#mcu xreader

The almost scolding sound of his voice sent your lips pursing in consternation. Immediately, you went to defend yourself and explain your state and the events leading to it in some way that absolved you of sole responsibility. But, you couldn’t.

Thinking back to the events that immediately preceded your waking up you drew a blank. Well, almost. You could remember the pain and a fair amount of panic alongside it, but the circumstance escaped you.

Your answering silence, alongside the panicked uptick of your heart and the thousand other stress responses he could likely pick up on, spoke loud enough. In the end, he verbalised the answer for you; “you don’t remember?”

Wincing at the pull of the thread suturing you back together, you grit your teeth. “Do you have to sound so disapproving?”

A dark laugh met that, but no words. The silence surprised you. The pair of you often engaged in sarcastic exchanges to overshadow these more more morbid aspects of your existence. It was unlike him to allow this silence linger between you - silence a space that allowed quashed thoughts and feelings to bubble into stark reality.

In the silence, punctuated by the sting of your wounds, your eyes acclimatised your this new light. His features appeared in greater clarity, eyebrows drawn and lips pursed as he worked on you. His skin was splashed in shifting neon; purples, reds, and blues scattering rhythmically over his skin.

Where were you?

You sat up suddenly with this question. An immediate pain scratched through you at this jolting movement and warm, rough hands stilled you. One palm flattened against your back whilst the other gripped the crook of your elbow. “Slow down,” he all but grumbled, “you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

You ignored his concern and looked around, one hand gripping the back of the sofa in an admittedly feeble attempt to steady yourself. “Where are we?”

Looking back to him you watched a strange uncertainty pull at him, lips quirking as his jaw clenched. Eventually, he provided you your answer; “my apartment.“

“Oh,” you did not bother to hide your surprise.

Your meetings previously had always been of a more clandestine nature. Dark alleys and rooftops, stern and sardonic words shared over the hubbub of a city that never slept. You had seen his face only a handful of times, known his real name for only a few weeks, and a visit to his apartment seemed such a large leap.

“W-what happened?” You asked again, more concern lancing through you at the revelation of your location. “Why am I here?”

Another heavy sigh escaped him, hands leaving your now steadied figure to drag tiredly over his face. The rusted red of dried blood upon his hands widened your eyes. Without thinking, your hands darted forward to take hold of his.

You ignored the surprised catch of his breath at the feel of your hands and turned over his hand in yours. Thumb sweeping softly over the skin there, you struggled to ascertain the source of this stark amount of blood. “Are you hurt?”

He swallowed thickly, voice hoarse when he eventually replied. “It’s not mine.” Clearing his throat, he gently extracted his hand and stood. Collecting the scant and bloodied medical supplies he had scattered haphazardly around the pair of you, he moved to the sink. You watched him scrub his hands. His face appeared forced into stoicism yet still he looked haggard. More so than you had ever seen him, a surprise given the location should be so familiar to him.

In a voice unlike your usual, you timidly asked, “Matt, are you okay?”

A crash of something answered the question. His face split into an anger you could at least recognise. Leaning heavily against the counter, a ragged breath heaved from him and he directed sharp words at you. “No, I’m not okay,” a tremor rang through the words, blunting their sharpness somewhat. “I found you half-dead in some alleyway,” his shoulders hunched as his head dropped, voice rising in anger. “You need to be more careful!”

Defensive, against his tone despite the actions he had taken to save you tonight, you argued back. “What, like you?” You jabbed angrily. “You’re always so fucking careful.” You shifted from your place on the couch to dramatically stand and leave.

You didn’t need this from someone who had already spent so much of his life in similar states of injury.

You were going to leave, without so much as a thank you, and disappear back into the night. You were going to, but a fresh pain tore through your side and you collapsed back onto the sofa with a choked gasp.

He was before you again in an instant. So quickly, in fact, that you assumed you had briefly blacked out. “Are you finished?” He asked with a huff. The condescension of his tone was made bearable by the concern tightening his lips. One hand softly lifted your shirt, careful fingertips examining the landscape of torn skin. “You’ve torn a few stitches.”

You grimaced at that, you really didn’t want to have to sit through any more. “Will it be okay?”

Fingertips still surveying the damage, he gave you an answer that sent relief soothing through you. “It was only a couple,” he removed his fingers slowly, fingertips seeming to linger upon the unbroken skin of your ribs. “The others-“ the words cut off prematurely as he cleared his throat and shifted oddly in place. “The others should hold.”

Silence welled between you briefly and it felt so very heavy that you thoughtlessly broke it. “Thank you.”

His head jerked strangely in response, lips working oddly as he chewed over whatever response had sprung forth. Eventually, a few quiet words managed to escape him. “I need you to be more careful.”

The subtle difference between these words and those he had harshly thrown at you just moments prior stilled you.

You need to be more careful.

I need you to be more careful.

Your eventual response was whispered. “I’m not going to stop, Matt.” His jaw worked but no words left him; he had expected the answer but he didn’t like it. “You know that.”

“I’m not asking you to,” he told you when his voice, however hoarse, returned to him. “Just be careful.”

The request was helpless and he knew it. The world you chose to inhabit, that you both chose to inhabit, had little room for those that were too careful.

“I’ll try,” you supplied, voice wavering under the sudden and unexpected weight of this conversation.

The answer wasn’t enough. He leaned heavily forwards, a specific intensity to his expression that you had never seen before and were almost afraid to interpret. “Potter,” he provided, “my suit can stop knives, sometimes even bullets.” As he spoke he nodded to himself, seemingly attempting to convince himself that this solution would fix everything. “I’ll talk to him, he’ll make something for you.”

You were unconvinced. “I don’t know, Matt. He doesn’t know me, why would he do that?”

Matt was resolute. He needed this to work and seemed determined to force it to. “He will if I ask him.”

It was a moot point, arguing now was pointless. Matt had made up his mind, Potter would either agree or he wouldn’t. It didn’t matter in this moment. Besides, fatigue was swiftly catching up with you.

“Okay,” you half-heartedly agreed, a shrug shifting your shoulders.

Cockily, he gave you nothing but a chuckle in response. Hands clutching your waist greedily as you melted into his attention.

A sudden ding jolted you from his arms, the grumble of your stomach more enticed by the idea of breakfast than his advances, and you rushed to the toaster. Licking your lips you plucked the two slices of toast from the toaster and plonked one piece indelicately on each plate. “Hope you’re hungry?”

Wryly, he smirked at you. “Sure,” he sidled up beside you, leaning forward to twist the dial of the radio, “what we having?”

As the music clicked off, you raised a brow at him - butter knife brandished as you paused in your action. “Well, I was having fun but you turned the music off.”

Delicately, he extracted the knife from you, taking over the important job of buttering the toast while you moved back to the frying pan.

“You call that music, doll?” You shook your head with a giggle, this familiar rant of his almost funny to you now. “That’s just… noise.”

Flicking the controls to turn off the hob, you deposited two slices of bacon on each plate and dumped the pan in the sink. “You’re so old.” You told him sardonically, listening to the hiss of cool tap water hitting the still heated pan.

Dismissively, he muttered “yeah, yeah,” as he leaned around you to send the butter knife clattering into the sink. “You know in my day, they made music you could actually dance to.”

You paused in your action, aggressively scrubbing the frying pan, and looked at him with a snorting laugh. “‘Back in my day’,” you mocked in good humour. A light laugh preceded your next sarcastic question; “what are you, a hundred years old?”

With a dramatic roll of his eyes he plucked the sponge from your hand and took over. “A hundred and five, next month.” He said that so matter-of-factly you couldn’t be sure if he were just continuing along with your poor excuse for a joke.

Frowning, eyebrows pushing together, you waited for him to clarify what that had even meant. When he said nothing, you pushed; “wait, wait, what?”

Carefully, stacking the pan on the drying rack, he shrugged. “My birthday’s next month.”

Grabbing a fresh tea-towel, grimacing at the sight of water pooling on the draining board, you shook your head. “Yeah, I got that part.” You told him, catching his eyes briefly before smoothing the towel over the pan, “you’re a hundred and five?” You asked, confused by whatever joke he was telling.

Plainly, he looked at you. “Yes,” he confirmed, “you know that.”

Flabbergasted, you shook your head. “I think I’d remember something like that, Bucky?” An element of fear infected his expression at the suddenly high pitch of your voice. “It’s not like a dealbreaker,” you assured, “but… you didn’t tell me that?!”

Seeming a little more settled, he squinted at you. “I didn’t outright say it, no,” he agreed, “but it’s pretty common knowledge.”

Lips twisting you pulled your phone from your pocket, tapping furiously into the search bar. The answer shone up at you, the fact feeling more real now that it was cemented in pixels. “Huh,” you gave, clicking the phone screen off, “you’re… right.“

A laugh pealed from him as he came to lean against the counter beside you, arms crossed over his chest. “Yeah - I think I know how old I am.”

You nodded, brain still almost short circuiting with this information. “I thought when you said you were older than you looked you meant you were like… fifty or something not… a centenarian.”

Eyes narrowed, he leaned forward as though to hear you better. “A what?”

“Centenarian,” you repeated, “yknow, over a hundred.” Feeling a spark of tension rolling from him, something about this subject pulling him taut, you smirked and attempted to push him back into the quiet ease of the morning. “You’re pretty spry for an old guy.”

One brow raising at you, arms uncrossing as his shoulders dropped slightly, he asked; “oh yeah?”

Nodding, springing lightly closer to him, you sent delicate fingertips over his neck. “Yeah,” you affirmed. Then, with fingers now skimming past his hairline, you added in a husky whisper; ”full of youthful stamina too.”

He ducked his head as he laughed, one hand slung lazily over your hips as the other pushed him away from the counter and closer to you. His tone dropped and became lazy in that seductive way of his, eyes bright and dark all at once as they all but smouldered over you: “You want another demonstration of that stamina?”

The loud buzz of the egg timer you had placed atop the fridge cut off any response you could make. With a new excitement infecting every movement, making you almost clumsy with bouncy haste, you moved from him to open the oven. You heard a disappointed huff from the man behind you before the egg timer was silenced, but you ignored it in favour of opening the oven and basking in the smell of hash browns.

Oven gloves quickly secured, you pulled the tray free and felt your mouth watering at the sight of golden potato.

As you dished out the rest of the breakfast items, giving him a little extra as always, you couldn’t help a last jab. “Do you want me to cut it up for you, or maybe blend it so you don’t have to chew?”

“Very funny,” he grumbled, leaning over to turn the radio back on at almost full volume; an innocent smile shot your way.