back from the darkness."

The name hit her like a physical blow. Bucky Barnes. The Winter Soldier had a real name, a real identity. 

"After that, she stayed close to the team," Sam went on. "Worked missions with us, became part of the family. She was brave, loyal, never hesitated to put herself in harm's way if it meant protecting innocent people or helping the team." His voice caught slightly. "She saved my life more than once. Saved all our lives."

The grief in his voice was palpable, a living thing that filled the space between them. She found herself holding her breath, afraid to disturb the weight of his memories but wanting him to continue.

"She mattered," he said simply. And yet, the effect — the emotion on his face — was devastating. 

She didn't ask how the other version of her had died. The pain etched into every line of Sam's expression was answer enough. Some wounds were too fresh to probe, even three years later.

Sam moved to leave, but her voice stopped him at the threshold.

"The Winter Soldier... that's Bucky Barnes, isn't it?"

He went absolutely still, tension radiating from his frame like heat from a furnace.

"In my world," she continued, forcing the words past the tightness in her throat, "the Winter Soldier died. Steve Rogers killed him during the fall of SHIELD. It was the only way to stop him." She hesitated, then added, "I heard you and Strange talking earlier. About... him."

Sam turned slowly, his expression carefully controlled but his eyes dark with something that might have been worry or fear or protective instinct. Maybe all three.

"It's better if you don't know," he said quietly, each word chosen with surgical precision. "Not yet."

The finality in his voice left no room for argument. He left her alone with her questions and the growing certainty that whatever connection existed between her and this world's version of the Winter Soldier, it was going to change everything. 

Why did the other version of her help him? What was different about their relationship that Sam seemed so on edge about? 

She sat on the edge of the unfamiliar bed in the unfamiliar room, staring out at the unfamiliar-familiar street, and wondered if there was any such thing as fate. Or if the universe was just crueler than she'd ever imagined.

______________________________________________________________

Sam was a good man, that became clear within hours of meeting him. The kind of good that ran bone-deep, expressed not in grand gestures but in small consistencies. He checked in without hovering, offered help without condescension, and by the third day had somehow managed to secure her an apartment only six blocks from his brownstone. When she'd asked how he'd pulled that off so quickly in New York's brutal housing market, he'd just smiled and said he knew people.

She could see why they'd chosen him to carry the shield. His moral compass alone was seemingly larger than life.

Still, living under his roof felt like wearing clothes that didn't quite fit. Not because Sam was unkind. If anything, he was almost painfully considerate, the way people are when they're afraid of breaking something fragile. It was the weight of expectation that pressed against her shoulders, the careful way he sometimes caught himself mid-sentence, as if he'd been about to say something meant for someone else.

Someone who looked exactly like her. Someone who was dead.

She threw herself into research with the desperate focus of someone trying to solve her own existence. Hunched over her laptop at Sam's kitchen table, she devoured everything she could find about this world's history. The Avengers Initiative. The Chitauri invasion. The fall of SHIELD and rise of HYDRA. The Sokovia Accords. Thanos and the Blip—five years when half of all life simply ceased to exist, then returned as suddenly as it had vanished.

The broad strokes matched her world's timeline, but the details were all wrong. Like looking at a painting that had been copied by someone with imperfect memory. Close enough to be familiar, different enough to be deeply unsettling.

What disturbed her most wasn't the differences themselves, but the growing realization that she wore the face of a woman who had lived through these events, who had bled and fought and sacrificed alongside Earth's mightiest heroes. Every record she found mentioned her. Intelligence reports signed with her name, mission debriefs that referenced her tactical assessments, personnel files that listed her as an active associate of the Avengers until three years ago.

And then, abruptly, the records stopped.

Sam's grief haunted the spaces between them like smoke. She'd catch him looking at her sometimes, as if he could will her to be someone else through sheer force of longing. When their eyes met, he'd remember himself and look away, but not before she glimpsed the disappointment that flickered across his features. Brief as lightning, but it left its mark.

She understood. But that didn't make it hurt less.

The day after she'd arrived, Sam's friend Joaquin Torres had shown up with a laptop bag and an easy grin that transformed the heavy atmosphere in the brownstone. Young, maybe mid-twenties, with the kind of boyish charm that made people trust him instinctively. More importantly, he looked at her without the weight of recognition, treating her like a person instead of a ghost wearing familiar skin. He hadn’t known her, the other version of her, Sam had told her. Much to her silent relief — a fresh human interaction was much needed. 

"Alright," he'd said, settling at the kitchen table and cracking open his laptop. "Let's get you a new identity. Technically, the old you is listed as deceased, which creates some interesting paperwork challenges. But nothing we can't handle."

His fingers flew across the keyboard with practiced ease, pulling up forms and databases with the casual expertise of someone who'd done this before. She found herself relaxing for the first time since falling through that portal, grateful to be treated like herself…whoever that was now.

By the second day, curiosity got the better of her.

"Did she, the other me, have any family?" she asked, trying to keep her tone casual while her hands twisted together under the table. "Husband, boyfriend, anyone who might be looking for me?"

Joaquin glanced up from his screen, scratching his chin thoughtfully. "Let me check... okay, parents died when she was eleven—" Her stomach clenched. Her parents, the ones in her world, had died around the same time. "—grandparents took her in but passed right before the Blip. No siblings listed." He scrolled further, eyebrows rising. "But damn, look at these connections. Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, Sam obviously. Tony Stark had you on his personal payroll after the whole SHIELD thing went sideways in 2014. You ran in some serious circles."

He leaned back, scanning the screen with obvious admiration. "No marriage records, no registered domestic partnerships. But there's some interesting cross-references here..." His grin faltered slightly as his eyes focused on something specific. "Hey, did Sam mention Bucky? Because there's quite a bit of documentation linking you two, and I'm talking—"

He stopped. The words died in his throat as he looked up and saw her expression.

The confusion must have been written across her face in bold letters, because Joaquin's boyish enthusiasm dimmed like someone had turned down his brightness settings. His gaze flicked from her to the laptop screen and back again, and she watched understanding dawn in his eyes with all the subtlety of a freight train.

"Oh." The word came out small, uncertain. "Judging by the look on your face... Sam hasn't talked to you about this yet."

"No," she said carefully, studying his suddenly nervous posture. "He hasn't."

Joaquin shifted in his chair, angling the laptop away from her line of sight with movements that screamed guilt. His cheeks flushed pink, and when he spoke again, his voice had lost all its earlier confidence.

"Listen, if Sam hasn't brought it up, there's probably a good reason. Maybe it's... maybe it's not important right now."

The lie was so transparent she almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

"Something on that screen you don't want me to see, Joaquin?"

"No! Nothing like that," he said too quickly, his voice cracking on the denial. He clutched the laptop closer to his chest like a shield. "It's just... if Sam thinks you're not ready to hear about it yet, then maybe..."

He trailed off, realizing he was only making it worse. She let the silence stretch, watching him squirm, filing away every nervous tic and unconscious gesture. In her experience, people revealed more in their attempts to hide things than they ever did when trying to be honest.

Finally, she nodded slowly, as if accepting his non-explanation. "Okay."

But the damage was done. This was the third time Bucky Barnes's name had surfaced in conversation, always followed by the same pattern—hesitation, deflection, someone changing the subject or ending the conversation entirely. Whatever connection had existed between her dimensional twin and this man, it was significant enough that Sam couldn't even bring himself to discuss it.

The questions multiplied like cancer cells in her mind. Who had Bucky Barnes been to her? An ally? An enemy? Had they worked together, or had she been hunting him? Was he the reason she'd died, or was there something else she wasn’t seeing? 

The not-knowing was worse than any answer could be.

When Joaquin packed up his laptop that evening, giving her an awkward yet genuine goodbye, she remained at the kitchen table staring at the stack of files and printouts she'd accumulated. The apartment Sam had found for her was ready—bare bones, but functional. She could move out tomorrow, start building something that resembled a life.

But first, she had research to do.

She waited until she heard Sam's bedroom door close, then fired up her own laptop and got to work. If no one would tell her about Bucky Barnes, she'd find out for herself.

The internet was a treasure trove of declassified documents, survivor testimonies, and conspiracy theories that turned out to be disturbingly accurate. She cross-referenced names, dates, and events, building a timeline that slowly painted a picture of James Buchanan Barnes—friend of Steve Rogers, sergeant in the 107th Infantry, presumed dead in 1945.

Except he hadn't died. HYDRA had found him, broken him, turned him into their perfect weapon. The Winter Soldier had been a man stolen from time and stripped of his identity, programmed to kill without question or memory.

Her hands trembled as she read mission reports that detailed his crimes. Political assassinations spanning decades. Scientists who'd gotten too close to inconvenient truths. Whistleblowers who'd tried to expose corruption. All of them silenced by a ghost with a metal arm and empty eyes.

But the story didn't end there. In 2014, Steve Rogers had found his childhood friend buried beneath layers of programming and torture. Had fought to bring him back, to restore the man HYDRA had tried to erase. The process had taken years of therapy, rehabilitation, deprogramming. But it worked.

Bucky Barnes was no longer the Winter Soldier. He was an Avenger. A former Congressman. He had rewritten his own story.

Her breath caught as she found what she'd been looking for: a digital roster buried in the aftermath of the Sokovia Accords. James Buchanan Barnes – Status: Active. Affiliation: New Avengers Initiative.

He was alive. Reformed. Fighting for the good guys now, apparently.

The knowledge sat in her stomach like a stone. Here, according to Joaquin's nervous reaction, he'd been connected to her in some significant way.

The irony was so sharp it could cut. A brainwashed assassin from the 1940’s connected to her? Were they friends? Had he killed someone she knew? She had no idea. There were no records about his personal life online. 

She stared at the screen until her eyes burned, then made a decision that felt both inevitable and insane. If Sam wouldn't tell her the truth, if Joaquin was too loyal or too scared to fill in the gaps, then she'd get her answers from the source.

She was going to find Bucky Barnes.

______________________________________________________________

Her new apartment felt like a train station, a place to exist rather than live between stops. The walls were still institutional white, the floors bare hardwood that echoed with every step. Sam had helped her haul in the essentials: a mattress, a couch from a secondhand store, a small table that wobbled when she put weight on it.

It should have felt like freedom. Instead, it felt like exile.

She didn't linger. Twenty minutes after Sam left, promising to check in tomorrow, she was studying transit maps and plotting her route to the New Avengers facility. The original Stark Tower had been sold, but the team had established a new base of operations in the same building, now deemed as the Watchtower. 

The evening commute provided perfect cover. Thousands of people moving with purpose, no one paying attention to one more face in the crowd. She joined the stream of humanity flowing toward the subway, her heart rate steady despite the magnitude of what she was planning.

Breaking into a superhero stronghold probably wasn't her smartest decision, but she'd made a career out of risky choices. This felt like just another case to crack, another locked door that needed opening.

The Watchtower rose thirty stories into the Manhattan sky, its glass facade reflecting the dying light of sunset. Even from the sidewalk, she could see the security measures. Cameras at every angle, discrete guards positioned at key points, biometric scanners flanking the main entrance.

She approached with the confidence of someone who belonged, shoulders back, stride purposeful. Sometimes the best disguise was attitude.

"Ma'am." A security guard stepped into her path before she'd made it halfway to the door. Young, alert, with the kind of bearing that screamed military background. His partner moved to flank her, casual but deliberate. "I'll need to see some identification."

She reached for her wallet, movements slow and non-threatening. "I'm here to see James Barnes. He's expecting me."

That got their attention. Too much attention. She saw the micro-expressions that flashed between them: surprise, confusion. The lead guard's hand drifted toward the radio clipped to his vest.

"You'll need clearance for that, ma'am. And I don't see you on any authorized visitor lists."

Behind them, the building's main doors hissed shut with hydraulic finality. The message was clear — she wasn’t getting in.

She maintained her smile, friendly and understanding. "Of course. My mistake. I'll just call ahead next time."

She turned and walked away, feeling their eyes on her back until she disappeared into the evening crowd. 

An hour later, she was back.

The Tower looked different at night. Imposing, fortress-like, its upper floors glowing against the darkness. She'd spent the time walking the perimeter, mapping service entrances and delivery bays, timing guard rotations and identifying blind spots in the surveillance coverage.

The rear of the building faced a narrow alley used for deliveries and maintenance. Less glamorous than the front entrance, but infinitely more accessible. She positioned herself in the shadows between two dumpsters and waited.

Patience was a detective's best friend. After twenty minutes, a catering van rumbled into the alley, its headlights cutting through the gloom. She watched the driver show his credentials to the guard, saw the heavy security door roll up to reveal a loading dock beyond.

As the van backed up to the platform, she moved.

She slipped alongside the van as the driver climbed out, using it as cover while boxes and trays were unloaded. The guard's attention was focused on his clipboard, checking items off a list with mechanical precision.

When he turned to examine a particularly large crate, she made her move. Three quick steps took her to the door, another two got her inside. The loading bay was cavernous and dimly lit, filled with the hum of machinery and the distant echo of voices.

She pressed herself against a concrete pillar, heart hammering as footsteps approached. A maintenance worker in coveralls walked past, whistling tunelessly, his footsteps fading as he disappeared around a corner.

She was in.

The Tower's interior was a maze of corridors and security checkpoints, but she'd navigated worse. She found a service stairwell — no cameras, minimal foot traffic—and began to climb. By the fifteenth floor, her legs burned and her lungs worked like bellows, but she pressed on.

The residential levels had to be near the top. That's where she'd find him.

Twenty-eighth floor. Twenty-ninth. Thirtieth.

The final door was different from the others. Heavier, with a biometric scanner and keypad that spoke of serious security measures. This had to be it. The private residential area where the Avengers lived when they weren't saving the world.

She stood before the scanner, knowing she had no way past it, knowing this was where her amateur breaking-and-entering skills reached their limit. But she'd come too far to turn back now.

"Who are you?"

The voice came from behind her, low and accented and sharp as a blade.

She spun, instinct driving her hand toward a weapon she didn't carry, muscles coiling for a fight that might be her last.

A woman stood at the mouth of the stairwell. Small, compact, with platinum blonde hair that caught the corridor's LED lighting. But it was her eyes that made the breath stick in her throat. Dark, calculating. This wasn't building security. This was someone far more dangerous.

The woman moved with liquid grace, each step deliberate and controlled. She wore dark tactical clothing that seemed to absorb light, and something about her posture—coiled, ready, predatory—set off every alarm bell in her brain.

"I asked you a question," the woman said, stepping closer. "How did you get past security?"

Her mouth had gone desert-dry, but she forced her voice to remain steady. "I could ask you the same thing."

The woman's lips curved in what might charitably be called a smile. It didn't reach her eyes. "Cute. Very cute. But I live here. You, on the other hand, definitely do not." Another step closer. "So let's try this again. Who are you, and what are you doing on a restricted floor?"

The accent was unmistakably Russian now that she heard more of it. Sharp consonants softened by years of speaking English, but the underlying cadence still there. The woman's stance was that of a trained fighter. She was balanced on the balls of her feet, hands loose at her sides but ready to move in any direction. Everything about her screamed potential danger.

"Look," she said, raising her hands in a gesture of surrender, "I'm just trying to find someone. I don't want any trouble."

"Then you came to the wrong place." The woman tilted her head, studying her with a vague intensity. "You look familiar. Have we met?"

The question sent ice through her veins. Another person who might recognize her face, who knew the woman she'd replaced. But this one's recognition carried a different quality. Not grief or longing, but something sharper. More analytical.

She didn’t know her. The old her. Not directly, at least. 

"I don't think so," she said carefully.

The blonde's sharp eyes never left her face, cataloging every feature with unsettling precision. "Hmm. You remind me of someone. I cannot place it exactly, but you have a very familiar face." She paused, head tilting further. "Are you a reporter?"

The question was so unexpected she almost laughed. "Do I look like a reporter to you?"

"Yes," the woman answered with complete seriousness. "Actually, you do. You have excellent bone structure. Very photogenic. Strong jawline, well-shaped eyebrows. The kind of face they put on Channel 9 news, no?" She gestured vaguely at her features. "Really quite striking, actually. And we get reporters trying to sneak in here all the time. You would not believe the lengths they go to. But none have made it this far before, which makes you either very skilled or very stupid."

Her mouth opened and closed wordlessly. Was this woman seriously critiquing her facial symmetry in the middle of what felt like a life-or-death situation? "...Thank you? I think? But I'm not a reporter."

The blonde hummed thoughtfully, those dark eyes scanning her from head to toe and back again with predatory interest. "I believe you, strange woman. Somehow, I do. But that makes this worse, doesn't it? Because if you are not a reporter, then why break into a tower full of superhumans and trained killers? Seems very..." She paused, searching for the right word. "Stupid. Or very desperate."

The weight of the moment pressed down on her shoulders. She could lie—make up some story about being lost, about mistaking this for a different building. But something about this woman's piercing gaze told her lies would be spotted immediately and punished accordingly.

So she chose the truth. Raw, unfiltered, desperate truth.

"Because I'm not from this world." The words tumbled out faster than she could stop them. "I know how insane that sounds, but apparently I'm from a parallel dimension—almost identical to this one—and a week ago I fell through some kind of glowing portal that spat me out here in New York. Sam Wilson found me, helped me out, told me I can't go home."

She ran a hand through her hair, exhaustion and frustration bleeding into her voice. "But the version of me that lived here? She's dead. Has been for three years. And everyone keeps looking at me like I'm her ghost, keeps mentioning James Barnes like I should understand what he meant to her. So yeah, I broke in here to find him. To get some goddamn answers about who I was supposed to be."

The confession left her feeling hollow, stripped bare. She'd laid all her cards on the table for a complete stranger who could probably kill her seventeen different ways without breaking a sweat.

Not one of her brightest moments. But somehow, it had felt right. 

The woman stared at her for a long moment, expression unreadable. Then something shifted in her features. A flicker of recognition, quickly suppressed but not fast enough.

"What is your name?" she asked softly, and there was something almost gentle in her tone now.

She hesitated for just a beat before giving her real name. Not the fabricated identity Joaquin had helped create, but the name she'd been born with.

The effect was instantaneous. The woman's carefully neutral expression crumbled, revealing shock, disbelief, and something deeper. A profound sadness that seemed to age her years in seconds.

"Bozhe moy," she whispered, the Russian slipping out unbidden. Her shoulders sagged as if an invisible weight had settled on them. "Yes... I know your story. All of it. Oh….this will not be easy. But he needs to know you are here."

She stepped closer, extending her hand with careful deliberation. "My name is Yelena Belova. I am... an associate of Bucky's. A friend. I can take you to him now, if that is what you truly want."

Her throat constricted as she stared at the offered hand. Every instinct screamed warnings, but she'd come too far to turn back now. She reached out, gripping Yelena's fingers.

"It's nice to meet you," she said, her voice barely steady. "Did you... did you know her? The other me?"

Yelena's smile was hollow, haunted. "No. But I know of you. We all do." The words carried the weight of a funeral dirge. "Come. I will take you to him. You’re on the wrong floor."

The elevator ride felt endless, each floor they passed stretching the silence tighter between them. Yelena stood with her arms crossed, staring at her boots with the intensity of someone trying to solve the world's most complex equation. Her bottom lip was caught between her teeth, brow furrowed in deep concentration.

The quiet became unbearable.

"You know," she said, clearing her throat, "everyone who seems to know about this other version of me... you all look at me like I'm some kind of ghost."

That pulled Yelena's gaze up, one eyebrow arching with sharp precision. Her voice was flat, matter-of-fact. "That is because you are a ghost. You are supposed to be dead here. Did you forget that small detail?"

The bluntness hit harder than expected, making her chest tight. "No, I remember. But it feels like more than that. You don't just look at me like I don't belong. You look at me like you're afraid."

Yelena's exhale was long and weary, her shoulders dropping as if she'd been carrying an invisible burden. When she spoke again, her accent thickened with emotion. "We are not afraid of you. We are afraid of what your being here will do to the people we care about."

"What do you—"

"You will see soon enough." Yelena's tone brooked no argument, but her expression softened slightly. She reached out, resting a careful hand on her arm, the touch cautious. "Just... be gentle with him. Please. He has been through enough."

The plea left her speechless, questions multiplying like cancer cells in her mind. All she could manage was a stiff nod.

The elevator chimed softly, doors sliding open with a whisper of hydraulics.

She followed Yelena into what was clearly a common area, all gleaming surfaces and floor-to-ceiling windows that offered breathtaking views of Manhattan. The space was dotted with comfortable seating, state-of-the-art monitors, and a conference table that could seat a dozen people.

Four figures stood around that table, all wearing matching tactical uniforms with red "A" emblems on their chests. Their conversation died the moment they noticed the newcomers.

The tallest of them—a blonde man with the kind of square jaw that belonged on recruitment posters—straightened immediately. His blue eyes narrowed with suspicion as they fixed on her. "Yelena," he said, his voice carrying authority and wariness in equal measure. "Who the hell is this?"

Before Yelena could answer, the large bearded man beside him stepped forward with a booming laugh that filled the entire space. His presence was overwhelming. all warmth and barely contained energy, like a bear-sized golden retriever.

"Ah, look at this! A new face, and such a lovely one!" He spread his arms wide as if preparing to envelope her in a bear hug, his voice thick with Russian accent and unmistakable joy. "Finally, some beauty around here to balance out all these ugly faces. You are... how do Americans say... a sight for sore eyes, da?"

Heat flooded her cheeks. She stood frozen, caught between mortification and the strange urge to smile despite everything.

Yelena groaned audibly, dragging a hand down her face. "Dad, stop."

"What?" The older man looked genuinely confused, then winked at her with shameless charm. "I only speak truth. Your mother, if she were here, she would agree—this one has excellent genetics. Very fine bone structure."

"Stop talking, Alexei," Yelena snapped, her tone sharp enough to cut glass. She turned back to the group, exhaling through her nose like wrangling her father was a full-time occupation. "This is—" She glanced back, seeking silent permission, then said the name quietly, as if she knew what was about to happen.

The effect was immediate and devastating.

The brunette woman—young, maybe mid-twenties, with energy crackling faintly around her fingers—went completely still. The shaggy-haired man in civilian clothes muttered something under his breath and took an unconscious step backward. Even Yelena's father sobered, his jovial expression fading into something more complex.

But it was the blonde man's reaction that made her stomach plummet.

His entire demeanor shifted, professionalism giving way to something colder, more calculating. He stepped closer, hands settling on his hips as he studied her like she was evidence at a crime scene.

Recognition flickered across his features as he processed her name, cross-referencing it with files in his memory. His expression shifted into something caught between a smirk and a sneer—the look of someone who'd just solved an unpleasant puzzle.

"I know that name," he said, his voice taking on a mocking edge. "Wasn't that the name of Barnes' dead girlfriend?"

The revelation hit her like a sledgehammer to the chest.

Dead girlfriend.

The words ricocheted through her skull, each repetition more devastating than the last. Not partner. Not colleague. Not enemy. Girlfriend. The other version of her, the woman whose shadow she was apparently condemned to live in, had been dating James Buchanan Barnes.

The Winter Soldier.

With a known killer.

The irony was so vicious it threatened to tear her apart from the inside. In her world, she'd spent years hunting down monsters, bringing justice to families destroyed by violence. Here, apparently, she'd been sharing a bed with one of the worst monsters of all.

Her vision began to tunnel, darkness creeping in at the edges like spilled ink. Her lungs had forgotten how to function, each breath coming in short, desperate gasps that never seemed to bring enough oxygen. The panic attack was inevitable now—her body's revolt against information too massive, too impossible to process.

Heat flooded her face, a burning flush of shock and shame and something else she couldn't name. Her hands began to shake, trembling at her sides as if her entire nervous system was short-circuiting.

"Hey." Yelena's voice cut through the static filling her head, firm but gentle. Warm fingers wrapped around her arm, anchoring her to reality when everything else felt like it was spinning away. "Breathe with me. Just breathe. In and out."

She shot a murderous glare at Walker, her voice cracking with fury. "Excellent timing, you absolute moron. Really thoughtful approach there."

Walker raised his hands in mock surrender, but his expression remained coldly entertained, like he was watching a fascinating psychological experiment unfold. "What? I figured she already knew! Isn't that the whole reason she's here?"

Alexei, blissfully oblivious to the emotional carnage unfolding around him, chimed in with maddening cheerfulness. "Of course she is the girlfriend! Look at her—she is exact copy of girl in photographs on Winter Soldier's nightstand. Very beautiful, very tragic, like heroine from Dostoyevsky novel." He beamed at her with paternal pride that made her want to scream. "You loved him deeply, da? Was passionate romance? He was good lover?"

"Dad!" Yelena's voice cracked like a whip, her glare hot enough to melt steel. "You are making everything worse!"

But Alexei only shrugged, completely immune to his daughter's homicidal expression. "What? I only speak truth everyone is thinking. And besides, is much better to be remembered as someone's great love than to be forgotten completely, no? It is romantic tragedy, like in great Russian stories."

The words were meant to comfort, but they only drove the knife deeper. Great love. Romantic tragedy. She was standing in a room full of people who remembered a version of her that had been intimately, desperately connected to a man who represented everything she'd spent her life fighting against.

Her hands clenched into fists, nails biting crescents into her palms as she fought to stay upright. The walls seemed to press closer, the ceiling lower, the air thicker. Everyone's stares felt like physical weight pressing down on her shoulders until she thought her knees might buckle.

This was wrong. Fundamentally, cosmically wrong. She shouldn't be here, shouldn't be wearing this face, shouldn't be expected to carry the emotional baggage of a woman who'd made choices that defied everything she believed in.

But she was trapped. Caught between worlds, between identities, between a past that wasn't hers and a future that terrified her beyond reason.

"What the hell are you people talking about?" she whispered, her voice barely audible above the thundering of her own pulse. "Is this some kind of sick joke?"

The pity in their faces was worse than cruelty would have been. At least cruelty would have given her something to fight against. This careful sympathy, these cautious expressions—they made her feel like a wild animal everyone was afraid might bolt or attack without warning.

Everyone except Walker, who continued studying her with clinical detachment, and Alexei, who kept rambling about the beauty of doomed love.

"You need to slow down your breathing," Yelena urged, gripping her shoulders with steady hands and forcing eye contact. "Focus on my voice. Just breathe."

But the command fell flat. The air had turned to concrete in her lungs. The room spun around her like a carnival ride gone wrong, and she could feel herself fragmenting, splitting apart at invisible seams.

She tore herself free from Yelena's grip and stumbled backward, her body moving toward the elevator of its own accord. Her chest heaved with each stuttering breath, vision blurring as tears she refused to acknowledge burned behind her eyes.

"Listen to me," she managed to choke out, every word sharp and desperate. "I don't know what twisted game you think you're playing, but whoever you think I am, I can't be her. I won't be her. I'm my own person, and I'm not from this world, and I've never even met James Barnes—"

Walker's eyebrow arched with infuriating calm. "Well, sweetheart," he drawled, "you're about to."

Behind her, the elevator gave a soft mechanical hiss.

The doors slid open.

She turned, ready to throw herself into whatever escape the elevator offered, ready to run until her legs gave out or her heart exploded—

And froze.

James Barnes stood there.

To her, he should have been nothing more than a name in old files, a face in grainy photographs, a shadow from history books. But in the flesh, he was devastatingly, undeniably real. Taller than she'd expected, broader through the shoulders. Dark hair fell in waves past his collar, shot through with faint silver that caught the light. His beard was neatly trimmed, dusted with gray that spoke of years and battles and sleepless nights. And his eyes — pale blue like a winter sky, sharp and intelligent. And currently wide with shock.

But it wasn't his appearance that stole her breath and left her feeling like she'd been struck by lightning.

It was the way he looked at her.

He'd been stepping out of the elevator, probably heading to some routine meeting or training session, and he'd frozen mid-stride. His hand was still braced against the elevator frame, knuckles white with tension. His chest rose and fell in sharp, uneven breaths, like someone had just punched all the air out of his lungs.

Those ice-blue eyes locked onto her face with an intensity that felt like being dissected, like he was looking straight through time and death and impossibility to see something that shouldn't exist. The expression on his face — raw disbelief warring with desperate hope, grief colliding with wonder—made something twist violently in her chest.

To her, he was a stranger. A name from her nightmares made flesh.

To him, she must be resurrection walking.

Her name fell from his lips like a prayer, broken and reverent and so full of longing it made her want to run screaming. His voice cracked under the weight of that single word, and his entire body seemed to lean forward, drawn by invisible strings.

He moved toward her slowly, as if afraid she might vanish if he startled her. Every step was careful, measured, like he was approaching something that might disappear any second. She wished she could right now.

His expression was torn wide open, every emotion playing across his features without filter or pretense.

She couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. For one suspended moment, she was caught in the gravitational pull of his gaze, trapped in the way he looked at her like she was the answer to prayers he'd stopped believing would be answered.

His hand twitched at his side, fingers flexing like he wanted to reach for her, to touch her face and confirm she was real and not just another cruel dream.

And then reality crashed back down on her like a tidal wave.

Her chest seized with pure, primal panic. Ice flooded her veins, her body's fight-or-flight response kicking into overdrive. She stumbled backward, shaking her head violently, trying to break whatever invisible connection had snapped taut between them.

"Don't—" Her voice shattered on the word. "Don't come near me."

He stopped immediately, but the damage was done. The anguish that flooded his features was unbearable, like she'd physically struck him. His lips parted, words trembling on his tongue, confusion bleeding through the desperate hope.

"It's okay," he said softly, his voice gentle in a way that made her want to scream. "It's me. It's Bucky. I don't understand what happened, how you're here, but it's going to be okay—"

"I don't know you!" The words exploded out of her, sharp and laced with mounting hysteria. She wrapped her arms around herself like armor, her whole body shaking with the effort of holding herself together. "I don't know who the hell you think I am, but I'm not her!"

He said her name again, softer this time, like he was trying to gentle a frightened animal. The sound of it in his voice, so full of history and intimacy, made her feel like her skin was crawling.

Before she could respond, before she could scream or run or collapse entirely, Yelena stepped forward. She positioned herself subtly between them, one hand raised in a calming gesture that encompassed both of them.

"She's not who you think," Yelena said quietly, her voice cutting through the tension like a blade. Her gaze flicked between Bucky's devastated expression and her trembling form. "She's not the woman you knew, Bucky. She's a variant. From another world, another timeline. She's not... she's not her."

The words landed like physical blows. Bucky staggered backward, his face cycling through disbelief, understanding, and a grief so profound it seemed to hollow him out from the inside.

But his eyes never left her face. Never stopped drinking her in like she might disappear at any moment.

She wanted the floor to open up and swallow her whole. Wanted to wake up from this nightmare and find herself back in her own world, her own life, where none of this impossible situation existed.

"This is getting incredibly uncomfortable," the young man with shaggy hair muttered from somewhere behind the group.

And it was. The tension in the air was thick enough to choke on. The weight of everyone's stares, the pity and confusion and worry—it was suffocating. Worst of all was the way Bucky kept looking at her, like the sight of her was simultaneously healing and destroying him.

She hated it. Hated this twisted version of fate that had dropped her into someone else's tragedy. Hated being expected to carry someone else's love, someone else's loss. Hated the way this man, this killer she was supposed to believe had been redeemed, was looking at her like she held his heart in her hands.

She'd come here for answers, but the truth was worse than any mystery could have been.

So she did the only thing that made sense anymore.

She ran.

Her detective training had kept her in good shape, years of chasing suspects through back alleys and up fire escapes had given her speed and endurance. She used all of it now, lunging toward the elevator with desperate urgency.

Behind her, she heard voices calling out—Yelena shouting her name, someone cursing in Russian, the sound of movement as superhuman reflexes kicked into gear.

But she was already inside, her finger jabbing frantically at the door close button as if her life depended on it.

The last thing she saw before the doors slid shut was Bucky's face—devastated, lost, reaching a hand out toward her like he was trying to stop her from disappearing all over again.

The moment she was alone, the adrenaline that had been holding her together evaporated. Her knees buckled, and she slid down the elevator wall until she was sitting on the cold metal floor, her head buried in her hands.

And for the first time since that portal had ripped her away from everything she knew, she broke.

The sobs came in waves, ugly and harsh and desperate. They tore out of her chest like they'd been trapped there for days, weeks, a lifetime. She cried for the life she'd lost, for the world she'd never see again, for the impossible situation she'd been thrust into without her consent.

She cried for the woman who'd worn her face and made choices she couldn't understand.

She cried for the man upstairs who'd looked at her like she was his whole world coming back from the dead.

Most of all, she cried because somewhere deep down, in a place she didn't want to acknowledge, she'd felt something when their eyes met. Something that terrified her more than any truth she'd uncovered.

Recognition.

Not of him, but of the way he'd looked at her. Like she was home.

And she had no idea what that meant, or what she was supposed to do with the guilt that had made a home in her heart. 

______________________________________________________________

Sam showed up at her apartment a few hours later, and for the first time since she'd met him, he was furious.

"What the hell were you thinking?" The door had barely clicked shut before his voice cracked across the room like a whip, sharp enough to make her spine straighten reflexively. His jaw was clenched so tight she could see the muscle jumping beneath his skin, his shoulders squared and rigid like he'd been holding onto that rage through the entire drive over. She didn’t doubt it. "Sneaking into the Watchtower like that? I told you—I told you—to keep a low profile."

"Oh, so now this is all my fault?" The words launched out of her before she could stop them, her finger jabbing toward his chest like a weapon. Heat flooded her veins, her pulse already wild and erratic, her voice shaking with something deeper than just rage. Desperation, maybe, or the kind of fear that could only be fought with fury. "You expect me to sit here, smile, and nod at every half-assed, vague non-answer you people throw at me? Just twiddle my damn thumbs in a world where the other me is dead?" Her voice cracked on the last word, raw and jagged. "I'm a detective, Sam, not some helpless civilian you can placate with scraps."

For a moment, Sam blinked like she'd blindsided him with a truth he hadn't bothered to consider. The fire in his eyes flickered, uncertainty creeping in around the edges. "Okay. I didn't…" He exhaled slowly, his anger deflating slightly as understanding dawned. "I didn't think about it like that. But when you put it that way, yeah, it makes sense, but—"

"Oh, for God's sake." She groaned, both hands flying to her hair, fingers tangling in the strands and tugging until her scalp burned with the sharp bite of pain. It grounded her, kept her from flying apart completely. Her chest was heaving now, words tearing out faster than she could filter them, like a dam had burst. "Were you seriously not going to tell me that your version of me, that she…was with the Winter Soldier?"

The silence that followed was deafening. Sam's gaze locked on hers, heavy and unblinking, his expression shifting into something guarded and final.

"No," he said finally, the word flat and unyielding as stone. "I wasn't planning on it."

Her stomach plummeted, a cold wash of betrayal flooding through her. Her throat constricted. "What the fuck, Sam? Why wouldn't you tell me that?"

He threw his hands up in exasperation, the sound of his sigh filling the cramped space between them like a punctured tire. "Why would I? What possible good would that do you?" His voice climbed, defensive and sharp. "You never knew him in your world. All it would do is create exactly what's happening now. Chaos, confusion. Pain for everyone involved."

She felt her mouth fall open, the words catching like glass shards on her tongue, but he barreled forward before she could speak.

"And how would it help him?" His voice cracked this time, a raw edge breaking through the frustration like a fault line splitting open. His hands fell back to his sides, limp and defeated, like the weight of everything had finally dragged him down. "It would just rip him apart all over again. You don't understand…he never recovered from losing her. From losing you." Sam shook his head, swallowing hard, his Adam's apple bobbing with the effort. "And now? Seeing your face again, hearing your voice, watching you move like her but not being her…" His voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "I can't even imagine what that did to him."

Her breath caught, sharp and ragged, like she'd just taken a sucker punch to the throat. Her anger stuttered and died for one disorienting second, replaced by something she couldn't name. Guilt? Sympathy? The strange, hollow ache of mourning someone she'd never been?

Her voice dropped, barely more than a whisper, fragile as spun glass. "Was he the one who called you? Told you I came to the Tower?"

Sam looked at her then, and there was no anger left in his face. Just a deep tiredness and something that looked disturbingly like pity.

"Of course it was him," he said softly, each word deliberate and weighted. "He's my best friend."

He let that hang in the air between them, heavy and damning, like a confession.

"And I know you didn't know," Sam added, his voice quieter still, almost gentle. "But I was just trying to protect him. I've watched him put himself back together piece by piece, and I couldn't…I won't let him fall apart again."

The fight drained out of her like water through a sieve. All the yelling, the accusations, the righteous fury, it all seemed suddenly hollow and pointless as Sam's words echoed inside her skull like a death knell. She collapsed onto the couch, her knees giving out beneath her, elbows braced on her thighs, hands pressing hard against her forehead as if she could physically hold the spiraling pieces of herself together.

The silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating.

"Okay," she finally whispered, the word trembling out of her like a prayer or a surrender. "Fine. You didn't tell me before. But you can tell me now." She lifted her eyes to Sam, and the weight of the question sitting heavy in her chest felt like it might crush her ribs. "What happened to her? The… me from here. How did she die?"

Sam froze, his mouth opening like he was going to speak, but no sound came out. His gaze flickered away from hers, darting toward the window, the floor, anywhere but her face. Like the answer was a wound he couldn't bring himself to reopen, a scab he refused to pick.

The silence stretched taut and unbearable, elastic and ready to snap, until a low voice cut through the tension like a blade.

"She died right after the fight against Thanos."

Her head snapped toward the door so fast her neck protested.

Bucky stood there, framed in the dim amber light from the hallway, his broad shoulders rigid as steel beams, his vibranium hand clenched around the doorframe with enough force that she could hear the wood creaking under the pressure. He looked like he was using it as an anchor, the only thing keeping him upright and steady. His eyes were locked on her, storm-blue and unflinching. So intense it felt like he was trying to memorize every detail of her face, as though looking away would destroy him all over again.

"Bucky—" Sam shot to his feet, tension coiling through his frame like a spring wound too tight. "I told you to wait in the car—"

Bucky didn't look at Sam. Didn't even acknowledge he'd spoken at all.

His gaze remained fixed on her, unblinking, burning through her like he could pin her to the floor with nothing but the weight of his stare. His voice, when it finally came, was steady but saturated with grief so thick and suffocating it seemed to bend the very air around them. He was still looking at her like she was a ghost made flesh, a cruel trick of light and shadow.

He stepped further into the apartment—one deliberate step, no more—like crossing that invisible threshold would mean too much, would shatter some fragile equilibrium he'd spent years building. Even this much proximity felt dangerous, charged with electricity that made her skin prickle. His eyes were sharp and hard as cut glass, but she could see the faint tremor of a storm barely restrained beneath the surface.

"It happened after we all came back. From the Blip. Fifteen days later, to be exact. Some nutjob — mad about the Blip and trying to take it out on the Avengers — broke into her apartment and…killed her. But you don't need to know the details," he said finally, his voice clipped and final. His eyes were damn near black. Hollowed out with grief.

The weight of his words hit her chest like a stone dropped from a great height. She stared back at him, her own words tangled in her throat like barbed wire. Sam shifted awkwardly between them, his expression tight and pale, like he was watching history about to repeat itself in the worst possible way. Maybe he was.

Her jaw clenched, forcing her voice out through the sudden tightness in her throat. "So now you get to decide for me?" The quiet venom in her tone surprised even her, cutting and precise. "You don't get to do that. Just because you knew me in another life doesn't give you the right to—"

"Stop." His voice cracked through hers like a whip, cold and brutal and absolutely final. It froze her mid-sentence, the words dying on her tongue. "I didn't know you. You're not her. You're just a woman wearing her face, carrying her voice, moving through the world like some cosmic joke." Each word was delivered like a physical blow, precise and merciless. "So no, you don't get the right to know how she died. You don't get to carry her memories or her pain or her love. All you should be doing is staying the hell away from anything that has to do with her."

Her stomach dropped to her feet, a cold wave of shock and hurt washing over her. She wasn't sure why his words sliced so deep—this man was a stranger, wasn't he? But the raw, bleeding wounds in his voice told her otherwise. Every syllable sounded like it cost him blood to speak.

Her chest burned with indignation and something sharper. Rejection, maybe, or the sting of being reduced to nothing more than a cruel facsimile. "I don't want any part of this world, Barnes," she shot back, watching him flinch—that subtle, involuntary recoil—when his last name hit the air like a curse. "But I'm not wearing anyone's face. This is me. My identity. My body. My life." Her voice rose, shaking with emotion she couldn't contain. "So I'm sorry your girlfriend died, but it's not fair for you to tell me I don't have the right to know what happened when I'm the one who has to live with everyone looking at me like I'm her ghost—"

"Shut up."

The words were a snarl, torn from his throat with a fury so raw and primal it made even Sam take a step back. His voice cracked like thunder, filling every corner of the small room. "Don't fucking say you're sorry. You have no idea who she was…what she meant, what she gave, what she sacrificed. You have no right to even speak her name, let alone wear her face and pretend you understand what any of us lost when she died."

Her chest heaved as white-hot anger surged through her veins like molten metal. "Why are you being such a complete jackass?" she snapped, her voice rising to match his, all pretense of composure abandoned. "You can't take this out on me! This isn't my fault! I didn't ask to be here, I didn't know what I was walking into, I didn't choose to look like her!" The words poured out of her in a torrent, years of frustration and confusion and fear crystallizing into pure rage. "You think I wanted to land in a world where I find out I was apparently dating a mass murderer? In my world, you're a war criminal! A terrorist!"

Something fundamental broke in him then. She could see it happen, the exact moment his carefully constructed composure shattered like glass.

Before she could even draw her next breath, he was there. Impossibly fast, covering the distance between them in a heartbeat. His face was just inches from hers, close enough that she could see the flecks of silver in his blue eyes, could feel the heat radiating off his skin. The air between them vibrated with the force of his fury, electric and dangerous. His eyes had gone nearly black, bottomless and wild, and when he spoke, his voice was molten steel poured over broken glass.

"You need to stop talking. Right now."

But her heart was hammering against her ribs like a caged bird, her throat raw with fury and fear and something else she couldn't name, and she couldn't stop. The words kept coming, sharp and cutting and designed to hurt. "What, does the Winter Soldier not like being reminded of the blood on his hands?" she spat, each word hitting its mark with surgical precision. "You think you get to stand there and act like I'm the monster when it was you? You killed for decades, Barnes. Innocent people. Children, probably. And now you want to be the judge of who deserves answers? That's rich."

His jaw tightened, a muscle jumping beneath the skin, his metal hand curling into a fist at his side with a soft mechanical whir.

"You ruined lives," she pressed on relentlessly, her voice shaking with anger and hurt and the desperate need to make him feel even a fraction of the pain he'd inflicted on her. She didn’t know why. She felt horrible doing it, knew it would solve nothing but create more pain. But she was so mad. So frustrated that everyone was treating her like a scar that hadn’t gone away. Couldn’t they see how alone she felt like this? "Entire families. Hundreds, maybe thousands of innocent people who never even knew your name." 

She laughed, but it was sharp and bitter, more like a sob than anything resembling humor. "But I'm the problem here? Because I look like some woman you couldn't save? Because I'm a reminder that you failed to protect the one thing that mattered to you?"

"Stop." The word broke from him like something vital tearing, guttural and desperate, but she was too far gone to hear it.

"—at least I never became the boogeyman little kids had nightmares about. At least I never let myself become a weapon pointed at the innocent. You're a murderer, Barnes. A murderer trying to play saint, and you have the audacity to act like—"

"Stop it, babe —"

The word slipped out before he could catch it, automatic and devastating. His face changed instantly—shock and raw, bleeding pain flickering across his features like he'd just ripped open a wound that had barely begun to heal. His lips pressed together hard, his eyes wide with something that looked like horror at his own slip, but it was too late. The word was hanging in the air between them, heavy and intimate and absolutely forbidden.

Her stomach lurched violently. The sound of it hit her like a physical blow. Unfamiliar to her but weighted with an intimacy she didn't share, couldn't claim, had no right to. It was a glimpse into someone else's love story, someone else's heart, and she was nothing but an unwelcome intruder. She stepped back sharply, stumbling slightly, as if the word had burned her.

"Don't," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Don't call me that. I'm not her. I'm not—" But she couldn't finish, couldn't voice what they both knew: that she was a pale imitation, a cosmic mistake like he had said. A walking reminder of everything he'd lost.

Sam was there in a flash, planting a firm hand against Bucky's chest, shoving him back a step before things could escalate further. "That's enough," Sam barked, his voice sharp with authority, his eyes darting between them like he was trying to defuse a bomb. "Both of you. Stop this right now."

Bucky froze, his chest heaving with ragged breaths, but his eyes never left her face. He looked utterly shattered, like he wanted to reach for her. Or maybe like he wanted to run as far away as possible. She couldn't tell which, and that uncertainty made everything worse.

Sam's hand stayed firm against Bucky's chest, even as the soldier's breathing began to even out into something resembling normal. His gaze flicked to her — still standing there rigid and trembling, staring at Bucky like she didn't even know what she was looking at anymore, like he was some dangerous animal that might strike at any moment.

Sam made the executive decision first. "We're leaving," he said flatly, not taking his eyes off Bucky. He gave him a sharp nudge toward the door, and Bucky went without protest, his shoulders tense as steel cables, his jaw locked like stone. He moved like a man in a trance, hollow and mechanical.

Before following, Sam turned back to her one last time. His expression softened fractionally, regret shadowing his dark eyes like storm clouds. "I'm sorry," he said quietly, and she could hear that he meant it. Sorry for bringing Bucky here, sorry for the pain they'd both inflicted, sorry that any of this had to happen at all.

She didn't answer. Couldn't. Her throat was too tight, her chest too full of emotions she didn't have names for. She just stood there, arms wrapped around herself like armor, eyes burning holes in the floor as silence pressed in from all sides.

Sam lingered for a heartbeat longer, waiting for something, anything, from her. Some sign that she was okay, that they could salvage this situation, that the damage wasn't irreparable. But when nothing came, when she remained frozen in her protective shell, he nodded once—heavy and resigned and infinitely tired—and followed Bucky out.

She watched them go through the blur of unshed tears. The door closed behind them with a soft click that echoed louder than it had any right to, final and absolute. Bucky never looked back.

The apartment was suddenly too big and too empty, the silence pressing against her eardrums like deep water. And all she could hear was that single word still echoing in her head carrying a weight that wasn't hers to bear, a love that would never belong to her, and the devastating knowledge that she was nothing more than a cruel reminder of everything this world had lost.

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