#edited again because fears should just...be anxieties...

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

He would find her at every meeting and every moment when she was in the break room. It was almost like he had some sort of alarm for whenever she moved at work. He would even go as far as walking her to her car on late nights, trying to make sure that she was safe. Which as a fellow agent, at first it drove her nuts, but once she realized he didn’t mean it as a mark on her ability but instead just for his own piece of mind, she warmed up to it. Despite what everyone warned her, she found herself enjoying his company, finding his weird social quirks adorable. 

She found herself happy to be around him, looking forward to their small work day interactions - almost finding herself praying to be invited to more of the after-work hangouts the original members of Checkmate seemed to go out on. Anything to have time with Adrian. 

However, sitting next to Adrian Chase on an airplane was a new type of Adrian, one she wasn’t thrilled about and felt ill-equipped to handle. 

His hands were shaking as he played with his belt buckle again, the rough sound of the metal clicking over and over again driving her slowly insane as he shuffled against her in the too small seat as she tried to focus on the dossier Chris had given them. She knew Adrian wasn’t going to read it, so at least one of them should be somewhat prepared for the mission, but she could tell he was anxious before they were even dropped off at the airport. His usual rambling was disjointed, like he couldn’t even keep his own thoughts straight as he stumbled through incorrect animal facts and ideas for the team to do when they got back, practically mixing the two up half the time.  

At first it worried her. She had never seen Adrian anxious before, and she had seen him go through way too many situations without anxiety for this to make any lick of sense. However, it didn’t take long to remind herself that this was Adrian Chase and nothing he did ever made a lick of sense.

So, a fear of flying didn’t seem that crazy and when she thought about it, Adrian normally did local Checkmate missions, nothing further than six hours by car. She just didn’t realize it was probably because of a refusal to get on a plane until now. It wasn’t until Chris told him that he truly felt like Adrian was the only one that could handle the mission that he had just beamed into agreement. 

But now faced with the reality of the situation, Adrian was back regretting his decision, and there was no Chris to pull him back.   

“Adrian, the plane hasn’t even left the tarmac, take a deep breath,” she said, not even bothering to look over at him, perfectly envisioning his panic-stricken face as she read over their key target’s information for what felt the millionth time, brow furrowed as she tried to make sense of it.

“We’re in a metal tube that’s twenty minutes away from being in the fucking sky and you’re telling me you’re not worried?” Adrian whispered in her ear, plucking the dossier from her hands and shoving it in his backpack at his feet. He keeps his eyes on hers and they’re wide with fear. 

“I was reading that!” she whined, leaning against Adrian, looking at him with a pout. 

“Yeah, well, your ‘husband’ is freaking out!” he hissed, and she felt warmth creep up her neck. Going undercover wasn’t her favorite type of mission, she always felt out of place and awkward, but Chris had insisted that she and Adrian were the only two fit for this mission. 

And it involved them pretending to be newlyweds at some resort that apparently had an international drug ring brewing. She didn’t fully understand how Checkmate received this mission to begin with, hence her trying to study the dossier. Plus, she wasn’t high up enough to even question the mission, especially why she was picked to go with Adrian. 

“Adrian, it’s a six hour flight. You have your switch, right? Just zone out and play games,” she said gently. He gasped as the plane jolted away from the terminal. Adrian was gripping his legs so tight that his knuckles were turning white, and she’s sure if he wasn’t in jeans he would’ve broken the skin on his leg from his own grip. 

“I can’t focus on a game when we’re in something that can kill us and I could do nothing about it,” he said tensely and she sighed, prying his hand off his leg and letting him squeeze the life out of her hand. 

“Adrian, we are going to be fine,” she said softly, nudging her shoulder against his as he released a shaky breath, his hand still tight around hers. 

“You promise?” he asked as the plane started driving slowly to the runway. 

“Adrian, have I ever lied to you?” she asked firmly. Adrian looked up, genuinely thinking about it. 

“Directly? I’m not really sure, but I’m sure you’ve told me some white lies,” he answered honestly, and she rolled her eyes. 

“Okay, well Adrian this is not a white lie. I’ve been on probably at least ten flights in my life and I’m still here, and I am absolutely positive that this time will be no different,” she said confidently. Sensing that the plane was about to take off, she took a deep breath before turning herself as much as she could to look at him. “Okay, Adrian, the plane is about to take off really fast. This is probably going to be the scariest part-”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he started muttering as she continued.

“But it’s okay because I’m going to hold your hand and keep talking till we’ve settled in the sky, okay?” Adrian nods with a sharp gasp as the plane begins to take off. “Adrian, keep looking at me, okay? We’re totally fine, this is all super normal, okay?” 

“Okay,” he squeaked out, eyes big and locked on her, she kept her expression as neutral as possible, hoping to not scare Adrian even further. 

“This is the worst bit, the rest should be super smooth and before you know it we’ll be at the resort and we get to spend a bunch of money on good food and kill some bad guys. Your favorite tasks!” she tried with a smile as she felt the plane finally start to level out and with the feeling she could see Adrian start to loosen. 

“Well, technically it’s my money from my mom’s basement, but I get your point. Do you think the resort will have good desserts? Sometimes I feel like fancy places have really good food and then they have to ruin it with only tart or bitter desserts, like I just want something sweet,” Adrian whined and she laughed, happy he seemed to be loosening up, although his grip was still deathly tight. 

“Adrian, I have to tell you a secret,” she said with a smile, and Adrian’s eyebrows raised as he leaned closer to her, his hand started to loosen but still holding on to her steady. “I read the resort's menu and studied it more than I did the dossier,” she whispered and for a second Adrian just looked at her with a blank expression.

It took him just a beat to start dying of laughter, leaning full force against her. Heat was coming off his body in waves and she couldn’t handle it, she just hoped that he couldn’t feel her heart pounding. Knowing Adrian if he did notice, he’d assume it was because of the plane. At least she had that going for her. 

“Can you tell me what soups they had?” he joked and she smiled, happy to see Adrian at least somewhat normal and not picking up on her weird feelings. 

The rest of the flight the two talked, she kept Adrian distracted or at least as distracted as she could through every bump and new noise on the plane. Their hands stayed locked the whole time, starting tight and uncomfortable till he relaxed and it was just a firm pressure, one that was comforting and almost familiar. 

Falling for Adrian was not something she thought would ever happen. When she met him she was intrigued by his weird, but well-intended actions, always doing what he was so sure was the best move. But even with his sharp edges and strange moments she was drawn to him and with time she started to notice how bright his green eyes were, his freckles and moles she wanted nothing more to just count, the small faded scars that littered his body, and the way he wanted nothing more to make her smile. He seemed to feed off of it, her laugh made him laugh harder, her smile made him smile, and whenever she frowned he worked double time to try to make her smile. 

But Adrian never made a move on her, never really flirted back with her. Despite the fact she thought for sure that he liked her, she had no concrete evidence. Sure he would sit next to her during meetings, called being her partner in the field, and always make sure she made it to the medical bay even for the smallest of injuries. Adrian always insisted on double checking that she was truly okay. 

So she shoved her feelings deep inside and was content with just being his friend. 

This mission was complicating her feelings a little bit, but Adrian didn’t seem even phased at the prospect at all. He simply plucked the wedding band out of their supply room and slipped it on the correct finger before handing her her very own engagement ring and wedding band with his typical goofy grin. 

She had looked at it intently every free moment. It was light, probably fake just due to the Checkmate budget on props, but it still felt heavy with the idea of marriage to Adrian. Which was crazy because the most touching the two had done was hugging after Adrian was hopped up on adrenaline after finally getting a chainsaw kill. 

“Thank god,” Adrian muttered as the wheels finally hit the ground and he let go of her hand, flexing it slightly from being locked in the same position for so long. She frowned at the loss of warmth from Adrian, but she was happy enough that he at least seemed to feel okay. “Okay, so the rental car and then how far is the resort?” 

“It’s about 30 minutes when I checked back at the office. Do you want me to drive?” she asked as it was finally her turn to get out of her seat and get her bag. She watched Adrian pout as he clearly wanted to help her get it out. 

“I’m okay driving if you’re okay giving directions,” he said with a shrug and she smiled. 

“Are you sure? I’ve never seen you drive a car other than your Sebring. I’d hate for us to crash a rental car on top of a mission that will probably already come with some property damage,” she said with a teasing tone and Adrian let out a harsh laugh. 

“I can drive any vehicle! I’m forklift certified, in fact!” 

“What? Why?” 

“I found a course online, it was like $35.” 

“I don’t think that was real, Ade.” 

“Yes it is! I’ve got a bunch of printed out certificates in my desk that say otherwise! I’m also a notary and an ordained minister!” he said and she laughed as they started to move off the plane. 

“Okay, well you can drive then, Father,” she teased with a smile and Adrian's face crept pink. It’s then she’s realized what she’s said and how it can be taken. “I just meant...like what you call a Catholic Priest, like they call them Father and then their name…I didn’t mean it, you know in the other way.” She cringed. 

“What other way?” Adrian squeaked out and she let out a shaky breath. At least he had the decency to pretend he didn’t understand.

“Come on, Adrian. We have a long week ahead of us,” she said as she began leading them through the airport, Adrian followed like a dutiful puppy.

____

Tag List:

@trelaney @kierselleboogie @v1gilanteloser @quietlybitchy @lil-rigatoni @snowyathena @tez0 @danversxwasabi  @obsessedromancereader @pandanapping

It was Leo.

Unlike most people she'd met at Darkwick, Leo gave her the distinct impression that noticing things wasn't a skill.

It was a hobby. A hobby he enjoyed far too much.

"Interesting?" she repeated carefully.

Leo smiled. Immediately, her level of concern doubled. "You looked startled."

"I almost walked into you."

"You almost did something else too."

Oh no. Her heartbeat immediately sped up.

Not visibly. Years of surviving Lucifer's scrutiny had trained that out of her. Internally, however, every alarm she possessed began activating simultaneously.

Did he notice? No. Impossible.

The spell hadn't even formed. The magic barely manifested. Nobody should have sensed anything, especially not someone from this world.

Right?

Unfortunately, confidence became difficult to maintain when Leo continued staring at her like she'd just become the most interesting thing he'd seen all day.

Which, given this was Leo, wasn't reassuring.

She folded her arms. Mostly because it gave her something to do. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Hm." That single syllable somehow communicated complete disbelief.

Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.

The conversation had existed for less than a minute, and she already wanted to leave. Unfortunately, Leo seemed perfectly content keeping her there, which she doesn't understand. Actually, now that she looked closer—

He seemed unusually cheerful.

This immediately made her suspicious because she didn't know Leo particularly well. What she did know came mostly from observation. And one conclusion had become abundantly clear.

Leo in a good mood was probably bad news for everyone else.

The same way Mammon smiles near expensive objects. Or Belphegor smiling near unsecured plans. Or Solomon smiling in general. Nothing good ever followed.

"...Why are you smiling?"

Leo blinked, then smiled wider. Mistake, that was a mistake. She should not have asked. "I didn't realize that bothered you."

"It concerns me."

Leo snickered, which somehow confirmed every concern she had. "Maybe I learned something interesting recently."

Her stomach tightened immediately. Not because of what he'd said, but because of who had said it.

Over the past week, she'd learned enough about Leo to understand that information wasn't something he merely collected. He enjoyed it. Pulled it apart. Examined it from different angles. Poked at it just to see what happened. The man treated secrets the way some people treated puzzles.

Which would normally be irritating. Right now it’s terrifying.

The panic arrived first. Logic followed several seconds later.

Because Leo's stigma existed.

And she knew that.

She knew enough about Dark Wick and the ghouls by now to understand that Leo wasn't simply observant. His stigma let him hear things ordinary people couldn't. Snippets. Fragments. Hidden details. Information people weren't supposed to know. Information like—

Her pulse jumped again. No. Stop.

The panic immediately started losing ground the moment she forced herself to remember.

Every conversation, the important one, the dangerous one. All of their conversation, actually. She'd been using concealment spells, Leo shouldn't have heard anything.

Nobody should have. Which meant she was panicking over nothing. Probably. Hopefully.

Leo continued watching her. The silence itself felt deliberate. Like he was waiting.

For what?

A flinch? A mistake? A confession?

The realization settled unpleasantly in her stomach. He was looking for a reaction.

"...Interesting?" she asked carefully.

"Alan came back in a terrible mood yesterday," Leo hummed, a very annoying noise. "Apparently, he'd gone all the way to Frostheim for something. Next thing I know, he's stomping around looking like he wants to punch a wall. I heard Jin was involved somehow."

Another baited hook. Which was exactly why she refused to react.

The mention of Jin had caught her attention. She knew it had. The memory of that argument she'd witnessed while following Lucas and Kaito surfaced immediately.

Jin looked angrier than she'd ever seen him. Tohma is looking equally unwilling to back down. At the time, she'd only caught fragments. Enough to understand they were fighting. Not enough to understand why.

Was that connected?

Her stomach sank. Leo was watching her again, watching far too closely. And suddenly she understood.

Oh. Oh, he was fishing.

The realization hit with enough force that she almost laughed. Not because it was funny, but because it was irritating.

The annoying part? It was working.

Because she genuinely wanted to know what happened between Jin and Tohma. Unfortunately, wanting to know and letting Leo know she wanted to know were two completely different things.

"That sounds unfortunate," she said.

"Hm." That was all he said. Just that single syllable. And somehow it was infuriating. "You know, I couldn't hear much."

His tone seemed to imply that it was bothering him, but the expression on his face didn't match his tone of voice. If anything, he seemed entertained. Which was exactly why she didn't trust it.

"I hate when my stigma cuts out at the interesting parts. And that Himbo was no help. Every time I asked, he got annoyed. Which is rude." For someone supposedly complaining about Alan's mood, Leo looked far too pleased with himself.

She stared at him. "You were literally trying to listen to something that wasn't your business."

"Exactly."

The answer came immediately. Without hesitation. Without shame. Without even a hint of self-awareness. She honestly didn't know why she expected otherwise.

Leo crossed his arms. "I was gathering information."

"That's called eavesdropping."

The problem was that Leo said it with the same tone somebody might use when explaining basic arithmetic. Completely unbothered.

As if the distinction between "gathering information" and "eavesdropping" existed only for people who enjoyed making life unnecessarily complicated.

For a moment, he looked genuinely confused by her objection, then he shrugged. "You know what, I think eavesdropping sounds cooler, actually."

Of course he did.

She should've known arguing with Leo was a waste of energy. The man would probably argue that gravity was optional if it annoyed enough people.

"You know," Leo continued, seemingly abandoning the topic entirely, "I was expecting something way more interesting."

Immediately suspicious, she narrowed her eyes. "About what?"

"You."

Every conversation involving Leo felt like accidentally stepping into a trap you couldn't see. The worst part was that half the time she wasn't even sure he knew where the trap was either.

He just enjoyed throwing things onto the floor and seeing what somebody stepped on.

"What about me?"

Leo hummed. A long, thoughtful sound.

The kind people make when deciding whether or not they should say something. Unfortunately, Leo had never seemed particularly burdened by such decisions.

"You've been weird lately."

Her heart dropped. There it is. The thing she'd been waiting for. The thing she'd been dreading. The thing that apparently every person in Darkwick had collectively decided to notice.

Fortunately, panic has become familiar territory recently. And familiar territory was easier to navigate.

"Everyone keeps saying that."

"See?" Leo pointed at her immediately. "That's weird."

"...What?"

"Normally you'd ask who."

The response came so fast she almost missed it.

Leo looked pleased. Like he'd found an unexpected piece while assembling a puzzle. She felt a flicker of alarm. Small. Sharp. Dangerous.

"You remember stuff like that?"

"NPC, I remember everything."

The nickname somehow sounded less insulting and more matter-of-fact when it came from him. Which honestly wasn't better. But considering Leo's personality, maybe that made sense.

The original MC had spent years helping everyone. Showing up whenever somebody needed something.

Fixing problems.

Running errands.

Supporting people.

Being available.

Being reliable.

Being there. Always there.

The role itself practically encouraged becoming part of the background.

The person everyone relied on. The person nobody really questioned. And she supposed from Leo's perspective—

Someone suddenly developing stronger opinions probably would seem strange. But the realization didn't make her feel better.

Leo leaned slightly against the wall.

Not blocking her path. Not trapping her. Yet somehow making it impossible to leave naturally.

"I mean, usually you'd ask."

"Ask what?"

" 'Who said that?' " His voice shifted slightly as he mimicked the conversation.

" 'When?' " Another gesture.

" 'What exactly did they say?' " Another.

" 'Why do they think that?' " He dropped his hand.

"You skipped all that." The smile returned. "You accepted it really fast."

For one horrifying second she wondered if she'd actually made a mistake. Then she stopped herself.

No.

Because the more she thought about it, the more obvious the pattern became. Leo wasn't presenting evidence. He was collecting reactions. The same thing he'd been doing since the conversation started.

He noticed something. He said it. Then watched.

If somebody reacted, great. If they didn't, he moved on and found something else.

She'd spent enough time around manipulative people to recognize when somebody was deliberately steering a conversation like this one.

Solomon did it. Asmodeus did it. Diavolo occasionally did it while pretending he wasn't.

Leo was doing it now.

The difference was that Leo wasn't trying to guide the conversation toward a specific conclusion.

He was watching. Testing.

Dropping pieces onto a board and seeing which ones made people react.

And suddenly she understood why he made her nervous.

Unlike people such as Romeo or Jin, who approached problems directly, Leo seemed to enjoy circling around them.

Observing. Collecting information. Finding weak points.

Then smiling while he did it.

"And you know what?"

"What?"

Leo tilted his head. "You could probably get replaced and nobody would notice."

She stared at him. "...Excuse me?"

"I'm serious." A little smirk tugged at his mouth, the kind that made her want to throw something at him. "If Sho suddenly closed his food truck because he got bored of it, everybody would notice."

She hesitated for a second. She wasn't entirely sure how to respond. "That may be a little concerning."

"Exactly." Leo pointed at her. "See? You're getting it."

She wasn't getting anything.

"You disappear for a week, people ask where you went."

A shrug.

"You disappear for a month, people get worried."

Another shrug.

"You get replaced by some weird clone?"

He paused.

"Honestly, I think half the school would still ask you for favors."

Her eye twitched, not because the comment was particularly cruel. Because it wasn't, and that was the problem.

Leo had managed to summarize months of the original MC's existence in a few careless sentences, reducing her to the person everyone called when they needed something.

God, she hated that.

Hated how casually everyone seemed to accept it. How normal it was for people to take and take and take, then act surprised whenever MC wasn't immediately available.

And the worst part? Leo wasn't even wrong.

Leo immediately perked up. "Oh, there it is."

"what is?"

Leo leaned back against the wall. "You never used to look annoyed when people said annoying things."

"I absolutely did."

"No." 

The answer came immediately. Like he'd already decided she was wrong before she opened her mouth.

"You looked tired." The correction landed so casually she almost missed it. "You know how old phones look right before they die?"

"...What?"

"You had that vibe."

She blinked. "What does that even mean?"

"It means you looked like somebody running on a three percent battery." The grin returned. "And now you don't."

She hated that comparison.

"Actually, that's what was bothering me."

"Bothering you?"

"Yeah."

His gaze narrowed slightly. "You actually react now."

She frowned. "I reacted before."

"No." The answer came immediately. "You tolerated things before."

A finger lifted.

"You'd smile."

Another.

"Nod."

Another.

"Fix whatever disaster somebody dumped on you."

Another.

"Then disappear."

"Now you look annoyed, you actually push back" His grin widened slightly.  "And honestly? It's way more interesting." He looked far too entertained. 

Her stomach tightened. Immediately. Because he wasn't wrong. And because he sounded entirely too pleased about it.

Leo gestured vaguely between them. "The old you would've escaped this conversation ages ago."

That caught her off guard. "What?"

"You would've done the polite thing." A hand gesture.

"Smile."

Another.

"Then leave."

His eyes flicked over her face. "But you're still here."

The words weren't accusatory and that's the problem.

If Leo had been accusing her of something, she could've denied it. If he'd been suspicious, she could've laughed it off. If he'd been trying to prove something, she could've picked apart his logic.

But he wasn't doing any of that.

And every casual observation felt like another finger pressing against a bruise she was desperately trying to hide.

Her shoulders locked. Her pulse thudded unpleasantly against her ribs.

Don't react.

Don't react.

Don't—

"Huh." The sound left him suddenly.

Her pulse immediately spiked. "What?"

Leo blinked, then laughed. "Oh wow."

"What?!!"

"You did it again."

Her stomach dropped. "Did what?"

"That face."

"What face?"

"The one where you look like you're trying really hard not to panic."

"..."

"..."

Leo snorted. "There it is."

She hated him.

Leo pushed away from the wall. Still grinning. "You know..."

His voice turned thoughtful. Or at least Leo's version of thoughtful, which mostly sounded like trouble preparing itself.

"The old you was easier." The statement landed strangely. "The old you would've nodded by now. Way less fun, though."

Her stomach tightened.

"You make me sound boring."

"You were boring." The answer came immediately, without hesitation.

Leo grinned. "You were useful."

Somehow that felt even worse.

"You just showed up, solved problems, and disappeared."

That...

Actually sounded disturbingly accurate.

"You didn't argue."

Another point.

"You didn't roll your eyes."

Another.

"You definitely didn't look at me like you're doing right now."

His grin widened. "There it is."

She hated this conversation. She hated it so much. Mostly because she couldn't tell how much of it was nonsense and how much of it was genuine observation.

With Leo, those two things seemed to overlap far too often. Fortunately, she'd already reached her limit.

Lucas. She needed Lucas. Or Kaito. Either one.

Immediately.

Preferably before Leo decided to continue whatever bizarre social experiment he was currently conducting.

So she took a step backward. "I have somewhere to be."

"Frostheim?"

The answer came too fast. Her eyes narrowed immediately.

Leo looked delighted. "Wow."

"..."

"That was a really good reaction."

Damn it. Absolutely damn it.

He laughed again, like the conversation had confirmed something entertaining.

"You're impossible."

"I get that a lot." Leo looked pleased by the response.

Of course, he did. At this point, she was beginning to suspect he treated irritation as a form of positive reinforcement. It's only strengthened her desire to leave.

Preferably before he found another conversational landmine to throw in her direction.

A hand caught her wrist.

The movement happened so suddenly that her body reacted before her mind did. Her muscles tensed. Magic threatened to surge instinctively beneath her skin. For one dangerous second she nearly twisted free on reflex.

"Hey—!!" The word died halfway out.

Not because Leo was holding her particularly hard. Because he wasn't smiling anymore. Even the lazy, careless attitude that seemed permanently attached to him had disappeared.

Leo had leaned slightly closer, his fingers remained loosely wrapped around her wrist. "You know, if somebody ever does replace you..."

Her entire body went cold. For a second she genuinely forgot how to breathe.

"...tell them not to."

Silence.

Her pulse slammed against her ribs. The hallway seemed to disappear. Every sound. Every voice. Every movement. 

Gone.

"What?"

She hated him. 

Hated how often he stumbled dangerously close to things he shouldn't know. Hated how easily he kept holding on details that everyone else probably tried hard to miss. Hated how impossible it was to tell whether he was joking.

Because he couldn't know.

He couldn't. Nobody knew. Nobody was supposed to know.

Then why did it feel like he was staring directly at the secret lodged inside her chest?

"If somebody steals your spot, puts on your face, starts pretending to be you..." A small frown appeared, like the hypothetical itself offended him. "...they should give it back."

Her heart nearly stopped. "What the hell are you talking about?"

The question came out sharper than intended. Leo ignored it. Or maybe he simply didn't care. Both were equally possible.

His gaze remained fixed on her face. Then, finally, the corner of his mouth lifted. "Because if I find out somebody actually replaced you..." His voice softened. "...I'd find out what happened to you."

A pause.

The smile on his face didn't reach his eyes. "And if they're hiding you, I'd drag you back."

Another pause.

"If they're pretending to be you, I'd make them slip." His fingers tightened ever so slightly around her wrist. "And if they still refused to leave..."

The words came out almost thoughtful. "...I'd stop being nice about it."

Silence stretched between them.

"Actually, scratch that." His grin widened. "I don't think I'd be nice about it at all."

Something cold crawled down her spine.

The words should've sounded ridiculous. They should've sounded like another joke. Instead they sounded horrifyingly sincere.

Not because he knew anything.

Because he sounded like he'd already decided what he'd do if it happened.

The thought terrified her. Because Leo wasn't looking at her like somebody making a joke. He was looking at her like somebody imagining a scenario. And deciding he didn't like it.

Then suddenly he blinked.

The moment shattered. Just like that. The strange intensity vanished, his grin widened. And Leo was Leo again.

"Oh." He laughed. "There it is."

"What is wrong with you?!" The outburst escaped before she could stop it. Several students glanced in their direction.

Leo looked delighted. "See? This never gets boring with that face."

She yanked her wrist free immediately. "You're insane."

"I've heard that one before too." Leo shrugged, completely unconcerned.

Like the last thirty seconds hadn't happened. Like he hadn't just reached into her worst fear and squeezed. She couldn't tell whether he'd meant any of it. Couldn't tell whether he was joking. Couldn't tell whether he was guessing.

The uncertainty followed her even as she turned away. Fast.

Because for the first time since arriving in Darkwick, she wanted only one thing. Find Lucas. Find Kaito. 

Immediately.

Before she had time to think about the fact that Leo had just described her exact nightmare without having any possible way of knowing it existed.

⊹ ࣪ ﹏𓊝﹏𓂁﹏⊹ ࣪ ˖ .fin

You were having the worst day. It seemed like your entire team was unaware of your existence. It wasn't a new feeling, of course. That's how you had manifested the ability to turn invisible in the first place. Your parents had ignored you. Forgotten you. That's how you were so easily captured and experimented on by whatever ghoulish HYDRA branch had done this to you. Now, in the place where you should feel least alone, you felt like you were as invisible as your powers could make you, without even using them. At this point, you had turned invisible unintentionally from feeling so ignored and unwanted.

There was only one person who made you feel seen. Bob. Bob understood you. He had been through hell in his life. Not unlike what you had been through to cope with what was done to you. That same, sweet, struggling man held you now as you did your best to hold back tears.

The truth was, your teammates were just busy. And anti-social freaks. But, mostly, busy. But Bob wasn't. Bob was mostly in the tower because the team loved him and needed to keep an eye on him, lest his mental health decline and his powers wreak havoc on Manhattan again. Bob would have been there for you even if he had been busy, though.

Bob adored you. It was so natural, from the moment you met. Val told the team your backstory, and Bob sat there in quiet admiration as you struggled to stay visible due to embarrassment. He could tell you would fit right in. And he had a strong feeling that you two would click.

Bob was right. You two had fallen in love so naturally it was hard to believe there was ever a time you two hadn't known each other. You were there for each other on your good days and your bad days. You both had a lot of bad days, but you had the love and patience for each other to make it through them together.

Bob held you tightly, whispering sweet reassurances in your ear, gently playing with your hair. He didn't need to see you to know where to hold you. He had you perfectly memorized.

As he held you, your anxieties lessened. You felt lighter in his arms. It was as if he could go inside your head and melt your fears away. Even if everyone else actually didn't want you around, you knew Bob did. He calmed you.

"There's my beautiful girl" Bob said as he smiled down at you "It's good to see your pretty face again, baby. Feeling better?"

It’s come to my attention that there’s a really sad anon out there randomly going into peoples inboxes and telling them I’m “problematic” with no further explanation as to why or what I’ve supposedly done.

Now I don’t know who exactly this anon is or what their problem is, but I do know one thing for sure: they’re one of Rot’s ignorant little dick riders. (Quick reality check: She hasn’t changed at all btw, sorry to burst your bubble!)

I've been a victim of both harassment and sexual harassment and stalking too, so it's wild to see myself being accused of the very thing I've been put through. Like, what is it, Opposite Day or something? Because I think I'd remember being fucking pathetic enough to go out of my way to harass someone, but you know what I do remember? The crying, the anxiety, the overwhelming sense of dread and sleepless nights, and the paranoia mixed with helplessness. That is something you unfortunately don’t forget when you’re made to go through that.

Oh, and yeah, I am self-shipper and always will be, but I am not a part of that godforsaken shitty community whatsoever anymore. I have never once harassed any other shippers; I block and move on because, frankly, as someone who's experienced it, I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Not to mention I do not have the energy emotionally or physically to be doing shit like that; I have actual hobbies and interests to dedicate my time to.

Anyway, since anon is in some made-up dream world where the roles seem to be reversed, here's all the real shit you need to see for what I've had to deal with:

🌸 🌸 🌸 🌸

Also anon quit pestering innocent people. It’s just a shitty thing to do.

On a final note, I'm obviously doing better now, but I won't be made to feel fear or discomfort because of this person and her loser friends/defenders again. So I'm making my boundaries crystal fucking clear.

Do not ever interact with me, my blogs, my posts, or literally anything to do with me if you even just so much as associate with the following individual in the slightest of ways:

@/hellfire-heresy

@/hellfireheresy

@/thornymoth

@/liminality-stars

(Edited on: 20/11/2025- first two urls changed.)

What she put me and many others through is inexcusable and unforgivable. I don’t want anyone who tolerates that type of bullshit around me.

This is all I have say to right now since I'd rather be posting gifs; I just thought I should shut down this stupidity before it continues.