To Whatever End

Spencer had left for his apartment straight from the airport with nothing more than a wave and a comment about needing to get home, picking up a few things from the drugstore and a Tupperware of soup along the way. It would no doubt be a struggle to get you to eat, hydrate, take painkillers or do anything, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try. Slowly stepping through the doorway into his apartment, the first thing he notices is how dark it is. Usually, you found joy in turning on the multiple lamps and lowlights settled through the mess of his apartment, allowing the warm light to cascade across the phthalo walls and his mahogany and walnut furniture. While you shared his distaste for big, bright lights, you also despised how much he tended to brood in the darkness. 

His eyes scan across his apartment, taking it all in. Everything, from the makeshift office to the messy living room, seems untouched. No candle lit on any of the tables, no returned book laying on his kitchen island, not even an attempt at cleaning up. If it wasn’t for the car keys abandoned on the desk closest to the door, hidden among his things, he would think that you hadn’t arrived yet.

Setting aside his go-bag and his satchel, he empties his hands before flicking on a few of the lamps. He steps around his couch to get to the ajar door of his bedroom, opening it slowly with a soft rap of his knuckles against the doorframe and a murmur of your name.

The response you give him is a hazy groan, laying curled up on his green duvet, the blankets kicked to the end of the mattress. Once the light streaming from the living room hits you, his brow furrows. Your body is hidden in one of his hoodies, oversized on him and drowning you, the hood pulled over your head and concealing all of your features.

“You okay?” Spencer murmurs as he discards his shoes and tie onto the floor haphazardly, crawling into bed behind you. A slender hand cups your elbow before he pulls back slightly, shocked by the heat radiating through the thick fabric. “Sweetheart, you’re burning up.”

As soon as he’s laid behind you, you turn around, legs pushing through to press your feet against his calves. Leaning your forehead against his chest, you seek out warmth even despite the fever overtaking your body. “One hundred and two degrees,” you mumble through your haze, trying to cut out any questions he may have and minimize the amount of energy you had to use.

Frowning, his hand slides beneath his hoodie, pushing it up and exposing your skin to the cold air. At your soft mewl of discontent, he shushes you gently, large hand smoothing over your stomach. “I know, honey, but this hoodie isn’t helping. Can you take it off, please? I can get you a shirt, if you want.”

“No. Can’t take it off. Can’t move.” Your tone is slurred, voice muffled by the material of his button-up, fingers curling to fist his shirt and keep him there. “Just wanna sleep.”

To your dismay, he simply shakes his head, one hand untangling yours from the material before he sits up. Another large hand slides behind your neck, fingertips pressing into the sides as he slowly lifts you to a good-enough sitting position. “Come on. Hands up, please.” 

Your movement is slow, his hands pushing up the hoodie higher and higher and coaxing your arms to straighten so he could pull it off. Despite your fever, he can feel the goosebumps sprouting on your skin, rubbing them away with his palm as his other hand tosses the hoodie away. Placing a kiss to your forehead and fighting a grimace at the heat, he slowly brings you to lay down again. “I’m gonna go get you some painkillers and some water. We need to break your fever.”

That pulls a whine from your throat, reaching out and brushing your hand along his thigh as you try to find any way to pull him back down. “Please just come back. We can worry about that later.”

Spencer’s heart thuds a bit harder against his chest at the request, never wanting to be the one saying no to you. But he knows the science, both biological and psychological, behind sickness behavior. Autonomic and behavioral changes triggered by soluble proteins produced at sites of infection. Lethargy, sleepiness, confusion. The body releases cytokines that affect moods and lead to a desire for social connection, hence the need to cling to him.

With another soft hush, he smooths down your hair and places another kiss to your hairline before stepping away from you. Moving quickly to keep himself from giving in and crawling back into bed with you, he heads back into the living room and fills a glass of water, making sure it was cold enough to feel nice but not cold enough to not drink quickly. Last but not least, he grabs a clean rag from off the counter, running it underneath cold water and ringing it out until it was just damp.

By the time he gets back to the bedroom, you’ve pulled the duvet over your legs again, letting it cool your calves as your hands tuck beneath your cheek. He stands in the doorway, watching you fondly and admiring just how small you look in the bed that his feet hang off of. For a moment, he thinks about how he’d love to do this for the rest of his life. Have his apartment be the home you crawl to when you’re not feeling your best, be the person your subconscious deems safe when it’s at its most vulnerable. 

Only once his arms ache from holding the water for too long, Spencer returns to your side, hand cupping the back of your neck to lift you up again. “Take the pills and a couple sips, sweet girl, and then you can go to bed, okay?” He murmurs as he holds out his hand, two white pills balanced in the middle of his palm.

Your nose wrinkles in distaste, eyes glancing at him pleadingly as you hope he changes his mind, only to be met with a soft yet stern gaze. Letting out a deep sigh, you pluck the painkillers from his hand and place them in your mouth before taking the glass he holds out, letting the cool water soothe your throat and the heat of your face.

After a few gulps, he plucks the glass from your hands, setting it on the side table and swapping it out for the cool rag. Leaning his back against the headboard, he pulls your head to lay on his chest, draping the towel over your forehead and ignoring the chill when one corner drapes onto his neck. Fingers work delicately to smooth loose strands of hair away from your forehead and cheeks before working through it, lips pulling down at the corners when they get stuck in a knot. 

“Thank you for taking care of me,” you murmur into the fabric of his shirt. “I know you’re probably tired from your flight.”

The sound is so soft that he barely picks it up, although he lets out a gentle hum in response. “I don’t feel as bad as you, that’s for sure,” he teases. His lips find your hairline again, breath brushing against your skin as he keeps his mouth there. “Social and emotional support is scientifically shown to be beneficial towards an individual’s health. Support encourages health behaviors, such as consuming more fruits and vegetables and the ceasing of certain sickness behaviors, like mood changes.”

That pulls a soft laugh out of you, shuddering from a chill. “I think it should be a crime for you to talk all scientifically and sexually to me when you can’t even kiss me,” you grumble playfully.

Spencer scoffs from beneath you, the arm wrapped around your shoulder tilting your chin up towards him. “To hell with that. I take my vitamins.”

And then he’s kissing you, all soft and slow, giving your foggy brain time to catch up to what was happening. You’re still uncomfortably warm in his arms, transferring your higher body heat, but there isn’t a single part of him that can find a problem with that. Not when you’re fully leaning into him, arms and legs pressed against his own, cheek tucked against his chest and lips so soft against his mouth.

The both of you part only after he’s stolen all of the breath out of your lungs, leaving you trembling from a fever and breathless from his lips. Your lips pull into a grin as you open your eyes to glance up at him. “If you get sick, I’m not taking care of you.”

“Shush,” he snips, arm moving down to pinch your hip, soothing it with a brush of his thumb. “I thought you were ready for bed, huh? Not ready to keep ogling me?” He tops off his teasing by pressing the back of his hand to your forehead. “In fact, are you sure you’re even sick?” You giggle in response, lifting an arm that feels like lead to swat away his hand. “Leave me alone,” you whine dramatically before nuzzling your face into the fabric of his button-up. As soon as your nose bumps with one of the buttons, you wrinkle it, pulling back to look up at him. “Can you please go and change so we can go to bed? This cannot be comfortable.”

Spencer’s response is quick. “It’s not.” Then, he braces the back of your head with a large hand to lift you, sliding out beneath you to make a mad dash for his closet. Your head falls back onto the pillows as you let out a soft whine of displeasure, even despite being the one to tell him to get changed.

He cannot help but laugh at you as his fingers brush through his clothing options. He can feel your eyes burning through his back as he slowly slips his arms through his shirt, tossing it into the laundry basket tucked in the bottom of his closet before pulling on a larger shirt. They stay on him as he pulls off his belt and socks and tugs on some plaid pajama pants. It’s not the first time he’s undressed in front of you, however your gaze would always cover his body in goosebumps. Once he’s properly dressed and ready for bed, he crawls back in next to you, this time pulling the duvet over the both of you. With the painkillers and the lack of a hoodie wrapped around you, he can feel the change in your body heat. Still too warm, but definitely lowering. 

You let out a soft squeak in surprise as his arms wrap around you, giving you a tight squeeze as you’re brought close to his chest. Immediately, your head is snuggled into the crook beneath his chin, inhaling the spot of cologne he had spritzed there that morning. Despite the small rush of adrenaline you had had in his presence, your exhaustion and illness are quickly catching up to you, eyes heavy-lidded as you relax into him. 

“Get some rest.” Spencer murmurs as he feels the tension relax out of your body, lips brushing against your forehead. A subtle check of your temperature.

Your teeth weren’t chattering. That would’ve meant your body had enough energy to waste on something so useless. Instead, everything inside you was pulling inward. Tightening. Conserving. Slowing.

“Keep moving,” Bucky’s voice snapped, low and close behind your left shoulder, and you did.

Not because he told you to. Because you had to.

The mission had gone wrong in the kind of way that didn’t leave room for debriefs. No secure exit point, no external comms, no second wave coming in behind you. Just you, Bucky, and the last evac flare tucked in Yelena’s pack two klicks east—across a frozen lake, through the trees, past whatever was still hunting you from the west ridge.

You hadn’t seen what hit the quinjet. Just felt the shockwave under your boots, then the plume of smoke curling over the horizon. Yelena had been the one closest to the treeline. She moved faster, covered more ground when it mattered, and she was carrying the extraction beacon. So when everything went to hell and the team scattered, it was you and Bucky left circling back to pull recon on the ones who shot your ride out of the sky.

Bucky walked behind you now, a half-step slower than usual. Calculated. Watching your six, probably watching your feet, too. 

“Northeast ridge is clear,” Yelena’s voice crackled softly in your comms. “Found an evac point. I’ll hold position.”

“Copy,” Bucky muttered. He was closer now. You could hear the rough edge in his voice, the constant scrape of concern just underneath it. “Let us know if anything shifts.”

There was a pause, a soft click, and then silence.

It had been thirty-two minutes.

Thirty-two minutes of sprinting across a frozen forest, every breath burning in your lungs. Thirty-two minutes of feeling Bucky’s presence hovering behind you like a shadow stitched to your spine, keeping pace, always watching. Watching your six, probably watching your feet, too.

“We’re near the lake,” Bucky said quietly.

You nodded once. Didn’t slow.

The lake had shown up on recon, a massive spread of black and silver on the satellite map, completely iced over and ringed by skeletal trees. You hadn’t planned to get near it. No cover. No depth perception. And the ice…

There were warnings. Cracks. Inconsistent freeze. The warm weeks earlier in the month had made it unreliable. Solid in places, dangerously thin in others.

Your fingers flexed around your weapon. You could still feel the scabbed-over cuts along your knuckles from the last mission. You hadn’t even gotten the blood out of the gloves. It had frozen stiff.

“They’re pushing,” Bucky said, eyes scanning the treeline. “Trying to flank.”

“We keep moving.”

“You’re hurt.”

“Not bad.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Your jaw locked.

There was blood soaking into the seam of your left leg, trailing down to right where the fabric met your boot. You didn’t look down. Couldn’t. It hadn’t slowed you down yet. If it did, you’d think about it. Not now.

You didn’t tell him how deep the cut went. You didn’t need to. He could smell it by now, metallic, sharp, slicing through the scent of ice and pine. It left a trail behind you, carved like a signature across the snow. If any of the hostiles had dogs, you were as good as marked.

The lake came into full view as you crested the ridge. It didn’t shimmer, didn’t glint—it was too dark for that now. Instead, it stretched wide and waiting, flat as glass and just as merciless. A wound in the landscape, glossy and black, veins of fracture spidering out across the surface where the snow had been blown off by the earlier blast wave.

Bucky said nothing, but he stopped just behind you. You could feel the weight of his silence.

“We don’t have time to go around,” you said, voice thin. “They’ll have us before the trees thicken again.”

“There’s no cover out there.” His tone wasn’t harsh. It was worse, quiet, steady, resigned. “If they catch sight of us, we’re open. Sitting ducks. You know that.”

“They won’t.” You adjusted your grip on your weapon. The trigger guard was sticking, your blood had frozen at the seam. “There’s mist coming off the surface. It’ll give us some visual buffer if we move fast.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“Which is why I can’t climb another fucking ridge.”

Your voice barely made it past your lips. It felt thinner than the air you were pulling into your chest. You didn’t need to look at Bucky to know he was staring at you again—sharp, narrowed, assessing you the way he did before a breach. Not checking for weakness. Measuring the cost.

But there was no time for costs anymore.

The crack of gunfire ricocheted off the ridge behind you. 

Not the echo of distant threat, but close. Immediate. 

Bark splintered off a tree trunk ten paces from your position, and Bucky moved instantly, grabbing your arm and yanking you down into a crouch behind the lip of an ice-encased boulder. 

You landed hard on your knee, your injured leg screaming in protest. Warm blood surged and stuck to the inside of your pants, and it was only then that you realized the muscle was torn. Not grazed. Torn.

Bucky didn’t flinch at the impact, but you caught the way his jaw clenched. “They’ve got fucking elevation,” he muttered under his breath. “How the hell did they—”

Another round cracked off a rock to your left. You ducked lower.

You didn’t answer him. You were trying not to pass out.

The second ridge. That was where they’d circled back. They must’ve doubled back around while you were sweeping east, using the wreckage and smoke trail from the quinjet as cover. You should’ve clocked it. Should’ve seen the trail crossing itself on the HUD.

But you’d been too busy bleeding.

A comms stutter broke through your earpiece. Yelena’s voice, brittle and curt: “Multiple heat signatures—tracking southeast. Six or seven. Aggressive push. Fast. You need to move.”

“Noted,” Bucky muttered, and clicked off.

He turned toward you, and there was something behind his eyes now. Not fear. Urgency. That hard-edged tension you’d only ever seen once before, when he’d carried your unconscious body out of a compound fire and spent the next forty minutes in complete silence.

“We’re not getting around the lake,” he said flatly.

Another shot cracked the air.

You flinched. He didn’t.

“They’re herding us,” you said quietly, barely audible. “Driving us into the open.”

He nodded once. “They want the intel. They don’t want to kill us. Not yet.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

More shouts. They were getting louder. You heard the low whine of an engine somewhere, a snowmobile, maybe. Not yours. Yours was ash.

“We need to split,” Bucky said suddenly.

You turned sharply. “No.”

“I’ll draw them off. You follow the lake’s edge. Keep to the trees.”

“They’re tracking us both. They know there’s two.”

“They don’t know where you are,” he said, already rising to his feet. “Not exactly. You haven’t fired since the breach. You’re harder to trace. Let me pull them west, and—”

“No.”

It came out louder than you meant it to. It silenced the forest.

You were breathing too hard. The edges of your vision had started to smear. Your leg was going numb.

“Bucky—”

Another shot. Close. Too close.

He didn’t hesitate.

He turned and hurled a flashbang toward the sound. The white light ignited against the snow with a violent hiss, smoke billowing out and momentarily masking your position.

Then—

Movement.

From your left. Fast.

You turned, raised your weapon, but it was too late. Something barreled through the trees and tackled you full force, body slamming into yours and driving you back, pain blooming white-hot in your thigh where the wound tore wider.

You hit the ground hard, your weapon flung into the snow. The hostile landed on top of you, mask fogged, breath rapid. He went for your throat. You reached for your boot knife, fingers numb, clumsy.

The lake was right there. Ten feet behind you. Maybe less.

You heard Bucky shout your name.

The knife slid into your hand. You didn’t think. You just moved.

You drove the blade up under his jaw, hard and clean, and rolled him off you before he could finish choking.

You were on your feet again—limping, half-hopping, gun lost, blood pouring down your leg now—and the others were coming.

You saw five through the smoke. At least five .

Too many.

You could try to crawl back to Bucky. Hope they didn’t shoot you in the open. Hope he could carry you.

Or—

Or you could do the thing you shouldn’t.

The thing that would buy you time.

The thing that would probably kill you.

You turned and ran toward the lake.

Bucky was still shouting, but his voice was muffled now, lost to the scream of your pulse and the way the air changed as you broke through the treeline.

Your feet hit the ice, and it sang beneath you.

A deep, haunted groan that vibrated up your legs and through your spine. The kind of sound the earth makes when it doesn’t want to be touched.

You didn’t stop.

The mist coming off the surface curled like fingers, wrapping around your boots, your knees, your breath. It shielded you, just enough. You heard the men behind you shouting, confused, uncertain. They’d lost you in the fog. For now.

But they’d find you again if you stopped moving.

You didn’t expect to make it across. That wasn’t the point.

You weren’t stupid. You’d seen the fractures on recon. Knew the freeze was uneven, knew the surface tension wouldn’t hold under sustained weight, and certainly not without punishing you for the arrogance of trying. You also knew there were at least four men behind you, maybe more, and you weren’t going to outrun them through another ridge. Not on a torn leg. Not dragging blood like breadcrumbs.

But you could give Bucky a chance. A window.

You weren’t going to last much longer anyway. Your sidearm was gone. Your rifle was jammed. Your limbs were starting to seize—not from fear, not from cold, but from simple math. The cost of staying alive had begun to outweigh what your body could give.

So you played the only card left.

If you could get two of them on the ice. Maybe three. And if you timed it right, kept your distance, baited them into giving chase, made them run heavier than you walked, there was a chance the lake would decide who stayed topside and who went under. You weren’t built like them. Smaller frame. Lighter gear. You knew how to move soft. They wouldn’t.

They were cocky. Angry. Trigger-happy and armored to hell. That kind of weight broke tension in seconds. You’d seen it happen. Watched it once during a training exercise, how a man with sixty extra pounds of ammo sank in four seconds flat when he tried to follow a sniper across a riverbed in spring thaw.

It might kill you too. But it might not. And if even one of them went in—

That was one less gun Bucky had to deal with. One less bullet in the air. One less thing clawing for your neck.

That was something.

Your breath came faster, colder. The cut in your leg had gone numb, finally, but you could feel the wetness inside your boot. The weight of it. The imbalance.

You didn’t know how far out you were.

The fog was thicker now, curling up your spine, swallowing the tree line. You could’ve been ten meters from shore or two. Could’ve been standing over solid ice or the thinnest patch on the lake.

Didn’t matter. You had to keep going.

There was shouting again. Closer. Heavier footsteps now, rapid and uncoordinated. They’d spotted your prints. One of them yelled to the others. Someone fired, blind and stupid, too far to your left to matter. The shot cracked across the lake and echoed, turning the world sharp and brittle.

You heard the ice answer.

A moan beneath the surface. A shift. A warning.

Still, you didn’t stop.

Another shot hit near your feet, spitting a web of cracks like a warning flare. You stumbled. Went to one knee. Pain flared up your hip. You hissed through your teeth and scrambled upright.

Behind you, closer now, another shout.

And then, footsteps on ice.

They were following you.

You felt the lake notice. The way it strained. The way it listened.

You started weaving, not running, but changing angles. You knew better than to move in a straight line. Spread the pressure. Make them adjust their balance. You could almost hear their weight dragging the surface down. Could hear how reckless their strides were. One of them slipped, boots sliding, cursing and shouting, and the others answered in angry Finnish.

You adjusted again, shifting your weight to the balls of your feet as you zig-zagged across the ice, lungs straining, vision speckled with spots. The cold had crawled under your skin now—made a home in the corners of your elbows, the hollow between your shoulder blades, the soft hinge of your jaw. You weren’t shivering anymore. That would have required your body to care whether it was dying.

Behind you, the men had begun to split. Two followed your path directly, weapons raised and boots clumsy across the frost, the third veering wide, trying to cut off your arc. You didn’t know where the fourth had gone. You didn’t have the capacity to guess. You’d passed beyond the edge of tactics and into instinct.

The ice beneath you moaned again, longer this time, a groaning, glacial sound that rippled underfoot like a living thing. The cracks spidered wider at the edges of your vision, faint lines of fracture glowing pale beneath the frost-dusted sheen. You counted every step in your head, each one a wager against weight and water.

You needed them closer. Just a little closer. You needed them to get stupid again, greedy for the kill.

And they did.

One of them shouted something guttural in Finnish, laced with adrenaline and mockery, and opened fire. The shot missed your side by inches, skimming the air close enough that you felt it kiss your ribs. You dropped hard into a crouch, used the momentum to pivot left, and rolled back into a full sprint. The surface answered with another shriek of pressure.

You couldn’t tell if it was a warning or a promise.

Then another sound, behind the gunfire—something real, something known.

Bucky’s voice.

Low at first, almost lost in the chaos. Then sharper, clearer, a shout that carved through the storm like a blade. He was yelling your name. You didn’t turn. Couldn’t. You could barely see anymore, and the fog curled tighter now, clouding everything but the space directly in front of you.

A second burst of fire came from the opposite edge of the lake—sharper, faster. Controlled. You recognized it immediately. Not hostile. That was him.

He was flanking.

You caught the flicker of movement through the mist just ahead and to your right. Bucky breaking the line of trees at a full sprint, a blur of black and gunmetal, eyes fixed on you like he could will you to stop. He was shouting again, but your ears had gone dull. All you could hear was the ice. The awful, pulsing hum of it underfoot, vibrating with your heartbeat.

And then one of the hostiles did what you’d hoped. He fired while running.

The recoil jolted his center of gravity, boots sliding out from under him as he fell sideways. He hit the ground hard, and the impact buckled the surface beneath him, cracks detonating outward like glass under a hammer. It sounded like thunder.

The other two tried to stop, but it was too late. One went down to a knee, skidding, scraping across the slick, and the third barreled into him, toppling them both in a tangle of limbs and shouted curses.

For a breath, you thought it had worked.

But it didn’t matter.

Because the fourth man, the one you couldn’t see, had circled wide, just like you feared. You didn’t hear him until he was right behind you. There was no gunshot. No shout. Just the thud of weight as he tackled you square in the back.

You hit the ice with a sickening crack, elbows slamming down first. The pain stole the breath from your lungs. Your vision whitewashed. Your cheek scraped frozen mist and split open.

He tried to roll you, get leverage to pin you down, but you were already moving. Already driving the knife from your belt up under his ribs, your fingers so numb you couldn’t tell if it connected.

It did. You felt him grunt, deep and surprised, before he staggered back, and you surged to your feet, but—

But the ice had had enough.

It screamed beneath you. A seismic groan, deeper than the others, wrong in every register. You felt the surface ripple like a muscle torn mid-strain. Your knees bent automatically, weight shifting light, trying to disperse, but it was too late.

The cracks burst outward from where the hostile had landed. The seams raced under your feet, intersecting, multiplying, fracturing the world beneath you in real time.

You heard Bucky shout your name again.

Closer.

Desperate.

And then he was there, just at the edge of your sightline. His face was bloodless, teeth bared, feet skidding to a stop as he reached out like he could catch you from twenty feet away.

“Don’t move!” he barked.

You didn’t.

Didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink.

But the ice moved anyway.

It bowed beneath you.

Then split.

The water came up like a hand and yanked you under.

Bucky saw the ice go before he heard it.

Not the split, but the way your knees flexed, just slightly, the way your arms went out as if your body knew before your mind did. That half-second of weightlessness right before everything collapsed. Bucky knew that look. He’d seen it in jump footage, in buildings on fire, in the eyes of people who understood they weren’t getting out unless someone came back for them.

He was already running.

Not thinking. Not planning. Just moving. Snow churned under his boots, breath barely fogging the air. He heard your name tear out of his throat, loud and raw and useless.

You were looking right at him. Eyes wide. Mouth slightly open. But you didn’t say anything. Didn’t scream. Didn’t even move.

You just dropped.

The ice beneath you opened like a mouth.

He reached the edge just in time to see the water close back over you.

The sound was sickening. One second you were there, the next you weren’t. The lake swallowed you whole, and all that remained was mist and the soft sound of new cracks racing toward him.

Bucky didn’t hesitate.

He launched himself forward, boots slamming into the ice, the weight of his landing enough to make the surface whine under him. He dropped into a slide, knees bent, palm out to brace, momentum hurtling him across the ice toward the place you’d gone under.

The cold didn’t register. Not the air, not the wind, not the water as it seeped through the cracks already kissing the soles of his boots. The serum kept his blood from reacting the way a normal man’s would. No immediate shock. No burning in the lungs. But it didn’t make him immune to the knowledge of what cold did to you.

You had maybe ninety seconds before the water started convincing your body to stop trying.

His hand was already going to his comm.

“Belova, she fell through,” he said, voice sharp, clipped. “The lake. Northwest section. I’m going in.”

Yelena’s reply came fast, static, then her voice, tight with urgency. “That lake is thirty meters deep in the center, Barnes. If you lose her—”

“I won’t.”

“You better not. I’ll find a snowmobile. If you’re still breathing, I’ll come get you.”

He reached the hole, just barely visible now. It was a jagged, black wound in the surface, already sheeting over at the edges with a thin glaze of refreeze. He dropped to his knees, leaned over, peered in—

And saw nothing.

Just black.

No movement. No sound. No trace.

“Northwest,” he repeated, already stripping his rifle off one shoulder and driving it into the snow at the edge of the break. “Tell evac. We’ll need heat. And a med kit.”

“Copy,” she said. “Don’t die.”

He could feel the press of his heartbeat in his teeth.

“Shit.” His voice cracked out of him like a whip.

He stripped the rifle from his shoulder, shoved it into the snow behind him, and without another thought, threw himself in.

The lake gripped him like a vice.

It wasn’t like diving into water. It was like diving into a vacuum. It swallowed him. Crushed him. Everything disappeared at once. Sight, sound, weight. He didn’t kick. Didn’t thrash. He let himself drop, arms out, the metal of his left dragging him faster. One breath in his lungs. That’s all he allowed.

He opened his eyes.

There was nothing.

Only black, smeared with silver light from the hole above him, already shifting, narrowing. Snow-dust had drifted across the opening. It would vanish in seconds. He needed to find you now.

He rotated once. No sign of you. Kicked again, deeper. The pressure increased, the cold turning the skin of his right arm to fire. He ignored it. Turned again. Saw—

Movement.

To his left.

A flicker. A shape. Limbs caught in the water’s drag. No fight in them.

He pushed toward it.

You weren’t moving. Your arms floated loosely, your legs bent at strange angles, one boot still half-trailing a blood-red ribbon through the current. Your head was tilted, hair haloing out in the dark.

For a split-second, something in him broke.

He reached you in three kicks. One arm wrapped around your chest, hand braced under your jaw, holding your head above your shoulders. Your face was waxy, mouth parted, lashes spiked with ice. He pulled you in, curled his metal arm across your ribs, and angled upward.

The surface was gone.

The hole was gone, nowhere near.

He turned in a tight circle, one-handed, dragging you with him. No openings. No shadows above, no light. The ice was seamless.

His vision tunneled.

He launched upward, fist first, and when his knuckles hit solid, he didn’t stop. He punched.

The sound was muffled underwater, more sensation than noise. The vibration hit his bones, the resistance of ancient ice refusing to yield. He drove his arm up again—once, twice—until the metal met fracture.

The ice split.

The hole widened just enough. He kicked upward and shoved you ahead of him, breaking the surface with a gasp you didn’t make.

The air burned. The cold above was nothing compared to below.

He hauled himself out of the water, grabbing you under the arms and dragging you with him, the both of you half-dead and slick with lakewater, steam rolling off your clothes as the air hit them.

You weren’t breathing.

“No—” he rasped. He dropped to his knees, pressed two fingers under your jaw. Nothing. His hand flattened against your chest. Still nothing. He tipped your head, cleared your mouth, and without pausing, sealed his lips to yours and breathed.

Twice.

Again.

Your body jerked, but only from the force.

He pressed down hard. His hands trembled, just slightly. Not from the cold.

“C’mon,” he muttered, voice cracked and low, barely human. “Don’t you fucking dare—”

Another breath.

You coughed.

Violent. Wet. Your whole frame arched up before collapsing into him, lungs sputtering lakewater and whatever else you’d swallowed, mouth opening to drag in air like it hurt to exist.

Bucky’s arms locked around you the second your head tilted forward.

You were shaking now. Not convulsing. Not yet. But the kind of full-body tremor that said your blood wasn’t moving fast enough. That your skin was freezing from the inside out.

“I got you,” he whispered, over and over, voice half-strangled as he pulled you close, as close as he could get without hurting you more. “I got you, I got you.”

He didn’t realize he was rocking you until your fingers clenched in his jacket. A tiny, involuntary twitch—no force behind it, no awareness—but it was enough. Enough to tell him you were still here. Still fighting. Still fucking breathing.

“Easy,” he whispered against your hair. “Just stay with me. I’ve got you.”

You made a sound. Barely anything. A cracked whimper caught in the wreckage of your throat. He pressed a hand to the back of your neck, fingers splayed wide, trying to shield as much of your skin as he could from the wind.

Your body was ice. Every inch soaked through. Your gear, your boots, the back of your neck, all of it was clinging to you like a second skin, each layer working against you now, not for.

The low snarl of a snowmobile engine cut through the trees, carving hard across the frozen ground. He didn’t look up. Didn’t shift. Just curled tighter around you and angled his body between yours and the open lake.

The engine cut off twenty feet away, skidding to a halt. Snow crunched under boots. Then—

“Shit.” Yelena’s voice dropped the usual smirk. “She’s hypothermic?”

“Full submersion,” Bucky said, barely audible. “At least a minute. Maybe longer.”

Yelena was already moving, yanking her pack off and crouching beside him. “Then we need her out of those clothes, now. You too. You’re soaked.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re wet,” she snapped. “You’re not immortal.”

“She’s freezing.”

“Exactly why we strip her down and use what’s dry. I brought a tarp rig for the back—get her on it. We’ll wrap her, I’ll drive.”

Bucky didn’t argue. He peeled his jacket off one arm, then the other, movements sharp and economical. It hit the snow with a wet slap. His gear vest followed. Then he reached for the zipper at your collar, fingers already numbing where they met the icy fabric.

“Hey,” he said softly, tipping your chin. Your eyes fluttered open for a breath, then closed again. “I know it’s cold. But we gotta get you out of this stuff. Alright?”

You didn’t answer. Just let him move you, limp and loose like your bones had gone slack. He tried to be fast. Careful. Stripped your coat first, then the soaked thermal underlayer, exposing your shoulders to the air. You flinched. He wanted to curse out loud. Wanted to punch the goddamn lake.

Yelena shrugged off her own jacket. “Here.”

He took it without looking and shoved your arms through the sleeves. It was warm. And dry. It didn’t matter if it was hers or his or stolen off a corpse. He’d have wrapped you in skin if it meant getting your body temp up fast enough.

But it wasn’t enough.

Your pants were soaked through. So were the boots. And your left leg—fuck.

He saw the blood pooled inside the boot as he started to peel it off. Frozen red around the seams. Your thigh was still bleeding, sluggish now from shock, but still enough to be dangerous.

“Yelena,” he barked without turning. “Gauze. Whatever you’ve got.”

“Med kit’s in the sled,” she called, already unrolling the tow platform and yanking the thermal tarp open. “Field wrap’s on the side.”

He ripped the second boot off, tossed both aside. The pants clung like wet parchment. He muttered something sharp under his breath and took the knife from his belt, slicing the fabric clean up the seam to the waistband. He didn’t pause. Didn’t look at your face. Just cut them free and tossed them into the snow.

Your leg was a mess. Torn muscle, ragged edge, blood sluggish but still weeping. He didn’t have time to be gentle. He grabbed the wrap from Yelena’s outstretched hand and packed the gauze into the wound, fingers fast and precise. Then he cinched the bandage tight just above your knee.

You groaned, weak and hoarse, but it meant you were still responsive.

“I know,” he muttered. “I know it hurts. Just hang on.”

Yelena was already back at the sled, lifting the flap on the side and unfurling the padding. “We’ve got maybe ten minutes before she drops out completely. Help me get her in.”

He moved without answering. One arm behind your back, one under your legs. You were a deadweight bundle of wet limbs and heatless skin.

Together, they settled you into the tow rig—padded, shielded at the sides, thermal canopy overhead. Standard evac mod. But it still looked like a coffin.

He hated that it looked like a coffin.

Yelena threw him a blanket roll, and he tucked it tight over your chest and shoulders, then your hips and thighs, arms crossed low over your ribs. Your skin was damp, your hair frozen at the ends, lashes rimmed in ice. He didn’t let himself stop moving. He kept one hand pressed just over your heart, the other ready to shield your face from wind.

His hand stayed there.

Just a second too long.

She didn’t call him on it.

“You’re going with her,” Yelena said instead, already climbing back onto the snowmobile. “I can drive. You monitor her breathing. Try and get her talking if you can. If she fully passes out—”

“She won’t.”

“I’m just saying—”

“She won’t.”

His voice was steel. He wasn’t yelling. He wasn’t pleading. He just knew.

Yelena didn’t argue again. She gunned the engine, and the machine roared to life.

He climbed into the tow sled, kneeling beside you, one hand on your chest, the other braced against the frame. Wind blasted past them as they launched forward, but he didn’t feel it.

All he felt was the shallow rise and fall beneath his hand.

You surfaced slowly.

Not all at once. Not in a cinematic way—no gasping, no full-body jolt, no sudden realization that you were still alive. Just pressure. First behind your eyes, then in your chest. A tightness, dull and deep, like your lungs had been filled with stones and someone had stacked their weight across your ribcage to make sure they stayed there.

Your mouth was open. You hadn’t meant it to be. Something cool and artificial was feeding air through your nose, down your throat. Plastic tubing, you realized after a beat, half-formed thoughts dragging behind sensation. An oxygen cannula. 

Your head ached.

Not a sharp pain. Not even pain, really. Just distance. Like your skull had been filled with static and your thoughts had to crawl through it on hands and knees to reach you. When you tried to move, just a twitch of your shoulder, your body didn’t respond. Not fully. Your nerves were slow, reluctant. Your arms felt like they belonged to someone else.

Then, light. Soft, not blinding. White above you. Clinical. Cold. You tried to blink and felt the dry pull of your lashes against skin that had been left too long without moisture.

There were sounds now. Somewhere in the periphery.

Muffled voices. Beeping.

A hiss of something mechanical resetting. Maybe a vitals monitor, maybe a heat unit.

The next thing you noticed was your skin.

Your entire body felt like it had been peeled back and glued together wrong. Your legs ached. Not in the sharp, obvious way of a gunshot or blade, but deeper. Bone deep. Joint deep. There was a dull, pulsing throb in your left thigh that you couldn’t place, and you realized after a moment that you didn’t want to.

You were alive.

You weren’t supposed to be.

A slow breath pulled through your chest. It hurt. Not like you’d broken anything, but like your lungs had fought too hard to keep you, and they were punishing you for it now. You could feel the heaviness in them, the stiffness—residual fluid, probably. You weren’t coughing, but your chest was tight, and something wet shifted faintly every time you inhaled.

Hypothermia. Near-drowning. Soft tissue trauma. Blood loss.

The words filtered in one by one like files retrieved from a burned cabinet.

You didn’t remember the evac. Just ice. The smell of pine. A scream half-swallowed by the wind. The weight of water crushing your body into stillness. And then, heat. Arms. Metal against your ribs. Something solid that refused to let go.

Something you’d stopped fighting for before it found you.

There was a voice outside the room, beyond a curtain surrounding you. Sharp. Familiar.

Yelena.

“—two hours max. That’s what the doc said. She needs rest, not another round of brooding Bucky Barnes breathing exercises.”

A grunt. Quieter. Male.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

A beat.

“Oh my god. You’re already doing it.”

You tried to turn your head toward the sound, but your body was too heavy. The world tilted and dragged behind you. Then, footsteps. Two sets. One softer, reluctant. One clipped.

They didn’t come in.

Their voices faded just enough to let the quiet crawl back in. Only the monitors kept humming, a soft rhythmic count of your survival, like the room was measuring every second you stayed alive and wasn’t convinced yet that you would.

You lay there, still and heavy, unsure if your body would obey you at all. Everything felt wrapped in gauze. Muted. Far away. But your chest remembered. The weight, the pressure, the water. The ache that lingered behind your ribs told you the lake hadn’t really let go. Not completely.

You tried again.

It wasn’t even a word at first. Just a shift. A breath caught too sharply in your throat. Your fingers twitched against the blanket. Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe you imagined it. You turned your head, just barely, toward the voices outside the curtain, and let your lips part.

“Buck—”

Your voice wasn’t a voice. It was air dragged across a raw throat, shredded in the middle, collapsing before it made it to sound. But it was enough. Enough to make the effort real. Enough to make your pulse spike on the monitor. Enough to send a tremor through your lungs.

The curtain shifted instantly.

Then opened.

Bucky’s silhouette filled the space between the light and the noise. For a second, he didn’t say anything. Just looked at you, jaw clenched, shoulders set. His face didn’t change, but you saw it anyway. Relief. The kind that didn’t need expression to be known.

“You’re awake.” His voice was low. Too steady.

You swallowed—or tried to. It scraped. Burned. Your throat felt flayed.

He crossed the room in two strides, dropping into the chair beside your bed like he’d been ready to launch himself forward the whole time and was only now allowed. His hand hovered near yours, not quite touching.

“Do you need the doc?” he asked. “I’ll go get them. Just hold on—”

You moved before you could think.

Not much. Not even fast. But your hand lifted, weak and trembling, and curled around his wrist as he started to move. The motion cost everything. Your arm dropped a second later like it had been cut loose, but it did its job.

Bucky froze.

You tried to speak again. The word caught halfway up your throat and crumpled. You coughed instead, once, hard enough to burn, and his hand was on you instantly, palm flat against your sternum like he could keep you from falling apart just by holding you still.

“You’re okay.” His voice was different now. Thinner. “You’re okay. Just breathe.”

You tried.

Your chest shook with it. Your lungs were still too tight. Too full of memory. But the oxygen tubing helped, and eventually the coughing stopped. Your body settled back against the sheets, exhausted from the effort of existing.

His hand didn’t move.

“I’m fine,” you rasped. Or tried to.

The word sounded nothing like a word.

It scraped the back of your throat and shattered. You winced. He shook his head once, almost imperceptible.

“Don’t,” he murmured. “You don’t have to talk. Not yet.”

You blinked up at him.

He was too close. Not in a way that made you uncomfortable, never that, but in the way that made you aware of how much space he took up without saying a word. The way his presence made the machines quieter. The way the lines around his mouth looked carved from stone. The way his hand hadn’t left your chest.

“You scared the hell out of me,” he said, softer now. “I thought—”

He didn’t finish.

You didn’t need him to.

You felt it in the way his shoulders curled forward. In the way he kept watching your pulse monitor like it owed him something. In the way his eyes kept returning to your mouth, to your neck, to the shallow rise and fall that proved you were still here.

You opened your mouth again.

The words didn’t come. You weren’t sure they could. Your throat felt like someone had taken a wire brush to the inside of it. But you moved your lips anyway, slow, deliberate, shaping around the simplest thing you could mouth.

How long?

Bucky blinked.

For a second, you thought maybe he hadn’t caught it. Then his hand left your chest—not completely, just enough to curl around your wrist again, warm and solid, anchoring.

“Seven days,” he said quietly. “You’ve been under for seven.”

You let that sit. Let it press.

Seven days.

Not just unconscious. Unresponsive. Monitored. Kept warm. Intubated, probably, if your throat was any indication. You were certain there’d been a moment, maybe more than one, where they weren’t sure you were going to come back at all. Where your body might have decided to give up on the rest of you even after the lake let you go.

You let your head tip, eyes dragging slowly across the room. The motion made your neck ache. Even that, especially that, felt like a small defeat.

There was a table beside the bed. Narrow. Stainless steel. You hadn’t noticed it before.

It was cluttered.

Not with the usual medical shit. Not gauze or tubing or pill cups. Something else. Something… softer.

There were a few folded paper cranes, wings dipped in bright marker ink. A knitted square of fabric, uneven at the edges, with a giant uneven “W” stitched into the center in dark blue yarn. A cheap plastic snow globe—Branson, Missouri—with fake snow and a peeling label. A tiny flickering LED tea light. A single packet of hot chocolate. A folded sketch torn from someone’s notebook paper.

You stared at it. Confused.

Your brow furrowed, unsteady, and you felt Bucky’s eyes move with yours.

He shifted in his chair, the leather creaking faintly under him.

“Those are from Bob.” He nodded toward the cranes. “He said paper folding helps with anxiety. Sat outside your room for two hours trying to get that red one right. Said you’d like it because it was ugly. Had character.”

Your lips twitched. Or tried to. He saw it.

Bob had tried to teach you once, back when missions were lighter and your hands steadier. He’d brought a pack of neon origami paper into the rec room like it was contraband, all sheepish grin and muttered instructions, and you’d spent an hour cursing under your breath while he quietly folded a perfect flock beside you. 

You never managed a proper crane, just a deeply cursed paper lump with uneven wings, but he’d kept it anyway. Called it your “battle bird.” Said it looked like it had been through something. Just like you.

“The tea light is Ava’s,” Bucky continued. “She said you always lit a candle on briefing nights. Figured you’d want one burning when you woke up.”

You did. Always the same squat little votive, tucked on the corner of your desk, flickering through every debrief while the rest of the team pretended not to notice. Ava had, though—said the sound and smell helped her keep her pacing in check, the rhythm of it steadier than her own breath some nights.

Bucky pointed at the snow globe, grimacing. “Walker. No note. Don’t ask.”

You made a rough sound, not quite a laugh, and regretted it immediately. Your chest ached. You swallowed it down.

Of course he brought Branson, Missouri.

The man had one week of leave and spent it sending you unsolicited selfies from a dinner theater called “Yakov’s Last Laugh,” wearing a cowboy hat two sizes too small and arguing over text about whether Silver Dollar City technically counted as “historic.”

You’d told him Branson wasn’t a real place. Just a Midwest fever dream built entirely out of unlicensed Elvis impersonators and knockoff Dollywood energy. He’d called it “America’s soul.”

You’d called it “a cry for help in gift shop form.”

And now it sat beside your medical chart, a tiny, glittering monument to the world’s pettiest inside joke.

God help you if it made you smile again.

“The sketch is from Alexei,” he went on. “It’s supposed to be you in the snow, fighting a bear. Or dancing with one. He wasn’t clear.”

You blinked slowly. That tracked. He’d once told you, entirely unprompted, that your “ferocity under pressure” reminded him of a Siberian she-bear. You’d assumed it was a compliment. Probably.

“And that,” he added, gesturing to the hot chocolate, “Yelena. Said hospital cocoa was an abomination and if she caught you drinking any she’d pull your IV herself.”

You smiled faintly. Yelena was the one who started it. Midnight cocoa in the mess when neither of you could sleep, hands still shaking from whatever dreams you'd clawed your way out of. No talking. No questions. Just heat, sugar, and silence until your pulses evened out again. A truce in a mug.

Your throat was still raw. You didn’t dare try a full word, but the question was there—in the slow blink, the glance toward the yarn.

“That’s from Walker too,” Bucky said, deadpan. “He learned to knit. Apparently.”

Your eyes drifted back to him. He hadn’t looked away from you once. Not really.

There was one more thing on the table. You hadn’t noticed it before. Smaller than the rest. Set slightly apart. A small matchbox-sized tin. Dark blue. Metal. Worn at the corners.

Bucky followed your gaze. His jaw tightened.

You looked at him.

He didn’t speak.

Just reached over slowly, picked it up, turned it once in his palm like he wasn’t sure if he regretted leaving it there.

Then he held it out to you. Didn’t press it into your hand, just let it rest there, cradled against his fingers, waiting.

You tilted your head toward it, but your muscles were still too slow, coordination still too shot. He noticed. Said nothing. Just flipped the lid open himself.

Inside, nestled into the tin’s base on a folded strip of linen, was a tiny object. Barely bigger than your thumb. Faintly metallic. Dull silver at the edges, matte black at the center.

It was a music box cylinder. A fragment. Something old, worn smooth. The kind used in hand-crank players—the ones tucked inside the little wind-up boxes you used to fidget with as a child, flipping them open and closed like they were meant to be solved.

You blinked.

Once.

Twice.

Bucky was watching you. Carefully. Like the weight of your reaction might crack him open.

“You said,” he said quietly, “a few months ago… that you had one when you were a kid. Broke in a move. Said you remembered the sound but not the song.”

You remembered. You hadn’t thought he had.

You hadn’t thought anyone had been listening.

“I found that in a market in Riga,” he went on, voice low, roughened at the edges. “The guy didn’t know what it played. Didn’t have the housing. Just this. It was rusted shut. Took me a few days to clean it.”

He paused.

“I was gonna wait to give it to you. But I didn’t know when the right time was.”

You tried to speak again. Your throat clenched. No sound came.

Still—you pushed the air up, forced it out like it owed you something. Like you had to say it, even if it burned.

“Why?”

It rasped out of you like broken glass dragged across stone. More breath than voice. But the word made it past your lips this time, and that was enough.

Bucky didn’t answer right away.

Didn’t look at you, either. Not at first. His eyes had dropped back to the tin, as if the shape of it might tell him how to start.

The silence stretched.

You didn’t push him.

“I didn’t know if you’d want it,” he said finally. The words came low. Barely above a whisper. “Didn’t know if it meant anything coming from me.”

He shifted in the chair like he didn’t trust it to hold his weight. Like he was trying not to lean too close.

“You said that thing about the music box and it just—stuck. I don’t even think you realized you said it. We were talking about… something else. Some mission. I can’t even remember which. You were just fiddling with your comm and you mentioned it. How the song used to help you sleep, but now you can’t remember the tune. Just that it made you feel… safe. Back then.”

He rubbed his thumb over his knee, like he needed something to ground himself.

“I remembered,” he said again, quieter this time. “And I kept looking. For months. In every market, every junk bin, every fucked-up antique shop we passed through. Most of them were trash. Broken. Stolen. Or the wrong kind. But then I found that one. Just the cylinder. No box. No sound. Just…possibility.”

His jaw twitched.

“I figured I’d give it to you when… I don’t know. When things slowed down. When we weren’t bleeding every week or crawling through wreckage or losing people left and right. But things don’t slow down. Not for us. So I waited.”

He finally looked at you.

And the look in his eyes—God. It made your breath stutter beneath the oxygen tube. It wasn’t pity. It wasn’t soft, either. It was sharp. Too sharp. Like the only way he knew how to look at you was like he was still checking for exit wounds.

“I thought I missed my chance.”

He said it so plainly you almost didn’t feel it at first. But it settled in your chest like a weight. Like truth.

“I thought you were gone,” he went on. “On that lake… when I couldn’t find the surface, when I finally got you out, when your body—” He stopped himself. Shook his head. “You weren’t moving. You weren’t breathing. You were just drifting. And I remember thinking—that’s it. That’s the end. That’s where I lose you.”

Your chest tightened. Not from pain. Not from cold. Just the sound of him.

“I don’t lose people like that anymore,” he said. “Not like I used to. Not if I can help it. And sure, I’ve said that before. But this time—” His voice cracked, just once. “This time it was you.”

You blinked. Hard.

He leaned forward now, elbows braced on his knees, voice lower than before.

“You don’t get it,” he said, rambling on like the words were exiting his mouth before he even thought about them. “You think you’re just… part of the team. That you’re one of us. And you are. But it’s not the same. Not for me.”

He exhaled, sharp and tired and fraying.

“You get under my skin in ways that nothing else does. You keep me tethered when shit goes sideways. You ask questions no one else asks. You call me on my bullshit without making it feel like I’m back in some shrink’s office getting dissected. You make space. And I didn’t know how much I needed that—no—wanted it. Until I thought I’d lost it.”

You didn’t know you’d started crying until you tasted salt at the edge of your mouth. Just a few tears. Silent. Clean. Your throat hurt too much for sobbing. Your eyes hurt too much to keep them open.

But he noticed.

He sat forward quickly, hand reaching for the call button. “Shit—do you want the doc? I can get them, they said to page if you—”

You lifted your hand again. Just barely. Just enough to curl your fingers around his wrist.

“No,” you whispered. Barely there. Barely sound.

His hand hovered an inch above the call button, frozen. You felt the way his wrist flexed beneath your fingers, the way the tendons in his forearm pulled tight like he wasn’t sure whether to move or stay. His eyes searched your face again, sharp and clinical for one second—checking your color, your breathing, your pupils—and then he exhaled, quieter this time. Sat back.

Didn’t pull away.

You swallowed. The effort scraped down your throat like sandpaper, but you did it anyway. Forced air past the ruined edges of your voice until it shaped something. Small. Crooked. Yours.

“I didn’t… know you remembered,” you rasped, each word a dry scrape across something bruised and tender. “The music box.”

Bucky exhaled. Short. Quiet. Almost a laugh, except there was nothing funny in it.

“I remember everything you don’t think I do,” he said. “You always think no one’s paying attention. But I see it. All of it. The way you cover for people when they’re tired. How you pass your dessert off to Bob when he pretends he’s not hungry. That little stretch you do before every mission.”

Your lips parted, breath caught halfway to forming something else. But your throat cracked mid-inhale, so you let it go. Let him keep speaking.

He leaned forward again, this time more gently, his forearms braced on either side of your legs, like he was trying to fold himself smaller. Make himself quieter. Like he didn’t want the rest of the world to hear what came next.

“I see you,” he repeated, quieter now. “Even when you think you’re blending in. When you’re holding it together for everyone else.”

You blinked slowly. The tears had stopped, or maybe your body had just run out. Your eyes burned from the effort of keeping them open. But they stayed on him.

“I think…” You paused, tried to clear your throat, but it made it worse. You grimaced through it, blinked hard. He moved like he might reach for you, or call again, but you shook your head, barely. 

“Let me,” you croaked, voice shot to hell, every syllable catching like thread pulled through torn cloth. “I think I… do the stretch… because I’m scared.”

His eyes didn’t widen. He didn’t flinch. Just watched. Still. So fucking still.

You blinked again, slow and raw. “Not of dying. Not really.”

That earned a twitch of his mouth. Not amusement. Something darker. Sadder. Knowing.

“Of what, then?” he asked, voice low.

You swallowed hard. The air in your lungs felt too thick now, heavy with what you hadn’t said before the lake took you. “Of… getting close. Of being… close. And then it ending.”

Something in his expression fractured. Not broken, not open, just bare. Like you’d peeled something back without meaning to. Like you’d stepped too close to the place he kept boarded up with silence and mission reports and one-liners that didn’t quite pass for humor.

He nodded once. Not like he was agreeing. Like he understood.

“You’re not the only one,” he said quietly. “You think I didn’t notice how long it took you to unpack after the Bataysk job? You kept your bag zipped by the door for three weeks.”

You almost laughed. Almost. But it came out too soft, caught on the edge of a breath.

“You knew?”

“I always knew.”

You looked at him again. Really looked. His hands weren’t covered by gloves like they normally were. They were bare, calloused, fingertips nicked and bruised. His left hand rested beside your blanket, the metal dull and wet-lit under the fluorescents, motionless.

Your hand moved before your brain caught up.

Weak. Slow. You lifted your fingers and reached for the edge of his sleeve, but your arm shook with the effort and dropped short. He caught it before it fell completely—his flesh hand, warm and scarred and careful—and guided your palm over the metal one like it wasn’t strange at all. Like you’d done it a thousand times. His jaw ticked.

“It’s cold,” you whispered.

He nodded. “I know.”

“I don’t mind.”

He let his thumb brush across the edge of your wrist, slow and grounding. Not a stroke. Not comforting. Just there. “I didn’t think I’d get to tell you any of this,” he said. “When I pulled you out, when you weren’t breathing, I—” He cut himself off again, jaw tightening. “I thought you were already gone.”

You wanted to say something, anything, but the only sound you made was breath.

It was enough.

“I wasn’t ready to lose you,” he said. “Not like that. Not ever. But especially not without… you knowing.”

Your throat pulled tight.

“Knowing what?” you whispered, wrecked.

He didn’t hesitate.

“That I give a damn. That I think about you more than I should. That you’re not just some mission partner I cover in the field. That you matter.”

You opened your mouth again. Closed it. Your lips trembled.

Bucky moved closer, just slightly, head still bowed low like the words had weight. Like if he spoke too loud they might splinter.

“You matter to me,” he said. “More than I ever planned for.”

Your eyes burned. Your hand twitched in his, a pathetic excuse for a squeeze, but he felt it. He held on tighter.

You swallowed again, painful and raw. “Me too,” you said, barely audible. “You… matter.”

Something broke in his face. Not his composure. Not his strength. Just the smallest trace of distance, pulled away. A breath he hadn’t been able to take until now.

You saw it in his eyes.

And maybe that would’ve been enough. Maybe in another world—one with less noise, less blood—you would’ve stayed like that for another minute. Maybe you would’ve reached for him again, said something more, pulled the words from the ruin of your voice just to hear him say your name in that same, low, wrecked way.

But this wasn’t that world.

And the curtain tore open before you could even draw your next breath.

“MY BEAR CUB LIVES!”

Alexei’s voice exploded through the medbay like cannon fire, and before you could brace for it, before Bucky could so much as turn in his seat, there were arms. So many arms. Warm, clumsy, massive arms wrapping around you like a weighted blanket made of noise and Soviet linen.

You wheezed. A sharp, involuntary gasp you couldn’t help as Alexei crushed half your torso in a rib-cracking hug.

Bucky was on his feet instantly. “Hey—hey! Easy! Watch it, she’s still—”

“Bah!” Alexei cut him off with a wave of one enormous hand. “She is strong! Like small elk! Look at this—already upright, already beautiful, skin like ice sculpture!” He reached out and cradled your jaw for a second, then kissed your forehead in a way that nearly knocked the oxygen cannula askew. “You do not die on me. You are not allowed to die on me. I would never forgive you.”

“I tried to stop him,” Yelena muttered dryly, appearing behind him with arms crossed and absolutely no remorse. “I tackled him in the hallway. Didn’t matter. He just kept bounding.”

She was flanked by three more figures—Bob, shifting awkwardly and clutching a bouquet that looked like it had been stolen from a funeral arrangement, Ava hovering beside him with a look of cautious relief, and John leaning just far enough into the room to smirk.

“Look who decided to rejoin the land of the living,” Walker called, voice light but eyes sharp. “Don’t do that again. It’s bad for team morale.”

Bucky hadn’t moved far from your bedside, just enough to make room, to stop Alexei from inadvertently crushing a vein or breaking an already-bruised rib. He was still watching you, eyes flicking between your face and your vitals monitor like he couldn’t help himself.

Alexei finally released you with a thud and an affectionate slap to the shoulder that nearly dislocated something. You blinked hard through the swirl of motion, coughing once as your lungs protested the sudden influx of people and oxygen.

“Careful,” Bucky muttered again, more to himself than anyone else.

But you caught his wrist before he could move back.

Just a small touch. Nothing demanding. Just enough.

He didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to.

The others kept talking—Yelena launching into a commentary about how ugly the paper cranes were before realizing Bob made them and immediately changing the subject, Ava threatening to install a lock on the medbay door, Bob quietly asking if you wanted him to adjust the light overhead, Walker declaring he’d brought “real food” and pulling a suspicious-looking bag from behind his back that Yelena immediately swatted out of his hands.

It was chaos. Loud and jagged and human.

But you didn’t look at them.

You looked at Bucky.

And he looked at you.

And in that small, quiet moment—under the hum of machines, under the curtain pulled halfway back, under the noise and the mess and the aching throb in your chest—you felt it settle. All of it. The tension. The fear. The distance you’d both kept because you didn’t know what would happen if you crossed it.

He stayed exactly where you needed him. Elbow resting on the frame of your bed, hand lax in your grip, eyes never leaving yours even when someone bumped the curtain again or when Yelena started swearing in Russian under her breath because she had opened the bag Walker had and apparently it smelled.

You didn’t speak.

Neither did he.

But your fingers stayed curled around his wrist, weak and unsteady, still trembling from the cold that still lived somewhere in your bones, and he didn’t pull away.

Didn’t shift.

Didn’t give you some line about rest or recovery or needing to take a break from all this noise.

He just stayed.

Not because you asked.

But because that’s what he did.

What he’d always done, quietly, behind the chaos.

The cold was relentless. It seeped through your layers, through the thick FBI-issued tactical jacket, biting into your skin as the wind howled through the trees. The snow was fresh, untouched in some places but disturbed in others—jagged footprints cut through the frost-covered ground, a desperate path leading deeper into the forest.

You weren’t far behind.

Your breath came in heavy puffs, curling in the freezing air as you ran. Your boots crunched against the hardened snow, but the sound barely registered over the pounding of your heart.

“Y/N, wait—damn it, slow down!” Spencer’s voice crackled in your earpiece, tight with worry. “You’re too far ahead!”

You ignored him, gripping your gun tighter as you weaved between towering trees. There wasn’t time to slow down. The unsub was getting away, dragging a terrified seven-year-old girl with him.

Sophie Miller.

She had been missing for seventy-two hours.

You had memorized her picture the moment Garcia pulled it up on the jet—a bright, smiling face framed by golden curls, her blue eyes wide with innocence. The kind of child who loved bedtime stories and left crayon doodles on the walls, the kind of child who should have been safe in her home, not stolen from her bed in the dead of night.

Your team had been hunting this man for days, piecing together the horror of what he had done to his previous victims. Two children taken. Two found frozen, discarded in the woods like they were nothing more than broken toys.

You weren’t going to let Sophie be the third.

“JJ, give me an update,” Hotch’s voice came through, steady despite the urgency.

“I’ve got footprints leading northeast—fresh,” JJ responded, breathing hard. “He’s heading for the lake.”

Your gut clenched.

A frozen lake in the middle of nowhere.

A last-ditch escape route.

Or a death trap.

Your earpiece crackled again. “Y/N, wait for backup,” Spencer urged, his voice edged with frustration. “If the ice isn’t stable—”

You tuned him out, eyes locking on the dark figure moving just ahead. He was close—thirty yards, maybe less. Sophie stumbled as he yanked her forward, her tiny arms flailing, her cries swallowed by the wind.

Your stomach twisted at the sight.

“FBI!” you shouted, leveling your gun. “Stop right there!”

The unsub whipped around, his wild eyes meeting yours. He was breathing hard, his clothes disheveled, his grip on Sophie iron-tight. He looked like a cornered animal.

Desperate. Dangerous.

For a second, you thought he might surrender.

Then—he ran.

Straight onto the ice.

“Shit,” you hissed, breaking into a sprint. “He’s on the lake—he’s trying to cross!”

Your pulse hammered as you reached the lake’s edge. The ice stretched out before you, smooth and pale beneath the overcast sky. Cracks ran through parts of it, thin, dark lines spidering across the surface. It wasn’t safe.

But Sophie was still out there.

“Y/N, don’t!” Spencer’s voice was sharp now, a mix of panic and authority. “The ice won’t hold—wait for us!”

You didn’t listen.

You stepped onto the ice.

The moment your foot made contact, you felt it—a slight shift beneath you, a groan so faint it could have been the wind. But you didn’t stop.

Sophie was crying now, her little body shaking as she struggled against the unsub’s grip.

“Let her go!” you ordered, gun trained on his back.

He ignored you, stumbling forward. Each step sent ripples through the ice, the cracks widening.

Your heart pounded.

He was going to get them both killed.

“Stop moving!” you shouted. “If you take another step, the ice will—”

A deafening crack split the air.

For a heartbeat, time seemed to freeze.

Then—the ice shattered beneath them.

Sophie screamed. The unsub’s eyes went wide with horror as the frozen ground gave way, swallowing them whole.

And then—they were gone.

Your breath caught in your throat.

The water was dark and violent, swallowing everything in seconds. Jagged chunks of ice bobbed in the freezing depths, the hole gaping like an open wound in the lake’s surface.

Cold fear slammed into your chest.

“Sophie!”

There was no hesitation. No second-guessing.

You ran forward—

And the ice gave way beneath your feet.

The world tilted. The breath was ripped from your lungs as the freezing water consumed you, dragging you under.

The cold was unbearable. It burned, stealing the air from your chest, wrapping around you like an icy fist. Your limbs felt sluggish, your body already fighting against the shock.

But you didn’t stop.

You forced your arms to move, kicking hard, pushing through the numbing water. You could barely see—the world was a blur of darkness and white, ice and air mixing in a chaotic swirl.

Then—you saw her.

Sophie.

Her tiny body was flailing just a few feet away, her movements slowing. Her lips were blue, her wide eyes filled with terror.

You reached for her, fingers grazing the fabric of her coat—

Something yanked you back.

The unsub.

His grip was iron-tight, his frozen fingers clawing at you as he fought to pull himself up. His weight dragged you downward, the icy depths swallowing you both.

Panic flared in your chest.

You struggled, twisting in his grasp, your lungs screaming for air. He was drowning, and he was going to take you with him.

But you weren’t going to die here.

And you weren’t going to let Sophie die, either.

Summoning every ounce of strength, you drove your elbow back—hard. It connected with his face, and his grip loosened just enough for you to break free.

You surged upward, breaking through the surface with a gasp.

The cold was unbearable, but you didn’t let it stop you. You lunged for Sophie, grabbing her by the arm, pulling her against you.

She wasn’t moving.

No, no, no—

“Hold on,” you choked out, gripping her tightly. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

You tried to swim, but your limbs were sluggish, heavy. The cold was seeping in, your body betraying you.

Then—

A hand.

Strong, warm fingers wrapped around your wrist.

Spencer.

His face was pale with fear, his eyes wide as he reached for you, his own body half sprawled on the cracking ice.

“I’ve got you,” he gasped, voice breaking. “Hold on to me.”

You used the last of your strength to push Sophie into his arms. His grip on her was firm, secure, and within seconds, Morgan was there, pulling her to solid ground.

Spencer didn’t hesitate—he reached for you next.

“Y/N,” he breathed, voice shaking. “Come on, take my hand.”

You tried.

But the ice beneath him groaned.

His weight shifted, the cracks spreading.

If he leaned out any further—

The ice was going to break again.

“Spencer,” you rasped. “You have to move back.”

His grip tightened. “Not without you.”

The darkness was pulling at you, the weight of the cold pressing down. Your body wanted to sink, to let go.

But Spencer was still holding on.

And you weren’t going to make him watch you drown.

With the last of your strength, you gritted your teeth and reached—fingers brushing his.

He caught you.

And then—

He pulled.

———

The ice cracked.

It happened in an instant—a sharp, splintering sound that cut through the frigid air like a gunshot. Spencer’s heart stopped.

He watched in horror as the frozen lake gave way beneath your feet.

One second, you were reaching for the little girl, your arms outstretched, eyes wide with determination. The next—

You were gone.

The icy water swallowed you whole.

“No!”

The scream ripped from Spencer’s throat before he could even think. His body moved on instinct, every ounce of logic drowned beneath sheer panic.

His knees slammed against the ice as he threw himself forward, fingers desperately clawing at the jagged edges of the hole where you had disappeared. His vision blurred, his breath came in sharp, ragged gasps.

Where were you?

Seconds stretched into an eternity.

Then—movement.

A hand.

Your hand.

Spencer didn’t hesitate. He lunged forward, fingers closing around your wrist, gripping so tightly his knuckles went white. The water around you was dark and churning, but he could see your face now—pale, eyes wide with terror, lips already turning blue.

“You’re okay,” he gasped, tightening his grip. “I’ve got you.”

The ice groaned beneath his weight.

“Reid, don’t!” Morgan’s voice cut through the chaos. “You’re too close!”

Spencer ignored him.

Your body jerked as the freezing water pulled at you, trying to drag you back under.

“No,” Spencer choked out, panic clawing at his chest. “No, no, no, just hold on—”

Your fingers trembled in his grasp, so cold, too cold.

“Spence,” you gasped, voice barely above a whisper. “I— I can’t—”

“Yes, you can,” he insisted, desperation bleeding into his voice. His eyes darted frantically to the ice beneath him. Cracks spiderwebbed outward from where he knelt, groaning under the pressure.

If he wasn’t careful, he was going in after you.

He didn’t care.

All he cared about was getting you out.

“Reid, stay put!” Morgan was closer now, inching toward them, his body low against the ice. “I’ll get her. Just don’t move.”

Spencer’s grip tightened.

“She’s slipping,” he gasped, voice shaking. “I can’t— I can’t let go—”

He felt it then—your fingers weakening in his grasp, your body going limp.

You were fading.

The cold was winning.

A sickening fear twisted in his gut. He was losing you.

“No,” he whispered, sheer terror making his voice break.

A firm grip on his shoulder yanked him back.

Morgan.

“I’ve got her,” Morgan said, voice steady, unshakable. “Reid, you have to let me do this.”

Spencer’s whole body tensed. His grip on your wrist was ironclad, unyielding.

“I can’t,” he admitted, voice raw.

Morgan’s eyes met his—serious, steady.

“You can.”

For a moment, Spencer hesitated. Then, with every ounce of trust he had, he loosened his grip—just enough for Morgan to take hold of your arm.

Morgan moved fast, pulling you upward with sheer strength.

You barely made a sound as your body was dragged onto the ice.

The moment you were clear, Spencer lunged forward, gathering you into his arms. His hands skimmed over your frozen skin, searching for injuries, grounding himself in the fact that you were still here.

But you were barely moving.

You were shaking violently, teeth chattering, eyes glassy and unfocused.

“She’s going into shock,” JJ’s voice cut through the wind. “We need to warm her up—now.”

Emily was already beside him, wrapping a thick thermal blanket around your shivering frame.

“Sophie—” you croaked, barely able to form the word.

“The girl’s safe,” Morgan reassured you, his voice softer than usual. “She’s with the paramedics.”

Relief washed over your face, but your body continued to tremble.

Spencer pressed his forehead against yours, his breath shaky.

“I thought I lost you,” he whispered, voice cracking.

You tried to respond, but your lips were too numb, your body wracked with tremors.

He cupped your face in his hands, his thumbs brushing over your icy cheeks.

“You’re okay,” he repeated, like saying it would make it true.

But you weren’t okay.

Your skin was cold—too cold. Your breaths came in sharp, uneven gasps, and your eyes kept fluttering shut, as if you were slipping away.

Spencer’s heart clenched.

“No, no, stay with me,” he begged, shaking you gently.

“So tired,” you mumbled.

“No,” Spencer whispered, panic rising in his chest. “Don’t close your eyes.”

You forced them open, just for him.

“I’m here,” you whispered.

Something inside Spencer broke.

He surged forward, pressing his lips to yours.

It wasn’t just a kiss—it was desperate, raw, a silent plea. A promise that he was here, that he wasn’t letting go.

When he pulled back, his hands never left you.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured, his voice barely above a whisper. “I’ve got you.”

Then, finally, the paramedics reached them.

Spencer didn’t let go—not as they wrapped you in more blankets, not as they strapped you to the stretcher, not as they rushed toward the ambulance.

He held your hand the entire way.

And he didn’t let go.

———

Warmth.

It was the first thing you felt.

Not the biting, numbing cold of the ice, nor the sharp sting of wind against your skin. This warmth was different—gentle, constant, like a fire burning low in the hearth.

The weight of thick blankets pressed against your body, cocooning you in layers of soft heat. The steady, rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor echoed in the quiet space around you. The faint scent of antiseptic and something familiar—Spencer—lingered in the air.

You were safe.

You tried to open your eyes, but they felt heavy, as if the exhaustion had settled into your bones, unwilling to let go. You managed a small inhale, and the moment you stirred, a hand—warm, shaking—tightened around yours.

“Sweetheart?”

Spencer.

His voice was hoarse, cracked at the edges, as if he’d been speaking—pleading—for hours.

You forced your eyes open, blinking sluggishly against the dim light of the hospital room.

And there he was.

Spencer sat hunched over the bed, his fingers curled tightly around yours, his knuckles white with the force of his grip. His hair was a mess, wild and disheveled, his normally neat curls tangled from where he’d clearly run his fingers through them too many times. Dark circles lined his eyes, and his lips were slightly chapped, as if he hadn’t had a sip of water in far too long.

But none of that compared to the raw emotion written all over his face.

Relief. Fear. Love.

He looked exhausted, like he hadn’t slept in days, like the weight of the world had been sitting on his chest.

You swallowed, your throat dry.

“…Hey.”

The word barely made it past your lips, but Spencer sucked in a sharp breath, like it physically hurt him to hear how weak you sounded.

“Oh, God,” he whispered, his grip tightening. “You’re awake.”

You tried to nod, but even that small movement made your body protest. Your limbs felt sluggish, as if you were moving through molasses.

Spencer must have noticed, because he was already adjusting the blanket around you, tucking it in carefully, like he could shield you from even the faintest chill.

“Don’t move,” he murmured, his voice laced with quiet urgency. “You need to rest. Your body’s still recovering from the hypothermia. The doctors said—” His voice wavered, and he shook his head, as if the memory of whatever they had said was too much. “You scared the hell out of me.”

You blinked at him, trying to push past the fog in your mind.

“How long?” you rasped.

Spencer swallowed, his throat bobbing.

“Two days.”

Your heart clenched.

Two days.

Spencer had been sitting here, in this exact spot, for two whole days.

Waiting.

Worrying.

Loving you through it.

“Spence,” you whispered, trying to squeeze his hand.

He let out a breathless, broken laugh.

“You almost died,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “You almost—” He stopped, squeezing his eyes shut. “I thought I lost you.”

Tears burned at the edges of your vision.

You hated seeing him like this—so wrecked, so shaken, like he had been forced to watch his worst nightmare unfold in front of him.

“I’m here,” you whispered. “I’m okay.”

Spencer let out a shaky breath, then lifted your hand to his lips, pressing a lingering kiss against your cold skin.

“You almost weren’t,” he murmured.

Your chest ached—not from the cold, not from the exhaustion, but from the sheer emotion in his voice.

“I had to save her,” you said, barely audible. “The little girl…”

Spencer nodded, his eyes searching yours.

“You did,” he whispered. “You saved her, sweetheart. She’s okay. Because of you.”

A soft breath of relief escaped your lips, but Spencer’s grip never loosened.

“You could’ve died,” he said, his voice breaking. “I watched you fall through the ice. I saw the way the water swallowed you whole, and for a second—” He stopped, inhaling sharply. “For a second, I thought I’d never see you again.”

Tears slipped down your cheeks.

“Spence,” you whispered, your heart shattering.

His own eyes were red-rimmed, his jaw tight as he fought against the storm of emotions threatening to swallow him whole.

“I can’t lose you,” he confessed, his voice trembling. “I don’t know what I’d do. I— I can’t—”

You didn’t let him finish.

With every ounce of strength you had left, you tugged weakly on his hand, pulling him closer.

He understood immediately.

Spencer surged forward, his forehead pressing against yours, his breath warm against your skin.

For a long moment, neither of you spoke.

You just breathed together.

“I’m here,” you whispered again, this time for him.

Spencer exhaled shakily, then—without hesitation—he kissed you.

It was slow, soft, his lips feather-light against yours, like he was afraid you might break.

But you kissed him back, pouring every ounce of love, every unspoken word, into the press of your lips.

When he pulled away, his hand never left your face, his fingers tracing over your skin as if memorizing every inch.

“I love you,” he whispered, raw and unfiltered.

You smiled, despite the exhaustion tugging at your body.

“I love you too.”

Spencer exhaled, relief washing over his face.

For the first time in days, he looked like he could finally breathe.

And with him by your side, so did you.

“Who is it?” you yell, suppressing a delighted giggle at a particularly good line. 

“Spencer,” your boyfriend’s voice shouts in return. “Do you have a spare key out here?”

As immersed in your reading as you are, Spencer’s number one on your list of people you would drop everything to hang out with (not that you would openly admit this to him). You shut off your tablet and carefully sit up, not wanting to get a head rush.

“No,” you answer. Once the threat of a blackout has passed, you rise to your feet and announce, “Coming!”

“No, don’t! I’ll have the landlord—hello,” Spencer cuts himself off as the door flings open, revealing your pajama-clad form. You grin brightly.

“Hi!” you reply happily, excited to see him. 

“You’re not a very good listener, you know that?” Spencer says flatly, crossing his arms across his chest. His sass does little to dampen your spirits.

“To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” you ask.

“Okay, first of all, it wouldn’t be unexpected if you answered your phone,” Spencer points out, stepping across the threshold into your entryway as he adds, “Second, ignoring me when I call you a bad listener only helps me build my case.”

“And you’re suing me on what grounds, exactly?” you question, quirking a brow and locking the door behind him. 

“Criminal negligence. My ego is facing irreparable damage,” Spencer declares with an exaggeratedly dejected sigh. 

“That’s your own fault. Confidence is key,” you chide. “Never let someone else have that much power over you, even someone as hot as me.”

Spencer’s eyes trail down your body, and he pretends to be unimpressed as he meets your gaze. 

“Those are the frumpiest pajamas I’ve ever seen,” he deadpans, and you click your tongue. 

“You can’t faze me,” you decree, tossing your mussed hair over one shoulder. “See? Confidence.”

“Fascinating,” Spencer says sarcastically. “Now, if only there were a way to make your joints as strong as your horribly misplaced faith in your fashion sense.”

“I dunno what you mean. I’m fine,” you say with a shrug. You’re lying, of course. You’ve been in such unbearable pain these past few days that you’ve been reduced to tears on more than one occasion. Still, Spencer has literally been shot at work, so you would feel a little ridiculous complaining to him. His eyes fall to your feet, noting the way in which you’re obviously heavily putting weight on your good leg. 

“Your flamingo impression is impressive, by the way,” he muses. 

“Thank you,” you reply kindly, ignoring his sarcasm and pretending like he’s paid you a genuine compliment. “I’ve also recently mastered ‘pogo stick’. Wanna see?”

“That’s okay,” Spencer declines. Unfortunately for him, you’re a stubborn thing, and you decide to demonstrate, anyway. You turn on your heels and hop away from him on your good foot.

“Boing, boing—ah! Hey!” you exclaim as you’re lifted off the ground. Spencer throws you over his shoulder like you weigh no more than a bag of groceries, carrying you toward your bedroom.

“You’re gonna kill yourself,” he chastises, careful not to jolt your hip as he maintains his hold on you. 

“Unhand me!” you command, kicking your legs like a petulant child. 

“Sure, I will,” Spencer promises. “In your bed. Where you should be.”

He reaches your bedroom and shoves the door open with his foot, depositing you next to the side of the bed he knows you prefer. You know he’s expecting you to lie down, but you’re a bit miffed by being manhandled—even though the fact that he can carry you so effortlessly is rather attractive—so you just stand there and glare at him.

“God, who invited the fun police?” you scoff.

“Hopping around on one foot because your other leg is hurt is fun to you?” he retorts, gesturing with a flourish toward your bed. You ignore him.

“It’s not that hurt,” you argue, though you don’t even sound convincing to your own ears. Spencer huffs, shaking his head at your antics. 

“Is that an official prognosis?” he inquires with narrowed eyes.

“Yes,” you affirm. “I’m a doctor.”

“And in another world, you might actually be a medical one,” Spencer replies unenthusiastically. He raises his hands to your shoulder and attempts to coax you into bed, gently guiding you toward the mattress. “Now, sit.”

“Woof,” you say flatly, obediently sinking onto your bed. Spencer looks like he’s resisting the urge to facepalm.

“Jesus—you’re impossible,” he remarks with another shake of his head. 

“Oomph,” you sigh, flopping down. You rest your head against your mountain of pillows and watch Spencer assess the room with an intent gaze. 

“Where’re your painkillers?” he asks. You wordlessly respond by pointing to the living room. He starts to head out the door, and then warns over his shoulder, “You better not move.”

“Yes, Daddy,” you tease, speaking as sweetly as you can. Spencer grimaces.

“Ew,” he gags. “A nod or something would’ve been fine.”

“But so much less fun,” you reply, pulling back the covers to make yourself more comfortable. 

“Uh-huh,” Spencer responds noncommittally from the living room. You hear the rattle of a pill bottle as he retrieves it from the coffee table. Moments later, he’s reappearing in your doorway. 

“You’re back,” you state.

“Bearing gifts,” he answers, holding up the bottle for emphasis. 

“I missed you,” you complain. You sound a bit sarcastic, but the sentiment is genuine. You love Spencer more than you’ve loved anyone else before, and he knows it, despite your constant joking and teasing. Part of what makes your banter so enjoyable is that it’s all in good fun. You would never needle at his actual insecurities, nor would he at yours. When you peel back the layers of quips, there’s genuine affection there, more potent than you feel for anyone else in this world. 

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Spencer tuts, though his cheeks flush slightly, betraying his nonchalant demeanor. “When was your last dose?”

“Half past nunya,” you stubbornly joke. Spencer squints at you.

“Which is your oh-so-polite way of saying, ‘Why no, Spencer, I haven’t yet taken my medication. Thank you for reminding me. I’m so lucky to have you. Have I mentioned how handsome you’re looking today?’” he retorts without missing a beat. He practically shoves the pill bottle into your hands before rounding the foot of the bed and flopping down beside you.

“I thought flattery got me nowhere,” you argue, turning to face him. “Are you done kissing your own ass?”

“Maybe,” he concedes.

“Thank God. A big head doesn’t suit your gangly shoulders,” you declare, uncapping the bottle. 

“Gang—take your damn steroids,” Spencer says exasperatedly. You sigh dramatically before popping the prescribed dose into your mouth.

“Fine,” you huff, your response garbled by the pills in your mouth.

“Thank you, baby,” Spencer praises as you sip some water, swallowing your medication. 

“Ah.” You open your mouth as wide as you can and stick out your tongue to prove that you’ve swallowed the pills. It’s not like he asked you to do this; no, you just feel like being annoying. 

“So charming when you actually follow directions,” Spencer coos sarcastically, lifting a finger to your chin and encouraging you to close your mouth. You snap your lips together and snuggle deeper into your pillows. Despite the obvious answer being that you’re about to sleep the day away, Spencer asks, “So, what’s on the agenda for today?”

“Well, I’m glad you asked. I was thinking of doing some squats, maybe going for a bike ride—” you start, staring dreamily at the ceiling. 

“Do you have a sarcasm filter?” Spencer interrupts. 

“It’s in my hip. In other words, it’s not working,” you reply quickly. He huffs with amusement. 

“Smartass,” he remarks. Then, he cracks his knuckles, as if preparing for some kind of major adventure. “So, I was thinking we could catch up on Survivor, or maybe I could do some cleaning for you while you read, or—”

“We?” you cut him off. 

“Well, yeah. I took the day off,” Spencer shrugs. That probably should’ve been obvious, in hindsight. He’s not dressed for work, and it’s now well past the time that either of you would have to leave this apartment to make it to headquarters on time. Apparently, you were just too distracted by your excitement at seeing your lovely boyfriend to take any of this into consideration. 

“To torment me,” you sigh. 

“To take care of you,” Spencer corrects. “Ya know, since you’re too stubborn to do it yourself.”

“I resent that,” you whine, though he’s absolutely correct. 

“They hated Jesus for speaking the truth, too,” he replies confidently, and you snort. 

“Heh. Alright, fine, you’re very thoughtful,” you cave. “I maintain that I’m okay, but I am not opposed to having you all to myself. Or whatever.”

“Sweet. So, TV?” Spencer asks, already reaching for the remote. He turns on your TV and flips through your streaming services as you reply.

“Only so I can ogle Jeff Probst,” you say sarcastically. Spencer narrows his eyes at you in a sidelong glance. 

“Remember who you’re talking to,” he threatens lightheartedly. You pout in mock apology.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot you called dibs on him,” you reply, intentionally misinterpreting his warning. 

“You’re very annoying when you’re pretending to not be in crippling pain,” Spencer complains, opening the CBS app on your television. 

“Pretend—” you start.

“—ing schmetending,” Spencer finishes. “How original.”

“Aw, Spence. It’s so cute how you can read my mind,” you beam, leaning over to hug his arm and press your weight against him in a dramatic show of affection. “We’re just two little peas in a pod.”

“Pea pods typically hold five to ten peas, actually,” he responds, abandoning his faux annoyance in exchange for that familiar, excited tone he uses when he gets to tell you a fun fact. Like always, you’re absolutely fascinated that he just knows these things, but you’re too preoccupied being a smartass to shower him with compliments. 

“Okay, and? I evicted the others. Fuck them,” you declare, gesturing in a shooing motion. 

“Alright, sure,” Spencer concedes. Then, because you’re practically shoving him off the bed, he demands, “Move over. Carefully.”

“Fine, fine,” you oblige, scooching back to your side of the bed and making a conscious effort not to jostle your hip. “Make yourself comfy.”

Spencer notices your awkward shimmy just as easily as he notices literally everything about you. He turns to you, concern etching his features. 

“Do you need anything? Would a heating pad help? I can go buy some lidocaine patches, or—” he starts to ramble, but you cut him off. 

“You know those don’t help,” you remind him. You feel a bit guilty when he responds with a dejected frown. Really, you don’t have anything to feel guilty about, since you would much rather prefer if lidocaine did help, and it’s not your fault that it doesn’t. You add, hoping to cheer him up a bit, “Thank you, though.”

“Of course. I hate seeing you in pain. And—”

“I’m—” you interject, but Spencer goes on. 

“Stop interrupting me,” he directs. Your lips part, stubbornly trying to finish your sentence, but he continues, “And don’t try to convince me you’re not in pain. If it was bad enough for you to go see a doctor last night, I’m sure anyone else would be crying like a baby with that hip.”

You’re flattered that he seems to think you’re some sort of badass with an insanely high pain tolerance. You want to argue, to remind him that you’re just used to living with pain, and that you’re not actually that tough at all, but something about his sentiment gives you pause. You shoot him an amused glance. 

“Even you?” you tease with raised eyebrows.

“Oh, especially me,” Spencer replies, nodding solemnly. He’s pretending to be more serious than he is, you know that, but you’re still comforted by the notion, regardless. You still feel pretty ridiculous complaining about a sore hip, but maybe being honest about it won’t be as humiliating as you’ve been imagining. 

“...I considered going to the hospital and demanding their finest opioids,” you mumble, trying not to sound as vulnerable as you feel. You hate that your entire life has (and perhaps always will be) a struggle between being too sick to function “normally”, yet not feeling sick enough to be valid in being miserable. As much as you doubt yourself and put yourself down, though, Spencer’s always there to lift you up. 

“I’m sorry, honey,” he says sympathetically, lifting a hand to run his fingers through your hair. “Hopefully, you’ll start to feel better when the inflammation goes down.”

“Yeah,” you shrug, leaning into his touch. His fingers trace your jawline, moving to cup your cheek.

“You look tired,” he notes softly. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

“A, you’re supposed to think I look beautiful at all times,” you retort, though you are tired, so your attempted sass falls a bit short. “B, no.”

“You do look beautiful, baby,” Spencer assures you, leaning down to press a light kiss to the crown of your head. He pulls back and assesses the—surely very noticeable—dark circles under your eyes. “Just a little… sleep-deprived.”

“I need a cursed spinning wheel,” you sigh, dropping your head against his shoulder. You’re not even pretending to watch TV; you’re too exhausted. 

“Oh, but I would miss you if you fell asleep for a hundred years,” Spencer responds, smoothing your hair as you curl against him. 

“Well, I would hope so,” you mumble into his shoulder. “Just kiss me after like, a week or two.”

“Too long,” Spencer decides. You snort, lifting your head just enough to look up at him incredulously.

“A week is too long? What would you do without me?” you question, quirking a brow at him. 

“Perish,” he declares, sighing heavily. You huff.

“Dramatic ass,” you tease. “I like that answer, though. Very devoted.”

It isn’t long until you’re drifting off, relaxing against him. Your brain feels foggy, and you vaguely register people’s voices emanating from the TV. You’re not sure how long you’ve been laying here like this, but eventually, Spencer pats your shoulder and whispers to you. 

“Baby, roll over, please,” he requests. 

“Mngh,” you grumble, not wanting to be disturbed. You were so damn comfy, what the hell is he bothering you for?

“You’re laying on your hip, just—” Spencer points out, trying to gently guide you into a different position. When you refuse to move, he groans. “Ugh.”

“‘M comf’,” you mumble, nuzzling impossibly further into his side. 

“‘Comf’ or not, you’re gonna regret it,” he asserts, slowly extracting himself from beneath you. 

“YOLO,” you declare, lazily pawing at his arm as he pulls away from him. 

“Yes, dear,” Spencer chuckles softly, pulling his arm away from you and looking at you as sternly as he can muster. “Help me help you improve the quality of said life by getting off that hip.”

Knowing he’s not going to relent, you sigh a dramatic “hmph” and roll onto your good side. You’re immediately grumpy, given the fact that your back is now to Spencer and you’ve lost your favorite pillow (his arm). 

“Thank you,” he says, squeezing your shoulder. You crane your neck to look over at him.

“We have to switch spots,” you decree. 

“Why?” Spencer asks.

“I don’t like facing away from you,” you explain in a near-whine. Spencer’s perplexed look fades into a fond smile, and he rises from the bed without another question.

“Alright, hon,” he concedes, rounding the bed once more to slip into the other side. Once he’s laying beside you, you press up against him, smiling contently—and sleepily—as you rest your head on his chest. “Better?”

“Yes,” you hum approvingly, eyes fluttering shut. 

“You going back to sleep?” he inquires.

“Mm,” you reply tiredly. 

“Sleep tight,” he whispers into your hair. For the first time in days, you feel something other than pure pain as you’re overcome by sleep. 

Staying with witnesses is supposed to be a safe part of the job. That’s why Hotch assigned it to you. But when Morgan walked the handcuffed unsub through the station, one victim’s husband lost it completely, and when you got into his warpath he shoved you so hard Spencer heard your head knock against the precinct’s tile floor. Blood puddled around your left temple before anyone could even make it to you. 

You started crying nearly as soon as you woke up. It was more than understandable, given the blood all around you and the confusion you must have been feeling after a head injury like that, but what scared the team was when you wouldn’t stop. JJ tried talking to you, even Morgan softened his teasing and offered you a hug, but to everyone’s surprise all you wanted was Spencer. You calmed some once he sat down in front of you. Tears still dribbled from your chin, but you didn’t seem quite so distraught, and you let the paramedics look at you so long as Spencer stayed. Eventually he wound up in the back of an ambulance, an arm around your shoulders while you sniffled miserably into his windbreaker and a paramedic applied butterfly bandages to the cut on your head. 

Your eyes water as the paramedic clicks off her pen light and begins asking you questions. It takes a few moments for your gaze to settle on her. 

“It’s…it’s Wednesday.” You turn to Spencer. “Is it Wednesday?” 

His heart throbs at the vulnerability in your tone. “Focus on her,” he says, softening the directive with a stroke of his thumb over your shoulder. 

You turn back to the paramedic, answering her questions with varying degrees of uncertainty. Your fingers curl in the material of Spencer’s jacket. He has the urge to tuck your head underneath his chin. 

The paramedic informs you (or informs Spencer, really, you’re not paying much attention) that they’re going to take you to the hospital for a CT scan. They’ll let him ride there with you if he wants to. Spencer says yes without a thought. 

While she goes to pack up her supplies, he takes your fingers and unbunches them, warming your palm between his. 

“How are you feeling?” he asks you. 

You make a soft, stymied sound, bringing the unhurt side of your head to Spencer’s shoulder for a rest. “I don’t like this.” 

Spencer doesn’t need to ask which part you mean. He imagines none of it is pleasant. The light and sound of an ambulance in general has to be torment for your head. 

“Try closing your eyes,” he suggests. 

“I’m worried that will make me dizzier.” 

“Do you feel sick?” 

“Not really.” 

“Just try. It helped last time.” 

You sigh but do. You turn your head so your forehead is pressing into the bump of his shoulder, and Spencer reaches up to stop you before you can get close to rubbing against the bandages keeping your cut closed. 

Your voice is a watery consistency. “I really don’t feel right.” 

Spencer feels a painful tug in his middle. “I know. I’m sure it’s scary, but it won’t be forever. We’re going to the hospital, and the doctors are going to make sure you’re okay.” 

“I just don’t like this.” 

“Yeah, I know.” 

“Spencer?” 

“Hm?” 

“I really feel like I messed things up.” 

He has to remind himself not to move. In his surprise, his instinct is to pull back, to search your face for answers, but you’re pointed where he can’t see you with your voice trailing down his arm. 

“You didn’t. What makes you think that?” 

“It just…it feels like…” 

The words take a while to come. Spencer forces himself to set aside his curiosity. 

“It’s okay,” he says gently. “You don’t have to think about that right now. Just rest. You didn’t mess anything up.” 

“It feels like I’m…” you forge on, determined. “I’m always either not helping or in the way.” 

Again, Spencer’s first thought is to ask what you mean by that. But he doesn’t want to force you to overexercise your injured brain, so he tries to go along without elaboration. He fills in the gaps. 

“You’ve never been in the way,” he assures you, meaning it. “And you help us a lot. We wouldn’t be nearly as efficient without you, especially on this last case.” 

“I’m just an intern.” 

“Exactly. So it’s even more impressive how valuable you’ve been to our team.” 

You’re quiet for a few moments. Spencer starts rubbing slow circles into your shoulder with his thumb. Your forehead warms his arm through the jacket. 

“Thank you for staying with me. You’re always so nice.” 

“It’s no problem. I like hanging out with you.” 

“I don’t feel very well.” 

“Are your eyes still closed?” 

A pause. “Were they supposed to be closed?” 

Spencer smiles at the top of your head. Even confused as you are, there’s a familiar note of inquisitiveness to your tone. Like all you ever really want is to be sure you’re doing the right thing. Spencer is warmed that you trust him to tell you what that is. 

“Try closing them.” 

“Oh. This is better, thank you.” 

It starts with the smallest thing—your fingers clutching at the sheets like you’re falling. At first he thinks you’re shifting in your sleep, and he squeezes the arm around your waist, a lazy press of reassurance as he buries his face into your shoulder.

But then your body locks.

Every muscle goes rigid, your back a tight, trembling bow, and Bucky’s eyes snap open in an instant.

“Baby?” he whispers, already pushing himself up on one elbow.

You don’t answer. You can’t. Your mouth is parted like you’re gasping, but no sound comes out. No air either.

Your eyes are still closed—caught in whatever terror has its claws in you—but your chest isn’t rising. Not even a hitch. Not even a trembling struggle. Just stillness.

And Bucky’s heart stops.

“Sweetheart—hey, look at me.” His hand comes to your cheek, gentle but urgent, his thumb brushing the corner of your mouth. “C’mon, angel. Breathe. Please.”

You jolt awake with a strangled inhale—except it isn’t an inhale. It’s a choke. A desperate, empty gasp that brings nothing with it.

Then panic hits you like a collapsing building and you arch forward, clawing at your throat, at the sheets, at him—because your body thinks you’re dying and Bucky has never felt terror like this, not even in the war.

He gathers you instantly into his lap, one strong arm around your upper back, the metal hand braced protectively behind your head.

“You’re okay. You’re safe.” His voice is steady, but his pulse is pure lightning. “You’re with me. Right here. I got you. I got you.”

Your breaths keep coming in short, shallow, broken bursts—your lungs trying to drag in air they can’t quite grab. You shake like you’re freezing, like your bones remember the nightmare even if you don’t have the words yet.

Bucky sways you gently, forehead pressed to yours, trying to anchor you back into your body.

“Follow me, okay?” He exaggerates a slow inhale—not too big, not too sharp, just steady. “Just like this. ‘Atta girl. Try again. You can do it.”

You’re crying now, silent tears slipping down your cheeks, and your fingers twist into the front of his shirt like you’re terrified he might disappear.

He grips your wrists softly to keep you grounded. “I’m not going anywhere. You hear me? You’re not alone. Breathe with me.”

It takes a few more tries—a few shaky, failed breaths—before the first real inhale finally lands. Small, thin, but there.

“That’s it,” he murmurs, voice breaking in relief. His hand slides up and down your spine in slow, comforting strokes. “There you are, baby. Keep going.”

You tuck your face into his neck, sobbing quietly as the tremors in your chest start to lose their violent edge. Every so often your breath stutters, but Bucky’s right there every time, whispering soft directions and brushing his thumb beneath your eye.

When your breathing evens out—still shaky, but normal enough—he kisses your hairline.

“God, honey,” he whispers, not even trying to hide how scared he’d been. “Thought I lost you for a second.”

You pull back just enough to look at him. Your voice is a scratchy mess. “S-sorry.”

Bucky’s expression softens instantly. “Don’t you dare apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I— it felt so real.” Your lip trembles. “I couldn’t breathe. In the dream… and then when I woke up it—it wouldn’t stop.”

He cups your face in both hands like it’s as precious as oxygen itself.

“You’re safe now,” he tells you, slow and deliberate so it sinks into the places the fear just hollowed out. “Whatever you saw, whatever happened in that nightmare—it can’t get you here. I won’t let it.”

You curl into him again, shaking with the aftershock of adrenaline and leftover dread. Bucky shifts until he’s leaning against the headboard, pulling you fully into his chest and wrapping the blanket around both of you.

His arms never leave you—not for a second.

Whenever your breathing hitches again, he rubs soothing circles between your shoulder blades. Whenever your body jumps with the memory of falling, he presses a kiss to your temple and whispers, I’ve got you.

He means it with every beat of his heart.

After a long while, when your body finally begins to relax, Bucky speaks softly into your hair.

“You wanna tell me what it was about?”

You shake your head weakly. “I don’t… I don’t even think I want to remember.”

He nods. “Then you don’t have to. You don’t owe me anything. I just want you to feel okay.”

You let out a fragile exhale. “I’m scared it’ll happen again.”

His grip around your waist tightens, warm and protective. “If it does, I’ll be right here. You wake up fighting for air, you wake up screaming, you wake up shaking—I’ll wake up with you. And I’ll get you through it every single time.”

He doesn’t sound dramatic. He sounds like he’s stating a simple, unshakeable fact.

You stare up at him through damp lashes. “You’re not scared of me?”

He smiles—soft, sad, endlessly tender. “Sweetheart, I’ve lived in fear most of my life. But you? Being the one who needs me? That doesn’t scare me. It… it makes me feel like I finally get to be something good.”

Your throat tightens, not with panic this time, but with something warm.

He presses his forehead to yours.

“You’re not a burden,” he murmurs. “You’re my girl. My responsibility. My heart. And I’m gonna protect that heart in the light of day and in the middle of the worst goddamn nightmare.”

He lays a kiss over your pulse point—slow, grounding—like he’s reminding both of you that it’s beating.

Eventually he eases you back down into the pillows, but he keeps you cradled against him, one hand spread over your ribs so he can feel each breath you take. Every rise and fall reassures him. Every soft exhale unwinds a little more of the cold fear he woke up with.

“Try to sleep, baby,” he whispers. “I’m right here.”

The flashing lights have started to feel distant.

You’re sitting on the edge of the ambulance bumper, the reflective metal cool against the backs of your legs, hands braced at your sides to keep from swaying. The night air stings against your skin, though you’re not sure if it’s from wind or blood loss or just the way adrenaline burns off and leaves you hollow.

You hear your name before you see him. Spencer’s voice is soft but sharp — cutting through the chaos like it always does, made of worry and way too much knowing.

He rushes toward you with that familiar mix of restraint and panic, curls mussed, tie half loosened, and eyes sweeping over you like he’s trying to scan every inch at once. He crouches in front of you, palms hovering just short of your knees, not touching, but ready.

“Hey—hey, are you okay? What happened?”

You blink down at him. “Just my arm,” you say automatically, lifting your sleeve just enough to show where the tear in your jacket ends in red. “Got scraped during the takedown. It’s not deep.”

His eyes flick there, narrow slightly, then scan your face.

You know what he sees. Dirt, sweat, a thin scratch on your cheekbone where the edge of a broken crate grazed you. Nothing fatal. You make sure of that. You trained yourself to look “fine.”

Spencer doesn’t look convinced, but he doesn’t push. Not here, not yet.

“You scared me,” he says instead, voice low. “You weren’t answering your radio for a solid three minutes.”

“I dropped it,” you lie, and it’s almost easy. “I was fine. I had cover.”

His jaw clenches, just slightly, and he nods. “Okay, okay.”

Behind him, two paramedics approach. You can feel their presence before you see them: clipboards, gloves and soft, efficient questions.

Spencer stands, but not all the way. He steps back just enough to give them access, but doesn’t stray more than a few feet. You feel his eyes on you even as he pretends to be distracted, turning slightly like he’s scanning the scene, but his body stays angled in your direction.

The medic starts asking questions. “Any dizziness? Vision blurred? Any sharp pain anywhere?”

You answer them on autopilot. “No dizziness. Vision’s fine. Just my arm. Cheek too, maybe. Everything else is fine.”

Lying feels strange when it’s not to an unsub. But if you mention the ribs—if you say that breathing pulls at your side like something deep and tearing, if you tell them that you’re certain there’s blood you haven’t looked at yet—they’ll send you to a hospital. They’ll call it in. They’ll make Spencer come. He’ll sit beside you, panicking in his quiet way, and you’ll have to see the look on his face.

You can’t handle the look on his face. So you lie. Just a little.

Just enough.

The medic starts bandaging your arm, cleaning the surface wound, taping gauze like muscle memory. Your cheek is swabbed with something that smells sharp and stings even sharper, and still, you say nothing about the deep, pulling ache in your ribs. The bloom of pain behind your sternum that’s growing darker by the minute.

You keep your jaw tight. You keep your breathing shallow. You keep your eyes on Spencer, who hasn’t stopped watching.

The house is quiet when you finally get home.

The kind of quiet that holds weight. No police radios crackling. No shouted commands or bullet ricochets. Just the soft hum of the fridge and the warm creak of floorboards beneath your feet.

It smells like home. A little like books and cedar and the lavender laundry detergent Spencer insists on using. The lights are low, everything golden and familiar. You drop your bag by the door, toe off your shoes. He helps you out of your jacket without a word, careful hands brushing your arm, and then kisses your temple, just a quick press before guiding you to the couch.

Neither of you talks much. You don’t need to. You both know the case is still clinging to your skin.

Spencer picks a movie without asking, something silly and quiet that you’ve seen a hundred times before. The two of you curl up together, your body pressed into his side, his arm curled loosely around your shoulders. You rest your cheek against his chest, listen to the slow beat of his heart under his shirt. It’s steady, still yours, and most importantly? Alive.

That alone almost makes you cry.

At first, you stay still. It’s enough, just this — his hand stroking your arm, his breath warm against your hair. But then he tilts your chin up and kisses you.

It starts soft. Familiar. A touch that says I’m here and I need you. But then it deepens, slowly, then all at once.

His fingers slide along your jaw, gentle but deliberate, like he’s tracing something he missed. Your hand fists in his shirt. You pull him closer because you need to. Because the fear’s still there, under your skin. The echo of what could’ve happened.

He kisses you like he’s trying to memorize the taste of now. Not with lust, but with aching relief. With reverence. With that kind of heat that comes from love, not want.

Every time a case goes bad — every time one of you walks a little too close to the line — it ends like this. Tangled up. Holding on. Making out like teenagers just to feel something tender in the wreckage.

And you want to keep going. You really do. But then he shifts.

Spencer slides a hand to your waist, fingers curling slightly to tug you closer, and he guides you up from the couch with one gentle pull—

You cry out. Sharper than you mean to. It rips from you, fast and real.

He stills immediately. “What’s wrong?”

You freeze. The pain sears down your side. You can feel blood again — fresh, warm, slick against the band of your jeans.

You open your mouth, but nothing comes out. You stammer. “I—I didn’t—Spence, I—”

He’s already furrowing his brow, soft concern bleeding into something firmer. “Hey. Look at me.” His voice stays calm, low, but not soft. Not right now. “Tell me what hurts.”

You close your eyes. You can’t lie to him. Not now. Not when he’s this close. Not when he’s kissing you like he wants to keep you.

“I didn’t say anything at the scene,” you whisper. “I didn’t want to go to the hospital. They would’ve made you worry. I didn’t—” Your voice cracks. “It’s my side. My ribs.”

Spencer exhales, the kind of breath that sounds like it hurts to let go of. His eyes flick down toward where your hand is gripping your side, the dark red spreading beneath the hem of your shirt.

He doesn’t say anything for a second. Just takes in the sight. Then he swallows hard, his mouth tightening.

“Arms up, come on.” His tone leaves no room to argue. It’s not sharp or mean. But it’s final.

You lift your arms, slow and careful as he peels your shirt off like he’s unwrapping something fragile. And then he sees it.

The gash is angry and red, crusted with blood, still oozing from the reopened tear. Bruising already blooms around it, deep and ugly along your ribs. Spencer’s jaw tightens, and he shakes his head, just once, like he can’t believe you kept this from him.

He doesn’t scold you. Doesn’t snap. Instead, he presses a kiss to your forehead, then nudges you gently back down onto the couch.

“Lie down,” he says, quiet but firm. “I’ve got it.”

He moves quickly, efficiently. Medical kit already halfway unpacked from earlier, hands gloved before you can even argue. You watch him in silence, your pulse stuttering in your chest.

You hate this look on his face. The worry. The hyper focus. Like he’s building a wall between himself and how afraid he really is.

He presses gauze gently to the wound. Cleans it with practiced hands. His eyes flick up every few seconds to make sure you’re still breathing steadily.

“You should’ve said something, you know,” he whispered more to himself at this point, but you still caught it, and your throat tightened.

“I didn’t want to go to the hospital,” you whisper. “I just… I wanted to come home. With you. That’s all I could think about. I didn’t want to lose that to some cold exam room or fluorescent lights or—”

Spencer lets out a soft, tired sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh — and reaches up to shush you gently, his fingers brushing your cheek. “You’re not losing anything,” he says. “I’ve got you. You’re here.”

Then, without a word, he shifts. He settles on the floor at your feet, knees bent, elbows resting against the edge of the couch. One arm wraps around your calf loosely, not gripping, just holding. Then he lays his head sideways, cheek pressed against your thigh, eyes fluttering closed like being this close is the only thing that can slow his heart back down.

You thread your fingers into his hair on instinct, brushing it back from his forehead. He hums quietly, almost a purr, and leans into the touch like he’s trying to memorize the feel of your skin against his scalp.

“I’m sorry,” you murmur.

He shakes his head against you. “Don’t be.”

“But I lied.”

“You panicked,” he corrects softly. “You were scared. So was I. I’m still scared. But you’re here. That’s all I care about.”

Hard days were normal.

Everyone on the team experienced them; they were a profiler's rite of passage. One monster after another, one tragedy, one mistake, one loss after another, after another, after another. It was inevitable: someone's strength would slip, or someone would have their string pulled until they were a pile of knots. That was the life they chose.

And still, when you caught yourself faltering, when you felt the weakness culminate in your muscles, in your mind, you refused to accept it. This line of work stops for no one.

────────────

Spencer notices you immediately. It isn't the dark circles under your eyes, the slight slump in your posture, or the missing smile on your face; it's the way you look at him.

Hotch had told the team to go home. The case was successful, the victim was saved, and everyone should have been proud of themselves—but really, how could they? 168 hours of work, maybe 48 hours of sleep, blood, sweat, tears, a lifeless, 4-foot-tall body. It was devastating.

Spencer identifies your devastation first when you meet his eyes after you're dismissed.

You pack the unread book you brought onto the jet into your bag, wishing the time-worn pages would give you a familiar comfort. Somehow, that world seemed further away than ever—like it was truly so detached from here, it wasn't even worth indulging in it.

You feel the pull of warmth and look up to find a healing bit of beauty looking across the room to you, adorned in a rumpled cardigan and mismatched socks that—especially now—seem too bright for the dreary environment. He's standing up straight, and he looks so alleviating, and he's walking towards you.

He clears his throat when he's close. It isn't easy for him, either. It wouldn't ever be easy. He's just learned to keep his eyes forward.

"Are you ready to go? I can drive you, if—If you still want to come." If you still want to share your space with him right now.

You had agreed to go to his place after you landed in Quantico. Nothing sounded worse than a cold, empty bed, closeted in a lonely, empty sort of darkness that you knew awaited you in your room.

"Yes, I'm ready. Let's go." Yes, you want to come. Yes, you want to share everything with him right now.

"Okay."

He drives you home in a plentiful silence. Occasionally, his blinker flicks on, and the sound radiates. It's not like there's nothing to say, because there is everything to say—but there's much to say later, when eyes can meet and fingers can touch.

The elevator ride is quiet, too. Your fingers subliminally twitch towards his, and he wraps his hand around yours. You're glad he's here with you, physically, spiritually.

His hand falls away when he opens the apartment door for you. You kick off your shoes next to his, and your mind is so, so muddled, distraught with images and a lingering vacancy in your chest, that you don't think to turn around, to set down your bag. Spencer takes it from you gently, without a second thought, dropping it quietly next to his.

"Are you tired?" He asks, watching as you turn towards him. Yes, of course you were tired. Stupid question, Spencer. "I mean, do you want to go straight to bed? Or do you want to shower first? Are you hungry?" His gaze holds yours for a moment, and his voice softens further. "What do you want right now?"

You swallow, scratching your arm mindlessly to give yourself time before answering. It doesn't buy you much. "I..." What did you want? You were always shit at answering that question. You want your mind to quiet, but not completely; you want something to keep the painful static at bay. You want to close your eyes. You want Spencer; you want Spencer's skin. You want Spencer's tenderness and tranquility around you, inside of you, drowning everything out until all you could possibly do is sink into the stillness of him and sleep. "I don't really know, Spence."

He wants to hug you. Could he hug you right now? "That's okay. You don't have to know." He settles for a small step forward. "Do you—Will you come with me?"

You nod, because you would come with him if he asked you to jump off a cliff. He walks you to his bedroom, where books are left spread open, papers are scattered across various surfaces, and pictures of you and the rest of the team are framed on his desk. The lamp on the nightstand bathes the room in orange.

Spencer stands close to you, the air between you holding still. His fingers hook on the first button of your top. "Can I?"

"Yes," you murmur, and his fingers start to work. They aren't entirely steady, but they're there, and they're brushing against you like you're glass and something worthy of being treated delicately. He pops open the first button, the second button, the third, the fourth, the fifth. His knuckles graze the plane of your stomach, and you crane your neck to find him looking down at you, coffee-colored eyes drinking you in for all that you are. Beauty, pain, stillness. His stare doesn't waver as he carefully slides your top down your shoulders. Oh, he loves you, and, oh, how he aches to kiss away every trouble that riddles your brilliant mind.

He wants to squeeze the pain out of you, to push it through your limbs until they drip out of your fingertips. He would take it all for you.

Instead, he strips away every article of clothing contaminated with the day and folds them carefully, placing them on his dresser. You stand before him bare and vulnerable and devastatingly stunning, and he wants to say "Thank you for letting me see you like this. Thank you for letting me see you at all. I will always beckon to your call." But tonight wasn't for words. Tonight was for proximity.

You are so, so strong, and Spencer can see it in every crevice of your soul. He slips his cardigan off, and you lift your hands to unbutton his shirt. Your fingers are much steadier than his were. He knows he will never be able to grasp you. He's okay with that.

And then both of you are equal, left to suffer the wrath of uncaring, careless air wrapping around your bodies. You are tired, your eyes sting, and you feel the call of a scratch inside of you that you know you won't be able to reach. Spencer catches you when you fall.

You don't see his face crumple when your forehead falls against his shoulder. He is thankful for so many reasons, and angry for so many more. There is nothing that could explain why the world is so cruel to its most kind, strong inhabitants. There is no reasoning here, and there has never been anything he has desired to know more.

The only thing he can do in this moment is hold your head against him, and be painfully protective of the heart you mercifully chose to share with him.

Your eyes squeeze shut, and his skin is warm and welcome and familiar. You wonder if it was possible to open someone up and crawl into them, live in the safe cavern of their ribcage, if Spencer would let you bury inside of him or not.

"It feels like it never gets easier." Your voice is a whisper, a slight gush of wind.

His lips press against your head. He feels the drag in his steps, too, and that's okay. You can feel his Adam's Apple bob as he swallows. "When—after what happened with Tobias—I didn't think I would ever be able to wake up the same way I had before. I wondered if it was finally the day where... Where I lost everything that I... Appreciated in myself. I thought nothing could have saved me." He chokes on his words and frowns, and you take your thumb to the area between his eyebrows. You love nothing more than seeing Spencer wear what he feels, but in this moment, you have to smooth his hurt out. It's a self-serving action. He kisses the inside of your wrist before it completely falls away. "One day, I just... Woke up, and it lingered less. I'm sorry I can't tell you a fact or statistic that proves everything will disappear in a day or two. Some things I just don't... know. I wish that I did, for you." He knows nothing at all.

You breathe out against his lips, and then he's taking you to his bed, kissing you, trying to kiss it away. Desire swarms him traitorously—as it almost always does—but he stuffs it away, using it as fuel to love patiently instead.

He asks you again, he'll keep asking: "What do you want me to be for you, right now?"

You trace the sharp line of his jaw, the curve of his lips, the slope of his neck, and hover where his heart beats rapidly beneath his skin. He lets you take.

"I'll be whatever you want," he whispers, desperation, craving, deep, deep yearning settling in his bones and flowing between the cracks in his voice. Anything to help you feel lighter. He would change every version of himself to fit what you need.

"I just want you, Spence. That's all I know." You want to see the dimple in his chin, and every one of his facial expressions, and you want to just be with him because that's when your mind finally allows itself to mellow. "Just be you?"

"Okay." He tells himself to breathe, to plant his feet on the floor. "Sure. I can be me."

Soft lips graze his again, and he can taste blue and hear wind-chimes knocking together during a storm. He doesn't know what moment you're trying to create, or how much sensation you're seeking, or what would be appropriate for him to give you to water the drought in your mind, but still keep it from overflowing. He wants you on his hands, but he doesn't want you dripping through them; he doesn't want you to stretch so far—so quickly—that your seams tear. He knows that no matter how hard he tries to erase the day, the affliction will stay afflicting until, suddenly, days or months or years later, it dwindles to translucence. No amount of kisses will rid you or him of next week's exhaustion.

But he kisses you anyway, and worries about this moment, not the next. He will help you tomorrow, however you want him, and he knows you will do the same because you are an improbability—a living, divine angel—and you love him.

And you love him, but you hurt, and you love him, but a life-changing love is not the center of the universe, even if it's the center of your universe. Death does not wait for life to finish running its course. It will come for you tomorrow when you go back to work, and all you and Spencer can do is love each other through it, because when you choose three-quarters of your life to revolve around maybe-lives-will-be-saveds, you reap what you sow.

Tears drip down from your eyes to your lips, and you can taste the salt of them in Spencer's mouth. The unfairness of it all makes your throat burn, and it's so, so okay, because there's a constant, immovable body against you, one that bleeds with you and cries with you and experiences with you; one that will be there in the morning, still adoring you, even after a hard day.

He accepts your tears. He is grateful for them. He lets them sit on his tongue because they are a part of you—the rawest part of you. His own don't fall, but, instead, linger in the mild intensity of his kiss, and grow where his affection lives. The sting that would normally reside behind his eyelids possesses his chest, and—you know what?—That's okay, too. He does not care, not at all. He has felt true, incontrovertible hopelessness, and this is not it. He has you, and life is so livable with you in it.

He pledged the moment he met you that he would be in your corner until the Earth got sucked into a black hole (which has a chance so astronomically small, he is comfortable calling it impossible). So, he lets you feel until it's unfeasible to do so anymore. Anything is better than going numb.

"I'm sorry," you shake as you break away from him. "I know—I know it was hard for everyone, and I shouldn't be—"

"No, no," he shakes his head despairingly. Hearing you apologize for being delicate was more painful than a shot to the neck. "Cry. I want you to cry—no, I don't want you to cry, not ever—but I want you to let it out. Don't say sorry. Never say sorry."

"I just—We've had cases like these before, and I didn't... break, then. I don't know—I don't know what's wrong with me now."

"Nothing, nothing is wrong with you. Don't say that, either, please."

He's quiet for a long time. He watches as more tears fall, and it's beautiful, you're so beautiful, and do you know how fortunate he feels to be the one you choose to go home with, even when you know you're vulnerable? Please, keep showing him your insides.

"It will never come when you expect it to," he murmurs. Your forehead drops against his, and he's so nervous to say the wrong thing, and so overtaken with endearment. "It's happened to every person on the team. It's impossible not to feel this way in this job. It's good, it's okay. Please know that it's okay—that you're going to be okay."

You nod weakly, and he cradles your head against him. He is wrecked in every way. "You're going to be okay," he whispers, and he whispers again, "you're going to be okay."

Oh, Spencer. It's hard for you to believe that you ever lived a day without knowing him, without knowing how he would hold you tightly in his hands but loosely in his arms, what his bare skin would look like in the dull moonlight. You couldn't imagine the world without him. It was worth it to experience feeling so intensely, no matter how negative it was, because it was always with him.

The highs are high, and the lows are low, and sometimes it's just time passing. It's all worth it. Just to be able to know there's coffee going in the morning, that the shades are pulled open, that there's eggs on the stove (which are most likely overcooked and are going to be replaced by trashy diner breakfast), and someone warm and real and devastatingly beautiful there to touch and melt into... It all had to be worth it, right?

He kisses you one more time, and it's fleeting and it's syrup stuck to the top of your mouth. Darkness holds the room still when he reaches across your body and flicks the lamp off, and you're quick to wish that you could see his face again, where his jaw ticks and eyelashes fall.

You would reach for him if you had the energy, but you don't. It's not surprising when he reaches for you instead; you figure he knows you need the touch—but, really, it's just a selfish action on his part, a ploy to have a little bit more of you on a night where nothing is absolute. He's flawed in that way, always coveting more pieces of you to store in his mind, never to forget. He's ashamed of it sometimes, but the night isn't about him, and no attention should be focused on his shortcomings.

Really, really, he just wants his love to get some much-deserved rest.

"Close your eyes," he says quietly, his breath ghosting over your skin. He could just barely make out your form, your wide eyes staring straight at the ceiling, like you could see through it and into the stars.

"I don't want to see it." He knew what you meant. You didn't want to see images of the day reflected back at you, trying to get you to watch everything on a loop. But your voice is sure and soft and lovely, and his contradicting feelings frustrate him immensely.

"Do you want me to read something to you? I have Wuthering Heights right here." It was one of your favorites, and yes, on any other night you would take that offer. You like hearing him read quotes that you had previously dedicated to him. "I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches and every word he says." He knows this, and, in fact, he keeps the book on his nightstand in case there's a night when you want something familiar.

"Can you just talk? About anything? I like hearing the things you know."

If he wasn't already completely besotted with you, he would have become just then. He could sob.

"Yeah—Yes, of course." Why, now, did he suddenly have no words? He has to search for them, search for words that aren't "You are the most dear to me," or "I could fill a million books full of affections for you. I need you to feel better in the morning so that I can feel better in the morning, even if that's not the healthiest thing." Every thought of his belonged to you.

"There was something I learned and wanted to tell you on the jet, but I didn't really have the chance to." He turns towards you, though he can't see you. "Did you know that there's a neurological disorder where people lose the ability to recognize faces, but they can still identify someone by the way they walk, breathe, or blink? It made me think of you; it just felt inappropriate to share at the time."

You close your eyes, and, yes, you think you'll be able to sleep. His voice clogs every other sense. You're filled with him, utterly, wholly. "I didn't know that. That's an intimate way to know someone, by the way they move in the world."

"I think I would know you if I couldn't see you."

Oh, he has your heart in his hands, and he could shatter it so, so easily if he wanted to. You would let him. But you know he won't.

You hum, and your body is light against the bed. "You think so?"

"Yes."

"I think I would know you, too."

He swallows. He loves you. "Are you tired?"

"Mhm." You turn towards him, though you can't see him. "Can you keep talking, please? Just until I fall asleep?"

Spencer’s hand twitched over the mattress, searching blindly in the dark—for something, someone maybe—before curling tight around nothing at all. The muscles in his jaw flexed, and his lips parted, words trying to find shape. 

A low sound left him, half a whisper, half a plea. 

“Y/N—”

Her name dissolved into the air like mist.

Beside him, she stirred, the mattress dipping gently as she turned toward him. The movement released a faint warmth between them, a ripple through the dark. Her voice came out soft, roughened by sleep, threaded with worry before she’d even fully woken. 

“Spence…hey.” 

She reached for him through the dark, fingertips brushing the tense curve of his shoulder. His skin was hot beneath her touch, his pulse fluttering wildly beneath it. The moment she touched him, his breath hitched—a startled sound.

“You’re dreaming,” she whispered, the words small and certain, like a tether thrown into the chaos of his sleep. 

He startled awake on a gasp, the sound of it filling the small apartment like a wave crashing against the shore. For a split second he didn’t know where he was—only that his chest was tight and his pulse was thundering in his ears and the world was blurred at the edges. Then came her voice again, low and grounding:

“It’s okay. It was a dream. You’re alright.”

The words anchored him. He blinked hard, the shape of her coming into focus in the dim light that leaked through the blinds; hair mussed, eyes heavy but worried, one hand still resting over his arm. The sound of rain that tapped faintly against the windowpane registered to him, steady and alive, like a heartbeat he could match his to. 

He drew in a shuddering breath and pressed his palms to his eyes. “Sorry,” he murmured, voice raw. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

She shook her head, sleepy but gentle. “Don’t apologize.”

He could feel her gaze on him, warm and unflinching, and no doubt cutting through the half-dark. But his heart hadn’t yet caught up to the present; it still beat like it was trying to escape his chest. The air between them was damp, humid from the storm and his own panic. 

Y/N shifted closer, sitting up slightly. “Was it a nightmare?”

He hesitated. His throat worked. “Yeah.”

“Bad one?”

“Yeah.”

The word came out smaller than he meant it to, and he hated how it sounded—weak, too fragile, too human, a crack in the armor of rationality he always tried to wear. 

Her hand found his again, smaller and steadier, her thumb brushing knuckles. “You’re okay, Spence. Just breathe.”

He tried. Inhale. Exhale. But the dream clung to him like wet fabric; faces, blood, her name shouted in the dark. His body refused to believe it wasn’t still happening, his chest still rose too fast, his pulse still stumbled. 

“Your heart’s beating so fast,” she murmured softly.

He gave a weak huff of air, meant to be a laugh. “Guess my subconscious didn’t get the memo that the case is over.”

Her lips curved faintly, not quite a smile but something close, something meant to soothe, and she hummed. “Your subconscious has probably seen too much.”

He looked at her, eyes tired but gentle. “Yours too.”

That earned a small sigh from her, the kind that almost sounded like a laugh—something resigned or fond or even a little sad. The kind that said oh well, what can you do?

Her lips settled back into that soft half-smile, and for a moment, they just looked at each other. 

He dropped his faze, ashamed suddenly, the feeling flickering across his face like a shadow. “It’s fine,” the murmur was quiet, fragile. “Really. Go back to sleep. We have to be up in a few hours anyways.”

She didn’t move. The rain whispered against the glass, the world outside a shade of blue that didn’t belong to night or morning. The clock on the nightstand blinked faintly—4:21 a.m.—and in the low blue light Spencer sat half-upright, still breathing like someone who’d been running from something that wasn’t there.

The quiet returned in pieces, but even still, she didn’t move to sleep.

Instead, she reached across the space between them and brushed her fingers against his jaw. His skin was warm and still damp, the faintest tremor in the muscles beneath her touch. 

“You don’t have to tell me what it was,” she said quietly. “But I don’t want you staying up alone.”

He looked at her then—really looked, and his eyes were rimmed red and the shadows beneath them looked deep as bruises. The sight of her undid him a little, and guilt tugged through his chest. “It’s not that I don’t want to,” he started, voice frayed at the edges. “It’s just… it was you. And it felt so real—too real.”

The words fell into the air between them and seemed to hover there, raw and trembling. 

She looked at him softly, the kind of look that held a thousand small kindnesses. “Dreams can be cruel,” she murmured. “And they take what we fear and turn it into something unimaginable.”

He swallowed hard, eyes flicking from her own and down. “I should be better at this by now. It’s just—everytime we finish a case like that…” He hesitated, the words catching like static in his throat. “I see things when I close my eyes, and tonight—tonight you were—”

Spencer stopped himself and the rest stayed lodged in his throat, trembling on the tip of his tongue, but too unbearable to escape. 

She didn’t press, no, only shifted closer until their knees touched under the blanket. “You don’t have to finish. I get it.”

He nodded, but the movement was tight and helpless. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

Her laugh was small, surprised and almost a sigh from how his words caught her off guard. “Spencer, you’ve seen me come apart after a case. Why would I judge you?”

He wanted to smile, something small to relieve her, and himself maybe. But he couldn’t; the adrenaline was still in him, humming in his veins and coming and going like waves, keeping him alert when all he wanted to do was rest, and his heart was still tap tap tapping against his ribs, quick and stubborn.

“I won’t be able to sleep,” he admitted finally, quiet enough that it almost disappeared beneath the hush of the rain.

“I know,” she said.

He exhaled through his nose, the kind of sound that wasn’t a laugh, more a surrender. His gaze lifted to her again, serious now, something pleading in flickering in his eyes, and for a moment, he looked like he wanted to say thank you or I’m sorry. Something small and honest; but instead, he cleared his throat and spoke with practiced steadiness, the voice he used when talking to victims on the job, ones he didn’t want to worry. “You should sleep, though. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. I promise.”

He looked away as he said it, down at the folds of the blanket gathered in his hands, as though he could hide his truth there, that he was anything but fine. 

She hummed in response, the sound low and thoughtful, but she didn’t move away. Her hand stayed near his, an unspoken refusal to leave him alone in the dark. 

He risked a glance back at her, and she was still there—looking at him through her lashes, half-lit by the grey dawn, expression unreadable but undeniably soft. 

“You know what I dream about?” she asked after a long silence, voice still drowsy. 

It startled a flicker of curiosity in him, making him pull his gaze back to her. “What?”

Her mouth curved into something between a smile and a secret. “Little things.”

He repeated it softly. “Little things?”

She hummed an easy mhm, the sound melting into the air. Then she leaned closer, her hair falling forward to catch the faint blue light from the window. “There’s still nightmares of course,” she said. “I don’t think any of us are free from those. But it’s after them… it’s the little things I see.”

The way she spoke had him captivated, enraptured, although he always was when she talked, but this was something entirely different; here, the way she spoke, even barely awake, was like a lullaby, every word shaped from calm and tenderness. From the small hope that there were still good things to dream about.

“Soft mornings. Warm light through the curtains. Orchids on a windowsill. You making coffee, humming something you don’t even realize you’re humming.”

The corner of his mouth twitched—the beginning of a smile tugging on his lips.

She took that as permission to keep going.

“I dream about the way sunlight smells,” she said. “That fresh, golden kind of warmth that makes everything feel clean. Sometimes there’s a little kitchen, and it’s colorful, and there’s a kettle on the stove, and you’ve already poured my cup. I’m only half-awake, just watching you move around the kitchen, and you look up sometimes—and I think maybe this is what peace looks like.”

He didn’t mean to react, only wanted her to keep talking—in that soft, lilting voice that always seemed to carry like light through gauze, low and honey-slow, curling through the quiet like the way steam curls from a cup, but he did; the sound he made was small, barely a breath or a hum, but his shoulders eased by a fraction with it. 

Her fingers drifted up, ghosting through his curls and untangling them gently. Achingly tender. “Sometimes,” she went on, “there’s a cat that shows up. You insist you don’t like cats, but you feed it anyway. And it follows you around the garden, waiting for you to read out loud.”

He let out another quiet exhale. His eyes were open, although slower now, and softer, tracing her face as she spoke. He watched the way her lashes brushed her skin when she blinked; the thoughtful distance in her gaze as she painted the scene in her mind; the faint curve of her lips when she spoke something beautiful, like she didn’t know she was doing it. 

Her voice had changed. It was warm and low, a current he could float on, and in this moment, he forgot that any world existed outside this bed, outside her voice. 

“And sometimes,” she said, “we’re older. You’ve finally let me convince you to love me. You still get that look when I catch you watching me—like the sun’s doing something only you can see. You laugh more in these dreams, and it’s the kind of laugh that fills the air and stays there, even when you stop.”

Her words lingered like perfume, light and golden, and for a moment he forgot to breathe. His throat worked as emotion rose and swelled quietly behind his ribs. It surprised him: the way her voice could undo him so completely. HIs eyes burned again, but differently this time. The red rim wasn’t from nightmares or ghosts; it was from something tender, something that ached in a gentler way—the kind that comes when you realize you’ve been seen and wanted, wholly and without fear. He didn’t trust his voice enough to speak, so instead his hand found the hem of her sleep shirt and stayed there, not pulling or reaching under, just resting. The contact grounded him, and her; it told her everything he couldn’t yet say. 

Her voice thinned out into something softer, nearly a whisper: “In one dream, we live somewhere quiet. There’s a porch with chipped paint, and the whole world smells like pine and sugar. You’re reading while I hang the laundry. The sky turns that color peaches turn right before they go too soft. You look up at me and smile, and everything in me feels like sunlight.”

As she spoke, the image drifted between them like a prayer half-remembered. 

He could almost see it—a small casita tucked against the hills, the faint creak of a porch swing, the hum of cicadas hidden in the trees, walls washed in warm colors that catch the afternoon light. Clay pots that line the railing, overflowing with marigolds, sunflowers, and herbs that all reach for the sun. Bougainvillea that would spill down from the roofline in riotous pinks and reds, curling through the wooden beams of the porch. Windows that would glow with hand-cut glass that catch the sun in mosaic fragments across the floor. Wind chimes made from old glass bottles would sing lazily in the breeze. Inside, bright tiles would line the kitchen—cobalt, amber, green—still warm from the afternoon light, and the air would be rich with coffee and flour and sugar. Somewhere, a radio would hum softly in Spanish, its melody thin and sweet, and Y/N would hum along. The house itself wouldn't be grand, but alive; bright in its own way, full of handprints and warmth and things that didn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful. Built by love, touched by time and care.

The room had fallen into that sacred, half-lit stillness again, the one that only existed between hours; the hush before dawn when even the city seemed to forget itself. The rain had quieted to a faint patter, like fingertips against glass. Every sound was small: the whisper of breath, the rustle of cotton sheets.

Y/N’s voice came again, softer now, threaded with that low rasp that always sounded like warmth to him. Like the sound of a match being struck in the dark. 

“In other dreams,” she murmured, “we’re sitting by a window, it’s late afternoon, and the light is so golden that it turns everything into honey. You’re reading something, it doesn’t really matter what, but I can hear you turning the pages. And there’s tea cooling on the table, and I think I tell you that you look beautiful in this light.”

A small grin tugged at her lips, unbidden and bright, the kind that overtakes a face before you can stop it. She could see him in her mind so clearly: the soft furrow in his brow as he read, the way he’d glance up when she said something like that, startled and a little shy. 

“And you’d do that thing,” she said sleepily, voice wrapping around the words tumbling out, like silk, “where you pretend like you didn’t hear me, but your mouth gives you away.”

Her smile stayed as she spoke, and he could hear it—feel it deep in his bones, in the marrow—in the rhythm of her voice. 

Her words moved like water, slow and lilting and inevitable; they slipped through him and washed away the remnants of the dream that had clawed at his chest. He didn’t answer, didn’t need to, only tightened his hold on her shirt, fingers curling in the fabric of it. She felt the faint twitch of them each time his breath deepened, each time he drifted another inch closer to much needed sleep. 

She smiled faintly against his shoulder, kept speaking just for him. “Or sometimes it’s not a house in the mountains, it’s a house by the ocean. The windows are open all day, you leave books on every surface, I spend the morning trying to remember where I put the flowers.”

The corners of her lips cured up slightly as she pictured it: sunlight pouring through gauzy curtains, hair fluttering in the sea breeze. “Everything smells like salt and citrus,” she said, eyes half-lidded, words rolling slow and sweet, “and you walk past and kiss me without saying anything, and it feels like the world has stopped just for that second, just to sit and watch, like even the waves pause to listen.”

His lips parted, a soundless sigh, and his thumb brushed over her hip slow and absent as though he could feel the dream in his sleep. 

She leaned her head against his, her words melting into the quiet.

“And sometimes,” she murmured as if it was a secret, “it’s nothing at all. Just light and warmth and the feeling that we made it somewhere safe.”

She could feel his heartbeat through the thin fabric of her shirt and it was slow now, steady and no longer chased by nightmares. The air around them smelled faintly of rain and the soft jabón de lavanda y limón detergent she used on her clothes, a clean and nostalgic scent that lingered like sunlight on cotton. 

Her voice dwindled into the smallest thread. 

“You read to me,” she said. “Your voice is low. The outside world doesn’t matter. The sun’s sinking, the sky’s the color of guava—that pink-orange color that fades too quickly—and everything is soft.” She paused, her lips barely moving. “I think that’s how love sounds.”

His breathing matched hers now—deeper, slower—and the thought struck him that maybe his was her plan all along; that she’d been breathing slow and careful to lull him to sleep. The tension in his body had begun to melt, and his fingers tightened slightly against her side, a wordless plea. 

“You’d never have to convince me,” he whispered, voice half-asleep already.

“I know,” she breathed.

A small silence stretched between them, gentle and familiar, and Y/N thought he had finally fallen asleep. Then, with his eyes still closed, he murmured, “You should be a poet, you know that?”

She let out a sleepy giggle, low and warm. “Yeah?”

He hummed, the sound like a smile.

“Think I could quit my day job?” she teased, voice lazy with fatigue. 

“Maybe in the next lifetime. I’d miss you too much,” he whispered, still half-lost to sleep. “But you’d be brilliant—you already are—but I’d spend hours trying to decipher your poems, and you.”

She tilted her head against his shoulder, pretending to consider it. “If I were a famous poet,” she mused, “I’d run free and never be caught. I’d live in a hundred cities, leave poems tucked in trees and under coffee cups, and no one would ever really know me.”

He smiled, eyes still closed. “Then I’d spend my whole life trying to find you,” he murmured, voice soft but sure. “I’d read every poem, follow every line until it led me back to you. I’d meet you, and I’d fall helplessly in love with you all over again.”

Her laugh came quiet, a little breath of joy in the dark. “You’d have your work cut out for you.”

“Worth it,” he said.

She smiled against him. “You only think that because it’s too early for your brain to argue with me.”

He huffed, the faintest sound of amusement. “Maybe. Or maybe I should wake up early more often—so I can hear about your dreams and all the strange, beautiful thoughts that live in your head.”

Her hand found his hair, fingers combing through it once, tender. Then she leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth, almost missing, more warmth than touch. “I’ll tell them to you whenever you like,” she whispered. 

He nodded faintly, eyes settling, the words anchoring themselves somewhere deep in him. His grip on her shirt loosened, but didn’t fall away, and he breathed her name once, a soft whisper that barely reached the air, so, so different from the one he had broken out earlier. She watched as his face softened, his mouth easing back into peace, the lines on his forehead smoothing away. 

“Goodnight, Spence,” she whispered, and then his body went still in the gentlest way—sleep finding him, patient and whole. 

Outside, the rain faded into drizzle.

Inside, he drifted through sleep, carried by the soft gravity of her voice. Through the golden rooms and seaside light she had painted for him; through the orchards of color and warmth. In the quiet world of dreams, he walked those sunlit porches, felt the salt wind against his face, heard her laughter somewhere close, and believed, even if only for the night, that peace was something he could keep. With her words still echoing, her warmth beside him, the nightmare finally letting go, Spencer walked gently through the living pictures of her dreams, and for a while, the two of them existed there together within the soft light she’d spoken into being. 

Somewhere far off, the light began to change—the first pale threads of dawn weaving themselves through the rain, through the blinds, across the bed where they lay, still and warm and safe in the quiet between heartbeats.